Payment in Blood (Inspector Lynley, #2)(111)

And then, having done it, she let herself weep, understanding at last the source of her tears, mourning the sister she had loved but forgiven too late, mourning the youth she had wasted in devotion to a man who finally meant nothing to her. She sobbed despairingly, for the years gone and the words unspoken, caring for nothing at last but this act of grief.

Across from her, Joanna Ellacourt spoke again. “This cuts it. Can’t any of you do something with her, or is she going to blubber for the rest of the day?” She turned to her husband. “David,” she insisted.

But Sydeham was gazing out into the theatre. “We’ve a visitor,” he said.

Their eyes followed his. Marguerite Rintoul, Countess of Stinhurst, was standing midway down the centre aisle.



SHE WAITED only as long as it took to close the door to her husband’s office. “Where were you last night, Stuart?” she demanded, doing nothing to hide the asperity in her voice as she pulled off her coat and gloves and threw them down on a chair.

It was a question which Lady Stinhurst knew quite well she would not have asked twenty-four hours ago. Then she would have accepted his absence in her usual, pathetically cringing fashion, hurt and wondering and afraid to know the truth. But now she was beyond that. Yesterday’s revelations in this room had combined with a long night of soul-searching to produce an anger so finely honed that it could not be blunted by any stony wall of protective and deliberate inattention.

Stinhurst went to his desk, sat behind it in the heavy leather chair.

“Sit down,” he said. His wife didn’t move.

“I asked you a question. I want an answer. Where were you last night? And please don’t ask me to believe that Scotland Yard kept you until nine this morning. I like to think I’m not that much of a fool.”

“I went to an hotel,” Stinhurst said.

“Not your club?”

“No. I wanted anonymity.”

“Something you couldn’t have at home, of course.”

For a moment, Stinhurst said nothing, fingering a letter opener that lay on his desk. Long and silver, it caught the light. “I found I couldn’t face you.”

Perhaps more than anything else, her reaction to that single sentence signalled the manner in which their relationship had changed. His voice was even, but brittle, as if the slightest provocation might cause him to break down. His skin was pallid, his eyes bloodshot and, when he placed the letter opener back on his desk, his wife saw that his hands trembled. And yet, she felt herself unmoved by all this, knowing perfectly well that its cause was not his concern for her welfare or the welfare of their daughter or even for himself, but concern over how he was going to keep the story about Geoffrey Rintoul’s despicable life and his violent death out of the newspapers. She had seen Jeremy Vinney herself in the back of the theatre. She knew why he was there. Her anger swelled anew.

“There I was at home, Stuart, patiently waiting as I always have done, worrying about you and what was happening at Scotland Yard. Hour after hour. I thought—I realised only later how foolish I was being—that somehow this tragedy might serve to bring us closer to each other. Imagine my thinking that, in spite of the story you produced about my ‘affair’ with your brother, we might still put this marriage of ours back together. But then you never even phoned, did you? And, like a fool, I waited and waited obediently. Until I finally saw that things are quite dead between us. They have been for years, of course, but I was far too afraid to face that. Until last night.”

Lord Stinhurst raised a hand as if in the hope of forestalling further words. “You do choose your moments, don’t you? This isn’t the time to discuss our marriage. I should think you’d see that if nothing else.”

Always, it was his voice of dismissal. So cold and final. So rigid with restraint. Odd, how it didn’t affect her one way or the other now. She smiled politely. “You’ve misunderstood. We aren’t discussing our marriage, Stuart. There’s nothing to discuss.”

“Then why—”

“I’ve told Elizabeth about her grandfather. I thought we might do it together last night. But when you didn’t come home, I told her myself.” She walked across the room to stand in front of his desk. She rested her knuckles against its pristine surface. Her fingers were newly bare of rings. He watched her but did not speak. “And do you know what she said when I told her that her beloved grandfather had killed her uncle Geoffrey, had snapped his handsome neck in two?”

Stinhurst shook his head. He lowered his eyes.

“She said, ‘Mummy, you’re standing in the way of the telly. Would you move, please?’ And I thought, isn’t that rich? All these years, dedicated to protecting the sacred memory of a grandfather she adored, have come down to this. Of course, I stepped out of her way at once. I’m like that, aren’t I? Always cooperative, eager to please. Always hoping things will turn out for the best if I ignore them long enough. I’m a shell of a person in a shell of a marriage, wandering round a fine house in Holland Park with every advantage save the one I’ve wanted so desperately all these years. Love.” Lady Stinhurst watched for a reaction on her husband’s face. There was nothing. She continued. “I knew then that I can’t save Elizabeth. She’s lived in a house of lies and half-truths for too many years. She can only save herself. As can I.”