Payment in Blood (Inspector Lynley, #2)(86)

“Well, don’t leave them standing in the hall,” Lynley said.

“The drawing room, then?” Denton enquired solicitously. Much too solicitously for Lynley’s liking.

He rose with a nod, irritably thinking, I hardly expect they want to see me in the kitchen.

The three of them were standing in a fairly tight knot at one end of the room when he joined them a moment later. They had chosen a position beneath the portrait of Lynley’s father, and under the cover of the music, they were speaking to one another in hushed, urgent voices. But his entrance brought their conversation to an end. And then, as if his presence were a stimulus to do so, they began to shed their coats, hats, gloves, and mufflers. The action had the appearance of buying a bit of time. Lynley turned off the stereo, replaced the album in its jacket, and faced them curiously. They seemed unnaturally subdued.

“We’ve come across some information that you need to have, Tommy,” St. James said, in very much the manner of a planned introduction.

“What sort of information?”

“It concerns Lord Stinhurst.”

Lynley’s eyes went at once to Sergeant Havers. She met them unflinchingly. “Are you part of this, Havers?”

“Yes, I am. Sir.”

“It’s my doing, Tommy,” St. James said before Lynley could speak again. “Barbara found Geoffrey Rintoul’s grave on the Westerbrae grounds, and she showed it to me. It seemed worth looking into.”

Lynley maintained his calm with an effort. “Why?”

“Because of Phillip Gerrard’s will,” Lady Helen said impulsively. “Francesca’s husband. He said he wouldn’t allow himself to be buried on the grounds of Westerbrae. Because of the telephone calls Lord Stinhurst placed on the morning of the murder. They weren’t only to cancel his appointments, Tommy. Because—”

Lynley looked at St. James, feeling the blow of treachery strike him from the single most unexpected quarter. “My God. You’ve told them about my conversation with Stinhurst.”

St. James had the grace to drop his eyes. “I’m sorry. Truly. I felt I had no choice.”

“No choice,” Lynley repeated incredulously.

Lady Helen took a hesitant step towards him, her hand extended. “Please, Tommy. I know how you must feel. As if we’re all against you. But that isn’t it at all. Please. Listen.”

Compassion from Helen was just about the last thing Lynley could bear at the moment. He struck out at her cruelly, without a thought. “I think we’re all perfectly clear on where your interests lie, Helen. You can hardly be the most objective assessor of truth, considering your involvement in this case.”

Lady Helen’s hand fell. Her face was stricken with pain. St. James spoke, his voice cold with quick anger. “Nor can you, Tommy, if the truth be faced among us.” He let a moment pass. Then he went on in a different tone, but as implacably as before. “Lord Stinhurst lied to you about his brother and his wife. First and last. A good possibility is that Scotland Yard knew he planned to do so and sanctioned it. The Yard chose you deliberately to handle this case because you were the most likely person to believe whatever Stinhurst told you. His brother and his wife never had an affair, Tommy. Now do you want to hear the facts, or shall we be on our way?”

Lynley felt as if ice were melting into his bones. “What in God’s name are you talking about?”

St. James moved towards a chair. “That’s what we’ve come to tell you. But I think we all could do with a brandy.”



WHILE ST. JAMES outlined the information they had gathered on Geoffrey Rintoul, Barbara Havers watched Lynley, gauging his reaction. She knew how resistant he would be to the facts, considering Rintoul’s privileged background and how closely it resembled Lynley’s own. Everything in Lynley’s upper-class constitution was going to act in concert, provoking him to disclaim each of their facts and conjectures. And the policewoman in Barbara knew exactly how insubstantial some of their facts were. The inescapable reality was that if Geoffrey Rintoul had indeed been a Soviet mole—working for years within that sensitive area of the Defence Ministry—the only way they would know for a certainty would be if his brother Stuart admitted it to them.

Ideally, they needed access to an MI5 computer. Even a file on Geoffrey Rintoul marked inaccessible would verify that the man had been under some sort of investigation by the counterintelligence agency. But they had no access to such a computer and no source within MI5 who could validate their story. Even Scotland Yard’s Special Branch would be of no service to them if the Yard itself had sanctioned Lord Stinhurst’s fabrication about his brother’s death in Scotland in the first place. So it all came down to Lynley’s ability to see past his tangle of prejudices against Rhys Davies-Jones. It all came down to his ability to look the truth squarely in the face. And the truth was that Lord Stinhurst, not Davies-Jones, had the strongest possible motive for wanting Joy Sinclair dead. Provided with the keys to Joy’s room by his own sister, he had murdered the woman whose play—cleverly revised without his prior knowledge—had threatened to reveal his family’s darkest secret.

“So when Stinhurst heard the name Vassall in Joy’s play, he had to know what she was writing about,” St. James concluded. “And consider how Geoffrey Rintoul’s background supports his having been a spy for the Soviets, Tommy. He went to Cambridge in the thirties. We know that Soviet recruiting went on like the devil during that period. Rintoul read economics, which no doubt made him even more receptive to arguments in favour of the teachings of Marx. And then his behaviour during the war. Requesting reassignment to the Balkans gave him contact with the Russians. I shouldn’t be at all surprised to discover that his control was in the Balkans as well. No doubt that’s when he received his most important instructions: to work his way into the Ministry of Defence. God knows how much sensitive data he supplied the Soviets over the years.”