Payment in Blood (Inspector Lynley, #2)(71)

“He never remarried?”

“Never. It doesn’t even appear that he engaged in discreet affairs, either. But sexual disinclination seems to run in the family, as you shall note momentarily.”

“How does that fit?” Barbara asked. “Considering the affair between Geoffrey and his sister-in-law.”

“A possible inconsistency,” St. James acknowledged.

Lady Helen continued. “Geoffrey was educated at Harrow and Cambridge. Graduated from Cambridge in 1936 with a first in economics and assorted honours in speech and debate which went on and on forever. But he didn’t come to anyone’s particular attention until October of 1942, and really, he appeared to be the most astonishing man. He was fighting with Montgomery at the twelve-day battle at El Alamein in North Africa.”

“His rank?”

“Captain. He was part of a tank crew. Apparently in one of the worst days of the fighting, his tank was hit, incapacitated, and ignited by a German shell. Geoffrey managed to get two wounded men out, dragging them more than a mile to safety. All in spite of the fact that he was wounded himself. He was awarded the Victoria Cross.”

“Hardly the sort of man one expects to find buried in an isolated grave,” Barbara commented.

“And there’s more,” Lady Helen said. “At his own request, and in spite of the severity of his wounds that could well have put him out of action for the remainder of the war, he finished it up in the Allied front in the Balkans. Churchill was trying to preserve some British influence there in the face of potential Russian predominance, and evidently Geoffrey was a Churchill man through and through. When he came home, he moved into a job in Whitehall working for the Ministry of Defence.”

“I’m surprised a man like that didn’t stand for Parliament.”

“He was asked. Repeatedly. But he wouldn’t do it.”

“And he never married?”

“No.”

St. James made a movement in his chair, and Lady Helen held out a hand to stop him. She rose herself and poured him a second cup of coffee, without a word. She merely frowned when he used the sugar too heavily and took the sugar bowl from him entirely when he dipped a spoon into it for the fifth time.

“Was he homosexual?” Barbara asked.

“If he was, then he was discretion itself. Which applies to any affairs he may have had. Not a whisper of scandal about him. Anywhere.”

“Not even anything that attaches him to Lord Stinhurst’s wife, Marguerite Rintoul?”

“Absolutely not.”

“He’s too good to be true,” St. James remarked. “What do you have, Barbara?”

As she was about to pull her own notebook from the pocket of her coat, Cotter entered with the promised food: cake for St. James and Lady Helen and a platter of cold meats, cheeses, and bread for Barbara. With, she saw, a third piece of cake to end her improvised meal. She smiled her thanks and Cotter gave her a friendly wink, checked the coffeepot, and disappeared through the door. His footsteps sounded on the stairs in the hall.

“Eat first,” Lady Helen advised. “With this chocolate cake in front of me, I’m afraid I shall be markedly distracted from anything you say. We can go on when you’ve finished your dinner.”

With a grateful nod for the nicely veiled understanding so typical of Lady Helen, Barbara fell upon the food eagerly, devouring three pieces of meat and two large wedges of cheese like a prisoner of war. Finally, with the cake before her and another cup of coffee, she pulled out her notebook.

“A few hours browsing through the public library and all I could find is that Geoffrey’s death appeared to be an entirely straightforward affair. Most of this is from the newspaper accounts of the inquest. There was a tremendous storm on the night he died at Westerbrae, or actually in the early morning hours of January 1, 1963.”

“That much is believable, considering what the weather was like this last weekend,” Lady Helen noted.

“According to the officer in charge of the investigation—an Inspector Glencalvie—the section of the road where the accident occurred was sheeted with ice. Rintoul lost control on the switchback, went right over the side, and rolled the car several times.”

“He wasn’t thrown out?”

“Apparently not. But his neck was broken and his body was burned.”

Lady Helen turned to St. James at this. “But couldn’t that mean—”

“No body-swapping in this day and age, Helen,” he interrupted. “No doubt they had dental charts and X rays to identify him. Was anyone a witness to the accident, Barbara?”

“The closest they could get to a witness was the owner of Hillview Farm. He heard the crash and was first on the scene.”

“And he is?”

“Hugh Kilbride, Gowan’s father.” They ruminated upon this information for a moment. The fire crackled and popped as the flames reached a hard bubble of sap. “So I kept thinking,” Barbara went on slowly, “what did Gowan really mean when he said those two words didn’t see to us? Of course, at first I thought it had something to do with Joy’s death. But perhaps it didn’t at all. Perhaps it referred to something his father had told him, a secret he was keeping.”

“It’s a possibility, to be sure.”

“And there’s something else.” She told them about her search through Joy Sinclair’s study, about the absence of any materials that referred to the play she had been writing for Lord Stinhurst.