In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Inspector Lynley, #10)(225)

Lynley reached Eaton Terrace at ten that night. He found his wife in the bathroom, sunk in a fragrant citrus froth of bubbles. Her eyes were closed, her head cradled in a towelling pillow, and her hands—garbed incongruously in white satin gloves—rested on the spotless stainless steel tray that spanned the width of the bath and held her soaps and her sponges. A CD player sat on the vanity amid a clutter of Helens unguents, potions, and creams. Music emanated from it. A soprano sang.

They lay him—gently and softly—in the cold cold ground,

they lay him—gently and softly—in the cold cold ground.

And here am I, a child without a light, to see me through the coming

storm, with no one here to tell me I am not alone.

Lynley reached for the off button. “Ophelia, I expect, once Hamlet's killed Polonius.”

Helen splashed in the bath behind him. “Tommy! You frightened me half to death.”

“Sorry.”

“Have you just now got in?”

“Yes. Tell me about the gloves, Helen.”

“The gloves?” Helens glance shifted to her hands. “Oh! The gloves. It's my cuticles. I'm giving them a treatment, a combination of heat and oil.”

“That's a relief,” he said.

“Why? Had you noticed my cuticles?”

“No. But I thought you were anticipating a future as the Queen, which would mean our relationship has come to an end. Have you ever seen the Queen without her gloves?”

“Hmm. I don't think I have. But you don't suppose she actually bathes with them on, do you?”

“It's a possibility. She may loathe human contact even with herself.”

Helen laughed. “I'm so glad you're home.” She peeled off the gloves and plunged her hands into the water. She settled back against her pillow and regarded him. “Tell me” she said gently. “Please.”

It was her way, and Lynley hoped it would always be her way: to read him so swiftly and to open herself to him with those three simple words.

He pulled a stool over to the side of the bath. He took off his jacket, dropped it onto the floor, rolled up his sleeves, and reached for one of the sponges and some soap. He took her arm first and ran the sponge down its slender length. And as he bathed her, he told her everything. She listened in silence, watching him.

“The worst of it all is this,” he said in conclusion to his tale. “Andy Maiden would still be alive if I'd stuck to procedure when we met yesterday afternoon. But his wife came into the room, and instead of questioning her about Nicola's life in London—which would have revealed that she'd known about it even longer than Andy, that Nicola had told her months before she told her father—I held back. Because I wanted to help him protect her.”

“When she didn't need his protection at all,” Helen said. “Yes. I see how it happened. How dreadful. But, Tommy, you were doing the best you knew at the time.”

Lynley squeezed the sponge and let the soapy water run against his wife's shoulders before he returned the sponge to its tray. “The best I knew at the time was to stick to procedure. He was a suspect. So was she. I didn't treat either one of them that way. Had I done so, he wouldn't be dead.”

Lynley couldn't decide what the worst of it had been: seeing the bloody Swiss Army knife still clutched in Andy's stiffened hand, trying to get Nancy Maiden away from her husband's corpse, hiking back to the Bentley with her in tow and every moment fearing that her shock would give way to a raving grief which he would not be able to handle, waiting—endlessly, it seemed—for the police to arrive, facing the corpse a second time and this time without Andy's wife present to deflect his attention from his former colleague's manner of death.

“Looks like the knife he showed me,” Hanken had said, observing it on the ground.

“It would be, wouldn't it” was Lynley's only reply. Then, passionately, “Blast it. God damn it, Peter. It's all my fault. If I'd showed them every one of my cards when they were both with me … But I didn't. I didn't.”

Hanken had nodded at his team then, directing them to bag the body. He'd shaken a cigarette from his packet and offered the packet to Lynley. He'd said, “Take one, God damn it. You need it, Thomas,” and Lynley had complied. They'd left the ancient stone circle but remained by the sentry stone, smoking their Marlboros. “No one operates by rote,” Hanken said. “Half of this job is intuition, and that comes from the heart. You followed your heart. In your position, I can't say I would have done differently.”

“Can't you?”

“No.”

But Lynley had known the other man was lying. Because the most important part of the job was knowing both when to follow your heart and when to do so would lead to disaster.

“Barbara was right from the first,” Lynley told Helen as she rose from the bath and took the towel he extended to her. “Had I even seen that this wouldn't have happened, because I'd have stayed in London and reined back the Derbyshire end of things while we brought down King-Ryder.”

“If that's the case,” Helen said quietly as she wrapped the towel round her body, “then I'm equally to blame for what's happened, Tommy.” And she told him how Barbara had come to be tracking down King-Ryder once she'd been thrown off the case. “I could have phoned you when Denton told me about the music. I didn't make that choice.”