A Great Deliverance

5

Lynley tossed down his newspaper and considered Barbara Havers. There was no need to do so surreptitiously, for she was bent over the glaucous-hued Formica train table between them, perusing the Keldale murder report. He gave momentary, idle consideration to the depths to which British Rail was sinking with its current colour scheme designed to take maximum wear with minimum upkeep, but then his thoughts returned to the offi cer opposite him.

He knew about Havers. Everyone did. She’d failed miserably through her first tenure in CID, swiftly alienating MacPherson, Stewart, and Hale, three of the easiest DIs with whom one could ever hope to work. MacPherson especially, with his rolling highland humour and his paternal approach, should have been a mentor extraordinaire for someone like Havers. The man was a virtual teddy bear. Had any DS ever failed to work successfully at his side? Only Havers.

Lynley remembered the day of Webberly’s decision to put her back in uniform. Everyone had known it was coming, of course. It had been coming for months. But no one had been quite prepared for the woman’s reaction.

“If I was lah-dee-dah Eton, you’d be keeping me,” she’d shouted in Webberly’s offi ce in a broken voice loud enough for the entire fl oor to hear. “If I’d a cheque-book large enough and a title on my name and a willingness to screw everything in sight-woman, man, child, or animal-I’d be quite good enough for your precious department!”

At the mention of Eton, three heads had swivelled in Lynley’s direction. By the end of the diatribe, a quick cessation of workday noise indicated to him that every person within range of vision was looking his way. He’d been standing at a cabinet, rooting about for the file on that miserable little worm Harry Nelson, but found that his fi ngers had suddenly become clumsy. Of course, he really didn’t need the file. Not exactly at the moment. Indeed, he couldn’t stand there forever; he had to turn, to go back to his desk.

He made himself do it, made himself say quite lightly, “Good Lord, I always draw the line at animals,” and made himself walk casually across the room.

Nervous, uncomfortable laughter greeted his remark. Then Webberly’s door slammed and Havers stormed wildly down the corridor. Her mouth was twisted with rage, her face blotched and mottled with tears that she wiped off savagely with the sleeve of her coat. Lynley felt the entire force of her hatred wash over him as her eyes met his and her lips curled in contempt. It was like being struck by an illness for which there was no cure.

A moment later, MacPherson lumbered by his desk, tossed down the file on Harry Nelson, and said, “Ye’re a class act, laddie,” in his amiable rumble. But still, it had taken at least ten minutes for his hands to stop shaking so that he could dial the phone for Helen.

“Lunch, old duck?” he had asked her.

She could tell. She could hear it at once. “Absolutely, Tommy. Simon’s been forcing me all morning to look at the most hideous hair samples imaginable-did you know that scalp actually comes off when you pull out someone’s hair, darling?-and somehow lunch seems just the very thing. Shall we say the Connaught?”

Blessed Helen. God, what a wonderful anchor she’d been in his life this past year! Lynley pushed the thought from his mind and returned to his study of Havers. She reminded him just a bit of a turtle. Especially this morning when Helen had come into the room. The poor wretch had absolutely frozen, muttered less than ten words, and retreated right into her shell. What bizarre behaviour! As if she had something to fear from Helen! He felt in his pockets for his cigarette case and lighter.

Sergeant Havers glanced up at his movement, then returned to her report, her face impassive. She doesn’t smoke or drink, Lynley thought and smiled wryly. Well, get used to it, Sergeant. I’m not at all a man who neglects his vices. Not in the past year, at least.

He’d never quite been able to comprehend the woman’s remarkable antipathy towards him. There was, if one thought about it, the entire ridiculous subject of class-and God knows he’d taken a fair share of ribbing once his colleagues discovered he’d inherited a title.

Yet after a week or two of their mocking bows and fanfares whenever he entered a room, the title had simply ceased to be an issue at all. But not for Havers, who seemed to hear the orotund words Eighth Earl of Asherton booming out every time he walked anywhere near her, something he’d scrupulously avoided doing since she’d been returned to uniform.

He sighed. And here they were now together. What was it exactly that Webberly had in mind in establishing this grotesque alliance of theirs? The super was by far the most intelligent man he’d ever run across at the Yard, so this quixotic little partnership hadn’t come out of nowhere. He looked out the rain-splattered window. If I can only determine which one of us is Sancho Panza, we’ll get on famously. He laughed.

Sergeant Havers looked up curiously but said nothing. Lynley smiled. “Just look for windmills,” he told her.

They were drinking the railway’s Styrofoam coffee from its Styrofoam cups when Sergeant Havers tentatively brought up the question of the axe.

“No prints on it at all,” she observed.

“It does seem odd, doesn’t it?” Lynley replied. He winced at the taste of the liquid and shoved the cup aside. “Kill your dog, kill your father, sit there waiting for the police to arrive, but wipe the axe handle clean of your fingerprints? It doesn’t follow.”

“Why do you think she killed the dog, Inspector?”

“To silence it.”

“I suppose so,” she agreed reluctantly.

Lynley saw that she wanted to say something more. “What do you think?”

“I…It’s nothing. You’re probably quite right, sir.”

“But you have another idea. Let’s hear it.” Havers was eyeing him warily. “Sergeant?” he prompted.

She cleared her throat. “I was only thinking that she really wouldn’t need to silence it. I mean…it was her dog. Why would it bark at her? I could be wrong, but it seems that it would bark at an intruder and an intruder would want to silence it.”

Lynley studied the tips of his steepled fi ngers. “‘The curious incident of the dog in the night-time,’” he murmured. “It would bark at a girl it knew if she were killing her father,” he argued.

“But…I was thinking, sir.” Havers nervously pushed her clipped hair behind her ears, a gesture that made her more unattractive than ever. “Doesn’t it look as if the dog was killed first?” She leafed through the papers that she had replaced in the folder and took out one of the photographs. “Teys’s body has collapsed right over the dog.”

Lynley examined the picture. “Yes, of course. But she could have arranged it.”

Havers’s sharp little eyes widened in surprise. “I don’t think she could, sir. Not really.”

“Why not?”

“Teys was six feet four inches tall.” She clumsily pulled out more of the report. “He weighed…here it is, fourteen and one-half stone. I can’t see this Roberta slinging round fourteen and one-half stone of dead weight just to arrange a crime scene. Especially if she intended to confess immediately after. It doesn’t seem possible. Besides, the body had no head, so you’d think there’d be a bit of blood on the walls if she’d slung it about. But there wasn’t.”

“Score a point for you, Sergeant,” Lynley said, pulling his reading spectacles out of his pocket. “I think I agree. Here, let me have a look at that.” She handed him the entire fi le. “Time of death was put at between ten and midnight,” he said, more to himself than to her. “Had chicken and peas for dinner. Something wrong, Sergeant?”

“Nothing, sir. Someone walked over my grave.”

A charming expression. “Ah.” He read on. “And barbiturates in the blood.” He looked up, his brow furrowed, and stared sightlessly at Sergeant Havers over the tops of his spectacles. “Somehow one never thinks of a man like that needing sleeping pills. There he is, putting in a hard day’s work on a farm, out in that wonderful fresh air of the dales. He eats a hearty dinner and just drops off to sleep by the fire. Bucolic bliss. So why sleeping pills?”

“It looks as if he’d only just taken them.”

“Obviously. One hardly expects him to have somnambulated his way out to the barn.”

She froze at once at his tone, retreated back into her shell. “I only meant-”

“Excuse me,” Lynley interrupted quickly. “I was joking. I do sometimes. It relieves the tension. You’ll have to try to get used to it.”

“Of course, sir,” she replied with deliberate courtesy.

★ ★ ★

The man accosted them as they walked over the pedestrian bridge towards the exit. He was extremely thin, anaemic-looking, obviously someone who was victim to at least a thousand different kinds of stomach problems that were the bane of his existence. Even as he approached them, he popped a tablet into his mouth and began chewing upon it with furious determination.

“Superintendent Nies,” Lynley remarked affably. “Have you come all the way from Richmond to meet us? That’s quite a drive for you.”

“Sixty bloody miles, so let’s get it straight right from the top, Inspector,” Nies snapped. He’d stopped dead in front of them, blocking their way to the stairs that would lead them down to the departures platform and out of the station. “I don’t want you here. This is Kerridge’s goddamned game and I’ve nothing to do with it. You want anything, you get it from Newby Wiske, not from Richmond. Is that perfectly clear? I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to hear from you. If you’ve come up here with a personal vendetta in mind, Inspector, then just shove it up your arse right now. Got it? I’ve not time for poncey schoolboys itching for a pretty scratch of revenge.”

There was a moment of silence. Watching Nies’s dyspeptic face, Barbara wondered if anyone ever spoke to Lord Asherton in such a colourful manner on his Cornish estate.

“Sergeant Havers,” Lynley said mildly, “I don’t believe you’ve ever been introduced to Chief Superintendent Nies of the Richmond police force.”

She had never seen a man driven to a loss so swiftly, done with an impeccable show of manners. “Nice to meet you, sir,” she said dutifully.

“Damn you to hell, Lynley,” Nies snarled. “Just stay out of my way.” With that, he turned on his heel and pushed his way through the crowd towards the exit.

“Nicely done, Sergeant.” Lynley’s voice was serene. His eyes searched through the swarm of humanity in the terminal. It was nearly noon, and the usual bustle of York’s station was intensified by the lunch hour as people took the opportunity to purchase tickets, to argue car hire prices with the station agents, to meet loved ones who had timed arrivals to fit into the schedules of a working world. Lynley found the person he was looking for, said, “Ah, I see Denton up ahead,” and raised his hand in acknowledgment to a young man who was approaching them.

Denton had just come out of the cafeteria, caught in the midst of a meal. He was chewing, swallowing, and wiping his mouth with a paper napkin as he dodged through the crowd. He additionally managed to comb his thick dark hair neatly, straighten his necktie, and give a quick glance at his shoes, all before reaching them.

“Good trip, my lord?” he asked, handing Lynley a set of keys. “The car’s just outside.” He smiled pleasantly, but Barbara saw that he avoided Lynley’s eyes.

Lynley gazed at his valet critically. “Caroline,” he said.

Denton’s round, grey eyes grew immediately rounder. “Caroline, my lord?” he repeated innocently. His cherubic face became, if possible, even more cherubic. He flicked a nervous glance back in the direction from which he’d just come.

“Don’t ‘Caroline, my lord?’ me. We’ve a few things to straighten up here before you go off on this holiday of yours. This is Sergeant Havers, by the way.”

Denton gulped and nodded quickly at Barbara. “Pleased, Sergeant,” he said and turned his eyes back to Lynley. “My lord?”

“Stop being so obsequious. You don’t do it at home and in public it makes my skin positively crawl with embarrassment.” Impatient, Lynley shifted his black overnight case from one hand to the other.

“Sorry.” Denton sighed and dropped the pose. “Caroline’s in the cafeteria. I’ve a cottage lined up in Robin Hood’s Bay.”

“What a romantic you are,” Lynley observed drily. “Spare me the details. Just tell her to phone Lady Helen and reassure her you’re not off to Gretna Green. Will you do that, Den-ton?”

The young man grinned. “Will do. In a tic.”

“Thank you.” Lynley reached into his pocket and from his wallet extracted a credit card. He handed it to the man. “Don’t get any ideas,” he warned. “I want only the car on this. Is that clear?”

“Absolutely,” Denton replied crisply. He glanced over his shoulder to the cafeteria, where a pretty young woman had come outside and was watching them. She was as fashionably dressed and as fashionably coiffured as Lady Helen Clyde herself always was. Practically her clone if it came down to it, Barbara thought sourly and wondered if it was a requirement of the job: handmaiden to the youngest daughter of an earl, just like someone stepping out of the nineteenth century. The only real difference between Caroline and her ladyship was a minor lack of self-assurance evidenced by Caroline’s grip upon her handbag: a two-fisted clinging to the handles as if it were to be used as a defensive weapon.

Denton spoke. “Shall I be off then?”

“Be off,” Lynley responded, and added as the man scurried back in the direction he had come, “Take some care, will you?”

“Not a fear, my lord. Not a fear,” was the swift reply.

Lynley watched him disappear into the crowd, the young woman on his arm. He turned to Barbara. “I think that’s the last interruption,” he said. “Let’s be on our way.”

With that, he led her out onto Station Road and directly up to a sleek, silver Bentley.

★ ★ ★

“I-have-got-the- poop,” Hank Watson said confidentially from the next table. “The- straight-certifi ed-verifi ed-poop!” Satisfi ed that he had the undivided attention of the others in the dining room, he went on. “About the baby-in-the-abbey story. JoJo-bean and I had the straight, certified from Angelina this morning.”

St. James looked at his wife. “More coffee, Deborah?” he asked politely. When she demurred, he poured some for himself and gave his attention back to the other couple.

Hank and JoJo Watson hadn’t wasted much time becoming elbow-rubbing intimates of the only other guests at Keldale Hall. Mrs. Burton-Thomas had seen to that by seating them at adjoining tables in the hall’s immense dining room. She hadn’t bothered with introductions. She knew quite well there would be no need. The beautiful bolection mouldings of the room’s panelled walls, the Sheraton sideboard, and the William and Mary chairs became entirely lost to the American couple’s interest once St. James and Deborah entered the room.

“Hank, hon, maybe they don’t want to hear about the baby in the abbey.” JoJo fi ngered her gold chain, from which were hanging a veritable excrescence of trinkets. #1 Mom, Applepie, and Sugarbean danced alongside a Mercedes-Benz symbol, a diminutive spoon, and a minuscule Eiffel Tower.

“Hellsapoppin they don’t!” was Hank’s riposte. “You just ask them, Bean.”

JoJo rolled her eyes in apology at the other couple. “Hank’s charmed with England. Just really charmed,” she explained.

“Love it.” Hank nodded. “If I could just get some toast that’s h-o-t, the place’d be perfect. Why in heck d’you people eat your toast cold?”

“I’ve always thought it was a cultural defi ciency,” St. James responded.

Hank brayed appreciatively, his mouth open wide to display a row of startlingly white teeth. “Cultural deficiency! That’s good! That’s real good! Hear that, Bean? Cultural defi ciency!” Hank always repeated any remark that made him laugh. Somehow, it gave him a certain authorship over it. “Now, back to the abbey.” He was also not easily diverted.

“Hank,” his wife murmured. She was a bit like a rabbit, exophthalmic, with a little upturned nose that continually twitched and flexed on her face as if she were not quite used to the air she breathed.

“Loosen up, Bean,” her husband urged. “These people here are the salt-of-the- earth.”

“I think I will have more coffee, Simon,” Deborah said.

Her husband poured, met her eyes, and said, “Milk, dear?”

“Yes, please.”

“H-o-t milk for the coffee!” Hank remarked, seeing a new avenue in which to demonstrate his considerable verbal fl exibility. “Now that’s something else I just haven’t got used to. Hey! Here’s Angelina now!”

The said young girl-obviously by her physical resemblance to Danny yet another member of the curiouser and curiouser Burton-Thomas clan-was carrying a large tray into the dining room with intense concentration. She was not as pretty as Danny: a plump little red hen of a girl whose scrubbed cheeks and rough hands made her look as if she’d be more at home on a farm than attempting to be part of her family’s eccentric establishment. She bobbed a nervous good morning, avoiding their eyes, and awkwardly distributed breakfast, gnawing her bottom lip miserably as she did so.

“Shy little thing,” Hank observed loudly, squashing a square of toast into the centre of his fried egg. “But she gave us the true poop last night after dinner. Now you’ve heard about that baby, right?”

Deborah and St. James looked at each other, deciding which one of them would take up the conversational ball. It was tossed to Deborah. “Yes, indeed we did,” she replied. “Crying from the abbey. Danny told us about it just after we arrived.”

“Ha! Bet she did,” Hank said obscurely, and then to make sure his meaning was clear, added, “Nice little piece. You know. Likes the attention.”

“Hank…” his wife murmured into her porridge. Her hair was very short, strawberry blonde, and the tips of her ears, showing through it, had become quite red.

“JoJo-bean, these people are not d-u-m,” Hank replied. “They know the score.” He waved a fork at the other two. A piece of sausage was poised perilously on the prongs. “You gotta excuse the Bean,” he explained. “You’d think living in Laguna Beach’d make a swinger outa her, wouldn’t you? You familiar with Laguna Beach, California?” No pause for an answer. “It is the finest place in the world to live, no offence to you here, of course. JoJobean and I’ve lived there for-how long is it now, pretty face? Twenty-two years?-and she still blushes, I tell you, when she sees two queers getting personal! ‘JoJo,’ I tell her, ‘there-is-no-use getting hot and bothered about queers.’” He lowered his voice. “We got them coming out our verifi ed ears in Laguna,” he confi ded.

St. James could not bring himself to look at Deborah. “I beg your pardon?” he asked, unsure if he had correctly heard the unusual, gymnastic pun.

“Queers, man! Faggots! Ho-mo-sex-shuls. By the certifi ed, verified millions in Laguna! They all want to live there! Now, as to the abbey.” Hank paused to slurp gustily at his coffee. “Seems the real story is that Danny and her you-know-what used to meet at the abbey on a regular basis. You know what I mean. For a little clutch-and-feel. And on the night in question some three years back they’ve just decided it’s time to consecrate the relationship. You follow me?”

“Completely,” St. James replied. He studiously avoided Deborah’s eyes.

“Now, Danny, see, is a little leery of this. After all, being a virgin on the wedding night’s a puh-retty big item to let go of, don’t you agree? ’Specially in this neck of the woods. And if little Danny lets this fella have his way…well, there’s no backward road, is there?” He awaited St. James’s response.

“I should imagine not.”

Hank nodded sagely. “So, as her sister Angelina tells it-”

“She was there?” St. James asked incredulously.

Hank spent a moment guffawing at the thought, banging his spoon with tympanic delight on the top of the table. “You’re a card, fella!” He directed his attention to Deborah. “He always like this?”

“Always,” she replied promptly.

“That’s great! Well, back to the abbey.”

Of course, Deborah and St. James’ exchanged looks replied.

“So here’s this fella with Danny.” Hank painted the scene in the air with his knife and fork. “The gun is loaded and the trigger cocked. When all of a sudden comes this baby wailing fist to beat the band! Can you see it?

Huh, can you?”

“In detail,” St. James replied.

“Well, these two hear that baby and think it’s the worda God himself. They get outa that abbey so fast that you’d think the devil was chasing them. And that, my friends, put an end to that.”

“To the baby crying, do you mean?” Deborah asked. “Oh, Simon, I was hoping we’d hear it tonight. Or perhaps even this afternoon. Warding off evil turned out to be so much more rewarding than I expected it to be.”

Minx, his look said.

“Not to the crying baby,” Hank instructed. “To the you-know-what between Danny and whoever he was. Who the hell was he, anyway, Bean?”

“A weird name. Ezra somebody.”

Hank nodded. “Well, anyway, Danny comes back to the hall here with a case of the hooha’s that just won’t quit. Wants to confess her sins and go right to the Lord. So they call the local priest in. It is ex-or-cism time!”

“For the abbey, the hall, or Danny?” St. James enquired.

“All three, fella! So this priest comes rushing down and does the bit with the holy water, goes on to the abbey, and-” He stopped completely, his face lit with joy, his eyes alive with delight: a master storyteller with the audience tearing and clawing to hear every last syllable.

“More coffee, Deborah?”

“Thank you, no.”

“And what do you think?” Hank demanded.

St. James considered the question. He felt his wife’s foot nudge his good leg. “What?” he dutifully responded.

“Damn if there wasn’t a real baby there. A newborn with the cord still attached. Couldn’t be more than a couple hours old. Deader’n a door knocker by the time the old priest got there. Exposure, they say.”

“How dreadful.” Deborah’s face paled. “What a horrible thing!”

Hank nodded solemnly. “You’re talking horrible, just think of poor Ezra! Bet he couldn’t you-know-what for another two years!”

“Whose baby was it?”

Hank shrugged. He turned his attention to his now-cold breakfast. Clearly, the juicier elements of the story were the only ones that he had pursued.

“No one knows,” JoJo answered. “They buried it in the churchyard in the village. With the funniest epitaph on the poor little grave. I can’t recall it, offhand. You’ll have to go see it.”

“They’re newlyweds, Bean,” Hank put in with a broad wink at St. James. “I bet they got plenty m-o-r-e on their minds than traipsing through graveyards.”

Obviously, Lynley favoured the Russians. They’d begun with Rachmaninoff, moved to Rimsky-Korsakov, and were now slam-banging their way through the cannonades of the 1812 Overture.

“There. Did you notice it?” he asked her, once the music had crashed to its fi nale. “One of the cymbalists was just a counterbeat behind. But it’s my only bone of contention with that particular recording of 1812.” He flipped the stereo off.

Barbara noticed for the first time that he wore absolutely no jewellery-no crested signet ring, no expensive wrist watch to fl ash gold richly when it caught the light. For some reason, that fact was as distracting to her as an unsightly display of opulent ornamentation would have been.

“I didn’t catch it. Sorry. I don’t know a lot about music.” Did he really expect her-with her background-to be able to converse with him about classical music?

“I don’t know much about it either,” he admitted ingenuously. “I just listen to it a great deal. I’m afraid I’m one of those ignoramuses who say, ‘I don’t know a thing about it, but I know what I like.”

She listened to his words with surprise. The man had a first in history, an Oxford education. Why in the world would he ever apply the word ignoramus to himself? Unless, of course, it was designed to put her at ease with a liberal dose of charm, something he was capable of doing quite well. It was effortless for him, as easy as breathing.

“I must have developed my liking for it during the very last part of my father’s illness. It was always playing in the house when I could get away to see him.” He paused, removed the tape, and the silence in the car became every bit as loud as the music had been, but far more disconcerting. It was some moments before he spoke again, and when he did, it was to pick up the thread of his original thought. “He simply wasted away to nothing. So much pain.” He cleared his throat. “My mother wouldn’t consider putting him into hospital. Even towards the end when it would have been so much easier on her, she wouldn’t hear of it. She sat with him hour after hour, day and night, and watched him die by degrees. I think it was music that kept them both sane those last weeks.” He kept his eyes on the road. “She held his hand and listened to Tchaikovsky. In the end he couldn’t even speak. I’ve always liked to think the music did his speaking for him.”

It was suddenly crucial to stop the direction the conversation was taking. Barbara gripped the stiff edges of the folded roadmap with dry, hot fingers and searched for another subject.

“You know that bloke Nies, don’t you?” It blurted out badly, all too obviously an ill-concealed attempt to digress. She shot a wary look at him.

His eyes narrowed, but otherwise he gave no immediate reaction to the question. One hand merely dropped from the steering wheel. For a moment, Barbara thought, ridiculously, that he intended to use it to silence her, but he simply chose another tape at random and slid it into the stereo. He did not, however, turn the unit on. She stared out at the passing countryside, mortifi ed.

“I’m surprised you don’t know about it,” he fi nally said.

“Know about what?”

He looked at her then. He appeared to be trying to read her face for insolence or sarcasm or perhaps a need to wound. Apparently satisfied with what he saw, he returned his eyes to the road.

“Just about five years ago, my brother-inlaw, Edward Davenport, was murdered in his home north of Richmond. Superintendent Nies saw fit to arrest me. It wasn’t a long ordeal, just a matter of a few days. But quite long enough.” A glance at her again, a self-deprecatory smile. “You’ve not heard that story, Sergeant? It’s nasty enough to make good cocktail party gossip.”

“I…no…no, I’d not heard it. And anyway, I don’t go to cocktail parties.” She turned blindly to the window. “I should guess the turnoff is near. Perhaps three miles,” she said uselessly.

She was shaken to the core. She could not have said why, did not want to think about it, and forced herself to study the scenery, refusing to be caught up in any further conversation with the man. Concentration on the land became imperative, and as she gave herself over to it, the country began its process of seduction upon her, for she was so used to the frenetic pace of London and the desperate grime of her neighbourhood in Acton that Yorkshire came as a bit of a shock.

The countryside was a thousand different shades of green, from the patchwork quilts of the cultivated land to the desolation of the open moors. The road dipped through dales where forests protected spotless villages and then climbed switchbacked curves to take them again up to the open land where the North Sea wind blew unforgivingly across heather and furze. Here, the only life belonged to the sheep. They wandered free and unfenced, unfettered by the ancient dry stone walls that constructed boundaries for their fellows in the dales below.

There were contradictions everywhere. In the cultivated areas, life burgeoned from every cranny and hedgerow, a thick vegetation that in another season would produce the mixed beauties of cow parsley, campion, vetch, and foxglove. It was an area where transportation was delayed while two dogs expertly herded a flock of plump sheep across pasture, down hillside, and along the road for a two-mile stroll into the centre of a village, directed only by the whistling of the shepherd who followed, his fate and the fate of the animals he owned left to the skill of the running dogs. And then suddenly, the plants, villages, magnificent oaks, elms, and chestnuts-this truly insubstantial pageant-faded to nothing in the glory of the moors.

Here, the cerulean sky exploded with clouds. It swept down to meet the rough, unconquered land. Earth and air: there was nothing else, save the sapient presence of the black-faced sheep, stalwart denizens of this lonely place.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Lynley asked after some minutes. “In spite of everything that’s happened to me here, I still love Yorkshire. I think it’s the loneliness here. The complete desolation.”

Again Barbara resisted the confi dence, the implicit message behind the words that here was a man who could understand. “It’s very nice, sir. Not like anything I’ve ever seen. I think this is our turn.”

The road to Keldale switched back and forth, taking them to the deepest section of the dale. Moments after the turn, the woods closed in on them. Trees arched over the road, ferns grew thickly at its sides. They came to the village the way that Cromwell had come, and they found it as he had: deserted.

The ringing of St. Catherine’s church bells told them immediately why there was no sign of life in the village. Upon the cessation of what Lynley was beginning to believe was surely Sayers’s nine tailors, the church doors opened and the ancient building spewed forth its tiny congregation.

“At last,” he murmured. He stood leaning against the car, thoughtfully surveying the village. He’d parked in front of Keldale Lodge, a trim little hostelry, heavily hung with ivy and multipaned windows, from which he had a sweeping view in four directions. Taking it in, he concluded that there couldn’t possibly have been a more unlikely spot on earth for a murder.

To the north was the narrow high street, flanked by grey stone buildings with tiled roofs and white woodwork containing the requisite elements for comfortable village life: a shoe-box-sized post offi ce; a nondescript greengrocer’s; a shop advertising Lyons cakes on a rusty yellow sign and looking like the purveyor of everything from motor oil to baby food; a Wesleyan chapel wedged with delightful incongruity between Sarah’s Tea Room and Sinji’s Beauty Shoppe (“Pretty Curls Make Lovely Girls”). The pavement on either side of the street was raised only slightly off the road, and water pooled in front of doorways from the morning’s rainfall. But the sky was clear now, and the air was so fresh that Lynley could taste its purity.

To the west, a road called Bishop Furthing led off towards farmland, enclosed on either side by the ubiquitous dry stone walls of the district. On its corner stood a tree-shaded cottage with a front door only steps from the street. It had an enclosed garden to one side from which the excited yelping of small dogs burst forth at regular intervals, as if someone were playing with them, rough and tumble. The building itself was labelled as inconspicuously as possible with the single word POLICE, blue letters on a white sign that stuck out from a window. Home of the archangel Gabriel, Lynley concluded, suppressing a smile.

To the south, two roads veered off from an overgrown two-bench common: Keldale Abbey Road, ostensibly leading to the same, and over the humped bridge that spanned the lazy movement of the River Kel, Church Street, with St. Catherine’s built on a hillock on the corner. It, too, was surrounded by a low stone wall, and embedded into this was a World War I memorial plaque, the sombre commonality of every village in the nation.

To the east was the road down which they had wended their way to this bit of Yorkshire heaven. It had been deserted earlier, but now the bent form of a woman trudged up the incline, a scarf tucked into her black coat. Shod in heavy brogues and dazzling blue ankle socks, she carried a mesh bag over one arm. It dangled there limply, empty. On a Sunday afternoon there was little hope of filling it with foodstuffs purchased at the grocer’s, for everything was locked up tight, and even if it were not, she was heading in the wrong direction to be making a purchase: out of the village, back up towards the moors. A farmwife, perhaps, having made some delivery.

The village was surrounded by woods, by the upward slope of meadow, by the feeling of absolute security and peace. Once St. Catherine’s bells ceased ringing, the birds took up, tittering from rooftops and trees. Somewhere, a fire had been lit and woodsmoke, just the ghost of its fragrance, was like a whisper in the air. It was hard to believe that three weeks past, a mile out of town, a man had been decapitated by his only daughter.

“Inspector Lynley? I hope I haven’t kept you waiting long. I always lock up during church since there’s no one else to watch the place. I’m Stepha Odell. I own the lodge.”

At the sound of the voice, Lynley turned from his inspection of the village, but at the sight of her, his polite introduction died on his lips.

A tall, shapely woman-perhaps forty years old-stood before him. She was dressed for church in grey linen, a well-cut dress with a white collar. The rest of her was black: shoes, belt, handbag, and hat. Except for her hair, which was coppery red and fell to her shoulders. She was stunning.

He found his voice. “Thomas Lynley,” he said idiotically. “This is Sergeant Havers.”

“Do come in.” Stepha Odell’s voice was warm and pleasant. “I’ve your rooms ready. You’ll find us a quiet inn at this time of year.”

There was a chill in the building they entered, an atmosphere produced by thick walls and stone floors. These were covered with a faded Axminster carpet. She led them into a tiny reception area, moving with a swift, unconscious grace, and produced an oversized register for them to sign. “You’ve been told I only do breakfast, haven’t you?” she asked earnestly, as if satisfying hunger were the uppermost thing on his mind at this moment.

Do I look that desperate? “We’ll manage, Mrs. Odell,” Lynley said. Tricky move, old boy. Transparent as hell. Havers stood mute at his side, her face without expression.

“Miss,” their hostess replied. “Stepha really. You can get meals at the Dove and Whistle on St. Chad’s Lane or at the Holy Grail. Or if you want something special, there’s Keldale Hall.”

“The Holy Grail?”

She smiled. “The pub across from St. Catherine’s.”

“That name must certainly propitiate the abstinent gods.”

“At least it does Father Hart. But he’s been known to tip a pint or two in an evening there. Shall I show you your rooms?”

Without waiting for an answer, she led them up the crooked stairs, displaying, Lynley noted, a remarkably pretty pair of ankles and above which rose an even prettier pair of legs. “You’ll find us glad to have you in the village, Inspector,” she stated as she opened the door to the first room and then with a gesture of her hand indicated the room next door with the unspoken message that it was up to them to decide who stayed where.

“That’s helpful. I’m glad to hear it.”

“We’ve none of us anything against Gabriel, you see. But he’s not been a popular man round here since they carted Roberta off to the asylum.”