Free Water Like a Stone by Deborah Crombie Page A

suit.
    Tonight, he thought he detected an odor other than eau de dog emanating from the good doctor—the sharp tang of whisky. But the doctor’s eyes gleamed with their usual intelligence, and her manner was as brisk as ever. Had she been celebrating, Babcock wondered? Was there a Mr. Elsworthy waiting at home? It was not the sort of thing one would ever dare ask her, and he couldn’t imagine her offering a personal confidence. Nor was he sure he really wanted to know.
    He stepped farther back, giving the doctor room to work. Stooping like a bulkily clad crane, she carefully eyed the body, then probed gently here and there with a gloved finger. She offered no commentary—small talk was never the doctor’s habit—and after a few minutes Babcock couldn’t contain his impatience.
    “Well?” he asked. “How long do you think it’s been here? How old is it? Is it male or female?”
    The look she shot him might have been aimed at a schoolboy talking out of turn in class. She turned back to the gaping mortar. “You might assume from the clothing that the child is female,” she said at last, with only a trace of sarcasm. “Further than that, I can’t say until I can do X-rays and a proper examination.” She peered down into the lower part of the wall cavity. “From the length of the body, I’d guess the infant was less than a year old, but not newborn.”
    Babcock snorted. “Very helpful.”
    “You were expecting miracles, Chief Inspector?”
    He thought he glimpsed a flash of humor in her eyes. “I wouldn’t mind.”
    “As to your first question,” she continued, “once your technicians have finished documenting the scene and we can remove the remains, I’ll do the preliminary exam at the morgue. Then we’ll see.” Elsworthy straightened up and peeled off her latex gloves, stuffing them into another capacious pocket as she moved towards the door.
    He had reached for his mobile phone to request reinforcements, uniforms to man the perimeter and begin the house-to-house, when the doctor turned back.
    “I can tell you one thing,” she said, and he paused, phone open in his hand. “This was no casual burial, no callous dumping of a corpse. If you want my opinion, I’d say it was a ritual interment.”
     
    When Gemma and the children returned from their trek to the pony pasture, they found the kitchen tidy again and Rosemary gathering the ingredients for punch. There had been no word from Kincaid or his sister.
    Sam led the children off to see his hoard of presents under the tree, and Hugh had gone up to his study, for “just a few minutes,” Rosemary informed Gemma with a roll of her eyes, adding, “He’s just acquired a rare edition of one of Dickens’s lesser-known Christmas stories. Once he gets immersed in a book, he’ll forget to eat if I don’t remind him. I suppose that sounds rather charming, but in reality, it’s quite irritating.”
    Gemma had seen the same sort of single-minded focus all too often when Kincaid was working a case—in fact, it had recently almost cost him the custody of his son. She, on the other hand, found it difficult to compartmentalize the different aspects of her life. Even while concentrating on work, some part of her mindwould be wondering what sort of day Kincaid was having, and whether there was something in the fridge for the children’s dinner. She’d seen it as a curse, this inability to shut down her emotional radar when she wanted so badly to succeed at her job.
    But lately she’d begun to think that the feminine hardwiring of her brain might have its compensations. The personal ones were more obvious—God forbid that she had failed to turn up at Kit’s custody hearing—but there were professional blessings as well.
    Her promotion had required her to learn to lead her team effectively, and she’d discovered that her awareness of their moods and shifting allegiances was an invaluable tool. She was also finding that an ability to see the big picture,