In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Inspector Lynley, #10)(222)

And Lynley had done, eventually. He had poured out his guilt, his confusion, and his sorrow in a manner that ultimately told him how badly he needed a figure to act the role of parent in his life.

Andy Maiden had stepped into that part without ever questioning why Lynley had needed him so desperately to do so. He'd said, “Listen to me, son,” and Lynley had listened, in small part because the other man was his superior officer, in large part because no one before had ever used the word son when speaking to him. Lynley came from a world where people recognised their individual places in the social hierarchy and generally kept to them or felt the consequences for not doing so. But Andy Maiden was not such a man. “You're not cut out for SO10,” Andy had told him. “What you've been through proves that, Tommy. But you had to go through it to know, d'you understand? And there's no sin in learning, son. There's only sin in refusing to take what you've learned and do something with it.”

That guiding philosophy of Andy Maiden's life reverberated now in Lynley's mind. The SO 10 officer had used it to map his entire career, and there was very little in the past few days of their re-acquaintance to reassure Lynley that Andy wouldn't follow that same philosophy today.

Lynley's fears drove him towards Nine Sisters Henge. When he reached it, the place was silent, except for the wind. This gushed and ceased and gushed in great gusts like air from a bellows. It blew from the east off the Irish Sea and promised more rain in the coming hours.

Lynley approached the copse and entered. The ground was still damp from the morning rain, and leaves fallen from the birches made a spongy padding beneath his feet. He followed the path that led from the sentry stone into the middle of the copse. Out of the wind, only the tree leaves susurrating provided sound aside from his own breathing, which was harsh from exertion.

At the final moment, he found that he didn't want to approach. He didn't want to see, and more than anything he didn't want to know. But he forced himself forward into the circle. And it was at the circle's centre that he found them.

Nan Maiden half-sat and half-knelt, her legs folded beneath her and her back to Lynley. Andy Maiden lay, one leg cocked and the other straight out, with his head and shoulders cradled in his wife's lap.

The rational part of Lynley's mind said, That would be where all the blood is coming from, from his head and his shoulders. But the heart of Lynley said, Good God no, and wished what he saw as he circled round the two figures was only a dream: a nightmare coming, as all dreams come, from what lies within the subconscious and cries for scrutiny when one is most afraid.

He said, “Mrs. Maiden. Nancy.”

Nan raised her head. She'd bent to Andy, so her cheeks and her forehead were splodged with his blood. She wasn't weeping and perhaps, beyond tears at this point, she hadn't wept at all. She said, “He thought he'd failed. And when he found that he couldn't make things good again …” Her hands tightened on her husband's body, trying to press closed the gash in his neck where the blood had throbbed out of him, bathing his clothes and pooling beneath him. “He had to do … something.”

Lynley saw that a blood-spattered paper lay crumpled on the ground next to her. On it, he read what he'd expected to see: “I did it. Nancy, I'm sorry.” Andy Maiden's brief and apocryphal confession to the murder of a daughter he had deeply loved.

“I didn't want to believe, you see,” Nan Maiden said, gazing down at her husband's ashen face and smoothing back his hair. “I couldn't believe and live with myself. And continue to live with him. I saw that something was terribly wrong when his nerves went bad, but I couldn't think he'd ever have hurt her. How could I think it? Even now. How?”

“Mrs. Maiden …” Lynley had no words for her. She was too much in shock to comprehend the scope of what lay behind her husband's actions. Right now her horror—born of her husband's putative murder of their daughter—was quite enough for her to contend with.

Lynley squatted next to Nan Maiden and put his hand on her shoulder. “Mrs. Maiden,” he said. “Come away from here. I've left my mobile in the car and we're going to need to phone the police.”

“He is the police,” she said. “He loved that job. He couldn't do it any longer because his nerves wouldn't take it.”

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

“Which is why I knew, you see. But still I couldn't be sure. I could never be sure, so I didn't want to say. I couldn't risk it.”

“Of course.” Lynley tried to urge her to her feet. “Mrs. Maiden, if you'll come—”

“I thought if I could just protect him from ever having to know … That's what I wanted to do. But it turns out that he knew about everything anyway, didn't he, so we might have actually talked about it, Andy and I. And if we'd talked about it … Do you see what that means? If we'd talked, I could have stopped him. I know it. I hated what she was doing—at first I thought I'd die from the knowledge of it—and if I'd known that she'd told him what she was doing as well …” Nan bent to Andy again. “We would have had each other. At the very least. We could have talked. And I would have said the right words to stop him.”

Lynley dropped his hand from her shoulder. He'd been listening all along, but he suddenly realised that he hadn't been hearing. The sight of Andy—his throat slashed open by his own hand—had clouded all his senses save his vision. But he finally heard what Nan Maiden was saying. Hearing, he finally understood.