Believing the Lie

by Elizabeth George

  “What about a brief encounter? I’m missing you, and I don’t like to miss you. When I miss you, you start preying on my mind. I can’t have that and do my job properly.”

  “A brief encounter would solve that for you?”

  “It would. I have no defence to offer: I enjoy you in bed.”

  “At least you’re forthright.”

  “And I always will be. So have you the time? I can come to you this afternoon— ” She paused and he pictured her checking her diary for a time. When she went on, he knew he’d been right. “Round half past three,” she added. “Can you free yourself then?”

  “I’m not near London, I’m afraid.”

  “Really? Where are you?”

  “Isabelle….” He wondered if she’d been trying to trick him. Dangling the prospect of sex to divert him first and then sweeping in for an inadvertent admission on his part regarding his location. “You know I can’t say.”

  “I know you’ve been instructed by Hillier to keep your mouth shut. I wouldn’t expect that to apply to me. Would it have applied— ” She stopped herself. She said, “Never mind,” and that told him what she’d been on the edge of asking: Would it have applied to your wife? But she wouldn’t say that. They never mentioned Helen because to mention Helen ran the risk of taking their relationship in a direction that led from the purely sexual to an area she’d indicated from the first she had no intention of going. “At any rate, this is ridiculous,” she said. “What does Hillier think I’m going to do with the information?”

  “I don’t expect it’s personal,” he said. “I mean, the fact that he doesn’t want you to know. He doesn’t want anyone to know. To be honest, I never thought to ask him why.”

  “That doesn’t seem like you. Did you want to leave London for some reason?” And then quickly, “Never mind. This is the sort of conversation that can get us in trouble. I’ll speak to you later, Tommy.”

  She rang off. He was left with the mobile in his hand. He put it back in his pocket and continued to the boathouse. Best to keep his mind in the here and now, he thought. Isabelle was right about conversations that could muddy the waters of what was going on between them.

  The boathouse, he found, was kept unlocked. The time of day made its interior darker than it had been on Lynley’s previous visit, so he was glad he’d brought the torch and he switched it on. It was quite cool within: the result of the water, the stones, and the time of year. The air bore the tang of damp wood and algae. He worked his way round to the spot where Ian Cresswell’s scull was tied.

  There, he knelt. He used the torch’s light against the edges of the stones that formed three sides of the gap remaining when the other two had gone into the water. There was little enough to see. Mortar was a rough surface anyway, and years of wear and usage had caused cracks, gouges, and splintered edges in more spots than just this one place. But what he was looking for was an indication of some tool used to ease the process of disintegration along: a chisel, perhaps, a screwdriver, a wedge. Anything would have done the job. Anything would also have left a mark.

  He could see nothing. He realised that a closer examination under full light was going to be necessary, rather hard to pull off if the pretence he was merely a visitor was to be maintained. He also realised that his previous conclusion about the missing stones was now confirmed: They had to get them up and out of the water. The prospect wasn’t a pleasant one. The water wasn’t deep, but it would be frigid.

  He switched off the torch and left the boathouse. He paused and looked out at the lake. No one was on it, and its surface was a perfect plane that reflected the glowing autumnal trees on its shoreline and above them the cloudless sky. He turned from this view and looked in the direction of the house. It was not visible from where he stood although anyone on the path through the plantation of poplars could easily see it. There was, however, another spot from which the boathouse could probably be seen: The top floor and roof of a square tower rose above a rise of land just south of the poplars. This was the folly where Mignon Fairclough lived. She’d not turned up to dinner on the previous night. Perhaps she wouldn’t mind a morning call upon her now.

  The folly was a duplication of the defensive pele towers in the district. It was the sort of structure people had once added to their properties to give them a bit of faux history, although, in the case of Ireleth Hall, faux history had hardly been necessary. Nonetheless, at some point in time the folly had been constructed and now it stood four floors tall, with a crenellated roof that suggested access was available at that level as well. And from the roof the view would be all encompassing, Lynley reckoned. One would be able to see Ireleth Hall, the drive up to it, its grounds, and the lake, as well as the boathouse.

  When he knocked on the door, he heard a woman call out from inside, “What? What?” in some exasperation. He reckoned he was disturbing Mignon in the midst of whatever it was that she did— he hadn’t yet learned her occupation— and he called out, “Miss Fairclough? Sorry. Am I disturbing you?”

  Her answer sounded surprised. “Oh! I thought it was Mother again,” and in a few moments the door swung open to reveal one of Bernard Fairclough’s twin daughters. She was supporting herself on a zimmer frame, a woman who’d taken her diminutive height from her father and not her mother. She was swathed in various robes and gowns that gave her a bit of an artistic flair at the same time as effectively shrouding her body. She was also, Lynley noted, fully made up as if planning to go out sometime during the day. She’d done her hair as well, but she’d chosen a rather childlike style. It was held off her face like Alice in Wonderland with a band of blue ribbon, although unlike Alice’s its colour was dull brown and not blond.

  She said, “You’re the Londoner, I take it. What’re you doing prowling round this morning? I saw you down at the boathouse again.”

  “Did you?” Lynley wondered how she’d managed that. Three flights of stairs with a zimmer frame. He also wondered why she’d managed it. “I was getting some air,” he said. “I saw the tower from the boathouse and came to introduce myself. I expected to meet you at dinner last night.”

  “Not up to it, I’m afraid,” she said. “Still recovering from a bit of surgery.” She looked him over and made no effort to hide her inspection. He thought she was about to say, You’ll do, or ask him to open his mouth for a look at his teeth but instead she said, “You may as well come in.”

  “Am I disturbing you?”

  “I was online but it can wait.” She stepped back from the door.

  Once inside, he could see the entire ground floor at a glance. It comprised a sitting room, a kitchen, and an area for Mignon’s computer. It also seemed to be acting as a storage facility for boxes upon boxes stacked in virtually every open area upon the floor. They were sealed and at first he thought she might be in the process of moving house till a glance told him they were all packages addressed to her, with packing slips encased in plastic upon them.

  The computer, he saw, was on. The screen of its monitor was lit and the format told him she’d been in the midst of reading and responding to e-mails. She saw the direction of his glance and said, “Virtual living. I find it vastly preferable to the real thing.”

  “A modern-day version of pen pals?”

  “Lord no. I’m having quite a torrid affair with a gentleman in the Seychelles. At least that’s where he says he’s from. He also says he’s married and a teacher in a dead-end job. Poor bloke went there for a sense of adventure and ended up finding the only adventure available was on the Internet.” She smiled briefly and insincerely. “Of course, he could be lying about everything since as far as he knows I’m a fashion designer terribly busy with getting ready for my next catwalk show. Last time I was a missionary physician doing noble work in Rwanda and before that… let me see… Oh yes. I was an abused housewife seeking someone to understand my plight. As I said, it’s virtual living. Anything is possible. It’s open season on the truth.”

  “Can’t that sort of
thing backfire?”

  “That’s half the fun. But I’m careful and once they start talking about getting together in one port or another, I end it with a bang.” She moved towards the kitchen, going on to say, “I should offer you coffee or something. I’ve only the instant kind, I’m afraid. Would you like a cup? Or tea? I’ve only bags. I could do you a cup of either.”

  “Coffee is fine. But I hate to trouble you.”

  “Do you indeed? How well-bred of you to say so.” She was out of his line of vision in the kitchen banging about, so he took the opportunity to look round the place. Aside from the plethora of boxes, there was unwashed crockery on most available surfaces. The plates and bowls looked to have been there for some time because when he lifted one, it left a perfect ring beneath it that was untroubled by the dust that formed a fine down elsewhere.

  He moved closer to the computer. She hadn’t been lying, he saw at a glance. God how I know what you mean, she had written. There are times when life gets in the way of what’s really important. In my case, we used to do it every night. And now I’m lucky for once a month. But you should talk to her about it. Really. Of course, I say that and don’t myself talk to James. How I wish. But never mind. What I wish can’t happen. If only, though.

  “We’ve advanced to the point of revealing our miserable marriages,” Mignon said behind him. “Really, it’s incredible. The process is always exactly the same. You think someone along the line would have a bit of imagination when they’re setting about seduction, but they never do. I’ve got the kettle on. Coffee’ll be just a minute. I’ll need you to carry your own cup.”

  Lynley joined her in the kitchen. It was tiny but kitted out with everything one would need. He saw she would have to do some washing up soon, however. There were very few plates left and she was using the last available mug for his coffee. She was having nothing herself. He said, “Wouldn’t you prefer a real relationship?”

  She eyed him. “Like my parents’, perhaps?”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “They seem quite devoted.”

  “Oh yes. They are. Perfectly devoted, entirely compatible, and everything else that goes along with it. Just look at them. Billing and cooing. Did they do that bit for you?”

  “I’m not sure I’d recognise a bill or a coo.”

  “Well, if they didn’t engage in a few rounds of it yesterday, they’ll show you today, I’m sure. Watch for an exchange of looks suggesting deep waters. They’re good at that.”

  “All form and no substance?”

  “I didn’t say that. Devoted was what I said. They’re devoted and compatible, with all the trimmings. I think it’s to do with the fact that my father’s rarely here. It’s quite perfect for them both. Well, for him at least. As for Mother, she doesn’t complain and why should she? As long as she can fish, go to lunch with friends, manage my life, and spend vast amounts of her money on the gardens, I expect her existence is fine. And it is her money. Not Dad’s, by the way, but he’s never minded that as long as he has free use of it. Not what I would want in a marriage but as I don’t want a marriage at all, who am I to judge theirs?”

  The water came to a boil and the kettle clicked off. Mignon set about the exercise of making him a cup of coffee, although she didn’t bother to do it deftly. She spooned in a heap of the instant powder, leaving a trail of it between jar and mug, and when she stirred it, the liquid slopped over the edge of the mug and onto the worktop. She used the same spoon to dig into a sugar bowl, did a bit more slopping, added milk, and slopped some more. She handed over the mug without wiping off the excess coffee and said in what Lynley judged the understatement of the year, “Sorry. I’m not at all domestic.”

  “Nor am I,” he responded. “Thank you.”

  She hobbled back to the sitting room, tossing over her shoulder, “What sort of car is that, by the way?”

  “Car?”

  “That amazing thing you’re driving. I saw it when you arrived yesterday. Quite stylish but it must absolutely swill petrol like a camel at the oasis.”

  “Healey Elliott,” he told her.

  “Never heard of it.” She found a chair unburdened by magazines and boxes. She deposited herself into it with a thud and said to him, “Find a spot. Move anything. It hardly matters.” And as he was searching for a place to sit, “So what were you doing at the boathouse? I saw you there yesterday with my father. What’s the attraction?”

  He made a note about being more careful in his movements. It was appearing that aside from occupying herself with the Internet, Mignon spent her time in observation of what was going on round the property. He said, “I’d thought about taking that scull out on the lake but my natural bent towards sloth got the better of me.”

  “Just as well.” She jerked her head in the general direction of the boathouse. “Last person who used it drowned. I reckoned you were tiptoeing down there to have a look at the scene of the crime.” She chuckled grimly.

  “Crime?” He took a sip of the coffee. It was ghastly.

  “My cousin Ian. Surely you’ve been informed. No?” She told him much of what he already knew, as blithely as she’d told him everything else. He wondered about her general frankness of conversation. In his experience, such commitment to ostensible veracity hid, in reality, a wealth of information.

  Ian Cresswell had definitely been murdered, as far as Mignon was concerned. Her reasoning was that, as far as she knew, people rarely died just because someone else wished them to. To his raised eyebrow upon hearing this, she went on. Her brother Nicholas had had to stumble along in Cousin Ian’s sainted footsteps for most of his life. From the moment dear Ian had arrived from Kenya to take up residence with the Fairclough family upon the death of his mother, it had been Ian this and Ian that and why can’t you be more like Ian? First-class pupil at St. Bees, he was, first-class athlete, first-class nephew to his uncle Bernard, shining star, blue-eyed boy, never put so much as a toenail wrong.

  “I reckoned when he dumped his family and took up with Kaveh, that would open Dad’s eyes to our darling Ian. I’m sure Nicky felt the same. But even deserting his family didn’t do it. And now Kaveh’s working for my mother and who orchestrated that if not Ian, hmm? No, nothing poor Nicky’s done in his life has been enough to shine a light on him that was brighter than the light shone on Ian. And nothing Ian did dimmed his own light in my father’s eyes. It does make one wonder.”

  “About?”

  “All sorts of delicious things.” Her face wore an I’ll-say-no-more expression: saintly and pleased simultaneously.

  “So Nicholas killed him?” Lynley enquired. “I assume he stood to gain somehow.”

  “As to the killing part, personally, I wouldn’t be the least surprised. As to the gaining… Lord knows.” She also seemed to be saying she wouldn’t much blame Nicholas for anything that might have happened to Ian Cresswell, and this, along with her remarks about the man himself, was something that bore looking into. As did, Lynley thought, the terms of Cresswell’s will.

  He said, “It does seem a risky way to go about killing him, though, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Why?”

  “I understand your mother uses the boathouse nearly every day.”

  Mignon straightened in her chair, receiving this news. She said, “And you’re implying…?”

  “That your mother might have been a target for murder, assuming in the first place that someone was targeted for murder at all.”

  “No one would be the least interested in seeing my mother die,” Mignon declared. She felt the need, apparently, to tick off on her fingers every person devoted to her mother, and topping the list was her father again, and all those claims of his devotion to Valerie.

  Lynley thought of Hamlet and ladies protesting too much. He also thought of rich people and what they did with their money and how money bought everything from unwilling silence to reluctant cooperation. But all of this begged the question of what Bernard Fairclough had then intended by coming to London and reques
ting someone to look into the death of his nephew.

  Too clever by half came to mind. Lynley just wasn’t certain where the expression ought to be applied.

  GRANGE-OVER-SANDS

  CUMBRIA

  Manette Fairclough McGhie had long believed there was no one on earth more manipulative than her own sister, but now she had other ideas. Mignon had used a simple accident at Launchy Gill to control their parents for more than thirty years: slip on the boulders too near the waterfall, knock your head, sustain a skull fracture, and my God, you’d think the world had ended. But really, Mignon was nothing at all in comparison to Niamh Cresswell. Mignon used people’s guilt, fear, and anxiety to get what she wanted. But Niamh used her own children. And this, Manette decided, was going to stop.

  So she took the day off from work. She had a good reason, being bruised and sore from Tim’s attack on her on the previous afternoon. But even had he not kicked her kidneys and her spine so savagely, she would have come up with something. Fourteen-year-old boys did not behave as Tim was behaving without good reason. She’d known, of course, that something more serious than confusion over his father’s life choices was behind Tim’s attack on her as well as his placement in Margaret Fox School. She just hadn’t known the reason was his own miserable excuse for a mother.

  Niamh’s home was just outside of Grange-over-Sands, some distance from Great Urswick. It was part of a neat and newish housing estate that curled down a hillside overlooking an estuary in Morecambe Bay. The houses here reflected someone’s taste for things Mediterranean: They were uniformly a blinding white, uniformly trimmed in dark blue, with uniformly simple front gardens heavily given to gravel and shrubbery. They were of various sizes and, true to form, Niamh possessed the largest of them with the best view of the estuary and the wintering birds who domiciled there. This was the home to which Niamh had decamped upon Ian’s desertion of his family. Manette knew from talking to Ian after the divorce that Niamh had been adamant about moving house. Well, who could blame her, really? Manette had thought at the time. The memories within the former home would have been painful, and the woman had two children to care for in the aftermath of the nuclear explosion that had occurred in the centre of her family. She’d have wanted something nice, at least, to help cushion the blow of such a transition in Tim and Gracie’s lives.