Payment in Blood (Inspector Lynley, #2)(91)

“It happened much the way Joy’s play depicted it the other night. There was a telephone call for Geoff, but my father and I came into the library without Geoff’s knowledge and overheard part of it, heard him say that someone would have to get to his flat for the code book or the whole network would be blown. Father began to question him. Geoff—he was always so eloquent, such a master of the language—was frantic to get away at once. There was hardly time for an inquisition. He wasn’t thinking straight, wasn’t answering questions consistently, so Father guessed the truth. It wasn’t really difficult after what we’d both heard of the telephone conversation. When Father saw that the very worst was true, something simply snapped. To him, it was more than treason. It was a betrayal of family, of an entire way of life. I think he was overcome in an instant with a need to obliterate. So…” From across the room, Stinhurst examined the lovely posters that lined his office walls. “My father went after him. He was like a bear. And I…God, I watched it all. Frozen. Useless. And every night since then, Thomas, I’ve relived that moment when I heard Geoff’s neck crack like the branch of a tree.”

“Was your sister’s husband, Phillip Gerrard, involved?” Lynley asked.

“Yes. He wasn’t in the library when Geoff’s call came through, but he and Francesca and Marguerite heard my father shouting and came running from upstairs. They burst into the room just a moment after…it was done. Of course, Phillip immediately went for the phone, insisting that the authorities be sent for at once. But we…the rest of us pressured him out of it. The scandal. A trial. Perhaps Father going to prison. Francesca became hysterical at the thought. Phillip was obdurate enough at first, but ultimately, against all of us, especially Francie, what could he do? So he helped us take his—Geoffrey, the body—to where the road forks left to Hillview Farm and begins the descent right towards Kilparie village. We took only Geoff’s car, to leave one set of tyre prints.” He smiled in exquisite self-denigration. “We were careful about that sort of thing. There’s a tremendous declivity that begins at the fork, with two switchbacks, one right after the other like a snake. We started the engine, sent the car off with Geoff in the driver’s seat. The car built speed. At the first switchback it shot across the road, broke through the fence, made the drop to the second switchback below, and went over the embankment. It burst into flames.” He pulled out a white handkerchief—a perfectly laundered linen square—and wiped at his eyes. He returned to the table but did not sit. “Afterwards, we walked home. The road was almost entirely ice, so we didn’t even leave footprints. There was never really a question of its not being an accident.” His fingers touched the photograph of his father, still lying where Lynley had placed it among the others on the table.

“Then why did Sir Andrew Higgins come from London to identify the body and testify at the inquest?”

“As insurance. Lest anyone notice anything peculiar about Geoff’s injuries that might cause questions to arise about our story. Sir Andrew was my father’s oldest friend. He could be trusted.”

“And Willingate’s involvement?”

“He arrived at Westerbrae within two hours of the accident. He’d been on his way to take Geoff back to London for questioning in the first place. A warning of his impending arrival was evidently the content of the telephone call my brother had received. Father told Willingate the truth. And a deal was struck between them. It would be an official secret. The government didn’t want it known that a mole had been in place for years in the Ministry of Defence now that the mole was dead. My father didn’t want it known that his son had been the mole. Nor did he want to stand trial for murder. So the accident story stood. And the rest of us vowed silence. We kept it as well. But Phillip Gerrard was a decent man. The knowledge that he’d allowed himself to be talked into covering up a murder consumed him for the rest of his life.”

“Is that why he’s not buried on Westerbrae land?”

“He felt he had cursed it.”

“Why is your brother buried there?”

“Father wouldn’t have his body in Somerset. It was all we could do to convince him to bury Geoff at all.” Stinhurst finally looked at his wife. “We all broke on the wheel of Geoffrey’s sedition, didn’t we, Mag? But you and I worst of all. We lost Alec. We lost Elizabeth. We lost each other.”

“It’s always been Geoff between us, then,” she said dully. “All these years. You’ve always acted as if you killed him, not your father. There were even times when I wondered if you had.”

Stinhurst shook his head, refusing to accept exoneration. “I did. Of course I did. In the library that night, there was a split second of decision when I could have gone to them, when I could have stopped Father. They were on the floor and…Geoff looked at me. Maggie, I’m the last person he saw. And the last thing he knew was that his only brother was going to stand there and do nothing and watch him die. I may as well have killed him myself, you see. I’m responsible for it in the long run.”

Treason, like the plague, doth take much in a blood. Lynley thought that Webster’s line had never seemed so apt as it did now. For from the fountainhead of Geoffrey Rintoul’s treachery had sprung the destruction of his entire family. And since the destruction would not sicken, it continued to feed upon the other lives that touched on the periphery of the Rintouls’: on Joy Sinclair’s and Gowan Kilbride’s. But now it would stop.