Payment in Blood

10

IT WAS HALF past two when Lynley and Havers finally reached Joy Sinclair’s small corner house. Located in the fashionable Hampstead area of London, the white brick building was a testament to the author’s success. Its front window, hung with diaphanous ivory curtains, bowed out over a patch of garden where pruned rose bushes, dormant star jasmine, and tight-budded camellias grew. Two window boxes spilled ivy down the front and up the walls of the house, particularly near the doorway whose narrow shingled pediment was nearly lost beneath lush, bronze-veined leaves. Although the house faced Flask Walk, its garden entry was on Back Lane, a narrow cobbled avenue that climbed towards Heath Street a block away, where traffic moved smoothly, almost without sound.

Followed by Havers, Lynley unhooked the wrought iron gate and crossed the fl agstone pathway. The day was windless but the air was raw, and a watery winter sunshine caught upon the brass lighting fixture to the left of the door and upon the polished post slot at its centre.

“Not bad digs,” Havers commented with grudging admiration. “Your basic bricked-in garden, your basic nineteenth-century lamp post, your basic tree-shaded street lined with your very basic BMWs.” She jerked a thumb at the house. “Must have set her back a few quid.”

“From what Davies-Jones said about the terms of her will, I’ve the impression she could afford it,” Lynley replied. He unlocked the door and motioned Havers inside.

They found themselves in a small anteroom, marble-tiled and unfurnished. A collection of several days’ letters lay scattered on the fl oor, pushed through the slot in the door by the postman. They were the kind of collection one might expect in the post of a successful author: five circulars, an electricity account, eleven letters addressed to Joy in care of her publisher and forwarded on, a telephone account, a number of small envelopes that looked like invitations, several business-size envelopes with a variety of return addresses. Lynley handed them to Havers.

“Have a look through these, Sergeant.”

She took them and they went on into the house, through an opaque glass door that led into a long hall. Here, two doors opened along the left wall and a staircase rose along the right. At the far end of the corridor, afternoon shadows filled what appeared to be the kitchen.

Lynley and Havers entered the sitting room first. The room shone in a filtered gold light that fell in three oblique shafts through a large bay window across a carpet the colour of mushrooms, which had the look and smell of having been newly laid. But there was very little else to reveal the personality of the house’s owner, other than low-slung chairs grouped round calf-high tables that spoke of a penchant for modern design. This was affirmed by Joy Sinclair’s choice of art. Three oils after the fashion of Jackson Pollock leaned against one wall, waiting to be hung, and on one of the tables an angular marble sculpture stood, its subject indeterminate.

Double doors on the eastern wall opened into the dining room. It too was furnished sparingly, with that same taste for the sleek paucity of modern design. Lynley walked to the set of four French doors behind the dining table, frowning at the simplicity of their locks and the ease of entry they would afford the least skilled burglar. Not, he admitted to himself, that Joy Sinclair had much here worth stealing, unless the market for Scandinavian furniture was booming or the paintings in the sitting room were the real thing.

Sergeant Havers pulled out one of the dining chairs and sat down at the table, spreading the mail in front of her, pursing her lips thoughtfully. She began slitting it open. “Popular lady. Must be a dozen different invitations in here.”

“Hmm.” Lynley looked out at the brick-walled back garden, a square not much larger than the area required to hold one thin ash tree, a circlet of ground beneath it for planting flowers, and a patch of lawn covered by a thin layer of snow. He went on into the kitchen.

The pervasive feeling of anonymous ownership here was much the same as in the other two rooms. Black-fronted appliances broke into a long row of white cabinets, a scrubbed pine breakfast table with two chairs stood against one wall, and bright splashes of primary colour had strategic places throughout the room: a red cushion here, a blue tea kettle there, a yellow apron on a hook behind the door. Lynley leaned against the counter and studied it all. Houses always had a way of revealing their owners to him, but this house had a look of deliberate artifi ciality, something created by an interior designer who had been given free rein by a woman absolutely uninterested in her personal environment. The result was a tasteful showpiece of restrained success. But it told him nothing.

“Horrendous telephone bill,” Havers called from the dining room. “Looks like she spent most of her time chatting it up with half a dozen chums round the world. She seems to have asked for a print out of her calls.”

“Such as?”

“Seven calls to New York, four to Somerset, six to Wales and…let me see…ten to Suffolk. All very brief save for two longer ones.”

“Made at the same time of day? Made one after another?”

“No, over five days. Last month. Interspersed with the calls to Wales.”

“Check on all the numbers.” Lynley started down the hall towards the stairs as Havers slit open another envelope.

“Here’s something, sir.” She read out to him, “‘Joy, You’ve answered none of my calls nor any of my letters. I shall expect to hear from you by Friday or the matter will have to be turned over to our legal department. Edna.’”

Lynley paused, his foot on the fi rst step. “Her publisher?”

“Her editor. And it’s on publishing house stationery. Sounds like trouble, doesn’t it?”

Lynley reflected on earlier information: the reference on the tape recording to putting Edna off, the crossed-out appointments on Upper Grosvenor Street in Joy’s engagement calendar.

“Telephone the publishing house, Sergeant. Find out what you can. Then do the same for the rest of the long-distance calls on the print out. I’m going up above.”

While Joy Sinclair’s personality had seemed absent on the lower floor of the house, her presence asserted itself with chaotic abandon once Lynley reached the top of the stairs. Here was the life centre of the building, an eclectic jumble of personal possessions collected and treasured. Here, Joy Sinclair was everywhere, in the photographs covering the walls of the narrow hall, in an overfull storage cabinet stuffed with everything from linens to crusty paintbrushes, in the curtain of lingerie in the bathroom, even in the air, which held the faint fragrance of bath powder and perfume.

Lynley went into the bedroom. It was a riot of multicoloured pillows, battered rattan furniture, and clothes. On the table next to her unmade bed stood a photograph that he examined briefly. An arrow-thin, sensitive-looking young man stood by the fountain in the Great Court of Trinity College, Cambridge. Lynley noted the way his hair grew back from his forehead, recognised something familiar in the set of his shoulders and head. Alec Rintoul, he guessed, and replaced it. He went on to the front of the house. Here, Joy’s study was no different from the other rooms, and upon his first look at it, Lynley wondered how anyone could manage to produce a book in an atmosphere so totally devoid of order.

He stepped over a pile of manuscripts near the door and walked to the wall where two maps were hung above a word processor. The first map was large, a regulation district map of the sort bookstores sell to tourists who want to make a thorough scrutiny of a particular area of the country. This one was for Suffolk, although parts of Cambridgeshire and Norfolk were included on it. Evidently, Joy had been using it for some sort of research, Lynley saw, for the name of a village was circled heavily in red ink, and some two inches from it a large X had been drawn not far from Mildenhall Fen. Lynley put on his spectacles to get a better look. Porthill Green, he read beneath the red circle.

And then, a moment later, he made the connection. P. Green in Joy’s engagement diary. Not a person at all, but a place.

Further circles appeared here and there on the map: Cambridge, Norwich, Ipswich, Bury St. Edmunds. Routes were traced out from each of these to Porthill Green and from Porthill Green out to the X near Mildenhall Fen. Lynley considered the implications attached to the presence of the map as below him he heard Sergeant Havers making one telephone call after another, muttering to herself occasionally when a response displeased her or when she was kept waiting or a line was engaged.

Lynley dropped his eyes to the second map on the wall. This was hand-drawn and rough, a pencilled depiction of a village with buildings common to any spot in England. They were only identified in the most generic of terms as church, greengrocers, pub, cottage, petrol station. The map told him nothing. Unless, of course, it was a rough delineation of Porthill Green. And even then it only indicated Joy’s interest in the spot. Not why she was interested, or what she would have done had she gone there.

Lynley gave his attention to her desk. Like everything else in the room, it had the appearance of disordered confusion, of the sort in which the originator of the mess knows exactly where everything is but of which no other human being could ever make sense. Books, maps, notebooks, and papers covered its surface, as well as an unwashed teacup, several pens, a stapler, and a tube of heat-producing analgesic to be rubbed on tired muscles. He considered it for several minutes as Havers’ voice continued its rise and fall of conversation below him.

There had to be some strange system involved, Lynley thought, looking through it. And it wasn’t too long before he understood what it was. Although the piles of material made no superficial sense as a whole, taken individually, they were perfectly rational. One stack of books seemed to be reference materials. There were three psychology texts dealing with depression and suicide, two textbooks on the workings of the British police. Another stack was a collection of newspaper articles, all detailing one sort of death or another. A third stack contained a collection of booklets and pamphlets describing various sections of the country. A last stack was correspondence, thick and probably gone unanswered.

He looked through this, ignoring the fan letters, working on instinct, hoping it would guide him to something signifi cant. He found it thirteen letters into the stack.

It was a brief note from Joy Sinclair’s editor, fewer than ten sentences long. When, the editor asked, might we expect to see the fi rst draft of Hanging’s Too Good? You’re six months overdue on it and as your contract stipulates…

Suddenly everything on Joy’s desk began to take on a marked coherence. The texts on suicide, the workings of the police, the articles about death, the title of a new book. Lynley felt the tightening of excitement that always came with knowing he was on the right track.

He turned back to the word processor. It had two disks in it, he saw, both a program disk and one that would contain Joy’s work.

“Havers,” he shouted, “what do you know about computers?”

“A minute,” she returned. “I’ve got…” Her voice lowered as she spoke into the phone.

Impatiently, Lynley switched the machine on. In a moment, directions appeared on the screen. It was far simpler than he would have ever imagined. Within a minute he was looking at Joy’s working copy of Hanging’s Too Good.

Unfortunately, the sum total of her manuscript-six months overdue to her publishers and no doubt the cause of her dispute with them-was one simple sentence: “Hannah decided to kill herself on the night of March 26, 1973.” That was it.

Fruitlessly, Lynley searched for something else, using every direction that the computer program had to offer him. But nothing was there. Either her work had been erased, or that single sentence was as far as Joy Sinclair had gone. No wonder her editor is frothing at the mouth and talking about legal action, Lynley thought.

He switched the machine off and gave his attention back to her desk. He spent the next ten minutes trying to fi nd something more in the material there. Failing that, he went to her filing cabinet and began searching through its four drawers. He was on his second one when Havers came into the room.

“Anything?” she asked him.

“A book called Hanging’s Too Good, someone named Hannah who decided to commit suicide, and a place called Porthill Green, P. Green, I should guess. What about you?”

“I’ve begun to get the feeling that no one goes to work in New York much before noon, but I was able to find out that the New York number was for a literary agent.”

“And the others?”

“The Somerset call was to Stinhurst’s home.”

“What about the letter from Edna? Did you telephone the publishing house about it?”

Havers nodded. “Joy sold a proposal to them early last year. She wanted to do something different, not a study of a criminal and victim which was her usual bent, but a study of a suicide, what led up to it and its aftereffects. The publisher bought the proposal- they’ve not had to worry about her meeting deadlines before this. But that was the end of it. She never gave them a thing. They’ve been after her for months. In fact, the reaction to her death sounded as if one of them may have been praying for it on a nightly basis.”

“What about the other numbers?”

“The number in Suffolk was an interesting one,” Havers replied. “A boy answered- sounded like a teenager. But he didn’t have the slightest idea who Joy Sinclair was or why she might have been phoning his number.”

“So what’s so interesting about that?”

“His name, Inspector. Teddy Darrow. His father’s name is John. And he was speaking to me from a pub called Wine’s the Plough. And that pub is sitting right in the middle of Porthill Green.”

Lynley grinned, felt that swift surge of power that comes from validation. “By God, Havers. Sometimes I think we’re one hell of a team. We’re onto it now. Can’t you feel it?”

Havers didn’t respond. She was browsing through the material on the desk.

“So we’ve found the John Darrow that Joy talked about both at dinner and on her tape,” Lynley mused. “We’ve the explanation for the reference on her calendar to P. Green. We’ve the reason for the matchbook in her shoulder bag-she must have been in the pub. And now we’re looking for a connection between Joy’s book and John Darrow, between John Darrow and Westerbrae.” He looked at Havers sharply. “But there was another set of phone calls, wasn’t there? To Wales.”

Lynley watched her leaf through the newspaper clippings on the desk in an apparent need to scrutinise each one of them. She didn’t appear to be reading, however. “They were to Llanbister. To a woman called Anghared Mynach.”

“Why did Joy phone her?”

Again, there was hesitation. “She was looking for someone, sir.”

Lynley’s eyes narrowed. He closed the fi ling drawer whose contents he had been examining. “Who?”

Havers frowned. “Rhys Davies-Jones. Anghared Mynach is his sister. He was staying with her.”

BARBARA SAW in Lynley’s face the swift assimilation of a series of ideas. She knew quite well the set of facts he was combining in his mind: the name John Darrow that was mentioned at dinner the night Joy Sinclair was murdered; the reference to Rhys Davies-Jones on Joy’s tape recorder; the ten telephone calls to Porthill Green, and mixed in with those calls, six to Wales. Six calls made to Rhys Davies-Jones.

To avoid a discussion of all of this, Barbara went to the pile of manuscripts lying near the study door. She began riffling through them curiously, noting the range of Joy Sinclair’s interest in murder and death: an outline for a study of the Yorkshire Ripper, an unfi nished article on Crippen, at least sixty pages of material on Lord Mountbatten’s death, a bound galley from a book called The Knife Plunges Once, three heavily edited versions of another book called Death in Darkness. But there was something missing.

As Lynley involved himself again with the filing cabinet, Barbara went to the desk. She opened the top drawer. In it, Joy had kept her computer disks, two long rows of fl oppy black squares, all labelled by subject on the upper right-hand corner. Barbara fl ipped through them, reading the titles. And as she did so, the knowledge began to fl ourish within her, like a growth that was swelling, not with malignancy but with tension. The second and third drawers were much the same, containing stationery, envelopes, ribbons for the printers, staples, ancient carbon paper, tape, scissors. But not what she was looking for. Nothing like that at all.

When Lynley moved to the bookshelves and began looking through the materials there, Barbara went to the fi ling cabinet.

“I’ve been through that, Sergeant,” Lynley said.

She sought an excuse. “Just a hunch, sir. It’ll only take a moment.”

The fact was that it took nearly an hour, but by that time Lynley had removed the jacket from a copy of Joy Sinclair’s most recent book, putting this into his pocket before going on into the bedroom and from there to the storage cabinet at the top of the stairs where Barbara could hear him rooting systematically through the assortment of belongings. It was after four o’clock when she concluded her search of the files and rested back on her heels, satisfied with the validity of her hypothesis. Her only decision now was whether to tell Lynley or to hold her tongue until she had more facts, facts that he would be incapable of brushing aside.

Why, she wondered, had he not noticed it himself? How could he possibly have missed it? With the glaring absence of material right before his eyes, he was seeing only what he wanted to see, what he needed to see, a trail of guilt leading directly to Rhys Davies-Jones.

This guilt was so seductive a presence that it had become for Lynley an effective smokescreen hiding the one crucial detail that he had failed to note. Joy Sinclair had been in the midst of writing a play for Stuart Rintoul, Lord Stinhurst. And nowhere in the study was there a single reference to it. Not a draft, not an outline, not a list of characters, not a scrap of paper.

Someone had been through the house before them.

“I’LL DROP YOU in Acton, Sergeant,” Lynley said when they were back outside. He headed down the street towards his car, a silver Bent-ley that had collected a small group of admiring schoolboys who were peering into its windows and running pious hands along its gleaming wings. “Let’s plan on an early start out to Porthill Green tomorrow. Half past seven?”

“Fine, sir. But don’t bother about Acton. I’ll catch the Tube. It’s just up on the corner of Heath Street and the high.”

Lynley paused, turned back to her. “Don’t be ridiculous, Barbara. That’ll take an age. A change of stations and God only knows how many stops. Get in the car.”

Barbara heard it as the order it was and looked for a way to deflect it without raising his ire. She couldn’t possibly waste the time of having him drive her all the way home. Her day was far from over, in spite of what he thought.

Without considering how unlikely it would sound to him, she took a stab with the fi rst excuse that came into her mind. “Actually, I’ve a date, sir,” she said. And then knowing how ridiculous the idea was, she smoothed over the absurdity with, “Well, it’s not a date exactly. It’s someone I’ve met. And we thought…well, perhaps we’d have dinner and see that new film at the Odeon.” She winced inwardly at that last piece of creativity and took a moment to pray that there was a new film at the Odeon. Or at least if there wasn’t, that he wouldn’t be the wiser.

“Oh. I see. Well. Anyone I know?”

Hell, she thought. “No, just a bloke I met last week. At the supermarket, actually. We banged trolleys somewhere between tinned fruit and tea.”

Lynley smiled at that. “Sounds exactly the way a meaningful relationship starts. Shall I drop you at the Tube?”

“No. I could do with the walk. I’ll see you tomorrow, sir.”

He nodded, and she watched him stride towards his car. In an instant he was surrounded by the eager children who had been admiring it.

“This your car, mister?”

“How much it cost?”

“Those seats leather?”

“C’n I drive it?”

Barbara heard Lynley laugh, saw him lean against the car, fold his arms, and take a moment to engage the group in friendly conversation. How like him, she thought. He’s had all of three hours sleep in the last thirty-three, he’s facing the fact that half of his world may be as good as in ruins, and still he takes the time to listen to children’s chatter. Watching him with them-fancying from this distance that she could see the lines of laughter round his eyes and the quirky muscle that crooked his smile-she found herself wondering what she might actually be capable of doing to protect the career and integrity of a man like that.

Anything, she decided, and began her walk to the Tube.

SNOW WAS FALLING when Barbara arrived at the St. James home on Cheyne Row in Chelsea that evening at eight. In the tawny glow of the street lamps, snowflakes looked like slivers of amber, floating down to blanket pavement, cars, and the intricate wrought iron of balconies and fences.The flurry was mild by way of winter storms, but even so, enough to snarl the traffic on the Embankment a block away. The usual roar of passing cars was considerably muted, and the occasional horn, honking in a burst of temper, explained why.

Joseph Cotter, who played the unusual dual role of manservant and father-in-law in St. James’ life, answered the door to Barbara’s knock. He was, she guessed, no older than fifty, a balding man of short, solid physique, so physically unlike his willowy daughter that for some time after she had first met Deborah St. James, Barbara had had no idea that she was even related to this man. He was carrying a coffee service on a silver tray and doing his best to avoid trampling a small, long-haired dachshund and a plump grey cat who were vying for attention at his feet. All of them threw grotesquely shaped shadows against the dark panelling on the wall.

“Off wi’ you, Peach! Alaska!” he said, before he turned his ruddy face to greet Barbara. The animals retreated a respectable six inches. “Come in, Miss…Sergeant. Mr. St. James is in the study.” He looked Barbara over critically. “’Ave you eaten yet, young lady? Those two ’ave only finished just now. Let me get you a bite in a tick, shall I?”

“Thank you, Mr. Cotter. I could do with something. I haven’t had a thing since this morning, I’m afraid.”

Cotter shook his head. “Police,” he said, in brief and eloquent disapproval. “You just wait in ’ere, miss. I’ll fix you up something nice.”

He knocked once on the door at the foot of the stairs and without waiting for a response, swung it open. Barbara followed him into St. James’ study, a room of tall, crowded bookshelves, scores of photographs, and intellectual jumble, one of the most pleasant locations in the Cheyne Row house.

A fire had been lit, and the room’s mixed odours of leather and brandy formed a comfortable redolence, not unlike that one might find in a gentleman’s club. St. James occupied a chair by the hearth, his bad leg resting upon a worn ottoman, while across from him, Lady Helen Clyde was curled into a corner of the couch. They were sitting quietly, in the manner of an old married couple or of friends too close to need the bridge of conversation.

“’Ere’s the sergeant now, Mr. St. James,” Cotter said, bustling forward with the coffee, which he set down on a low table in front of the fire. Flames there cast a glow against the porcelain, flickered like moving gold in a refl ection on the tray. “An’ she’s not ’ad a bite to eat, so I’ll see to that at once if you’ll do the coffee on your own.”

“I think we can manage that without disgracing you more than two or three times, Cotter. And if there’s any chocolate cake left, would you cut another piece for Lady Helen? She’s longing to have one, but you know how she is. Far too well bred to ask for more.”

“He’s lying as usual,” Lady Helen interjected. “It’s for himself but he knows how you’ll disapprove.”

Cotter looked from one to the other, undeceived by their exchange. “Two pieces of chocolate cake,” he said meaningfully. “An’ a meal for the sergeant as well.” Flicking at the arm of his black jacket, he left the room.

“You look about done in,” St. James said to Barbara when Cotter was gone.

“We all look done in,” Lady Helen added. “Coffee, Barbara?”

“At least ten cups,” she replied. She tugged off her coat and knit cap, tossed them down on the couch, and walked to the fire to thaw out her numb fingers. “It’s snowing.”

Lady Helen shuddered. “After this past weekend, those are the last two words I look forward to hearing.” She handed St. James a cup of coffee and poured out two more. “I do hope your day was more productive than mine, Barbara. After spending five hours exploring Geoffrey Rintoul’s past, I’ve begun to feel as though I’m working for one of those committees in the Vatican who recommend candidates for canonisation.” She smiled at St. James. “Can you bear to hear it all again?”

“I long to,” he replied. “It allows me to examine my own disreputable past and feel suitable guilt over it.”

“As well you should.” Lady Helen returned to the couch, shaking back a few feathery strands of hair that fell against her cheek. She slipped off her shoes, curled her legs underneath her, and sipped her coffee.

Even in exhaustion, she was graceful, Barbara noticed. Utterly confi dent. Completely at ease. Being in her presence was always an exercise in feeling ungainly and decidedly unattractive, and observing the woman’s understated elegance, Barbara wondered how St. James’ wife placidly endured the fact that her husband and Lady Helen worked side by side three days each week in his forensic laboratory on the top floor of the house.

Lady Helen reached for her handbag and pulled from it a small, black notebook. “After several hours with Debrett’s and Burke’s and Landed Gentry-not to mention a forty-minute stretch on the telephone with my father, who knows everything about everyone who’s ever had a title-I’ve managed to come up with a rather remarkable portrait of our Geoffrey Rintoul. Let me see.” She opened the notebook, and her eyes skimmed down the first page. “Born November 23, 1914. His father was Francis Rintoul, fourteenth Earl of Stinhurst, and his mother was Astrid Selvers, an American debutante in the fashion of the Vanderbilts who apparently had the audacity to die in 1925, leaving Francis with three small children to raise. He did so, with outstanding success, considering Geoffrey’s accomplishments.”

“He never remarried?”

“Never. It doesn’t even appear that he engaged in discreet affairs, either. But sexual disinclination seems to run in the family, as you shall note momentarily.”

“How does that fit?” Barbara asked. “Considering the affair between Geoffrey and his sister-in-law.”

“A possible inconsistency,” St. James acknowledged.

Lady Helen continued. “Geoffrey was educated at Harrow and Cambridge. Graduated from Cambridge in 1936 with a first in economics and assorted honours in speech and debate which went on and on forever. But he didn’t come to anyone’s particular attention until October of 1942, and really, he appeared to be the most astonishing man. He was fi ghting with Montgomery at the twelve-day battle at El Alamein in North Africa.”

“His rank?”

“Captain. He was part of a tank crew. Apparently in one of the worst days of the fighting, his tank was hit, incapacitated, and ignited by a German shell. Geoffrey managed to get two wounded men out, dragging them more than a mile to safety. All in spite of the fact that he was wounded himself. He was awarded the Victoria Cross.”

“Hardly the sort of man one expects to fi nd buried in an isolated grave,” Barbara commented.

“And there’s more,” Lady Helen said. “At his own request, and in spite of the severity of his wounds that could well have put him out of action for the remainder of the war, he fi nished it up in the Allied front in the Balkans. Churchill was trying to preserve some British influence there in the face of potential Russian predominance, and evidently Geoffrey was a Churchill man through and through. When he came home, he moved into a job in Whitehall working for the Ministry of Defence.”

“I’m surprised a man like that didn’t stand for Parliament.”

“He was asked. Repeatedly. But he wouldn’t do it.”

“And he never married?”

“No.”

St. James made a movement in his chair, and Lady Helen held out a hand to stop him. She rose herself and poured him a second cup of coffee, without a word. She merely frowned when he used the sugar too heavily and took the sugar bowl from him entirely when he dipped a spoon into it for the fi fth time.

“Was he homosexual?” Barbara asked.

“If he was, then he was discretion itself. Which applies to any affairs he may have had. Not a whisper of scandal about him. Anywhere.”

“Not even anything that attaches him to Lord Stinhurst’s wife, Marguerite Rintoul?”

“Absolutely not.”

“He’s too good to be true,” St. James remarked. “What do you have, Barbara?”

As she was about to pull her own notebook from the pocket of her coat, Cotter entered with the promised food: cake for St. James and Lady Helen and a platter of cold meats, cheeses, and bread for Barbara. With, she saw, a third piece of cake to end her improvised meal. She smiled her thanks and Cotter gave her a friendly wink, checked the coffeepot, and disappeared through the door. His footsteps sounded on the stairs in the hall.

“Eat first,” Lady Helen advised. “With this chocolate cake in front of me, I’m afraid I shall be markedly distracted from anything you say. We can go on when you’ve fi nished your dinner.”

With a grateful nod for the nicely veiled understanding so typical of Lady Helen, Barbara fell upon the food eagerly, devouring three pieces of meat and two large wedges of cheese like a prisoner of war. Finally, with the cake before her and another cup of coffee, she pulled out her notebook.

“A few hours browsing through the public library and all I could find is that Geoffrey’s death appeared to be an entirely straightforward affair. Most of this is from the newspaper accounts of the inquest. There was a tremendous storm on the night he died at Westerbrae, or actually in the early morning hours of January 1, 1963.”

“That much is believable, considering what the weather was like this last weekend,” Lady Helen noted.

“According to the officer in charge of the investigation-an Inspector Glencalvie-the section of the road where the accident occurred was sheeted with ice. Rintoul lost control on the switchback, went right over the side, and rolled the car several times.”

“He wasn’t thrown out?”

“Apparently not. But his neck was broken and his body was burned.”

Lady Helen turned to St. James at this. “But couldn’t that mean-”

“No body-swapping in this day and age, Helen,” he interrupted. “No doubt they had dental charts and X rays to identify him. Was anyone a witness to the accident, Barbara?”

“The closest they could get to a witness was the owner of Hillview Farm. He heard the crash and was first on the scene.”

“And he is?”

“Hugh Kilbride, Gowan’s father.” They ruminated upon this information for a moment. The fire crackled and popped as the flames reached a hard bubble of sap. “So I kept thinking,” Barbara went on slowly, “what did Gowan really mean when he said those two words didn’t see to us? Of course, at fi rst I thought it had something to do with Joy’s death. But perhaps it didn’t at all. Perhaps it referred to something his father had told him, a secret he was keeping.”

“It’s a possibility, to be sure.”

“And there’s something else.” She told them about her search through Joy Sinclair’s study, about the absence of any materials that referred to the play she had been writing for Lord Stinhurst.

St. James’ interest was piqued. “Was there any sign of forcible entry to the house?”

“None that I noticed.”

“Could someone else have had a key?” Lady Helen asked, then went on to say, “But that’s not quite right, is it? Everyone with an interest in the play was at Westerbrae, so how could her house…Unless someone rushed back to London and managed to get everything out of the study before you arrived. Yet that doesn’t seem at all likely, does it? Or even possible. Besides, who would have a key?”

“Irene, I imagine. Robert Gabriel. Perhaps even…” Barbara hesitated.

“Rhys?” Lady Helen asked.

Barbara felt a stirring of discomfort. She could read worlds into the manner in which Lady Helen had said the man’s name. “Possibly. There were a number of phone calls to him on her telephone bill. They were interspersed with calls to a place called Porthill Green.” Her loyalty to Lynley prevented her from saying anything else. The ice she was walking on in this private investigation was insubstantial enough without giving Lady Helen any information which she might inadvertently or deliberately pass on to someone else.

But Lady Helen required no further information. “And Tommy thinks that Porthill Green somehow gives Rhys a motive for murder. Of course. He’s looking for a motive. He told me as much.”

“And yet, none of this takes us any closer to understanding Joy’s play, does it?” St. James looked at Barbara. “Vassal,” he said. “Does that mean anything to you?”

She frowned. “Feudalism and fi efs. Should it mean something more?”

“It’s somehow connected to all of this,” Lady Helen answered. “It’s the only part of the play that stuck in my mind.”

“Why?”

“Because it made no sense to anyone but the members of Geoffrey Rintoul’s family. And it made perfect sense to them. They reacted when they heard the character say that he wasn’t about to become another vassal. It seemed to be some sort of familial code word that only they understood.”

Barbara sighed. “So where do we go from here?”

Neither St. James nor Lady Helen had an answer for her. They fell into several minutes of meditation that were broken by the sound of the front door opening and a young woman’s pleasant voice calling, “Dad? I’m home. Absolutely freezing and in desperate need of food. I’ll eat anything. Even steak and kidney pie, so you can see how immediately in danger of starvation I am.” Her light laughter followed.

Cotter’s voice replied sternly from one of the upper floors. “Your ’usband’s eaten every crumb in the ’ouse, luv. And that’ll teach you to leave the poor man to ’is own devices all these hours. What’s the world comin’ to?”

“Simon? He’s home so soon?” Footsteps sounded hurriedly in the hall, the study door burst open, and Deborah St. James said eagerly, “My love, you didn’t-” She stopped abruptly when she saw the other women. Her eyes went to her husband and she pulled off a beret the colour of cream, loosing an undisciplined mass of coppery red hair. She was dressed in business clothes-a fine coat of ivory wool over a grey suit-and she carried a large metal camera case which she set down near the door. “I’ve been doing a wedding,” she explained. “And together with the reception, I thought I’d never escape. You’re all of you back from Scotland so soon? What’s happened?”

A smile broke over St. James’ face. He held out his hand and his wife crossed the room to him. “I know exactly why I married you, Deborah,” he said, kissing her warmly, tangling his hand in her hair. “Photographs!”

“And I always thought it was because you were absolutely mad for my perfume,” she replied crossly.

“Not a bit of it.” St. James pushed himself out of his chair and went to his desk. There, he rooted through a large drawer and pulled out a telephone directory which he opened quickly.

“Whatever are you doing?” Lady Helen asked him.

“Deborah’s just given us the answer to Barbara’s question,” St. James replied. “Where do we go from here? To photographs.” He reached for the telephone. “And if they exist, Jeremy Vinney is the one man who can get them.”