Payment in Blood (Inspector Lynley, #2)(53)

“Someone has probably told you already that my sister and my husband had an affair last year, Inspector,” she began, keeping her voice low. “It’s no particular secret. So I don’t mourn her death as I ought to, as I probably shall eventually. It’s just that when your life’s been torn apart by two people you love, it’s difficult to forgive and forget. Joy didn’t need Robert, you see. I did. But she took him anyway. And that still hurts when I think of it, even now.”

“Was their affair over?” Lynley asked.

Irene’s attention drifted from Havers’ pencil to the floor. “Yes.” The single word had the distinct flavour of a lie, and she continued at once, as if to hide this fact. “I even knew when it started between them. One of those dinner parties where people have too much to drink and say things they wouldn’t otherwise say. That night Joy announced that she’d never had a man who’d been able to satisfy her in only one go. That, of course, was the sort of thing Robert would take as a personal challenge that had to be attended to without delay. Sometimes what hurts me the most is the fact that Joy didn’t love Robert. She never loved anyone at all after Alec Rintoul died.”

“Rintoul’s been a recurring theme this evening. Were they ever engaged?”

“Informally. Alec’s death changed Joy.”

“In what way?”

“How can I explain it?” she replied. “It was like a fire, a rampage. It was as if Joy decided that she would start living with a vengeance once Alec was gone. But not to enjoy herself. Rather, to destroy herself. And to take as many of us down with her as she could. It was a sickness with her. She went through men, one after another, Inspector. She devoured them. Rapaciously. Hatefully. As if no one could ever begin to make her forget Alec and she was daring each and every one of them to try.”

Lynley walked to the bed, placed the contents from Joy’s shoulder bag onto the counterpane. Irene considered the objects listlessly.

“Are these hers?” she asked.

He handed her Joy’s engagement calendar first. Irene seemed reluctant to take it, as if she would come across knowledge within it that she would rather not possess. However, she identified what notations she could: appointments with a publisher in Upper Grosvenor Street, the birthday of Irene’s daughter Sally, Joy’s self-imposed deadline for having three chapters of a book done.

Lynley pointed out the name scrawled across one entire week. P. Green. “Someone new in her life?”

“Peter, Paul, Philip? I don’t know, Inspector. She might have been going off on holiday with someone, but I couldn’t say. We didn’t speak to one another very often. And then, when we did, it was mostly business. She probably wouldn’t have told me about a new man in her life. But it wouldn’t surprise me at all to know that she had one. That would have been more than typical of her. Really.” Disconsolately, Irene fingered one or two other items, the wallet, the matchbook, the chewing gum, the keys. She said nothing else.

Watching her, Lynley pressed the button on the small tape recorder. Irene shrank infinitesimally at the sound of her sister’s voice. He let the machine play. Through the cheerful comments, through the vibrant excitement, through the future plans. He couldn’t help thinking, as he listened to Joy Sinclair once again, that she didn’t sound at all like a woman bent upon destroying anyone. Halfway through it, Irene raised a hand to her eyes. She bent her head.

“Does any of that mean anything to you?” Lynley asked.

Irene shook her head blindly, a passionate movement, a second patent lie.

Lynley waited. She seemed to be attempting to withdraw from him, moving further into herself both physically and emotionally. Shrivelling up through a concerted act of will. “You can’t bury her this way, Irene,” he said quietly. “I know that you want to. I understand why. But you know if you try it, she’ll haunt you forever.” He saw her fingers tighten against her skull. The nails caught at her flesh. “You don’t have to forgive her for what she’s done to you. But don’t put yourself into a position of doing something for which you cannot forgive yourself.”

“I can’t help you.” Irene’s voice sounded distraught. “I’m not sorry my sister’s dead. So how can I help you? I can’t help myself.”

“You can help by telling me anything about this tape.” And ruthlessly, mercilessly, Lynley played it again, hating himself for doing so at the same time as he acknowledged it was part of the job, it had to be done. Still, at the end, there was no response from her. He rewound the tape, played it again. And then again.

Joy’s voice was like a fourth person in the room. She coaxed. She laughed. She tormented. She pleaded. And she broke her sister the fifth time through the tape, on the words, “For God’s sake, don’t let Mum forget Sally again this year.”

Irene snatched the recorder, shut it off with hands which fumbled on the buttons, and flung it back onto the bed as if touching it contaminated her.

“The only reason my mother ever remembered my daughter’s birthday is because Joy reminded her,” she cried. Her face bore the signs of anguish, but her eyes were dry. “And still I hated her! I hated my sister every minute and I wanted her to die! But not like this! Oh God, not like this! Have you any idea what it’s like to want a person dead more than anything in the world and then to have it happen? As if a mocking deity listened to your wishes and only granted the foulest ones you possess?”