In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Inspector Lynley, #10)(145)

Beattie's fingers folded round each other. Two of them, Lynley saw, had nails that were blackened, both of them deformed by some sort of fungus that apparently grew rampant beneath them. It was a disconcerting sight in a man of medicine, and Lynley wondered that Beattie didn't do something about it.

“Yes. I knew Nicola Maiden,” Beattie said.

“Tell us about your relationship.”

Behind gold-framed spectacles, the eyes were wary. “Am I a suspect?”

“Everyone who knew her is a suspect.”

“You said Tuesday night.”

“I did say that, yes.”

“I was here on Tuesday night.”

“In this house?”

“Not here. But in London. At my club in St. James's. Shall I arrange for corroboration, Inspector? That's the word I want, isn't it? Corroboration”

Lynley said, “Tell us about Nicola. When did you see her last?”

Beattie reached for his champagne and drank. To gain time, to still nerves. It was impossible to tell. “The morning of the day before she left for the North.”

“This would be last June?” Nkata asked. And when Beattie nodded, Nkata added, “In Islington?”

“Islington?” Beattie frowned. “No. Here. She came to the house. She always came to the house when I … when I needed her.”

“Your relationship was sexual, then,” Lynley said. “You were one of her clients.”

Beattie turned his head away from Lynley, looking towards the mantelpiece with its copious display of family photos. “I expect you know the answer to that question. You'd hardly have come calling on a Saturday evening had you not been told exactly where I fitted in Nikki's life. So, yes, I was one of her clients, if that's what you'd like to call it.”

“What would you call it?”

“We had a mutually beneficial arrangement. She provided an indispensable service. I paid her generously for it.”

“You're a man with a high public profile,” Lynley pointed out. “You've a successful career, a wife and children, grandchildren, and all the external trappings of a fortunate life.”

“I've all the internal trappings as well,” Beattie said. “It is a fortunate life. So why would I risk losing it by having a liaison with a common prostitute? That's what you want to know, isn't it? But that's just the point, you see, Inspector Lynley. Nikki wasn't common in any way.”

Music started somewhere in the house, a furious and proficient playing on a piano. Chopin, it sounded like. Then the tune broke off abruptly amid some shouting, to be replaced by a spritely Cole Porter piece that was accompanied by exuberant voices not bothering to aim for the appropriate key. “‘Call me irreSPONsible, call me unreLIable,’” the group partly howled, partly laughed, partly sang. Much guffawing and good-natured derision followed this: the happy family in celebration.

“So I'm learning,” Lynley agreed. “You're not the first person to mention the fact that she was a cut above the ordinary. But actually, why you were willing to risk everything with an affair—”

“That's not what it was.”

“With an arrangement, then. Why you'd risk everything for that isn't what I want to know. I'm more interested in discovering exactly what you'd be willing to do to safeguard what you have—these external and internal trappings of your life—if the continuing possession of them was threatened in some way.”

“Threatened?” Beattie's voice was too perplexed for Lynley to believe the reaction was ingenuous. Surely the man knew how much he put at jeopardy by having a prostitute operating on the periphery of his life.

“Every man has enemies,” Lynley told him. “Even you, I dare say. Should someone untrustworthy have found out about your arrangement with Nicola Maiden, should someone have decided to harm you by revealing that arrangement, you would have lost a great deal, and not all of it tangible.”

“Ah. I do see: the traditional outcome of societal defiance. ‘Who steals my purse,’” Beattie murmured. Then he went on more conversationally, giving Lynley the oddest sensation that they might have been discussing the next day's weather forecast. “That couldn't have happened, Inspector. Nikki came to the house, as I said. She dressed conservatively, carried a brief case, and drove a Saab. To all appearances, she was arriving to take dictation or to help plan a party. And as our encounters took place well away from windows, there was absolutely nothing for anyone to see.”

“She herself didn't wear a blindfold, I expect.”

“Of course she didn't. She could hardly do that and be of any satisfactory service to me.”

“So you'll no doubt agree that she might have been in possession of certain details about you. Details, which if revealed, could confirm a story—perhaps one sold to a tabloid?—that would prove whatever facts she might choose to lay before a public for whom gossip can never be salacious enough.”

Beattie said, sounding pensive, “Good my God.”

“So corroboration is in order, as you guessed,” Lynley said. “We'll need the name of your club.”

“Are you suggesting that I killed Nikki because she wanted more from me than I was paying? Or because I'd decided I didn't need her any longer and she was threatening to go public if I didn't keep paying her?” He drank a final mouthful of his champagne, afterwards giving a rueful laugh and shoving the glass away. He lumbered to his feet, saying, “Mother of God, if that had only been the case. Wait here please.” And he left the room.