"Major?"

"I just spoke to the postman. He said he'd seen an ambulance pull away from the building when he came past earlier and I wondered-there was no answer when I knocked downstairs just now. Is she all right?"

Oh, lord! Kincaid sagged against the doorjamb. How could he have forgotten that the Major didn't know? And they were friends, not just passing acquaintances-her comfortable afternoon visits with the Major were one thing, at least, mat Jasmine had discussed. "I'm not sure you'd call them 'chats'," she'd said, laughing. "Mostly we just sit, like two old dogs in the sun."

Kincaid pulled himself together, sure that his face was stamped with dismay. "Come in, Major, do." He ushered the Major in and waved vaguely in the direction of a chair, but the Major turned and stood quietly facing him, waiting. His eyes were a surprisingly sharp, pale blue.

"You'd best tell me, then," he said, finally.

Kincaid sighed. "She didn't answer the door to her nurse this morning. I came along and forced the lock. We found her in bed. She seemed to have died peacefully in her sleep."

The Major nodded, and an expression flickered across his face that Kincaid couldn't quite place. "A good lass, in spite of-" He broke off and focused on Kincaid. "Well, never mind that now." The remnants of his Scots burr became more pronounced. "Will you be seeing to things, then?"

Another assumption of an intimacy with Jasmine he hadn't felt he merited, Kincaid thought curiously. "Temporarily, at least. Her brother's coming up tonight."

The Major merely nodded again and turned toward the door. "I'll leave you to get on with it."

"Major?" Kincaid stopped him as he reached the door. "Did Jasmine ever mention a brother to you?"

The Major turned in the act of jamming his hat over the thinning hair brushed across his skull. Thoughtfully, he fingered the gray bristles that lay on his upper lip like thatch on a cottage roof. "Well now, I can't say as she did. She never said much. Remarkable for a female." The blue eyes crinkled at the corners.