Payment in Blood (Inspector Lynley, #2)(92)

There was just one more detail to be attended to. “Why did you involve MI5 this past weekend?”

“I didn’t know what else to do. All I knew was that any investigation would inevitably centre itself round the script we were reading the night Joy died. And I thought—I believed—that a close scrutiny of the script would reveal everything my family and the government had been so careful to keep hidden for twenty-five years. When Willingate phoned me, he agreed that the scripts had to be destroyed. Then he got in touch with your people in Special Branch and they in turn contacted a Met commissioner, who agreed to send someone—someone special—to Westerbrae.”

Those last words brought with them a renewed swelling of bitterness that Lynley fought against uselessly. He told himself that had it not been for Helen’s presence at Westerbrae and the crushing revelation about her relationship with Rhys Davies-Jones, he would have seen through the web of lies that Stinhurst had woven, he would have found Geoffrey Rintoul’s grave himself and drawn his own conclusions from it without the generous aid of his friends. At the moment, clinging to that belief was his only source of self-respect.

“I’m going to ask you to make a complete statement at the Yard,” Lynley said to Stinhurst.

“Of course,” he replied, and the denial that followed his acquiescence was as mechanical as it was immediate. “I didn’t kill Joy Sinclair. Thomas, I swear it.”

“He didn’t.” Lady Stinhurst’s tone was more resigned than urgent. Lynley didn’t respond. She went on. “I would have known had he left our room that night, Inspector.”

Lady Stinhurst could not have chosen a single rationale less likely to meet with Lynley’s belief. He turned to Havers. “Take Lord Stinhurst in for a preliminary statement, Sergeant. See that Lady Stinhurst goes home.”

She nodded. “And you, Inspector?”

He thought about the question, about the time he still needed to come to terms with all that had happened. “I’ll be along directly.”



ONCE LADY STINHURST’S taxi was on its way to the family’s Holland Park home and Sergeant Havers and Constable Nkata had escorted Lord Stinhurst from the Agincourt Theatre, Lynley went back into the building. He did not relish the idea of an accidental meeting with Rhys Davies-Jones, and there was no doubt at all that the man was somewhere on the premises today. Yet something prompted Lynley to linger, perhaps as a form of expiation for the sins he had committed in suspecting Davies-Jones of murder, in doing everything in his power to encourage Helen to suspect him of murder as well. Governed by the force of passion rather than by reason, he had scrambled for facts that would point the case in the Welshman’s direction and had ignored those that wanted to lay the blame upon anyone else.

All this, he thought wryly, because I was so stupidly ignorant of what Helen meant in my life until it was too late.

“You needn’t try to comfort me.” It was a woman’s faltering voice, coming from the far side of the bar, just out of the range of Lynley’s vision. “I haven’t come here on any but equal terms. You said, let’s talk truthfully. Well, let’s do! Unsparingly, truthfully, even shamelessly, then!”

“Jo—” David Sydeham responded.

“It’s no longer a secret that I love you. It never was. I loved you as long ago as the time I asked you to read the stone angel’s name with your fingers. Yes, it had begun that early, this affliction of love, and has never let go of me since. And that is my story—”

“Joanna, shut up. You’ve dropped at least ten lines!”

“I haven’t!”

Sydeham and Ellacourt’s words pounded their way into Lynley’s skull. He crossed the lobby, reached the bar, unceremoniously grabbed the script out of Sydeham’s hand, and without a word ran his eyes down the page to find Alma’s speech in Summer and Smoke. He didn’t use his spectacles, so the words were blurred. But legible enough. And absolutely indelible.



You needn’t try to comfort me. I haven’t come here on any but equal terms. You said, let’s talk truthfully. Well, let’s do! Unsparingly, truthfully, even shamelessly, then! It’s no longer a secret that I love you. It never was. I loved you as long ago as the time I asked you to read the stone angel’s name with your fingers. Yes, I remember the long afternoons of our childhood…



And yet, for a moment, Lynley had assumed Joanna Ellacourt had been speaking for herself, not using the words that Tennessee Williams had written. Just as young Constable Plater must have assumed when faced with Hannah Darrow’s suicide note fifteen years earlier in Porthill Green.





14


BECAUSE OF a traffic snarl on the M11, he did not arrive in Porthill Green until after one o’clock, and by that time clouds humped along the horizon like enormous tufts of grey cotton wool. A storm was brewing. Wine’s the Plough was not yet locked for its midafternoon closing, but rather than go into the pub at once for his confrontation with John Darrow, Lynley crunched across the snow on the green to a call box that leaned precariously in the direction of the sea. He placed a call to Scotland Yard. It was only a matter of moments before he heard Sergeant Havers’ voice, and from the background noises of crockery and conversation, he guessed that she was taking the call from the officers’ mess.