Careless in Red (Inspector Lynley, #15)(56)
She said, “You want to, so do it. I’m not holding you here. I’ve never held you.”
He murmured, “Shhh, now. Put this on,” and he slid arms through the straps of her bra. She was no help to him, despite his encouragement. He was forced to cup her heavy breasts in his hands and fit the bra around them before he hooked it in the back. Thus he dressed her, and when he had her in her clothing, he urged her to her feet and she finally came to life.
She said again, “I can’t let them see me like this,” but her tone was different this time. She went to her dressing table and from among its clutter of cosmetics and costume jewellery, she brought forth a brush. This she vigorously ran through her long blonde hair till she had it untangled and fashioned into a passable chignon. She switched on a little brass lamp that he’d given her on a long ago Christmas, and she bent to the mirror to examine her face. She used powder and a bit of mascara, and then she rustled among the lipsticks to find the one she wanted, which she applied.
“All right,” she said, and she turned to him.
Head to toe in black, but her lips were red. They were as red as a rose might be. They were as red as blood indeed was.
IN CONDUCTING THE PRELIMINARIES of the investigation with the assistance of Constable McNulty and Sergeant Collins, Bea Hannaford learned soon enough that she had as helpmates the indisputable police equivalents of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. This realisation had abruptly descended upon her when Constable McNulty informed her?with a suitably lachrymose expression on his face?that he’d given the family the information about Santo Kerne’s death likely being a murder. While this in itself could not be called execrable police work, having gone on blithely to share with the Kernes the facts about the dead boy’s climbing equipment definitely was.
Bea had stared at McNulty, disbelieving at first. Then she’d understood that he was not misspeaking, that he had actually disclosed vital particulars of a police investigation to individuals who very well might be suspects. She’d exploded first. She’d wanted to strangle him second. Exactly what do you do all day, she’d enquired third in a nasty tone, toss off in public lavatories? Because, my man, you are the most wretched excuse for a police officer I’ve yet to meet. Are you aware that now we have nothing known only by ourselves and the killer? Do you understand the position that puts us in? After that, she’d told him to come with her and keep his mouth shut unless and until she told him he had permission to speak.
He’d shown good sense in this, at least. From the moment they’d arrived at the Promontory King George Hotel?a crumbling heap of derelict art deco that needed to be pulled down, in Bea’s opinion?Constable McNulty had uttered not a word. He’d even taken notes, never once looking up from his pad as she spoke to Alan Cheston while they waited for the return of Ben Kerne, one hoped with his wife in tow.
Cheston was not a niggard with details: He was twenty-five, he was putatively the partner of the Kerne daughter, he’d grown up in Cambridge as the only child of a retired physicist (“That’s Mum,” he explained with no little pride) and a retired university librarian (“That’s Dad,” he added unnecessarily). He’d studied at Trinity Hall, gone on to the London School of Economics, and worked in marketing in a Birmingham redevelopment corporation until his parents’ retirement to Casvelyn, at which point he moved to Cornwall to be close to them in their latter years. He owned a terrace house in Lansdown Road that was being renovated, making it suitable for the wife and family he hoped for, so in the meantime he was living in a bed-sit at the far end of Breakwater Road.
“Well, not exactly a bed-sit,” he added after watching Constable McNulty’s industrious scribbling for a moment. “It’s rather a room in that house?the large pink cottage??at the end of the road, opposite the canal. I’ve kitchen privileges and…well, the landlady’s quite liberal with how I use the rest of the house.”
By which, Bea assumed, he meant that the landlady had modern ideas. By which, she assumed, he meant that he and the Kerne daughter bonked there with impunity.
“Kerra and I intend to marry,” he added, as if this fine detail might smooth the troubled waters of what he mistakenly saw as Bea’s ostensible concern for the young woman’s virtue.
“Ah. How nice. And Santo?” she asked him. “What sort of relationship did you have with him?”
“Terrific lad,” was Alan’s reply. “He was hard not to like. He was no great intellectual, mind you, but he had a happiness about him, a playfulness. He was infectious, and from what I could see, people liked to be around him. People in general.”
Joie de vivre, Bea thought. She pressed on. “And what about you in particular? Did you like to be around him?”
“We didn’t spend much time together. I’m Kerra’s partner, so Santo and I…We were more like in-laws, I suppose. Cordial and friendly in conversation, but not anything else. We didn’t have the same interests. He was very physical. I’m more…cerebral?”
“Which makes you better suited to run a business, I expect,” Bea noted.
“Yes, of course.”
“Like this business, for example.”
The young man was no idiot. He, unlike the Stan and Ollie she was saddled with, could tell a hawk from a handsaw no matter the direction of the wind. He said, “Actually Santo was a bit relieved when he knew I was going to work here. It took an unwanted pressure off him.”