All Shall Be Well Read Online Free PDF

bed.”
    Kincaid frowned. Jasmine had ordered the hospital bed several months ago. “How long since you’d seen your sister, Theo?”
    Theo took another sip of the whiskey and contemplated the question. “Six months, I think. About that.” He saw Kincaid’s look of surprise. “Please don’t get the wrong impression—what did you say your name was? I wasn’t quite taking things in when you phoned.”
    “Duncan.”
    Theo nodded a little owlishly, and Kincaid thought he had not exaggerated his low tolerance for alcohol. “It’s not that I didn’t want to see my sister, Duncan, but that she didn’t want to see me. Or rather,” he leaned forward and waved his glass at Kincaid in emphasis, “she didn’t want me to see her. After she knew she was ill she didn’t encourage me to visit.” Theo leaned back in his chair and sighed. “God! She could be so stubborn. I rang up every week. Once, when I phoned and begged her to let me come she said, ‘Theo, I’m losing my hair. I don’t want you to see me.’ I can’t imagine her without it. Was she—”
    “She did lose her hair, but it grew in again when they stopped the treatments. Quite thick and dark, like a boy’s.”
    Theo considered this, nodded. “She always wore it long, since she was a girl. She was quite proud of it.” He fell silent and closed his eyes for so long that Kincaid began to think he had dozed off. Kincaid had reached over to take the tilting glass from Theo’s hand when he opened his eyes and continued as if he hadn’t paused.
    “Jasmine always looked after me, you see. Our mother died when I was born, our father when I was ten and Jasmine fifteen. But Father wasn’t much use. It was always just the two of us, really.” Theo took another sip of his drink and patted his nose again with the handkerchief. “She told me that the treatmentshad helped, that she was doing all right. I should have known better.” He leaned back and closed his eyes again for a moment. When he opened them and spoke, his words were surprisingly bitter. “I think she couldn’t bear to be at a disadvantage, couldn’t bear not to be in charge. She robbed me of my only chance to repay her, to look after her the way she looked after me.”
    “Surely she didn’t want to distress you,” Kincaid suggested gently.
    Theo sniffed. “Perhaps. But it would have been easier than this … this leaving things unfinished.”
    Deciding it unwise to offer a refill, Kincaid gathered up Theo’s empty glass along with his own and washed them out in the sink. He felt unexpectedly light-headed himself, and remembered that the last thing he’d eaten had been stale sandwiches at his desk in the early morning hours. Theo’s voice interrupted his thoughts before they wandered too far in the direction of food.
    “The really odd thing is that she phoned me yesterday—that was odd in itself as she almost always waited for me to ring her—and said she wanted to see me this weekend. I thought she must be improving. She really sounded quite well. We made arrangements for Sunday, as I couldn’t close the shop on Saturday.”
    A cruel trick to play on her brother, Kincaid thought, if Jasmine had intended to kill herself. He hadn’t thought her capable of malice. Still, what did he know of the relationship between them, or about Theo, for that matter? He turned around and leaned against the sink, folding his arms across his chest. “What do you sell, Theo? Jasmine never said.”
    Theo smiled. “Junk, really. As in j-u-n-q-u-e. Things not quite old enough to be considered antiques and not expensiveenough to be considered much else. Anything from buttons to butter dishes.” His face fell. “Jasmine helped set me up.” He stood and began walking restlessly about the room, touching things. “I don’t know what I shall do now.” He shook his head, then turned and faced Kincaid again, holding a small porcelain elephant from Jasmine’s writing desk. “What’s to be done, about