"She never spoke about it… her illness, I mean," Kincaid said. "I didn't realize it was so far-"

The front door swung open and bounced against the wall. Kincaid and Felicity Howarth spun around, startled. A woman stood framed in the doorway, clutching a shopping bag to her breast.

"Where is she? Where have they taken her?" She took in the neatly made bed and their arrested postures, and the bag slipped as she swayed.

Felicity was quicker off the mark than Kincaid. She had the bag safely on the floor and her hand under the woman's elbow before Kincaid reached them.

They guided her toward a chair and she slumped into it, unresisting. Not yet thirty, Kincaid judged her, a trifle plump, with wayward brown hair and painfully fair skin, and a round face now crumpled with distress.

"Margaret? It is Margaret, isn't it?" Felicity asked gently. She glanced at Kincaid and explained, "She's a friend of Jasmine's."

"Tell me where they've taken her. She won't want to be alone. Oh, I knew I shouldn't have left her last night-" The sentence disintegrated into a wail and she turned her head from side to side as if searching for Jasmine in the flat, her hands twisting in her lap. Kincaid and Felicity looked at one another over Margaret's head.

Felicity knelt and took Margaret's hands in hers. "Margaret, look at me. Jasmine's dead. She died in her sleep last night. I'm sorry."

"No." Margaret looked at Felicity in appeal. "She can't be. She promised."

The words struck an odd note and Kincaid felt a prickle of alarm. He dropped down on one knee beside Felicity. "Promised? What did Jasmine promise, Margaret?"

Margaret focused on Kincaid for the first time. "She changed her mind. I was so relieved. I didn't think I could go through-" A hiccupping sob interrupted her and she shivered. "Jasmine wouldn't go back on a promise. She always kept her word."