Gemma hesitated, then made a face. "Better not. I've played truant enough lately. See you tomorrow." She went out with a wave, then stuck her head round the door again. "Don't forget to look after the cat, now."
The weather change had driven the weekend hordes from Hampstead Heath. Spring had flaunted her true colors and driven them scurrying back into pubs and parlors, except for a few solitary dog-walkers and resolute joggers. Litter left behind from the warm-weather festivities blew fitfully across the grass. Stopping at the flat only long enough to change into jeans and anorak, Kincaid crossed East Heath Road at the bottom of Worsley and plunged onto the Heath itself near the Mixed Bathing Pond. He felt a need to work the kinks out of mind and body. Running required too much focus, or at least that's what he told himself, so he turned north and walked, letting his thoughts wander where they would.
Gemma's theories worried him more than he'd admitted. He trusted her instincts, and if she said Margaret Bellamy was dead scared, he believed her. But he couldn't make a logical construction out of the rest of it-there were just too many holes.
He smiled, thinking of Gemma's arguments. Sometimes her enthusiasm amused him, sometimes it irritated him, but that was one reason they worked well together-she charged into ideas headlong while he tended to worry at them, and often together they came to a satisfactory conclusion.
The path crossed the viaduct pond and he stopped a moment, hands in pockets, admiring the view. New-leafed branches formed mirror images of themselves in the water, and to the west the spire of Hampstead's Christ Church rose above the still-bare fingers of the taller trees. Gemma had been different at the weekend, some of the fiery energy banked down to a lazy contentment. Bright cotton clothes against skin faintly flushed from the sun, an elusive scent of peaches when he'd stood next to her in Theo's dusty shop-Kincaid blinked and shook himself like a dog coming out of water.
He started walking again, head down into the wind, beginning the long climb to the Heath-top. Somehow, in the course of the weekend, the atmosphere between them had shifted. Today they'd worked together in their usual way, and he'd begun to think he was imagining things, but then he sensed her uncharacteristic hesitation when he suggested they stop for an after-work drink. They often did that, talking over the day's progress and planning the next, and only now did he realize how much he looked forward to it. Maybe he demanded too much of her time, and she resented it. He'd be more careful in the future.
Twigs of gorse, heavy with yellow blossom, scratched and snagged at his sleeve as he absentmindedly passed too near. Beautiful and irritatingly prickly, like Gemma-and like Gemma, it needed to be handled with caution. He smiled.
His path dead-ended at the top of Heath Street, just across from Jack Straw's Castle. The parking lot of the old pub was already full, and when the door swung open the wind carried a faint drift of music to Kincaid's ears. The boisterous crowd didn't appeal to him and he turned left down Heath Street, feeling the pull in his calf muscles as he made the steep descent. When he reached the tube station, an impulse sent him straight ahead rather than left into Hampstead High Street. Church Row came up shortly on his right, and he turned into the narrow lane, the spire of St. John's leading him on like a compass needle.
Kincaid entered the churchyard through the massive wrought-iron gates. A drunk snored on a bench by the church door, disturbing the silence. Kincaid turned left, into the dim greenness of the tomb-covered hillside, which even in early spring was tangled and overgrown with vegetation. The path wound under the heavy boughs of evergreens, passing damp, gray stone slabs, splotched with lichens. He stopped at his favorite spot, just before the lower boundary wall.
"John Constable, Esq., R.A., 1837," read the carved inscription on the side of the tomb. Constable lay with his wife, Mary Elizabeth, and the marker also bore witness to the death of their son, John Charles, age twenty-three. Constable's name was associated with the history of almost every part of Hampstead, as he rented one house after another from 1819 until his death, and was said to have asked to "take his everlasting rest" in the village he immortalized in his paintings.
Why Kincaid found the Victorian monument comforting he couldn't have said, but since he'd lived in Hampstead he had developed a habit of coming here to think when he couldn't quite sort something out. He sat on a rock and rubbed a twig between his fingers, crumbling the dry bark to dust. Frowning, he tried to clear his mind, concentrate. His gut-instinct told him that Meg really had loved Jasmine, would not have harmed her against her wishes. Roger, however, was a different kettle of fish, and a smelly one at that. Sex was a powerful and often twisted force, and he wasn't sure how blind an eye Meg might have persuaded herself to turn in order to preserve her relationship with Roger.
And Theo? Had Theo resented his sister more than he loved her? He certainly had reason to be grateful to her, but the contrariness of human nature could make gratitude a difficult burden to bear.
He began to see Jasmine sitting in the center of a radiating web of relationships, inviolate. What had she felt for anyone? Had she moved through her life untouched and untouching? She'd faced her illness with such equanimity. He couldn't reconcile the passionate girl in the journals with the woman he'd known-charming, witty, intelligent, and more guarded than he ever had imagined.
Kincaid sighed and stood up. The light was fast fading, the graves had no secrets to impart, and if he weren't careful he'd be blundering his way back up the hill. He realized that the wind had died, and beyond the boundary hedge the lights of the city glowed in the gathering dusk.
The drunk was gone when Kincaid reached the church again. From within the building, muffled by the heavy doors, voices sang in familiar cadence. "Evensong," Kincaid said aloud. When had he last heard an Evensong service? The sound took him back to the sturdy red-brick church of his Cheshire childhood. His parents had deemed the Evensong service the only compromise between their Anglican upbringing and their liberal philosophies, and while the family often attended Evensong, Kincaid could not remember being inside the church on a Sunday.
Inching open the scuffed, blue-leather-padded door and slipping through, Kincaid made his way to the last pew and eased into it. Only a few scattered forms filled the seats in front of him. He wondered that the service, so lightly attended, was held at all.
Voices rose, the sound filling the hollow space inside the church, and the notes of the massive organ vibrated through the pew into his bones. Kincaid relaxed, idly watching the choir director. The man used his hands like blunt instruments, chopping and jabbing his signals to the choir. He looked, in fact, more like a rugby forward than a choir director-well over six-feet tall, with massive shoulders under his surplice and a square, heavy-jawed head.
The director moved a step to the right and Kincaid caught a glimpse of a familiar face in the choir's back row. A fringe of gray hair around a balding head and a ruddy face, a clipped gray mustache-so accustomed was Kincaid to the Major's usual tweedy attire that the full, white fabric of the surplice had disoriented him for a moment. How could he have forgotten the Major telling him he sang with the St. John's choir? Kincaid watched, fascinated by the sight of his taciturn neighbor raising his voice in a joyous, open-mouthed bass.
The service drew to a close. The final "amen" hung trembling, then the choir filed out. The other congregants passed Kincaid on their way to the door, smiling and glancing curiously at him. Regulars, he thought, wondering just who the hell he was. When the porch door closed on the last straggler, Kincaid stood and walked toward the altar.