A Bitter Feast(97)

Frowning, Gemma fished in her jacket pocket, pulling out a crumpled note and smoothing it with her fingers. “I needed to write something down yesterday. I grabbed an order pad from the bar, but first I tore off the top page.” She held it up. Scrawled across the sheet was the word COFFEE followed by a question mark.

“That’s Jack’s writing,” said Viv, with obvious reluctance.

“Wasn’t Fergus drinking coffee?”

“Yes, but—” Viv bit at her fingernail, then said, “Okay. Bea was helping Jack in the bar. You think Jack saw her put something in Fergus’s coffee?”

Glancing at Booth, Kincaid guessed they were thinking the same thing. Bea Abbott’s father was a doctor with a reputation for being a bit free with his prescription pad. What might Bea have had access to?

“But even if she did,” Viv went on, “why? Why would she do something like that?”

“You told her about the job offer. Who had the most to lose if you changed your mind and accepted Fergus’s offer?” asked Gemma.

“But I wouldn’t have. And she didn’t know he was Grace’s—”

“Viv,” broke in Ibby, her name a plea. “I told her about Fergus and Grace. I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t have, but I was so pissed off when he showed up that afternoon. He was chatting Grace up in the courtyard, making her laugh, wearing that stupid hat like he was freaking Gandalf or something. Bea saw them together, too.”

A sudden gust of wind swirled round the car park, raising little eddies of fallen leaves. Just as Kincaid looked up and realized that heavy clouds were massing in the western sky, Gemma said, alarm in her voice, “Where is Bea? She said she was going to the bank ages ago.”

“Oh my God.” Viv gripped Gemma’s arm. “Grace. Grace should be home from school by now. Where the hell is she?”



“Right here is fine, Mrs. Johnson.” Grace bared her teeth in a big fake smile as she got out of the car in front of St. Mary’s Church. “I can walk across the road,” she said, adding under her breath as Mrs. Johnson waved and drove off, “I’m not two, you know.” She could even walk home from school if her mum would let her, along the river path. It was only a couple of miles. She knew the way, but of course her mum said she was too young and what if it was muddy or something stupid like that.

Usually Bea alternated picking her and Alesha up from school with Mrs. Johnson, because her mum, of course, was always too busy. Grace wished it had been Bea today, but then Bea had been short with her that morning, so maybe it was just as well.

Just thinking about going home gave Grace a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. Everybody was whispering round her, like she didn’t know there was something weird about Jack being hit by the car. She couldn’t bear to go in the bar because it made her think about him.

And she really couldn’t bear to think about Fergus. She didn’t want to believe he was dead. Maybe he’d just gone away and her mum was only telling her that because she didn’t want them to be together. He’d been fine on Friday—he’d whispered to her that he was going to make her mum see sense and that they would all go to London to live.

Maybe her mum had made him go away. Maybe Fergus would come back and take her to London and it would be just the two of them.

But that thought made her feel funny, too. As much as she hated her mum, she didn’t want to think that something bad might happen to her, like what had happened to Kit’s mum. Or to Nell.

She shivered. Alesha said that meant someone was walking over your grave, but that was stupid. She was just cold, that was all. The sky had gone a weird sort of muddy purple and the rising wind tugged at her hair and rustled in the leaves of the trees in the churchyard. A storm was coming.

She wondered if Mark had left Bella out in the farmyard. Bella didn’t like storms. Would she be scared if it thundered? Coming to a sudden decision, Grace slipped her backpack over the churchyard wall. Nobody would steal it from out of the churchyard, and she wouldn’t be gone long. And it wasn’t like her mum would notice if she didn’t come home right on time.



It occurred to her too late that Mark might tell her mum that she’d come without permission. They were always talking and sometimes she thought that Mark actually liked her mum in that way, which was gross. But Bea said not to be silly, that her mum couldn’t manage things as it was and she certainly had no business having a relationship. Besides, her mum had to have loved Fergus, hadn’t she, if Fergus was her dad?

Well, she would just check on the dogs, in case Mark wasn’t at home. The farmhouse door was always left off the latch, and she could just put the dogs inside. Carefully, she opened and closed the gate, aware of the too-loud sound of her trainers crunching on the leaves that lay like a gold blanket over the drive. But there was no sound from the dogs.

She walked on. When she came out into the open field, she saw that the sky to the west was almost black and it had grown twilight dark. There was still no sign of the dogs. But there was Mark’s Land Rover, in the yard, so he must be inside with them. The back was down on the trailer and all the hay was gone.

Grace was about to turn back to the gate when she saw there was another car pulled behind Mark’s, invisible until she’d turned the curve in the drive. It was Bea’s little Fiat. What was she doing here? Bea didn’t even like Mark.