Careless in Red (Inspector Lynley, #15)(32)

With his foot, Ben closed the door behind him. Dellen stirred. He thought she might speak, but instead she drew the linens up to her face. She pressed them to her nose, taking in Santo’s scent. She was like a mother animal in this, and like an animal she operated on instinct. It had been her appeal from the day he’d met her: both of them adolescents, one of them randy and the other one willing.

All she knew so far was that Santo was dead, that the police had been, that a fall had taken him, and that the fall was during a sea-cliff climb. Ben had got no further than that with the information because she’d said, “A climb?” after which she’d read her husband’s face as she’d long been capable of doing and she’d said, “You did this to him.”

That was it. They’d been standing in the reception area of the old hotel because he’d not managed to get her any farther inside. Upon her return, she’d seen at once that something was wrong and she’d demanded to know, not as a way of deflecting the obvious question of where she herself had been for so many hours?she wouldn’t think anyone actually had a right to know that?but because something was wrong on a much larger scale than curiosity over her whereabouts. He’d tried to get her upstairs to the lounge, but she’d been immovable. So he told her there.

She went for the stairs. She stopped momentarily at the bottom step, and she clutched the railing as if to keep herself upright. Then she climbed.

Now, Ben set the milk-and-sugar tea on the floor near her head. He sat on the edge of Santo’s bed.

She said, “You’re blaming me. You reek of blaming me, Ben.”

“I don’t blame you,” he said. “I don’t know why you’d think that.”

“I think it because we’re here. Casvelyn. That was all about me.”

“No. It was for all of us. I’d had enough of Truro as well. You know that.”

“You would have stayed in Truro forever.”

“That’s not the case, Dellen.”

“And if you’d had enough?which I don’t believe anyway?it hadn’t to do with you. Or Truro. Or any town. I can feel your loathing, Ben. It smells like sewage.”

He said nothing. Outside, a gust of wind hit the side of the building, rattling the windows. A fierce storm was brewing. Ben knew the signs. The wind was onshore. It would bring in heavier rain from the Atlantic. They were not yet out of the season of storms.

“It’s myself,” he said. “We had words. I said some things?”

“Oh, I expect you did. You saint. You bloody saint.”

“There’s nothing saintly about following through. There’s nothing saintly about accepting?”

“That’s not what things were about between you and Santo. Don’t think I don’t know. You’re a real bastard.”

“You know why.” Ben set his mug of tea on the bedside table. Deliberately, then, he switched on the lamp. If she looked at him, he wanted her able to see his face and to read his eyes. He wanted her to know that he spoke the truth. “I told him he needed to take more care. I told him people are real, not toys. I wanted him to see that there’s more to life than seeking pleasure for himself.”

Her voice was scorn. “As if that’s how he lives.”

“You know that it is. He’s good with people. All people. But he can’t let that…that skill of his lead him to do wrong by them or to them. But he doesn’t want to see?”

“Doesn’t? He’s dead, Ben. There is no doesn’t.”

Ben thought she might weep then, but she did not. He said, “There is no shame in teaching one’s children to do right, Dellen.”

“Which means your right, yes? Not his. Yours. He was supposed to be made in your likeness, wasn’t he? But he wasn’t you, Ben. And nothing could make him in your likeness.”

“I know that.” Ben felt the words’ intolerable weight. “Believe me, I know that.”

“You don’t. You didn’t. And you couldn’t cope with it, could you? You had to have him the way you wanted.”

“Dellen, I know I’m to blame. Do you think that I don’t? I’m as much to blame for this as?”

“No!” She rose to her knees. “Do not dare,” she cried. “Don’t bring that back to me just now because if you do, I swear if you do, if you even mention it, if you bring it up, if you try to, if you…” Words seemed to fail her. Suddenly, she reached for the mug he’d placed on the floor and she threw it at him. Hot tea stung his chest; the rim of the mug struck his breastbone. “I hate you,” she said and then louder with each successive word, “I hate you, I hate you. I hate you.”

He dropped off the bed and onto his knees. He grabbed her then. She was still shrieking her hate as he pulled her to him, and she beat on his chest, his face, and his neck before he was able to catch her arms.

“Why didn’t you let him just be who he was? He’s dead and all you ever needed to do was just to let him be. Was that too much? Was that asking too much?”

“Shh,” Ben murmured. He held her; he rocked her; he pressed his fingers to her thick blonde hair. “Dellen,” he said. “Dellen, Dell. We can weep for this. We can. We must.”

“I won’t. Let me go. Let. Me. Go!”