Careless in Red (Inspector Lynley, #15)(101)

“Yes,” he said evenly. “As it happens, I do know what you mean.”

She raised her hand to her lips. She had strong-looking hands, sensible hands, a doctor’s hands, with clipped, clean nails. “Oh my God. I am so bloody sorry. I’ve done it again. Sometimes, my mouth goes off.”

“It’s all right.”

“It isn’t. You would have done anything to save her. I’m terribly sorry.”

“No. What you said is perfectly true. In crisis people thrash about, looking for answers, trying to get to a solution. And to them the solution is always what they want and not necessarily what’s actually best for anyone else.”

“Still, I didn’t mean to cause you pain. I don’t ever mean that for anyone, for that matter.”

“Thank you.”

From there he couldn’t see how to get to her lies except to tell a few of his own, which he preferred not to do. Surely, it was up to Bea Hannaford to question Daidre Trahair about her alleged route from Bristol to Polcare Cove. It was up to Bea Hannaford to reveal to Daidre exactly what the police knew about her putative lunch at a pub, and it was up to Bea Hannaford to decide how to utilise that knowledge to force the vet into an admission of whatever it was that she needed to admit.

He used the pause in their conversation to head in another direction. He said lightly, “We started with a governess. Have I told you that? Completely nineteenth century. It only lasted till my sister and I rebelled and put frogs into her bed on Guy Fawkes night. And at that time of year, believe me, frogs weren’t easy to find.”

“Are you saying you actually had a governess as a child? Poor Jane Eyre with no Mr. Rochester to rescue her from a life of servitude, dining in her bedroom alone because she wasn’t upstairs or downstairs either?”

“It wasn’t as bad as that. She dined with us. With the family. We’d begun with a nanny but when it was time for school, the governess came onboard. This was for my older sister and me. By the time my brother was born?he’s ten years younger than I, have I told you??that had all been put to rest.”

“But it’s so…so charmingly antique.” Lynley could hear the laughter in Daidre’s voice.

“Yes, isn’t it? But it was that, boarding school, or the village school where we would mix with the local children.”

“With their ghastly Cornish accents,” Daidre noted.

“The very thing. My father was determined that we would follow in his educational footsteps, which did not lead to the village school. My mother was equally determined we wouldn’t be packed off to boarding school at seven years of age?”

“Wise woman.”

“?so their compromise was a governess until we drove her off with her sanity barely intact. At which point, we did go to the local school, which was what we both wanted anyway. My father must have tested our accents every day, however. It seemed so. God forbid that we should ever sound common.”

“He’s dead now?”

“Years and years.” Lynley ventured a look. She was studying him and he wondered if she was considering the topic of schooling and wondering why they were talking about it. He said, “What about you?” and tried to make it casual, noting his discomfort as he did so. In the past, attempting to work a suspect round to a trap had presented no problem for him.

“Both of my parents are hale and hearty.”

“I meant school,” he said.

“Oh. It was all tediously normal, I’m afraid.”

“In Falmouth, then?”

“Yes. I’m not of the sort of family that packs its children off to boarding school. I went to school in town, with all the riffraff.”

She was caught. It was the moment at which Lynley would have ordinarily sprung the trap, but he knew he could have missed a school somewhere. She could have attended an institution now closed. He found that he wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. He let matters go. They made the rest of the journey to Pengelly Cove in a companionable fashion. He spoke of how a privileged life had led to police work; she spoke of a passion for animals and how that passion had taken her from rescuing hedgehogs, seabirds, songbirds, and ducks to veterinary school and ultimately to the zoo. The only creature from the animal world that she didn’t like, she confessed, was the Canada goose. “They’re taking over the planet,” she declared. “Well, at least they seem to be taking over England.” Her favourite animal she declared to be the otter: freshwater or sea. She wasn’t particular when it came to otters.

In the village of Pengelly Cove, it was a matter of a few minutes in the post office?a single counter in the village’s all-purpose shop?to discover that more than one Kerne lived in the vicinity. They were all the progeny of one Eddie Kerne and his wife, Ann. Kerne maintained a curiosity that he called Eco-House some five miles out of town. Ann worked at the Curlew Inn although the job appeared to be a sinecure at this point since she was aging badly after a stroke some years ago.

“There’s Kernes crawling all over the landscape,” the postmistress told them. She was the lone labourer in the shop, a grey-haired woman of uncertain but clearly advanced years whom they’d come upon in the midst of sewing a tiny button onto a child-size white shirt. She poked her finger with the needle as she worked. She said bloody hell, damn and pardon and then wiped a spot of blood onto her navy cardigan before going on with, “You go outside and shout the name Kerne, ten people on the street’ll look up and say, ‘What?’” She examined the strength of her repair and bit off the thread.