Careless in Red (Inspector Lynley, #15)(70)

“Neither of you cooked, then?”

“Neither of us cooked. I could do eggs and toast, of course, and Helen was brilliant at opening tins of soup, beans, and smoked salmon although she could easily be expected to pop a tin in the microwave and possibly blow the entire electrical system in the house. We employed someone to cook for us. It was that, takeaway curry, or starvation. And one can eat only so much takeaway curry.”

“You poor things,” Daidre said. “Come along, then. I expect you can learn at least something.”

She returned to the kitchen and he followed her. From a cupboard, she took a wooden bowl?carved with primitive dancing figures round its rim?and she rustled up a cutting board and a number of, thankfully, recognisable foodstuffs meant to be combined into a salad. She set him to his task with a knife, saying, “Throw in anything. That’s the beauty of a salad. When you’ve got enough in the bowl, I’ll show you a simple dressing that won’t tax your sadly meagre talents. Any questions, then?”

“I’m sure I’ll have them as I go along.”

They worked in companionable silence, Lynley upon the salad and Daidre Trahair upon a dish with string beans and mint. Something was baking away in the oven?emitting the fragrance of pastry?while something else simmered in a pan. In time, they had a meal assembled, and Daidre instructed him in the art of laying a table, which he did, at least, know how to do but which he allowed her to demonstrate for him because allowing her that allowed him to watch and evaluate her.

He was acutely aware of DI Hannaford’s instructions to him, and while he didn’t like the idea of using Daidre Trahair’s hospitality as a device of investigation instead of a means of friendly entrée into her world, the part of him that was a policeman trumped the part of him that was a social creature in need of communing with other like creatures. So he watched and waited and he remained alert for what crumbs he could gather about her.

There were few enough. She was very careful. Which was, in itself, a valuable crumb.

They tucked into their meal in her tiny dining room, where a piece of cardboard fixed over a window reminded him of his duty to repair it for her. They ate something she called Portobello Wellington, along with a side dish of couscous with sun-dried tomatoes, green beans done up with garlic and mint, and his salad dressed with oil, vinegar, mustard, and Italian seasoning. They had no wine to drink, merely water with lemon. She apologized for this, much as she had over the sherry.

She said she hoped he didn’t mind a vegetarian meal. She wasn’t vegan, she explained, for she saw no sin in consuming animal products like eggs and such. But when it came to the flesh of her fellow creatures on the planet, it seemed too…well, too cannibalistic.

“Whatever happens to the beasts, happens to man,” she said. “All things are connected.” It sounded to him like a quote, and even as he thought as much, she unblushingly told him it was. She said, appealingly, “Those aren’t my words, actually. I can’t remember who said them or wrote them, but when I first came across them years ago, they had the ring of truth.”

“Isn’t there an application to zoos?”

“Imprisoning beasts leading to man’s imprisonment, you mean?”

“Something like that. I?forgive me?I don’t much care for zoos.”

“Nor do I. They hearken back to the Victorians, don’t they? That excited quest for knowledge about the natural world without an accompanying compassion for that world. I myself loathe zoos, to be quite honest.”

“But you choose to work in them.”

“I choose to be committed to improving conditions for the animals therein.”

“Subverting the system from within.”

“It makes more sense than carrying a protest sign, doesn’t it.”

“Rather like going on a foxhunt with a herring attached to your horse.”

“Do you like foxhunting?”

“I find it execrable. I’ve been only once, on Boxing Day one year. I must have been eleven years old. My conclusion was that Oscar had it right, although I couldn’t have said as much at the time. Just that I didn’t like it and the idea of a pack of dogs on the trail of a terrified animal…and then being allowed to tear it to pieces if they find it…It wasn’t for me.”

“You’ve a soft heart, then, for the animal world.”

“I’m not a hunter, if that’s what you mean. I would have made a very bad prehistoric man.”

“No killing sabre-tooth tigers for you.”

“Evolution, I’m afraid, would have ground to a precipitate halt had I been at the tribal helm.”

She laughed. “You’re very droll, Thomas.”

“Only in fits and starts,” he told her. “Tell me how you subvert the system.”

“The zoo? Not as well as I would like to.” She helped herself to more green beans and she passed the bowl to him, saying, “Have some more. This is my mother’s recipe. The secret is what you do with the mint, popping it into the hot olive oil just long enough to wilt it, which releases its flavour.” Her nose wrinkled. “Or something like that. Anyway, the beans you boil only five minutes. Any longer and they’ll be mushy, which is the last thing you want.”

“Nothing being worse than a mushy bean,” he noted. He took another helping. “All praise to your mother. These are very good. You’ve done her proud. Where is she, your mother? Mine’s just south of Penzance. Near Lamorna Cove. And I fear she cooks about as well as I do.”