A Share in Death

Angela as peacemaker. Quite a change, Kincaid thought, from the sullen child who sat in corners and spoke to no one. He stood on the steps and watched the three children. At the other end of the garden Emma MacKenzie and John Hunsinger sat together companionably on the stone bench. Certainly they seemed in better accord than the group that had just broken up inside.

Patrick Rennie had hustled his wife out of the room, his face flushed with embarrassment. “Too bad. Poor Patrick,” Marta Rennie said over her shoulder as her husband maneuvered her through the doorway. The last thing they heard was an echo of her spiteful giggle from the entrance hall.

Cassie turned on her heel and left the room without a word. Graham, who had been as silent as Cassie all evening, said, “Shit. Maybe she’s got the right idea,” and disappeared into the bar.

Maureen looked around as if surprised to find her husband and children not attached to her. “Oh dear, the kiddies haven’t had their tea,” she said and hurried from the room.

“Well, it was a nice party. I mean, until…” Janet ducked her head, her eyes straying in her husband’s direction.

“Appalling. Absolutely appalling. How the man has the nerve to stand for public office with a wife like that, I can’t imagine.” Eddie stalked from the room, and Janet followed with a last apologetic glance at Kincaid.

 

Cassie pulled her sweater over her head in irritation. The angora fiber woven into the sweater’s wool had rubbed her skin until it felt as if it had been scrubbed with a wire brush. But the color, a dull olive, flattered her, and she had dressed with special care. Not that it had mattered. She could have worn a flour sack for all the difference it had made.

 

Nothing had gone right for her since the minute she walked into the sitting room for cocktails.

 

A share in death 79

 

Nothing had gone right for her, in fact, since that dreadful row with Sebastian on Sunday afternoon. Cassie dropped her sweater where she stood, kicked off her linen slacks in the direction of the bedroom and shrugged herself into an old satin dressing gown left lying across the armchair the night before. She’d made little effort to imprint her personality on the bland chintz-and-oak atmosphere of the cottage. She even preferred to make love in the big house, when she could manage it.