Careless in Red (Inspector Lynley, #15)(118)

“And that’s it?”

“That’s it.”

Lynley looked at her evenly. Her face was a blank, an admirable poker face that might have duped someone who knew her less well than he did. “Am I actually meant to believe that, Barbara?”

“Sir, there’s nothing else to believe.”

They engaged in a stare down. But ultimately there was nothing to be gained. She’d worked with him too long to be intimidated by any implications that might hang upon silence. She said, “By the way, no one ever put your resignation through channels. As far as anyone’s concerned, you’re on compassionate leave. Indefinitely, if that’s what it takes.” She sipped her tea again. “Is that what it takes?”

Lynley looked away from her. Outside, a grey day was framed by the window, and a sprig of the ivy that climbed on this side of the building was blowing against the glass. “I don’t know,” he said. “I think I’m finished with it, Barbara.”

“They’ve posted the job. Not your old one but the one you were in when…You know. Webberly’s job: the detective superintendent’s position. John Stewart’s applying. Others as well. Some from outside and some from within. Stewart’s obviously got the inside track on it, and between you and me, that would be a disaster for everyone if he gets it.”

“It could be worse.”

“No, it couldn’t.” She put her hand on his arm. So rare a gesture it was that he had to look at her. “Come back, sir.”

“I don’t think I can.” He rose then, to distance himself not from her but from the idea of returning to New Scotland Yard. He said, “But why here, in the middle of nowhere? You could be staying in town, which makes far more sense if you’re working with Bea Hannaford.”

“I could ask the same of you, sir.”

“I was brought here the first night. It seemed easiest to stay. It was the closest place.”

“To what?”

“To where the body was found. And why are we turning this into an examination of me? What’s going on?”

“I’ve told you.”

“Not everything.” He studied her evenly. If she’d come to keep a watch over him, which was likely the case, Havers being Havers, there could be only one reason. “What did you learn about Daidre Trahair?” he asked her.

She nodded. “You see? You haven’t lost your touch.” She downed the rest of her tea and held out her cup. He poured her another and put in a packet of sugar and two of the thimbles of milk. She said nothing else until he’d handed the cup back and she’d taken a swig. “A family called Trahair are longtime residents of Falmouth, so that part of her story’s on the up-and-up. The dad sells tyres; he’s got his own company. The mum does mortgages for homes. No primary school records for a kid called Daidre, though. You were right about that. In some cases that might suggest she was sent off to school in the old way: booted out the door when she was five or whatever, home for half terms and the holidays but otherwise unseen and unheard till emerging from the great machine of proper”?she rolled the r to indicate her scorn?“education at eighteen or whatever.”

“Spare me the social commentary,” Lynley said.

“I speak purely from jealous rage, of course,” Havers said. “Nothing I would have liked better than to be packed off to boarding school directly after I learned to blow my nose.”

“Havers…”

“You haven’t lost that tone of martyred patience,” she noted. “C’n I smoke in here, by the way?”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“Just enquiring, sir.” She curved her palm around her teacup. “So while I reckon she could have gone off to primary school, it doesn’t seem likely to me because there she is in the local secondary comprehensive from the time she’s thirteen. Playing field hockey. Excelling at fencing. Singing in the school choir. Mezzo-soprano if that’s of interest.”

“And you’re rejecting the idea of earlier boarding school for what reason?”

“First of all, because it doesn’t make sense. I can see it done the reverse way: primary day school and then boarding school when she was twelve or thirteen. But boarding out through primary school and then returning home for secondary? This is a middle-class family. What middle-class family sends its kids off at that age and then has them back home when they’re thirteen?”

“It’s been known to happen. What’s the second of all?”

“The second of…? Oh. Second of all, there’s no record of her birth. Not a cracker, not a hint. Not in Falmouth, that is.”

Lynley considered the implications of this. He said, “She told me she was born at home.”

“The birth would still have to be registered within forty-two days. And if she was born at home, the midwife would have been there, yes?”

“If her father delivered her…?”

“Did she tell you that? If you and she were exchanging intimate details?”

He glanced at her sharply, but her face betrayed nothing.

“?then wouldn’t that have been an intriguing one to share? Mum doesn’t make it to the hospital for some reason: like it’s a dark and stormy night. Or the car breaks down. The electricity goes out. There’s a maniac loose in the streets. There’s been a military coup that history failed to record. There’s a curfew due to racial rioting. The Vikings, having missed the east coast entirely because you know how Vikings are when it comes to having a decent sense of direction, have emerged from a time warp to invade the south coast of England. Or maybe aliens. They might have landed. But whatever the reason, there they are at home with Mum in labour and Dad boiling water without knowing what he’s supposed to do with it but nature takes its course anyway and out pops a baby girl they call Daidre.” She placed her teacup on the narrow nightstand next to the bed. “Which still doesn’t explain why they wouldn’t have registered the birth.”