Payment in Blood

6

DAVID SYDEHAM did not look like the kind of man to whom a woman of Joanna Ellacourt’s fame and reputation would have stayed married for nearly two decades. Lynley knew the fairy-tale version of their relationship, the sort of romantic drivel that tabloids feed up for their customers to read on the underground during rush-hour commutes. It was fairly standard stuff, how a twenty-nine-year-old midland booking agent-the son of a country cleric-with little more than good looks and unshakeable self-confidence to recommend him, had discovered a nineteen-year-old Nottingham girl doing a tousle-haired Celia in a back-alley theatre; how he persuaded her to throw her lot in with his, rescuing her from the grim working-class environment into which she had been born; how he provided her with drama coaches and voice lessons; how he nurtured her career every step of the way until she emerged, as he had long known she would, the most sought-after actress in the country.

Twenty years later, Sydeham was still handsome enough in a sensual way, but it was a handsomeness gone to seed, a sensuality given sway too often with unfortunate consequences. His skin showed the inchoate signs of dissipation. There was rather too much flesh under his chin and a decided puffiness to his hands and face. Like the other men at Wester-brae, Sydeham had not been given the opportunity to shave that morning, and he looked even the worse for wear because of this. A substantial growth of beard shadowed his face, accenting the deep circles under his heavily lidded eyes. Still, he dressed with a remarkable instinct for making the best of what he had. Although his was the body of a bull, he encased it in jacket, shirt, and trousers that were obviously cut specifically to fit him. They had the look of money, as did his wristwatch and signet ring which fl ashed gold in the fi relight as he took a seat in the sitting room. Not a hard-backed chair, Lynley noted, but a comfortable armchair in the semi-darkness of the room’s periphery.

“I’m not entirely certain that I understand your function here this weekend,” Lynley said as Sergeant Havers closed the door and took her seat at the table.

“Or my function at all?” Sydeham’s face was bland.

It was an interesting point. “If you wish.”

“I manage my wife’s career. I see to her contracts, book her engagements, run interference for her when the pressure mounts. I read her scripts, coach her with her lines, manage her money.” Sydeham appeared to perceive a change in Lynley’s expression. “Yes,” he repeated, “I manage her money. All of it. And there’s quite a bit. She makes it, I invest it. So I’m a kept man, Inspector.” Upon this last remark, he smiled without the slightest trace of humour. His skin seemed thin enough when it came to the superficial inequities in his relationship with his wife.

“How well did you know Joy Sinclair?” Lynley asked.

“Do you mean did I kill her? I’d only met the woman at half past seven. And while Joanna wasn’t altogether happy with the manner in which Joy had taken to revising her play, I generally negotiate improvements with playwrights. I don’t kill them if I don’t like what they’ve written.”

“Why wasn’t your wife happy with the script?”

“All along, Joanna had been suspicious that Joy was attempting to create a vehicle to bring her sister back to the stage. At Joanna’s expense. Joanna’s would be the name that would bring in the audience and the critics, but Irene Sinclair’s performance would be spotlighted for them to see. At least, that was Jo’s fear. And when she saw the revised script, she jumped to conclusions and felt the worst had actually come true.” Sydeham slowly lifted both arms and shoulders. It was a curious, Gallic shrug. “I…we had quite a row about it after the read-through, in fact.”

“What sort of row?”

“The sort of row married couples always have. A look-at-what-you-got-me-into row. Joanna was determined not to go on with the play.”

“And that’s been taken care of rather nicely for her, hasn’t it?” Lynley remarked.

Sydeham’s nostrils flared. “My wife didn’t kill Joy Sinclair, Inspector. Nor, for that matter, did I. Killing Joy would hardly have put an end to our real problem.” He moved his head abruptly from Lynley and Havers, focussing on the table that stood under the sitting-room window and on the silver-framed photographs arrayed on it.

Lynley saw the other man’s remark for the fishing line it was and decided to take the bait. “Your real problem?”

Sydeham’s head swivelled back to them. “Robert Gabriel,” he said broodingly. “Robert bleeding Gabriel.”

Lynley had learned years before that silence was as useful a tool of interrogation as any question he might ask. The attendant tension it nearly always caused was a form of appanage, one of the few benefits to carrying a warrant card from the police. So he said nothing, letting Sydeham simmer himself into further disclosure. Which he did, almost immediately.

“Gabriel’s been after Joanna for years. He fancies himself some kind of cross between Casanova and Lothario, only it never worked with Jo, in spite of all his efforts. She can’t stand the bloke. Never has.”

Lynley was amazed to hear this revelation, considering the reputation Ellacourt and Gabriel had for sizzling across the stage. Evidently, Sydeham recognised this reaction, for he smiled as if in acknowledgement and went on.

“My wife is one hell of an actress, Inspector. She always was. But the truth of the matter is that Gabriel put his hands up her skirt one time too many during Othello last season, and she was through with him. Unfortunately, she didn’t tell me how determined she was never to perform with him again until it was too late. I’d already negotiated the deal with Stinhurst for this new production. And I saw to it personally that Gabriel had a part in it as well.”

“Why?”

“Simple business. Gabriel and Ellacourt have chemistry. People pay to see chemistry. And I thought Joanna could take care of herself well enough if she had to appear with Gabriel again. She did it in Othello, bit him like a shark when he went for tongue during a stage kiss, and laughed like hell about it afterwards. So I didn’t think that one more play with Gabriel would set her off the way it did. Then like a fool, when I found out how absolutely dead set against him she was, I lied to her, told her that Stinhurst had insisted that Gabriel be in the new production. But unfortunately, last night, Gabriel let it out of the bag that I was the one who had wanted him in the play. And that was part of what set Joanna off.”

“And now that it’s certain there’s to be no play?”

Sydeham spoke with ill-concealed impatience. “Joy’s death does nothing to change the fact that Joanna’s still under contract to do a play for Stinhurst. So is Gabriel. And Irene Sinclair, for that matter. So Jo’s working with both of them whether she likes it or not. My guess is that Stinhurst will take them back to London and start putting together another production as soon as he can. So if I wanted to help Joanna-or at least put an end to the anger between us-I’d be orchestrating a quick end to either Stinhurst or Gabriel. Joy’s death put a stop to Joy’s play. Believe me, it didn’t really do a thing to benefi t Joanna.”

“To benefit yourself, perhaps?”

Sydeham gave Lynley a long look of evaluation. “I don’t see how anything that hurts Jo might benefit me, Inspector.”

There was certainly truth to that, Lynley admitted to himself. “When did you last have your gloves with you?”

Sydeham appeared to want to continue their previous discussion. Nonetheless, he answered cooperatively enough. “Yesterday afternoon when we arrived, I think. Francesca asked me to sign the register, and I would have taken my gloves off to do so. Frankly, I don’t know what I did with them after that. I don’t remember putting them back on, but I might have shoved them in the pocket of my coat.”

“That was the last time you saw them? You didn’t miss them?”

“I didn’t need them. Joanna and I didn’t go out again, and I’d no need to put them on in the house. I didn’t even know they were missing until your man brought the one into the library a few minutes ago. The other may be in my coat pocket or even on the reception desk if I left them there. I simply don’t remember.”

“Sergeant?” Lynley nodded towards Havers who got up, left the room, and returned in a moment with the second glove.

“It was on the floor between the wall and the reception desk,” she said and laid it on the table.

All of them gave a moment over to examining the glove. The leather was rich, comfortably worn, and initialled on the inner wrist with the letters DS in intricate scrollwork. The faint scent of saddle soap spoke of a recent cleaning, but no remnants of that preservative clung to seams or to lining.

“Who was in the reception area when you arrived?” Lynley asked.

Sydeham’s face wore the meditative expression of looking back upon an activity that one thinks at the time is unimportant in order, in retrospect, to place persons and events in their correct positions. “Francesca Gerrard,” he said slowly. “Jeremy Vinney came briefl y to the door of the drawing room and said hello.” He paused. He was using his hands as he talked, illustrating each person’s position in the air in front of him in a process of visualisation. “The boy. Gowan was there. Perhaps not immediately, but he’d have had to be eventually since he came for our luggage and showed us up to our room. And…I’m not entirely certain, but I think I may have seen Elizabeth Rintoul, Stinhurst’s daughter, darting into one of the rooms along that corridor off the entrance hall. Someone was down there, at any rate.”

Lynley and Havers exchanged speculative glances. Lynley directed Sydeham’s attention towards the plan of the house which Havers had brought with her into the sitting room. It was spread out on the central table, next to Sydeham’s glove. “Which room?”

Sydeham pushed out of his chair, came to the table, and ran his eyes over the plan. He scrutinised it conscientiously before he replied. “It’s hard to say. I only caught a glimpse, as if she were trying to avoid us. I just assumed it was Elizabeth because she’s peculiar that way. But I should guess this last room.” He pointed to the offi ce.

Lynley considered the implications. The master keys were kept in the offi ce. They were locked in the desk, Macaskin had said. But then he had gone on to say that Gowan Kilbride may have had access to them. If that were the case, the locking of the desk may well have been a casual matter at best, sometimes done and sometimes ignored. And on the day of the arrival of so large a party, surely the desk would have been unlocked, the keys easily accessible to anyone involved in preparing the rooms. Or to anyone at all who knew about the existence of the offi ce: Elizabeth Rintoul, her mother, her father, even Joy Sinclair herself.

“When was the last time you saw Joy?” Lynley asked.

Sydeham shifted restlessly on his feet. He looked as if he wanted to go back to his chair. Lynley decided he wanted him standing.

“A while after the read-through. Perhaps half past eleven. Perhaps later. I wasn’t paying much attention to the time.”

“Where?”

“In the upstairs corridor. She was heading towards her room.” Sydeham looked momentarily uncomfortable but continued. “As I said before, I’d had a row with Joanna over the play. She’d stormed out of the read-through, and I found her in the gallery. We had some fairly nasty words. I don’t much care for rowing with my wife. I was feeling low afterwards, so I was going to the library to fetch myself a bottle of whisky. That’s when I saw Joy.”

“Did you speak to her at all?”

“She didn’t look very much like she wanted to speak to anyone. I just brought the whisky back to my room, had a few drinks, well… maybe four or five. Then I simply slept it off.”

“Where was your wife all this time?”

Sydeham’s eyes drifted to the fi replace. His hands automatically sought the pockets of his grey tweed jacket, perhaps in a fruitless search for cigarettes to still his nerves. Obviously, this was the question he had hoped to avoid answering.

“I don’t know. She’d left the gallery. I don’t know where she went.”

“You don’t know,” Lynley repeated carefully.

“That’s right. Look, I learned a good number of years ago to leave Joanna to herself when she’s in a temper, and she was in a fair one last night. So that’s what I did. I had the drinks. I fell asleep, passed out, call it whatever you want to. I don’t know where she was. All I can say is that when I woke up this morn-ing-when the girl knocked on the door and babbled at us to get dressed and meet in the drawing room-Joanna was in bed beside me.” Sydeham noticed that Havers was writing steadily. “Joanna was upset,” he asserted. “But it was at me. No one else. Things have been…a bit off between us for a while. She wanted to be away from me. She was angry.”

“But she did return to your room last night?”

“Of course she did.”

“What time? In an hour? In two? In three?”

“I don’t know.”

“But surely her movement in the room would have awakened you.”

Sydeham’s voice grew impatient. “Have you ever slept off a binge, Inspector? Pardon the expression, but it would have been like waking the dead.”

Lynley persisted. “You heard nothing? No wind? No voices? Nothing at all?”

“I told you that.”

“Nothing from Joy Sinclair’s room? She was on the other side of yours. It’s hard to believe that a woman could meet her death without making a sound. Or that your own wife could be in and out of the room without your awareness. What other things might have gone on without your knowledge?”

Sydeham looked sharply from Lynley to Havers. “If you’re pinning this on Jo, why not on me as well? I was alone for part of the night, wasn’t I? But that’s a problem for you, isn’t it? Because, saving Stinhurst, so was everyone else.”

Lynley ignored the anger that rode just beneath Sydeham’s words. “Tell me about the library.”

There was no alteration in expression at this sudden, new direction in the questioning. “What about it?”

“Was anyone there when you went for the whisky?”

“Just Gabriel.”

“What was he doing?”

“The same as I was about to. Drinking. Gin by the smell of it. And no doubt hoping for something in a skirt to wander by. Anything in a skirt.”

Lynley picked up on Sydeham’s black tone. “You don’t much like Robert Gabriel. Is it merely because of the advances he’s made towards your wife, or are there other reasons?”

“No one here much likes Gabriel, Inspector. No one anywhere much likes him. He gets by on sufferance because he’s such a bloody good actor. But frankly, it’s a mystery to me why he wasn’t murdered instead of Joy Sinclair. He was certainly asking for it from any number of quarters.”

It was an interesting observation, Lynley thought. But more interesting was the fact that Sydeham had not answered the question.

APPARENTLY, Inspector Macaskin and the Westerbrae cook had decided to carry a burgeoning conflict to the sitting room, and they arrived at the door simultaneously, bearing two disparate messages. Macaskin insisted upon being the first heard, with the white-garbed cook lurking in the background, wringing her hands together as if every wasted moment brought a souffl e closer to perdition in her oven.

Macaskin gave David Sydeham a head-totoe scrutiny as the man moved past him into the hall. “We’ve done all that’s to be done,” he said to Lynley. “Fingerprinted the whole lot. Clyde and Sinclair rooms are sealed off, crimescene men are done. Drains appear clean, by the way. No blood anywhere.”

“A clean kill save for the glove.”

“My man will test that.” Macaskin jerked his head towards the library and went on curtly. “Shall I let them out? Cook says she’s got dinner and they’ve asked for a bit of a wash.”

The request, Lynley saw, was out of character for Macaskin. Giving the reins of an investigation over to another officer was not an accustomed routine for the Scot, and even as he spoke, the tips of his ears grew red against his fi ne, grey hair.

As if she recognised a concealed message within Macaskin’s words, the cook belligerently continued, “Ye canna keep them from fude. ’Tisna richt.” Clearly, it was her expectation that the police modus operandi was to put the entire group on bread and water until the killer was found. “I do hae a bit prepared. They’ve ha nowt but one wee san’wich a’ day, Inspector. Unlike the police,” she nodded meaningfully, “who hae been feeding themsel’ since this mornin’ from what I can tell by lookin’ a’ my kitchen.”

Lynley flipped open his pocket watch, surprised to see that it was half past eight. He couldn’t have been less hungry himself, but since the crime-scene men were finished, there was no further purpose to keeping the group from adequate food and from the relatively restricted, supervised freedom of the house. He nodded his approval.

“Then we’ll be off,” Macaskin said. “I’ll leave Constable Lonan with you and get back myself in the morning. I’ve a man ready to take Stinhurst to the station.”

“Leave him here.”

Macaskin opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, throwing protocol to the wind long enough to say, “As to those scripts, Inspector.”

“I’ll see to it,” Lynley said fi rmly. “Burning evidence isn’t murder. He can be dealt with when the time arrives.” He saw Sergeant Havers move in a recoiling motion, as if she wished to distance herself from what she saw as a poor decision.

For his part, Macaskin seemed to consider arguing the point and decided to let it go. His official good-night comprised the brusque words: “We’ve put your things in the northwest wing. You’re in with St. James. Next to Helen Clyde’s new room.”

Neither the political manoeuvring nor the sleeping arrangements of the police were of interest to the cook, who had remained in the doorway, eager to resolve the culinary dispute that had brought her to the sitting room in the first place. “Twinty minutes, Inspector.” She turned on her heel. “Bey on time.”

It was a fine point of conclusion. And that is how Macaskin used it.

RELEASED at last from their day’s confi nement in the library, most of the group were still in the entrance hall when Lynley asked Joanna Ellacourt to step into the sitting room. His request, made so soon after his interview with her husband, reduced the small cluster of people to breath-holding suspense, as if they were waiting to see how the actress would respond. It was, after all, couched as a request. But none of them were foolish enough to believe that it was an invitation that might be politely rebuffed should Joanna choose to do so.

It looked as if she was considering that as a possibility, however, walking a quick line between outright refusal and hostile cooperation. The latter seemed ascendant, and as she approached the sitting-room door, Joanna gave vent to the umbrage she felt after a day of incarceration by favouring neither Lynley nor Havers with so much as a word before she passed in front of them and took a seat of her own choosing, the ladder-back chair by the fire that Sydeham had avoided and Stinhurst had only reluctantly occupied. Her choice of it was intriguing, revealing either a determination to see the interview through in the most forthright manner possible or a desire to choose a location where the benefits of fi relight playing upon her skin and hair might distract an idle watcher at a crucial moment. Joanna Ellacourt knew how to play to an audience.

Looking at her, Lynley found it hard to believe that she was nearly forty years old. She looked ten years younger, possibly more, and in the forgiving light of the fire that warmed her skin to a translucent gold, Lynley found himself recalling his first sight of François Boucher’s Diana Resting, for the splendid glow of Joanna’s skin was the same, as were the delicate shades of colour across her cheeks and the fragile curve of her ear when she shook her hair back. She was absolutely beautiful, and had her eyes been brown instead of cornfl ower blue, she might herself have posed for Boucher’s painting.

No wonder Gabriel’s been after her, Lynley thought. He offered her a cigarette which she accepted. Her hand closed over his to steady the lighter’s flame with fingers that were long, very cool, flashing several diamond rings. It was a stagey sort of movement, intentionally seductive.

“Why did you argue with your husband last night?” he asked.

Joanna raised a well-shaped eyebrow and spent a moment taking in Sergeant Havers from head to toe, as if in an evaluation of the policewoman’s grubby skirt and sootstained sweater. “Because I’d grown tired of being on the receiving end of Robert Gabriel’s lust for the last six months,” she replied frankly, and paused as if in the expectation of a response- a nod of sympathy, perhaps, or a cluck of disapproval. When it became evident that none was forthcoming, she was forced to continue her story. Which she did, her voice a bit tight. “He had a nice hard-on every night in my last scene in Othello, Inspector. Just about the time he was supposed to smother me, he’d begin squirming about on the bed like a pubescent twelve-year-old who’s just discovered how much fun he can have with that sweet little sausage between his legs. I’d had it with him. I thought David understood as much. But apparently he didn’t. So he arranged a new contract, forcing me to work with Gabriel again.”

“You argued about the new play.”

“We argued about everything. The new play was just part of it.”

“And you objected to Irene Sinclair’s role as well.”

Joanna flicked cigarette ash onto the hearth. “As far as I was concerned, my husband couldn’t have manipulated this affair with more resounding idiocy. He put me in the position of having to fight off Robert Gabriel for the next twelve months at the same time as trying to keep Gabriel’s ex-wife from climbing up my back on the way to her new, superlunary career. I won’t lie to you, Inspector. I’m not at all sorry that this play of Joy’s is fi nished. You may say that’s an open admission of guilt if you like, but I’m not about to sit here and play the mourner over the death of a woman I scarcely knew. I suppose that gives me a motive to kill her, as well. But I can’t help that.”

“Your husband says that you were out of your room for part of last night.”

“So I had the opportunity to do Joy in? Yes, I suppose it looks that way.”

“Where did you go after your row in the gallery?”

“To our room, at fi rst.”

“What time was this?”

“Shortly after eleven, I imagine. But I didn’t stay there. I knew David would be coming back, sorry about it all and eager to make it up in his usual fashion. And I wanted none of it. Or of him. So I went to the music room next to the gallery. There’s an ancient gramophone there and some even more ancient records. I played show tunes. Francesca Gerrard appears to be quite an Ethel Merman fan, by the way.”

“Would someone have heard you?”

“As corroboration, you mean?” She shook her head, apparently unconcerned by the fact that her alibi thus had absolutely no grounds for credibility. “The music room’s off by itself in the northeast corridor. I doubt anyone would have heard. Unless Elizabeth was doing her usual routine, snooping at doors. She seems to excel at it.”

Lynley let that one go by. “Who was in the reception area when you arrived yesterday?”

Joanna fingered a few strands of her fi relit hair. “Aside from Francesca, I don’t recall anyone in particular.” Her brow furrowed thoughtfully. “Except Jeremy Vinney. He came to the drawing room door and said a few words. I do remember that.”

“Curious that Vinney’s presence sticks in your mind.”

“Not at all. Years ago he had a small part in a production I did in Norwich. And I remember thinking when I saw him yesterday that he has about as much stage presence now as he did then. Which is to say he has none. He’s always looked like someone who’s just dropped fifteen lines and can’t think how to ad-lib his way out of the mess. He couldn’t even manage to rhubarb successfully. Poor man. The stage was not his gift, I’m afraid. But then he’s awfully dumpy to play any signifi cant role.”

“What time did you return to your room last night?”

“I’m really not certain, as I didn’t check the time. It’s not the sort of thing one does as a matter of course. I just played records until I was sufficiently cooled off.” She gazed at the fi re. Her unruffled composure altered a degree as she ran a hand along the fine crease in her trousers. “No, that’s not quite true, is it? I wanted to make certain David had time to fall asleep. Face-saving, I suppose, although when I think about it now, why I wanted to give him a chance to save face is beyond me.”

“To save face?” Lynley queried.

Joanna smiled quickly, without apparent cause. It appeared to be a distraction, a way of automatically concentrating an audience’s attention on her beauty rather than the quality of her performance. “David is in the wrong about this entire contract situation with Robert Gabriel, Inspector. And had I come back sooner, he would have wanted to put the anger between us at rest. But…” She looked away again, touching the tip of her tongue to her lips as if in the need to buy time. “I’m sorry. I just don’t think I can tell you after all. Silly of me, isn’t it? I suppose you might even want to arrest me. But there are some things…I know David wouldn’t have told you himself. But I couldn’t go back to our room until he was asleep. I just couldn’t. Please understand.”

Lynley knew she was asking for permission to cease talking, but he said nothing, merely waiting for her to continue. When she did so, she kept her face averted, and she drew on her cigarette several times before crushing it out altogether.

“David would have wanted to make it up. But he hasn’t been able to…for nearly two months now. Oh, he would have tried anyway. He’d have felt he owed me that. And if he failed, everything would have been that much worse between us. So I stayed out of the room until I thought he’d be asleep. Which he was. And I was glad of it.”

This was a fascinating piece of information, to be sure. It made the longevity of the Ellacourt-Sydeham marriage even more diffi cult to understand. As if in recognition of this fact, Joanna Ellacourt spoke again. Her voice became sharp, unclouded by either sentiment or regret.

“David’s my history, Inspector. I’m not ashamed to admit that he made me what I am. For twenty years he’s been my biggest supporter, my biggest critic, my best friend. One doesn’t throw that over simply because life gets a little inconvenient now and again.”

Her final statement declared marital loyalty more eloquently than anything Lynley had ever heard. Nonetheless, it was diffi cult for him to put aside David Sydeham’s evaluation of his wife. She was, indeed, one hell of an actress.

FRANCESCA GERRARD’S bedroom was tucked far away into the corner of the upper northeast corridor, where the hallway narrowed and an old disused harp, covered haphazardly, cast a Quasimodo shadow against the wall. No portraits hung here. No tapestries served as buffers against the cold. Here were no overt illustrations of comfort and security. Only monochromatic plaster, showing the tracery of age like fine webbing, and a paper-thin carpet running along the fl oor.

Casting a hasty look behind her, Elizabeth Rintoul slipped down this hallway and paused at her aunt’s door, listening intently. From the upper west corridor, she could hear the rumble of voices. But from inside the room there was nothing. She tapped her fingernails against the wood, a nervous movement that resembled the pecking of small birds. No one called entrance. She knocked again.

“Aunt Francie?” A whisper was all she was willing to risk. Again there was no response.

She knew her aunt was inside, for she’d seen her walk down this corridor not fi ve minutes past when the police had finally unlocked all their rooms. So she tried the doorknob. It turned, feeling slippery under her sweaty hand.

Inside, the air held a smell of musty pomanders, sweetly suffocating face powder, pungent analgesic, and inexpensive cologne. The room’s furnishings acted as companion pieces to the bleak paucity of decoration in the corridor outside: a narrow bed, a single wardrobe and chest of drawers, a cheval glass that cast strange green reflections, distorted so that foreheads were bulbous and chins were too small.

Her aunt had not always used this as her bedroom. It was only after her husband’s death that she had moved to this part of the house, as if its inconvenience and inelegance were part of the process of mourning him. She appeared to be engaged in that process now, for she was sitting upright on the very edge of the bed, her attention given to a studio photograph of her husband that was hanging on the wall, the room’s sole decoration. It was a solemn picture, not at all the Uncle Phillip that Elizabeth remembered from her childhood, but undeniably the melancholy man he had become. After New Year’s Eve. After Uncle Geoffrey.

Elizabeth shut the door quietly behind her, but as the wood scraped against the strike plate, her aunt gave a choked, mewling gasp. She rose swiftly from the bed and spun, both hands raised in front of her like claws, as if in defence.

Elizabeth stiffened. How a gesture, so simple, could bring everything back, a memory suppressed and believed forgotten. A six-yearold girl, wandering happily out to the stable in Somerset; seeing the kitchen maids squatting to look through a fissure in the building’s stone wall where the mortar had worn away; hearing them whisper to her Come and see some nancy boys, luv; not knowing what it meant but eager-always so pathetically eager-to be friends; bending to the peephole and seeing two stable-boys, their clothes strewn carelessly round a stall, one of them on all fours and the other rearing and plunging and snorting behind him and both of their bodies sheened with a sweat that glistened like oil; frightened and recoiling from the sight only to hear the girls’ stifled laughter. Laughter at her. At her innocence and her blind naïveté. And wanting to strike out at them, to hurt them, to claw at their eyes. With hands just like Aunt Francie’s were now.

“ Elizabeth!” Francesca dropped her arms. Her body sagged. “You startled me, my dear.”

Elizabeth watched her aunt warily, afraid to contend with any other memories that might be stirred by another inadvertent gesture. Francesca, she saw, had begun to make herself ready for dinner when her husband’s picture had drawn her into the reverie that Elizabeth had interrupted. Now she was peering at her reflection in the mirror as she ran a brush through her thinning grey hair. She smiled at Elizabeth, but her lips quivered to belie whatever air of tranquillity she was straining to project.

“As a girl, you know, I got used to looking in the mirror without seeing my own face. People say it can’t be done, but I mastered it. I can do my hair, my make-up, my earrings, anything. And I never have to see how homely I am.”

Elizabeth didn’t bother to offer a soothing denial. Denial was insult, for her aunt spoke the truth. She was homely and had always been so, burdened by a long, horsey face, a preponderance of teeth, and very little chin. Possessing a gangling body, she was all arms, legs, and elbows, the recipient of every genetic curse of the Rintoul family. Elizabeth had often thought that homeliness was the reason her aunt wore so much costume jewellery, as if it might somehow distract one’s attention from the gross misfortunes of her face and body.

“You mustn’t mind, Elizabeth,” Francesca was saying gently. “She means well. She does mean well. You mustn’t mind so awfully much.”

Elizabeth felt her throat close. How well her aunt knew her. How completely she had always understood. “‘Get Mr. Vinney a drink, darling… His glass is almost empty.’” Bitterly, she mimicked her mother’s retiring voice. “I wanted to die. Even with the police. Even with Joy. She can’t stop. She won’t stop. It won’t ever end.”

“She wants your happiness, my dear. She sees it in marriage.”

“Like her own, you mean?” The words tasted like acid.

Her aunt frowned. She put her brush on the chest of drawers, placing her comb neatly across its bristles. “Have I shown you the photographs Gowan gave to me?” she asked brightly, pulling open the top drawer. It squeaked and stuck. “Silly dear boy. He saw a magazine with those before-and-after pictures and decided we’d do a set of the house. Of each room as we renovate it. And then perhaps we’ll display them all in the drawing room when everything’s done. Or perhaps an historian might find them of interest. Or we could always use them to…” She struggled with the drawer, but the wood was swollen with the winter damp.

Elizabeth watched her wordlessly. It was always the way within the circle of the family: unanswered questions, secrets, and withdrawal. They were all conspirators whose collusion insisted upon ignoring the past so that it would go away. Her father, her mother, Uncle Geoffrey, and Granda. And now Aunt Francie. Her loyalties, too, were to the ties of blood.

There was no point in staying in the room any longer. Only one thing needed to be said between them. Elizabeth steadied herself to say it.

“Aunt Francie. Please.”

Francesca looked up. She still held on to the drawer, still pulled at it fruitlessly, without realising that she was only making its inutility even more pronounced.

“I wanted you to know,” Elizabeth said. “You need to know. I…I’m afraid I didn’t manage things properly at all last night.”

Francesca at last dropped her grip on the drawer. “In what way, my dear?”

“It’s just that…she wasn’t alone. She wasn’t even in her room. So I didn’t have a chance to talk to her at all, to give her your message.”

“It doesn’t matter, darling. You did your best, didn’t you? And at any rate, I-”

“No! Please!”

Her aunt’s voice-as always-was warm with compassion, with understanding how it felt to be barren of ability or talent or hope. In the face of this unconditional acceptance, Elizabeth felt the dry choking of fruitless tears. She couldn’t bear to weep-in either sorrow or pain-so she turned and left the room.

“BLUIDY THING!”

Gowan Kilbride had just about reached his point of no return in his ability to survive nonstop aggravation. The situation in the library had been bad enough, but afterwards it had grown worse with the knowledge, neither admitted to nor denied by the girl herself, that Mary Agnes had allowed Robert Gabriel the very liberties that were forbidden to Gowan’s own pleasure. And now, after all that, to be sent to the scullery by Mrs. Gerrard with directions to do something about the bloody boiler that hadn’t worked properly in fifty years…It was beyond a person’s ability to endure.

With a curse, he threw his spanner down onto the floor where it promptly chipped an old tile, bounced once, and slid under the fi ery coils of the infernal water heater.

“Damn! Damn! Damn!” Gowan fumed with rising anger.

He squatted on the floor, poked about with his arm, and immediately burned himself on the metal underside of the boiler.

“Jesus flippin’ Christ!” he howled, throwing himself to one side and staring at the old mechanism as if it were a malevolent, living being. He kicked it viciously, kicked it again.

He thought about Robert Gabriel with Mary Agnes and kicked it a third time, which dislodged one of the rusting pipes. Steaming water began to spray out in a hissing arc.

“Oh hell!” Gowan snapped. “Burn an’ rot an’ worms eat yer insides!”

He grabbed a piece of towelling from the scullery sink and wrapped it round the pipe to grasp it without further damage to himself. Wrestling the piece into inadequate submission, sputtering against the fi ne hot spray that shot against his face and his hair, he lay on his chest. With one hand he forced the pipe back into place, and with the other he sought the spanner that he had dropped, fi nally locating it back against the far wall. He scrabbled against the floor to inch his way closer to the tool. His fingers were mere centimetres from it when suddenly the entire scullery went black, and Gowan realised that on top of everything else, the single light bulb in the room had just burnt out. The only light left came from the boiler itself, a thin useless glow of red that was shining directly into his eyes. It was the fi nal blow.

“Ye shittin’ piece of crile!” he cried. “Ye damn pie-eyed sheemach! Ye veecious piece o’ sussy! Ye-”

And then, with no warning, he knew that he wasn’t alone.

“Who’s there? Cum here an’ help me!”

There was no answer.

“Here! Richt on the fl uir!”

And still no response.

He turned his head, tried and failed to pierce the gloom. He was about to call out again-and louder this time, for the hair on the back of his neck had begun to rise with consternation-when there was a rush of movement in his direction. It sounded as if half a dozen people were storming him at once.

“Hey-”

A blow cut off his voice. A hand gripped his neck and smashed his head to the fl oor. Pain roared through his temples. His fi ngers loosened their hold on the pipe and water shot out directly into his face, blinding him, searing him, scalding his flesh. He struggled wildly to free himself but was shoved savagely onto the burning pipe so that the gush of water entered his clothes, blistering his chest, his stomach, and his legs. His clothing was wool, and it clung to him like a sealant, holding the liquid like acid upon his skin.

“Gaaaa-”

He tried to cry out as agony, terror, and confusion ripped through him. But a knee dropped onto the small of his back, and the hand twined in his hair forced his head to turn and ground his forehead, nose, and chin into the pool of steaming water forming on the tile.

He felt the bridge of his nose crack, felt the skin scrape from his face. And just as he began to understand that his unseen assailant meant to drown him in less than one inch of water, he heard the unmistakable snick of metal on tile.

The knife entered his back a second later.

THE LIGHT switched on again. Quick footsteps climbed the stairs.