In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Inspector Lynley, #10)(191)

If the proprietor of the Black Angel was surprised to see him back so soon, the man gave no indication. Tourist season, after all, was nearly at an end. He would be happy enough for whatever custom came his way in the coming months. He handed over a key—depressingly, it was for the same room he'd had earlier, Lynley saw—and asked if the inspector wanted his bags taken up or would he rather see to them himself? Lynley handed over his suitcase and went to the bar for a meal.

Sunday lunch was long since finished, but they could do him a cold ham salad or a filled jacket potato, he was informed, as long as he wasn't overly particular about the potato's filling. He said that he wasn't, and he asked for both.

When the food was in front of him, however, Lynley found that he wasn't as hungry as he'd thought. He dipped into the potato with its thatch of cheddar, but when he brought the loaded fork to his mouth, his tongue thickened at the thought of having to swallow anything solid, chewed or not. He lowered the fork and reached for the lager. Getting drunk was still an option.

He wanted to believe them. He wanted to believe them not because they were able to offer him the slightest bit of evidence in support of their statements but because he didn't want to believe anything else. Cops went bad from time to time, and only a fool denied that fact. Birmingham, Guildford, and Bridgewater were only three of the places that had numbers attached to them—six, four, and four respectively—in reference to the defendants convicted on spurious evidence, interrogation room beatings, and manufactured confessions with signatures forged. Each conviction had been the result of police malfeasance for which not a single excuse could possibly be made. So there were bad cops: whether one called them overly zealous, outright tendentious, thoroughly corrupt, or simply too indolent or ignorant to do the job the way the job was supposed to be done.

But Lynley didn't want to believe that Andy Maiden was a cop who'd gone bad. Nor did he even want to believe that Andy was simply a father who'd reached the end of his tether in dealing with his child. Even now, after talking to Andy, after watching the interplay between the man and his wife and having to evaluate what every word, gesture, and nuance between them meant, Lynley found that his heart and his mind were still in conflict over the basic facts.

Nan Maiden had joined them in the airless little office behind Reception in Maiden Hall. She'd shut the door. Her husband had said, “Nancy, don't bother. The guests … Nan, you're not needed in here,” and cast a beseeching look at Lynley in an unspoken request that Lynley did not grant. For needed was exactly what Nan Maiden was if they were to get to the bottom of what had happened to Nicola on Calder Moor.

She said to Lynley, “We weren't expecting anyone else today. I told Inspector Hanken yesterday that Andy was at home that night. I explained—”

“Yes,” Lynley agreed. “I've been told.”

“Then I don't see what further good can come from more questions.” She stood stiffly near the door, and her words were as rigid as her body when she went on. “I know you've come for that, Inspector: questioning Andy instead of offering us information about Nicola's death. Andy wouldn't look like that—like he's being chewed up inside—if you hadn't come to ask him if he actually … if he went onto the moor so that he could—” And there her voice faltered. “He was here on Tuesday night. I told Inspector Hanken that. What more do you want from us?”

The absolute truth, Lynley thought. He wanted to hear it. More, he wanted them both to face it. But at the last moment, when he could have revealed to her the real nature of her daughter's life in London, he didn't do it. All the facts about Nicola would come out eventually—in interrogation rooms, in legal depositions, and in the trial—but there was no reason to drag them out now, like the bones of a grinning skeleton forced from a cupboard that the girl's mother didn't even know existed. If nothing else, he could honour Andy Maiden's wishes in that matter, at least for now.

He said, “Who can support your statement, Mrs. Maiden? DI Hanken told me that Andy had gone to bed early in the evening. Did someone else see him?”

“Who else would have seen him? Our employees don't go into the private part of the house unless they're instructed to do so.”

“And you didn't ask one of them to check on Andy during the evening?”

“I checked on him myself.”

“So you see the difficulty, don't you?”

“No, I don't. Because I'm telling you that Andy didn't …” She clenched her fists at her throat and squeezed her eyes shut. “He didn't kill her!”

So the words were said at last. But even as they were said, the one logical question that Nan Maiden might have asked went completely unspoken. She never said the words, “Why? Why would my husband have killed his own daughter?” And that was a telling omission.

The question was the single best way that Nan Maiden could have challenged the police conjectures about her husband; it was a gauntlet that she could have thrown down, one which called upon the police to give a credible reason why an unthinkable crime against human nature had been committed. But she didn't ask it. And like most people who don't ask questions when questions are called for, she gave herself away. For to ask the question gave Lynley an opening to plant in her mind the seeds of a doubt that she obviously couldn't afford to let grow there. Better to deny and avoid than to have to think the unthinkable first, than to have to learn to accept it second.