A Place of Hiding (Inspector Lynley, #12)(166)

Those were the fateful words: if you don’t do something. The affair was now over, and she was desperate to know what that something had been. Henry looked at her long after he had spoken, with the way I want to ringing between them like the bells of St. Martin’s Church. Valerie raised her hand to her lips and pressed them back against her teeth as if this gesture could stop her from saying what she was thinking, what she most feared.

Henry read her as easily as he’d always done. He gave her a look from head to toe. He said, “Got the guilts, Val? Not to worry, girl.”

Her relieved, “Oh Harry, thank God, because I—” was cut short when her brother completed his confession.

“You weren’t the only one to tell me about them.”





Chapter 22


Ruth entered her brother’s bedroom for the first time since his death. The moment had come, she decided, to sort through his clothes. Not so much because anything made this an immediate necessity, but because sorting through his clothes afforded her employment, which was what she wanted. She wanted to do something related to Guy, something that would put her close enough to feel his comforting presence but at the same time keep her distant enough to prevent her from learning anything more about the many ways in which he’d deceived her. She went to the wardrobe and removed his favourite tweed jacket from its hanger. Taking a moment to absorb the familiar scent of his shaving lotion, she slid her hand into each pocket in turn, emptying them of a handkerchief, a roll of breath mints, a biro, and a piece of paper torn from a small spiral notebook, its ragged edges still intact. This last was folded into a tiny square, which Ruth unfolded. C + G = n 4ever! had been written upon it in an unmistakably adolescent hand. Ruth hastily crumpled the paper in her fist and found herself looking left and right as if someone might have been watching her, some avenging angel seeking the sort of proof she herself had just stumbled upon.

Not that she required proof at this point. Not that she had ever required it. One didn’t need proof for what one knew was a monstrous fact because one had actually seen the truth of it before one’s eyes...Ruth experienced the same kind of sickness that had hit her on the day she’d returned unexpectedly early from her Samaritans meeting. She’d not yet had a diagnosis for her pain. Calling it arthritis, she’d been dosing herself with aspirin and hoping for the best. But on this day, the intensity of the aching made her useless for anything other than getting herself home and getting herself supine on her bed. So she’d left the meeting long before its conclusion and she’d driven back to Le Reposoir. Climbing the stairs took an effort: her will against the reality of her weakness. She won that battle and staggered along the corridor to her bedroom, next to Guy’s. She had her hand on the doorknob when she heard the laughter. Then a girl’s voice cried out, “Guy, don’t! That tickles!”

Ruth stood like salt because she knew that voice and because she knew it, she didn’t move from her door. She couldn’t move because she couldn’t believe. For that reason, she told herself there was probably a very simple explanation for what her brother was doing in his bedroom with a teenager.

Had she quickly removed herself from the corridor, she might have been able to cling to that belief. But before she could even think about making herself scarce, her brother’s bedroom door opened. Guy came out, shrugging a dressing gown over his naked body as he said into the room,

“I’ll use one of Ruth’s scarves, then. You’ll love it.”

He turned and saw his sister. To his credit—to his one and only credit—his cheeks went from flushed to waxen in an instant. Ruth took a step towards him, but he grabbed the knob of the door and pulled it shut. Behind it, Cynthia Moullin called out, “What’s going on? Guy?” while Guy and his sister faced each other.

Ruth said, “Step away, frère, ” as Guy said hoarsely, “Good God, Ruth. Why are you home?”

She said, “To see, I suppose,” and she shouldered past him to reach the door.

He didn’t try to stop her, and she wondered at that now. It was almost as if he’d wanted her to see everything: the girl on the bed—slender, beautiful, naked, fresh, and so unused—and the tassel he’d been teasing her with, left on her thigh, where he’d last been applying it. She’d said, “Get dressed,” to Cynthia Moullin.

“I don’t think I will” was the girl’s reply.

They’d stayed there, the three of them, actors waiting for a cue that did not come: Guy by the door, Ruth near the wardrobe, the girl on the bed. Cynthia looked at Guy and raised an eyebrow, and Ruth had wondered how any adolescent caught in this kind of situation could possibly look so sure of what would happen next.

Guy said, “Ruth.”

Ruth said, “No.” And to the girl, “Get dressed and get out of this house. If your father could see you—”

Which was as far as she got because Guy came to her then and put his arm round her shoulders. He said her name again. Then quietly—and incredibly—into her ear, “We want to be alone right now, Ruthie, if you don’t mind. Obviously, we didn’t know you’d come home.”

It was the absolute rationality of Guy’s statement in circumstances where rationality was least expected that propelled Ruth out of the room. She went into the corridor, and Guy murmured, “We’ll talk later” as he shut the door. Before it closed completely, Ruth heard him say to the girl,