Payment In Blood

by Elizabeth George

  “No.”

  “The circumstance of a winter storm?”

  “No!”

  “The man she mentions, John Darrow?”

  Irene’s hair swung out in an arc as she turned her head away. At the sudden movement, Lynley said, “John Darrow. You recognise the name.”

  “Last night at dinner. Joy talked about him. She said something about wining and dining a dreary man called John Darrow.”

  “A new man she’s involved with?”

  “No. No, I don’t think so. Someone—I think it was Lady Stinhurst—had asked her about her new book. And John Darrow came up. Joy was laughing the way she always did, making light of the difficulties she’s been having with the writing, saying something about information she needed and was trying to get. It involved this John Darrow. So I think he’s connected with the book somehow.”

  “Book? Another play, you mean?”

  Irene’s face clouded. “Play? No, you’ve misunderstood, Inspector. Aside from an early play six years ago and the new piece for Lord Stinhurst, my sister didn’t write for the theatre. She wrote books. She used to be a journalist, but then she took up documentary nonfiction. Her books are all about crimes. Real crimes. Murders, mostly. Didn’t you know that?”

  Murders mostly. Real crimes. Of course. Lynley stared at the little tape recorder, hardly daring to believe that the missing piece to the triangular puzzle of motive-means-opportunity would be given to him so easily. But there it was, what he had been seeking, what he had known instinctively he would find. A motive for murder. Still obscure, but merely waiting for the details to flesh it out into a coherent explanation. And the connection was there on the tape as well, in Joy Sinclair’s very last words: “…ask Rhys how best to approach him. He’s good with people.”

  Lynley began replacing Joy’s belongings in the bag, feeling uplifted yet at the same time filled with a hard edge of anger at what had happened here last night, and at the price he was going to have to pay personally to see that justice was done.

  At the door, with Havers already out in the corridor, he was stopped by Irene Sinclair’s last words. She stood near the bed, backed by inoffensive wallpaper and surrounded by a suitable bedroom suite. A comfortable room, a room that took no risks, threw out no challenges, made no demands. She looked trapped within it.

  “Those matches, Inspector,” she said. “Joy didn’t smoke.”

  MARGUERITE RINTOUL, Countess of Stinhurst, switched out the bedroom light. The gesture was not born of a desire to sleep, since she knew very well that sleep would be an impossibility for her. Rather, it was a last vestige of feminine vanity. Darkness hid the tracery of lines that had begun to network and crumple her skin. In it, she felt protected, no longer the plump matron whose once beautiful breasts now hung pendulous inches short of her waist; whose shiny brown hair was the product of weavings and dyes expertly orchestrated by the finest hairdresser in Knightsbridge; whose manicured hands with their softly buffed nails bore the spotting of age and caressed absolutely nothing any longer.

  On the bedside table she placed her novel, laying it down so that its lurid cover lined up precisely with the delicate brass inlay etched against the rosewood. Even in the darkness, the book’s title leered up at her. Savage Summer Passion. So pathetically obvious, she told herself. So useless as well.

  She looked across the room to where her husband sat in an armchair by the window, given over to the night, to the weak starlight that filtered through the clouds, to the amorphous shapes and shadows upon the snow. Lord Stinhurst was fully clothed, as was she, sitting upon the bed, her back against the headboard, a wool blanket thrown across her legs. She was less than ten feet away from him, yet they were separated by a chasm of twenty-five years of secrecy and suppression. It was time to bring it to an end.

  The thought of doing so was paralysing Lady Stinhurst. Every time she felt that the breath she was taking was the breath that would allow her to speak at last, her entire upbringing, her past, her social milieu rose in concert to strangle her. Nothing in her life had ever prepared her for a simple act of confrontation.

  She knew that to speak to her husband now was to risk everything, to step into the unknown, to hazard coming up against the insurmountable wall of his decades of silence. Having tested these waters of communication periodically before, she knew how little might be gained from ner efforts and how horribly her failure would sit upon her shoulders. Still, it was time.

  She swung her legs over the side of the bed. A momentary dizziness took her by surprise when she stood, but it passed quickly enough. She padded across to the window, acutely aware of the deep cold in the room and the nasty tightness in her stomach. Her mouth tasted sour.

  “Stuart.” Lord Stinhurst did not move. His wife chose her words carefully. “You must talk to Elizabeth. You must tell her everything. You must.”

  “According to Joy, she already knows. As did Alec.”

  As always, those last three words fell heavily between them, like blows against Lady Stinhurst’s heart. She could still see him so clearly—alive and sensitive and achingly young, meeting the terrifying end that was destined for Icarus. But burning, not melting, out of the sky. We are not meant to outlive our children, she thought. Not Alec, not now. She had loved her son, loved him instinctively and devotedly, but invoking his memory—like a raw wound in both of them that time had only caused to fester—had always been one of her husband’s ways of putting an end to unpleasant conversations. And it had always worked. But not tonight.

  “She knows about Geoffrey, yes. But she doesn’t know it all. You see, she heard the argument that night. Stuart Elizabeth heard the fighting.” Lady Stinhurst stopped seeking a response from him, seeking some kind of sign that would tell her it was safe to continue. He gave her nothing. She plunged on. “You spoke to Francesca this morning, didn’t you? Did she tell you about her talk with Elizabeth last night? After the read-through?”

  “No.”

  “Then I shall. Elizabeth saw you leave that night, Stuart. Alec and Joy saw you as well. They were all watching from a window upstairs.” Lady Stinhurst felt her voice wavering. But she forced herself to continue. “You know how children are. They see part, hear part, and assume the rest. Darling. Francesca said that Elizabeth believes you killed Geoffrey. Apparently, she’s thought that…since the night it happened.”

  Stinhurst made no reply. Nothing changed about him, not the even flow of his breathing, not his upright posture, not his steady gaze on the frozen grounds of Westerbrae. His wife tentatively put her fingers on his shoulder. He flinched. She dropped her hand.

  “Please. Stuart.” Lady Stinhurst hated herself for the tremor behind her words, but she couldn’t stop them now. “You must tell her the truth. She’s had twenty-five years of believing you’re a murderer! You can’t let it continue. My God, you can’t do that!”

  Stinhurst didn’t look at her. His voice was low. “No.”

  She couldn’t believe him. “You didn’t kill your brother! You weren’t even responsible! You did everything in your power—”

  “How can I destroy the only warm memories Elizabeth has? She has so little, after all. For God’s sake, at least let her keep that.”

  “At the expense of her love for you? No! I won’t have it.”

  “You will.” His voice was implacable, bearing the sort of unquestionable authority that Lady Stinhurst had never once disobeyed. For to disobey was to step out of the role she had been playing her entire life: daughter, wife, mother. And nothing else. As far as she knew, there was only a void beyond the narrow boundaries set up by those who governed her life. Her husband spoke again. “Go to bed. You’re tired. You need to sleep.”

  As always, Lady Stinhurst did as she was told.

  IT WAS PAST TWO in the morning when Inspector Macaskin finally left, with a promise to telephone with the postmortems and the forensic reports as soon as he could. Barbara Havers saw him out and returned to Lynley and St. James in the sitting room
. They were at the table, with the items from Joy Sinclair’s shoulder bag spread out before them. The tape recorder was playing yet another time, Joy’s voice rising and falling with the broken messages that Barbara had long ago memorised. Hearing it now, she realised that the recording had begun to take on the quality of a recurring nightmare, and Lynley the quality of a man obsessed. His were not quantum leaps of intuition in which the misty image of crime-motive-perpetrator took recognisable shape. Rather, they bore the appearance of contrivance, of an attempt to find and assess guilt where only by the wildest stretching of the imagination could it possibly exist. For the first time in that endless harrowing day, Barbara began to feel uneasy. In the long months of their partnership, she had come to realise that, for all his exterior gloss and sophistication, for all his trappings of upper-class splendour that she so mightily despised, Lynley was still the finest DI she had ever worked with. Yet Barbara knew intuitively that the case he was building now was wrong, founded on sand. She sat down and reached restlessly for the book of matches from Joy Sinclair’s bag, brooding upon it.

  It bore a curious imprint, merely three words, Wine’s the Plough, with the apostrophe an inverted pint glass spilling lager. Clever, Barbara thought, the sort of amusing memento one picks up, stuffs into a handbag, and forgets about. But she knew that it was only a matter of time before Lynley would grasp at the matchbook as another piece of evidence affirming Davies-Jones’ guilt. For Irene Sinclair had said that her sister did not smoke. And all of them had seen that Davies-Jones did.

  “We need physical evidence, Tommy,” St. James was saying. “You know as well as I that all this is purest conjecture. Even Davies-Jones’ prints on the key can be explained away by the statement Helen gave us.”

  “I’m aware of that,” Lynley replied. “But we’ll have the forensic report from Strathclyde CID.”

  “Not for several days, at least.”

  Lynley went on as if the other man had not spoken. “I’ve no doubt that some piece of evidence will turn up. A hair, a fibre. You know as well as I how impossible it is to carry off a perfect crime.”

  “But even then, if Davies-Jones was in Joy’s room earlier in the day—and from Gowan’s report, he was—what have you gained by the presence of one of his hairs or a fibre from his coat? Besides, you know as well as I that the crime scene was contaminated by the removal of the body, and there’s not a barrister in the country who won’t know it as well. As far as I’m concerned, it comes back to motive again and again. The evidence is going to be too weak. Only a motive can give it strength.”

  “That’s why I’m going to Hampstead tomorrow. I’ve a feeling that the pieces are lying there, ready to be put together, in Joy Sinclair’s flat.”

  Barbara heard this statement with disbelief. It was beyond consideration that they should leave so soon. “What about Gowan, sir? You’ve forgotten what he tried to tell us. He said he didn’t see someone. And the only person he told me he saw last night was Rhys Davies-Jones. Don’t you think that means he was trying to change his statement?”

  “He didn’t finish the sentence, Havers,” Lynley replied. “He said two words, didn’t see. Didn’t see whom? Didn’t see what? Davies-Jones? The cognac he was supposed to be carrying? He expected to see him with something in his hand because he came out of the library. He expected liquor. A book. But what if he only thought that’s what he saw? What if he realised later that what he saw was something quite different, a murder weapon?”

  “Or what if he didn’t see Davies-Jones at all and that’s what he was trying to tell us? What if he only saw someone else attempting to look like Davies-Jones, perhaps wearing his overcoat? It could have been anyone.”

  Lynley stood abruptly. “Why are you so determined to prove the man is innocent?”

  From his sharp tone, Barbara knew what direction his thoughts were taking. But he wasn’t the only one with a gauntlet to throw down. “Why are you so determined to prove that he’s guilty?”

  Lynley gathered Joy’s belongings. “I’m looking for guilt, Havers. It’s my job. And I believe the guilt lies in Hampstead. Be ready by half past eight.”

  He started for the door. Barbara’s eyes begged St. James to intercede in an area where she knew she could not go, where friendship had stronger ties than the logic and rules that govern a police investigation.

  “Are you certain it’s wise to go back to London tomorrow?” St. James asked slowly. “When you think of the inquest—”

  Lynley turned in the doorway, his face caught by the cavern of shadows in the hall. “Havers and I can’t give professional evidence here in Scotland. Macaskin will handle it. As for the rest of them, we’ll collect their addresses. They’re not about to leave the country when their livelihood’s tied up on the London stage.”

  With that, he was gone. Barbara struggled to find her voice. “I think Webberly’s going to have his head over this. Can’t you stop him?”

  “I can only try to reason with him, Barbara. But Tommy’s no fool. His instincts are sound. If he feels he’s onto something, we can only wait to see what he finds.”

  In spite of St. James’ assurance, Barbara’s mouth was dry. “Can Webberly sack him for this?”

  “I suppose it depends on how it all turns out.”

  Something in his guarded statement told her everything she wanted to know. “You think he’s wrong, don’t you? You think it’s Lord Stinhurst, too. God in heaven, what’s wrong with him? What’s happened to him, Simon?”

  St. James picked up the bottle of whisky. “Helen,” he said simply.

  THE KEY in his hand, Lynley hesitated at Lady Helen’s door. It was half past two. No doubt she would be asleep by now, his intrusion both disruptive and unwelcome. But he needed to see her. And he didn’t lie to himself about the purpose of this visit. It had nothing to do with police work. He knocked once, unlocked the door and went in.

  Lady Helen was on her feet, coming across the room, but she halted when she saw him. He closed the door. He said nothing at first, merely noting the details and striving to understand what they might imply.

  Her bed was undisturbed, its yellow and white counterpane pulled up round the pillows. Her shoes, slim black pumps, were on the floor next to it. They were the only article of clothing that she had removed other than her jewellery: gold earrings, a thin chain, a delicate bracelet on the nightstand. This last object caught his eyes, and for a painful moment he considered how small her wrists were that such a piece could encircle them so easily. There was nothing else to see in the room, save a wardrobe, two chairs, and a dressing table in whose mirror they both were reflected, warily confronting one another like two mortal enemies come upon each other unexpectedly and without sufficient energy or will to do battle again.

  Lynley walked past her to the window. The west wing of the house stretched into the darkness, scattered lights making bright slits against black where curtains were not fully drawn, where others waited, like Helen, for the morning. He closed the curtains.

  “What are you doing?” Her voice was chary.

  “It’s far too cold in here, Helen.” He touched the radiator, felt its ineffective tingle of warmth, and went to the door to speak to the young constable stationed at the top of the stairs. “Would you see if there’s an electric fire somewhere?” Lynley asked him. When the man nodded, he shut the door again and faced her. The distance between them seemed enormous. Hostility thickened the air.

  “Why have you locked me in here, Tommy? Do you expect me to hurt someone?”

  “Of course not. Everyone’s locked in. It’ll be over in the morning.”

  There was a book on the floor next to one of the chairs. Lynley picked it up. It was a murder mystery, he saw, well thumbed through with typical, whimsical Helen-notations in the margins: arrows and exclamation points, underlinings and comments. She was always determined that no author would ever pull the wool over her eyes, convinced that she could solve any literary conundrum far sooner in its pages than co
uld he. Because of this, he’d been the recipient of her discarded, dog-eared books for the better part of a decade. Read this, Tommy darling. You shall never sort it out.

  At the memory’s sudden force, he felt stricken with sorrow, desolate, utterly alone. And what he had come to say would only serve to make the situation worse between them. But he knew he had to speak to her, whatever the cost.

  “Helen, I can’t bear to see you do this to yourself. You’re trying to replay St. James to a different ending. I don’t want you to do it.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. None of this has anything to do with Simon.” Lady Helen remained where she was, across the room from him, as if to step in his direction were to surrender in some way. And she would never do that.

  Lynley thought he saw a small bruise low on her neck where the collar of her teal blouse dipped towards the swell of her breasts. But when she moved her head, the bruise disappeared, a trick of light, a product of unhappy imagination.

  “It does,” he said. “Or haven’t you noticed yet how very much like St. James he is? Even his alcoholism is St. James all over again with a simple difference in disability. Except that this time, you won’t walk out on him, will you? You won’t go gratefully when he tries to send you away.”

  Lady Helen’s head turned from him. Her lips parted, then closed. He saw that she would allow him these moments of castigation, but she would offer no defence. His punishment would be never to know, never to understand completely what had drawn her to the Welshman, to be forced into guesswork that she would never affirm. He accepted this knowledge with rising anguish. Still, he wanted to touch her, feeling desperate for contact, for a moment of her warmth.