In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Inspector Lynley, #10)(165)

“Why you were warm clay.”

“Yes. Why. And when I asked that question and took a hard look at the answer, what do you expect it was?”

His head was spinning and his eyes burned with fatigue. Lynley said, reasonably enough, he thought, “Helen, what does this have to do with wallpaper?” and knew a moment later he'd failed her in some way.

She released herself from his embrace. “Never mind. This isn't the moment. I knew that. I can see you're exhausted. Let's just go to bed.”

He tried to regroup. “No. I want to hear this. I admit that I'm tired. And I got lost following all the dancing warm clay But I want to talk. And to listen. And to know …” To know what? he wondered. He couldn't have said.

She frowned at him, a clear warning sign that he should have heeded and did not. “What? Dancing warm clay? What are you talking about?”

“I'm talking about nothing. It was stupid. I'm an idiot. Forget it. Please. Come back. I want to hold you.”

“No. Explain what you meant.”

“Helen, it was nothing. It was just an inanity.”

“Just an inanity rising from my conversation.”

He sighed. “I'm sorry. You're right. I'm done in. When I get like this, I say things without thinking. You said that two of your sisters didn't dance to his tune while the rest of you did, which made you warm clay. I took that and wondered how warm clay could dance to his music and … Sorry. It was a stupid remark. I'm not thinking right.”

“And I'm not thinking at all,” she said. “Which, I suppose, shouldn't come as a surprise to either of us. But that's what you wanted, isn't it?”

“What?”

“A wife who couldn't think.”

He felt slapped. “Helen, that's not only bloody nonsense. It's an insult to us both.” He went to the table for his plate and cutlery, which he carried to the sink. He rinsed them, spent far too much time watching the water swirl round the drain, and finally said on a sigh, “Damn.” He turned to her. “I'm sorry, darling. I don't want us to be at odds with each other.”

Her face softened. “We aren't,” she said.

He went back to her, pulled her to him once again. “Then what?” he asked.

“I'm at odds with myself.”





[page]CHAPTER 24


rying to pin down the individual whom Terry Cole had gone to see at King-Ryder Productions hadn't been as easy as Barbara Havers anticipated after her conversation with Neil Sitwell, even with the list of employees in her possession. Not only were there three dozen of them listed, but on a Saturday night most of those three dozen had not been at home. They were, after all, theatre people. And theatre people—so she discovered—were not in the habit of vegetating blissfully under their own roofs when they could be out on the town. So it had been after two in the morning before she'd tracked down Terry Coles contact at 31-32 Soho Square: Matthew King-Ryder, son of the deceased founder of the theatrical production company.

He'd agreed to see her—”after nine, if you don't mind. I'm completely fagged out”—at his home in Baker Street.

It was half past nine when Barbara found the address that had been listed along with Matthew King-Ryder's name and phone number. It was a mansion block, she saw, one of those enormous brick Victorian structures that—at the end of the nineteenth century—had signaled an alteration in lifestyle from the spacious and gracious to the more understated and the somewhat confined.

Relatively speaking, of course. Compared to Barbara's hovel, King-Ryder's flat was a virtual palace, although it did appear to be one of those ill-thought-out conversions of a larger flat in which cross-ventilation and natural lighting had been sacrificed to the cause of lining someone's pockets with monthly rental payments.

Or such was Barbara's assessment of the flat when Matthew King-Ryder admitted her to it. He asked her to “excuse the mess, please. I'm getting ready to move house,” in reference to a pile of rubbish and bin bags waiting for the mansion block's cleaners outside his front door, and he led her down a short and badly lit corridor to a sitting room. There, gaping cardboard boxes displayed books, trophies, and various ornaments indifferently wrapped in newspaper, and framed photographs and theatrical posters leaned in stacks against the walls, waiting for a similar disposition. “I'm finally entering the world of property ownership,” King-Ryder confided. “I've got enough for the house, but not enough for the house and the removal men. So it's a bit of a do-it-myself job. Hence the mess. Sorry. Here. Have a seat.” He swept a stack of theatre programmes to the floor. “Would you like a coffee? I was just about to make some for myself.”

“Sure,” Barbara said.

He went to the kitchen which lay just beyond a dining nook. A hatch had been crafted into one of the walls, and he spoke through this casually as he dumped a measure of coffee beans into a grinder. “I'll be south of the river, which won't be as convenient for getting to the West End. But it's a house, not a flat. And it has a decent garden and, more important, it's freehold. And it's mine.” He canted his head and grinned in her direction. “Sorry. I'm rather excited. Thirty-three and I've finally got a mortgage. Who knows? It'll probably be marriage next. I like it strong. The coffee, that is. 'S that okay with you?”