In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Inspector Lynley, #10)(205)

“Hadn't been for me, he'd be married now. Wife. Kids. A life. An’ I took that from him. I did it. Me.”

“Uncle Jeremy, you mustn't think that. Julie loves you. He knows how important Broughton Manor is to you at the end of the day, and he wants to make it a home again. And anyway, he's not even thirty yet. He's got years and years to have a family.”

“Life's passing him by,” Jeremy said. “An’ it'll go right by him while he struggles at home. An’ he'll hate me for that when he wakes up and sees it.”

“But this is life.” Samantha placed a comforting hand on her uncle's shoulder. “What we're doing here, at the manor, every day. This is life, Uncle Jeremy.”

He straightened from the sink, reaching in his pocket as he did so, bringing out a neatly folded handkerchief and honking into it before he turned to her. Poor man, she thought. When had he last wept? And why were men so embarrassed when they finally broke with the force of a reasonable emotion?

“Want to be part of it again,” he said.

“Part of it?”

“Life. I want life, Sammy. This”—he made a gesture towards the sink—“this runs away from everything living. I say enough.”

Odd, Samantha thought. He suddenly sounded so strong, as if nothing stood between him and his hope for sobriety. And just as suddenly she wanted that for him: the life he imagined for himself, happy in his home, occupied and surrounded by his darling grandchildren. She could even see them, those lovely grandchildren still unconceived. She said, “I'm so glad, Uncle Jeremy. I'm so terribly terribly glad. And Julian … Julie'll be so delighted. He'll want to help you. I know he will.”

Jeremy nodded, his gaze fixed on her. “You think?” he said hesitantly. “After all these years … with me … like this?”

“I know he'll help,” she said. “I just know it.”

Jeremy straightened his clothes. He blew his nose noisily once again and folded his handkerchief back into his pocket. He said, “Y’ love him, don't you, girl?”

Samantha shuffled her feet.

“You're not like the other. You'd do anything for him.”

“I would,” Samantha said. “Yes. I would.”

When Lynley arrived in Padley Gorge, the search of Maiden Hall was in full swing. Hanken had brought six constables with him, and he'd deployed them economically as well as thoroughly. Three of them were searching the family's floor, the residents’ floor, and the ground floor of the Hall proper. One was searching the outbuildings on the property. Two others were searching the grounds. Hanken himself was coordinating the effort, and when Lynley pulled to a stop in the car park he found his fellow DI smoking moodily beneath an umbrella near a panda car as the family-floor constable made his report.

“Get out with the others on the grounds, then,” Hanken was instructing him. “If there's been any digging round here, I want you lot on it like hounds down a foxhole. Understand? And mind you dig up that new road sign at the bottom of the drive.” The constable trotted off in the direction of the slope that fell away towards the road. There Lynley could see two other policemen pacing along evenly beneath the trees in the rain.

“Nothing so far,” Hanken told Lynley. “But it's here somewhere. Or something related to it is. And we'll find it.”

“I've got the waterproof,” Lynley said.

Hanken raised an eyebrow and tossed his cigarette onto the ground. “Have you indeed? That's good work, Thomas. Where'd you find it?”

Lynley told him about the thought process that had led him to the skip. Under a week's worth of rubbish from the hotel, he'd found the rain gear by relying upon a pitchfork and the patience of the dustmen who'd arrived just behind him to collect the skip's contents.

“You don't much look like you've been doing some skip-trolling,” Hanken told him.

“I showered and changed,” Lynley admitted.

The rubbish in the skip—piled up on the waterproof for nearly a week—had ultimately protected it from the rain, which might have otherwise washed away any evidence left upon it. As it was, the plastic garment hadn't been touched by anything other than coffee grounds, vegetable peelings, plate scrapings, old newspapers, and crumpled tissues. And since it had been turned inside out anyway, even these had only smeared its insides, giving it the appearance of a discarded tarpaulin. Its exterior had been largely untouched, so the blood splatters on it remained as they had been on the previous Tuesday night: mute witnesses to what had occurred inside Nine Sisters Henge. Lynley had bundled the waterproof into a supermarket carrier bag. It was, he said, in the boot of the Bentley.

“Let's have it, then.”

“First,” Lynley said with a nod at the Hall, “are the Maidens here?”

“We don't need an ID on the rain gear if it's got the kid's blood on it, Thomas.”

“I wasn't asking professionally. How are they taking the search?”

“Maiden claims he's found some bloke in London who can do a lie detector on him. Runs a business called Polygraph Professionals, or something like that.”

“If he's willing—”

“Bollocks,” Hanken cut in irritably. “You know that polygraphs are worth sod all. So does Maiden. But they make one hell of a delaying tactic, don't they? ‘Please don't arrest me. I've got a polygraph organised.’ Bugger that for a lark. Let's have the waterproof.”