Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(31)
That life and its impending close would have been given some meaning by Balford of the future: hotels refurbished, businesses lured to the sea by the guarantee of low ground rents and landlords committed to redevelopment and restoration, buildings gentrified, parks replanted—and big parks, not plots of grass the size of an envelope which some people dedicated to Asian mothers with utterly unpronounceable names—and attractions added along the seafront. There were plans for a leisure centre, for a renovated indoor swimming pool, for tennis and squash courts, for a new cricket pitch. This was what Balford-le-Nez could be, and it was to this end that Agatha Shaw was striving, seeking a slip of immortality.
She'd lost her parents during the Blitz. She'd lost her husband at thirty-eight. She'd lost three of her children to careers round the globe and the fourth in a car crash at the hands of his limp-willed Scandinavian wife. Early on she'd come to know that the wise woman kept her expectations humble and her dreams to herself, but in these final years of her life she'd found herself growing as weary of submission to the will of the Almighty as she would have grown weary of fighting that will. So she'd taken up her final cause like a warrior, and she was fully determined to see this battle through to the end.
Nothing was going to stop this project, least of all the death of some foreigner she didn't know. But she needed Theo to be her right hand. She needed Theo quick-witted and strong. She wanted him impenetrable and invincible, and the last thing her plans for Balford had required of him was his tacit agreement to their derailment.
She clutched her three-pronged stick in a grip so tight that it made her arm tremble. She concentrated the way her physical therapist had told her that she would now have to concentrate in order to walk. It was an unspeakable cruelty to have to tell each leg what to do before it would do it. She who once had ridden, played tennis, golfed, fished, and boated was reduced to saying, “First left, then right. Now left, then right,” just to get to the library door. Her teeth ground on the words. If she'd had the temperament to be a dog owner, had possessed a faithful and affectionate Corgi, and had been equal to the effort required, she would have kicked the animal in sheer frustration.
She found Theo in the old morning room. He'd long ago converted it to his lair, equipping it with television, stereo, books, comfortable old furniture, and a personal computer on which he communicated with the world's social misfits who happened to share his particular passion: amateur palaeontology. Agatha thought of it as an adult's excuse to grub round in the mud. But to Theo it was an avocation that he pursued with a dedication that most men used when pursuing pudenda. Day or night mattered little to Theo: When he had a free hour, off he would stride in the direction of the Nez, where the eroding cliffs had been disgorging dubious treasures for as long as the sea had been gnawing at the land.
He wasn't at the computer that night. Nor was he using his magnifying glass to study a misshapen bit of stone—”This is actually a rhino tooth, Gran,” he'd say patiently—culled from the cliffs. Rather, he was speaking into the telephone in a low hushed voice, rushing sentences that Agatha couldn't distinguish into the ear of someone who clearly didn't want to hear.
She caught the words, “Please. Please. Listen to me,” before he looked towards the door and, seeing her, replaced the receiver in its cradle as if no one were on the other end of the line.
She studied him. The night was nearly as torrid as the day had been, and since this room was on the west side of the house, it had taken the worst of the day's heat the longest. So there was at least one reason why Theo's face was flushed and why his fair skin was damp and oily looking. But the other reason, she supposed, was sitting somewhere holding a dead telephone receiver in a damp palm, doubtlessly wondering why “Listen to me” had ended rather than extended a conversation.
The windows were open, but the room was insufferable. Even the walls looked as if they wanted to sweat right through their old William Morris paper. The clutter of magazines, newspapers, books, and most of all the clutter of stones—”No, Gran, they only look like stones. They're actually bones and teeth, and here, look for yourself, this's part of a mammoth tusk,” Theo would say—made the room even more unbearable, as if they raised its temperature another ten degrees. And, despite her grandson's care to clean them, they imbued the air with a disturbingly fecund smell of earth.
Theo moved from the telephone to the broad oak table. This was finely sheened with dust because he wouldn't allow Mary Ellis to apply a rag to its surface and disarrange the fossils he'd assembled there in cubicled wooden trays. There was an old balloon-backed chair in front of the table, and he took this and swung it round to face her.
She understood that he was making a place for her, well within her reach. This realisation made her feel like pinching the lobes of his ears until he wailed. She wasn't ready for the grave despite its having been dug, and she could do without the tender gestures revealing that others anticipated her imminent demise. She chose to stand.
“And the end result?” she demanded as if there had been no break in their conversation.
His eyebrows drew together. He used the back of his curled index finger to wipe the perspiration from his forehead. His glance went to the telephone, then back to her.
“I'm not the least interested in your love life, Theodore. You'll learn soon enough that it's an oxymoron. I pray nightly that you develop the presence of mind not to be led by either your nose or your penis. Otherwise, what you do on your free time is between you and whoever shares the momentary joy of experiencing the mingling of your bodily fluids. Although in this heat, why anyone would even think of intercourse—”