Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(115)

“Theodore!” she snapped, and wielded her stick at his legs. He was passing her sofa yet another time, treading from his chair to the open window as if he'd decided to wear a path straight through the Persian carpet before the end of the evening. His grandmother couldn't decide which activity drove her more to distraction: his charade of conversing with her or his newly found interest in the state of the garden. Not that he could see much of the garden in the fast dying light. But there was little doubt that if she demanded to know what was so enthralling outside the window, he would claim to be mourning the death of the lawn.

Her stick failed to stop him, missed him entirely. But when she said, “Theodore Michael Shaw, traipse across this drawing room another time and I'll give you six of the best that you'll never forget. And I'll use this cane to do it. D'you hear me?”

That did the trick. Theo stopped, turned, and looked at her wryly. “Think you're up for that, Gran?” The question was fondly asked, yet he seemed to feel the fondness in spite of himself. He walked no farther to the window, but his gaze went to it nonetheless.

“What the devil is it?” she demanded. “You haven't heard a word I've said all evening. I want this to stop and I want it to stop right now. Tonight.”

“What?” he asked, and to give him credit, he looked sufficiently nonplussed nearly to convince her.

But she was nobody's fool. She hadn't brought up four difficult children—six, if one counted Theo and his pig-headed brother—for nothing. She knew when something was going on, and she knew even better when that something was a something which someone was trying to hide from her.

“Don't be obtuse,” she replied tartly. “You were late … again. You didn't eat more than ten bites at dinner. You ignored the cheese, let your coffee get cold, and for the past twenty minutes when you haven't been wearing a trail through my carpet, you've been watching the clock like a prisoner waiting for visiting hours.”

“I had a late lunch, Gran,” Theo said reasonably. “And this heat's pure hell. How could anyone tuck into salmon pie in this kind of weather?”

“I managed,” she said. “And hot food is appropriate when the weather's beastly. It cools the blood.”

“That sounds like an old wives’ tale to me.”

“Piffle,” she said. “And food isn't the point. You're the point. Your behaviour's the point. You haven't been yourself since—” She paused for thought. How long had it been since Theo hadn't been the Theo she'd known and loved—loved against her wishes, her wisdom, and her inclination—for the last twenty years? A month? Two? He'd started at first with long silences, he'd gone on to longer observations of her when he probably thought she wasn't looking, and he'd mixed these up with nocturnal disappearances, hushed telephone calls, and a disturbing weight loss. “What in the name of Medusa is going on?” she settled on demanding.

He flashed her a smile, but she didn't miss the fact that this rident expression did nothing to alter the bleakness in his eyes. “Gran, believe me. Nothing's going on.” He answered in that soothing tone that doctors always use when attempting to garner the cooperation of a recalcitrant patient.

“Are you up to something?” she asked directly. “Because if you are, I'd like to point out that you've little to gain from obfuscation.”

“I'm not up to anything. I've been thinking about business: how the pier's shaping up and how much money we're going to lose if Gerry DeVitt doesn't have that restaurant opened before the August bank holiday.” He returned to his chair, as if this action would prove his words. He clasped his hands loosely between his knees and gave her what went for his full attention these days.

She continued as if he hadn't spoken. “Obfuscation destroys. And if you wish to argue about that, perhaps three names will emphasise my point: Stephen, Lawrence, Ulricke. All practitioners of the fine art of deception.”

She saw his eyes tighten in a wince that pleased her. She meant to hit him below the belt, and she was glad to know that he'd felt the blow. His brother, his father, and his pea-brained mother, those three were. All of them dissemblers, all of them consequently disinherited, all of them sent into the world to fend for themselves. Two of them were already dead, and the third … who knew what insalubrious end Stephen Shaw would meet in that snake pit that went for a society in Hollywood?

Since Stephen's departure at nineteen years of age, she'd been telling herself that Theo was different. He was sane, reasonable, and enlightened in a way that his immediate family had never been. Upon him she'd learned to place her hopes and to him would go her fortune. If she didn't live to see the complete renaissance of Balford-le-Nez, it didn't matter, because Theo would carry forward her dream. Through him and his efforts, she would live on.

Or so she had thought. But the past few weeks—or was it a month? or two?—had seen the waning of his interest in her affairs. The past few days had shown her that his mind was deeply engaged elsewhere. And the past few hours had indisputably illustrated that she had to act soon to bring him back on track if she wasn't to lose him altogether.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I don't mean to ignore you. But I'm juggling the pier, the work on the restaurant, the plans for the hotel, this town council business …” As his voice drifted off, his gaze began to travel to that blasted open window, but he seemed to realise what he was doing because he quickly brought himself back to her. “And this heat,” he said. “I'm never my best in this sort of heat.”