Payment in Blood

17

“JOY’S DOOR wasn’t locked,” Sydeham said.

They sat at a metal-legged table in one of the interrogation rooms at New Scotland Yard. It was a room designed to allow no escape, bearing not a single decorative appointment that might give fl ight even to imagination. Sydeham did not look at any of them as he spoke, not at Lynley, who sat across from him and worked to draw together all the details of the case; not at Sergeant Havers, who for once took no notes but merely interjected questions to add to their body of knowledge; not at the yawning shorthand typist-a twenty-two-year veteran of police work who recorded everything with an expression of boredom that suggested she had already heard every entanglement possible in the kinds of human relationships that end in violence. Faced with the three of them, Sydeham had turned his body to give them the benefit of his profile. His eyes were on a corner of the room where a dead moth lay, and he stared at it as if seeing there a re-creation of the past days of violence.

His voice sounded nothing more than monumentally weary. It was half past three. “I’d got the dirk earlier when I went down to the library for the whisky. It was easy enough to pull it off the dining room wall, go through the kitchen, up the back stairs, and along to my room. And then, of course, all I had to do was wait.”

“Did you know that your wife was with Robert Gabriel?”

Sydeham moved his eyes to the Rolex whose gold casing glittered in a half-crescent beneath his black sweater. Caressingly, he rotated a finger round its face. His hands were quite large, but without callosity, unexposed to labour. They didn’t look at all like the hands of a killer.

“It didn’t take long to work it out, Inspector,” he finally replied. “As Joanna herself would no doubt point out, I had wanted her together with Gabriel, and she was just giving me what I wanted. Theatre of the real in spades. It was an expert revenge, wasn’t it? Of course, I wasn’t sure at first that she was actually with him. I thought-perhaps I hoped- she’d gone somewhere else in the house to sulk. But I suppose I really knew that’s not at all her style. And at any rate, Gabriel was fairly forthright about his conquest of my wife the other day at the Agincourt. But then, it isn’t the kind of thing he’d be likely to keep quiet about, is it?”

“You assaulted him in his dressing room the other night?”

Sydeham smiled bleakly. “It was the only part of this bloody mess that I truly enjoyed. I don’t like other men stuffing my wife, Inspector, whether she’s a willing participant or not.”

“But you’re more than willing to have another man’s wife, if it comes down to it.”

“Ah. Hannah Darrow. I had a feeling that little minx would do me in, in the end.” Sydeham reached for a Styrofoam cup of coffee on the table before him. His nails made crescent patterns upon it. “When Joy talked at dinner about her new book, she mentioned the diaries she was trying to get off John Darrow, and I could see fairly well how everything was going to come down. She didn’t seem the sort to give up just because Darrow said no once. She hadn’t got to where she was in her career by shrinking away from a challenge, had she? So when she talked about the diaries, I knew it was just a matter of time before she had them. And I didn’t know what Hannah had written so I couldn’t take the chance.”

“What happened that night with Hannah Darrow?”

Sydeham brought his eyes to Lynley. “We met at the mill. She was some forty minutes late, and I’d begun to think-to hope, actual-ly-that she wasn’t coming. But she showed up at the last in her usual fashion, hot to make love right there on the floor. But I…I put her off. I’d brought her a scarf she’d seen in a boutique in Norwich. And I insisted she let me put it on her right then.” He watched his hands continue their play on the white cup, fi ngers pressing upon its rim. “It was easy enough. I was kissing her when I tightened the knot.”

Lynley thought about the innocent references he had been too blind to see earlier in Hannah’s diary and took a calculated gamble with, “I’m surprised you didn’t have her one last time right there in the mill, if that’s what she wanted.”

The payoff he was looking for came without a pause. “I’d lost the touch with her. Each time we met, it was becoming more diffi cult.” Sydeham laughed shortly, an expression of contempt that was self-directed. “It was going to be Joanna all over again.”

“The beautiful woman who rises to fame, who’s the object of every man’s steamy fantasy, whose own husband can’t service her the way she wants.”

“I’d say you’ve got the picture, Inspector. Nicely put.”

“Yet you’ve stayed with Joanna all these years.”

“She’s the one thing in my life that I did completely right. My unmitigated success. One doesn’t let something like that go easily, and as for me, I’d never have considered it. I couldn’t let her go. Hannah merely came along at a bad time for Jo and me. Things had been…off between us for about three weeks. She’d been thinking of signing on with a London agent and I felt a bit left out in the cold.

Useless. That must have been what started my…trouble. Then when Hannah came along, I felt like a new man for a month or two. Every time I saw her, I had her. Sometimes two or three times in a single evening. Christ. It was like being reborn.”

“Until she wanted to become an actress like your wife?”

“And then it was history repeating itself. Yes.”

“But why on earth kill her? Why not just break it off?”

“She’d found my London address. It was bad enough when she showed up at the theatre one evening when Jo and I were setting off with the London agent. After that happened, I knew if I left her behind in the Fens, she’d show up one day at our flat. I would have lost Joanna. There simply didn’t seem to be another choice.”

“And Gowan Kilbride? Where did he fit in?”

Sydeham placed his coffee cup back onto the table, its rim caved in all around, entirely useless now. “He knew about the gloves, Inspector.”

THEY COMPLETED their preliminary interview with David Sydeham at five-fifteen in the morning and staggered, red-eyed, out into the corridor where Sydeham was led to a telephone to make a call to his wife. Lynley watched him go, feeling caught in a fl ood of pity for the man. This surprised him, for justice was being served by the arrest.Yet he knew that the effect of the murders-that stone thrown into a pond whose surface cannot remain unchanged by the intrusion-had only just begun for everyone. He turned away.

There were other things to contend with, among them the press, finally eager for a statement, materialising from nowhere, shouting questions, demanding interviews.

He pushed past them, crumpled into nothing a message from Superintendent Webberly that was pressed into his hand. Nearly blind with exhaustion, he made his way towards the lift, caught up at last in only one conscious thought: to fi nd Helen. In only one conscious need: to sleep.

He found his way home like an automaton and fell onto his bed fully clothed. He did not awaken when Denton came in, removed his shoes, and covered him with a blanket. He did not awaken until the afternoon.

“IT WAS HER EYESIGHT,” Lynley said. “I noticed nearly everything else in Hannah Darrow’s diaries save the reference to the fact that she hadn’t worn her spectacles to that second play, so she couldn’t see the stage clearly. She only thought Sydeham was one of the actors because he came out the stage door at the end of the performance. And of course, I was too blinded by Davies-Jones’ role in The Three Sisters to realise what it meant that Joanna Ellacourt had been in the same scene from which the suicide note was drawn. Sydeham would know any scene Joanna was in, probably better than the actors themselves. He helped her with her lines. I heard him doing that myself at the Agincourt.”

“Did Joanna Ellacourt know her husband was the killer?” St. James asked.

Lynley shook his head, taking the proffered cup of tea from Deborah with a faint smile. The three of them sat in St. James’ study, dividing their attention among cakes and sandwiches, tarts and tea. A misty shaft of late afternoon sunlight struck the window and reflected against a mound of snow on the ledge outside. Some distance away, rush-hour traffic on the Embankment began its noisy crawl towards the suburbs.

“She’d been told by Mary Agnes Campbell-as had they all-that Joy’s bedroom door was locked,” he responded. “Like me, she thought Davies-Jones was the killer. What she didn’t know-what no one knew until late yesterday afternoon-was that Joy’s door hadn’t been locked all night. It was only locked once Francesca Gerrard went into the room to look for her necklace at three-fi fteen, found Joy dead, and, assuming her brother had done it, went down to her office for the keys and locked the door in an attempt to protect him. I should have heard the lie when she told me the pearls were on the chest of drawers by the door. Why would Joy have put them there when the rest of her jewellery was on the dressing table on the other side of the room? I’d seen that myself.”

St. James selected another sandwich. “Would it have made a difference had Macaskin managed to reach you before you left for Hampstead yesterday?”

“What could he have told me? Only that Francesca Gerrard had confessed to him that she lied to us at Westerbrae about the door being locked. I don’t know whether I would have had the common sense to put that together with a number of facts that I had been choosing to ignore. The fact that Robert Gabriel had a woman with him in his bedroom; the fact that Sydeham admitted that Joanna had not been with him for some hours the night Joy died; the fact that Jo and Joy are two easy names to confuse, especially for a man like Gabriel, who pursued women tirelessly and took as many to bed as he could manage.”

“So that’s what Irene Sinclair heard.” St. James moved in his chair to a more comfortable position, grimacing as the lower part of his leg brace caught against the piping on the ottoman’s edge. He disengaged it with an irritable grunt. “But why Joanna Ellacourt? She’s not made it a secret that she loathes Gabriel. Or was that dramatic loathing part of the ploy?”

“She loathed Sydeham more than Gabriel that night, because he’d got her into Joy’s play in the first place. She felt he’d betrayed her.

She wanted to hurt him. So she went to Gabriel’s bedroom at half past eleven and waited there, to take her revenge on her husband in coin that he would well understand. But what she didn’t realise was that, in going to Gabriel, she’d given Sydeham the opportunity he had been looking for ever since Joy made the remark about John Darrow at dinner.”

“I suppose Hannah Darrow didn’t know that Sydeham was married.”

Lynley shook his head. “Evidently not. She’d only seen them once together and even then another man was with them. All she knew was that Sydeham had access to drama coaches and voice coaches and everything else that went into success. As far as Hannah was concerned, Sydeham was the key to her new life. And for a time, she was his key to a sexual prowess he had been lacking.”

“Do you suppose Joy Sinclair knew about Sydeham’s involvement with Hannah Darrow?” St. James asked.

“She hadn’t got that far in her research. And John Darrow was determined she never would. She merely made an innocent remark at dinner. But Sydeham couldn’t afford to take a chance. So he killed her. And of course, Irene’s references to the diaries at the theatre yesterday were what took him to Hampstead last night.”

Deborah had been listening quietly, but now she spoke, perplexed. “Didn’t he take a terrible chance when he killed Joy Sinclair, Tommy? Couldn’t his wife have returned to their room at any moment and found him gone? Couldn’t he have run into someone in the hall?”

Lynley shrugged. “He was fairly sure where Joanna was after all, Deb. And he knew Robert Gabriel well enough to believe that Gabriel would keep her with him as long as he could possibly continue to demonstrate his virility. Everyone else in the house was easily accounted for. So once he heard Joy return from Vinney’s room shortly before one, all he had to do was wait a bit for her to fall asleep.”

Deborah was caught on an earlier thought. “But his own wife…” she murmured, looking pained.

“I should guess that Sydeham was willing to let Gabriel have his wife once or twice if he could get away with murder. But he wasn’t willing to let the man boast about it in front of the company. So he waited until Gabriel was alone at the theatre. Then he caught him in his dressing room.”

“I wonder if Gabriel knew who was beating him,” St. James mused.

“As far as Gabriel was concerned, it probably could have been any number of men. And he was lucky it wasn’t. Anyone else might have killed him. Sydeham didn’t want to do that.”

“Why not?” Deborah asked. “After what happened between Gabriel and Joanna, I should think Sydeham would be more than happy to see him dead.”

“Sydeham was nobody’s fool. The last thing he wanted to do was narrow my field of suspects.” Lynley shook his head. His next words reflected the shame he felt. “Of course, what he didn’t know was that I had suffi ciently narrowed it myself already. A field of one. Havers said it best. Police work to be proud of.”

The other two did not respond. Deborah twisted the lid on the porcelain teapot, slowly tracing the petal of a delicate pink rose. St. James moved a bit of sandwich here and there on his plate. Neither of them looked at Lynley.

He knew they were avoiding the question he had come to ask, knew they were doing it out of loyalty and love. Still, undeserving as he was, Lynley found himself hoping that the bond between them all was strong enough to allow them to see that he needed to fi nd her in spite of her desire not to be found. So he asked the question.

“St. James, where’s Helen? When I got back to Joy’s house last night, she’d vanished. Where is she?”

He saw Deborah’s hand drop from the teapot, saw it tighten on the pleats of her russet wool skirt. St. James lifted his head.

“That’s too much to ask,” he responded.

It was the answer Lynley had expected, the answer he knew was owed to him. Yet, in spite of this, he pressed them. “I can’t change what happened. I can’t change the fact that I was a fool. But at least I can apologise. At least I can tell her-”

“It’s not time. She’s not ready.”

Lynley felt a surge of anger at such implacable resolution. “Damn you, St. James. She tried to warn him off! Did she tell you that as well? When he came over the wall, she gave a cry that he heard, and we nearly lost him. Because of Helen. So if she’s not ready to see me, she can tell me that herself. Let her make the decision.”

“She’s decided, Tommy.”

The words were spoken so coolly that his anger died. He felt his throat tighten in quick reaction. “She’s gone with him, then. Where? To Wales?”

Nothing. Deborah moved, casting a long look at her husband, who had turned his head to the unlit fire.

Lynley felt rising desperation at their refusal to speak. He’d met with the same kind of refusal from Caroline Shepherd at Helen’s fl at earlier, the same kind of refusal on the telephone when he spoke to Helen’s parents and three of her sisters. He knew it was a punishment richly due him, and yet in spite of that knowledge, he railed against it, refused to accept it as just and true.

“For God’s sake, Simon.” He felt riven by despair. “I love her. You, above all people, know what it means to be separated like this from someone you love. Without a word. Without a chance. Please. Tell me.”

Unexpectedly then, he saw Deborah reach out quickly. She grasped her husband’s thin hand. Lynley barely heard her voice as she spoke to St. James.

“My love, I’m sorry. Forgive me. I simply can’t do this.” She turned to Lynley. Her eyes were bright with tears. “She’s gone to Skye, Tommy. She’s alone.”

HE FACED only one last task before heading north to Helen, and that was to see Superintendent Webberly and, through seeing him, to put a period to the case. To other things as well. He had ignored the early-morning message from his superior, with its offi cial congratulations for a job well done and its request for a meeting as soon as possible. Filled with the realisation of how blind jealousy had governed every step of his investigation, Lynley had hardly wanted to hear anyone’s praise. Much less the praise of a man who had been perfectly willing to use him as an unwitting tool in the master game of deceit.

For beyond Sydeham’s guilt and Davies-Jones’ innocence, there still remained Lord Stinhurst. And Scotland Yard’s dance of attendance upon the commitment of the government to keeping a twenty-five-year-old secret out of the public eye.

This remained to be dealt with. Lynley had not felt himself ready for the confrontation earlier in the day. But he was ready now.

He found Webberly at the circular table in his office. There, as usual, open fi les, books, photographs, reports, and used crockery abounded. Bent over a street map which was outlined heavily in yellow marking pen, the superintendent held a cigar clenched between his teeth, filling the already claustrophobic room with a malodorous pall of smoke. He was talking to his secretary, who sat behind his desk, cooperatively nodding and note-taking and all the time waving her hand in front of her face in a useless attempt to keep the cigar smoke from permeating her well-tailored suit and smooth blonde hair. She was, as usual, as close a replica of the Princess of Wales as she could make herself.

She rolled her eyes at Lynley, wrinkled her nose delicately in distaste at the smell and the clutter, and said, “Here’s Detective Inspector Lynley, Superintendent.”

Lynley waited expectantly for Webberly to correct her. It was a game the two of them played. Webberly preferred mister to the use of titles. Dorothea Harriman (“call me Dee, please”) vastly preferred titles to anything else.

This afternoon, however, the superintendent merely growled and looked up from his map, saying, “Did you get everything, Harriman?”

His secretary consulted her notes, adjusting the high scalloped collar of her Edwardian blouse. She wore a pert bow tie beneath it. “Everything. Shall I type this lot up?”

“If you will. And run thirty copies. The usual routing.”

Harriman sighed. “Before I leave, Superintendent?…No, don’t say it. I know, I know. ‘Put it on the tick, Harriman.’” She shot Lynley a meaningful look. “I’ve so much time on the tick right now that I could take my honeymoon on it. If someone would be so good as to pop the question.”

Lynley smiled. “Blimey. And to think I’m busy tonight.”

Harriman laughed at the answer, gathered up her notes, and brushed three paper cups from Webberly’s desk into the rubbish. “See if you can get him to do something about this pit,” she requested as she left.

Webberly said nothing until they were alone. Then he folded the map, slid it onto one of his filing cabinets, and went to his desk. But he did not sit. Rather, puffing on his cigar contentedly, he looked at the London skyline beyond the window.

“Some people think it’s lack of ambition that makes me avoid promotion,” Webberly confided without turning. “But actually it’s the view. If I had to change offices, I’d lose the sight of the city coming to light as darkness falls. And I can’t tell you what pleasure that’s given me through the years.” His freckled hands played with the watch fob on his waistcoat. Cigar ash fluttered, ignored, to the fl oor.

Lynley thought about how he had once liked this man, how he had respected the fi ne mind inside the dishevelled exterior. It was a mind that brought out the best in those under his command, conscientiously using each one to his personal strength, never to his weakness. That quality of being able to see people as they really were had always been what Lynley admired most in his superior. Now, however, he saw that it was double-edged, that it could be used-indeed, had been used in his case- to probe a man’s weakness and use that weakness to meet an end not of his own devising.

Webberly had known without a doubt that Lynley would believe in the given word of a peer. That kind of belief was part and parcel of Lynley’s upbringing, a precious clinging to “my word as a gentleman” that had governed people of his class for centuries. Like the laws of primogeniture, it could not be sloughed off easily. And that is what Webberly had depended upon, sending Lynley to hear Lord Stinhurst’s manufactured tale of his wife’s infi delity. Not MacPherson, Stewart, or Hale, or any other DI who would have listened sceptically, called in Lady Stinhurst to hear the story herself and then moved on to uncover the truth about Geoffrey Rintoul without a second thought.

Neither the government nor the Yard had wanted that to happen. So they had sent in the one man they believed could be depended upon to take the word of a gentleman and hence to sweep all connections to Lord Stinhurst right under the carpet. That, to Lynley, was the unpardonable offence. He couldn’t forgive Webberly for having done it to him.

He couldn’t forgive himself for having mindlessly lived up to their every expectation.

It didn’t matter that Stinhurst had been innocent of Joy Sinclair’s death. For the Yard had not known that, had not even cared, had desired only that key information in the man’s past not come to light. Had Stinhurst been the killer, had he escaped justice, Lynley knew that neither the government nor the Yard would have felt a moment’s compunction as long as the secret of Geoffrey Rintoul was safe.

He felt ugly, unclean. He reached into his pocket for his police identification and tossed it onto Webberly’s desk.

The superintendent’s eyes dropped to the warrant card, raised back to Lynley. He squinted against the smoke from his cigar. “What’s this?”

“I’m done with it.”

Webberly’s face looked frozen. “I’m trying to misunderstand you, Inspector.”

“There’s no need for that, is there? You’ve all got what you wanted. Stinhurst is safe. The whole story is safe.”

Webberly took the cigar from his mouth and crushed it among the stubs in his ashtray, spattering ash. “Don’t do this, lad. There’s no need.”

“I don’t like being used. It’s a funny quirk of mine.” Lynley moved to the door. “I’ll clean out my things-”

Webberly’s hand slammed down against the top of his desk, sending papers flying. A pencil holder toppled to the fl oor. “And you think I like being used, Inspector? Just what’s your fantasy about all this? What role have you assigned me?”

“You knew about Stinhurst. About his brother. About his father. That’s why I was sent to Scotland and not someone else.”

“I knew only what I was told. The order to send you north came from the commissioner, through Hillier. Not from me. I didn’t like it any better than you did. But I had no choice in the matter.”

“Indeed,” Lynley replied. “Well, at least I can be grateful that I do have choices. I’m exerting one of them now.”

Webberly’s face flooded with angry colour. But his voice stayed calm. “You’re not thinking straight, lad. Consider a few things before your righteous indignation carries you nobly towards professional martyrdom. I didn’t know a thing about Stinhurst. I still don’t know, so if you care to tell me, I’d be delighted to hear it. All I can tell you is that once Hillier came to me with the order that you were to have the case and no one else, I smelled a dead rat floating in somebody’s soup.”

“Yet you assigned me anyway.”

“Damn you for a fool! I wasn’t given a choice in the matter! But see it for what it was, at least. I assigned Havers as well. You didn’t want her, did you? You fought me on it, didn’t you? So why the hell do you think I insisted she be on the case? Because of all people, I knew Havers would stick to Stinhurst like a tick on a dog if it came down to it. And it came to that, didn’t it? Blast you, answer me! Didn’t it?”

“It did.”

Webberly drove a thick fist into his open palm. “Those sods! I knew they were trying to protect him. I just didn’t know from what.” He fired Lynley a dark look. “But you don’t believe me, I dare say.”

“You’re right. I don’t. You’re not that powerless, sir. You never have been.”

“You’re wrong, lad. I am, when it comes to my job. I do as I’m told. It’s easy to be a man of inflexible rectitude when you’ve the freedom to walk out of here anytime you smell something a little unpleasant. But I don’t have that kind of freedom. No independent source of wealth, no country estate. This job isn’t a lark. It’s my bread and butter. And when I’m given an order, I follow it. As unpleasant as that may seem to you.”

“And if Stinhurst had been the killer? If I’d closed the case without making an arrest?”

“You didn’t do that, did you? I trusted Havers to see that you wouldn’t. And I trusted you. I knew that your instincts would take you to the killer eventually.”

“But they didn’t,” Lynley said. The words cost him dearly in pride, and he wondered why it mattered so much to him that he had been such a fool.

Webberly studied his face. When he spoke, his voice was kind yet still keen with perception. “And that’s why you’re tossing it in, isn’t it, laddie? Not because of me and not because of Stinhurst. And not because some higher-ups saw you as a man they could use to meet their own ends. You’re tossing it in because you made a mistake. You lost your objectivity on this one, didn’t you? You went after the wrong man. So. Welcome to the club, Inspector. You’re not perfect any longer.”

Webberly reached for the warrant card, fi ngered it for a moment before taking it to Lynley. Without formality, he shoved it into the breast pocket of his coat.

“I’m sorry the Stinhurst situation happened,” he said. “I can’t tell you it won’t happen again. But if it does, I should guess you won’t need Sergeant Havers there to remind you that you’re more of a policeman than you ever were a bloody peer.” He turned back to his desk and surveyed its mess. “You’re due time off, Lynley. So take it. Don’t report in till Tuesday.” And then, having said that, he looked up. His words were quiet. “Learning to forgive yourself is part of the job, lad. It’s the only part you’ve never quite mastered.”

HE HEARD the muted shout as he drove up the ramp from the underground car park and pulled onto Broadway. It was fast growing dark. Braking, he looked in the direction of St. James’ Park Station, and among the pedestrians he saw Jeremy Vinney loping down the pavement, topcoat flapping round his knees like the wings of an ungainly bird. As he ran, he waved a spiral notebook. Pages, covered with writing, fluttered in the wind. Lynley lowered the window as Vinney reached the car.

“I’ve done the story on Geoffrey Rintoul,” the journalist panted, managing a smile. “Jesus, what a piece of luck to catch you! I need you to be the source. Off the record. Just to confi rm. That’s all.”

Lynley watched a flurry of snow blow across the street. He recognised a group of secretaries making their end-of-day dash from the Yard to the train, their laughter like music rising into the air.

“There’s no story,” he said.

Vinney’s expression altered. That momentary sharing of confidence was gone. “But you’ve spoken to Stinhurst! You can’t tell me he didn’t confirm every detail of his brother’s past! How could he deny it? With Willingate in the inquest pictures and Joy’s play alluding to everything else? You can’t tell me he talked his way out of that!”

“There’s no story, Mr. Vinney. I’m sorry.” Lynley began to raise the window but stopped when Vinney hooked his fingers over the glass.

“She wanted it!” His voice was a plea. “You know Joy wanted me to follow the story. You know that’s why I was there. She wanted everything about the Rintouls to come to light.”

The case was closed. Her murderer had been found. Yet Vinney pursued his original quest. There was no possibility of a journalistic coup involved for him since the government would quash his story without a thought. Here was loyalty far beyond the call of friendship. Once again, Lynley wondered what lay at its heart, what debt of honour Vinney owed Joy Sinclair.

“Jer! Jerry! For God’s sake, hurry up! Paulie’s waiting and you know he’ll get himself all hot and bothered if we’re late again.”

The second voice drifted from across the street. Delicate, petulant, very nearly feminine. Lynley tracked it down. A young man- no more than twenty years old-stood in the archway leading into the station. He was stamping his feet, shoulders hunched against the cold, and one of the passageway lights illuminated his face. It was achingly handsome, possessing a Renaissance beauty, perfect in feature, in colour, in form. And a Renaissance assessment of such beauty rose in Lynley’s mind, Marlowe’s assessment, as apt now as it had been in the sixteenth century. To hazard more than for the Golden Fleece.

Finally, then, that last puzzle piece clicked into position, so obvious a piece that Lynley wondered what had kept him from placing it before. Joy hadn’t been talking about Vinney on her tape recorder. She had been talking to him, reminding herself of a point she wanted to make in a future conversation with her friend. And here across the street was the source of her concern: “Why be in such a lather over him? It’s hardly a lifetime proposition.”

“Jerry! Jemmy!” the voice wheedled again. The boy spun on one heel, an impatient puppy. He laughed when his overcoat billowed out round his body like a circus clown’s garb.

Lynley moved his eyes back to the journalist. Vinney looked away, not towards the boy but towards Victoria Street.

“Wasn’t it Freud who said there are no accidents?” Vinney’s voice sounded resigned. “I must have wanted you to know, so you’d understand what I meant when I said that Joy and I were always-and only-friends. Call it absolution, I suppose. Perhaps vindication. It makes no difference now.”

“She did know?”

“I had no secrets from her. I don’t think I could have had one if I tried.” Vinney looked deliberately back at the boy. His expression softened. His lips curved in a smile of remarkable tenderness. “We are cursed by love, aren’t we, Inspector? It gives us no peace. We seek it endlessly in a thousand different ways, and if we’re lucky, we do have it for a shuddering instant. And we feel like free men then, don’t we? Even when we bear its most terrible burden.”

“Joy would have understood that, I dare say.”

“God knows. She was the only one in my life who ever did.” His hand dropped from the window. “So I owe her this about the Rintouls, you see. It’s what she would have wanted. The story. The truth.”

Lynley shook his head. “Revenge is what she wanted, Mr. Vinney. And I do think she got that. After a fashion.”

“So that’s the way it’s to be? Can you really let it end this way, Inspector? After what these people have done to you?” He waved in the direction of the building behind them.

“We do things to ourselves,” Lynley replied. He nodded, raised the window, and drove on.

HE WOULD LATER SEE the trip to Skye as a phantasmagorical blur of continually changing countryside that he was only dimly aware of as he flew towards the north. Stopping merely for food and petrol and once for a few hours of rest at an inn somewhere between Carlisle and Glasgow, he arrived at Kyle of Lochalsh, a small village on the mainland across from the Isle of Skye, in the late afternoon the following day.

He pulled into the car park of an hotel on the waterfront and sat gazing at the strait, its rippled surface the colour of old coins. The sun was setting, and on the island the majestic peak of Sgurr na Coinnich looked covered in silver. Far below it, the car ferry pulled away from the dock and began its slow movement towards the mainland, carrying only a lorry, two hikers who hugged one another against the bitter cold, and a slender solitary fi gure whose smooth chestnut hair blew round her face, which was lifted, as if for blessing, to the last rays of the winter sun.

Seeing Helen, Lynley all at once perceived the sheer lunacy of his coming to her now. He knew he was the last person she wanted to see. He knew that she wanted this isolation. Yet none of that mattered as the ferry drew nearer to the mainland and he saw her eyes fall upon the Bentley in the car park above her. He got out, pulled on his overcoat, and walked down to the landing. The wind blew frigidly against him, buffeting his cheeks, whipping through his hair. He tasted the salt of the distant North Atlantic.

When the ferry docked, the lorry started up with a foul emission of smoke, and trundled down the Invergarry road. Arm in arm, the hikers passed him, laughing, a man and a woman who stopped to kiss, then to ponder the opposite shore of Skye. It was hung with clouds, dove grey turning to the lavish hues of sunset.

The drive north from London had given Lynley long hours in which to contemplate what he would say to Helen when he fi nally saw her. But as she stepped from the ferry, brushing her hair from her cheeks, words were lost to him. He wanted only to hold her in his arms and knew beyond a doubt that he did not have that right. Instead, he walked wordlessly at her side up the rise towards the hotel.

They went inside. The lounge was empty, its vast front windows offering a panorama of water and mountains and the sunset-shot clouds of the island. Lady Helen walked to these and stood before them, and although her posture-the slightly bent head, the small curved shoulders-spoke volumes of her desire for solitude, Lynley could not bring himself to leave her with so much left unsaid between them. He joined her and saw the shadows under her eyes, smudges of both sorrow and fatigue. Her arms were crossed in front of her, as if in the need of warmth or protection.

“Why on earth did he kill Gowan? More than anything else, Tommy, that seems so senseless to me.”

Lynley wondered why he had ever given a moment to thinking that Helen, of all people, would greet him with the score of recriminations that he had so steadfastly earned. He had been prepared to hear them, to admit to their truth. Somehow in the confusion of the last few days, he had forgotten the basic human decency that was the central core of Helen’s character. She would put Gowan before herself.

“At Westerbrae, David Sydeham claimed that he’d left his gloves at the reception desk,” he replied, watching her eyes lower thoughtfully, the lashes dark against her creamy skin. “He said he’d left them there when he and Joanna fi rst arrived.”

She nodded in comprehension. “But when Francesca Gerrard ran into Gowan and spilled all those liqueurs that night after the reading, Gowan had to clean the entire area. And he saw that David Sydeham’s gloves weren’t there at all, didn’t he? But he must not have remembered it at once.”

“Yes, I think that’s what happened. At any rate, once Gowan remembered, he would have realised what it meant. The single glove that Sergeant Havers found at the reception desk the next day-and the one that you found in the boot-could have got there only one way: through Sydeham’s putting them there himself, after he killed Joy. I think that’s what Gowan tried to tell me. Just before he died. That he hadn’t seen the gloves at the reception desk. But I…I thought he was talking about Rhys.”

Lynley saw her eyes close painfully upon the name, knew she hadn’t expected to hear it from him.

“How did Sydeham manage it?”

“He was still in the sitting room when Macaskin and the Westerbrae cook came to me and asked if everyone could be allowed out of the library. He slipped into the kitchen then and got the knife.”

“But with everyone in the house? Especially with the police?”

“They’d been packing up to leave. Everyone was wandering here and there. And besides, it was only the work of a minute or two. After that, he went up the back stairs and along to his room.”

Without thinking, Lynley raised his hand, grazed it gently along the length of her hair, following its curve to touch her shoulder. She did not move away from him. He felt his heart beat heavily against his chest.

“I’m so sorry about everything,” he said. “I had to see you to say at least that much, Helen.”

She didn’t look at him. It seemed as if the effort to do so was monumental, as if she found herself unequal to the task. When she spoke, her voice was low and her eyes were fixed on the distant ruin of Caisteal Maol as the sun struck its crumbling walls for the fi nal time that day.

“You were right, Tommy. You said I was trying to replay Simon to a different ending, and I discovered that I was. But it wasn’t a different ending after all, was it? I repeated myself admirably when it came down to it. The only thing missing from the wretched scenario was a hospital room for me to walk out of, leaving him lying there entirely alone.”

No acrimony underscored her tone. But Lynley didn’t need to hear it to know how each word carried its full weight of searing self-loathing. “No,” he said miserably.

“Yes. Rhys knew it was you on the telephone. Was that just two nights ago? It seems like forever. And when I rang off, he asked me if it was you. I said no, I said it was my father. But he knew. And he saw that you’d convinced me that he was the killer. I kept denying it, of course, denying everything. When he asked me if I’d told you he was with me, I even denied that as well. But he knew I was lying. And he saw that I’d chosen, just as he’d told me I’d choose.” She lifted a hand as if to touch her cheek, but again it seemed that it required too much effort. She dropped it to her side. “I didn’t even need to hear a cock crow three times. I knew what I’d done. To both of us.”

Whatever his own desires in coming to her here, Lynley knew he had to convince Lady Helen of his culpability in the sin she believed she had committed. He had to give her that much, if nothing else.

“It isn’t your fault, Helen. You wouldn’t have done any of that had I not forced you into it. What were you to think when I told you about Hannah Darrow? What were you to believe? Whom were you to believe?”

“That’s just it. I could have chosen Rhys in spite of what you said. I knew that then, I know it now. But instead, I chose you. When Rhys saw that, he left me. And who could blame him? Believing one’s lover is a murderer does rather irreparable damage to a relationship, after all.” She finally looked at him, turning, so near that he could smell the pure, fresh scent of her hair. “And until Hampstead, I did think Rhys was the killer.”

“Then why did you warn him off? Was it to punish me?”

“Warn him…? Is that what you thought? No. When he came over the wall, I saw at once it wasn’t Rhys. I…I’d grown to know Rhys’ body, you see. And that man was too big. So without thinking, I reacted. It was horror, I think, the realisation of what I’d done to him, the knowledge that I’d lost him.” Her head turned back to the window, but only for a moment. When she went on, her eyes once again sought his. “At Westerbrae, I’d come to see myself as his saviour, the fine, upright woman who was going to make him whole again after he’d been in ruins. I saw myself as his reason for never drinking again. So you see, you were really right at the heart of it, weren’t you? It was just like Simon after all.”

“No. Helen, I didn’t know what I was talking about. I was half-mad with jealousy.”

“You were right, all the same.”

As they spoke, shadows lengthened in the lounge, and the barman walked through, turning on lights, opening the bar at the far end of the room for its evening business. Voices drifted to them from the reception desk: a crucial decision to be reached about postcards, a good-humoured debate about the next day’s activities. Lynley listened, longing for that sweet normality of a holiday from home with someone he loved.

Lady Helen stirred. “I must change for dinner.” She began to move towards the lift.

“Why did you come here?” Lynley asked abruptly.

She paused but did not look at him. “I wanted to see Skye in the dead of winter. I needed to see what it was like to be here alone.”

He put his hand on her arm. Her warmth was like an infusion of life. “And have you seen enough of it? Alone, I mean.”

Both of them knew what he was really asking. But instead of replying, she walked to the lift and pressed the button, watching its light single-mindedly, as if she were observing an amazing act of creative genius. He followed and barely heard her when she fi nally spoke.

“Please. I can’t bear to cause either of us any more pain.”

Somewhere above them, the machinery whirred. And he knew then that she would go on to her room, seeking the solitude she had come for, leaving him behind. But he saw that she intended this to be no few minutes’ separation between them. Instead, this was something indeterminate, endless, something not to be borne. He knew it was the worst possible time to speak. But there would probably not be another opportunity.

“Helen.” When she looked at him, he saw that her eyes were liquid with tears. “Marry me.”

A small bubble of laughter escaped her, not a sound of humour but one of despair. She made a tiny gesture, eloquent in its futility.

“You know how I love you,” he said. “Don’t tell me it’s too late.”

She bowed her head. In front of her the lift doors opened. As if they beckoned her to do so, she put into words what he had been afraid-and had known-she might say. “I don’t want to see you, Tommy. Not for a while.”

He felt wrenched by the words, managed only, “How long?”

“A few months. Perhaps longer.”

“That feels like a sentence of death.”

“I’m sorry. It’s what I need.” She walked into the lift, pushed the button for her fl oor.

“Even after this, I still can’t bear to hurt you. I never could, Tommy.”

“I love you,” he said. And then again, as if each word could serve as its own painful act of contrition. “Helen. Helen. I love you.”

He saw her lips part, saw her fl eeting, sweet smile before the lift doors closed and she was gone.

BARBARA HAVERS was in the public bar of the King’s Arms not far from New Scotland Yard, moping into her weekly pint of ale. She’d been nursing it along for the past thirty minutes. It was an hour before closing, long after the time when she should have made her way back to her parents and Acton, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to that yet.The paperwork was filed, the reports completed, the conversations with Macaskin at an end for now. But as always, at the conclusion of a case, she had a sense of her own uselessness. People would go on brutalising one another, despite her meagre efforts to stop them.

“Buy a bloke a drink?”

At Lynley’s voice, she looked up. “I thought you’d gone to Skye! Holy God, you look done in.”

He did indeed. Unshaven, his clothes rumpled, he looked like last year’s Christmas wish.

“I am done in,” he admitted, making a pathetically visible effort to smile. “I’ve lost count of the hours I’ve spent in the car over the last few days. What’re you drinking? Not tonic water tonight, I take it?”

“Not tonight. I’ve moved up to Bass. But now you’re here, I may change my poison. Depends on who’s paying.”

“I see.” He took off his overcoat, threw it down carelessly on the next table, and sank into a chair. Feeling in his pocket, he produced cigarette case and lighter. As always she helped herself, regarding him over the flame that he held for her.

“What’s up?” she asked him.

He lit a cigarette. “Nothing.”

“Ah.”

They smoked companionably. He made no move to get himself a drink. She waited.

Then with his eyes on the opposite wall he said, “I’ve asked her to marry me, Barbara.”

It was as she expected. “You don’t exactly look like the bearer of glad tidings.”

“No. I’m not.” Lynley cleared his throat, studying the tip of his cigarette.

Barbara sighed, felt the weighty, sore blanket of his unhappiness, and found to her surprise that she wore it as her own. At the nearby bar Evelyn, the blowsy barmaid, was fi ngering her way, bleary-eyed, through the night’s receipts and doing her best to ignore the leering advances of two of the establishment’s regular patrons. Barbara called out her name.

“Aye?” Evelyn responded with a yawn.

“Bring on two Glenlivets. Neat.” Barbara eyed Lynley and added, “And keep them coming, will you?”

“Sure, luv.”

When they were delivered to the table and Lynley reached for his wallet, Barbara spoke again.

“It’s on me tonight, sir.”

“A celebration, Sergeant?”

“No. A wake.” She tossed back her whisky. It lit her blood like a flame. “Drink up, Inspector. Let’s get ourselves soused.”