"Dorset was a wash-out." He acknowledged her I-told-you-so expression with a grin. "And I talked to the Major," he added more seriously, finding himself reluctant to recount the Major's tale even to Gemma. "I don't think he could have killed Jasmine. Of course, he hasn't an alibi, but there is no physical evidence to indicate him, either."

"But didn't he leave practice early, an unusual occurrence for him?"

Kincaid shrugged. "I suppose he really didn't feel well. A coincidence."

Gemma raised an eyebrow. "You didn't ask him?"

"Somehow I didn't feel I could, after what he'd told me. And coincidences do happen, inconvenient as they may be," he added a little defensively.

"We're not getting anywhere, and you know the Guv isn't going to let us slide any longer. Our caseload has suffered this past week." She righted the chair. "The odd thing is that I've suddenly found I care in more than the ordinary way-I feel I've come to know Jasmine, through you, through Meg and the others, and I hate to think of her death going in the unsolved file."

"Anything useful come in overnight?" He tapped the open file with a forefinger.

Gemma shook her head. "Only for elimination purposes. There's not a breath of evidence that Theo Dent left Abinger Hammer by car, train, horse, bus, or bicycle on the night Jasmine died. And…" she hunted through the loose pages, "a reply came from the nursing school in Dorchester where Felicity Howarth did her specialized training. A clean bill of health, an 'exceptional student', according to a note from the dean. They included her transcripts." Gemma frowned as she read. "She must have been married twice. She applied to her initial training college as Felicity Jane Heggerty, nee Atkins, giving an address in Blandford Forum." Gemma looked up at Kincaid, puzzled. "Isn't that where…"

Kincaid didn't hear the rest. The pieces snicked into place in his mind with blinding clarity. "Gemma, call Martha Trevellyan and find out if Felicity's scheduled to work today." Gemma raised an eyebrow, but looked the number up in the file and complied without question. She replaced the receiver and said, "Felicity called in ill. Martha's just now found someone to cover for her, and she sounded very put out-said it was not like Felicity at all."

"I think I'll pay Felicity a visit, ill or not."

"Do you want me to call her first?"

He shook his head. "No, best not."

"I'll come with you." She stood and shrugged into a cardigan she'd hung over the back of his chair.

Kincaid stopped her with a hand on her arm as she came around the desk. "Go home, Gemma. You've done more than necessary already. Spend your Saturday properly, with Toby." He smiled. "And it would be discreet on your part not to be associated with this, because it's quite likely I've just lost every marble I ever possessed."

Chapter Twenty

The April sun lent an air of industrious festivity even to Felicity Howarth's run-down street. The uncollected rubbish had disappeared, a few residents washed cars or worked in their tiny front gardens.

Kincaid rang Felicity's bell and waited, hands in pockets, until the echoes died away, then rang again. He had reached for the bell for the third time when the door opened. "Mr. Kincaid."

"Hello, Felicity. Can you spare me a few minutes?" She did indeed look unwell, wrapped in an old, pink dressing gown that clashed with the faded red-gold of her hair, her face scrubbed free of makeup and lined with exhaustion.

She stepped aside without speaking and he followed her into the sitting room. Pulling the dressing gown more tightly around her body, she sank into a chair, the crisp authority that he associated with her missing entirely.

"I called the service. Martha said you weren't well."

After a moment in which he thought she wouldn't respond, she said, "No. Poor Martha. She doesn't expect me to let her down."

Kincaid looked around the neat sitting room, checking details against his memory. There were no photographs among the ornaments and knick-knacks. "Felicity, how old is your son?"

"My son?" she said blankly.

"I understand from Martha Trevellyan that you have a son in a nursing home."

"Barry. His name is Barry." A trace of anger came through her lethargy. "He's twenty-nine."

"Why didn't you tell us you came from Dorset? You and Jasmine must have shared a common bond."

"I didn't think of it. I've lived in London for years, and Jasmine and I never spoke of it."

"But you were aware that Jasmine had lived in Dorset, even though you never discussed it."

Felicity pleated a fold of her dressing gown between her fingers. "She must have mentioned it, but I can't remember that we ever actually talked about it. I have a lot of patients, Mr. Kincaid. I can't be expected to keep the details of their life stories straight in my mind."

A little progress, he thought, pleased to have moved her from apathy to a more revealing defensive posture. "But surely the parallel was unusual enough to be remarked upon? After all, during the time you lived in Blandford Forum, Jasmine worked in the solicitor's office on the market square. Do you know the one, next to the bank? It's still there."

He left the sofa and shifted the chair from Felicity's desk around so that he could sit facing her, their knees almost touching. "Tell me exactly what's wrong with your son, Felicity. Why is he kept in a nursing home?" Kincaid held his breath, knowing he had not a shred of evidence, only a wild surmise that had blossomed suddenly in his brain.

Felicity studied the fold of dressing gown now scrunched in both hands. After a moment she looked up and met Kincaid's eyes. "He's almost completely blind and deaf. He responds to very little stimulus, but he does know me."

"Martha Trevellyan said something about a childhood injury. What happened to Barry, Felicity?"

Her hands became still in her lap. "Now they call it DAI, diffuse axonal injury, but when Barry was a baby so little was known about profound head injuries that they were often misdiagnosed."

Kincaid sighed and sat back. "I think," he said slowly, "that you didn't need to be told that Jasmine came from Dorset because you remembered her very well. What I don't understand is Jasmine not mentioning in her journals that she knew you."

Felicity stood up and went to the window. Since Kincaid's last visit, clusters of pale green leaves had burst out along the bramble shoots and a few late daffodils had pushed their heads through the grass. "I always mean to do something with the garden," she said, her back to him. "Then I work extra shifts and visit Barry on my days off, and somehow I never get around to it."

Kincaid waited. After a moment he saw her shoulders relax, and he knew she had made up her mind. She continued as if she hadn't interrupted the thread of the conversation. "Perhaps she saw it as a judgement. Retribution. And at first I think she wasn't sure, didn't trust her own memory. My name was different." She turned to face him, but with the light behind her he couldn't read her eyes. "I went by Janey in those days-my first husband thought Felicity too Victorian, and I humored him-and I later remarried, so my last name changed as well. It was almost thirty years ago, after all, and people do change physically, as hard as we try to prevent it." The corners of her mouth turned up.

"How did you come to know Jasmine then?"

Felicity smiled again. "I considered myself very lucky to have found her to look after Barry. She was only a couple of years younger than I, responsible, ambitious, wanted to get on in the world. Evenings and weekends when she wasn't working in old Mr. Rawlinson's office she liked to pick up a bit extra."

She moved back to the chair, her dressing gown falling open at the knees to reveal a sliver of nylon nightdress as she sat, carelessly now. "It was an ordinary Saturday. I'd gone shopping. Jasmine met me at the door, her face white and stiff with fright. She said she'd called for the doctor, she thought Barry was having some kind of seizure. I remember putting my parcels down carefully before I went to him. He lay rigid in his cot, his face contorted, making little circles around his head with his fists." She fell silent, her gaze fixed on her fingers intertwined in her lap.