Love to you, Mother
Hands on her hips, Sidney threw back her head and laughed, clearly delighted with having brought off a coup. 'Isn't she grand? What a time I had getting her to write it, though. Had she not already wanted to speak to you about seeing to Deborah – you know how she is, always concerned that we'll become social heathens and not do the proper thing in these situations – I doubt if anything could have made her write it.'
St James felt Lady Helen watching him. He knew what she expected him to ask. He didn't ask it. For the past ten days he had known something had happened between them. Cotter's behaviour alone would have told him as much, even if Deborah had not been gone from Howenstow when he'd returned from Penzance on the evening after Trenarrow's death. But, other than saying he'd flown her back to London, Lynley said nothing more. And Cotter's grim restraint had not been a thing which St James wanted to disturb. So even now he said nothing.
Lady Helen, however, did not have his scruples. 'What's happened to Deborah?'
'Tommy broke their engagement,' Sidney replied. 'Cotter hasn't told you, Simon? From the way Mummy's cook tells it, he was practically breathing fire on the phone. Quite in a rage. I half-expected to hear he'd duelled with Tommy for satisfaction. "Guns or knives," I can hear him shouting. "Speaker's Corner at dawn." Tommy hasn't told you, either? How decidedly odd. Unless, of course, he thinks you may demand satisfaction, Simon.' She laughed and then sobered thoughtfully. 'You don't think this is a class thing, do you? Considering Peter's choice of Sasha, class can hardly be an issue with the Lynleys.'
As she spoke, St James realized that Sidney had no idea of anything that had happened since her bitter departure from Howenstow on that Sunday morning. He opened the bottom drawer beneath his work table and removed her perfume bottle.
'You misplaced this,' he said.
She grabbed it, delighted. 'Where did you find it? Don't tell me it was in the Howenstow wardrobe. I can accept that for shoes but for nothing else.'
'Justin took it from your room, Sid.'
Such a simple statement – seven words, no more. Their effect upon his sister was immediate. Her smile faded. She tried to hold on to the edges of it, but her lips quivered with the effort. Liveliness left her. The quick end to her insouciance told him how precarious a hold she had on her emotions. Her present madcap demeanour merely acted as a shield to fend off a mourning she had not begun.
'Justin?' she said. 'Why?'
There was no easy way for him to tell her. He knew that the knowledge would only add to her sorrow. Yet telling her seemed to be the only way that she might start the process of burying her dead.
'To frame you for murder,' he said.
'That's ridiculous.'
'He wanted to murder Peter Lynley. He got Sasha Nifford instead.'
'I don't understand.' She rolled the perfume bottle over and over in her hand. She bent her head. She brushed at her cheeks.
'It was filled with a drug she mistook for heroin.' At that she looked up. St James saw the expression on her face. The use of a drug as a means of murder did indeed make the truth so unavoidable. 'I'm sorry, love.'
'But Peter. Justin told me Peter was at Cambrey's. He said they had a row. And then Mick Cambrey died. He said that Peter wanted to kill him. I don't understand. Peter must have known Justin told you and Tommy about it. He knew. He did know.'
'Peter didn't kill Justin, Sid. He wasn't even at Howenstow when Justin died.'
'Then, why?'
'Peter heard something he wasn't supposed to hear. He could have used it against Justin eventually, especially once Mick Cambrey was killed. Justin got nervous. He knew Peter was desperate about money and cocaine. He knew he was unstable. He couldn't predict his behaviour, so he needed to be rid of him.'
Together, St James and Lady Helen told her the story. Islington, oncozyme, Trenarrow, Cambrey. The clinic and cancer. The substitution of a placebo that led to Mick's death.
'Brooke was in jeopardy,' St James said. 'He took steps to eliminate it.'
'What about me?' she asked. 'It's my bottle. Didn't he know that people would think I was involved?' Still she clutched the bottle. Her fingers turned white round it.
'The day on the beach, Sidney,' Lady Helen said. 'He'd been humiliated rather badly.'
'He wanted to punish you,' St James said.
Sidney's lips barely moved as she said, 'He loved me. I know it. He loved me.'
St James felt the terrible burden of her words and with it the need to reassure his sister of her intrinsic worth. He wanted to say something but couldn't think of the words that might comfort her.
Lady Helen spoke. 'What Justin Brooke was makes no statement about who you are, Sidney. You don't take your definition of self from him. Or from what he felt. Or didn't feel, for that matter.'
Sidney gave a choked sob. St James went to her. 'I'm sorry, love,' he said, putting his arm tighdy round her. 'I think I'd rather you hadn't known. But I can't lie to you, Sidney. I'm not sorry he's dead.'
She coughed and looked up at him. She offered a shattered smile. 'Lord, how hungry I am,' she whispered. 'Shall we have lunch?'
In Eaton Terrace, Lady Helen slammed the door of her Mini. She did it more to give herself courage – as if the action might attest to the fittingness of her behaviour -than to assure herself that the car door was securely locked. She looked up at the darkened front of Lynley's townhouse, then held up her wrist to the light of the street-lamp. It was nearly eleven, hardly the time for a social call. But the very unsuitability of the hour gave her an advantage which she wasn't willing to relinquish. She climbed the marble-tiled steps to his door.
For the past two weeks she had been trying to contact him. Every effort had received a rebuff. Out on a job, working a double shift, caught at a meeting, testifying in court. From a series of unquestionably polite secretaries, assistants and junior officers, she had heard every permutation of a job-related excuse. The implicit message was always the same: he was unavailable, alone, and preferring it so.
It would not be so tonight. She rang the bell. It sounded somewhere in the back of the house, resonating oddly towards the front door as if the building were empty. For a fleeting, mad moment, she actually harboured the thought that he had moved from London – ninning away from everything once and for all – but then the fanlight above the door showed a sudden illumination in the lower hallway. A bolt was drawn, the door opened, and Lynley's valet stood blinking owlishly out at her. He was wearing his bedroom slippers, Lady Helen noted, and a tartan flannel bathrobe over paisley pyjamas. Surprise and judgement played spontaneously across his face. He wiped them off quickly enough, but Lady Helen read their meaning. Well brought up daughters of peers were not supposed to go calling on gentlemen late at night, no matter which part of the twentieth century this was.
'Thank you, Denton,' Lady Helen said decisively. She stepped into the hall every bit as if he'd asked her in with earnest protestations of welcome. 'Please tell Lord Asherton that I must see him at once.' She removed her light evening coat and placed it along with her bag on a chair in the foyer.
Still standing by the open door, Denton looked from her to the street as if trying to recall whether he had actually asked her in. He kept his hand on the doorknob and shifted from foot to foot, appearing caught between a need to protest the solecism of this visit and the fear of someone's wrath should he do so.