Mourn not your Dead

must be the elusive Sergeant James. I’ve heard about you from Geoff, among others. I’m Madeleine Wade.” She put her hand out the window, and Gemma grasped fingers as strong as her own. “If you’re looking for your superintendent, I haven’t seen him lately. Cheerio.” With a wave Madeleine put the car into gear and pulled away, leaving Gemma gaping after her.
    She closed her mouth with a snap, wondering why she felt as if she’d just been unzipped and put back together again. And had she heard an emphasis on the your before superintendent, or was she imagining things? With a shrug she crossed the road and went round to the pub car park, but there was no sign of the Rover.
    Slowly, she walked into the lane and stared at the Gilberts’ house. Would she be stealing a march on Kincaid if she took the opportunity to have a word with Claire Gilbert? She felt she and Claire had established a rapport of sorts and that perhaps she had a better chance of winning Claire’s confidence alone.
    Letting herself in through the gate, she bypassed the dark, austere front door that seemed to her to symbolize Alastair Gilbert’s presence in the house, and took the path to the back garden.
    The sight that greeted her might have graced a painter’s canvas. A white wrought-iron chair had been pulled out into a sunny patch on the green square of lawn. In it sat Claire, wearing a high-necked Victorian blouse and skirt like a drift of wild flowers. Lucy sat on the ground beside her, head against her mother’s knee. Lewis gamboled about with a tennis ball in his mouth, which he promptly dropped in his eagerness to greet Gemma.
    “Sergeant,” said Claire as Gemma crossed the lawn, “get another chair and join us. It’s positively indecent, isn’t it, for November?” She turned a palm up to the flawless azure sky. “Have some lemonade. It’s the real thing, not the fizzy stuff from a bottle. Lucy made it herself.”
    “I’ll just get you a glass,” said Lucy with a smile, and pushed herself up with graceful ease. “No, Lewis,” she scolded as she pulled over a chair for Gemma. “She doesn’t want to play with you just now, silly beast.” The dog cocked his head and panted, the pink of his lolling tongue bright against his dark muzzle.
    “I feel an absolute layabout,” said Gemma, but she sank into the chair gratefully.
    Claire closed her eyes. “Sometimes it’s the best option, and we don’t take it often enough.”
    “Everyone seems to be telling me that today. Is there a conspiracy?”
    Claire laughed. “Did you grow up having ‘the devil finds work for idle hands’ drummed into you, too? Funny how hard it is to shake those things.”
    Lucy returned with a glass of lemonade for Gemma and resumed her place beside her mother’s chair. “Shake what things?” she asked, looking up at them.
    “Things we learned at our mother’s knees,” Claire answered lightly, running a hand through her daughter’s hair. “How to listen, how to please, how to do what’s expected of us. Isn’t that right, Sergeant?” She gave Gemma a quizzical glance. “I can’t keep calling you ‘Sergeant’—it’s Gemma, isn’t it?”
    Gemma nodded, thinking of her mother’s outspoken independence (bloody-mindedness, her dad had been known to call it). Yet even with that influence, Gemma had tiptoed around Rob’s every whim as if he were royalty. The memory made her wince. Where did such behavior come from, and how did one guard against it?
    “I’d better get ready,” said Lucy, breaking into Gemma’s reverie. “Dog drool doesn’t exactly suit the occasion.” She stood up and brushed at her shirt.
    “Occasion?” asked Gemma.
    “We’re taking Gwen out for tea and Mum says I have to wear something ‘appropriate.’ Don’t you hate that word?”
    “It’s dreadful,” Gemma agreed with a smile. “How’s his mother coping, by the way?”
    “I’ll be along in a minute, love,” Claire said to Lucy, then turned back to Gemma. “As well as can be expected. The shock seems to have made her a bit fuzzy. Sometimes she seems to forget what’s happened, but when she remembers she’s worrying herself over the funeral.” Claire gazed at the trees that climbed the slope behind the garden. When the kitchen door had banged behind her daughter, she said, “Since we have no idea when the coroner will release the body, Becca thinks we might hold a small memorial service without making a feast for the press.” With a