A Great Deliverance

11

She returned to the table and placed the tray between them. It was an unnecessary nicety. The kitchen was so tiny that only a few steps were needed to move across the room, yet still she preserved the semblance of gentility and countered the claustrophobia of poverty by using the tray. It was covered with a piece of old lace upon which rested fine bone china. Both plates were chipped, but the cups and saucers had somehow managed the years unscathed.

Autumn leaves in a pottery jug served to decorate the plain pine table, and onto its surface Marsha Fitzalan set everything out carefully: plates, cutlery, and linen. She poured the steaming coffee into their cups and added sugar and milk to her own before she began to speak.

“Gilly was exactly like her mother. I taught Tessa as well. Of course, it betrays my age dreadfully to admit to that. But there you have it. Nearly everyone in the village passed through my classroom, Inspector.” Her eyes twinkled as she added, “Except Father Hart. He and I are of the same generation.”

“I should never have guessed,” Lynley said solemnly.

She laughed. “Why is it that truly charming men always know when a woman is fi shing for a compliment?” She dug into her pie enthusiastically, chewed appreciatively for a few moments, and then continued. “Gillian was the mirror image of her mother. She had that same lovely blonde hair, those beautiful eyes, and that same wonderful spirit. But Tessa was a dreamer and Gillian was a bit more of a realist, I should say. Tessa’s head was always in the clouds. She was all romance. I think that’s why she chose to marry so young. She was determined that life was all about being swept off one’s feet by a tall, dark hero, and William Teys certainly fit the image.”

“Gillian wasn’t worried about being swept off her feet?”

“Oh no. I don’t think the thought of men ever entered Gilly’s head. She wanted to be a teacher. I can remember her coming by in the afternoons, curling up on the floor with a book. How she loved the Brontës! That child must have read Jane Eyre six or seven times by her fourteenth birthday. She, Jane, and Mr. Rochester were all rather intimate acquaintances, as I recall. And she loved to talk about everything she read. But it wasn’t just chatter. She talked about characters, motivations, meanings. She would say, ‘I shall have to know these things when I’m a teacher, Miss Fitzalan.’”

“Why did she run away?”

The old woman studied the bronze leaves in the jug. “I don’t know,” she replied slowly. “She was such a good child. There was never a problem that she couldn’t seem to solve with that quick mind of hers. I honestly don’t know what happened.”

“Could she have been involved with a man? Perhaps someone she was running after?”

Miss Fitzalan dismissed the idea with a movement of her hand. “I don’t believe Gillian was interested in men yet. She was a bit slower to mature than the other girls were.”

“What about Roberta? Was she much like her sister?”

“No, Roberta was like her father.” She stopped suddenly and frowned. “Was. I don’t want to talk about her in the past tense like that. But she seems to have died.”

“She does, doesn’t she?”

The woman looked as if she appreciated his concurring with her. “Roberta was big like her father, very solid and silent. People will tell you she had no personality at all, but that’s not true. She was simply excruciatingly shy. She had her mother’s romantic disposition, her father’s taciturnity. And she lost herself in books.”

“Like Gillian?”

“Yes and no. She read like Gillian, but she never spoke about what she read. Gillian read to learn. Roberta, I think, read to escape.”

“Escape what?”

Miss Fitzalan fussily straightened the lace that covered the old tray. Her hands, Lynley saw, were spotted with age. “The knowledge of being deserted, I should guess.”

“By Gillian or her mother?”

“By Gillian. Roberta worshipped Gillian. She never knew her mother. You can imagine what it must have been like having Gilly for an older sister: so lovely, so lively, so intelligent. Everything Roberta wasn’t and wished she could be.”

“Jealousy?”

She shook her head. “She wasn’t jealous of Gilly. She loved her. I should think it hurt Roberta dreadfully when her sister left. But unlike Gillian, who would have talked about her pain-Lord knows, Gilly talked about anything and everything-Roberta internalised it. I remember, in fact, the poor child’s skin after Gilly left. Funny that I would still remember that.”

Lynley thought of the girl he had seen in the asylum and was not surprised that the teacher would remember the condition of Roberta’s skin. “Acne?” he asked. “She would have been young for that.”

“No. She broke out in the most dreadful rash. I know it was nerves, but when I spoke to her about it she blamed it on Whiskers.” Miss Fitzalan dropped her eyes and toyed with her fork, making delicate patterns in the crumbs on her plate. Lynley waited patiently, convinced there was more. Finally she went on. “I felt so inadequate, Inspector, such a failure as a friend and as a teacher that she couldn’t talk to me about what had happened to Gilly. But she just couldn’t talk, so she blamed it all on being allergic to her dog.”

“Did you speak to her father about it?”

“Not at first. William had been so crushed by Gillian’s running off that he wasn’t the least bit approachable. For weeks it seemed the only person he would talk to at all was Father Hart. But in the end, frankly, I felt I owed it to Roberta. After all, the child was only eight years old. It wasn’t her fault that her sister had run away. So I went out to the farm and told William I was worried about her, especially considering the pathetic story she’d made up about the dog.” She poured herself more coffee and sipped it as she brooded over that long-ago visit. “Poor man. I certainly needn’t have worried about his reaction. I think he must have felt terribly guilty about having ignored Roberta, because he drove to Richmond directly and bought three or four different kinds of lotion to put on her skin. It may well have been that all the poor girl needed was her father’s attention, because the rash went away after that.”

But nothing else did, Lynley thought. In his mind he saw the lonely little girl in the gloomy farmhouse, surrounded by the ghosts and voices of the past, living her life in grim sterility, taking her nourishment from books.

Lynley unlocked the back door and let himself into the house. It was unchanged, as cold and airless as it had been before. He went through the kitchen to the sitting room, where Tessa Teys smiled at him tenderly from her corner shrine, looking young and infinitely vulnerable. He imagined Russell Mowrey raising his head from his excavation and seeing that lovely face framed in a gap in the fence. It was easy to see why Mowrey had fallen in love. It was easy to see why he would be in love still.

Not a thousand ships but one enraged husband, Lynley thought. Is it possible, Tessa? Or did you see your world shatter in one afternoon and know you couldn’t bear to build it again?

He turned from the shrine and ran up the stairs. No, the answer had to be in the house. It had to be Gillian.

He went first to her bedroom, but its vacuity told him nothing. The bed stared up at him wordlessly, its covering unblemished. The rug held no footprints leading back into the past. The wallpaper covered no long-held secrets. It was as if a young girl had never lived in the room, had never breathed her liveliness and spirit into the air. And yet something… Something of Gillian lingered, something he had seen, something he could feel.

He walked to the window and looked, unseeing, at the barn. She was wild, ungoverned. She was an angel, sunshine. She was a cat in heat. She was the loveliest creature I’ve ever seen. It was as if there were no real Gillian at all, but only a kaleidoscope that, juggled before viewing, appeared different to each person who gazed into it. He longed to believe that the answer was in the room, but when he turned from the window, he saw nothing but furniture, wallpaper, and rug.

How could someone be wiped so completely out of the life of the family in which she had lived for sixteen years? It was inconceivable. Yet it had been done. Or had it?

He walked to Roberta’s room. Gillian couldn’t have faded from her sister’s life so completely. The love was there. The bond was strong. Everyone, at least, no matter what they had said about Gillian, agreed upon that. His gaze roamed from window to wardrobe to bed. He considered this last: it was her hiding place for food, why not for Gillian as well?

Steeling himself to the sight and the smell of the putrefaction, Lynley pulled back the mattress. The stench rose like an undulating wave.

He glanced about, looking for a way to make the job at hand easier but finding nothing that would do. The light in the room was poor, and, unpleasant as it would be, there was nothing for it but to drag the entire mattress off and rip the box spring apart. Grunting with the effort, he jerked mattress and bedding onto the floor and then went to the window. He threw it open and stood for a moment sucking in the fresh air before turning back to the bed. He climbed onto the box spring and planned his attack, ignoring his queasiness. Come on, old boy. Isn’t this why you got into police work? Buck up, now. Give it one big pull.

He did so, and the rotting material-that thin layer of sanity-came apart in his hands, exposing the madness beneath it. Mice scattered in all directions, leaving diminutive tracks through the decaying fruit. One sowlike rodent nursed her litter of clutching, blind offspring in a bed of women’s dirty underclothes. And an angry cloud of moths, disturbed from their slumber, burst out into the light, flinging themselves upwards into Lynley’s face.

Startled, he reeled back, managed to keep from crying out, and quickly made his way to the bathroom, where he took a moment to splash water on his face. He looked at himself in the mirror and laughed soundlessly. Good thing you skipped lunch. After that, you may well skip eating for the rest of your life.

He sought a towel on which to dry his face. There was none on the rack, but he caught a glimpse of a dressing gown hanging on the back of the bathroom door. He swung it shut. Its broken hasp lock grated against the frame like a shriek. He dried his face on the hem of the garment, fingered the lock meditatively, and after a moment, a new thought triggered, he left the room.

The box of keys was where he had seen it before, far in the back on the top shelf of Teys’s wardrobe. He took it out and dumped it onto the bed. Teys would have put Gillian’s things in a trunk somewhere. In the attic, perhaps.

And the keys would be here. He searched through them fruitlessly. They were all door keys, the old-fashioned keyhole variety, a strange collection of rusting, metallic mementoes. He threw them back into their box in disgust and cursed the blind determination of the man who had wiped one daughter’s existence off the face of the earth.

Why? he wondered. What kind of anguish was it that had driven William Teys to deny the existence of the child he so loved? What could she possibly have done to bring him to such an act of destruction? And at the same time provoke her sister to such an impotent yet desperate act of preservation as the simple hiding of a photograph.

He knew what came next. The attic’s a blind, old boy. Back to her bedroom. You know it’s there. Maybe not in the mattress, but you know it’s there. He shuddered at the thought of what other surprises waited like spectres in that sepulchral room.

As he was gathering his shattered defences for another assault, the sound of whistling, joyful and unrestrained, came to him from outside. He went to the window.

A young man was walking down the trail from High Kel Moor, an easel over his shoulder and a wooden case in his hand. It was time, Lynley decided, to meet Ezra.

His first thought was that the other man was not as young as he looked from a distance. It must have been the hair, Lynley thought, which was a rich, deep blond and worn much longer than was the current fashion. Up close, Ezra looked very much what he was: a man somewhere in his thirties, wary about this meeting with the detective from Scotland Yard. The wariness came through in the careful stance; it also came through in the swiftly veiled eyes, the kind of eyes that changed colour with the clothing he wore. They were deep blue now, as was the man’s shirt, which was streaked with paint. He had stopped whistling the moment he saw Lynley come out of the house and climb nimbly over the pasture wall.

“Ezra Farmington?” he said pleasantly.

Farmington halted. His features put Lynley in mind of the Delacroix painting of Frederic Chopin. Here were the same sculpted lips; the shadow of a cleft in the chin; the dark brows- much darker than the hair; the nose that was dominant but not detractive.

“That’s right,” he said, noncommittally.

“Doing some painting on the moor today?”

“Yes.”

“Nigel Parrish tells me you do light studies.”

The name got a reaction. The eyes became guarded. “What else does Nigel tell you?”

“That he saw William Teys run you off his property. You seem to be making free use of it now.”

“With Gibson’s permission.” The words were terse.

“Indeed? He didn’t mention it.” Lynley gazed serenely in the direction of the trail. It was steep and rocky, ill-maintained, not the place for a country hike. An artist would have to be most sincere about his endeavours to bother climbing up to the high moor at all. He turned back to the other man. The afternoon breeze that rustled through the pasture ruffl ed Farmington’s blond hair appealingly so that the sun struck its highlights. Lynley began to understand why he wore it long. “Mr. Parrish tells me that Teys destroyed some of your work.”

“Does he also tell you what the hell he was doing out here that night?” Farmington demanded. “No, blast his eyes, I’ll be damned if he does.”

“According to him, he was bringing Teys’s dog back to the farm.”

The artist’s face mirrored his disbelief. “Bringing the dog back to the farm? What a laugh!” He savagely drove the pointed legs of his easel into the soft earth. “Nigel really knows how to manipulate the facts, doesn’t he? Let me guess what he told you. That Teys and I were having a bloody fine row in the middle of the road when up he popped, innocently walking the poor, blind dog home.” Farmington ran one hand through his hair in agitation. His body was so tense that Lynley wondered if he would start swinging his fi sts. “Christ, that man will drive me to do something mad.”

Lynley lifted an eyebrow in interest. The other man read the expression.

“And I suppose that is a confession of guilt, Inspector? Well, I suggest you trot back to Nigel and ask him what he was doing wandering down Gembler Road last night. Believe me, that dog could have found his way back from Timbuktu if he’d wanted to.” He laughed. “That dog was a damn sight smarter than Nigel. Not that that means much.”

Lynley wondered at the source of Farmington’s anger. The passion was real, without doubt. Yet it was out of all proportion to the subject at hand. The man was like a taut bowstring upon which undue pressure was being exerted. An ounce more, and he would snap.

“I saw your work at Keldale Lodge. The way you painted the abbey put me in mind of Wyeth. Was that deliberate?”

Ezra relaxed a tightly balled fist. “That was done years ago. I was floundering for style. I didn’t trust my instincts so I copied everyone else’s. I’m surprised Stepha still has it hanging.”

“She said you did it to pay for your board one autumn.”

“That’s right. I paid for most everything like that in those days. If you look hard enough, you’ll see my crap hanging in every shop in town. I even bought toothpaste that way.” It was a derisive statement, an indication of contempt, but directed at himself, not at Lynley.

“I like Wyeth,” Lynley went on. “There’s a simplicity to his work that I find refreshing. I like simplicity. The clarity of line and image. Details.”

Farmington folded his arms. “Are you always this obvious, Inspector?”

“I try to be,” Lynley responded with a smile. “Tell me about your argument with William Teys.”

“And if I refuse?”

“You may, of course. But I’d wonder why. Have you something to hide, Mr. Farming-ton?”

Farmington shifted on the balls of his feet. “I’ve nothing to hide. I was on the moor that day and came down towards dark. Teys must have seen me from a window. Hell, I don’t know. He caught up with me here on the road. We had it out.”

“He destroyed some of your work.”

“It was crap anyway. It didn’t matter.”

“I was always under the impression that artists like to have control over their own creations rather than give it to other people. Wouldn’t you agree?” Lynley immediately saw that he’d struck tender flesh, for Farmington stiffened involuntarily. His eyes moved to the low sun in the sky. He didn’t respond immediately.

“I’d agree,” he said finally. “Yes, by God, I’d agree.”

“Then when Teys took it upon himself-”

“Teys?” Ezra laughed. “I didn’t care what Teys did. I told you, what he’d destroyed was pure crap anyway. Not that he’d have known the difference. Any man who’d play Souza full blast for an evening’s entertainment hasn’t got a whole lot of taste, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Souza?”

“The god-awful stars-and-stripes piece. Christ, you’d think he was entertaining a house full of flag-waving Americans. And then to have the cheek to howl at me for disturbing his peace by tiptoeing across his land to get to the trail. I laughed at him. That’s when he went for my paintings.”

“What did Nigel Parrish do while all this was going on?”

“Nothing. Nigel had seen what he’d come to see, Inspector. He’d done his bit of sleuthing. He could rest an easy man that night.”

“And on other nights?”

Farmington picked up his easel. “If there’s nothing more, I’ll be on my way.”

“No, there is one thing more.”

Farmington pivoted to face him. “What?” he demanded.

“What were you doing the night William Teys died?”

“I was at the Dove and Whistle.”

“And after time was called?”

“Home in bed. Sleeping it off. Alone.” He tossed his hair off his face. It was an odd, distinctly feminine gesture. “Sorry I didn’t take Hannah with me, Inspector. She’d be quite an alibi, but I’ve never gone in for the whips and chains routine.” He climbed over the rock wall and strode angrily down the road.

“It was, as they say in American detective films, a total bust.” Sergeant Havers tossed the photograph onto the table in the Dove and Whistle and dropped wearily into a chair opposite him.

“Which means, I suppose, that no one has ever seen Russell Mowrey in this lifetime?”

“And unless we can believe in reincarnation, no one has ever seen him at all. Tessa, however, was widely recognised. A few lifted eyebrows. A few pointed questions.”

“What was your response?”

“I was suitably vague, murmuring a lot of interesting Latin adages to get me through difficult moments. I was fine until I tried out caveat emptor. Somehow it didn’t have that ring of authority the other phrases had.”

“Would you care to drown your disappointment in a drink, Sergeant?” he asked.

“Just tonic water,” she responded and, seeing his expression, added, “Really. I don’t drink much, sir. Honest,” with a smile.

“I’ve spent a rather fascinating day,” Lynley told her when he returned with her drink. “An encounter with Madeline Gibson, all hotly deshabille in an emerald negligee with absolutely nothing at all underneath.”

“The life of a policeman is rotten,” Havers noted.

“And Gibson upstairs at the absolute ready. I was a welcome guest.”

“I can imagine.”

“I’ve learned the most today about Gillian, however. She was a sunshine angel, a cat in heat, or the loveliest creature ever seen. It depends who’s reporting the details. Either the woman’s a chameleon or some of these people are taking considerable trouble to make it look that way.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know. Unless, of course, they have a vested interest in keeping her as mysterious as possible.” He swallowed the rest of his ale and leaned back in his chair, stretching his tired muscles. “But the real atmosphere today was at Gembler Farms, Havers.”

“Why’s that?”

“I was hot on the trail of Gillian Teys. Picture it, please. Something told me it was all in Roberta’s room. So I threw myself into the investigation with a passion, ripped off the top of her mattress’ box spring, and fairly lost myself on the spot.” He described the sight.

Havers made a grimace of distaste. “Glad I missed that.”

“Oh, have no fear. I was far too discomposed to put the bed back together. So I shall need your assistance tomorrow. Shall we say directly after breakfast?”

“Sod you.” She grinned.

It was obviously teatime when they arrived at the cottage on the corner of Bishop Furthing Road. It was a late tea, however, probably sliding itself right into dinner, for Constable Gabriel Langston answered the door, holding tightly in his hand a plate weighted down with a variety of food. Cold chicken legs, cheese, fruit, and cake jockeyed for position on a brown pottery dish.

Langston seemed very young for a policeman but aptly named Gabriel, for he was slightly built, with thinning yellow hair the consistency of spun glass, babysmooth skin, and features that looked undeveloped, as if the bones were too soft beneath them.

“I sh-sh-should’ve s-seen you at once,” he stammered, blushing heavily on cheeks and neck. “Wh-when you arrived. But I was to-told you’d c-come to m-me if you n-needed anything.”

“Nies told you, no doubt,” Lynley guessed. The other man nodded awkwardly and gestured them into his home.

The table was laid out for one and the constable hastily set his meal down on it, wiped his hand on his trousers, and extended it to Lynley. “N-nice to m-meet you b-both. S-sorry about…” He blushed darker and gestured helplessly at his mouth as if there were something he could have done about his speech impediment. “T-tea?” he said eagerly.

“Thank you. I’d love a cup. What about you, Sergeant?”

“Yes, thank you,” Havers replied.

The man nodded in obvious relief, smiled, and disappeared into an undersized kitchen off the room in which they stood. The cottage, they could see, was strictly a one-person affair, not much more than a bedsitting room. But it was conscientiously clean-swept, polished, and dusted. Only the faint odour of wet dog marred it. The source of this lay on a chewed and stringy rag rug, toasting himself before a single-bar electric fire set into a small stone fireplace. He was a white highland terrier, and he lifted his chin, blinked at them seriously, and yawned, revealing a long pink tongue. This done, he turned his nose happily back to the electric blaze.

Langston returned with a tray in his hands and another terrier at his heels. This was a livelier version of the first, for it threw itself upon Lynley in excited greeting.

“H-here, down!” Langston ordered as sharply as his gentle voice would allow. The dog obeyed reluctantly, then scampered across the room to join the other in a heap by the fire. “Th-they’re g-good lads, Inspector. S-sorry.”

Lynley waved off the apology as Langston poured the tea. “Go on with your meal, Constable. Havers and I are out prowling a bit late this evening. We can talk while you eat.”

Langston didn’t look as if he believed this was possible, but he dug into his food with a shy duck of his head.

“I understand that Father Hart rang you directly after he found William Teys’s body,” Lynley began. When the man nodded eagerly, he went on. “Roberta was still there when you arrived?” Another nod. “Did you bring Richmond in immediately? Why was that?” Lynley regretted the question the moment he asked it. Stupid clod, he thought, wondering what it would be like for the man to have to agonise his way through questioning witnesses, especially those like Father Hart who seemed to float between two distinct planes of existence.

Langston was staring at his plate, attempting to formulate an answer.

“I expect that was the quickest way to go about it,” Havers offered. Langston nodded gratefully.

“Did Roberta speak to anyone at all?” Langston shook his head. “Not to you? Not to anyone from Richmond?” Again, the negative. Lynley glanced at Havers. “Then she only spoke to Father Hart.” He considered the situation. “Roberta was sitting on the overturned pail, the axe was nearby, the dog was under Teys. But the weapon used to slit the dog’s throat was missing. Is that correct?” A nod. Langston bit into his third chicken leg, his eyes on Lynley. “What happened to the dog?”

“I…b-buried h-him.”

“Where?”

“Out the b-back.”

Lynley leaned forward. “Behind this cottage? Why? Did Nies tell you to do so?”

Langston swallowed, rubbed his hands on his trousers. He looked miserably at his two companions by the fire and, seeing themselves the focus of his attention, they wagged their tails supportively. “I…” It was embarrassment rather than his speech that stopped him this time. “I love d-dogs,” he said. “D-didn’t want th-them to burn old Wh-Whiskers. He…was a p-pal o’ the l-lads.”

“Poor man,” Lynley murmured when they were on the street again. Darkness was falling quickly. Somewhere a woman’s voice rose, calling to a child. “No wonder he brought in Richmond.”

“What could have possessed him, becoming a police constable?” Havers demanded as they crossed to the lodge.

“I expect he never thought he’d come across a murder. At least not one like this. Who would expect it in a place like Keldale? God knows before this, Langston’s most serious duty was probably patrolling the village and checking shop doors to see they were locked at night.”

“Then what’s next?” Havers asked. “We won’t have the dog till the morning.”

“True.” Lynley flipped open his watch. “That gives me twelve hours to talk St. James into abandoning his honeymoon for the thrill of the chase. What do you think, Havers? Have we a chance?”

“Will he have to choose between the dead dog and Deborah?”

“Afraid so.”

“I think we’ll need a miracle, sir.”

“I’m good at that,” Lynley said grimly.

It would have to be the white shirtwaist again. Barbara took it out of the wardrobe and looked at it critically. A different belt and it wouldn’t look bad. Or perhaps a scarf at the throat. Had she brought a scarf? Even one for the head could be tied someway to give a touch of colour, to change the outfit somehow, to make it look a bit different. Humming beneath her breath, she rummaged through her things. They were tossed into the chest of drawers in a heap, but she found what she was looking for easily enough. A scarf of red and white checks. A bit like a tablecloth, but it couldn’t be helped.

She went to the mirror and saw her refl ection with a start of pleased surprise. The country air had whipped colour into her cheeks and her eyes had sparkle to them. It was being useful that did it, she decided.

She had enjoyed her day in the village alone. It was the first time a DI had allowed her to do something all by herself. It was the fi rst time a DI had assumed she had brains. She felt bolstered by the experience and realised how much her confidence had been destroyed by her humiliating return to uniform. What a horrible time that had been in her life: the seething anger boiling over into imcomprehensible rage, the festering sore of unhappiness, the knowledge of being evaluated by others as not good enough, not up to snuff.

Snuff: the image of Jimmy Havers’s little pig eyes looked back at her from the mirror. Her eyes were his. She turned from the glass.

Everything was going to be better now. She was on her way, and nothing could stop her. She would sit for the inspector’s exam again. She would pass this time. She knew it.

She stepped out of her tweed skirt, struggled out of the pullover, and kicked off her shoes. Of course, no one had given her any information about Russell Mowrey, but everyone had taken her quite seriously in her questioning. Everyone had seen her for what she was: a representative of New Scotland Yard. A fine representative: competent, intelligent, insightful. It was what she had needed. Now she could really be part of the case.

She completed her dressing, tied the scarf jauntily round her throat, and descended the stairs to meet Lynley.

He was in the lounge, standing before the water-colour of the abbey, lost in thought. Behind the bar, Stepha Odell watched him. They might have been part of a painting themselves. The woman stirred fi rst.

“A drink before you leave, Sergeant?” she asked pleasantly.

“Thank you, no.”

Lynley turned. “Ah, Havers,” he said, absently rubbing his temples. “Are you ready for another assault on Keldale Hall?”

“Quite,” she replied.

“Then we’re off.” He nodded a detached goodnight to the other woman and, hand on Barbara’s elbow, guided her from the room. “I’ve been meditating on our best approach,” he said once they were in the car. “You’ll have to keep that dreadful American couple engaged in conversation long enough for me to have a word with St. James. Can you do that? I hate to abandon anyone to such a fate, but if good old Hank hears me, I have the most appalling suspicion that he’ll demand to be part of the case himself.”

“No problem, sir,” Barbara replied. “I’ll keep him enthralled.”

He glanced at her suspiciously. “How?”

“I’ll have him talk about himself.”

In response, Lynley laughed, suddenly looking younger and far less fatigued. “That should do it, all right.”

“Now lookit, Barbie,” Hank said with a wink, “if it’s investigating you and Tom are up to in this burg, then you oughta get yourselfs hooked up in this place for a nighter two. What say, JoJo-bean? This place j-u-m-p-s after dark, huh?”

They were taking their postprandial drinks in the oak hall. Hank, wearing blinding white trousers, an embroidered south-of-the-border shirt open to the waist, and the requisite gold chain, leered at Barbara knowingly. He stood as if hoping to become at one with the garlands and cherubs of the carved chimneypiece. One hand was resting on a stylised stone primrose, the fingers curling round a generous measure of brandy: his third or fourth. The other hand was at his waist, the thumb cocked into the loop of his trousers. It was quite a pose.

His wife sat in a high-backed chair, directing her mournfully apologetic gaze alternately betweeen Deborah and Barbara. Lynley and St. James, Barbara noted with satisfaction, had managed to effect a disappearance in the direction of the stone hall almost immediately after dinner, and Mrs. Burton-Thomas had dozed off noisily on a well-padded couch nearby. Barbara reflected upon the uneven quality of Mrs. Burton-Thomas’s snores and decided the woman was faking it. She couldn’t blame her. Hank had been holding forth for a good quarter hour.

Barbara cast a quick look at Deborah to see how she was dealing with her husband’s sudden desertion of her to Hank’s clutches. The other woman’s face, crossed by fi re and shadow, was tranquil, but when she felt Barbara’s eyes on her, a mischeivous smile touched her lips for an instant. She knows perfectly well what’s happening, Barbara decided, and liked Deborah for the generosity implied behind her acceptance of the fact.

As Hank was opening his mouth to continue his description of the after-dark j-u-m-p-s at Keldale Hall, Lynley and St. James rejoined them by the fi re.

“Now you gotta get the pitcher here,” Hank was continuing. “I go to the window two nights ago to shut out that damned screeching. Ever hear peacocks make such a ruckus, Debbie?”

“Peacocks?” Deborah asked. “Good heavens, Simon, it wasn’t the baby in the abbey at all! Did you lie to me?”

“I was obviously misled,” St. James replied. “It sounded remarkably like a baby to me. Are you telling me we warded off evil for nothing?”

“Like a baby?” Hank demanded, incredulous. “You must be lost in the throes of l-u-v, Si. That was a peacock screeching fit to beat the band.” He sat down, knees spread apart, his arms resting on his chunky thighs. “So I go to the window to either shut the thing or give the old heave-ho to a shoe and kill that damn bird. I’m one helluva shot. Did I tell you that? No? Well, we got this alley in Laguna, see, where the queers hang out.” He waited to see if he would once again have to explain the denizens of Laguna Beach to his audience, but they were caught in the grip of his pictorial pun. He went on happily. “And I get puhlenty of practise heaving shoes out at them, lemme tell you. Whatsay, Bean? Truth or not?”

“Truth, honey,” JoJo replied. “He can hit anything,” she swore to the others.

“I have no doubt,” Lynley said grimly.

Hank flashed his capped teeth. “So, here I am at the window, ready to heave it, see, when what I notice is a heckuva lot more ’an some bird.”

“Someone else screeching?” Lynley enquired.

“Hell no. The bird was there all right, but I got an eyefull-a something else!” He waited for them to ask what it was. There was polite silence. “Okay, okay!” He laughed. He lowered his voice. “Danny and that fella, whatsis name, Ira…Hezekiah…”

“Ezra?”

“Yep! And they are liplocked like I never s-e-e-n. Whew! ‘You two gonna come up for air?’ I yell.” He howled appreciatively.

Polite smiles all around. JoJo gazed from one face to another like a puppy eager to be loved.

“Only, this is the best part.” Hank lowered his voice again. “What we got on our hands isn’t Danny at all. But it’s Ezra all right.” He smiled triumphantly. Their complete attention was his at last.

“More brandy, Deborah?” St. James asked.

“Thank you.”

Hank squirmed forward in his seat. “But he’s gettin’ it on with Angelina! Can you see it?” He barked with laughter and pounded his knee. “This Ezra’s busier than a rooster in a henhouse, fellas. I don’t know what he’s got, but he sure likes spreading it around!” He slurped at his drink. “I made a few pointed remarks to Angelina in the A.M., but that girl is deep. Not a twitch of the e-y-e. I’m telling you, Tom, if it’s action you’re looking for, you oughta get yourself down here.” He sighed with satisfaction and fingered his heavy gold chain. “L-u-v. Wonderful thing, huh? Nothing messes with the mind like l-u-v. Bet you can attest to that, Si, huh?”

“I’ve been distraught for years,” St. James acknowledged.

Hank brayed. “Cotcher heart pretty young, did she?” He pointed a knowing finger at Deborah. “After him for a while, huh?”

“Since childhood,” she replied smoothly.

“Childhood?” Hank crossed the room to slosh more brandy into his glass. Mrs. Bur-ton-Thomas snored loudly as he passed her. “You two’re school sweethearts like me and the Bean, I’ll bet. Remember it, Bean? A little you-know-what in the back of the Chevy. You got drive-in movies here?”

“I think that’s a phenomenon endemic to your country,” St. James replied.

“Say what?” Hank shrugged and fell back into his seat. Brandy splashed out onto his white trousers. He ignored it. “So you met in school?”

“No. We were formally introduced at my mother’s house.” St. James and Deborah exchanged innocent glances.

“Hey, she set you two up, I bet. The Bean and I met on a blind date, too! We got something in common, Si.”

“Actually, I was born in his mother’s house,” Deborah added politely. “But I grew up mostly in Simon’s house in London.”

Hank’s face fell. These are dangerous waters. “Did you catch that, Bean? You two related? Cousins or something?” Visions of haemophiliacs languishing behind closed doors clearly danced in his head.

“Not at all. My father is Simon’s…well, what would you call Dad?” She turned to her husband. “Footman, servant, butler, valet?”

“Father-in-law,” St. James replied.

“Did you catch that, Bean?” Hank said in awe. “This is some romance.”

It was sudden, unexpected. She was trying to adjust. Lynley’s was turning out to be such a multifaceted character, like a diamond cut by a master jeweller, that in every situation a new surface glittered that she had never seen before.

In love with Deborah. All right, certainly. That was understandable. But in love with the daughter of St. James’s servant? Barbara struggled to assimilate the information. How had it ever happened to him? she wondered. He had always seemed to be in such complete control of his life and his destiny. How had he ever allowed it to happen?

She now saw his peculiar behaviour at St. James’s wedding in an entirely new light. Not anxious to be rid of her as soon as he could, but anxious to be away from a source of considerable pain: the nuptial happiness of a woman he loved with another man.

At least she understood now why of the two men Deborah had chosen St. James. Obviously, she’d never even been given a choice, for Lynley would never have allowed himself to speak to her of love. To do this would ultimately have led him to speak of marriage, and Lynley would never marry the daughter of a servant. It would shake his family tree to its very roots.

Yet he certainly must have wanted to make Deborah his wife, and how he must have suffered, watching St. James placidly break the ridiculous code of social behaviour that held Lynley immobilised.

What had St. James said? Father-in-law. In four short syllables he had coolly wiped away every class distinction that might ever have separated him from his wife.

No wonder she loves him, Barbara realised suddenly.

She glanced warily at Lynley as they drove back to the lodge. What must it be like for him, knowing that he had lacked the courage to tell Deborah that he wanted her, knowing that he’d put his family and his title before his love? How he must hate himself! What regret he must feel! How horribly lonely he must really be!

He felt her looking at him. “You did nice work today, Sergeant. Especially at the hall. Keeping Hank at bay for a quarter of an hour shall get you a citation, rest assured.”

She felt absurdly warmed by the praise. “Thank you, sir. St. James agreed to help?”

“He did indeed.”

He did indeed, Lynley thought. He let out his breath sharply in self-derision and tossed the file onto the bedside table. He dropped his spectacles on top of it, rubbed his eyes, and adjusted the pillows behind his back.

Deborah had spoken to her husband. Lynley could see that. They’d already discussed what his response would be when he was asked to assist. It was a simple one: “Of course, Tommy. What can I do?”

How like both of them! How like Deborah to have seen in their conversation that morning all of his concerns about the case. How like her to have paved the way for him to ask St. James’s help. And how like St. James to have agreed without hesitation, for any hesitation would have aroused the guilt that always lay like a dangerous, wounded tiger between them.

He leaned back against the pillows and closed his eyes wearily, allowing his mind in its exhaustion to drift back to the past. He gave himself to the bewitching visions of a former happiness that remained unclouded by grief or pain.

The lovely Thais by his side, Sate like a blooming Easter bride, In fl ow’r of youth and beauty’s pride. Happy, happy, happy pair! None but the brave deserves the fair.

Dryden’s words came from nowhere, unbidden and unwanted. He swallowed them down and demanded that they recede into his mind, an effort that took every ounce of his concentration and prevented him from hearing the door open and the footsteps cross to the bed. He was quite unaware, in fact, of the presence in the room until a cool hand touched his cheek gently. His eyes fl ew open.

“I think you need an Odell’s, Inspector,” Stepha whispered.