Leave the Grave Green

When Kincaid returned to the Chequers, a bit muddy as Tony had predicted and feeling pleasantly tired from his walk, there was still no word from Gemma regarding her progress with Tommy Godwin. He rang the Yard and left a message for her with the duty sergeant. As soon as she finished in London she was to join him again. He wanted her in on the interview with Hicks. And considering Kenneth’s obvious dislike of women, Kincaid thought with a smile, maybe she should conduct it.

In Henley, Kincaid left the car near the police station and walked down Hart Street, his eyes on the tower of the church of St. Mary the Virgin.

Square and substantial, it anchored the town around it like the hub of a wheel. Church Avenue lay neatly tucked in the tower’s shadow, facing the churchyard as if it were its own private garden. A plaque set into the stonework informed him that the row of almshouses had been endowed by John Longland, Bishop of Lincoln, in 1547, and rebuilt in 1830.

The cottages were unexpectedly charming, built of a very pale green-washed stucco, with bright blue doors and lace curtains in every window. Kincaid knocked at the number Sharon Doyle had given him. He heard the sound of the television, and faintly, the high voice of a child.

He had raised his hand to knock again when Sharon opened the door. Except for the unmistakable golden corkscrew curls, he would hardly have recognized her. She wore no makeup, not even lipstick, and her bare face looked young and unprotected. The tarted-up clothes and high heels were gone—replaced by a faded sweatshirt, jeans and dirty trainers, and in the few days since he had seen her she seemed visibly thinner. To his surprise, she also seemed rather pathetically glad to see him.

“Superintendent! What are you doing here?” A sticky and disheveled version of the child in the wallet photo Kincaid had seen slipped up beside Sharon and wrapped herself around her mother’s leg.

“Hullo, Hayley,” said Kincaid, squatting at her eye level. He looked up at Sharon and added, “I came to see how you were getting on.”

“Oh, come in,” she said as if making an effort to recall her manners, and she stepped back, hobbled by the child clinging to her like a limpet. “Hayley was just having her tea, weren’t you, love? In the kitchen with Gran.” Now that she had Kincaid in the sitting room, she seemed to have no idea what to do with him, and simply stood there stroking the child’s tangle of fair curls.

Kincaid looked around the small room with interest. Doilies and dark furniture, fringed lampshades and the smell of lavender wax, all as neat and clean as if they had been preserved in a museum. The sound of the television was only a bit louder than it had been when he stood outside, and he surmised that the cottage’s interior walls must be constructed of thick plaster.

“Gran likes the telly in the kitchen,” Sharon said into the silence. “It’s cozier to sit in there, close by the range.”

The front room might have been the scene of some long-ago courtship, thought Kincaid. He imagined young lovers sitting stiltedly on the horsehair chairs, then remembered that these cottages had been built for pensioners, and any wooing must have been done by those old enough to know better. He wondered if Connor had ever come here.

Diplomatically, he said, “If Hayley would like to go in with Gran and finish her tea, perhaps you and I could go outside and have a chat.”

Sharon gave Kincaid a grateful glance and bent down to her daughter. “Did you hear what the superintendent said, love? He needs to have a word with me, so you go along in with Gran and finish your tea. If you eat up all your beans and toast, you can have a biscuit,” she added cajolingly.

Hayley studied her mum as if gauging the sincerity of this pledge.

“I promise,” said Sharon, turning her and giving her a pat on the bottom. “Go on now. Tell Gran I’ll be along in a bit.” She watched the little girl disappear through the door in the back of the room, then said to Kincaid, “Just let me get a cardy.”

The cardy turned out to be a man’s brown wool cardigan, a bit moth-eaten, and ironically reminiscent of the one Sir Gerald Asherton had worn the night Kincaid met him. Seeing Kincaid’s glance, Sharon smiled and said, “It was my granddad’s. Gran keeps it for wearing about the house.” As she followed Kincaid out into the churchyard, she continued, “Actually, she’s my great-gran, but I never knew my real gran. She died when my mum was a baby.”

Although the sun had set in the few minutes Kincaid had been inside the house, the churchyard looked even more inviting in the soft twilight. They walked to a bench across the way from the cottages, and as they sat down Kincaid said, “Is Hayley always so shy?”