Payment in Blood (Inspector Lynley, #2)(14)

“I’m sorry,” he replied, “I’m afraid you shall have to rely on the kindness of strangers other than myself.” And then he repeated, “Find your key, Helen.”

Lady Helen made a gesture Lynley recognised, a prelude to speaking. He turned away. “We’ll be in the Sinclair room,” he said to Havers. “Let me know when she’s dressed. Constable Lonan, see that the rest of them stay here for now.”

Angry voices swelled again. Lynley ignored them and left the room. St. James and Macaskin followed.



LEFT WITH THIS group of la-de-da suspects, so atypical of what one usually came across in a murder investigation, Barbara Havers was only too delighted to make her own assessments of their potential guilt. She had the time to do so as Lady Helen returned to Rhys Davies-Jones and exchanged a few quiet words with him beneath the general din of expostulations and imprecations that followed Lynley’s departure.

They were quite the lot, Barbara decided. Chic and well tailored and divinely turned out. With the exception of Lady Helen, they were a veritable advertisement for how to dress for a murder. And how to act once the police arrive: righteous indignation, calls for solicitors, nasty remarks. So far, they were living up to her every expectation. At any moment, no doubt one of them would mention a close connection with his MP, an intimacy with Mrs. Thatcher, or a notable figure on his family tree. They were all the same, such swells, such toffs.

All but that one pinch-faced woman who had managed to shrink her considerable frame into an ill-shaped heap on the settee, as far away as possible from the man with whom she shared it. Elizabeth Rintoul, Barbara thought. Lady Elizabeth Rintoul, to be exact. Lord Stinhurst’s only daughter.

She was acting as if the man seated next to her carried a particularly virulent strain of disease. Cringed into a corner of the couch, she held a navy cardigan closed at her throat and pressed both arms tightly, painfully to her sides. Her feet were planted on the floor in front of her, shod in the kind of flat-soled, plain black shoes that are generally labelled sensible. They stuck out like angular blobs of oil from beneath an unappealing black flannel skirt. Lint dotted it liberally. She added nothing whatsoever to the conversation going on about her. But something in her posture suggested bones that were brittle and about to break.

“Elizabeth, dear,” murmured the woman opposite her. She wore the kind of meaningful, ingratiating smile one directs to a recalcitrant child misbehaving before company. Obviously, this was Mum, Barbara decided, Lady Stinhurst herself, dressed in a fawn-coloured twinset and amber beads, ankles neatly crossed and hands folded in her lap. “Perhaps Mr. Vinney’s drink could be replenished.”

Elizabeth Rintoul’s dull eyes moved to her mother. “Perhaps,” she responded. She made the word sound foul.

Casting a pleading glance at her husband as if for support, Lady Stinhurst persisted. She had a gentle, uncertain voice, the sort one expects from maiden ladies not accustomed to speaking to children. She lifted a hand nervously to hair that was expertly coloured and styled to fight off the reality of fast-encroaching old age. “You see, darling, we’ve been sitting so long now and I really don’t believe Mr. Vinney’s had anything at all since half past two.”

It was far more than a hint. It was a blatant suggestion. The bar was just across the room and Elizabeth was to wait upon Mr. Vinney like a debutante with her very first beau. The directions were clear enough. But Elizabeth wasn’t about to follow them. Instead, contempt flashed across her features, and she dropped her eyes to a magazine in her lap. She mouthed a singularly unladylike response, one word only. Her mother could not possibly misread or misunderstand it.

Barbara watched the exchange between them with some fascination. The Lady Elizabeth looked well over thirty years old—probably skating closer to forty. She was hardly of an age to need a prod from Mum in the man department. But prod was certainly what Mum had in mind. In fact, in spite of Elizabeth’s unveiled hostility, Lady Stinhurst made a movement that looked very much as if she intended to shove Elizabeth in the direction of Mr. Vinney’s arms.

Not that Jeremy Vinney himself appeared willing. Next to Elizabeth, The Times journalist was doing his best to ignore the conversation entirely. He probed at his pipe with a stainless steel tool and eavesdropped unashamedly on what Joanna Ellacourt was saying at her end of the room. She was angry and making no secret about the fact.

“She’s made wonderful fools of us all, hasn’t she? What a lark for her! What a bloody good laugh!” the actress cast a scathing look at Irene Sinclair, who still sat in her low chair far away from the rest of them, as if her sister’s death somehow had served to make her own presence unwelcome. “And who do you imagine benefits from last night’s little change in the script? Me? Not on your life! Well, I won’t stand for it, David. I damn well won’t stand for it.”

David Sydeham sounded conciliatory as he answered his wife. “Nothing’s settled yet, Jo. Far from it now. Once she changed the script, your contract may well have become void.”

“You think the contract is void. But you don’t have it here, do you? We can’t look at it, can we? You don’t know if it’s void at all. Yet you expect me to believe—to take your word after all that’s happened—that merely a change in characterisation makes a contract void? Pardon my disbelief, will you? Pardon my incredulous shriek of laughter. And give me another gin. Now.”