For the Sake of Elena (Inspector Lynley, #5)(92)

“That was good for her. You must have known it would be. Thank you, Tommy.”

“No. Pure selfishness. I wanted information. I thought Pen could provide it. That’s all of it, Helen. Well, not quite. I wanted to see you. There doesn’t seem to be an end to that.”

She got to her feet. He did likewise. They headed for the front door. He reached for his overcoat, but turned to her impulsively before he took it from the stand.

He said, “Miranda Webberly’s playing jazz tomorrow night at Trinity Hall. Will you come?” When she glanced towards the stairs, he went on with, “A few hours, Helen. Pen can deal with them alone. Or we can collar Harry at Emmanuel. Or bring in one of Sheehan’s constables. That’s probably the best bet for Christian anyway. So will you come? Randie plays a mean trumpet. According to her father, she’s become a female Dizzy Gillespie.”

Lady Helen smiled. “All right, Tommy. Yes. I’ll come.”

He felt his heart lift, despite the probability that she was accommodating him only as a means of showing her gratitude for having taken Pen away from her malaise for a few minutes. “Good,” he said. “Half past seven, then. I’d suggest we have dinner as well, but I won’t push my luck.” He took his overcoat from the rack and slung it over his shoulder. The cold wouldn’t bother him. A moment of hope seemed enough protection against anything.

She knew what he was feeling, as she always did. “It’s just a concert, Tommy.”

He didn’t avoid her meaning. “I know that. Besides, we couldn’t possibly make it to Gretna Green and back in time for Christian’s breakfast, could we? But even if we could, doing the dread deed in front of the local blacksmith would never be my idea of a way to get married, so you’re relatively safe. For an evening, at least.”

Her smile widened. “That’s an enormous comfort.”

He touched her cheek. “God knows I want you to be comfortable, Helen.”

He waited for her to move, tried to make her do so through allowing himself if only for a moment to feel the sheer, telling force of his own desire. Her head tilted slightly, pressing her cheek against his hand.

He said, “You won’t fail this time. Not with me. I won’t let you.”

“I love you,” she said. “At the bottom of it all.”





13





“Barbara? Lovey? Have you gone to bed? Because the lights are out and I don’t want to disturb you if you’re asleep. You need your sleep. It’s your beauty sleep, I know. But if you’re still up, I thought we might talk about Christmas. It’s early, of course, but still one wants to be prepared with gift ideas and decisions about which invitations to accept and which to decline.”

Barbara Havers closed her eyes briefly, as if by that activity she could shut out the sound of her mother’s voice. Standing in the darkness at her bedroom window, she looked down on the back garden where a cat was slinking along the top of the fence that separated their property from that of Mrs. Gustafson. Its attention was speared onto the snarl of weeds that grew in place of what once had been a narrow strip of lawn. He was hunting a rodent. The garden was probably swarming with them. Barbara saluted him silently. Have at them, she thought.

Near her face, the curtains gave off the odours of old cigarette smoke and heavy dust. Once a crisp, starched white cotton sprigged with clusters of forget-me-nots, they hung limp and grey, and against this background of grime the cheerful blue flowers had long since given up the effort of contrast. Now they looked largely like smudges of charcoal set against an ever-darkening, bleak field of ash.

“Lovey?”

Barbara heard her mother tottering along the upstairs passage, her mules alternately shuffling and slapping against the bare floor. She knew she ought to call out to her, but instead she prayed that before she reached the bedroom, her mother’s fleeting attention would make the jump to something else. Perhaps to her brother’s bedroom which, although it long since had been cleared of his belongings, often still proved enough of a lure that Mrs. Havers would wander into it, talking to her son as if he were still alive.

Five minutes, Barbara thought. Just five minutes of peace.

She’d been home for some hours, arriving to find Mrs. Gustafson sitting erect on a kitchen chair at the foot of the stairs and her mother above in her bedroom, crumpled on the edge of the bed. Mrs. Gustafson was curiously armed with the hose of the vacuum cleaner, her mother was bewildered and frightened, a shrivelled figure in the darkness who had lost the simple knowledge of how to operate her bedroom lights.

“We had ourselves a bit of a scuffle. She’s been wanting your father,” Mrs. Gustafson had said when Barbara came in the door. Her grey wig had been pulled slightly askew so that on the left its curls hung down too far below her ear. “She started looking through the house calling out for her Jimmy. Then she wanted the street.”

Barbara’s eyes fell to the hose of the vacuum.

“Now, I din’t hit her, Barbie,” Mrs. Gustafson said. “You know I wouldn’t hit your mum.” Her fingers first curled round the hose then caressed its worn covering. “Snake,” she said confidentially. “She does behave when she sees it, luv. I just wave it a bit. That’s all I have to do.”

For a moment, Barbara felt as if her blood had congealed, rendering her immobile and incapable of speech. She felt wedged solidly between two conflicting needs. Words and actions were called for, some sort of castigation of the elderly woman for her blind stupidity, for resorting to terrorising instead of tending. But, far more important, placation was required. For if Mrs. Gustafson drew the line on what she was willing to endure, they were lost.