Careless in Red (Inspector Lynley, #15)(100)

“This is so good of you, Thomas, but perhaps I ought to arrange for a glazier?” Daidre had said. She sounded doubtful about his intentions of wielding glass and putty.

“Nonsense. It’s all very straightforward,” he told her.

“Have you…I mean, before this?”

“Many times. Other projects, I mean. As far as windows are concerned, I admit to being something of a virgin. Now…Let’s see what we have.”

What they had was a cottage of two hundred years, possibly older, because Daidre wasn’t sure. She kept meaning to do a history of the place, she told him, but so far she’d not got round to it. She did know it had begun its life as a fishing hut used by a great house near Alsperyl. That house was vanished?its interior long ago destroyed by fire and its stones eventually carted away by locals who used them for everything from building cottages to defining property lines?but as it had dated to 1723, there was every chance that this little building was of a similar age.

This meant, of course, that nothing was straight, including the windows whose frames had been precisely constructed to fit apertures that were themselves without precision. Lynley discovered this to his dismay when he held the glass up to the frame once the debris of the broken window was cleared away. A slight horizontal drop existed, he saw, just enough to make the placement of the glass…something of a challenge.

He should have measured both ends, he realised. He felt his neck grow hot with embarrassment.

“Oh dear,” Daidre said. And then quickly, as if she believed her remark spoke of a lack of confidence, “Well, I’m sure it’s only a matter of?”

“Putty,” he said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“This merely calls for a greater amount of putty at one end. There’s no real problem.”

“Oh that’s lovely,” she said. “That’s good. That’s excellent.” She took herself off to the kitchen at once, murmuring obscurely about brewing tea.

He struggled with the project: the putty, the putty knife, the glass, the placement of the glass, the falling rain that he should have damn well known was going to make the entire enterprise impossible. She stayed in the kitchen. She remained there so long that he drew the conclusion she was not only laughing at his ineptitude but also hiding the fact that she herself could have repaired the window with one hand tied behind her back. After all, she was the woman who’d used him as a mop when it came to darts.

When at last she emerged, he’d managed to get the glass in, but it was obvious that someone with more skill than he was going to have to repair his repair. He admitted as much and apologised. He had to go down to Pengelly Cove, he told her, and if she had the time to accompany him there, he’d make everything up to her with dinner.

“Pengelly Cove? Why?” she asked.

“Police business,” he replied.

“Does DI Hannaford think there are answers in Pengelly Cove? And she’s setting you after them? Why not one of her own policemen?” Daidre asked. When he hesitated about giving her an answer, it took her only a moment to understand. She said, “Ah. So you’re not a suspect any longer. Is that wise of DI Hannaford?”

“What?”

“To dismiss you from suspicion because you’re a cop? Fairly shortsighted, isn’t it?”

“I think she’s had trouble coming up with a motive.”

“I see.” Her voice had altered, and he knew she’d put the rest of it together. If he was no longer a suspect, she still was. She would know that there was a reason for this, and she would probably know why.

He thought she might refuse to go with him, but she didn’t, and he was glad. He was seeking a way to get to the truth of who she was and what she was hiding, and with no easy resources at hand to do this, gaining her trust through companionship did seem the best way.

Miracles proved to be his means of access. They’d driven up from the cove and they were winding through Stowe Wood on their way to the A39 when he asked her if she believed in miracles. At first she frowned at the question. Then she said, “Oh. The Internet paperwork you saw. No, I don’t, actually. But a friend of mine?a colleague at the zoo, the primate keeper, as a matter of fact?is planning a trip for his parents because they believe in miracles and they’re in rather bad need of one at the moment. A miracle, that is, not a trip.”

“That’s very good of you to help him out.” He glanced over at her. Her skin was blotchy. “Your…” What was the colleague to her? he wondered. Your lover, your boyfriend, your erstwhile partner? Why this reaction?

“It’s an act of friendship,” she said, as if he’d asked those questions. “Pancreatic cancer. There’s no real coming back from that diagnosis, but he’s not an old man?Paul says his dad’s only fifty-four?and they want to try everything. I think it’s futile, but who am I to say? So I told him I’d…well, I’d look for the place with the best statistics. Rather silly, isn’t it?”

“Not necessarily.”

“Well, of course it is, Thomas. How does one apply statistics to a place dominated by mysticism and earnest if misplaced belief? If I bathe in these waters, are my chances for a cure better than if I scribbled my request on a scrap of paper and left it at the foot of a marble statue of a saint? What if I kiss the ground in Medjugorje? Or is the best course to stay home and pray to someone on the fast track for a halo? They need miracles to get their sainthood, don’t they? What about that route? It would at least save money that we can’t afford to spend anyway.” She drew a breath and he glanced her way again. She was leaning against the car door, and her face looked rather pinched. “Sorry,” she said. “I do go on. But one so hates to see people divorce themselves from their own common sense because a crisis has arisen. If you know what I mean.”