Payment in Blood (Inspector Lynley, #2)(110)

“Are you all right, Irene?” Rhys Davies-Jones asked.

She looked up, managing a weary smile. “Yes. Fine. A bit tired, I’m afraid.” That would be enough for now.

Others began to arrive. Irene heard rather than saw them, mentally ticking off each person’s entrance as she listened for signs of strain in their voices, signs of guilt, signs of increased anxiety. Robert Gabriel gingerly took his place next to her. He fingered his swollen face with a rueful smile.

“I’ve not had a chance to say thank you for last night,” he said in a tender voice. “I’m…well, I’m sorry about it, Renie. I’m most wretchedly sorry about everything, in fact. I would have said something when the doctors had finished with me, but you’d already gone. I rang you up, but James said you were at Joy’s in Hampstead.” He paused for a reflective moment. “Renie. I thought…I did hope we might—”

She cut him off. “No. There was a great deal of time for me to think last night, Robert. And I did that. Clearly. At last.”

Gabriel took in her tone and turned his head away. “I can guess what kind of thinking you accomplished at your sister’s,” he said with aggrieved finality.

The arrival of Joanna Ellacourt allowed Irene to avoid an answer. She swept up the aisle between her husband and Lord Stinhurst as David Sydeham was saying, “We want final approval of all the costumes, Stuart. It’s not part of the original contract, I know. But considering everything that’s already happened, I think we’re within our rights to negotiate a new clause. Joanna feels—”

Joanna did not wait for her husband to argue the merits of their case. “I’d like the costumes to reflect who the starring role belongs to,” she said pointedly, with a cool glance at Irene.

Stinhurst did not reply to either of them. He looked and moved like a man ageing rapidly. Managing the stairs seemed to drain him of energy. He appeared to be wearing the very same suit, shirt, and tie that he’d had on yesterday, the charcoal jacket rumpled, its sleeves badly creased. As if he’d given up interest in his appearance entirely. Watching him, Irene wondered, with a chill, if he would even live to see this production open. When he took his chair, with a nod of acknowledgement towards Rhys Davies-Jones, the new reading began.

They were midway through the play when Irene allowed herself to drop off to sleep. The theatre was so warm, the atmosphere on the stage was so close, their voices rose and fell with such hypnotic rhythm that she found it easier than she had supposed it would be to let herself go. She stopped worrying about their willingness to believe in the role she was playing and became the actress she had been years ago, before Robert Gabriel had entered her life and undermined her confidence with year after year of public and private humiliation.

She even felt herself beginning to dream when Joanna Ellacourt’s voice snapped angrily, “For God’s sake, would someone wake her up? I’ve no intention of trying to work my way through this with her sitting there like a drooling grandmother snoring at a kitchen fire.”

“Renie?”

“Irene!”

She opened her eyes with a start, pleased to feel the rush of embarrassment sweep over her. “Did I drop off? I’m terribly sorry.”

“Late night, sweetie?” Joanna asked tartly.

“Yes, I’m afraid…I…” Irene swallowed, smiled flickeringly to mask pain, and said, “I spent most of the night going through Joy’s things in Hampstead.”

Stunned astonishment met this announcement. Irene felt pleased to see the effect her words had upon them, and for a moment she understood Jeremy Vinney’s anger. How easily indeed they had forgotten her sister, how conveniently their lives had moved on. But not without a stumbling block for someone, she thought, and began to construct it with every power available to her. She brought tears into her eyes.

“There were diaries, you see,” she said hollowly.

As if instinct alone told her that she was in the presence of a performance capable of upstaging her own, Joanna Ellacourt sought their attention again. “No doubt an account of Joy’s life makes absolutely fascinating reading,” she said. “But if you’re awake now, perhaps this play will be fascinating as well.”

Irene shook her head. She allowed her voice to raise a degree. “No, no, that isn’t it. You see, they weren’t hers. They had come by express yesterday, and when I opened them and found the note from the husband of that wretched woman who had written them—”

“For God’s sake, is this really necessary?” Joanna’s face was white with anger.

“—I started to read. I didn’t get very far, but I saw that they were what Joy had been waiting for to do her next book. The one she talked about just the other night in Scotland. And suddenly…I seemed to realise that she was really dead, that she wouldn’t ever be back.” Irene’s tears began to fall, becoming suddenly copious as she felt the first swelling of genuine grief. Her next words only marginally touched upon the script that she and Sergeant Havers had so painstakingly prepared. She was rambling, she knew it, but the words had to be said. And nothing else mattered but saying them. “So she’ll never write it now. And I felt as if…with Hannah Darrow’s diaries sitting there in her house…I ought to write the book for her if only I could. As a means of saying that…in the end, I understood how it happened between them. I did understand. Oh, it hurt. God, it was agony all the same. But I understood. And I don’t think…She was always my sister. I never told her that. Oh God, I can’t go back there now that she’s dead!”