“Something you appear to be disregarding for the moment.”
The boy made a wry face and nodded towards the journals under Lynley’s arm. “About Mum, isn’t it? I’ve read ’m, you see. Dad left the keys one night. I’ve been through ’m all.” He rolled onto the balls of his feet awkwardly, driving one hand into the pocket of his blue jeans. “We don’t talk about it. Don’t think Dad could. But if you catch this bloke, will you let me know?”
Lynley hesitated. The boy spoke again.
“She was my mum, you know. She wasn’t perfect, wasn’t no la-de-da type. But she was my mum all the same. She didn’t do bad to me. And she didn’t kill herself.”
“No. She didn’t that.” Lynley headed for the door. He paused there and thought of a way he might answer the boy’s need. “You watch the papers, Teddy. When we’ve got the man who killed Joy Sinclair, that’ll be the man you want.”
“Will you get him for my mum as well, Inspector?”
Lynley considered lying to save the boy from facing yet another harsh reality. But as he studied his friendly, anxious face, he knew he couldn’t do so. “Not unless he confesses.”
The boy nodded with childish sophistication, although his jaw tightened whitely. He said with deliberate and painful carelessness, “No evidence, I suppose.”
“No evidence. But it’s the same man, Teddy. Believe me.”
The boy turned back to the television. “I remember her a bit, is all.” He fiddled with a knob without turning on the set. “Do get him,” he said in a low voice.
RATHER THAN stop in Mildenhall and run the risk of wasting time finding no public library, Lynley drove on to Newmarket where he knew there would be one. Once there, however, he spent twenty minutes fighting his way through the late afternoon traffic until he found the building he was looking for at a quarter past five. He parked illegally, left his police identification in plain sight propped against the steering wheel, and hoped for the best. Concerned that it had begun to snow, knowing that every moment was precious as a result of this, he dashed up the steps into the library, with the Norwich theatre programme folded into a pocket of his overcoat.
The building smelled powerfully of beeswax, old paper, and a central heating system that was sadly overworked. It was a place of high windows, dark bookcases, brass table lamps fitted out with tiny white shades, and an enormous U-shaped circulation desk behind which a well-tailored man in large spectacles pumped information into a computer. This last looked gratingly out-of-place in the otherwise antique environment. But at least it made no noise.
Lynley strode to the card catalogue and hunted through it for Chekhov. Within five minutes he was sitting down at one of the long, battle-worn tables with a copy of The Three Sisters opened in front of him. He began scanning it, at first reading only the first line of each speech. Midway through the play, however, he realised that, from the length of the speeches and the way the suicide note had been torn, what Hannah had written might well have come from the middle of a speech. He began again, more slowly, yet all the while anxiously aware of the bad weather outside that would impede the flow of traffic to London, aware of the time that was passing and what might be happening in the city while he was gone. It took him nearly thirty minutes to find the speech, ten pages into act 4. He read the words once, then a second time to make sure.
What trifles, what silly little things in life will suddenly for no reason at all, take on meaning. You laugh at them just as you’ve always done, consider them trivial, and yet you go on, and you feel that you haven’t the power to stop. Oh, let’s not talk about that! I feel elated, I see these fir trees, these maples and birches, as if for the first time, and they all gaze at me with curiosity and expectation. What beautiful trees and, in fact, how beautiful life ought to be with them! I must go, it’s time…There’s a tree that’s dead, but it goes on swaying in the wind with the others. So it seems to me that if I die, I’ll still have a part in life, one way or another. Good-bye, my darling…The papers you gave me are on my table under the calendar.
The speaker had not been one of the women, as Lynley had originally supposed, but one of the men. Baron Tuzenbach, speaking to Irina in the final moments of the play. Lynley pulled the Norwich programme out of his pocket, opened it to the cast, ran his finger down the page and found what he had dreaded—and hoped—to see. Rhys Davies-Jones had indeed played Tuzenbach to Joanna Ellacourt’s Irina, Jeremy Vinney’s Ferapont, and Robert Gabriel’s Andrei in that winter of 1973.
It was, at last, the verification he had sought. For what better man to know how a set of lines could be used than the man who had said them night after night? The man Helen trusted. The man she loved and believed to be innocent.
Lynley shelved the book and went in search of a telephone.
15
FOR THE ENTIRE DAY, Lady Helen had known that she should have felt exultant. After all, they had done what she had been determined they should do. They had proven Tommy wrong. Through their explorations into Lord Stinhurst’s background, they had proven nearly every suspicion against Rhys Davies-Jones in the deaths of Joy Sinclair and Gowan Kilbride to be without merit. They had, in doing so, altered the entire direction of the case. So when Sergeant Havers telephoned St. James at noon with the information that Stinhurst had been brought in for interrogation, that he had admitted to the truth about his brother’s involvement with the Soviets, Lady Helen knew that she should have been swept up in a tide of jubilation.
Shortly after two, she had left St. James’ house, had spent the remainder of the day in preparation for her evening with Rhys, an evening that would be one of loving celebration. She had prowled the streets of Knightsbridge for hours, in search of the perfect sartorial accompaniment to her mood. Except that soon enough she found that she wasn’t at all sure of her mood. She wasn’t sure of anything.
She told herself at first that the welter she was in arose from the fact that Stinhurst had admitted to nothing in the deaths of Joy Sinclair and Gowan Kilbride. But she knew she could not hold on to that lie for long. For if Strathclyde CID were able to turn up a hair, a spot of blood, or a latent fingerprint to tie the Scotland deaths to Stinhurst, she would then have to face what was really at the centre of her turmoil today. And at the centre was not an argument over one man’s guilt and another man’s innocence. At the centre was Tommy, his despairing face, his final words to her last night.
Yet she knew quite distinctly that whatever pain Tommy felt couldn’t be allowed to matter to her now. For Rhys was innocent. Innocent. And she had clung so tenaciously to that belief for the past four days that she could not let it go long enough to think of anything else, could not let herself be turned in any other direction but his. She wanted Rhys cleared completely in everyone’s eyes, wanted him to be seen for what he truly was—and seen by everyone, not just by her.
It was after seven when her taxi drew up to her flat on Onslow Square. Snow was falling heavily, wave after silent wave of it drifting from the east into soft piles along the iron fence that bordered the green at the centre of the square. When Lady Helen stepped into the frosty air and felt the sweet sting of flakes against her cheeks and eyelashes, she spent a moment admiring the change that fresh snow always brought to the city. Then, shivering, she scooped up her packages and ran up the tiled front steps of the building that housed her flat. She fumbled in her handbag for her keys, but before she could find them the door was swung open by her maid, who drew her inside hastily.
Caroline Shepherd had been with Lady Helen for the past three years, and although she was five years younger than her employer, she was passionately devoted to Lady Helen’s every interest, so she minced no words when the cold night air caught at her cloud of black hair as she slammed the door home. “Thank God! I’ve been that worried about you. Do you know it’s gone seven and Lord Asherton’s been ringing again and again and again this past hour? And Mr. St. James as well. And that lady sergeant from Scotland Yard. And Mr. Davies-Jones has been here the
se last forty minutes waiting for you in the drawing room.”
Lady Helen dimly heard it all but acknowledged only the last. She handed her packages over to the younger woman as they hurried up the stairs. “Lord, am I really as late as that? Rhys must wonder what’s become of me. And it’s your evening off, isn’t it? I am sorry, Caroline. Have I made you dreadfully late? Are you seeing Denton tonight? Will he forgive me?”
Caroline smiled. “He’ll see his way to that if I encourage him proper. I’ll just pop these in your room and be on my way.”
Lady Helen and Caroline occupied the largest flat in the building, seven rooms on the first floor with a large drawing room that overlooked the square below. Here, the curtains were undrawn, and Rhys Davies-Jones stood at the French doors that spilled light onto a small balcony crusted with snow. He turned when Lady Helen entered.
“They’ve had Stinhurst at Scotland Yard for most of the day,” he said, his brow furrowed.
She hesitated at the door. “Yes. I know.”
“Do they actually think…I can’t believe that, Helen. I’ve known Stuart for years. He couldn’t have…”
She swiftly crossed the room to him. “You’ve known all these people for years, haven’t you, Rhys? Yet one of them did kill her. One of them killed Gowan.”
“But Stuart? No. I can’t…Good God, why?” he asked fiercely.
The room’s lighting placed part of his body in shadow, so she could not see him distinctly, but she could hear in his voice the insistent plea for trust. And she did indeed trust him—she knew that without a doubt. But even so, she couldn’t bring herself to delineate for him all the details of Stinhurst’s family and background. For doing that would ultimately reveal Lynley’s humiliation, all the errors in judgement he had made over the past few days, and for the sake of the long friendship she had shared with Lynley—no matter that it might well be dead between them now—she found that she could not bear to expose him to the possibility of anyone’s derision, deserved or not.
“I’ve thought about you all day,” she answered simply, laying her hand on his arm. “Tommy knows you’re innocent. I’ve always known that. And we’re here together now. What else really matters at the heart of it?”
She felt the change in his body even as she spoke. His tension dissolved. He reached for her, his face melting, warming with his lovely smile. “Oh God, nothing. Nothing at all, Helen. Only you and I.” He pulled her to him, kissing her, whispering only the single word love. No matter the horrors of the past few days. They were over now. It was time for going on. He drew her away from the windows to the couch that sat in front of a low fire at the opposite end of the room. Pulling her down next to him, he kissed her again, with more assurance, with a rising passion that kindled her own. After a long while, he lifted his head and ran his fingers in a feather-like touch along the line of her jaw and across her neck.
“This is madness, Helen. I’ve come to take you to dinner and I find that all I can manage to think about is taking you to bed. At once, I’m rather ashamed to admit. We’d best be off before I lose interest in dinner altogether.”
She lifted a hand to his cheek, smiling fondly when she felt its heat.
At her gesture, he murmured, bent to her again, his fingers working loose the buttons of her blouse. Then his mouth moved warmly against her bare throat and shoulders. His fingers brushed against her breasts. “I love you,” he whispered and sought her mouth again.
The telephone rang shrilly.
They jumped apart as if an intruder were present, staring at each other guiltily as the telephone went unanswered. It made its way through four jarring double rings before Lady Helen realised that Caroline, already two hours behind schedule on her free evening, had left the flat. They were entirely alone.
Her heart still pounding, she went into the hallway and lifted the receiver on its ninth ring.
“Helen. Thank God. Thank God. Is Davies-Jones with you?”
It was Lynley.
HIS VOICE was tightly strung with such unmistakable anxiety that Lady Helen froze. Her mind felt numb. “What is it? Where are you?” She knew she was whispering without even intending to do so.
“In a call box near Bishop’s Stortford. There’s a bloody great wreck on the M11 and every back road I’ve tried has been done in by the snow. I can’t think how long it’s going to take me to get back to London. Has Havers spoken to you yet? Have you heard from St. James? Damn it all, you’ve not answered me. Is Davies-Jones with you?”
“I’ve only just got home. What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Just answer me. Is he with you?”
In the drawing room, Rhys was still on the couch, but leaning towards the fire, watching the last of the flames. Lady Helen could see the play of light and shadow on the planes of his face and in his curly hair. But she couldn’t speak. Something in Lynley’s voice warned her off.
He began to talk rapidly, driving the words home to her with the strength of a terrifying, passionate conviction.
“Listen to me, Helen. There was a girl. Hannah Darrow. He met her when he was in The Three Sisters in Norwich in late January of 1973. They had an affair. She was married, with a baby. She planned to leave her husband and child to take up a life with Davies-Jones. He convinced her that she was going to audition for the stage and she practised a part he chose for her, believing that after her audition she would run off with him to London. But the night they were to leave, he murdered her, Helen. And then he hanged her from a hook in the ceiling of a mill. It looked like a suicide.”
She managed only a whisper. “No. Stinhurst—”
“Joy’s death had nothing at all to do with Stinhurst! She was planning to write about Hannah Darrow. It was to be her new book. But she made the mistake of telling Davies-Jones about it. She phoned him in Wales. The tape recorder in her purse even had a message to herself, Helen, reminding her to ask Davies-Jones how to handle John Darrow, Hannah’s husband. So don’t you see? He knew all along that Joy was writing this book. He knew as early as last month. So he suggested to Joy that you be given the room right next to her, to make sure he had access. Now for the love of God, I’ve had men out looking for him since six o’clock. Tell me if he’s with you, Helen!”
Every force within her joined in conjunction to prevent her from speaking. Her eyes burned, her throat closed, her stomach tightened like a vise. And although she fought against the vivid memory, she heard Rhys’ voice clearly, those words of condemnation spoken so easily to her at Westerbrae. I’d been doing a winter’s season round Norfolk and Suffolk…when I got back to London she was gone.
“Hannah Darrow left a diary,” Lynley was saying desperately. “She left the programme from the play. I’ve seen them both. I’ve read it all. Helen, please, darling, I’m telling you the truth!”
Dimly, Lady Helen saw Rhys get up, saw him go to the fire, saw him pick up the poker. He glanced in her direction. His face was grave. No! It was impossible, absurd. She was in no danger. Not from Rhys, never from Rhys. He wasn’t a murderer. He had not killed his cousin. He couldn’t kill anyone. But Tommy was still speaking. Even as Rhys began to move.
“He arranged for her to copy a scene from the play in her own writing and then he used part of what she’d copied as the suicide note. But the words…they were from one of his own speeches in the play. It was Tuzenbach. He was Tuzenbach. He’s killed three people, Helen. Gowan died in my arms. For the love of God, answer me! Tell me! Now!”
Her lips formed the hateful word in spite of her resolve. She heard herself say it. “Yes.”
“He’s there?”
Again. “Yes.”
“Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
“Oh God. Caroline’s out?”
It was easy, so easy. Such a simple word. “Yes.”
And as Lynley continued to speak, Rhys turned back to the fire, poked at it, added another log, returned to the couch. Watching him, understanding the implications of what she had just d
one, of the choice she had made, Lady Helen felt tears sting at the back of her eyes, felt the constriction in her throat, and knew that she was lost.
“Listen to me carefully, Helen. I want to put a tail on him until we get the final forensic report from Strathclyde CID. I could bring him in before then, but all it would amount to is another go-round with nothing to show. So I shall phone the Met now. They’ll send a constable, but it may take as long as twenty minutes. Can you keep him with you for a while? Do you feel safe enough with him to do that?”
She battled against despair. She could not speak.
Lynley’s own voice was torn. “Helen! Answer me! Can you manage twenty minutes with him? Can you? For God’s sake—”
Her lips were stiff, dry. “I can manage that. Easily.”
For a moment, she heard nothing more, as if Lynley were evaluating the exact nature of her response. Then he asked sharply: “What does he expect from you tonight?”
She didn’t reply.
“Answer me! Has he come to take you to bed?” When still she said nothing, he cried, “Helen! Please!”
She heard herself whisper hopelessly, “Well, that should take up your twenty minutes nicely, shouldn’t it?”
He was shouting, “No! Helen! Don’t—” when she hung up the phone.
SHE STOOD with her head bent, struggling for composure. Even now, he was placing his call to Scotland Yard. Even now the twenty minutes had begun.
Odd, she thought, that she felt no fear. Her heart throbbed in her ears, her throat was dry. But she was not afraid. She was alone in the flat with a killer, with Tommy miles away, with a snowstorm sealing off easy escape. But she was not at all afraid. And it came to her, as hot tears seared and demanded release, that she was not afraid because she no longer cared. Nothing mattered any longer, least of all whether she lived or died.
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