A Place of Hiding (Inspector Lynley, #12)(164)

Deborah sifted through all this for a clear understanding: the man, the woman, the boy, the mother, and all the reasons for an accusation. She said, “D’you know the other woman, Stephen?” as China took another anxious step towards him. They were getting somewhere at last, and Deborah gestured to her to keep her from frightening the boy into silence through her desire to get to the bottom of the matter quickly.

“ ’Course I know her. Cynthia Moullin.”

Deborah glanced at China, who shook her head. Deborah said to Stephen, “Cynthia Moullin? Who is she?”

A schoolmate, it turned out. A teenage girl from the College of Further Education.

“But how do you know this?” Deborah asked, and when he rolled his eyes expressively, she saw the truth. “You lost her to Mr. Brouard? Is that it?”

He said, “Where’s that stupid dog?” in answer.

When her brother didn’t pick up the phone on this third successive morning that she’d rung him, Valerie Duffy couldn’t take it any longer. She got in her car and drove to La Corbière once Kevin had set about his work on the estate, once Ruth had finished her breakfast, and once she herself had an hour to spare from her duties in the house. She knew she would not be missed.

The first thing Valerie noticed at the Shell House was the ruin of the front garden, and this frightened her instantly, speaking eloquently as it did of her brother’s temper. Henry was a good man—a supportive brother, a loyal friend, and a loving father to his girls—but he had a fuse that, when lit, burned to the explosive in a matter of seconds. As an adult, she’d never seen his temper in action, but she’d seen the devastation of its display. He’d yet to direct it at a human being, though, and that was what she’d been counting on on the day she’d dropped in, when she’d found him in the house baking the scones his youngest girl loved and told him that her employer and his dear friend Guy Brouard was having regular intercourse with Henry’s oldest daughter.

It had been the only way she knew to put a stop to the affair. Talking to Cynthia hadn’t put even a dent in the machine of their mating. “We’re in love, Aunt Val,” the girl had told her with all the wide-eyed innocence of a virgin recently and pleasurably deflowered. “Haven’t you ever been in love?”

Nothing could convince the girl that men like Guy Brouard didn’t fall in love. Even the knowledge that he was having it off with Ana?s Abbott at the same time as he was enjoying Cynthia made not the slightest difference to the girl. “Oh, we talked about that. He’s got to do it,” Cynthia said.

“Else people might think he was having me.”

“But he is having you! He’s sixty-eight years old! My God, he could be arrested for this.”

“Oh no, Auntie Val. We waited till I was of age.”

“Wai ted...?” Valerie had seen in an instant the years that her brother had worked for Guy Brouard at Le Reposoir, bringing along one of his girls occasionally because it was important to Henry that he spend time with each of them individually, to make up for the fact that their mother had deserted them for life with a rock star whose celestial glow had long since been extinguished.

Cynthia had been the most frequent of her father’s companions. Valerie had thought nothing of this till she’d first seen the looks pass between the girl and Guy Brouard, till she’d noted the casual contact between them—just a hand brushing against an arm—till she’d followed them once and watched and waited and then confronted the girl to learn the worst.

She’d had to tell Henry. There was no other choice when Cynthia couldn’t be talked out of the road she was traveling. And now there were the consequences of telling him, hanging over her like the blade of a guillotine that waits for the signal to be released. She picked her way through the sad debris of the fanciful front garden. Henry’s car was parked to one side of the house, not far from the barn where he made his glass, but the barn itself was shut and locked, so she went to the front door. There she steadied herself for a moment before she knocked.

This was her brother, she told herself. She had nothing to worry about and even less to fear from him. They’d weathered a difficult childhood together in the home of a bitter mother who—like Henry himself in a repetition of history—had been deserted by a faithless spouse. They shared more than blood because of this. They shared memories so powerful that nothing could ever be more important than the way they’d learned to lean upon each other, to parent each other in the physical absence of one genitor and the emotional disappearance of the other. They had made it not matter. They had sworn it would not colour their lives. That they had failed at this was nobody’s fault, and it certainly wasn’t for want of determination and effort. The front door swung open before she could knock, and her brother stood before her with a basket of laundry balanced on his hip. His expression was as black as she’d ever seen it. He said, “Val. What the hell do you want?” after which he stalked to the kitchen, where he’d built a lean-to that served as a laundry room.

She couldn’t help noticing when she followed him that Henry was doing the washing as she herself had taught him. Whites, darks, and bright colours all carefully separated, towels comprising an individual load. He saw her observing him and a look of self-loathing flitted across his face. “Some lessons die hard,” he told her.