Payment in Blood (Inspector Lynley, #2)(16)
“He spent four months in hospital after that. He’s quite …recovered now. I ran into him early last month in the Brompton Road. We had dinner and…well, ever since we’ve seen a good deal of each other.”
“His recovery must be complete indeed if he’s working with Stinhurst, Ellacourt, and Gabriel. Lofty company for—”
“A man of his reputation?” Lady Helen frowned down at the floor, touching her slippered foot delicately to one of the pegs that held the wood in place. “Yes, I suppose. But Joy Sinclair was his cousin. They were very close, and I think she saw the opportunity to give him a second chance in London theatre. She was instrumental in talking Lord Stinhurst into giving Rhys the contract.”
“She had influence with Stinhurst?”
“I’ve got the impression Joy had influence with everyone.”
“Meaning?”
Lady Helen hesitated. She was not a woman given to saying anything that might denigrate others, even in a murder investigation. Doing so now went against the grain, even with St. James, always a man she could trust implicitly, waiting for her answer. She gave it reluctantly, prefacing it with a quick look at Sergeant Havers to read her face for its degree of discretion.
“Apparently she had an affair with Robert Gabriel last year, Simon. They had a tremendous row about it only yesterday afternoon. Gabriel wanted Joy to tell his former wife that he slept with her just once. Joy refused. It…well, the row was heading towards violence when Rhys burst into Joy’s room and broke it up.”
St. James looked perplexed. “I don’t understand. Did Joy Sinclair know Robert Gabriel’s wife? Did she even know he was married?”
“Oh yes,” Lady Helen answered. “Robert Gabriel was married for nineteen years to Irene Sinclair. Joy’s sister.”
INSPECTOR MACASKIN unlocked the door and admitted Lynley and St. James into Joy Sinclair’s room. He felt for the wall switch, and two serpentine bronze ceiling fixtures spilled light down on the wealth of contradictions below. It was, Lynley saw, a beautiful room, the sort one expects the play’s star performer to be given, not its author. Expensively papered in green and yellow, it was furnished with a four-poster Victorian bed and nineteenth-century chest of drawers, wardrobe, and chairs. A comfortably faded Axminster carpet covered the oak floor, and the boards creaked with age when they walked across it.
Yet the room was still very much the scene of a brutal crime, and the frigid air was a rich effluvium of blood and destruction. The bed acted as centrepiece with its writhing confusion of blood-soaked linens and its single, deadly gash that spoke eloquently of the manner in which the woman had died. Donning latex gloves, the three men approached it with a fair degree of respect: Lynley taking in the room with a sweeping glance, Macaskin pocketing Francesca Gerrard’s master keys, and St. James scrutinising those scant feet and inches of horrifying catafalque as if they could reveal to him the identity of their maker.
As the other two watched, St. James removed a small folding ruler from his pocket and, leaning over the bed, delicately probed the ugly puncture at the centre top. The mattress was unusual, wool-filled in the manner of a tick. Packing of this sort would make it soothingly comfortable, moulded to shoulders, hips, and the small of one’s back. And it had the additional benefit of having shaped itself cooperatively round the intrusive murder weapon, faultlessly reproducing the direction of entry.
“One thrust,” St. James said to the others over his shoulder. “Right-handed, delivered from the left side of the bed.”
Inspector Macaskin spoke curtly. “Possible for a woman?”
“If the dirk was sharp enough,” St. James responded, “it would take no great force to drive it through a woman’s neck. Another woman could have done it.” He looked pensive. “But why is it that one can’t really imagine a woman committing a crime such as this?”
Macaskin’s eyes were on the immense stain that was not yet dry upon the mattress. “Sharp, yes. Damned sharp,” he said moodily. “A killer covered with blood?”
“Not necessarily. I should guess that he would have blood on his right hand and arm, but if he managed it quickly and shielded himself with the bed linen, he might well have got away with just a spot or two. And that, if he didn’t panic, could easily be wiped off on one of the sheets and that spot on the sheet then mingled in with the blood that the wound produced.”
“What about his clothing?”
St. James examined the two pillows, set them on a chair, and peeled back the bottom sheet from the mattress a careful inch at a time. “The killer might well have worn no clothes at all,” he noted. “It would be far easier to see to it in the nude. Then he could return to his room, or to her room,” this with a nod at Macaskin, “and wash the blood off with soap and water. If there was any on him in the first place.”
“That would be a risk, wouldn’t it?” Macaskin asked. “Not to mention cold as the dickens.”
St. James paused to compare the hole in the sheet with that in the mattress. “The entire crime was a risk. Joy Sinclair might well have awakened and screamed like a banshee.”
“If she was asleep in the first place,” Lynley noted. He had gone to the dressing table near the window. A jumble of articles took up its surface: make-up, hair brushes, hair dryer, tissues, a mass of jewellery among which were three rings, five silver bangles, and two strings of coloured beads. A gold hoop earring lay on the floor. “St. James,” Lynley said, his eyes on the table, “when you and Deborah go to an hotel, do you lock the door?”