Payment in Blood (Inspector Lynley, #2)(113)

“Well, no matter, Mum,” she said. “You thought about her, didn’t you? And Mrs. Gustafson will be sure to learn of that. You were neighbourly, weren’t you?”

Her mother smiled vacantly. “Yes. I was, wasn’t I?” She set the tray down on the very edge of the table. Barbara lunged forward to catch it before it toppled to the floor. “Have you seen Brazil, lovey?” Affectionately, Mrs. Havers fingered the tattered artificial leather cover of her album. “I did some more work on it today.”

“Yes. I had a quick glance.” Barbara continued sweeping things off the work top into the rubbish. The sink was piled with unwashed crockery. A faint odour of rot emanated from it, telling her that uneaten food was also buried somewhere beneath the mess. “I’ve brought Chinese,” she told her mother. “I’m off again in a bit, though.”

“Oh, lovey, no,” her mother responded. “In this cold? In the dark? I don’t think that’s wise, do you? Young ladies should not be on the streets alone at night.”

“Police business, Mum,” Barbara replied. She went to the cupboard and saw that only two clean plates were left. No matter, she thought. She would eat out of the cartons once her parents had taken their share.

She was setting the table as her mother puttered uselessly in her wake when the front doorbell rang. They looked at each other.

Her mother’s face clouded. “You don’t suppose that’s…No, I know. Tony won’t come back, will he? He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“He’s dead, Mum,” Barbara replied firmly. “Put the kettle on for tea. I’ll get the door.”

The bell rang a second time before she had a chance to answer it. Muttering impatiently, flipping on the exterior light, she pulled the door open to see, unbelievably, Lady Helen Clyde standing on the front step. She was dressed completely in black from head to toe, and that should have served as warning enough for Barbara. But at the moment, all she could contemplate was the horrifying thought that, unless this was a nightmare from which she could mercifully awaken, she was going to have to ask the other woman into the house.

The youngest daughter of the tenth Earl of Hesfield, child of a Surrey great house, denizen of one of the most fashionable districts in London. Come to this netherworld of Acton’s worst neighbourhood…for what? Barbara gaped at her wordlessly, looked for a car in the street, and saw Lady Helen’s red Mini parked several doors down. She heard her mother’s nervous whimper some distance behind her.

“Lovey? Who is it? It’s not…”

“No, Mum. It’s fine. Don’t worry,” she called back over her shoulder.

“Forgive me, Barbara,” Lady Helen said. “If there had been any other way, I would have taken it.”

The words brought Barbara back to herself. She held the door open. “Come in.”

When Lady Helen passed her and stood in the hall, Barbara felt herself looking at her home involuntarily, seeing it as the other woman must see it, as a place where lunacy and poverty whirled wildly hand in hand. The worn linoleum on the floor unwashed for months at a time, tracked with footprints and puddles of melted snow; the faded wallpaper peeling away at the corners with a damp patch growing mouldy near the door; the battered stairway with hooks along the wall on which ragged coats hung carelessly, some unworn for years; the old rattan umbrella rack, with great gaping holes in its sides where wet umbrellas had eaten through the palm over time; the odours of burnt food and age and neglect.

My bedroom’s not like this! she wanted to shout. But I can’t keep up with them and pay the bills and cook the meals and see that they clean themselves!

But she said nothing. She merely waited for Lady Helen to speak, feeling a hot tide of shame wash over her when her father shambled to the door of the sitting room in his baggy trousers and stained grey shirt, pulling his oxygen along behind him in its trolley.

“This is my father,” Barbara said and, when her mother peeped out of the kitchen like a frightened mouse, “and my mother.”

Lady Helen went to Jimmy Havers, extending her hand. “I’m Helen Clyde,” she said, and looking into the kitchen, “I’ve interrupted your dinner, haven’t I, Mrs. Havers?”

Jimmy Havers smiled expansively. “Chinese tonight,” he said. “We’ve enough if you want a bite, don’t we, Barbie?”

At another time, Barbara might have taken grim amusement from the thought of Lady Helen Clyde eating Chinese food out of cartons, sitting at the kitchen table and chatting with her mother about the trips to Brazil and Turkey and Greece that occupied the inner reaches of her madness. But now she only felt weak with the humiliation of discovery, with the knowledge that Lady Helen might somehow betray her circumstances to Lynley.

“Thank you,” Lady Helen was replying graciously. “But I’m not at all hungry.” She smiled at Barbara, but it was at best only an unsteady effort.

Seeing this, Barbara realised that whatever her own state was in the face of this visit, Lady Helen’s was worse. Thus, she spoke kindly. “Let me just get them started eating, Helen. The sitting room’s over there if you don’t mind a rather large sort of mess.”

Without waiting to see how Lady Helen might react to her first sight of the sitting room, with its ancient creaking furniture and general air of decay, Barbara ushered her father into the kitchen. She took a moment to soothe her mother’s querulous fears about their unexpected visitor, dishing out rice, fried shrimp, sesame chicken, and oyster beef as she considered why the other woman had appeared on her doorstep. She didn’t want to think that Lady Helen might already be aware of the machinery set in progress for tonight’s arrest. She didn’t want to think that the potential arrest might be the reason for this visit in the first place. Yet, all the time she knew in her heart that there could be no other reason. She and Lady Helen Clyde did not exactly travel in the same circle of friends. This was hardly an impulsive social call.