A Share in Death

“So you thought,” Kincaid finished for her when she trailed off, “you’d just conveniently not mention it. I can’t say I blame you. I’m sure it all seemed a great fuss about nothing. What did it matter where anyone was when Sebastian decided to plug himself into the swimming pool? There’s only one little problem. I think Chief Inspector Nash is very shortly going to come to the conclusion that Sebastian had a little unsolicited help getting himself killed. And then it matters very much what everyone was up to on Sunday night.”

Kincaid gave her a brief, encouraging smile, as if he had uttered nothing out of the ordinary, and he spoke as quietly and casually as he had begun. A tremor of fear ran through Cassie’s body. A moment passed before she trusted herself to speak. “I thought… I wasn’t here. We weren’t here. Graham and I.”

Kincaid’s eyes widened. “Surely not with Angela—”

“No. In the empty suite. We always met in the empty suites, when we could. We were together all the time. It was after midnight when I came back here.”

“And you didn’t think, didn’t wonder why Sebastian’s bike was still parked outside?”

“No.” The word hung between them, charged, and Cassie felt she had been judged and found wanting.

“You didn’t see or hear anything else, anything not as it should be?” 82 deborah grombie

“No.” She couldn’t tell him about the note. Quickly scribbled, wedged into her door, it proved someone else had been abroad in the late hours of that Sunday evening. And it had driven all thought of Sebastian, or anything else, from her mind.

 

“Thanks, Cassie. For the coffee.” Kincaid stood up and Cassie came around the bar and followed him to the door.

As he opened it she touched his arm and he paused. “Will it… Do you think it will all have to come out? About Graham and me?”

“I don’t know. Maybe not. But I wouldn’t count too much on Nash’s discretion.”

She nodded. “What made you change your mind? About Sebastian committing suicide?”

“I didn’t. I never thought for a moment that he had.” The door clicked softly shut as he left her.

 

Hannah stood just inside the open French door of her suite, the room unlit in the gathering dusk. The children’s voices came easily to her, but she couldn’t see them without stepping out onto the balcony and she didn’t want to be seen. Her emotions were so raw she felt she might be transparent even from a distance.