Well-Schooled in Murder

by Elizabeth George

  “We can’t go to that zoo,” her mother said. “We can’t see the llamas now, lovey.”

  The telephone startled Deborah St. James out of sleep. It jangled once before being answered hastily in some other part of the house. She reached out automatically, felt the emptiness next to her in the bed, and looked at the clock. It was twenty past three.

  Lying sleeplessly in bed, she had heard Simon’s return shortly after one, had waited in the darkness for him to come to her, finally falling into a restless sleep herself. Now it was apparent that he had not come to bed—or to their room—at all. Nor had he done so on the previous night, using as an excuse that he had worked late in the lab, that he had not wanted to disturb her and thus had slept in the guestroom.

  She felt a dismal emptiness at this second night without him. It left her drifting, growing smaller, more insignificant, more alone. For a moment she lay there trying to feel relief at this division that was keeping him from her. But she could summon only desolation and found in the nighttime telephone call an excuse.

  She reached for her dressing gown and pulled it on as she left the room. The house was quiet, but she could hear her husband’s voice somewhere above her. She climbed towards it.

  By the time she reached the laboratory, he had ended his telephone conversation, and he looked up in surprise when she said his name from the doorway.

  “The phone woke me,” she said by way of explanation. “Is something wrong? Has something happened?” She thought of his family, of all the possibilities. But while he looked grave, he did not look stricken.

  “It was Tommy,” he replied. “Barbara Havers’ father died today.”

  She felt her features cloud. “How awful for her, Simon.” She walked into the room, going to stand next to him at the worktable. On it, he had spread out a police report in preparation for the job of verifying or nullifying its extensive conclusions. It was a piece of work that would take him several weeks, certainly nothing that he had to begin tonight.

  He was distracting himself with his job, distracting himself from having to talk to her. She had wanted it that way. She had clung to the hope that his commitment to his career would keep him so busy that he might simply let her go off on her own and build a separate life from his, so that they might never have to look upon the real heart of the sorrow she had created for them both. Yet now that he appeared to be willing to do just that, she could not endure it, not after what she had seen and recognised on his face when he had looked at the photograph of Tommy two nights ago. She sought something to say to him and found her subject in another’s distress.

  “I’m so sorry. Is there anything we can do for her?”

  “Nothing at the moment. Tommy will let us know. But Barbara’s always been fairly private about her family affairs. So I doubt there’ll be much she’ll let us do.”

  “Yes. Of course.” She reached for the toxicology report, picked it up, and gazed at the jumble of words without comprehension. “Have you been home long? I was asleep. I didn’t hear you come in.” The lie was casual, conversational, certainly no greater sin than any other on her conscience.

  “Two hours.”

  “Ah.”

  There seemed nothing more to say. Polite conversation was difficult enough to maintain during the daylight hours. In the middle of the night, with exhaustion claiming the better part of their ability to communicate with an exchange of mere pleasantries that danced across the surface of meaning, it was impossible. Yet in spite of this, she did not want to leave him, and she didn’t have to analyse where that feeling was coming from. His face two nights ago had revealed to her that he believed in a fiction that she had to lay to rest. There was only one way to do that, only one way to give him back to himself. She wondered if she would be able to do so. It seemed so much easier to muddle on, to hope that somehow they would get through this time and find their way back to each other with no expenditure of emotion or effort. At this moment, however, that kind of convenient conclusion to their troubles seemed unlikely. More, it seemed cowardly. Yet she could not find the words to begin.

  Without apparent reason, her husband began to speak. His eyes on the array of papers and equipment on the worktable, he told her about the case Lynley had been working on. He spoke about Chas Quilter and Cecilia Feld, about Brian Byrne, about Matthew Whateley’s parents and their Hammersmith cottage. He described the school. He talked about a fume cupboard and a claustrophobic chamber above a drying room, about the porter’s lodge and the Headmaster’s study. Deborah listened closely, coming to understand that he was speaking in order to forestall her departure. The realisation gave her hope.

  She listened to everything. One hand rested on the worktable near his. The other played on the satin piping of her dressing gown.

  “Those poor people,” she said when he had concluded. “There’s nothing worse…” She didn’t want to weep any longer. She wanted to put mourning behind her forever, but it wouldn’t recede. She forced herself to confront it. “What can be worse than losing a child?”

  He looked at her then, his face an engraving of doubts and fears. “Losing each other.”

  She felt the dread of speaking but made her way past it. “Is that what’s happened? Have we lost each other?”

  “We seem to have.” He cleared his throat, swallowed. Restless, he reached towards a microscope and adjusted one of its dials. “You know”—his words were light, but the effort this cost him was apparent—“it may very well be my fault, Deborah, not yours. God knows what else that blasted accident may have done to me besides take away the use of my leg.”

  “No.”

  “Or there could be some sort of genetic defect that I’m passing on so that you can’t carry a child full term.”

  “My love. No.”

  “With another man, you might—”

  “Oh, Simon. Don’t.”

  “I’ve had time to do some reading about it. If it is genetic, we can find that out. I’ll have a chromosome study done—a karyotype. After that, we’ll know and can decide what to do. Of course, that would mean I couldn’t be the father of any of our children. But we could find a donor.”

  She couldn’t bear what he was doing to himself. “Is that what you think I want? A child at any cost? Not yours, but just anyone’s?”

  He looked back at her. “No. Not that. Not just anyone’s.”

  It was out then, on the table between them. Even as she wanted to flee from what inevitably had to follow, Deborah still found that she could marvel at the courage it had taken her husband to give his worst fears life. Faced with such unwavering resolution, she was struck to the core by the strength of her love for him.

  “You mean Tommy’s child,” she said.

  “You’ve thought of that, haven’t you?” His question was gentle. Hearing it, Deborah felt she could have borne a bitter accusation better than such a display of understanding. Even though, at the root of it, he did not understand, even though he would never understand unless she told him everything. “It would be natural enough,” he was continuing reasonably, as if the statement did not tear unforgivingly at his heart. “If you’d only married Tommy as he wanted all those years ago, you might have had a child by now.”

  “I’ve not thought of that. I’ve never once thought of how things might have been had I married Tommy.” She stared without seeing at the items on the table, an exercise in summoning up the courage to go on. She knew he didn’t believe her denial. Why should he? What other excuse could there be, save regret or remembrance, for her perusal of her photographs of Tommy?

  Slowly he began to gather together the police report, clipping papers and putting them back into files. She saw that he’d left one of the computer printers on, and she bought time by going to it, shutting it down, and diligently replacing its cover. When she turned back to him, he was watching her from the pool of light shed by the high intensity lamp on the worktable. She herself was in a cavern of shadow. She knew the darkness served to hide what p
layed upon her face.

  “There wasn’t a happily ever after,” she said. Her palms were sticky. Her eyelids stung. “You and I were in love. We married. I wanted your child. It seemed reasonable to assume that everything would fall into place according to my plans. But things didn’t do that. I’m trying to come to terms with the fact that they probably never will. And with the fact that…” She felt her own resistance to saying anything more. Her body seemed to harden. She struggled against its protective refusal to let her speak. “…with the fact that it’s all my fault, really. I did it to myself.”

  He moved on the stool, making a gesture which served to contravene her words. “It’s no one’s fault, Deborah. You can’t cast blame in a situation like this. I don’t understand why you want to.”

  She averted her face, not so that he couldn’t see it, but so that she would not have to see his. Instead, she looked upon the black gaze of the window. Her own reflection dared her to go on.

  Her husband spoke again. “Even if you want to assess blame, as I’ve said, it could just as easily be me as you. That’s why I think we should have some tests. Then if I’m the one—if there’s a genetic problem—we can go from there.” He paused and returned quietly to his earlier theme. “We can find a donor.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “I want your happiness, Deborah.”

  The words were both a torment and a challenge, even though Deborah knew he intended them to be nothing more than an avowal of his love. “At what cost to yourself?”

  He didn’t reply. She turned back to him. He met her gaze with an expression of controlled placidity that was supposed to demonstrate his ability to relinquish the gratification of fathering a child. But his eyes could not carry the burden of the lie.

  “No,” she said softly. “Beloved. No. There’s no need for tests. No need for donors. No need for you to put yourself through any of this. I’m at fault. I know it.”

  “You can’t.”

  “I do.” She remained across the room. It seemed better that way. She didn’t know what he would do when he heard the truth, but she felt certain he wouldn’t want to be near her. “You see…I just didn’t think about it at the time. I was only eighteen.”

  “Eighteen?” he repeated, perplexed. “What are you talking about?”

  “An abortion,” she said. She went no further. She knew she would not have to. He would complete the rest of the story himself.

  She saw him do so quickly. He flinched. His face blanched. He stood abruptly.

  “I couldn’t tell you, Simon,” she whispered. “I couldn’t. It was the only thing you never knew. So many times I wanted to…but I knew what it would do to you…what you would think. And now…Oh God, I’ve destroyed us.”

  “Did he know?” St. James asked numbly. “Does he know now?”

  “I never told him.”

  He took a single step towards her. “Why not? He would have married you, Deborah. He wanted to marry you. What would it have mattered to him if you were pregnant? He wouldn’t have cared. He would have been overjoyed. You would have been giving him exactly what he wanted in the first place. Yourself and an heir. Why didn’t you tell him?”

  “You know why.”

  “I don’t.”

  “It was you.” She broke. “You know it was you.”

  “What do you mean?” he demanded.

  “I loved you. Not Tommy. I loved you. Always. You know that.” Sobs grew, leaving her incapable of speech. Still, she tried. “I thought…it wasn’t real to me then…and you were always…I wanted…you were the only one…Always. But I was alone…and those years when you wouldn’t write to me…So he came to America…You know the rest…I didn’t…he was someone…”

  She heard him move then, heard his uneven footsteps rapidly strike the wooden floor. For a moment she thought he was leaving the room. It was, after all, what she deserved. But then he was next to her, pulling her into his arms.

  “Deborah. God. Deborah.” His hands were in her hair, pressing her head against his shoulder. She felt the forceful pounding of his heart. His words were ragged. “What have I done to you?”

  She could only say, “Nothing. Nothing.”

  He held her fiercely. “I did everything wrong. Everything backwards. And you bore the brunt of it all. My fear, my confusion, my doubt. All of it. For three rotten years. I’m so sorry, my love.” And then again, lifting her face, “My love.”

  “The photograph…”

  “It meant nothing. I know that now. You were looking at the past. That has nothing to do with the future.”

  It took more than a moment for the import of his words to strike her. His hands were on her face, his fingers wiping away her tears. He said her name. It was a shaken whisper.

  Her eyes filled again. “How can you forgive me? How can I ask that of you?”

  “Forgive?” He sounded incredulous. “Deborah, for God’s sake, that was six years ago. You were only eighteen. You were a different person. The past is nothing. Only the present and the future matter. Surely you know that by now.”

  “I don’t see…How can we ever be what we were to each other? How can we go on?”

  He pulled her close. “By going on.”

  A misty rain fell upon the mourners who stood round Jimmy Havers’ coffin in South Ealing Cemetery. A plastic-topped shelter had been set up to protect Sergeant Havers, her mother, and a collection of half a dozen elderly relatives of the deceased, but the rest of the group stood beneath umbrellas. A clergyman was intoning a plea for God’s merciful judgement, his hands holding a Bible to his chest, mud splattering against the hem of his cassock. Lynley tried to concentrate upon the words, but he was distracted by bits and pieces of a whispered conversation behind him.

  “Had to negotiate to get him into South Ealing, don’ you know. Had to buy the plot special. They’ve had it for years. That’s their son in the next grave.”

  “She found him, I hear. Barbie. He’d been dead all day. Her mum was right there and she didn’t even know he was gone.”

  “No surprise to me, that. Batty, her mum is. Has been for ages.”

  “Senile?”

  “Just batty. Can’t be left alone for ten minutes.”

  “Cor. What’s Barbie to do?”

  “Put her away, I’d guess. There has to be some home as will take her.”

  “Not likely to be easy. Just look at the poor thing.”

  It was the first time Lynley had seen Sergeant Havers’ mother. He was still trying to come to terms with the sight of her, and with his own previous reluctance to invade the closed world that was Barbara Havers’ life. He had known Barbara for years, had worked with her closely for the past eighteen months, yet every time she had fended off a circumstance that might have allowed him to know her as more than merely a colleague, he had allowed her to do so with very little protest. It was as if, all along, he had taken the full measure of the secrets she was trying to hide and was only too willing to allow her to go on hiding them indefinitely.

  Her mother had clearly been one of them. Dressed in an overlarge black coat that dangled round her ankles, she clung to Barbara’s arm, smiling, her head cocked to one side. She did not seem to be aware of the funerary rites going on round her. Rather, she cast diffident glances at the group that stood opposite her in a semicircle round the yawning grave, and she whispered to her daughter and stroked her arm. Barbara’s only response was to pat her mother’s hand, although she attended to her briefly by fastening the top button of her coat and brushing away several grey hairs that lay on its collar. That done, she returned her attention to the clergyman. Her face was composed; her eyes rested on the coffin. She appeared to be giving her thoughts to the service.

  Lynley could not. He could ground himself only in the here and now. Prayers for eternity meant less than nothing. He examined the mourners.

  Across the grave, St. James held an umbrella over his wife, while Deborah took further shelter in the curve of his arm. N
ext to them, Superintendent Webberly stood bareheaded in the drizzle, his hands driven into the pockets of his raincoat. Behind him were three other DI’s, and next to them the singular black face of Constable Nkata. The small crowd was dotted with other representatives from the Yard. They were here for Barbara. They had never known her father.

  Beyond them, a woman in pink plastic gloves was digging industriously in an urn at the side of a marble-topped grave. She paid no attention to the service going on, squishing round in galoshes as if she were alone. She only looked up from her employment when a car approached, its tyres slashing through the puddles along the lane behind Lynley that led from the cemetery’s entrance on South Ealing Road. It stopped, motor running. A door opened and shut. The car drove off. Quick footsteps crossed the pavement. Someone had come—quite late—to join the mourners.

  Lynley saw that Havers had descried the newcomer, for her eyes moved from the grave to the back of the group and then immediately, as if inadvertently, to him. She averted her gaze at once, but not quickly enough. He knew Havers. He read her well. He realised who had come. Even had he not drawn this instant conclusion from Havers’ expression, the faces of St. James and Deborah would have told him. No doubt it was they in the first place who had put through the call to Corfu that brought Helen Clyde home.

  And it was Helen who stood at the edge of the crowd. Lynley knew it. He could feel it. He did not even need to turn and see her for verification. He would sense her presence in the very air whenever she was near him, to the end of his life. Two months of her absence had made no change in that. Two decades would not do so.

  The clergyman ended his prayers, stepped back, and watched the attendants lower the casket. When it was settled, Sergeant Havers urged her mother forward a few tottering steps and helped her throw a handful of spring flowers into the grave. Mrs. Havers had been clutching them throughout the service. She had dropped them twice on the way from the chapel. They were bedraggled now, a flutter of stems and petals without definition any longer. They floated out from her hand, were quickly sodden by the rain.