A Bitter Feast(47)
“Storm coming,” Booth said softly as he fished out the key.
As soon as they stepped inside and switched on the lights, Kincaid could see that no expense had been spared on the place. The floors were bleached wide plank, the walls a pale mint, and the upholstered furniture looked comfortable.
The cottage was feminine, and above all, tidy. Tidier, God knew, than his own house ever looked, between the kids and the cats and the dogs. Here there were no stacks of newspapers, no empty tea mugs, not even any dog toys littering the kilim. A few issues of Country Life were stacked neatly on the ottoman that served as a coffee table, the television remote aligned perfectly in the center. In a basket at the end of the sofa, he found a current issue of the Radio Times and some knitting.
Bookcases had been built in on either side of the hearth. Examining the volumes, Kincaid found popular novels, some classics, as well as some books on gardening and knitting.
There were two framed photos on the bottom shelf. Kincaid recognized Nell instantly, even though he’d only seen her in the dark and in pain. Both showed Nell with a black-and-white border collie—Bella, he presumed. In one, Nell was smiling at the camera. In the other, she was facing the dog, which was placed in a perfect sit. Kincaid wondered if Mark Cain had taken the photos.
Although Kincaid had another look among the books and objets d’art, there were no other photos, and nothing to suggest that she had kept in touch with work colleagues or extended family.
Kincaid picked up the first photo and held it in the lamplight. Nell Greene had been a trim woman with an ordinary, pleasant face and short light-colored hair that might have been described as blond. The photo did not highlight what he remembered the most. She had had beautiful eyes.
“The woman alphabetized her spices,” Booth called from the kitchen. Photo in hand, Kincaid joined him. Booth was peering into a drawer beside the cream-colored Aga. The only spots of color in the room were provided by a turquoise teakettle on the Aga and a bowl of green apples on the kitchen table. Kincaid spotted a few cookery books grouped on an open shelf, but when he looked more closely he saw that they were well-thumbed copies of Nigella and Nigel Slater, homey rather than challenging.
Looking about, Kincaid saw a couple of unopened bottles of wine in a rack and a bottle of sherry beside the salt and pepper mills. “No other alcohol?”
“No. And no sign she’d been drinking in her initial blood test last night, which corroborates what the bartender told me. He said she only had coffee and a glass of tap water.”
Kincaid held up the photo for Booth’s inspection. “Would you say she was blond?”
“You mean could she have matched our receptionist’s description?” Booth squinted at the image. “Maybe. At night, in the right light.”
“Questionable, I agree.”
Neither of them said that no one could mistake Viv Holland for anything other than blond.
The dog’s bowls, Kincaid discovered, were by the back door, and the basket with her toys and chew bones was under the kitchen table. There were only a few stray tufts of black-and-white hair on the bare floors. Having grown up with collies, he thought Nell must have vacuumed every day to have kept the house in such a pristine state.
He had always found searching the property and the possessions of the recently dead a complicated business—fascinating, because how people lived and what they lived with told so much about them, disturbing, because it seemed such an elemental invasion of privacy.
“I don’t think we’ll find anything in here,” he said, abruptly. “I’ll just check the rest of the house.”
The only bathroom was off the hall and, unlike the kitchen and living areas, did not seem to have had much updating. It was clean, however, and the toiletries were organized in pretty baskets. Checking the medicine cabinet, he found toothpaste and various over-the-counter medications. Behind these were two prescription bottles.
He wasn’t carrying gloves, so using a tissue as a precaution, he turned the bottles until he could read the labels. One was an antianxiety drug, the other a common antidepressant. Both were nearly full, and both were dated nearly a year ago.
The bedroom held a neatly made double bed, nightstands, a dresser, and an old-fashioned freestanding wardrobe. He tried that first, running his hands gently over the hanging things. The business suits were of good quality but had a layer of dust on the shoulders. The other things in the wardrobe were the sort of simple, practical things one wore for life in the country, much of which was spent outdoors.
Carelessly, he’d used his right hand to move the hangers in the wardrobe and now it was throbbing badly. With a grunt of pain, he sat down on the edge of the bed and opened the nightstand drawer with his left hand. Bookmarks, hand cream, a small torch. And beneath the detritus, a framed photograph, facedown. He held it to the light.
It was Nell’s wedding picture. The clothes were dated, the dress the overly ruffled fashion made popular by Princess Diana. The young Nell looked hopefully out at him, perhaps a little too seriously for a wedding day. The groom had been a good-looking man with dark hair and heavy eyebrows, but Kincaid thought that even then his expression showed the beginnings of a certain pomposity.
What had become of this young couple? And why had Nell kept the photo if she couldn’t bear to look at it?
Chapter Thirteen
May 2007
“Fire two duck, two steaks, medium well,” Viv called out.