Payment in Blood (Inspector Lynley, #2)(42)
“In the drawing room,” Lonan replied. “On the window seat behind the curtains.”
Lynley looked at him sharply. “Hidden?”
“Looks like she just tossed it there the same way she tossed about everything in her room.”
Lynley unzipped the plastic, slipping the shoulder bag out onto the bed. The other two men watched curiously as he opened it and spilled out its contents. They comprised an interesting array of articles which Lynley sorted through slowly, dividing them into two piles. Into one pile he placed those objects common to a hundred thousand handbags hanging from the arms of a hundred thousand women: a set of keys attached to a large, brass ring, two inexpensive ballpoint pens, an opened pack of Wrigley’s, a single matchbook, and a pair of dark glasses in a new leather case.
The rest of the contents went into the second pile where they attested to the fact that, like many women, Joy Sinclair had imbued even so mundane an object as a black shoulder bag with the singular stamp of her personality. Lynley thumbed through her chequebook first, scanning the entries for anything unusual and finding nothing. Apparently the woman had not been overly concerned with the state of her finances, since she had not balanced the book in at least six weeks. This financial nonchalance had its explanation in her wallet, which held nearly one hundred pounds in notes of varying denominations. But neither chequebook nor wallet retained Lynley’s interest once his eyes fell upon the final two objects Joy Sinclair had carried with her—an engagement calendar and a small, hand-sized tape recorder.
The calendar was new, its pages scarcely having seen use at all. The weekend at Westerbrae was blocked out, as was a luncheon with Jeremy Vinney two weeks past. There were references to a theatre party, a dental appointment, some sort of anniversary, and three engagements marked Upper Grosvenor Street—each one crossed out as if none had been kept. Lynley turned the page to the successive month, found nothing, turned again. Here the single word P. Green was written across one entire week, chapters 1-3 across the week after that. There was nothing else save a reference to S birthday jotted down on the twenty-fifth.
“Constable,” Lynley said thoughtfully, “I’d like to keep this for now. The contents, not the bag itself. Will you check that with Macaskin before he pushes off?”
The constable nodded and left the room. Lynley waited until the door closed behind him before he turned back to the bed, picked up the tape recorder, and with a glance at St. James switched it on.
She had a perfectly lovely voice, throaty and musical. It was husky, a come-hither sort of voice with the kind of inadvertent sensuality that some women consider a blessing and others a curse. The sound switched on and off, in varying tempos with differing backgrounds—traffic, the underground, a quick blare of music—as if she grabbed the recorder out of her shoulder bag to save a sudden thought wherever it happened to strike her.
“Try to put Edna off at least two more days. There’s nothing to report. Perhaps she’ll believe I’ve had flu….That penguin! She used to love penguins. It’ll be perfect….For God’s sake, don’t let Mum forget Sally again this year…. John Darrow believed the best about Hannah until circumstances forced him to believe the worst….See about tickets and a decent place to stay. Take a heavier coat this time….Jeremy. Jeremy. Oh Lord, why be in such a lather about him? It’s hardly a lifetime proposition….It was dark, and although the winter storm…wonderful, Joy. Why not simply go with a dark and stormy night and have done with creativity once and for all….Remember that peculiar smell: decaying vegetables and flotsam washed down the river by the last storm….The sound of frogs and pumps and the unremittingly flat land….Why not ask Rhys how best to approach him? He’s good with people. He’ll be able to help….Rhys wants to—”
Lynley switched off the recorder at this. He looked up to find St. James watching him. In a play for time before the inevitable came into the open between them, Lynley gathered up the articles and placed them all into a plastic bag which St. James had produced from his valise. He folded it closed, took it to the chest of drawers.
“Why haven’t you questioned Davies-Jones?” St. James asked.
Lynley returned to the foot of the bed, to his suitcase which lay on a luggage stand there. Flipping this open, he pulled out his dinner clothes, giving himself time to consider his friend’s question.
It would be easy enough to say that the initial circumstances had not allowed him to question the Welshman, that there was a logic to the manner in which the case had developed so far and he had intuitively followed the logic to see where it would lead. There was truth in that explanation as well. But beyond that truth, Lynley recognised an additional, unpleasant reality. He was struggling with a need to avoid confrontation, a need with which he had not yet come to terms, so foreign was it to him.
In the next room, he could hear Helen, her movements light and brisk and efficient. He had heard her thus a thousand and one times over the years, heard her without noticing. The sounds were amplified now, as if with the intention of imprinting themselves permanently onto his consciousness.
“I don’t want to hurt her,” he said at last.
St. James was attaching his leg brace to a black shoe, and he paused in the effort, shoe in one hand, brace in the other. His face, usually so noncommittal, reflected surprise. “You’ve certainly an odd way of showing it, Tommy.”