Payment in Blood (Inspector Lynley, #2)(13)
He recognised the principal players in the drama, mostly by their relative proximity to what was clearly the main attraction and dominant force in the room: Britain’s foremost actress, Joanna Ellacourt. She was standing by the bar, a wintry blonde beauty whose white angora sweater and matching wool trousers seemed to emphasise the temperature of disdain with which she greeted the arrival of the police. As if in the expectation of meeting some need of hers, at Joanna’s elbow stood a brawny, older man, with heavy-lidded eyes and coarse, greying hair—no doubt her husband, David Sydeham. Only two steps away on Joanna’s other side, her leading man turned abruptly back to a drink that he was nursing at the bar. Robert Gabriel was either not interested in the newcomers or eager not to be seen until properly fortified for the encounter. And in front of Gabriel, having risen quickly from the couch on which he had been sitting, Stuart Rintoul, Lord Stinhurst, studied Lynley intently as if with the purpose of casting him in some future production.
There were others in the room whose identities Lynley could only guess at for the moment: two older women near the fire, most likely Lord Stinhurst’s wife and his sister, Francesca Gerrard; an angry-faced, pudgy man somewhere in his thirties who smoked a pipe, wore newish tweeds, and seemed to be the journalist Jeremy Vinney; sharing a settee with him, an exceedingly ill-dressed, unattractive middle-aged spinster type whose extreme lankiness if not her resemblance to Lord Stinhurst indicated that she had to be his daughter; the two teenagers employed at the hotel, together at the furthest corner of the room; and in a low chair nearly obscured by shadows, a black-haired woman who raised a haunted face to Lynley, hollow-cheeked, dark-eyed, with an undercurrent of passion held in savagely tight rein. Irene Sinclair, Lynley guessed, the victim’s sister.
But none of these was the one person Lynley was looking for, and he passed his eyes over the group once again until he found the director of the play, recognising him from the olive skin, black hair, and sombre eyes of the Welsh. Rhys Davies-Jones was standing by the chair that Lady Helen had just vacated. He had moved when she did, as if to prevent her from confronting the police alone. He stopped, however, when it became apparent to everyone that this particular policeman was no stranger to Lady Helen Clyde.
Across the width of the room and through the gulf created by the conflict of their cultures, Lynley looked at Davies-Jones, feeling an aversion take hold of him, one so strong that it seemed a physical illness. Helen’s lover, he thought, and then more fiercely to convince himself of the fact’s grim immutability: This is Helen’s lover.
No man could have looked less likely for the role. The Welshman was at least ten years Helen’s senior, quite possibly more. With curly hair going to grey at the temples and a thin weathered face, he was wiry and fit like his Celtic ancestors. Also like them, he was neither tall nor handsome. His features were sharp and stony. But Lynley could not deny that the look of the man spoke of both intelligence and inner strength, qualities that Helen would recognise—and value—beyond any others.
“Sergeant Havers,” Lynley’s voice cut through the continued protestations, eliminating them abruptly, “take Lady Helen to her room and allow her to get dressed. Where are the keys?”
Wide-eyed and white-faced, a young girl came forward. Mary Agnes Campbell, finder of the body. She held out a silver tray on which someone had deposited all of the hotel keys, but her hands were shaking, so the tray and its contents jangled discordantly. Lynley’s eyes took it in, then moved to the assembled company.
“I locked all the rooms and collected the keys immediately after she…the body was discovered this morning.” Lord Stinhurst resumed his seat by the fire, a couch which he was sharing with one of the two older women. Her hand groped for his, and their fingers intertwined. “I’m not certain what the procedure is in a case like this,” Stinhurst concluded, in explanation, “but that seemed the best.”
When Lynley looked less than willing to receive this bit of news with appreciation, Macaskin interjected, “Everyone was in the drawing room when we arrived this morning. His lordship had done us the service of locking them in.”
“How helpful of Lord Stinhurst.” It was Sergeant Havers, speaking in a voice so polite that it sounded like steel.
“Find your key, Helen,” Lynley said. Her eyes had never left his face since he’d first spoken to her. He could feel them on him now, her gaze warm, like a touch. “The rest of you may be expected to be inconvenienced awhile longer.”
Into the storm of fresh protests that greeted this remark, Lady Helen started to respond, but Joanna Ellacourt expertly wrested the stage from her by crossing the room to Lynley. The lighting became her, and Joanna walked like a woman who knew how to use the moment. Her long, unpinned hair moved like sun-shot silk upon her shoulders.
“Inspector,” she murmured, motioning gracefully towards the door, “I feel I may ask you…if it’s not too much. I should be only too grateful to be given just a few moments to myself. Somewhere. Out of here. In my own room, perhaps, but if that’s not possible, just in any room. Anywhere. With a single chair on which I could sit and ponder and gather my wits once again. Five minutes only. If you would be so good as to see to it for me, I should feel in your debt. After this dreadful day.”
Her performance was lovely, Blanche Dubois in Scotland. But Lynley had no intention of acting the part of her gentleman from Dallas.