Careless in Red

Chapter Eight

“I KNOW THIS ISN’T A GOOD TIME TO TALK ABOUT IT,” ALAN Cheston said. “There’s not going to be a good time to talk about anything for a long while to come, and I think we both know that. The thing is, though…These guys have a diary to fill and if we’re going to commit, we need to let them know or we’re going to lose out.”

Ben Kerne nodded numbly. He couldn’t imagine conversing rationally about any subject, let alone about business. All he could imagine was a further walking of the corridors inside the Promontory King George Hotel, one shoulder against the wall and his head aimed down to study the floor. Down one corridor and up another, through a fire door and up the stairs to begin another corridor. On and on, spectral-like, into infinity. Occasionally thinking about how much they had spent on the old hotel’s transformation and wondering what the purpose might be in spending any more. Wondering what the purpose might be in anything at this point, and then trying to stop thinking altogether.

He’d done all that on the previous night. Dellen had pills but he would not take them.

Ben looked at Alan. He saw him through a fog, as if a veil existed between his eyeballs and his brain. He could take in the younger man, but he had no ability to process what he was taking in. So he said, “Go on. I understand,” although he didn’t want the first and didn’t mean the second.

They were in the marketing office, a small former conference room that opened off the erstwhile reception area. It had likely been used for staff meetings when the hotel was in operation. An ancient blackboard still hung on the wall, stained with ghostly copperplate, undoubtedly the work of a manager stirring his troops to action if the excessive underlining was anything to go by. Beneath this writing surface and encircling the room, the walls were covered with gouged wainscoting, above it faded wallpaper featuring hunting scenes. The Kernes had determined to leave all this as it was when they’d taken over the hotel. No one would see it but themselves, they’d decided, and the money could be more profitably spent elsewhere.

Which was the purpose of this meeting with Alan. Ben tuned in to what the young man was talking about and heard “…must consider the cost as an investment towards returns. Additionally, it’s a onetime cost but not a onetime use of the product, so we’d amortise what we spent producing it. If we’re careful to avoid a look that will date the piece, we’ll be fine. You know what I mean: keep away from shots of vehicles, avoid sites likely to demonstrate anachronicity in five years and use sites likely to demonstrate their history. That sort of thing. Here. This sample came the other day. I’ve already shown Dellen, but she probably…well, understandably she probably won’t have mentioned it to you.” Alan rose from the conference table-a pitted and scratched pine affair with countless burns from forgotten cigarettes-and went to the video player. He had coloured in a febrile manner as he spoke, and not for the first time Ben speculated about his daughter’s relationship with this man. He reckoned he knew the reason behind Kerra’s choice of Alan, and he was fairly certain she was wrong about him in more ways than one.

He and Alan were having their regular meeting about marketing strategies. Ben hadn’t possessed the will to cancel it. He sat in mute attendance now, considering which of them was the more heartless bastard: Alan for ostensibly carrying on as if nothing had happened or himself for being present. Dellen was meant to be in attendance as she, too, worked in marketing, but she’d not risen from bed.

On the video monitor, a promotional film began. It featured a resort in the Scilly Isles: a high-end hotel and spa with golf course attached. It wouldn’t attract the same sort of clientele as Adventures Unlimited, but that wasn’t the point of Alan’s showing it to him.

A suave voice-over provided the commentary, a sales pitch for the resort. While the voice recited the expected panegyric, the accompanying film featured shots of the hotel sitting atop white sands, spa goers basking under the ministrations of lithesome and tanned masseuses, golfers whacking away at balls, diners on terraces and in candlelit rooms. This was, Alan said, the type of film one showed at travel venues. They could do that as well, but with a much broader base of appeal. This, then, was what Alan was after: Ben’s permission to pursue yet another way to market Adventures Unlimited.

“As you’ve mentioned, we’ve got bookings coming in,” Alan said once the film had finished, “which is brilliant, Ben. That piece the Mail on Sunday printed on you and what you’re doing with this place helped enormously as a promotional vehicle. But it’s time we looked at the potential we have for a larger market.” He ticked items off on his fingers. “Families with children from six to sixteen, independent schools with programmes taking pupils for weeklong maturing courses, singles looking to meet life mates, mature travelers in good condition who don’t want to while away their golden years rocking on a veranda somewhere. Then there are drug-rehab programmes, early release programmes for young offenders, inner-city youth programmes. We’ve an expansive market out there, and I mean to see us tap into it.”

Alan’s face was shiny, his ears were red, and his eyes were bright. Enthusiasm and hope, Ben thought. Either that or nerves. He said to Alan, “You’ve got big plans.”

“I hope that’s why you took me on. Ben, what you have here…This place. Its location. Your ideas for it. With an investment in areas likely to be fruitful, you’re looking at the goose and gold eggs. I swear it.”

Alan seemed to study him, then, just as Ben had himself studied Alan. He ejected the video from the machine and handed it over, putting a hand on Ben’s shoulder momentarily. “Watch it again with Dellen when you’re both up to it,” he said. “We’ve no need to make a decision today. But…soon, though.”

Ben’s fingers closed round the plastic case. He felt its little ridges press against his skin. He said, “You’re doing a good job. Organising the Mail on Sunday piece…That was brilliant.”

“I wanted you to see what I could do,” Alan told him. “I’m grateful you took me on. Otherwise, I’d probably have been forced to live in Truro or Exeter, which I wouldn’t much like.”

“Much larger places than Casvelyn, though.”

“Too large for me if Kerra’s not there.” Alan gave a laugh, which sounded embarrassed. “She didn’t want me to come on staff here, you know. She said it wouldn’t work out, but I mean to show her otherwise. This place”-he extended his arms to take in the hotel as a whole-“this place fills me with ideas. All I need is someone to listen and okay them when the time is right. I mean, have you thought about everything the hotel can actually be in the off-season? It’s got room for conferences, and with a little tweaking of the promotional film…”

Ben tuned out, not because he wasn’t interested but because of the painful contrast to Santo that Alan Cheston was presenting. Here was the zeal Ben had hoped for in Santo: a wholehearted embracing of what would have been Santo’s inheritance and that of his sister. But Santo hadn’t seen things that way. He’d hungered for experiencing life instead of for building life. That was how he and his father had differed. True, he’d been only eighteen years old, and with maturity might have come interest and commitment. But if the past was the best indicator of the future, didn’t it stand to reason that Santo would have continued to engage in more of what had already begun to define him as a man? Charm and pursuit, charm and pleasure, charm and enthusiasm for what enthusiasm could gain him and not what enthusiasm could produce.

Ben wondered if Alan had seen all this when he’d asked for employment at Adventures Unlimited. For Alan had known Santo, had spoken to him, had seen him, had watched him. Thus Alan had known a gap was present. He’d assessed this gap and had deemed himself the man to fill it.

Alan was saying, “So if we combine our assets and present a plan to the bank-” when Ben interrupted, our having broken into his thoughts like a sharp rap on the door of his consciousness.

“Do you know where Santo kept his climbing kit, Alan?”

Alan stopped dead in his verbal tracks. He looked at Ben in some apparent confusion. It was feigned; it was not feigned. Ben couldn’t tell. Alan said, “What?” And when Ben repeated the question, Alan appeared to think about his reply before making it. “I expect he kept it in his bedroom, Ben, didn’t he? Or perhaps wherever you keep yours?”

“Do you know where mine is?”

“Why would I know?” Alan went about putting away the video recorder. A silence hung between them. In it, a car drove up outside and Alan walked to the window as he said, “Unless…” But his answer was lost as two doors slammed on the other side of the window. “Police,” Alan said. “It’s that constable again. The one who came earlier. He’s got some woman with him this time.”

Ben left the conference room at once and went to the entry as the front door opened and Constable McNulty came inside. He was preceded by a tough-looking woman with Sid Vicious hair dyed a shade of red that bordered on purple. She wasn’t young, but she wasn’t old. She looked at him directly, but not without compassion.

“Mr. Kerne?” she said and went on to introduce herself as Detective Inspector Hannaford. She was there to interview the family, she told him.

All of the family? Ben wanted to know. Because his wife was in bed and his daughter was off on a bicycle ride. He felt this last made Kerra sound heartless, so he added, “Stress. When she feels pressure, she needs an outlet.” And then he felt he’d said too much.

They would get to the daughter later, Hannaford told him. In the meantime, they would wait while he roused his wife. This was preliminary stuff, she added. They would not take up too much of his time just now.

Just now meant there would be a later. With the police, what was implied was generally more important than what was said.

“Where are you with the investigation?” he asked.

“This is the first step, Mr. Kerne, aside from forensics. They’re beginning with fingerprints: his equipment, his car, the contents of his car. They’ll move on from there. You”-and with a gesture that took in the hotel and obviously meant everyone within it-“will need to be fingerprinted. But for the moment, it’s questions. So if you’ll fetch your wife…”

There was nothing for it but to do as she requested. Anything else and he’d look uncooperative, so Dellen’s state couldn’t be allowed to matter.

Ben went up the stairs instead of taking the lift. He wanted to use the climb to think. There was so much he didn’t want the police to know, consisting of matters both buried and private.

At their bedroom, Ben knocked on the door softly, but he didn’t wait to hear his wife’s voice. He went into the darkness and moved towards the bed, where he switched on a lamp. Dellen lay as she’d lain when he’d last seen her. She was supine, one arm crooked across her eyes. Next to her on the bedside table were two bottles of pills and a glass of water. The glass’s rim bore a crescent of red lipstick.

He sat down on the edge of the bed, but she didn’t alter her position although her lips moved convulsively, so he knew she wasn’t asleep. He said, “The police have come. They want to talk to us. You’ll have to come down.”

Her head moved fractionally. “I can’t.”

“You must.”

“I can’t let them see me like this. You know that.”

“Dellen-”

She lowered her arm. She squinted in the light and turned her head away from it and from him. “I can’t and you know it,” she said again. “Unless you want them to see me like this. Is that it?”

“How can you say that, Dell?” He put his hand on her shoulder. He felt the answering tension run through her body.

“Unless,” she said again and she turned her head towards him, “you want them to see me like this. Because we know you prefer me this way, don’t you? You love me this way. You want me this way. I could almost think you arranged Santo’s death just to send me in this direction. It’s so useful to you, yes?”

Ben rose abruptly. He swung round so that she might not see his face.

She said at once, “I’m sorry. Oh God, Ben. I don’t know what I’m saying. Why don’t you leave me? I know you want to. You’ve wanted to forever. You wear our marriage like a hair shirt. Why?”

He said, “Please, Dell.” But he didn’t know what he was asking her for. He wiped his nose on the arm of his shirt and went back to her. “Let me help you. They’re not going to leave till they’ve spoken to us.” He didn’t add what he also might have told her: that the police were likely going to come back later to talk to Kerra and they could as well talk to Dellen then. That, he determined, could not be allowed to happen. He needed to be there when they spoke to Dellen, and if the investigators came back later, there was always a chance they’d catch Dellen alone.

He went to the wardrobe and pulled clothes out for her. Black trousers, black jersey, black sandals for her feet. He sorted out underwear and carried everything back to the bed.

“Let me help you,” he said.

It had been the imperative of their years together. He lived to serve her. She lived to be served.

He drew the blankets and sheet away from her body. Beneath them, she was nude, and her scent was rank, and he looked on her with no stirring of lust. No longer the form of the fifteen-year-old girl he’d rolled with in the maram grass between the dunes, her body expressed the loathing that her voice wouldn’t speak. She was pitted and stretched. She was dyed and painted. She was simultaneously barely real and all too corporeal. She was the past-embroilment and estrangement-made flesh.

He put his arm beneath her shoulders and he raised her. She’d begun to weep. It was a silent crying, ugly to watch. It stretched her mouth. It reddened her nose. It slit her eyes.

She said, “You want to, so do it. I’m not holding you here. I’ve never held you.”

He murmured, “Shhh, now. Put this on,” and he slid arms through the straps of her bra. She was no help to him, despite his encouragement. He was forced to cup her heavy breasts in his hands and fit the bra around them before he hooked it in the back. Thus he dressed her, and when he had her in her clothing, he urged her to her feet and she finally came to life.

She said again, “I can’t let them see me like this,” but her tone was different this time. She went to her dressing table and from among its clutter of cosmetics and costume jewellery, she brought forth a brush. This she vigorously ran through her long blonde hair till she had it untangled and fashioned into a passable chignon. She switched on a little brass lamp that he’d given her on a long ago Christmas, and she bent to the mirror to examine her face. She used powder and a bit of mascara, and then she rustled among the lipsticks to find the one she wanted, which she applied.

“All right,” she said, and she turned to him.

Head to toe in black, but her lips were red. They were as red as a rose might be. They were as red as blood indeed was.

IN CONDUCTING THE PRELIMINARIES of the investigation with the assistance of Constable McNulty and Sergeant Collins, Bea Hannaford learned soon enough that she had as helpmates the indisputable police equivalents of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. This realisation had abruptly descended upon her when Constable McNulty informed her-with a suitably lachrymose expression on his face-that he’d given the family the information about Santo Kerne’s death likely being a murder. While this in itself could not be called execrable police work, having gone on blithely to share with the Kernes the facts about the dead boy’s climbing equipment definitely was.

Bea had stared at McNulty, disbelieving at first. Then she’d understood that he was not misspeaking, that he had actually disclosed vital particulars of a police investigation to individuals who very well might be suspects. She’d exploded first. She’d wanted to strangle him second. Exactly what do you do all day, she’d enquired third in a nasty tone, toss off in public lavatories? Because, my man, you are the most wretched excuse for a police officer I’ve yet to meet. Are you aware that now we have nothing known only by ourselves and the killer? Do you understand the position that puts us in? After that, she’d told him to come with her and keep his mouth shut unless and until she told him he had permission to speak.

He’d shown good sense in this, at least. From the moment they’d arrived at the Promontory King George Hotel-a crumbling heap of derelict art deco that needed to be pulled down, in Bea’s opinion-Constable McNulty had uttered not a word. He’d even taken notes, never once looking up from his pad as she spoke to Alan Cheston while they waited for the return of Ben Kerne, one hoped with his wife in tow.

Cheston was not a niggard with details: He was twenty-five, he was putatively the partner of the Kerne daughter, he’d grown up in Cambridge as the only child of a retired physicist (“That’s Mum,” he explained with no little pride) and a retired university librarian (“That’s Dad,” he added unnecessarily). He’d studied at Trinity Hall, gone on to the London School of Economics, and worked in marketing in a Birmingham redevelopment corporation until his parents’ retirement to Casvelyn, at which point he moved to Cornwall to be close to them in their latter years. He owned a terrace house in Lansdown Road that was being renovated, making it suitable for the wife and family he hoped for, so in the meantime he was living in a bed-sit at the far end of Breakwater Road.

“Well, not exactly a bed-sit,” he added after watching Constable McNulty’s industrious scribbling for a moment. “It’s rather a room in that house-the large pink cottage?-at the end of the road, opposite the canal. I’ve kitchen privileges and…well, the landlady’s quite liberal with how I use the rest of the house.”

By which, Bea assumed, he meant that the landlady had modern ideas. By which, she assumed, he meant that he and the Kerne daughter bonked there with impunity.

“Kerra and I intend to marry,” he added, as if this fine detail might smooth the troubled waters of what he mistakenly saw as Bea’s ostensible concern for the young woman’s virtue.

“Ah. How nice. And Santo?” she asked him. “What sort of relationship did you have with him?”

“Terrific lad,” was Alan’s reply. “He was hard not to like. He was no great intellectual, mind you, but he had a happiness about him, a playfulness. He was infectious, and from what I could see, people liked to be around him. People in general.”

Joie de vivre, Bea thought. She pressed on. “And what about you in particular? Did you like to be around him?”

“We didn’t spend much time together. I’m Kerra’s partner, so Santo and I…We were more like in-laws, I suppose. Cordial and friendly in conversation, but not anything else. We didn’t have the same interests. He was very physical. I’m more…cerebral?”

“Which makes you better suited to run a business, I expect,” Bea noted.

“Yes, of course.”

“Like this business, for example.”

The young man was no idiot. He, unlike the Stan and Ollie she was saddled with, could tell a hawk from a handsaw no matter the direction of the wind. He said, “Actually Santo was a bit relieved when he knew I was going to work here. It took an unwanted pressure off him.”

“What sort of pressure?”

“He’d have had to work with his mum in this part of the business, and he didn’t want to. At least, that’s what he led me to believe. He said he wasn’t suited for this end of the operation.”

“But you don’t mind it? Working this end of things. Working with her?”

“Not at all.” When he said this last bit, he kept his eyes well fixed on Bea’s and his entire body motionless. That alone made her wonder about the nature of his lie.

She said, “I’d like to look at Santo’s climbing kit if you’ll point out where I can find it, Mr. Cheston.”

“Sorry. Thing is, I don’t actually know where he kept it.”

She had to wonder about that as well. He’d answered rather promptly, hadn’t he, as if he’d been expecting the question.

She was about to press him further on this topic when he said, “Here’s Ben with Dellen,” into the sound of the old cagelike lift descending. She told the young man they’d speak again, no doubt. He said, Absolutely. Whenever the inspector wished.

He returned to his office before the lift reached the ground floor and disgorged the Kernes. Ben came out first and extended his hand to assist his wife. She emerged slowly, looking rather like a somnambulist. Drugs, Bea thought. She’d be sedated, which was hardly unexpected in the mother of a dead child.

The rest of her appearance, however, was unexpected. The polite term for it would have been faded beauty. Somewhere in her midforties, she suffered from the voluptuous woman’s curse: the luscious curves of her youth having given way to the spread and the sag of advancing middle age. She’d been a smoker as well and perhaps she still was, for her skin was heavily webbed round the eyes and creviced round the lips. She wasn’t fat, but she lacked the toned body that her husband possessed. Too little exercise and too much indulgence, Bea concluded.

And yet the woman had a way about her: pedicured feet, manicured hands, sumptuous blond hair with a pleasing sheen, large violet eyes with thick dark lashes, and a manner of movement that asked for aid. Troubadours would have called her a damsel. Bea called her Big Trouble and waited to find out why.

“Mrs. Kerne,” she said. “Thank you for joining us.” And then to Ben Kerne, “Is there somewhere we could talk? This shouldn’t take overly long.” The last bit was typical police casuistry. It would take however long it took for Bea to be satisfied.

Ben Kerne said they could go up to the hotel’s first floor. The residents’ lounge was there. They’d be comfortable.

They were. The room overlooked St. Mevan Beach, and it was fitted out with plush but durable new sofas, a large-screen television, a DVD player, a stereo, a pool table, and a kitchenette. This last feature possessed tea-making facilities and a shiny stainless-steel cappuccino machine. The walls displayed vintage posters of athletic scenes from the 1920s and 30s: skiers, hikers, cyclists, swimmers, and tennis players. It was well thought out and nicely done. A lot of money had gone into it.

Bea wondered where the money for such a project had come from, and she was not shy about asking. Rather than reply, however, Ben Kerne asked if the police wanted something from the cappuccino machine. Bea demurred for both of them before Constable McNulty-who’d raised his head from his pad with what she considered precipitate enthusiasm-could accept. Kerne went to the machine anyway, saying, “If you don’t mind…,” and going on to make some sort of concoction, which he pressed upon his wife. She took it from him with no enthusiasm. He asked her to have a bit of it, and he sounded solicitous. Dellen said she didn’t want it, but Ben was obdurate. “You must,” he told her. They looked at each other and seemed to engage in a battle of wills. Dellen was the one to blink. She raised the cup to her lips and didn’t lower it till she’d drunk it all, leaving a disturbing smear of red where her lips had touched the stoneware.

Bea asked them how long they’d been in Casvelyn, and Ben told her they’d arrived two years earlier. They’d come from Truro, he said, and he went on to explain that he’d owned two sporting goods shops in that town, which he’d sold-along with the family house-in order to finance, if only partially, the project of setting up Adventures Unlimited. Further money had come from the bank, naturally. One did not take on a venture like this without more than one source of financing. They were due to open in mid-June, he said. At least, they had been due to open. Now…He didn’t know.

Bea let that go for the moment. She said, “Grow up in Truro, did you, Mr. Kerne? Were you and your wife childhood sweethearts?”

He hesitated at this, for some reason. He looked to Dellen as if considering how best to phrase his answer. Bea wondered which of the questions was giving him pause: the growing up in Truro part or the childhood sweethearts part.

“Not in Truro, no,” he finally answered. “But as to being childhood sweethearts…” He looked at his wife again, and there was no doubt that his expression was fond. “We’ve been together more or less since we were teenagers: sixteen and fifteen, wasn’t it, Dell?” He didn’t wait for his wife to reply. “We were like most kids, though. Together for a bit, broken up for a bit. Then forgiveness and getting back together. We did that for six or seven years before we got married, didn’t we, Dell?”

Dellen said, “I don’t know. I’ve forgotten all that.” She had a husky voice, a smoker’s voice. It suited her. Anything else would have been wildly out of character.

“Have you?” He turned from her to Bea. “It seemed to go on forever: the drama of our teenage years. As these things do, when you care for someone.”

“What sort of drama?” Bea asked as next to her Constable McNulty kept up a gratifying scribbling against his pad.

“I slept around,” Dellen said bluntly.

“Dell…”

“She’ll likely find out the truth, so we may as well tell it,” Dellen said. “I was the village tart, Inspector.” And then to her husband, “C’n you make me another coffee, Ben? And hotter, if you will. The last was rather lukewarm.”

Ben’s face had altered to granite as she’d spoken. After a fractional hestitation, he rose from the sofa where he’d placed himself and his wife, and he went back to the cappuccino maker. Bea let the silence continue, and when Constable McNulty cleared his throat as if to speak, she knocked her foot against his to keep him quiet. She liked tension during an interview, especially if one of the suspects was inadvertently providing it to the other.

Dellen finally spoke again, but she looked at Ben, as if what she said comprised a hidden message for him. “We lived down the coast, Ben and I, but not in a place like Newquay, where there’re at least a few diversions. We were from a village where there was nothing to do besides the beach in summer and sex in winter. And sometimes sex in summer as well if the weather wasn’t good enough for the beach. We ran in packs then-a gang of kids-and we mixed it up with each other. Pairing off this way for a bit, pairing off that way for a bit. Till we got to Truro, that is. Ben went first and I-clever girl-followed him directly. And that made all the difference. Things changed for us in Truro.”

Ben returned with her drink. He also brought with him a packet of cigarettes that he’d taken from somewhere in the kitchenette, and he lit one for her and handed it over. He sat next to her, quite close.

Dellen downed the second coffee much as she’d done the first, as if her mouth were lined with asbestos. She took the cigarette from him and drew in on it expertly, doing what Bea always thought of as that double-inhaling bit: drawing smoke in, letting a bit out, drawing it all back in again. Dellen Kerne made the act look unique. Bea tried to get a bead on the woman. Dellen’s hands were unsteady.

“Bright lights, big city?” she asked the Kernes. “Is that what took you to Truro?”

“Hardly,” Dellen said. “Ben had an uncle who took him in when he was eighteen. He kept rowing with his dad. Over me. Dad thought-this is Ben’s, not mine-that if he got him out of the village, he’d get him out of my hair as well. Or get me out of his. He didn’t reckon I’d follow. Did he, Ben?”

Ben covered her hand with his. She was saying too much and all of them knew it, but only Ben and his wife knew why she was doing it. Bea considered what all this had to do with Santo as Ben endeavoured to wrest control of the conversation from Dellen by saying, “That’s a reinvention of history. Truth of the matter”-and this he said directly to Bea-“is that my dad and I never got on very well. His dream was to live entirely off the land, and after eighteen years of that, I’d had enough. I made arrangements to live with my uncle. I took off for Truro. Dellen followed me in…I don’t know…What was it? Eight months?”

“Seemed like eight centuries,” Dellen said. “For my sins, I knew a good thing when I saw it. For my sins, I still do.” She kept her gaze on Ben Kerne as she said to Bea, “I’ve a wonderful husband whose patience I’ve tried for many years, Inspector Hannaford. Could I have another coffee, Ben?”

Ben said, “Are you sure that’s wise?”

“But make it hotter still, please. I don’t think that machine is working very well.”

And it came to Bea that that was it: the coffee and what the coffee stood for. She hadn’t wanted it, and he’d insisted. Coffee as metaphor, and Dellen Kerne was rubbing his face in it.

She said, “I’d like to see your son’s room, if I may. As soon as you’ve finished with your coffee, of course.”

DAIDRE TRAHAIR WAS WALKING back towards Polcare Cove along the cliff top when she saw him. A brisk wind was blowing and she’d just stopped to refasten her hair in its tortoiseshell slide. She’d managed to capture most of it, and she’d shoved the rest of it behind her ears, and there he was, perhaps one hundred yards to the south of her. He’d obviously just climbed from the cove, so her first thought was that he was on his way again, resuming his walk, having been released from all suspicion by Detective Inspector Hannaford. She concluded that this release was reasonable enough: As soon as he’d said he was from New Scotland Yard, he’d probably been absolved from suspicion. If only she herself had been half so clever…

Except she had to be truthful, at least with herself. Thomas Lynley had never told them he was from New Scotland Yard, had he? It had been something assumed last night by the other two the moment he’d said his name.

He’d said Thomas Lynley. They’d said-one of them and she couldn’t remember which one it had been-New Scotland Yard? in such a way that seemed to speak volumes among them. He’d said something to indicate they were correct in their assumption and that had been it.

She knew why now. For if he was Thomas Lynley of New Scotland Yard then he was also Thomas Lynley whose wife had been murdered in the street in front of their Belgravia house. Every cop in the country would know about that. The police were, after all, a brotherhood of sorts. This meant, Daidre knew, that all cops everywhere in the country were connected. She needed to remember that, and she needed to be careful round him, no matter his pain and her inclination to assuage it. Everyone had pain, she told herself. Life was all about learning to cope with it.

He raised an arm to wave. She waved in turn. They walked towards each other across the top of the cliff. The path here was narrow and uneven-with shards of carboniferous stone tipping up from the soil-and along its east side gorse rustled thickly, a yellow intrusion standing hardily against the wind. Beyond the gorse, grass grew abundantly although it was closely cropped by the sheep that grazed freely upon it.

When they were close enough to be heard by each other, Daidre said to Thomas Lynley, “So. You’re on your way, then?” But as soon as she spoke, she realised this was not the case, and she went on to add, “Except you’ve not got your rucksack with you, so you aren’t on your way at all.”

He nodded solemnly. “You’d make a good detective.”

“A decidedly elementary deduction, I’m afraid. Anything more would escape my notice. Are you out for a walk?”

“I was looking for you.” As it had done to hers, the wind tossed his hair and he brushed it away from his forehead. Again, she thought how like hers it was. She assumed that he went quite blond in summer.

“For me?” she asked. “How did you know where to find me? Beyond knocking at the door of the cottage, I mean. Because I hope I can presume you did knock this time. I don’t have many more windows to offer up to you.”

“I knocked,” he said. “When no one answered, I had a look round and saw the fresh footprints. I followed them. It was simple enough.”

“And here I am,” she said.

“And here you are.”

He smiled and seemed to hesitate for some reason, which surprised Daidre as he didn’t seem the type of man who’d hesitate at anything. She said, “And?” and cocked her head. He had, she noted, a scar on his upper lip that relieved his otherwise off-putting appearance, which was handsome in that classical sense: He had strong features that were well defined. No indication of inbreeding here.

“I’ve come to ask you to dinner,” he said. “I’m afraid I can only offer you the Salthouse Inn as I’ve no funds of my own yet, and I can hardly invite you for a meal and ask you to pay for it, can I. But at the inn, they’ll put our meal on the books, and as breakfast was excellent-well, at least it was filling-I suspect dinner will be adequate as well.”

“What a dubious invitation,” she said.

He seemed to think about it. “D’you mean the ‘adequate’ part?”

“Yes. ‘Join me for an adequate albeit far-from-sumptuous meal.’ It’s one of those gallant post-Victorian requests one can only respond to with ‘Thank you, I think.’”

He laughed. “Sorry. My mother would roll in her grave, were she dead, which she isn’t. Let me say, then, that I’ve had a look at tonight’s menu, and it appears…if not brilliant, then at least swell.”

She laughed in turn. “Swell? Where on earth did that come from? Never mind. Don’t tell me. Have a meal here instead. I’ve something already prepared and there’s enough for two. It only wants baking.”

“But then I’ll be doubly in your debt.”

“Which is exactly where I want you, my lord.”

His face altered, all amusement drained away by her slip of the tongue. She cursed herself for her lapse in circumspection and what it presaged about her ability to keep other things to herself in his presence.

He said, “Ah. So you know.”

She sought an explanation and decided one existed that would be reasonable, even to him. “When you said last night that you were Scotland Yard, I wanted to know if that was the case. So I set about finding out.” She looked away from him for a moment. She saw that the herring gulls were settling in on the nearby cliff face for the night, pairing off onto ledges and into crevices, ruffling their wings, huddling against the wind. “I’m terribly sorry, Thomas,” she said.

After a moment during which more gulls landed and others soared and cawed, he said, “You’ve no need to apologise. I would have done the same in your situation. A stranger in your house claiming to be a policeman. Someone dead outside. What are you to believe?”

“That’s not what I meant.” She looked back at him. He was into the wind; she was against it. It played havoc with her hair, whipping it into her face despite the slide.

“Then what?” he said.

“Your wife,” she told him. “I’m so terribly sorry about what happened to her. What a wrenching thing for you to have to go through.”

“Ah,” he said. “Yes.” He moved his gaze to the seabirds. He would see them, Daidre knew, as she saw them, pairing off not because there was safety in numbers but because there was safety in just one other gull. “It was far more wrenching for her than for me,” he said.

“No,” Daidre said. “I don’t believe that.”

“Don’t you? Well, there’s little more wrenching than death by gunshot, I daresay. Especially when death is not immediate. I didn’t have to go through that. Helen did. She was there one moment, just trying to get her shopping in the front door. She was shot the next. That would be rather wrenching, wouldn’t you say?” He sounded bleak, and he didn’t look at her as he spoke. But he’d misunderstood her meaning, and Daidre sought to clarify it.

“I believe that death is the end of this part of our existence, Thomas: the spiritual being’s human experience. The spirit leaves the body and then goes on to what’s next. And what’s next has to be better than what’s here or what’s the point, really?”

“Do you actually believe that?” His tone walked the line between bitterness and incredulity. “Heaven and hell and nonsense in a similar vein?”

“Not heaven and hell. That all seems rather silly, doesn’t it. God or whoever up there on a throne, casting this soul downward to eternal torment, tossing this soul upward to sing hymns with the angels. That can’t be what this”-her arm took in the cliff side and the sea-“is all about. But that there’s something else beyond what we understand in this moment…? Yes, I do believe that. So for you…You’re still the spiritual being undergoing and attempting to understand the human experience while she now knows-”

“Helen,” he said. “Her name was Helen.”

“Helen, yes. Forgive me. Helen. She now knows what it was all about. But there’s little peace of mind in that. For you, I mean…Knowing that Helen’s moved on.”

“It wasn’t her choice,” he said.

“Is it ever, Thomas?”

“Suicide.” He looked at her evenly.

She felt a chill. “That’s not a choice. That’s a decision based upon the belief that there are no choices.”

“God.” A muscle moved in his jaw. She so regretted her slip of the tongue. A simple expression-my lord-had reduced him to his wound. These things take time, she wanted to tell him. Such a cliché but so much truth within it.

She said to him, “Thomas, do you fancy a walk? There’s something I’d like to show you. It’s a bit of a way…perhaps a mile up the coast along the path, but it’ll give us something of an appetite for dinner.”

She thought he might refuse, but he did not. He nodded and she gestured him to follow her. They headed in the direction from which she’d just come, dipping down at first into another cove, where great fins of slate shot out of the encroaching surf and reached towards a treacherous cliff top of sandstone and shale. The wind and the waves made talking difficult, as did their positions-one behind the other-so Daidre said nothing, nor did Thomas Lynley. It was, she decided, better this way. Letting a moment pass without acknowledging it further was sometimes a more efficacious approach to healing than troubling a developing scar.

Spring had brought wildflowers into areas more protected by the wind, and along the way into combes the yellow of ragwort mixed with the pinks of thrift while bluebells still marked the spots where ancient forests had once stood. There was scant habitation in the immediate environs of the cliffs when they ascended, but in the distance stone-built farmhouses crouched alongside their greater-size barns, and the cattle these served grazed in paddocks that were marked by Cornwall’s earthen hedgerows with their rich vegetation where dog rose and pennywort grew.

The nearest village was a place called Alsperyl, which was also their destination. This comprised a church, a vicarage, a collection of cottages, an ancient schoolhouse, and a pub. All fashioned from the unpainted stone of the district, they sat some half mile to the east of the cliff path, beyond a lumpy paddock. Only the church spire was visible. Daidre pointed this out and said, “St. Morwenna’s, but we’re going this way just a bit farther if you can manage.”

He nodded, and she felt foolish with her final remark. He was hardly infirm and grief did not rob one of the ability to walk. She nodded in turn and led him perhaps another two hundred yards where a break in the wind-tossed heather on the seaside edge of the path gave way to steps hewn into stone.

She said, “It’s not much of a descent, but have care. The edge is still deadly. And we’re…I don’t know…perhaps one hundred fifty feet above the water?”

Down a set of steps, which curved with the natural form of the cliff side, they came to another little path, nearly overgrown with gorse and patches of English stonecrop that somehow thrived here despite the wind. Perhaps twenty yards along, the path ended abruptly, but not with a precipitous cliff edge as one might expect. Rather, a small hut had been hewn into the cliff face. It was fronted with the old driftwood of ruined ships and sided-where such sides emerged beyond the cliff face itself-with small blocks of sandstone. Its wooden face was grey with age. The hinges that served its rough Dutch door bled rust onto pitted panels.

Daidre glanced back at Thomas Lynley to see his reaction: such a structure in such a remote location. His eyes had widened, and a smile crooked his mouth. His expression seemed to say to her, What is this place?

She replied to his unasked question, speaking above the wind that buffeted them. “Isn’t it marvelous, Thomas? It’s called Hedra’s Hut. Evidently-if the journal of the reverend Mr. Walcombe is to be believed-it’s been here since the late eighteenth century.”

“Did he build it?”

“Mr. Walcombe? No, no. He wasn’t a builder, but he was quite a chronicler. He kept a journal of the doings round Alsperyl. I found it in the library in Casvelyn. He was the vicar of St. Morwenna’s for…I don’t know…forty years, perhaps? He tried to save the tormented soul who did build this place.”

“Ah. That would be the Hedra from Hedra’s Hut, then?”

“The very woman. Apparently, she was widowed when her husband-who fished the waters out of Polcare Cove-was caught in a storm and drowned, leaving her with one young son. According to Mr. Walcombe-who does not generally embellish his facts-the boy disappeared one day, likely having ventured too near the edge of the cliff in an area too friable to support his weight. Rather than confront the deaths of both husband and son within six months of each other, poor Hedra chose to believe a selkie had taken the boy. She told herself he’d wandered down to the water-God knows how he managed it from this height-and there the seal waited in her human form and beckoned him into the sea to join the rest of the…” She frowned. “Blast. I’ve quite forgotten what a group of seals is called. It can’t be a herd. A pod? But that’s whales. Well, no matter at the moment. That’s what happened. Hedra built this hut to watch for his return, and that’s what she did for the rest of her life. It’s a poignant story, isn’t it?”

“Is it true?”

“If we can believe Mr. Walcombe. Come inside. There’s more to see. Let’s get out of the wind.”

The upper and lower doors closed by means of wooden bars that slid through rough wooden handles and rested on hooks. As she pushed the top one back and then the bottom one, and swung the doors open, she said over her shoulder, “Hedra knew what she was about. She gave herself quite a sturdy place to wait for her son. It’s framed in timber all round. Each side has a bench, the roof has quite decent beams to hold it up, and the floor is slate. It’s as if she knew she’d be waiting for a while, isn’t it?”

She led the way in, but then stopped short. Behind her, she heard him duck under the low lintel to join her. She said, “Oh blast,” in disgust and he said, “Now, that’s a shame.”

The wall directly in front of them had been defaced and defaced recently if the freshness of the cuts into the wooden panels of the little building were anything to go by. The remains of a heart which had been earlier carved into the wood-no doubt accompanied by lovers’ initials-curved round a series of vicious hack marks that now gouged deeply, as if into flesh. No initials were left.

“Well,” Daidre said, trying to sound philosophical about the mess, “I suppose it’s not as if the walls haven’t already been carved up. And at least it isn’t spray paint. But still…One wonders…Why do people do such things?”

Thomas was observing the rest of the hut, with its more than two hundred years of carvings: initials, dates, other hearts, the occasional name. He said thoughtfully, “Where I went to school, there’s a wall…It’s not too far from the entry, actually, so no visitor can ever miss it…Pupils have put their initials into it for…I don’t know…I expect they’ve done it since the time of Henry the sixth. Whenever I go back-because I do go back occasionally…one does-I look for mine. They’re still there. They somehow say I’m real, I existed then, I exist even now. But when I look at all the others-and there are hundreds, probably thousands of them-I can’t help thinking how fleeting life is. It’s the same thing here, isn’t it?”

“I suppose it is.” She ran her fingers over several of the older carvings: a Celtic cross, the name Daniel, B.J. + S.R. “I like to come here to think,” she told him. “Sometimes I wonder who were these people all coupled together so confidently. And did their love last? I wonder that as well.”

For his part, Lynley touched the poor gouged heart. “Nothing lasts,” he said. “That’s our curse.”