Payment in Blood (Inspector Lynley, #2)(52)

“I know exactly the kind of woman Helen is,” Lynley responded. “One absolutely vulnerable to a man who claims to be in possession of a weakness that only she can cure. And that’s how you played it, isn’t it? Right into her bed. If I bring her down here now, no doubt I’ll discover that this evening in her room was just another variation on last night’s tender theme.”

“And by God, you can’t bear the thought of that, can you? You’re so sick with jealousy that you stopped seeing straight the moment you knew I’d slept with her. Face the facts, Inspector. Don’t twist them about to pin something on me because you’re too goddamned afraid to take me on in any other way.”

Lynley moved sharply in his chair, but Macaskin and Havers were on their feet at once. That brought him to his senses. “Get him out of here,” he said.



BARBARA HAVERS waited until Macaskin himself had ushered Davies-Jones from the room. She watched to ensure they were left in complete privacy before she cast a long, supplicating look in St. James’ direction. He joined her at the table with Lynley, who had put on his reading spectacles and was looking through Barbara’s notes. The room was taking on a more than lived-in look, with glasses, plates of half-eaten food, overfull ashtrays, and notebooks scattered about. The air smelled as if a contagion were alive in it.

“Sir.”

Lynley raised his head and Barbara saw with a wrench that he looked awful, fagged out, drawn through a wringer of his own devising.

“Let’s look at what we have,” she suggested.

Over the top of his spectacles, Lynley’s eyes went from Barbara to St. James. “We have a locked door,” he replied reasonably. “We have Francesca Gerrard locking it with the only key available besides the one across the room on the dressing table. We have a man in the next room with a clear means of access. Now we’re looking for a motive.”

No, Barbara thought weakly. She kept her voice even and impartial. “You must admit that it’s purely coincidental that Helen’s room and Joy’s room adjoined each other. He couldn’t have known in advance about that.”

“Couldn’t he? A man with a self-professed interest in architecture? There are homes with adjoining rooms all over the country. It hardly takes a university degree to guess there would be two here. Or that Joy, after specifically requesting a room by Helen’s, would be given one of them. I imagine no one else was phoning Francesca Gerrard with special requests of that nature.”

Barbara refused to submit. “Francesca herself could have killed Joy as matters stand now, sir. She was in the room. She admits it. Or she could have given the key to her brother and let him do the job.”

“It always comes back to Lord Stinhurst for you, doesn’t it?”

“No, that’s not it.”

“And if you want to go with Stinhurst, what about Gowan’s death? Why did Stinhurst kill him?”

“I’m not arguing that it’s Stinhurst, sir,” Barbara said, trying to hold on to her patience, her temper, and her need to shout out Stinhurst’s motive until Lynley was forced to accept it. “For that matter, Irene Sinclair could have done it. Or Sydeham or Ellacourt, since they were both on their own. Or Jeremy Vinney. Joy was in his room earlier. Elizabeth told us as much. For all we know, he wanted Joy, got himself squarely rejected, went to her room and killed her in a fit of anger.”

“And how did he lock the door when he left?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps he went out the window.”

“In a storm, Havers? You’re stretching it more than I am.” Lynley dropped her notes onto the table, removed his spectacles, rubbed his eyes.

“I see that Davies-Jones had access, Inspector. I see that he had opportunity, as well. But Joy Sinclair’s play was to resurrect his career, wasn’t it? And he had no way of knowing for certain whether the play was finished just because Stinhurst withdrew his support. Someone else well might have financed it. So it seems to me that he’s the only person in the house with a solid motive for keeping the woman alive.”

St. James spoke. “No. There’s another, isn’t there, if it comes to regenerating dying careers? Her sister, Irene.”





“I DID WONDER when you would get to me.”

Irene Sinclair stepped back from the door. She walked to her bed and sat down, her shoulders slumped. In deference to the lateness of the hour, she had changed into her nightclothes, and like the woman itself, her garments were restrained. Flat-heeled slippers, a navy flannel dressing gown under which the high neck of a white nightdress rose and fell with her steady breathing. There was something, however, oddly impersonal about her clothing. It was serviceable, indeed, yet adhering strictly to a norm of perceived propriety, it was exceedingly chilling, as if designed and worn to hold life itself at bay. Lynley wondered if the woman ever slopped round the house in old blue jeans and a tattered jersey. Somehow, he doubted it.

Her resemblance to her sister was remarkable. In spite of the fact that he had observed Joy only through the photographs of her death, Lynley could easily recognise in Irene those features she had shared with her sister, features unaffected by the five or six years that separated them in age: prominent cheekbones, broad brow, the slight squaring of jawline. She was, he guessed, somewhere in her early forties, a statuesque woman with the sort of body other women long for and most men dream of taking into their beds. She had a face that might have belonged to Medea and black hair in which the grey was beginning to streak back dramatically from the left peak of her forehead. Any other woman, remotely insecure, would have coloured it long ago. Lynley wondered if the thought had even crossed Irene’s mind. He studied her wordlessly. Why on earth had Robert Gabriel ever found the need to stray?