Payment in Blood (Inspector Lynley, #2)(112)

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That I’m leaving you,” she said. “I don’t know if it’s permanent. I don’t have the bravado to claim that, I’m afraid. But I’m going to Somerset until I have everything sorted out in my mind, until I know what I want to do. And if it does become permanent, you’re not to worry. I don’t require much. Just a few rooms somewhere and a bit of peace and quiet. No doubt we can work out an equitable settlement. But if not, our respective solicitors—”

Stinhurst swung his chair to one side. “Don’t do this to me. Not today. Please. Not on top of everything else.”

She gave a regretful laugh. “That’s really what it is, isn’t it? I’m about to cause you one more headache, just another inconvenience. Something else to have to explain away to Inspector Lynley, if it comes down to that. Well, I would have waited, but as I needed to talk to you anyway, now seemed as good a time as any to tell you everything.”

“Everything?” he asked dully.

“Yes. There’s one thing more before I’m on my way. Francesca telephoned this morning. She couldn’t bear it any longer, she said. Not after Gowan. She thought she would be able to. But Gowan was dear to her, and she couldn’t bear to think that she had made less of his life and his death by what she had done. She was willing to at first, for your sake, of course. But she found that she couldn’t keep up the pretence. So she plans to speak to Inspector Macaskin this afternoon.”

“What are you talking about?”

Lady Stinhurst pulled on her gloves, picked up her coat, preparatory to leaving. She took brief, hostile pleasure in her final remarks. “Francesca lied to the police about what she did, and what she saw, the night Joy Sinclair died.”



“I’VE BROUGHT Chinese food, Dad.” Barbara Havers popped her head into the sitting room. “But I shall have to ask you not to fight with Mum over the shrimp this time. Where is she?”

Her father sat before the television set, which was tuned deafeningly into BBC-1. The horizontal hold was slipping, and people’s heads were being cut off right at the eyebrows so that it looked a bit like a science fiction show.

“Dad?” Barbara repeated. He gave no answer. She walked into the room, lowered the volume, and turned to him. He was asleep, his jaw slack, the tubes that fed him oxygen askew in his nostrils. Racing magazines covered the floor near his chair and a newspaper was opened over his knees. It was too hot in the room, in the entire house for that matter, and the musty smell of her parents’ ageing seemed to seep from the walls and the floor and the furniture. This mixed with a stronger, more recent scent of food overcooked and inedible.

Barbara’s movement made sufficient noise to waken her father, and, seeing her, he smiled, showing teeth that were blackened, crooked, and in places altogether missing. “Barbie. Mussa dozed off.”

“Where’s Mum?”

Jimmy Havers blinked, adjusting the tubes in his nostrils and reaching for a handkerchief into which he coughed heavily. His breathing sounded like the bubbling of water. “Just next door. Mrs. Gustafson’s come down with flu again and Mum’s taken her some soup.”

Knowing her mother’s questionable culinary talents, Barbara wondered briefly if Mrs. Gustafson’s condition would improve or worsen under her ministrations. Nonetheless, she was encouraged by the fact that her mother had ventured out of the house. It was the first time she had done so in years.

“I’ve brought Chinese,” she told her father, indicating the sack she cradled in one arm. “I’m off again tonight, though. I’ve only half an hour to eat.”

Her father frowned. “Mum won’t like that, Barbie. Not one bit.”

“That’s why I’ve brought the food. Peace offering.” She went on to the kitchen at the back of the house.

Her heart sank at the sight of it. A dozen tins of soup were lined up near the sink with their lids gaping open and spoons stuck in them as if her mother had sampled each one before deciding which to offer their neighbour. Three had actually been heated, in separate pans which still stood on the stove with the fire left carelessly on beneath them and their contents burnt to nothing, sending up a scent of scalded vegetables and milk. Perilously near the flame, a package of biscuits lay open, spilling out its contents, its wrapper hastily torn away and part of it discarded on the floor.

“Oh hell,” Barbara said wearily, turning off the stove. She put her package down onto the kitchen table, next to her mother’s newest album of travel information. A glance told her that Brazil was this week’s destination, but she wasn’t interested in looking at the collection of brochures and photographs clipped from magazines. She rummaged beneath the sink for a rubbish sack and was dropping the tins of soup into it when the front door opened, hesitant steps teetered down the uncarpeted hall, and her mother appeared at the kitchen door, a badly scored plastic tray in her hands. Soup, biscuits, and a withered apple were all in place upon it.

“It went cold,” Mrs. Havers said, her colourless eyes trying to focus past her own confusion. She was wearing only an irregularly buttoned cardigan over her shabby housedress. “I didn’t think to cover the soup, lovey. And when I got there, her daughter had come to stay and said that Mrs. Gustafson didn’t want it.”

Barbara looked at the curious mixture and blessed Mrs. Gustafson’s daughter for her wisdom if not for her tact. The soup was a blend of everything on the stove, an unappealing concoction of split pea, clam chowder, and tomato with rice. Rapidly cooling in the night air, it had formed a puckered skin on the top so that it vaguely resembled coagulating blood. Her stomach churned uneasily at the sight.