Payment in Blood (Inspector Lynley, #2)(41)
THE LIGHT switched on again.
Quick footsteps climbed the stairs.
7
“I SUPPOSE the more important question is whether you believe Stinhurst’s story,” St. James pointed out to Lynley.
They were in their corner bedroom, where the northwest wing of the house met the main body. It was a small room, adequately furnished in beechwood and pine, inoffensively papered with stripes of creeping jenny on a field of pale blue. The air held that vaguely medicinal smell of cleanser and disinfectant, disagreeable but not overwhelming. From the window, Lynley could see across a recess to the west wing where Irene Sinclair was moving listlessly in her room, a dress draped over her arm as if she couldn’t decide whether to put it on or to forget the business entirely. Her face looked etiolated, an elongated white oval framed by black hair, like an artist’s study of the power of contrast. Lynley dropped the curtain and turned to find that his friend had begun changing his clothes for dinner.
It was an awkward ritual, made worse because St. James’ father-in-law was not there to assist him, made worse because the entire need for assistance in what for anyone else would have been a simple procedure had its genesis on a single night of Lynley’s own drunken carelessness. He watched St. James, caught between wanting to offer him help and knowing that the offer would be politely rebuffed. The leg brace was uncovered, the crutches were used, the shoes were untied, and always St. James’ face remained entirely indifferent, as if he had not been lithe and athletic a mere decade before.
“Stinhurst’s story had the ring of truth, St. James. It’s not exactly the kind of tale one spins to get out of a murder charge, is it? What could he possibly hope to gain from disparaging his own wife? If anything, the case against him looks blacker now. He’s given himself a solid motive for murder.”
“One that can’t be verified,” St. James argued mildly, “unless you check with Lady Stinhurst herself. And something tells me that Stinhurst is betting you’re too much the gentleman to do so.”
“I’ll do it, of course. If it becomes necessary.”
St. James dropped one of his shoes onto the floor and began attaching his leg brace to another. “But let’s go beyond what he’s assuming your reaction will be, Tommy. Let’s consider for a moment that his story is true. It would be clever of him, wouldn’t it, to outline his motive for murder so obviously. That way you needn’t dig for it, needn’t be additionally suspicious when you uncover it. Taken to the extreme, you needn’t even suspect him of the murder in the first place since he’s been perfectly honest with you about everything from the start. It’s clever, isn’t it? Too clever by half. And what better way to develop a crucial need to destroy the evidence than by acquiescing to Jeremy Vinney’s presence here as well, a man likely to pursue any embarrassing story once Joy was killed.”
“You’re arguing that Stinhurst knew in advance that Joy’s revisions of the play would turn it into an exposé of his wife and brother’s affair. But that really doesn’t hold with Helen being given the room adjoining Joy’s, does it? Or with the locked hall door. Or with Davies-Jones’ fingerprints all over that key.”
St. James didn’t disagree. He merely remarked, “If it comes to that, Tommy, I suppose one could say that it also doesn’t hold with the fact that Sydeham was alone for a part of the night. As was his wife, as it turns out. So either one of them had the opportunity to kill her.”
“Opportunity, perhaps. Everyone appears to have had the opportunity. But motive is a problem. Not to mention the fact that Joy’s door was locked, so whoever did it either had access to those master keys or got in through Helen’s room. We’ll always go back to that, you see.”
“Stinhurst could have had access to the keys, couldn’t he? He told you himself that he’s been here before.”
“As have his wife, his daughter, and Joy. All of them with access to the keys, St. James. Even David Sydeham may have had access to them if he went down the corridor later on in the afternoon to see which room Elizabeth Rintoul had disappeared into when she saw him and Joanna Ellacourt arrive. But that’s stretching things, isn’t it? Why would he be curious about Elizabeth Rintoul’s hiding place? More, why would Sydeham kill Joy Sinclair? To spare his wife a production with Robert Gabriel? It doesn’t wash. Apparently, she’s tightly under contract to appear with Gabriel anyway. Killing Joy accomplished nothing.”
“We go back to that point, don’t we? Joy’s death seems to benefit one person only: Stuart Rintoul, Lord Stinhurst. Now that she’s dead, the play that promised to be so embarrassing for him is never to be produced. By anyone. It looks bad, Tommy. I don’t see how you can ignore such a motive.”
“As to that—”
A knock sounded on the door. Lynley answered it to find Constable Lonan standing in the corridor, carrying a lady’s shoulder bag that was encased in plastic. He held it stiffly before him in both hands, like a butler presenting a tray of questionable hors d’oeuvres.
“It’s Sinclair’s,” the constable explained. “The inspector thought you might want to have a look at the contents before the lab goes over the bag for prints.”
Lynley took it from him, laid it on the bed, and pulled on the latex gloves that St. James wordlessly passed him from the open valise at his feet. “Where was it found?”