Kissed a sad goodbye - Deborah Crombie [56]
Kincaid allowed a pause to lengthen before he asked, “Mr. Hammond, in your experience, would you say Reg Mortimer is a truthful person?”
“What do you mean by that?” Blue veins stood out on William Hammond’s hands as he clasped them over his knees. “He’s a fine young man. Peter Mortimer and I have known one another since Oxford, and I have the greatest confidence in father and son.”
Confidence enough, wondered Gemma, to marry your daughter off to him, and bring him into your company with no more incentive than friendship? She framed an idea into a question. “You said Sir Peter served on the board. Does that mean he has a financial interest in Hammond’s?”
“Naturally he owns a number of shares. I’m sorry, but I really don’t see the point to this, under the circumstances. And I’ve things to attend to—people will be coming by the house to pay their respects.” Although polite, it was a dismissal as firm as the one he’d given Teresa Robbins.
“Thank you for your time, Mr. Hammond. You’ve been very kind. We won’t trouble you any further at the moment.” Kincaid rose and Gemma followed his cue, uncomfortably aware of her skirt plastered to the backs of her thighs with perspiration. “Our technicians will need to have a look round, however,” Kincaid added, as if it had just occurred to him. “Perhaps Teresa could arrange that for us?”
“Here? In my building?” William Hammond’s voice faltered. He looked suddenly exhausted, and Gemma thought that for all his appearance of control, he’d reached the limit of his endurance.
“They’ll do their best not to disrupt things,” Kincaid replied soothingly.
Gazing at the dust motes swirling in the bars of sunlight that dissected the air, Gemma realized she had become aware of complex layers of scent—the mustiness of old wood and the nearness of water, mixed with the ripe aroma of tea. The sense-tickling smells, the golden light, and the slow movement of the air under the spinning fans made the warehouse suddenly seem a timeless place, and she wondered what other dramas it had witnessed. She turned to Hammond. “I think Teresa said your great-grandfather started the business? So Hammonds have always been here?”
“I’ve always seen that as rather a special obligation, carrying on the family tradition. And it meant so much to Annabelle.…”
“What will happen now?” asked Gemma. “Will Jo carry on in Annabelle’s place?”
“Jo has her own career, and she’s never had much interest in the business.” Hammond met Gemma’s eyes, and the desolation she saw in his made her flinch. “But I doubt it would matter if she had. No one can possibly replace Annabelle.”
CHAPTER 7
That ‘The Island is not what it was’, is a sentiment with which every Islander over forty would agree … whilst recalling with affectionate regret the days when ‘every door was open’, and ‘everyone knew everyone else’. Such phrases recall a neighbourliness, and a sense of local identity, both of which have been threatened with destruction by almost everything that has happened on the Isle of Dogs since 1939.
Eve Hostettler, from Memories of
Childhood on the Isle of Dogs, 1870–1970
Kincaid slid into the car and gingerly touched the steering wheel, then snatched his fingers back. “Bloody hell. I’ll bet you could fry eggs on the dash.”
They had left William Hammond on his own, with his assurances that he just needed a chance to get his bearings, but to Gemma the weight of grief in the warehouse had felt so tangible that even the scorching heat outside was a relief. “It’s a terrible thing to lose a child, even if they’re grown,” she said as she grappled with a seat-belt buckle that seemed molten. “Do you suppose it’s even harder if that child is as perfect as Annabelle Hammond seems to have been?”
“She can’t have been all that perfect, or someone wouldn’t have killed her.”
“Are you saying it was her fault she was murdered?” Gemma retorted, then felt a little embarrassed by her defensiveness.
“Of course not.” Kincaid glanced at