Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(43)
“But it's his death you know something about.”
“Not exactly his death. But something related. And I wanted to know should I say something if someone asks me.”
“What kind of someone?”
“Maybe a police kind of someone.”
“Police?” Connie managed to say the word with barely a movement of her lips. Beneath the fuchsia blusher she wore, her skin had gone quite pale so that the streaks of make-up on her cheeks stood out like sodden rose petals. She didn't look at Rachel again as she spoke. “We're business women, Rachel Lynn Winfield. We're business women first and we're business women last. What we got—no matter how little it is—depends on the good will of this town. And not just the tourists’ good will, mind you, coming here in the summer, but everyone else's good will as well. You got that?”
“Sure. I know.”
“So you get a name as someone who opens her gob too easy and spills what she knows to every Tom, Dick, and Harry coming in off the street, and the only people who lose out are us: Connie and Rache. People shy away from us. They stop coming into the shop. They take their business over to Clacton, and it's no inconvenience for them to do that because they'd rather go somewhere they feel comfortable, where they can say, ‘I need something pretty for a very special lady’ and they can wink when they say it and know that wink isn't going to get back to their wives. Am I being clear on this, Rache? We got a business to run. And business comes first. Always.”
That said, she took up her Coke once again, and this time when she took a gulp, she pulled a copy of Woman's Own from the pile of bills, catalogues, and newspapers on the table. She opened it and began to study the table of contents. Their conversation was at a close.
Rachel watched her running her long red fingernail down the list of articles contained in the magazine. She watched as Connie flipped to one entitled “Seven Ways to Know if He's Cheating.” The title made Rachel shiver despite the heat, so accurately did it hit the very nail on the very head. She needed an article called “What to Do When You Know,” but she had her answer, really. Do nothing and wait. Which is what, she realised, everyone should do when it came to betrayals petty or otherwise. Acting upon a knowledge of them led nowhere else but to disaster. The past few days in Balford-le-Nez had proved that to Rachel Winfield beyond a shadow of a doubt.
“FOR AN INDEFINITE stay?” The proprietor of the Burnt House Hotel fairly salivated over the words. As it was, he rubbed his hands together as if he were already massaging the money Barbara would have to part with at the end of her stay. He had introduced himself as Basil Treves and had added the information that he was a retired lieutenant in the army—in “Her Majesty's Armed Forces,” as he termed it—once he read upon her registration card that her place of employment was New Scotland Yard. This apparently made them compatriots of some sort.
Barbara supposed it was the idea of having to wear uniforms both in the army and for the Met. She herself hadn't worn a uniform in years, but she didn't share this bit of personal trivia. She needed Basil Treves on her side, and anything that served to put him there and keep him there was well worth preserving. Besides, she appreciated the fact that he'd tactfully made no mention of the condition of her face. She'd removed the remaining bandages in the car after leaving Emily, but her skin from eyes to lips was still a panorama of yellow, purple, and blue.
Treves led her up one flight of stairs and down a dim corridor. Nowhere was there much to indicate to Barbara that the Burnt House Hotel was a banner of delights just waiting to unfurl for her pleasure. A relic of long-ago Edwardian summers, it boasted faded carpets over creaking floor boards above which hung water-stained ceilings. It was possessed of a general atmosphere of genteel decay.
Treves seemed oblivious of all this, however. He chatted incessantly the entire way to Barbara's room, smoothing his sparse and oily hair up from a parting just above his left ear and across the gleaming dome of his skull. She would find the Burnt House had every possible convenience, he confided: a colour television in every room with a remote control device and another large-screen telly in the residents’ lounge should she decide to be sociable of an evening; tea-making facilities next to one's bed for a morning cuppa; bathrooms in nearly every room and additional toilets and baths on each floor; telephones with a direct line into the world upon the touch of a nine; and that most mystical, blessed, and cherished of mod cons—a fax machine in reception. He called it a facsimile sender, as if he and the machine were still on formal terms with each other, and he went on to add, “But you won't be wanting that, I dare say. Here for a holiday, are you, Miss Havers?”
“Sergeant Havers,” Barbara corrected him, and added “Detective Sergeant Havers.” There was no better time than the present, she decided, to position Basil Treves where she needed him. Something about the man's sharp little eyes and expectant posture told her he would be only too happy to assist the police with information if given a chance. The framed newspaper photo of himself in reception—celebrating his election to the town council—told her that he was the sort of man who didn't come by personal glory often or easily. So when the opportunity arose to garner a bit, he doubtless would be the first to jump at it. And what better glory than to be an unofficial part of a murder investigation? He might prove to be quite useful, and with only a little effort on her part. “I'm here on business, actually,” she told him, allowing herself a slight taffy-pull with the truth. “CID business, to be more precise.”