Payment in Blood

8

THERE WASN’T ENOUGH space in the scullery, so Inspector Macaskin did his pacing in the kitchen. His left hand ran along the worktable in the centre of the room; he gnawed at the fingers of his right with vicious concentration. His eyes fl icked from the windows that presented him blankly with his own reflection to the closed door leading towards the dining room. From there he could hear the raised wail of a woman’s voice, and the voice of a man, raw with anger. Gowan Kilbride’s parents from Hillview Farm, meeting with Lynley, fl ailing him mercilessly with the first fury of their grief. On the floor above them, behind closed and guarded doors, the suspects waited for their summons from the police. Again, Macaskin thought. He cursed himself soundly, his conscience shredded by the belief that had he not suggested letting everyone out of the library for dinner, Gowan Kilbride might well be alive.

Macaskin swung around as the scullery door opened and St. James stepped out with Strathclyde’s medical examiner. He hurried to join them. Over their shoulders, he could see two other crime-scene men still at work in the small room, doing what they could to collect what evidence had not been obliterated by water and steam.

“Right branch of the pulmonary artery is my guess without a full postmortem,” the examiner murmured to Macaskin. He was stripping off a pair of gloves, which he stuffed into his jacket pocket.

Macaskin directed a querying look at St. James.

“It could be the same killer.” St. James nodded. “Right-handed. One blow.”

“Man or woman?”

St. James blew out a refl ective breath. “My guess is a man. But I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of a woman.”

“But surely we’re talking about considerable strength!”

“Or a rush of adrenaline. A woman could do it if she were driven.”

“Driven?”

“Blind rage, panic, fear.”

Macaskin bit down too hard on his fi nger. He tasted blood. “But who? Who?” he demanded of no one.

WHEN LYNLEY unlocked the door to Robert Gabriel’s room, he found the man sitting much like a solitary prisoner in a cell. He had chosen the least comfortable chair in the room and he leaned forward in it, his arms on his legs, his manicured hands dangling uselessly in front of him.

Lynley had seen Gabriel on the stage, most memorably as Hamlet four seasons past, but the man close-up was very different from the actor who swept the audience along with him through the tortured psyche of a Danish prince. In spite of the fact that he was not much past forty, Gabriel was starting to look worn out. There were pouches under his eyes, and a fatty layer had begun to take up permanent residence round his waist. His hair was well cut and perfectly combed, but in spite of a gel that attempted to encourage it into a modern style, it was thin upon his skull, artifi cial-looking as if he had enhanced its colour in some way. At the crown of his head, its thickness barely sufficed to cover a bald spot that made a small but growing tonsure. Youthfully dressed, Gabriel appeared to favour trousers and shirt of a colour and weight that seemed more appropriate to a summer in Miami Beach than a winter in Scotland. They were contradictions, notes of instability in a man one would expect to be self-assured and at ease.

Lynley nodded Havers towards a second chair and remained standing himself. He chose a spot near a handsome hardwood chest of drawers where he had an unobstructed view of Gabriel’s face. “Tell me about Gowan,” he said. The sergeant crackled through the pages of her notebook.

“I always thought my mother sounded just like the police,” was Gabriel’s weary response. “I see I was right.” He rubbed at the back of his neck as if to rid it of stiffness, then sat up in his chair and reached for the travel alarm clock on the bedside table. “My son gave this to me. Look at the silly thing. It doesn’t even keep proper time any longer, but I’ve not been able to bring myself to toss it in the rubbish. I’d call that paternal devotion. Mum would call it guilt.”

“You had a row in the library late this afternoon.”

Gabriel gave a derisive snort. “We did. It seems Gowan believed that I’d been savouring one or two of Mary Agnes’ finer qualities. He didn’t much like it.”

“And had you?”

“Christ. Now you sound like my ex-wife.”

“Indeed. That doesn’t go far to answering my question, however.”

“I’d spoken to the girl,” Gabriel snapped. “That’s all.”

“When was this?”

“I don’t know. Sometime yesterday. Shortly after I arrived. I was unpacking and she knocked on the door, ostensibly to deliver fresh towels, which I didn’t need. She stayed to chat, long enough to find out if I had any acquaintance with a list of actors who appear to be running neck and neck at the top of her marital-prospect list.” Gabriel waited belligerently and when no additional question came forth he said, “All right, all right! I may have touched her here and there. I probably kissed her. I don’t know.”

“You may have touched her? You don’t know if you kissed her?”

“I wasn’t paying attention, Inspector. I didn’t know I would have to account for every second of my time with the London police.”

“You talk as if touching and kissing are knee-jerk reactions,” Lynley pointed out with impassive courtesy. “What does it take for you to remember your behaviour? Complete seduction? Attempted rape?”

“All right! She was willing enough! And I didn’t kill that boy over it.”

“Over what?”

Gabriel had at least enough conscience to look uncomfortable. “Good God, just a bit of nuzzle. Perhaps a feel beneath her skirt. I didn’t take the girl to bed.”

“Not then, at least.”

“Not at all! Ask her! She’ll tell you the same.” He pressed his fingers to his temples as if to quell pain. His face, bruised from his run-in with Gowan, looked riven by exhaustion. “Look, I didn’t know Gowan had his eye on the girl. I hadn’t even seen him then. I didn’t know he existed. As far as I was concerned, she was free for the taking. And, by God, she didn’t protest. She could hardly do that, could she, when she was doing her best to manage a feel of her own.”

The actor’s last statement rang with a certain pride, the kind evidenced by men who feel compelled to talk about their sexual conquests. No matter how puerile the reported seduction appears to others, in the speaker it always meets some undefined need. Lynley wondered what it was in Gabriel’s case.

“Tell me about last night,” he said.

“There’s nothing to tell. I had a drink in the library. Spoke to Irene. After that, I went to bed.”

“Alone?”

“Yes, as hard as that may be for you to believe, alone. Not with Mary Agnes. Not with anyone else.”

“That takes away an alibi, though, doesn’t it?”

“Why in God’s name would I need an alibi, Inspector? Why would I want to kill Joy? All right, I had an affair with her. I admit my marriage fell apart because of it. But if I wanted to kill her, I would have done so last year when Irene found out and divorced me. Why wait until now?”

“Joy wouldn’t cooperate in the plan you had, would she, the plan to win your wife back? Perhaps you knew that Irene would come back to you if Joy would tell her that she’d been to bed with you only once. Not again and again over a year, but once. Except that Joy had no intention of lying to benefi t you.”

“So I killed her because of that? When? How? There’s not a person in the house who doesn’t know her door was locked. So what did I do? Hide in the wardrobe and wait for her to fall asleep? Or better yet, tiptoe back and forth through Helen Clyde’s room and hope she wouldn’t notice?”

Lynley refused to let himself become involved in a shouting match with the man. “When you left the library this evening, where did you go?”

“I came here.”

“Immediately?”

“Of course. I wanted a wash. I felt like hell.”

“Which stairs did you use?”

Gabriel blinked. “What do you mean? What other stairs are there? I used the stairs in the hall.”

“Not those right next door to this very room? The back stairs? The stairs in the scullery?”

“I had no idea they were even there. It’s not my habit to prowl about houses looking for secondary access routes to my room, Inspector.”

His answer was clever enough, impossible to verify if no one had seen him in the scullery or the kitchen within the last twenty-four hours. Yet certainly Mary Agnes had used the stairs when she worked on this fl oor. And the man wasn’t deaf. Nor were the walls so thick that he would hear no footsteps.

It appeared to Lynley that Robert Gabriel had just made his fi rst mistake. He wondered about it. He wondered what else the man was lying about.

Inspector Macaskin poked his head in the door. His expression was calm, but the four words he said held a note of triumph.

“We’ve found the pearls.”

“THE GERRARD woman had them all along,” Macaskin said. “She handed them over readily enough when my man got to her room for the search. I’ve put her in the sitting room.”

Sometime since their earlier meeting that night, Francesca Gerrard had decided to deck herself out in a grating array of costume jewellery. Seven strands of beads in varying colours from ivory to onyx had joined those of puce, and she was sporting a line of metallic bracelets that made her movements sound as if she were in shackles. Discoidal plastic earrings striped violently in purple and black were clipped to her ears. Yet the tawdry display seemed the product of neither eccentricity nor self-absorption. Rather, it appeared however questionably to be a substitute for the ashes which women of other cultures pour upon their heads at the time of a death.

Nothing was quite so clear as the fact that Francesca Gerrard was grieving. She sat at the table in the centre of the room, one arm pressed tightly into her waist, one fi st clenched between her eyebrows. Swaying slowly from side to side, she wept. The tears were not spurious. Lynley had seen enough mourning to know when he was faced with the real thing.

“Get something for her,” he said to Havers. “Whisky or brandy. Sherry. Anything. From the library.”

Havers went to do so, returning a moment later with a bottle and several glasses. She poured a few tablespoons of whisky into one of the tumblers. Its smoky scent struck at the air like a sound.

With a gentleness unusual in her, Havers pressed the glass into Francesca’s hand. “Drink a bit,” she said. “Please. Just to steady yourself.”

“I can’t! I can’t!” Nonetheless, Francesca allowed Sergeant Havers to lift the glass to her lips. She took a grimacing swallow, coughed, took another. Then she said brokenly, “He was…I liked to pretend he was my son. I’ve no children. Gowan…It’s my fault that he’s dead. I asked him to work for me. He didn’t really want to. He wanted to go to London. He wanted to be like James Bond. He had dreams. And he’s dead. And I’m to blame.”

Like people afraid of making any sudden movements, the others in the room took seats surreptitiously: Havers at the table with Lynley, St. James and Macaskin out of Francesca’s line of vision.

“Blame is part of death,” Lynley said quietly. “I bear equal responsibility for what’s happened to Gowan. I’m not likely to forget it.”

Francesca looked up, surprised. Clearly, she had not expected such an admission from the police.

“Part of myself feels lost. It’s as if…No, I can’t explain.” Her voice quavered, then held.

Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. Exposed for years to death in a thousand and one horrible varieties, Lynley understood far better than Francesca Gerrard could ever have realised. But he said only, “You’ll find that, in a case like this, a burial of grief comes hand-in-hand with justice. Not at once, of course. But eventually.”

“And you need me for that. Yes. I do understand.” She drew herself up, blew her nose shakily on a wadded tissue from her pocket, took another hesitant sip of whisky. Her eyes brimmed with tears again. Several escaped in a wet trail from cheeks to lips.

“How did you come to have the necklace in your room?” Lynley asked. Sergeant Havers took out her pencil.

Francesca hesitated. Her lips parted twice to speak before she was able to go on. “I took it back last night. I would have told you earlier in the drawing room. I wanted to. But when Elizabeth and Mr. Vinney began…I didn’t know what to do. Everything happened so quickly. And then Gowan…” She faltered on the name, like a runner stumbling and not righting himself properly.

“Yes. I see. Did you go to Joy’s room for the necklace or did she bring it to you?”

“I went to her room. It was on the chest of drawers by the door. I suppose I had changed my mind about her having it.”

“You took it back as easily as that? There was no discussion?”

Francesca shook her head. “There couldn’t have been. She was asleep.”

“You saw her? You got into her room? Was the door unlocked?”

“No. I’d gone without my keys because I thought at first it might be unlocked. Everyone knew each other, after all. There was no reason to lock doors. But hers was locked, so I went to the office for the master keys.”

“The key wasn’t in her lock from the inside?”

Francesca frowned. “No…It couldn’t have been, could it, or I wouldn’t have been able to unlock it with my own.”

“Take us through exactly what you did, Mrs. Gerrard.”

Willingly, Francesca retraced her route from her bedroom to Joy’s where she turned the door handle only to find the room locked; from Joy’s room to her own where she picked up her desk key from her chest of drawers; from her room to her office where she took the master keys from the bottom drawer of her desk; from her office to Joy’s room where she unlocked the door quietly, saw the necklace in the light from the corridor, took it, and relocked the door; from Joy’s room to her office where she returned the keys; from her office back to her own room where she replaced the necklace in her jewellery box.

“What time was this?” Lynley asked.

“Three-fi fteen.”

“Exactly?”

She nodded and went on to explain. “I don’t know whether you’ve ever done anything impulsive that you regret, Inspector. But I regretted parting with the pearls directly after Elizabeth took them to Joy. I lay in bed trying to decide what to do. I didn’t want a confrontation with Joy, I didn’t want to burden my brother Stuart with anything else. So I…well, I suppose I stole them, didn’t I? And I know it was three-fifteen because I had been lying awake watching the clock and that’s what time it was when I fi nally decided to do something about getting my necklace back.”

“You said Joy was asleep. Did you see her? Hear her breathing?”

“The room was so dark. I…I suppose I assumed she was asleep. She didn’t stir, didn’t speak. She…” Her eyes widened. “Do you mean she might have been dead?”

“Did you actually see her in the room at all?”

“You mean in the bed? No, I couldn’t see the bed. The door was in the way and I hadn’t opened it more than a few inches. I just thought, of course…”

“What about your desk in your offi ce? Was it locked?”

“Oh yes,” she replied. “It’s always locked.”

“Who has keys to it?”

“I have one key. Mary Agnes has the other.”

“And could anyone have seen you going from your room to Joy’s? Or going to the office? On either of the two trips?”

“I didn’t notice anyone. But I suppose…” She shook her head. “I just don’t know.”

“But you would have passed any number of rooms to make the trips, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course, anyone on the main corridor could have seen me if they were up and about. But surely I would have noticed that. Or heard a door opening.”

Lynley went to join Macaskin who was already on his feet, examining the fl oor plan that was still spread out upon the table from their earlier interview with David Sydeham. Four rooms had immediate access to the main corridor besides the rooms belonging to Lady Helen and Joy Sinclair: Joanna Ellacourt and David Sydeham’s room, Lord Stinhurst and his wife’s, the unused room of Rhys Davies-Jones, and Irene Sinclair’s at the junction of the main corridor and the west wing of the house.

“Surely there’s truth to what the woman is saying,” Macaskin muttered to Lynley as they looked the floor plan over. “Surely she would have heard something, seen something, been alerted to the fact that she was being watched.”

“Mrs. Gerrard,” Lynley said to her over his shoulder, “are you absolutely certain that Joy’s door was locked last night?”

“Of course,” she replied. “I thought of sending a note with her tea this morning, to tell her I’d taken the necklace back. Perhaps I really should have. But then-”

“And you did take the keys back to your desk?”

“Yes. Why do you keep asking me about the door?”

“And you locked the desk again?”

“Yes. I know I did that. It’s something I always do.”

Lynley turned from the table but remained next to it, his eyes on Francesca. “Can you tell me,” he asked her, “how Helen Clyde came to be given a room adjoining Joy Sinclair’s? Was that coincidental?”

Francesca’s hand rose to her beads, an automatic movement, companion to thought. “Helen Clyde?” she repeated. “Was it Stuart who suggested…No. That’s not right, is it? Mary Agnes took the call from London. I remember because Mary’s spelling is a bit phonetic, and the name she’d written was unfamiliar. I had to get her to say it for me.”

“The name?”

“Yes. She’d written down Joyce Encare, which of course made no sense until she said it. Joy Sinclair.”

“Joy had telephoned you?”

“Yes. So I returned the call. This was…it must have been last Monday evening. She asked if Helen Clyde might have the room next to hers.”

“Joy asked for Helen?” Lynley queried sharply. “Asked for her by name?”

Francesca hesitated. Her eyes dropped to the plan of the house, then rose back to meet Lynley’s. “No. Not exactly by name. She merely said that her cousin was bringing a guest and could that guest be given the room next to hers. I suppose I assumed she must have known…” Her voice faltered as Lynley pushed himself away from the table.

He looked from Macaskin to Havers to St. James. There was no point in further procrastination. “I’ll see Davies-Jones now,” he said.

RHYS DAVIES-JONES did not appear to be cowed in the presence of the police, in spite of the escort of Constable Lonan who had followed him like an unfortunate reputation from his room, down the stairs, and right to the door of the sitting room. The Welshman evaluated St. James, Macaskin, Lynley, and Havers with a look entirely straightforward, the deliberate look of a man intent upon showing that he had nothing to hide. A dark horse which had never been thought of… Lynley nodded him to a seat at the table.

“Tell me about last night,” he said.

Davies-Jones gave no perceptible reaction to the question other than to move the liquor bottle out of his line of vision. He played the tips of his fingers round the edge of a packet of Players that he took from his jacket pocket, but he did not light one. “What about last night?”

“About your fingerprints on the key to the door that adjoined Helen’s and Joy’s rooms, about the cognac you brought to Helen, about where you were until one in the morning when you showed up at her door.”

Again, Davies-Jones did not react, either to the words themselves or to the current of hostility that ran beneath them. He answered frankly enough. “I took cognac up to her because I wanted to see her, Inspector. It was stupid of me, a rather adolescent way of getting into her room for a few minutes.”

“It seems to have worked well enough.”

Davies-Jones didn’t respond. Lynley saw that he was determined to say as little as possible. He found himself instantly equally determined to wring every last fact from the man. “And your fingerprints on the key?”

“I locked the door, both doors in fact. We wanted privacy.”

“You entered her room with a bottle of cognac and locked both the doors? Rather a blatant admission of your intentions, wouldn’t you say?”

Davies-Jones’ body tensed fractionally. “That’s not how it happened.”

“Then do tell me how it happened.”

“We talked for a bit about the read-through. Joy’s play was supposed to have brought me back into London theatre after my…trouble, so I was rather upset about the way everything turned out. It was more than a little bit obvious to me that whatever my cousin had in mind in getting us all up here to look at the revisions in her script, putting on a play had little enough to do with it. I was angry at having been used as a pawn in what was clearly some sort of vengeance game Joy was playing against Stinhurst. So Helen and I talked. About the read-through. About what in God’s name I would do from here. Then, when I was going to leave, Helen asked me to stay the night with her. So I locked the doors.” Davies-Jones met Lynley’s eyes squarely. A faint smile touched his lips. “You weren’t expecting it to have happened quite that way, were you, Inspector?”

Lynley didn’t reply. Rather, he pulled the whisky bottle towards him, twisted off its cap, poured himself a drink. The liquor fl ashed through his body satisfactorily. Deliberately, he set the glass down on the table between them, a full inch still in it. At that, Davies-Jones looked away, but Lynley didn’t miss the tight movements of the man’s head, the tension in his neck, traitors to his need. He lit a cigarette with unsteady hands.

“I understand you disappeared right after the read-through, that you didn’t show up again until one in the morning. How do you account for the time? What was it, ninety minutes, nearly two hours?”

“I went for a walk,” Davies-Jones replied.

Had he claimed that he had gone swimming in the loch, Lynley could not have been more surprised. “In a snowstorm? With a wind-chill factor of God only knows how far below freezing, you went for a walk?”

Davies-Jones merely said, “I fi nd walking a good substitute for the bottle, Inspector. I would have preferred the bottle last night, frankly. But a walk seemed like the smarter alternative.”

“Where did you go?”

“Along the road to Hillview Farm.”

“Did you see anyone? Speak to anyone?”

“No,” he replied. “So no one can verify what I’m telling you. I understand that perfectly. Nonetheless, it’s what I did.”

“Then you also understand that as far as I’m concerned you could have spent that time in any number of ways.”

Davies-Jones took the bait. “Such as?”

“Such as collecting what you’d need to murder your cousin.”

The Welshman’s answering smile was contemptuous. “Yes. I suppose I could have. Down the back stairs, through the scullery and kitchen, into the dining room, and I’d have the dirk without anyone seeing me. Sydeham’s glove is a problem, but no doubt you can tell me how I managed to get it without him being the wiser.”

“You seem to know a great deal about the layout of the house,” Lynley pointed out.

“I do. I spent the early part of the afternoon looking it over. I’ve an interest in architecture. Hardly a criminal one, however.”

Lynley fingered the tumbler of whisky, swirling it meditatively. “How long were you in hospital?” he asked.

“Isn’t that a bit out of your purview, Inspector Lynley?”

“Nothing that touches this case is out of my purview. How long were you in hospital for your drinking problem?”

Davies-Jones answered stonily. “Four months.”

“A private hospital?”

“Yes.”

“Costly venture.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? That I stabbed my cousin for her money to pay my bills?”

“Did Joy have money?”

“Of course she had money. She had plenty of money. And you can rest assured she didn’t leave any of it to me.”

“You know the terms of her will, then?”

Davies-Jones reacted to the pressure, to being in the close presence of alcohol, to having been led so expertly into a trap. He stubbed out his cigarette angrily in the ashtray. “Yes, blast you! And she’s left every last pound to Irene and her children. But that’s not what you wanted to hear, is it, Inspector?”

Lynley seized the opportunity he had gained through the other man’s anger. “Last Monday Joy asked Francesca Gerrard that Helen Clyde be given a room next to hers. Do you know anything about that?”

“That Helen…” Davies-Jones reached for his cigarettes, then pushed them away. “No. I can’t explain it.”

“Can you explain how she knew Helen would be with you this weekend?”

“I must have told her. I probably did.”

“And suggested that she might want to get to know Helen? And what better way than by asking to be given adjoining rooms.”

“Like schoolgirls?” Davies-Jones demanded. “Rather transparent for a ruse leading to murder, wouldn’t you say?”

“I’m certainly open to your explanation.”

“I don’t bloody have one, Inspector. But my guess is that Joy wanted Helen next to her to act as a buffer, someone without a vested interest in the production, someone who wouldn’t be likely to come tapping at her door, hoping for a chat about line and scene changes. Actors are like that, you know. They generally don’t give a playwright much peace.”

“So you mentioned Helen to her. You planted the idea.”

“I did nothing of the kind. You asked for an explanation. That’s the best I can do.”

“Yes. Of course. Except that it doesn’t hold with the fact that Joanna Ellacourt had the room on the other side of Joy’s, does it? No buffer there. How do you explain it?”

“I don’t. I have absolutely no idea what Joy was thinking. Perhaps she had no idea herself. Perhaps it means nothing and you’re looking for meaning wherever you can fi nd it.”

Lynley nodded, unaffected by the anger in the implication. “Where did you go once everyone was let out of the library this evening?”

“To my room.”

“What did you do there?”

“I showered and changed.”

“And then?”

Davies-Jones’ eyes made their way to the whisky. There was no noise at all save for a rustle from one of the others in the room, Macaskin fishing a roll of mints from his pocket. “I went to Helen.”

“Again?” Lynley asked blandly.

His head snapped up. “What the hell are you suggesting?”

“I should guess that would be obvious enough. She’s provided several rather good alibis for you, hasn’t she? First last night and now this evening.”

Davies-Jones stared at him incredulously before he laughed. “My God, that’s absolutely unbelievable. Do you think Helen’s stupid? Do you think she’s so naïve that she’d allow a man to do that to her? And not once, but twice? In twenty-four hours? What kind of a woman do you think she is?”

“I know exactly the kind of woman Helen is,” Lynley responded. “One absolutely vulnerable to a man who claims to be in possession of a weakness that only she can cure. And that’s how you played it, isn’t it? Right into her bed. If I bring her down here now, no doubt I’ll discover that this evening in her room was just another variation on last night’s tender theme.”

“And by God, you can’t bear the thought of that, can you? You’re so sick with jealousy that you stopped seeing straight the moment you knew I’d slept with her. Face the facts, Inspector. Don’t twist them about to pin something on me because you’re too goddamned afraid to take me on in any other way.”

Lynley moved sharply in his chair, but Macaskin and Havers were on their feet at once. That brought him to his senses. “Get him out of here,” he said.

BARBARA HAVERS waited until Macaskin himself had ushered Davies-Jones from the room. She watched to ensure they were left in complete privacy before she cast a long, supplicating look in St. James’ direction. He joined her at the table with Lynley, who had put on his reading spectacles and was looking through Barbara’s notes. The room was taking on a more than lived-in look, with glasses, plates of half-eaten food, overfull ashtrays, and notebooks scattered about. The air smelled as if a contagion were alive in it.

“Sir.”

Lynley raised his head and Barbara saw with a wrench that he looked awful, fagged out, drawn through a wringer of his own devising.

“Let’s look at what we have,” she suggested.

Over the top of his spectacles, Lynley’s eyes went from Barbara to St. James. “We have a locked door,” he replied reasonably. “We have Francesca Gerrard locking it with the only key available besides the one across the room on the dressing table. We have a man in the next room with a clear means of access. Now we’re looking for a motive.”

No, Barbara thought weakly. She kept her voice even and impartial. “You must admit that it’s purely coincidental that Helen’s room and Joy’s room adjoined each other. He couldn’t have known in advance about that.”

“Couldn’t he? A man with a self-professed interest in architecture? There are homes with adjoining rooms all over the country. It hardly takes a university degree to guess there would be two here. Or that Joy, after specifically requesting a room by Helen’s, would be given one of them. I imagine no one else was phoning Francesca Gerrard with special requests of that nature.”

Barbara refused to submit. “Francesca herself could have killed Joy as matters stand now, sir. She was in the room. She admits it. Or she could have given the key to her brother and let him do the job.”

“It always comes back to Lord Stinhurst for you, doesn’t it?”

“No, that’s not it.”

“And if you want to go with Stinhurst, what about Gowan’s death? Why did Stinhurst kill him?”

“I’m not arguing that it’s Stinhurst, sir,” Barbara said, trying to hold on to her patience, her temper, and her need to shout out Stinhurst’s motive until Lynley was forced to accept it. “For that matter, Irene Sinclair could have done it. Or Sydeham or Ellacourt, since they were both on their own. Or Jeremy Vinney. Joy was in his room earlier. Elizabeth told us as much. For all we know, he wanted Joy, got himself squarely rejected, went to her room and killed her in a fi t of anger.”

“And how did he lock the door when he left?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps he went out the window.”

“In a storm, Havers? You’re stretching it more than I am.” Lynley dropped her notes onto the table, removed his spectacles, rubbed his eyes.

“I see that Davies-Jones had access, Inspector. I see that he had opportunity, as well. But Joy Sinclair’s play was to resurrect his career, wasn’t it? And he had no way of knowing for certain whether the play was finished just because Stinhurst withdrew his support. Someone else well might have fi nanced it. So it seems to me that he’s the only person in the house with a solid motive for keeping the woman alive.”

St. James spoke. “No. There’s another, isn’t there, if it comes to regenerating dying careers? Her sister, Irene.”

“I DID WONDER when you would get to me.”

Irene Sinclair stepped back from the door. She walked to her bed and sat down, her shoulders slumped. In deference to the lateness of the hour, she had changed into her nightclothes, and like the woman itself, her garments were restrained. Flat-heeled slippers, a navy flannel dressing gown under which the high neck of a white nightdress rose and fell with her steady breathing. There was something, however, oddly impersonal about her clothing. It was serviceable, indeed, yet adhering strictly to a norm of perceived propriety, it was exceedingly chilling, as if designed and worn to hold life itself at bay. Lynley wondered if the woman ever slopped round the house in old blue jeans and a tattered jersey. Somehow, he doubted it.

Her resemblance to her sister was remarkable. In spite of the fact that he had observed Joy only through the photographs of her death, Lynley could easily recognise in Irene those features she had shared with her sister, features unaffected by the five or six years that separated them in age: prominent cheekbones, broad brow, the slight squaring of jawline. She was, he guessed, somewhere in her early forties, a statuesque woman with the sort of body other women long for and most men dream of taking into their beds. She had a face that might have belonged to Medea and black hair in which the grey was beginning to streak back dramatically from the left peak of her forehead. Any other woman, remotely insecure, would have coloured it long ago. Lynley wondered if the thought had even crossed Irene’s mind. He studied her wordlessly. Why on earth had Robert Gabriel ever found the need to stray?

“Someone has probably told you already that my sister and my husband had an affair last year, Inspector,” she began, keeping her voice low. “It’s no particular secret. So I don’t mourn her death as I ought to, as I probably shall eventually. It’s just that when your life’s been torn apart by two people you love, it’s difficult to forgive and forget. Joy didn’t need Robert, you see. I did. But she took him anyway. And that still hurts when I think of it, even now.”

“Was their affair over?” Lynley asked.

Irene’s attention drifted from Havers’ pencil to the floor. “Yes.” The single word had the distinct flavour of a lie, and she continued at once, as if to hide this fact. “I even knew when it started between them. One of those dinner parties where people have too much to drink and say things they wouldn’t otherwise say. That night Joy announced that she’d never had a man who’d been able to satisfy her in only one go. That, of course, was the sort of thing Robert would take as a personal challenge that had to be attended to without delay. Sometimes what hurts me the most is the fact that Joy didn’t love Robert. She never loved anyone at all after Alec Rintoul died.”

“Rintoul’s been a recurring theme this evening. Were they ever engaged?”

“Informally. Alec’s death changed Joy.”

“In what way?”

“How can I explain it?” she replied. “It was like a fire, a rampage. It was as if Joy decided that she would start living with a vengeance once Alec was gone. But not to enjoy herself. Rather, to destroy herself. And to take as many of us down with her as she could. It was a sickness with her. She went through men, one after another, Inspector. She devoured them. Rapaciously. Hatefully. As if no one could ever begin to make her forget Alec and she was daring each and every one of them to try.”

Lynley walked to the bed, placed the contents from Joy’s shoulder bag onto the counterpane. Irene considered the objects listlessly.

“Are these hers?” she asked.

He handed her Joy’s engagement calendar first. Irene seemed reluctant to take it, as if she would come across knowledge within it that she would rather not possess. However, she identified what notations she could: appointments with a publisher in Upper Grosvenor Street, the birthday of Irene’s daughter Sally, Joy’s self-imposed deadline for having three chapters of a book done.

Lynley pointed out the name scrawled across one entire week. P. Green. “Someone new in her life?”

“Peter, Paul, Philip? I don’t know, Inspector. She might have been going off on holiday with someone, but I couldn’t say. We didn’t speak to one another very often. And then, when we did, it was mostly business. She probably wouldn’t have told me about a new man in her life. But it wouldn’t surprise me at all to know that she had one. That would have been more than typical of her. Really.” Disconsolately, Irene fingered one or two other items, the wallet, the matchbook, the chewing gum, the keys. She said nothing else.

Watching her, Lynley pressed the button on the small tape recorder. Irene shrank infi nitesimally at the sound of her sister’s voice. He let the machine play. Through the cheerful comments, through the vibrant excitement, through the future plans. He couldn’t help thinking, as he listened to Joy Sinclair once again, that she didn’t sound at all like a woman bent upon destroying anyone. Halfway through it, Irene raised a hand to her eyes. She bent her head.

“Does any of that mean anything to you?” Lynley asked.

Irene shook her head blindly, a passionate movement, a second patent lie.

Lynley waited. She seemed to be attempting to withdraw from him, moving further into herself both physically and emotionally. Shrivelling up through a concerted act of will. “You can’t bury her this way, Irene,” he said quietly. “I know that you want to. I understand why. But you know if you try it, she’ll haunt you forever.” He saw her fi ngers tighten against her skull. The nails caught at her fl esh. “You don’t have to forgive her for what she’s done to you. But don’t put yourself into a position of doing something for which you cannot forgive yourself.”

“I can’t help you.” Irene’s voice sounded distraught. “I’m not sorry my sister’s dead. So how can I help you? I can’t help myself.”

“You can help by telling me anything about this tape.” And ruthlessly, mercilessly, Lynley played it again, hating himself for doing so at the same time as he acknowledged it was part of the job, it had to be done. Still, at the end, there was no response from her. He rewound the tape, played it again. And then again.

Joy’s voice was like a fourth person in the room. She coaxed. She laughed. She tormented. She pleaded. And she broke her sister the fifth time through the tape, on the words, “For God’s sake, don’t let Mum forget Sally again this year.”

Irene snatched the recorder, shut it off with hands which fumbled on the buttons, and flung it back onto the bed as if touching it contaminated her.

“The only reason my mother ever remembered my daughter’s birthday is because Joy reminded her,” she cried. Her face bore the signs of anguish, but her eyes were dry. “And still I hated her! I hated my sister every minute and I wanted her to die! But not like this! Oh God, not like this! Have you any idea what it’s like to want a person dead more than anything in the world and then to have it happen? As if a mocking deity listened to your wishes and only granted the foulest ones you possess?”

Good God, the power of simple words. He knew. Of course, he knew. In the timely death of his own mother’s lover in Cornwall, in ways that Irene Sinclair could never hope to understand. “It sounds as if some of what she said was to be part of a new work. Do you recognise the place she’s describing? The decaying vegetables, the sound of frogs and pumps, the fl at land?”

“No.”

“The circumstance of a winter storm?”

“No!”

“The man she mentions, John Darrow?”

Irene’s hair swung out in an arc as she turned her head away. At the sudden movement, Lynley said, “John Darrow. You recognise the name.”

“Last night at dinner. Joy talked about him. She said something about wining and dining a dreary man called John Darrow.”

“A new man she’s involved with?”

“No. No, I don’t think so. Someone-I think it was Lady Stinhurst-had asked her about her new book. And John Darrow came up. Joy was laughing the way she always did, making light of the difficulties she’s been having with the writing, saying something about information she needed and was trying to get. It involved this John Darrow. So I think he’s connected with the book somehow.”

“Book? Another play, you mean?”

Irene’s face clouded. “Play? No, you’ve misunderstood, Inspector. Aside from an early play six years ago and the new piece for Lord Stinhurst, my sister didn’t write for the theatre. She wrote books. She used to be a journalist, but then she took up documentary nonfiction. Her books are all about crimes. Real crimes. Murders, mostly. Didn’t you know that?”

Murders mostly. Real crimes. Of course. Lynley stared at the little tape recorder, hardly daring to believe that the missing piece to the triangular puzzle of motive-means-opportunity would be given to him so easily. But there it was, what he had been seeking, what he had known instinctively he would find. A motive for murder. Still obscure, but merely waiting for the details to flesh it out into a coherent explanation. And the connection was there on the tape as well, in Joy Sinclair’s very last words: “…ask Rhys how best to approach him. He’s good with people.”

Lynley began replacing Joy’s belongings in the bag, feeling uplifted yet at the same time filled with a hard edge of anger at what had happened here last night, and at the price he was going to have to pay personally to see that justice was done.

At the door, with Havers already out in the corridor, he was stopped by Irene Sinclair’s last words. She stood near the bed, backed by inoffensive wallpaper and surrounded by a suitable bedroom suite. A comfortable room, a room that took no risks, threw out no challenges, made no demands. She looked trapped within it.

“Those matches, Inspector,” she said. “Joy didn’t smoke.”

MARGUERITE RINTOUL, Countess of Stinhurst, switched out the bedroom light. The gesture was not born of a desire to sleep, since she knew very well that sleep would be an impossibility for her. Rather, it was a last vestige of feminine vanity. Darkness hid the tracery of lines that had begun to network and crumple her skin. In it, she felt protected, no longer the plump matron whose once beautiful breasts now hung pendulous inches short of her waist; whose shiny brown hair was the product of weavings and dyes expertly orchestrated by the finest hairdresser in Knightsbridge; whose manicured hands with their softly buffed nails bore the spotting of age and caressed absolutely nothing any longer.

On the bedside table she placed her novel, laying it down so that its lurid cover lined up precisely with the delicate brass inlay etched against the rosewood. Even in the darkness, the book’s title leered up at her. Savage Summer Passion. So pathetically obvious, she told herself. So useless as well.

She looked across the room to where her husband sat in an armchair by the window, given over to the night, to the weak starlight that filtered through the clouds, to the amorphous shapes and shadows upon the snow. Lord Stinhurst was fully clothed, as was she, sitting upon the bed, her back against the headboard, a wool blanket thrown across her legs. She was less than ten feet away from him, yet they were separated by a chasm of twenty-five years of secrecy and suppression. It was time to bring it to an end.

The thought of doing so was paralysing Lady Stinhurst. Every time she felt that the breath she was taking was the breath that would allow her to speak at last, her entire upbringing, her past, her social milieu rose in concert to strangle her. Nothing in her life had ever prepared her for a simple act of confrontation.

She knew that to speak to her husband now was to risk everything, to step into the unknown, to hazard coming up against the insurmountable wall of his decades of silence. Having tested these waters of communication periodically before, she knew how little might be gained from ner efforts and how horribly her failure would sit upon her shoulders. Still, it was time.

She swung her legs over the side of the bed. A momentary dizziness took her by surprise when she stood, but it passed quickly enough. She padded across to the window, acutely aware of the deep cold in the room and the nasty tightness in her stomach. Her mouth tasted sour.

“Stuart.” Lord Stinhurst did not move. His wife chose her words carefully. “You must talk to Elizabeth. You must tell her everything. You must.”

“According to Joy, she already knows. As did Alec.”

As always, those last three words fell heavily between them, like blows against Lady Stinhurst’s heart. She could still see him so clearly-alive and sensitive and achingly young, meeting the terrifying end that was destined for Icarus. But burning, not melting, out of the sky. We are not meant to outlive our children, she thought. Not Alec, not now. She had loved her son, loved him instinctively and devotedly, but invoking his memory-like a raw wound in both of them that time had only caused to fester-had always been one of her husband’s ways of putting an end to unpleasant conversations. And it had always worked. But not tonight.

“She knows about Geoffrey, yes. But she doesn’t know it all. You see, she heard the argument that night. Stuart Elizabeth heard the fighting.” Lady Stinhurst stopped seeking a response from him, seeking some kind of sign that would tell her it was safe to continue.

He gave her nothing. She plunged on. “You spoke to Francesca this morning, didn’t you? Did she tell you about her talk with Elizabeth last night? After the read-through?”

“No.”

“Then I shall. Elizabeth saw you leave that night, Stuart. Alec and Joy saw you as well. They were all watching from a window upstairs.” Lady Stinhurst felt her voice wavering. But she forced herself to continue. “You know how children are. They see part, hear part, and assume the rest. Darling. Francesca said that Elizabeth believes you killed Geoffrey. Apparently, she’s thought that…since the night it happened.”

Stinhurst made no reply. Nothing changed about him, not the even fl ow of his breathing, not his upright posture, not his steady gaze on the frozen grounds of Westerbrae. His wife tentatively put her fingers on his shoulder. He flinched. She dropped her hand.

“Please. Stuart.” Lady Stinhurst hated herself for the tremor behind her words, but she couldn’t stop them now. “You must tell her the truth. She’s had twenty-five years of believing you’re a murderer! You can’t let it continue. My God, you can’t do that!”

Stinhurst didn’t look at her. His voice was low. “No.”

She couldn’t believe him. “You didn’t kill your brother! You weren’t even responsible! You did everything in your power-”

“How can I destroy the only warm memories Elizabeth has? She has so little, after all. For God’s sake, at least let her keep that.”

“At the expense of her love for you? No! I won’t have it.”

“You will.” His voice was implacable, bearing the sort of unquestionable authority that Lady Stinhurst had never once disobeyed. For to disobey was to step out of the role she had been playing her entire life: daughter, wife, mother. And nothing else. As far as she knew, there was only a void beyond the narrow boundaries set up by those who governed her life. Her husband spoke again. “Go to bed. You’re tired. You need to sleep.”

As always, Lady Stinhurst did as she was told.

IT WAS PAST TWO in the morning when Inspector Macaskin finally left, with a promise to telephone with the postmortems and the forensic reports as soon as he could. Barbara Havers saw him out and returned to Lynley and St. James in the sitting room.They were at the table, with the items from Joy Sinclair’s shoulder bag spread out before them.The tape recorder was playing yet another time, Joy’s voice rising and falling with the broken messages that Barbara had long ago memorised. Hearing it now, she realised that the recording had begun to take on the quality of a recurring nightmare, and Lynley the quality of a man obsessed. His were not quantum leaps of intuition in which the misty image of crime-motiveperpetrator took recognisable shape. Rather, they bore the appearance of contrivance, of an attempt to find and assess guilt where only by the wildest stretching of the imagination could it possibly exist. For the first time in that endless harrowing day, Barbara began to feel uneasy. In the long months of their partnership, she had come to realise that, for all his exterior gloss and sophistication, for all his trappings of upper-class splendour that she so mightily despised, Lynley was still the fi nest DI she had ever worked with.Yet Barbara knew intuitively that the case he was building now was wrong, founded on sand. She sat down and reached restlessly for the book of matches from Joy Sinclair’s bag, brooding upon it.

It bore a curious imprint, merely three words, Wine’s the Plough, with the apostrophe an inverted pint glass spilling lager. Clever, Barbara thought, the sort of amusing memento one picks up, stuffs into a handbag, and forgets about. But she knew that it was only a matter of time before Lynley would grasp at the matchbook as another piece of evidence affirming Davies-Jones’ guilt. For Irene Sinclair had said that her sister did not smoke. And all of them had seen that Davies-Jones did.

“We need physical evidence, Tommy,” St. James was saying. “You know as well as I that all this is purest conjecture. Even Davies-Jones’ prints on the key can be explained away by the statement Helen gave us.”

“I’m aware of that,” Lynley replied. “But we’ll have the forensic report from Strathclyde CID.”

“Not for several days, at least.”

Lynley went on as if the other man had not spoken. “I’ve no doubt that some piece of evidence will turn up. A hair, a fibre. You know as well as I how impossible it is to carry off a perfect crime.”

“But even then, if Davies-Jones was in Joy’s room earlier in the day-and from Gowan’s report, he was-what have you gained by the presence of one of his hairs or a fibre from his coat? Besides, you know as well as I that the crime scene was contaminated by the removal of the body, and there’s not a barrister in the country who won’t know it as well. As far as I’m concerned, it comes back to motive again and again. The evidence is going to be too weak. Only a motive can give it strength.”

“That’s why I’m going to Hampstead tomorrow. I’ve a feeling that the pieces are lying there, ready to be put together, in Joy Sinclair’s fl at.”

Barbara heard this statement with disbelief. It was beyond consideration that they should leave so soon. “What about Gowan, sir? You’ve forgotten what he tried to tell us. He said he didn’t see someone. And the only person he told me he saw last night was Rhys Davies-Jones. Don’t you think that means he was trying to change his statement?”

“He didn’t finish the sentence, Havers,” Lynley replied. “He said two words, didn’t see.

Didn’t see whom? Didn’t see what? Davies-Jones? The cognac he was supposed to be carrying? He expected to see him with something in his hand because he came out of the library. He expected liquor. A book. But what if he only thought that’s what he saw? What if he realised later that what he saw was something quite different, a murder weapon?”

“Or what if he didn’t see Davies-Jones at all and that’s what he was trying to tell us? What if he only saw someone else attempting to look like Davies-Jones, perhaps wearing his overcoat? It could have been anyone.”

Lynley stood abruptly. “Why are you so determined to prove the man is innocent?”

From his sharp tone, Barbara knew what direction his thoughts were taking. But he wasn’t the only one with a gauntlet to throw down. “Why are you so determined to prove that he’s guilty?”

Lynley gathered Joy’s belongings. “I’m looking for guilt, Havers. It’s my job. And I believe the guilt lies in Hampstead. Be ready by half past eight.”

He started for the door. Barbara’s eyes begged St. James to intercede in an area where she knew she could not go, where friendship had stronger ties than the logic and rules that govern a police investigation.

“Are you certain it’s wise to go back to London tomorrow?” St. James asked slowly. “When you think of the inquest-”

Lynley turned in the doorway, his face caught by the cavern of shadows in the hall. “Havers and I can’t give professional evidence here in Scotland. Macaskin will handle it. As for the rest of them, we’ll collect their addresses. They’re not about to leave the country when their livelihood’s tied up on the London stage.”

With that, he was gone. Barbara struggled to find her voice. “I think Webberly’s going to have his head over this. Can’t you stop him?”

“I can only try to reason with him, Barbara. But Tommy’s no fool. His instincts are sound. If he feels he’s onto something, we can only wait to see what he fi nds.”

In spite of St. James’ assurance, Barbara’s mouth was dry. “Can Webberly sack him for this?”

“I suppose it depends on how it all turns out.”

Something in his guarded statement told her everything she wanted to know. “You think he’s wrong, don’t you? You think it’s Lord Stinhurst, too. God in heaven, what’s wrong with him? What’s happened to him, Simon?”

St. James picked up the bottle of whisky. “Helen,” he said simply.

THE KEY in his hand, Lynley hesitated at Lady Helen’s door. It was half past two. No doubt she would be asleep by now, his intrusion both disruptive and unwelcome. But he needed to see her. And he didn’t lie to himself about the purpose of this visit. It had nothing to do with police work. He knocked once, unlocked the door and went in.

Lady Helen was on her feet, coming across the room, but she halted when she saw him. He closed the door. He said nothing at fi rst, merely noting the details and striving to understand what they might imply.

Her bed was undisturbed, its yellow and white counterpane pulled up round the pillows. Her shoes, slim black pumps, were on the floor next to it. They were the only article of clothing that she had removed other than her jewellery: gold earrings, a thin chain, a delicate bracelet on the nightstand. This last object caught his eyes, and for a painful moment he considered how small her wrists were that such a piece could encircle them so easily. There was nothing else to see in the room, save a wardrobe, two chairs, and a dressing table in whose mirror they both were reflected, warily confronting one another like two mortal enemies come upon each other unexpectedly and without suffi cient energy or will to do battle again.

Lynley walked past her to the window. The west wing of the house stretched into the darkness, scattered lights making bright slits against black where curtains were not fully drawn, where others waited, like Helen, for the morning. He closed the curtains.

“What are you doing?” Her voice was chary.

“It’s far too cold in here, Helen.” He touched the radiator, felt its ineffective tingle of warmth, and went to the door to speak to the young constable stationed at the top of the stairs. “Would you see if there’s an electric fi re somewhere?” Lynley asked him. When the man nodded, he shut the door again and faced her. The distance between them seemed enormous. Hostility thickened the air.

“Why have you locked me in here, Tommy? Do you expect me to hurt someone?”

“Of course not. Everyone’s locked in. It’ll be over in the morning.”

There was a book on the floor next to one of the chairs. Lynley picked it up. It was a murder mystery, he saw, well thumbed through with typical, whimsical Helen-notations in the margins: arrows and exclamation points, underlinings and comments. She was always determined that no author would ever pull the wool over her eyes, convinced that she could solve any literary conundrum far sooner in its pages than could he. Because of this, he’d been the recipient of her discarded, dog-eared books for the better part of a decade. Read this, Tommy darling. You shall never sort it out.

At the memory’s sudden force, he felt stricken with sorrow, desolate, utterly alone. And what he had come to say would only serve to make the situation worse between them. But he knew he had to speak to her, whatever the cost.

“Helen, I can’t bear to see you do this to yourself. You’re trying to replay St. James to a different ending. I don’t want you to do it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. None of this has anything to do with Simon.” Lady Helen remained where she was, across the room from him, as if to step in his direction were to surrender in some way. And she would never do that.

Lynley thought he saw a small bruise low on her neck where the collar of her teal blouse dipped towards the swell of her breasts. But when she moved her head, the bruise disappeared, a trick of light, a product of unhappy imagination.

“It does,” he said. “Or haven’t you noticed yet how very much like St. James he is? Even his alcoholism is St. James all over again with a simple difference in disability. Except that this time, you won’t walk out on him, will you? You won’t go gratefully when he tries to send you away.”

Lady Helen’s head turned from him. Her lips parted, then closed. He saw that she would allow him these moments of castigation, but she would offer no defence. His punishment would be never to know, never to understand completely what had drawn her to the Welshman, to be forced into guesswork that she would never affirm. He accepted this knowledge with rising anguish. Still, he wanted to touch her, feeling desperate for contact, for a moment of her warmth.

“I know you, Helen. And I understand how guilt feeds on itself. Who on earth could possibly understand that better than I? I crippled St. James. But you’ve always believed that your sin was worse, haven’t you? Because inside, where you would never have to admit it, you were relieved all those years ago when he broke your engagement. Because then you would never have to face life with a man who could no longer do all those things that, at the time, seemed so absurdly important. Skiing, bathing at resorts, dancing, hiking, having a wonderful time.”

“Damn you.” Her voice was no more than a whisper. When she met his eyes, her face was white. It was a warning. He ignored it, compelled to go on.

“For ten years you’ve had yourself on the rack over leaving St. James. And now you see an opportunity to put it all right, to make up for everything: for letting him go off to Switzerland to convalesce alone, for letting yourself be driven off when he needed you; for shirking a marriage that appeared to have responsibilities far outweighing its pleasures. Davies-Jones is going to be your redemption, isn’t he? You plan to make him whole again, just as you could have done-and didn’t do- for St. James. And then you’ll be able to forgive yourself at last. That’s it, isn’t it? That’s how it’s to be played.”

“I think you’ve said enough,” she said stiffly.

“I haven’t.” Lynley sought the words to break through to her; it was imperative that she understand. “Because he isn’t like St. James at all beneath the surface. Please. Listen to me, Helen. Davies-Jones isn’t a man you’ve known intimately, inside and out, since your eighteenth birthday. He’s a relative stranger to you, someone you can’t really know.”

“A murderer, in other words?”

“Yes. If you will.”

She flinched from the easiness of his admission, but her slender body drew strength from the passion of her reply. Muscles became tense across her face and neck, even-to his imagination-beneath the soft sleeves of her blouse.

“With me too blinded by love or remorse or guilt or whatever it is that prevents me from seeing what’s so patently obvious to you?” She flung her hand sharply towards the doorway, to the house beyond it, to the room she had occupied and what had happened within it. “Exactly when did he set this murder in motion? He left the house after the read-through. He didn’t get back till one.”

“On his own report, yes.”

“You’re saying he lied to me, Tommy. But I know he didn’t. I know he walks when he needs to drink. He told me that in London. I even walked with him out by the loch after he broke up the row between Joy Sinclair and Gabriel yesterday afternoon.”

“And don’t you see how clever that was, how all of that was to set you up to believe him when he said he’d been out walking again last night? He needed your compassion, Helen, if you were to allow him to stay in your room. And what better way to get it than to say he’d been out walking off his need to drink. He could hardly have gained your sympathy so effectively by hanging about after the read-through, could he?”

“Do you actually want me to believe that Rhys murdered his cousin while I was asleep, that he then came back into my room, and made love to me for a second time? It’s completely absurd.”

“Why?”

“Because I know him.”

“You’ve been to bed with him, Helen. I think you’ll agree that knowing a man is more complicated than falling into bed with him for a few steamy hours, no matter how pleasant they may have been.”

Her dark eyes alone bore the wound made by his words. When she spoke again, it was with heavy irony. “You choose your words well. Congratulations. They do hurt.”

Lynley felt his heart twist. “I don’t want you to be hurt! God in heaven, can’t you see that? Can’t you see that I’m trying to keep you from harm? I’m sorry about what’s happened. I’m sorry for the foul way I treated you earlier. But none of that goes any distance to change the facts of last night. Davies-Jones used you to gain access to her, Helen. He used you again after he saw to Gowan this evening. He plans to go on using you unless I can stop him. And I intend to stop him. Whether you help me or not.”

She lifted her hand to her throat, clutched at the collar of her blouse. “Help you? My God, I think I’d rather die.”

Her words and the bitterness of her tone struck Lynley like a blow. He might have answered but was spared the necessity by the police constable who had managed to fi nd a single-bar electric fire to keep her warm through what remained of the night.