Payment in Blood (Inspector Lynley, #2)(90)

Stinhurst stared long at his wife, as if he were trying to summon courage from an examination of her face. “I was the one who gave Geoff over to the government. All of you learned the worst about him on that New Year’s Eve. But I…God help me, I’d known he was a Soviet agent since 1949.”



STINHURST HELD himself perfectly still as he spoke, perhaps in the belief that a single movement would cause the floodgates to open and the accumulated anguish of thirty-nine years to come pouring out. His voice was matter-of-fact, and although his eyes became increasingly red-rimmed, he shed no tears. Lynley found himself wondering if Stinhurst was even capable of weeping after so many years of deceit.

“I knew that Geoff was a Marxist when we were at Cambridge. He made no secret of it, and frankly, I took it as a bit of a lark, something he would outgrow in time. And if he didn’t, I thought what a laugh it would be to have the future Earl of Stinhurst committed to the workers’ struggle to change the tide of history. What I didn’t know was that his proclivities had been duly noted, and that he had been seduced into espionage while he was still a student.”

“Seduced?” Lynley asked.

“It is a process of seduction,” Stinhurst replied. “A combination of flattery and cajolery, making the student believe he plays an important role in the scheme of change.”

“How did you come to know this?”

“I discovered it quite by chance, after the war when we were all in Somerset. It was the weekend my son Alec was born. I’d gone out looking for Geoff directly after I’d seen Marguerite and the baby. It was…” He smiled at his wife for the first and only time. Her face did not register a single response. “A son. I was so happy. I wanted Geoff to know. So I went out looking and found him in one of our boyhood haunts, an abandoned cottage in the Quantock Hills. Apparently he’d felt that Somerset was safe.”

“He was meeting someone?”

Stinhurst nodded. “I probably would have thought it was only a farmer, but earlier that weekend I’d seen Geoff working in the study on some government papers, the sort that are stamped confidential in garish letters across the front. I thought nothing of it at the time, just that he’d brought work home. His briefcase was on the desk, and he was putting a document into a manila envelope. Not an estate envelope, nor a government one. I remember that distinctly. But I thought nothing of it until I came upon him in the cottage and saw him pass that same envelope to the man he was meeting. I’ve often thought that had I arrived a minute sooner—a minute later—I might well have assumed his companion was indeed a Somerset farmer. But as it was, once I saw the envelope change hands, I guessed the worst. Of course, for a moment I tried to tell myself that it was all a coincidence, that the envelope could not possibly be the same one I had seen in the study. But if it was only an innocent exchange of information that I’d witnessed—all legal and aboveboard—why arrange for it to take place in the Quantock Hills, in the middle of nowhere?”

“If you’d discovered them,” Lady Stinhurst asked numbly, “why didn’t they do…something to keep you from revealing what you knew?”

“They didn’t know exactly what I’d seen. And even if they had, I was safe. In spite of everything, Geoff would have drawn the line at the elimination of his own brother. He was, after all, more of a man than I when it came right down to it.”

Lady Stinhurst looked away. “Don’t say that about yourself.”

“It’s true, I’m afraid.”

“Did he admit to his activities?” Lynley asked.

“Once the other man was gone, I confronted him,” Stinhurst said. “He admitted to it. He wasn’t ashamed. He believed in the cause. And I…I don’t know what I believed in. All I knew was that he was my brother. I loved him. I always had. Even though I was revolted by what he was doing, I couldn’t bring myself to betray him. He would have known, you see, that I was the one to turn him in. So I did nothing. But it ate away at me for years.”

“I should guess you finally saw your opportunity to take action in 1962.”

“The government prosecuted William Vassall in October; they already had arrested and tried an Italian physicist—Giuseppe Martelli—for espionage in September. I thought that if Geoff’s activities were uncovered then, so many years after I had come to know about them, he could hardly think I was the one to give him over to the government. So I…in November I handed my facts to the authorities. And surveillance began. In my heart, I hoped—I prayed—that Geoff would discover he was being watched and make his escape to the Soviets. He almost did.”

“What prevented him?”

At the question, Stinhurst’s clenched fist tightened. His hand shook with the pressure, knuckles and fingers white. In the outer office a telephone rang; an infectious burst of laughter sounded. Sergeant Havers stopped writing, cast a questioning look towards Lynley.

“What prevented him?” Lynley repeated.

“Tell them, Stuart,” Lady Stinhurst murmured. “Tell the truth. This once. At last.”

Her husband rubbed at his eyelids. His skin looked grey. “My father,” he said. “He killed him.”



STINHURST PACED the length of the room, his tall, lean figure like a rod save for his head, which was bent, his eyes on the floor.