When Margaret Bellamy tells Superintendent Duncan Kincaid that she'd agreed to help Kincaid's downstairs neighbor Jasmine Dent end her cancer-stricken life but then couldn't go through with it, Kincaid wonders if somebody else assisted Jasmine's suicide--or gave her a lethal dose of morphine for less helpful reasons altogether. The potential motives of the suspects--Jasmine's ineffectual brother Theo, who's failed at one small business after another; her basement neighbor Major Keith, a devoted gardener who served in India at the same time Jasmine was born; home-help nurse Felicity Howarth, who wants to refuse her thousand-pound legacy; and Meg's grasping boyfriend Roger Leveson-Gower, who's counting on her coming into money--seem commonplace enough; but Kincaid and his sergeant Gemma James (A Share in Death, 1993), their path lit by entries from Jasmine's journal, uncover an entirely unexpected new motive. In fact, the ending may be too unexpected for Crombie's quietly probing manner; it's the firm portraits of even minor characters that make this linger in the memory.
