Payment in Blood

7

“I SUPPOSE the more important question is whether you believe Stinhurst’s story,” St. James pointed out to Lynley. They were in their corner bedroom, where the northwest wing of the house met the main body. It was a small room, adequately furnished in beechwood and pine, inoffensively papered with stripes of creeping jenny on a field of pale blue. The air held that vaguely medicinal smell of cleanser and disinfectant, disagreeable but not overwhelming. From the window, Lynley could see across a recess to the west wing where Irene Sinclair was moving listlessly in her room, a dress draped over her arm as if she couldn’t decide whether to put it on or to forget the business entirely. Her face looked etiolated, an elongated white oval framed by black hair, like an artist’s study of the power of contrast. Lynley dropped the curtain and turned to fi nd that his friend had begun changing his clothes for dinner.

It was an awkward ritual, made worse because St. James’ father-in-law was not there to assist him, made worse because the entire need for assistance in what for anyone else would have been a simple procedure had its genesis on a single night of Lynley’s own drunken carelessness. He watched St. James, caught between wanting to offer him help and knowing that the offer would be politely rebuffed. The leg brace was uncovered, the crutches were used, the shoes were untied, and always St. James’ face remained entirely indifferent, as if he had not been lithe and athletic a mere decade before.

“Stinhurst’s story had the ring of truth, St. James. It’s not exactly the kind of tale one spins to get out of a murder charge, is it? What could he possibly hope to gain from disparaging his own wife? If anything, the case against him looks blacker now. He’s given himself a solid motive for murder.”

“One that can’t be verified,” St. James argued mildly, “unless you check with Lady Stinhurst herself. And something tells me that Stinhurst is betting you’re too much the gentleman to do so.”

“I’ll do it, of course. If it becomes necessary.”

St. James dropped one of his shoes onto the floor and began attaching his leg brace to another. “But let’s go beyond what he’s assuming your reaction will be, Tommy. Let’s consider for a moment that his story is true. It would be clever of him, wouldn’t it, to outline his motive for murder so obviously. That way you needn’t dig for it, needn’t be additionally suspicious when you uncover it. Taken to the extreme, you needn’t even suspect him of the murder in the first place since he’s been perfectly honest with you about everything from the start. It’s clever, isn’t it? Too clever by half. And what better way to develop a crucial need to destroy the evidence than by acquiescing to Jeremy Vinney’s presence here as well, a man likely to pursue any embarrassing story once Joy was killed.”

“You’re arguing that Stinhurst knew in advance that Joy’s revisions of the play would turn it into an exposé of his wife and brother’s affair. But that really doesn’t hold with Helen being given the room adjoining Joy’s, does it? Or with the locked hall door. Or with Davies-Jones’ fingerprints all over that key.”

St. James didn’t disagree. He merely remarked, “If it comes to that, Tommy, I suppose one could say that it also doesn’t hold with the fact that Sydeham was alone for a part of the night. As was his wife, as it turns out. So either one of them had the opportunity to kill her.”

“ Opportunity, perhaps. Everyone appears to have had the opportunity. But motive is a problem. Not to mention the fact that Joy’s door was locked, so whoever did it either had access to those master keys or got in through Helen’s room. We’ll always go back to that, you see.”

“Stinhurst could have had access to the keys, couldn’t he? He told you himself that he’s been here before.”

“As have his wife, his daughter, and Joy. All of them with access to the keys, St. James. Even David Sydeham may have had access to them if he went down the corridor later on in the afternoon to see which room Elizabeth Rintoul had disappeared into when she saw him and Joanna Ellacourt arrive. But that’s stretching things, isn’t it? Why would he be curious about Elizabeth Rintoul’s hiding place? More, why would Sydeham kill Joy Sinclair? To spare his wife a production with Robert Gabriel? It doesn’t wash. Apparently, she’s tightly under contract to appear with Gabriel anyway. Killing Joy accomplished nothing.”

“We go back to that point, don’t we? Joy’s death seems to benefit one person only: Stuart Rintoul, Lord Stinhurst. Now that she’s dead, the play that promised to be so embarrassing for him is never to be produced. By anyone. It looks bad, Tommy. I don’t see how you can ignore such a motive.”

“As to that-”

A knock sounded on the door. Lynley answered it to find Constable Lonan standing in the corridor, carrying a lady’s shoulder bag that was encased in plastic. He held it stiffl y before him in both hands, like a butler presenting a tray of questionable hors d’oeuvres.

“It’s Sinclair’s,” the constable explained. “The inspector thought you might want to have a look at the contents before the lab goes over the bag for prints.”

Lynley took it from him, laid it on the bed, and pulled on the latex gloves that St. James wordlessly passed him from the open valise at his feet. “Where was it found?”

“In the drawing room,” Lonan replied. “On the window seat behind the curtains.”

Lynley looked at him sharply. “Hidden?”

“Looks like she just tossed it there the same way she tossed about everything in her room.”

Lynley unzipped the plastic, slipping the shoulder bag out onto the bed. The other two men watched curiously as he opened it and spilled out its contents. They comprised an interesting array of articles which Lynley sorted through slowly, dividing them into two piles. Into one pile he placed those objects common to a hundred thousand handbags hanging from the arms of a hundred thousand women: a set of keys attached to a large, brass ring, two inexpensive ballpoint pens, an opened pack of Wrigley’s, a single matchbook, and a pair of dark glasses in a new leather case.

The rest of the contents went into the second pile where they attested to the fact that, like many women, Joy Sinclair had imbued even so mundane an object as a black shoulder bag with the singular stamp of her personality. Lynley thumbed through her chequebook first, scanning the entries for anything unusual and finding nothing. Apparently the woman had not been overly concerned with the state of her finances, since she had not balanced the book in at least six weeks. This fi nancial nonchalance had its explanation in her wallet, which held nearly one hundred pounds in notes of varying denominations. But neither chequebook nor wallet retained Lynley’s interest once his eyes fell upon the fi nal two objects Joy Sinclair had carried with her-an engagement calendar and a small, hand-sized tape recorder.

The calendar was new, its pages scarcely having seen use at all. The weekend at Westerbrae was blocked out, as was a luncheon with Jeremy Vinney two weeks past. There were references to a theatre party, a dental appointment, some sort of anniversary, and three engagements marked Upper Grosvenor Street -each one crossed out as if none had been kept. Lynley turned the page to the successive month, found nothing, turned again. Here the single word P. Green was written across one entire week, chapters 1-3 across the week after that. There was nothing else save a reference to S birthday jotted down on the twenty-fi fth.

“Constable,” Lynley said thoughtfully, “I’d like to keep this for now. The contents, not the bag itself. Will you check that with Macaskin before he pushes off?”

The constable nodded and left the room. Lynley waited until the door closed behind him before he turned back to the bed, picked up the tape recorder, and with a glance at St. James switched it on.

She had a perfectly lovely voice, throaty and musical. It was husky, a come-hither sort of voice with the kind of inadvertent sensuality that some women consider a blessing and others a curse. The sound switched on and off, in varying tempos with differing backgrounds- traffic, the underground, a quick blare of music-as if she grabbed the recorder out of her shoulder bag to save a sudden thought wherever it happened to strike her.

“Try to put Edna off at least two more days. There’s nothing to report. Perhaps she’ll believe I’ve had flu…That penguin! She used to love penguins. It’ll be perfect…For God’s sake, don’t let Mum forget Sally again this year… John Darrow believed the best about Hannah until circumstances forced him to believe the worst…See about tickets and a decent place to stay. Take a heavier coat this time…Jeremy. Jeremy. Oh Lord, why be in such a lather about him? It’s hardly a lifetime proposition…It was dark, and although the winter storm…wonderful, Joy. Why not simply go with a dark and stormy night and have done with creativity once and for all… Remember that peculiar smell: decaying vegetables and flotsam washed down the river by the last storm…The sound of frogs and pumps and the unremittingly flat land…Why not ask Rhys how best to approach him? He’s good with people. He’ll be able to help…Rhys wants to-”

Lynley switched off the recorder at this. He looked up to find St. James watching him. In a play for time before the inevitable came into the open between them, Lynley gathered up the articles and placed them all into a plastic bag which St. James had produced from his valise. He folded it closed, took it to the chest of drawers.

“Why haven’t you questioned Davies-Jones?” St. James asked.

Lynley returned to the foot of the bed, to his suitcase which lay on a luggage stand there. Flipping this open, he pulled out his dinner clothes, giving himself time to consider his friend’s question.

It would be easy enough to say that the initial circumstances had not allowed him to question the Welshman, that there was a logic to the manner in which the case had developed so far and he had intuitively followed the logic to see where it would lead. There was truth in that explanation as well. But beyond that truth, Lynley recognised an additional, unpleasant reality. He was struggling with a need to avoid confrontation, a need with which he had not yet come to terms, so foreign was it to him.

In the next room, he could hear Helen, her movements light and brisk and effi cient. He had heard her thus a thousand and one times over the years, heard her without noticing. The sounds were amplified now, as if with the intention of imprinting themselves permanently onto his consciousness.

“I don’t want to hurt her,” he said at last.

St. James was attaching his leg brace to a black shoe, and he paused in the effort, shoe in one hand, brace in the other. His face, usually so noncommittal, reflected surprise. “You’ve certainly an odd way of showing it, Tommy.”

“You sound just like Havers. But what would you have me do? Helen’s determined to be absolutely blind to the obvious. Shall I point out the facts to her now, or hold my tongue and let her become even more involved with the man so that she’s thoroughly devastated when she discovers how he’s used her?”

“If he’s used her,” St. James said.

Lynley pulled on a clean shirt, buttoned it in a poorly hidden agitated fashion, and knotted his tie. “If? Just what do you conjecture his visit to her room last night was all about, St. James?”

His question was met with no reply. Lynley could feel his friend’s eyes on his face. His fi ngers fumbled with the mess he had made of his tie. “Oh, damn and blast!” he muttered savagely.

AT THE KNOCK, Lady Helen opened her door, expecting to find Sergeant Havers or Lynley or St. James in the corridor, ready to escort her to dinner as if she were either the prime suspect or a key witness in need of police protection. Instead, it was Rhys. He said nothing, his expression hesitant, as if he was wondering what his reception might be. But when Lady Helen smiled, he entered the room and pushed the door shut behind him.

They looked at each other like guilty lovers, hungry for a surreptitious meeting. The need for quiet, for stealth, for a declaration of unity heightened sensitivity, heightened desire, heightened and strengthened the newly forged bond between them. When he held out his arms, Lady Helen more than willingly sought their refuge.

With a wordless longing, he kissed her forehead, her eyelids, her cheeks, and at last her mouth. Her lips parted in response and her arms tightened round him, holding him closer to her as if his presence might obliterate the worst of the day. She felt the length of his body create its sweet agony of pressure against her own, and she began to tremble, shot through with a dizzying, unexpected bolt of desire. It came upon her from nowhere, running through her blood like a liquid fi re. She buried her face against his shoulder, and his hands moved upon her with possessive knowledge.

“Love, love,” Rhys whispered. He said nothing more, for at his words, she turned her head and sought his mouth again. After some moments, he murmured, “Aw bey browden on ye, lassie,” and then added with a torn chuckle, “But I suppose you’ve noticed that.”

Lady Helen lifted her hand to smooth his hair back from his temples where it was peppered with grey. She smiled, feeling somehow comforted and not entirely certain why this should be so. “Where on earth did a black-hearted Welshman ever learn to speak Scots?”

At that, his mouth twisted, his arms stiffened momentarily, and Lady Helen knew before he answered that she had innocently asked the wrong question. “In hospital,” he said.

“Oh Lord. I’m so sorry. I didn’t think-”

Rhys shook his head, pulled her closer to him, resting his cheek against her hair. “I’ve not told you about any of it, have I, Helen? I think it’s something I didn’t want you to know.”

“Then don’t-”

“No. The hospital was just outside of Portree. On Skye. In the dead of winter. Grey sea, grey sky, grey land. Boats leaving for the mainland with me wishing to be on any one of them. I used to think that Skye would drive me to drink on a permanent basis. That kind of place tests one’s mettle as nothing else ever does. To survive, it all came down to clandestine pulls at a whisky bottle or profi ciency in Scots. I chose Scots. That, at least, was guaranteed by my roommate, who refused to speak anything else.” His fingers touched her hair, a mere ghost of a caress. It seemed tentative, unsure. “Helen. For God’s sake. Please. I don’t want your pity.”

It was his way, she thought. It was always his way. He would cut through like that, moving past the potential of any meaningless expression of compassion that stood between him and the rest of the world. For pity kept him at a disadvantage, prisoner of an illness that could not be cured. She took his pain as her own.

“How could you ever believe I feel pity? Is that what you think was between us last night?”

She heard his ragged sigh. “I’m forty-two years old. Do you know that, Helen? Is that fifteen years your senior? Good God, is it more?”

“Twelve years.”

“I was married once, when I was twenty-two. Toria was nineteen. Both of us fresh from the regionals and thinking we’d become the next West End wonders.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“She left me. I’d been doing a winter’s season round Norfolk and Suffolk -two months here, a month there. Living in grimy bed-sits and foul-smelling hotels. Thinking none of it was really half bad since it put food on the table and kept the children in clothes. But when I got back to London, she was gone, home to Australia. Mum and Dad and security. More than mere bread on the table. Shoes on her feet.” His eyes were bleak.

“How long had you been married?”

“Only five years. But quite long enough, I’m afraid, for Toria to come to terms with the worst about me.”

“Don’t say-”

“Yes. I’ve only seen my children once in the past fifteen years. They’re teenagers now, a boy and a girl who don’t even know me. And the worst of it is that it’s my own fault. Toria didn’t leave because I was a failure in the theatre, although God knows my chances of success were fairly dim. She left because I was a drunkard. I still am. A drunkard, Helen. You must never forget that. I mustn’t let you forget it.”

She repeated what he had said himself one night as they walked together against the wind along the edge of Hyde Park: “Well, it’s only a word, isn’t it? It only has the power we’re willing to give it.”

He shook his head. She could feel the heavy beating of his heart. “Have they questioned you yet?” she asked.

“No.” His cool fingers rested on the nape of her neck, and he spoke over her head carefully, as if each word was chosen with deliberation. “They do think I killed her, don’t they, Helen?”

Her arms tightened of their own volition, speaking the answer for her. He went on. “I’ve been considering how they might think I did it. I came to your room, brought you cognac to make you drunk, made love to you as a distraction, then stabbed my cousin. Why, of course, remains to be seen. But no doubt they’ll think of something soon enough.”

“The cognac was unsealed,” Lady Helen whispered.

“Do they think I put something in it? Good God. And what about you? Do you think that as well? Do you think I came to you, intent upon drugging you and then murdering my cousin?”

“Of course not.” Looking up, Lady Helen saw a mixture of fatigue and sadness melt together on his face, tempered by relief.

“When I got out of your bed, I unsealed it,” he said. “God knows I wanted the stuff. I felt desperate to have it. But then you woke up. You came to me. And frankly, I discovered that I wanted you more.”

“You don’t need to tell me.”

“I was inches from a drink. Centimetres. I haven’t felt like that in months. If you hadn’t been there…”

“It doesn’t matter. I was there. I’m here now.”

Voices came to them from the room next door: Lynley’s raised hotly for a moment, followed by St. James’ placid murmur. They listened. Rhys spoke.

“Your loyalties are going to be tested brutally through this, Helen. You know that, don’t you? And even if you’re presented with irrefutable truths, you’re going to have to decide for yourself why I came to your room last night, why I wanted to be with you, why I made love to you. And, most of all, what I was doing all that time while you slept.”

“I don’t need to decide,” Lady Helen declared. “There aren’t two sides to this story as far as I’m concerned.”

Rhys’ eyes darkened to black. “There are. His and mine. And you know it.”

WHEN ST. JAMES and Lynley entered the drawing room, they saw it was destined to be a most unpleasant dinner.The assembled group could not have placed themselves across the oriental carpet with any more effective staging to depict their displeasure with the fact that they would be sitting down to dine with New Scotland Yard.

Joanna Ellacourt had selected a centre-stage location. Having established herself somewhere between sitting and draping on a rosewood chaise near the fi replace, she favoured the two newcomers with a glacial look before she turned away, sipped on what looked like white-capped pink syrup, and cast her eyes upon the George II chimney-piece as if its pale green pilasters needed memorising. The others were gathered round her on couches and chairs; their desultory conversation ceased entirely at the entrance of the two men.

Lynley’s eyes swept over the group, making a quick note of the fact that some of them were missing, making especial note of the fact that among the missing were Lady Helen and Rhys Davies-Jones. At a drinks trolley at the far end of the room, Constable Lonan sat like a guardian angel, keeping sharp eyes on the company as if in the expectation that one or more of them might commit some new act of violence. Lynley and St. James went to join him.

“Where are the others?” Lynley asked.

“Not down yet,” Lonan replied. “The one lady just got in here herself.”

Lynley saw that the lady in question was Lord Stinhurst’s daughter, Elizabeth Rintoul, and she was approaching the drinks trolley like a woman going to her execution. Unlike Joanna Ellacourt, who had dressed for the dinner in clinging satin as if it were a social occasion of the highest order, Elizabeth wore a tan tweed skirt and bulky green sweater, both decidedly old and ill-fi tting, the latter decorated with three moth holes that made an isosceles triangle high on her left shoulder.

She was, Lynley knew, thirty-five years old, but she looked far older, like a woman approaching spinsterly middle age in the worst possible way. Her hair, perhaps in an unsuccessful attempt to achieve strawberry blonde, had been coloured an artificial shade of brown that had since gone brassy. It was heavily permed so that it formed a screen from behind which she could observe the world. Both the colour and the style suggested a choice made from a magazine photograph and not one that took into consideration the demands of her complexion or the shape of her face. She was very gaunt, with features that were pinched and pointed. Her upper lip was beginning to develop the creasing lines of age.

Uneasiness limned itself on her bloodless face as she crossed the room. One hand caught at her skirt and squeezed the material. She didn’t bother to introduce herself, didn’t bother with any introductory formality at all. It was clear that she had waited more than twelve hours to ask her question and was not about to be put off another moment. Nonetheless, she didn’t actually look at Lynley as she spoke. Her eyes-shadowed inexpertly with a peculiar shade of aquamarine-merely touched his face to establish contact and from that moment forward remained riveted on the wall just beyond him, as if she were addressing the painting that hung there.

“Do you have the necklace?” she asked stiffly.

“I beg your pardon?”

Elizabeth ’s hands splayed out against her skirt. “My aunt’s pearl necklace. I gave it to Joy last night. Is it in her room?”

There was a murmur from the group at the fireplace, and Francesca Gerrard got to her feet. Coming to Elizabeth ’s side, she put her hand on her elbow, attempting to draw her back to the others. She kept her eyes off the police.

“It’s all right, Elizabeth,” she murmured. “Really. Quite all right.”

Elizabeth jerked away. “It’s not all right, Aunt Francie. I didn’t want to give it to Joy in the first place. I knew it wouldn’t work. Now that she’s dead, I want you to have it back.” Still, she looked at no one. Her eyes were bloodshot, a condition that her eyeshadow only heightened.

Lynley looked at St. James. “Were there pearls in the room?” The other man shook his head.

“But I took the necklace to her. She wasn’t in her room yet. She’d gone to…So I asked him to…” Elizabeth stopped, her face working. Her eyes sought and then fastened on Jeremy Vinney. “You didn’t give it to her, did you? You said you would, but you didn’t. What have you done with that necklace?”

Vinney’s gin and tonic stopped midway to his lips. His fingers, too plump and overly hairy, tightened on the glass. Clearly, the accusation came as a surprise. “I? Of course I gave it to her. Don’t be absurd.”

“You’re lying!” Elizabeth shrilled. “You said she didn’t want to talk to anyone! And you put it in your pocket! I heard the two of you in your room, you know! I know what you were after! But when she wouldn’t let you do it, you followed her back to her room, didn’t you? You were angry! You killed her! And then you took the pearls as well!”

Vinney was on his feet at that, a quick man in spite of the weight he carried. He tried to push aside David Sydeham, who grabbed his arm.

“You dried-up little shrew,” he fl ared. “You were so goddamned jealous of her, you probably killed her yourself! Snooping about, listening at doors. That’s about as close as you’ve come to having any, isn’t it?”

“Jesus God, Vinney-”

“And what were you doing with her?” Angry colour shot across Elizabeth ’s cheeks in patches. Her lips contorted into a sneer. “Hoping to get your own creative juices up by bleeding off hers? Or smelling her up like every other man here?”

“ Elizabeth!” Francesca Gerrard pleaded weakly.

“Because I know why you came! I know what you were after!”

“She’s mad,” Joanna Ellacourt muttered in disgust.

Lady Stinhurst broke at that. She spat a response at the actress. “Don’t you say that!

Don’t you dare! You sit there like an ageing Cleopatra who needs men to-”

“Marguerite!” Her husband’s voice boomed. It shattered everyone to silence, nerve-strung and brittle.

The tension was broken by footsteps on the stairs and in the hall. A moment later the remaining members of the party entered the room: Sergeant Havers, Lady Helen, Rhys Davies-Jones. Robert Gabriel appeared less than a minute behind them.

His eyes darted from the tense group by the fireplace to the others near the drinks trolley, to Elizabeth and Vinney, squaring off in anger. It was an actor’s moment and he knew how to use it.

“Ah.” He smiled gaily. “We are indeed all in the gutter, aren’t we? But I wonder which of us are looking at the stars?”

“Certainly not Elizabeth,” Joanna Ellacourt replied curtly and turned back to her drink.

From the corner of his eye, Lynley saw Davies-Jones draw Lady Helen towards the drinks trolley and pour her a dry sherry. He even knows her habits, Lynley thought dismally and decided that he had had his fill of the entire group.

“Tell me about the pearls,” he said.

Francesca Gerrard felt for the single string of cheap beads she wore. They were pucecoloured; they argued dramatically with the green of her blouse. Ducking her head, raising a nervous hand to her mouth as if to hide her prominent teeth from scrutiny, she spoke with a well-bred hesitation, as if better manners told her it was unwise to intrude.

“I…It’s my fault, Inspector. I’m afraid that last night I did ask Elizabeth to offer the pearls to Joy. They aren’t priceless, of course, but I thought if she needed money…”

“Ah. I see. A bribe.”

Francesca’s eyes went to Lord Stinhurst. “Stuart, won’t you…?” The words wavered uneasily. Her brother didn’t reply. “Yes. I thought she might be willing to withdraw the play.”

“Tell him how much the pearls are worth,” Elizabeth insisted hotly. “Tell him!”

Francesca made a delicate moue of distaste, clearly unused to discussing such matters in public. “They were a wedding present from Phillip. My husband. They were…perfectly matched so-”

“They were worth more than eight thousand pounds,” Elizabeth snapped.

“I had of course always intended to pass them on to my own daughter. But since I have no children-”

“They were going to go to our little Elizabeth,” Vinney finished triumphantly. “So who better to have nicked them from Joy’s room? You nasty little bitch! Clever to point the fi nger at me!”

Elizabeth made a precipitate move towards him. Her father rose and intercepted her. The entire scene was about to be lived through once again. But Mary Agnes Campbell arrived in their midst, coming to stand hesitantly in the doorway, her eyes large and round, her fingers playing at the tips of her hair. Francesca spoke to her in an effort to divert the tide of passion.

“Dinner, Mary Agnes?” she asked inanely.

Mary Agnes scanned the room. “Gowan?” she responded. “He isna wi’ ye? Nae wi’ the police? Cuik wants him…” Her voice fell off. “Ye havena seen…”

Lynley looked from St. James to Havers. All of them shared a moment of the unthinkable.

All of them moved. “See that no one leaves the room,” Lynley directed Constable Lonan.

THEY WENT in separate directions, Havers up the stairs, St. James down the lower northeast corridor, and Lynley into the dining room, through the china and warming rooms. He burst into the kitchen.The cook started in surprise, a steaming kettle in her hand. Broth spilled over the side in an aromatic stream. Above them, Lynley heard Havers pounding down the west corridor. Doors crashed open. She called the boy’s name.

Seven steps and Lynley was at the scullery door. The knob turned in his hand, but the door wouldn’t open. Something blocked the passage.

“Havers!” he shouted, and in rising anxiety at the absence of reply, “Havers! Damn and blast!”

Then he heard her flying down the back staircase, heard her pause, heard her cry of incredulity, heard the unbelievable sound of water, the sound of sloshing like a child in a wading pond. Precious seconds passed. And then her voice like a bitter draught of medicine one expects but hopes not to swallow:

“Gowan! Christ!”

“Havers, for God’s sake-”

There was movement, something dragging. The door eased open a precious twelve inches, giving Lynley access to the heat and the steam and the heart of malevolence.

His back muddied and gummed by crimson, Gowan had been lying on his stomach across the top step of the scullery, apparently in an effort to escape the room and the scalding water that poured from the boiler and mixed with the cooling water on the fl oor. It was inches deep, and Havers waded back across it, seeking the emergency valve that would shut it off. When she found it, the room was plunged into an eerie stillness that was broken by the cook’s voice on the other side of the door.

“Is it Gowan? Is it the lad?” And she began a keening that reverberated like a musical instrument against the kitchen walls.

But when she paused, a second sound racked the hot air. Gowan was breathing. He was alive.

Lynley turned the boy to him. His face and neck were a puckered, red mass of boiled fl esh. His shirt and trousers were cooked onto his body. “Gowan!” Lynley cried. And then, “Havers, phone for an ambulance! Get St. James!” She did not move. “Blast it, Havers! Do as I say!”

But her vision was transfixed on the boy’s face. Lynley spun back, saw the initial glazing of Gowan’s eyes, knew what it meant.

“Gowan! No!”

For an instant, Gowan seemed to try desperately to respond to the shout, to accept the call back from the darkness. He took a stertorous breath, wracked with bloody phlegm.

“Didn’t…see…”

“What?” Lynley urged. “Didn’t see what?”

Havers leaned forward. “Who? Gowan, who?”

With an enormous effort, the boy’s eyes sought her. But he said nothing more. His body shuddered once and was still.

LYNLEY FOUND that he had grasped hold of Gowan’s shirt in a frantic attempt to infuse his tortured body with life. Now he released him, letting the corpse rest back upon the step, and a monumental sense of outrage filled him. It began as a howling, curling deep within muscles, tissues, and organs, screaming to get out.

He thought of the wasted life-the generations of life callously destroyed-in the single young boy who had done… what? Who had paid for what crime? What chance remark? What piece of knowledge?

His eyes burned, his heart pounded, and for a moment he chose to ignore the fact that Sergeant Havers was speaking to him. Her voice broke wretchedly.

“He pulled the ruddy thing out! Oh my God, Inspector, he must have pulled it out!”

Lynley saw that she had gone back to the boiler in the corner of the room. She was kneeling on the fl oor, mindless of the water, a torn piece of towel in her hand. Using it, she lifted something from the pool and Lynley saw it was a kitchen knife, the very same knife he had seen in the hands of the Westerbrae cook a few short hours before.