In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Inspector Lynley, #10)(188)

“Tell me how it happened,” Lynley said stonily. “Tell me what you used besides the knife.”

Maiden dropped his hand. “God in heaven …” His voice was hoarse. “Tommy, you can't be thinking …” Then he appeared to reflect back over what he'd said, to locate the exact point of misunderstanding between them. “She drove me to bribery. To paying her to work for Upman so that he could win her … so that her mother would never discover what she was … because it would have destroyed her. But no. No. You can't think I killed her. I was here the night she died. Here in the hotel. And … my God, she was my only child.”

“And she'd betrayed you,” Lynley said. “After all you'd done for her, after the life you'd given her—”

“No! I loved her. Do you have children? A daughter? A son? Do you know what it is to see the future in your child and know you'll live on no matter what happens just because she herself exists?”

“As a whore?” Lynley asked. “As a woman on the game who makes her money paying house calls on men she whips into submission? ‘I'll see you dead before I let you do it.’ Those were your words. And she was returning to London next week, Andy You'd bought yourself only a reprieve from the inevitable when you paid her to work in Buxton.”

“I didn't! Tommy, listen to me! I was here on Tuesday night.”

Maiden's voice had risen and a knock sounded on the door. It opened before either man could speak. Nan Maiden stood there. She looked from Lynley to her husband. She didn't speak.

But she didn't need to say a word in explanation of what Lynley read on her face. She knows what he did, he thought. My God, she's known from the first.

“Leave us,” Andy Maiden cried out to his wife.

“I don't think that will be necessary,” Lynley said.

Barbara Havers had never been to Westerham, and she discovered soon enough that there was no easy way to get there from the St. James home in Chelsea. She'd made a quick run to the St. Jameses upon leaving Eaton Terrace—why not, she'd thought, since she was in the area so close to the King's Road, a short jaunt down which would take her to Cheyne Row—and she'd been dead eager to let off steam to the couple who she very well knew were most likely to have also experienced Inspector Lynley's brand of priggish irrationality firsthand at one time or another. But she hadn't had a chance to tell her story. For Deborah St. James had answered the door, given a happy shout in the direction of the study, and pulled her inside the house like a woman greeting someone unexpectedly back from the war.

“Simon, look!” she'd announced. “Isn't this just meant” And the meeting between the three of them had been the spur that sent Barbara into Kent. To get there, however, she'd had to battle the maze of unmarked streets that made the words south of the river synonymous with a sojourn in hell. She'd got lost on the far side of Albert Bridge, where one moment of inattention resulted in twenty minutes of exasperation driving round Clapham Common in a futile search for the A205. Once she'd found it and worked her way over to Lewisham, she'd begun wondering about the efficacy of using the Internet to locate one's expert witnesses.

The witness in this case lived in Westerham, where he also ran a small business a short distance away from Quebec House. “You won't be able to miss it,” he'd told her on the telephone. “Quebec House sits at the top of the Edenbridge Road. It's got a sign at the front. It's open today—Quebec House—so there'll probably be the odd coach in the car park. I'm less than five hundred yards to the south.”

So he was, she found, in a clapboard construction that bore the sign QUIVER ME TIMBERS above its door.

His name was Jason Harley, and his business shared room with his house, the original home having been halved by a wall that ran down its middle like Solomon's judgement. An overly wide door had been set into this wall, and it was through this door that Jason Harley rolled himself in the high performance wheelchair of a marathon athlete when Barbara rang the bell outside the shop door.

“You're Constable Havers?” Harley asked.

“Barbara,” she said.

He tossed back a mass of hair that was blond, very thick, and straight as a ruler. “Barbara, then. Lucky you caught me at home. I usually shoot on Sundays.” He rolled himself back and beckoned her inside, saying, “Make sure the sign stays on closed, won't you? I've got a local fan club that likes to drop by when they see I'm open.” He made this last remark ironically.

“Trouble?” Barbara asked him, thinking of louts, hooligans, and what torments they could inflict on a paraplegic.

“Nine-year-old boys. I spoke at their school. Now I'm their hero.” Harley grinned affably. “So. How can I help you, Barbara? You said you wanted to see what I have?”

“Right.”

They'd found him on the Internet, where his business had a Web page, and his proximity to London had been the deciding factor in Barbara's selection of him as her expert witness. On the phone, which rang in his house as well as in his shop, Jason Harley had told her he wasn't open on Sundays, but when she'd explained the reasons behind her call, he'd agreed to see her.

Now she stood in the close confines of Quiver Me Timbers, and she glanced over its merchandise: the fibreglass, yew, and carbon of Jason Harley's trade. Racks stood against walls. Display cases lined the shop's single wide aisle. An assembly area spanned the farther end. And central to everything was a maple stand in which a ribboned medal was encased in glass. It was an Olympic gold, Barbara saw when she examined the medal. Not only in Westerham was Jason Harley somebody.