Payment in Blood (Inspector Lynley, #2)(28)

That remark boded ill, but, like a fool for love, Gowan had been willing to take the conversation further.

“Haiven?” he’d asked irritably.

“Tha’ policeman!” And then Mary Agnes had gone on rhapsodically to catalogue Inspector Lynley’s virtues. Gowan felt them tattooed into his brain. Hair like Anthony Andrews, a nose like Charles Dance, eyes like Ben Cross, and a smile like Sting. No matter that the man had not bothered to smile once. Mary Agnes was perfectly capable of filling in details when necessary.

It had been bad enough to be in fruitless competition with Jeremy Irons. But now Gowan saw that he had the entire front line of Britain’s theatrical performers to contend with, all embodied in a single man. He ground his teeth bitterly and writhed in discomfort.

He was sitting in a cretonne-covered chair whose material felt like a stiff second skin after so many hours. Next to him—moved carefully out of everyone’s way only a quarter hour into their group incarceration—Mrs. Gerrard’s treasured Cary Globe rested on an impossibly ornate, gilded stand. Gowan stared at it morosely. He felt like kicking it over. Better yet, he felt like heaving it through the window. He was desperate for escape.

He tried to quell the need by forcing himself to consider the library’s charms, but he found there were none. The white plaster octagons on the ceiling needed paint, as did the garlands that ornamented their centres. Years of coal fires and cigarette smoke had taken their toll, and what looked like deep shadows in the nooks and crannies of the raised decoration was really soot, the kind of grime that promised a miserable two weeks or more of work in the coming months. The bookshelves, too, spoke of added misery. They held hundreds of volumes—perhaps even thousands—bound in leather and, behind the glass, all smelling equally of dust and disuse. Another job of cleaning and drying and repairing and…Where was Mary Agnes? He had to find her. He had to get out.

Near him, a woman’s voice rose in a tear-filled plea. “My God, please! I can’t stand this another moment!”

Within the last weeks, Gowan had developed a mild dislike of actors in general. But in the past nine hours, he had found he’d developed a hardy loathing of one group in the very particular.

“David, I’ve reached my breaking point. Can’t you do something to get us out of here?” Joanna Ellacourt was wringing her hands as she spoke to her husband, pacing the floor and smoking. Which, Gowan thought, she’d been doing all day. The room smelled like a smouldering rubbish heap largely because of her. And it was interesting to note that she had only reached this newest level of nervous agitation when Lady Helen Clyde reentered the room and promised the possibility of attention being directed somewhere other than upon the great star herself.

From his wing chair, David Sydeham’s hooded eyes followed his wife’s slim figure. “What would you have me do, Jo? Batter down the door and club that constable over the head? We’re at their mercy, ma belle.”

“Sit, Jo darling.” Robert Gabriel extended a well-tended hand to her, beckoning her to join him on the couch by the fire. The coals there had burned down to small grey lumps speckled with glowing rose. “You’re doing nothing more than unstringing your nerves. Which is exactly what the police would like you to do, would like all of us to do, in fact. It makes their job easier.”

“And you’re hell-bent on not doing that, I dare say,” Jeremy Vinney put in just a pitch above sotto voce.

Gabriel’s temper flared. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Vinney ignored him, struck a match, and applied it to his pipe.

“I asked you a question!”

“And I’m choosing not to answer it.”

“Why, you miserable—”

“We all know Gabriel had a row with Joy yesterday,” Rhys Davies-Jones said reasonably. He was sitting furthest from the bar, in a chair next to the window whose curtains he had recently pulled back. Black night yawned through the glass. “I don’t think any of us need make veiled references to it in the hope that the police will get the point.”

“Get the point?” Robert Gabriel’s voice held the cutting edge of his ire. “Nice of you to have me fingered for the murder, Rhys, but I’m afraid it won’t wash. Not a bit of it.”

“Why? Have you an alibi?” David Sydeham asked. “The way it looks to me, you’re one of the very few people at significant risk, Gabriel. Unless, of course, you can produce a second party with whom you spent the night.” He smiled sardonically. “What about the little girl? Is that what Mary Agnes is up to right now, trotting out stories about your technique? That must be keeping the coppers on the edge of their seats, all right. An intimate description of what it’s like for a woman to have you between her legs. Or was Joy’s play heading us towards that kind of revelation last night?”

Gabriel surged to his feet, knocking against a brass floor lamp. Its arc of light flashed wildly round the room. “I bloody well ought to—”

“Stop it!” Joanna Ellacourt put her hands over her ears. “I can’t stand it! Stop!”

But it was too late. The quick exchange of words had struck Gowan like fists. He leaped out of his chair. In four steps he made it across the room to Gabriel and furiously whipped the actor around to face him.

“Damn ye tae hell!” he shouted. “Did ye titch Mary Agnes?”