Payment in Blood (Inspector Lynley, #2)(99)
Hannah had devoted her next several entries to a detailed description of their lovemaking. These pages were heavily thumbed, no doubt the section that John Darrow turned to whenever he wanted to remember his wife in the worst possible light. For she was meticulous in description, omitting nothing, and at the last comparing her husband’s endowments and his performance with those of her lover. It was a brutal evaluation, nothing that a man would get over very quickly. It gave Lynley an idea of what her farewell note to John Darrow must have been like.
The penultimate entry was on March 23.
Ive been practicing all week when Johns down in the pub. Teddy watches me from his cot and laughs something wicked to see his mum prancing round like a russion lady. But Ive got it down. Was dead easy, that. And in 2 nights Im off to Norwich so we can decide what to do and when Im to have my awdition. I can harly wait. Im lonely for him right now. John was on me like a pig this morning. He said its been 2 months since the doctor said he couldent and he was threw with waiting for him to say he could. It almost made me sick when he put his tong in my mouth. He tasted like shit I swear it. He said thats better now isnt it Han and he did me so hard I tried not to cry. When I think that till 2 months ago I thought thats what it was sposed to be like and I was just sposed to put up with it. I have to laugh now. I know better. And Ive decided to tell John befor I leave. He deserves it after this morning. He thinks hes such a MAN. If he only knew what a real man and I do to each other in bed hed probaly faint. God, I dont know if I can wait 2 more days to see him again. I miss him so. I DO LOVE HIM.
Lynley snapped the journal closed as Hannah Darrow’s comments came together in his mind, like a puzzle finally completed. Prancing around like a Russian lady. A play about a man who gets married, whose sisters hate his wife. People talking endlessly about moving away or marrying. And the poster itself—as big as life—on Lord Stinhurst’s office wall. The Three Sisters, Norwich. The life and death of Hannah Darrow.
He began searching through the rest of her belongings, digging past clothes and handbags and gloves and jewellery. But he did not find what he was looking for until he turned to the second trunk. There at the bottom, past sweaters and shoes, beneath a girlhood scrapbook filled with clippings and mementoes, was the old theatre programme he had prayed to find, Hannah’s wire-rimmed spectacles hooked onto its cover. Designed with a diagonal stripe across the front to serve as division between the two pieces that the company were doing in repertory, the programme was fashioned with stark letters, white upon black on the top half and the reverse on the bottom: The Duchess of Malfi and The Three Sisters.
Impatiently, Lynley skimmed through the pages, looking for the cast. But when he came to it, he stared incredulously, scarcely believing the obscene twist of mocking chance that had governed the casting of the performances. For with the exception of Irene Sinclair and the addition of actors and actresses in whom he had no interest, everyone else was absolutely the same. Joanna Ellacourt, Robert Gabriel, Rhys Davies-Jones, and, to complicate matters further, Jeremy Vinney in a minor role, no doubt the swan song of a brief career on the stage.
Lynley tossed the programme to one side. He got up from the chair and paced across the little room, rubbing his forehead. There had to be something that he had not noticed in the few entries Hannah had made about her lover. Something that revealed his identity in even an oblique fashion, something Lynley himself had already read without realising what it meant. He returned to his chair, picked up the journal, and began it all again.
It was not until the fourth time through that he found it: He says hell show me how to act it. Of course he should know!!! Thats what hes good at. The words implied only two possibilities: the director of the production or the actor who was in the scene from which Hannah’s “suicide note” had been drawn. The director would be skilled in showing an untutored girl the rudiments of a performance. An actor from the same scene would be able to show her how to play the role with ease, since he had been performing opposite an actress doing it for several weeks.
A quick survey of the programme told Lynley that Lord Stinhurst had been the director. He scored a point for Sergeant Havers’ intuition. Now all that was left was to find out where in The Three Sisters the “suicide note” belonged and who played the roles in that scene. For he could visualise it now—Hannah going to the mill to meet her lover, in her pocket the eight pages of script that she had meticulously copied by hand for her audition. And the man who killed her, who took those eight pages, tore off the single part that would look like a suicide note, and took the rest with him, leaving her body hanging from the ceiling.
Lynley closed the trunks, turned off the light, and grabbed the stack of journals and the programme. Downstairs in the flat, he found Teddy in the sitting room with his feet propped up on a cheap, food-splattered coffee table, eating fish fingers from a blue tin plate. A pint of ale stood on the floor, half drunk. A small colour television was tuned in to a sports programme, downhill skiing by the look of it. Seeing Lynley, the boy hopped to his feet and turned off the television.
“Have you any books of plays in the flat?” Lynley asked, although he was fairly certain what the reply would be.
“Books of plays?” the boy repeated with a shake of his head. “Not a one. You’re sure you want a book? We’ve records and such. Magazines as well.” He seemed to realise as he spoke that Lynley was not looking for sources of entertainment. “Dad says you’re a cop. Says I’m not to talk to you.”