Payment in Blood (Inspector Lynley, #2)(107)
Lynley heard her words, recognising the kaleidoscopic effect they had on the case. They threw everything into a new perspective. “What time was this?”
“Late. Long after one. Perhaps nearly two. I don’t actually know.”
“But you heard him? You’re certain of that?”
“Oh, yes. I heard him.” She bent her head in shame.
Yet after that, Lynley thought, she would still seek to protect the man. That kind of undeserved, selfless devotion was beyond his comprehension. He avoided trying to deal with it by asking her something altogether different. “Do you remember where you were in March of 1973?”
She did not seem to take in the question at once. “In 1973? I was…surely I was at home in London. Caring for James. Our son. He was born that January, and I’d taken some time off.”
“But Gabriel wasn’t home?”
She pondered this. “No, I don’t think he was. I think he was appearing in the regionals then. Why? What does that have to do with all this?”
Everything, Lynley thought. He put all his resources into compelling her to listen and understand his next words. “Your sister was getting ready to write a book about a murder that occurred in March of 1973. Whoever committed that murder also killed Joy and Gowan Kilbride. The evidence we have is virtually useless, Irene. And I’m afraid we need you if we’re to bring this creature to any kind of justice.”
Her eyes begged him for the truth. “Is it Robert?”
“I don’t think so. Inspite of everything you’ve told us, I simply don’t see how he could have managed to get the key to her room.”
“But if he was with her that night, she could have given it to him!”
That was a possibility, Lynley acknowledged. How to explain it? And then how to align it with what the forensic report revealed about Joy Sinclair? And how to tell Irene that even if, by helping the police, she proved her husband innocent, she would only be proving her own cousin Rhys guilty?
“Will you help us?” he asked.
Lynley saw her struggle with the decision and knew exactly the dilemma she faced. It all came down to a simple choice: her continued protection of Robert Gabriel for the sake of their children, or her active involvement in a scheme that might bring her sister’s killer to justice. To choose the former, she faced the uncertainty of never knowing whether she was protecting a man who was truly innocent or guilty. To choose the latter, however, she in effect committed herself to an act of forgiveness, a posthumous absolution of her sister’s sin against her.
Thus, it was a choice between the living and the dead wherein the living promised only a continuation of lies and the dead promised the peace of mind that comes from a dissolution of rancour and a getting on with life. On the surface, it appeared to be no choice at all. But Lynley knew too well that decisions governed by the heart could be wildly irrational. He only hoped Irene had grown to see that her marriage to Gabriel had been infected with the disease of his infidelities, and that her sister had played only a small and unhappy role in a drama of demise that had been grinding itself out for years.
Irene moved. Her fingers left damp marks on her leather handbag. Her voice caught, then held. “I’ll help you. What do I have to do?”
“Spend tonight at your sister’s home in Hampstead. Sergeant Havers will go with you.”
16
WHEN DEBORAH ST. JAMES answered the door to Lynley’s knock the next morning at half past ten, her unruly hair and the stained apron she wore over her threadbare jeans and plaid shirt told him he had interrupted her in the midst of her work. Still, her face lit when she saw him.
“A diversion,” she said. “Thank God! I’ve spent the last two hours working in the darkroom with nothing but Peach and Alaska for company. They’re sweet as far as dogs and cats go, but not much for conversation. Simon’s right there in the lab, of course, but his entertainment value plunges to nothing when he’s concentrating on science. I’m so glad you’ve come. Perhaps you can rout him out for morning coffee.” She waited until he had removed overcoat and muffler before she touched his shoulder lightly and said, “Are you quite all right, Tommy? Is there anything…? You see, they’ve told me a bit about it and…You don’t look well. Are you sleeping at all? Have you eaten? Should I ask Dad…? Would you like…?” She bit her lip. “Why do I always babble like an idiot?”
Lynley smiled affectionately at her jumble of words, gently pushed one of her fallen curls back behind her ear, and followed her to the stairs. She was continuing to speak.
“Simon’s had a phone call from Jeremy Vinney. It’s put him into one of those long, mysterious contemplations of his. And then Helen rang not five minutes later.”
Below her, Lynley hesitated. “Helen’s not here today?” In spite of his tone, which he had endeavoured to keep guarded, he saw that Deborah read through the question easily. Her green eyes softened.
“No. She’s not here, Tommy. That’s why you’ve come, isn’t it?” Without waiting for his answer, she said kindly, “Do come up and talk to Simon. He knows Helen better than anyone, after all.”
St. James met them at the door to his laboratory, an old copy of Simpson’s Forensic Medicine in one hand and a particularly grisly-looking anatomical specimen in the other: a human finger preserved in formaldehyde.