“Not quite yet.” He sat, smiled at her fondly, and said, “Someday, I suppose.” He reached for the napkin, folded it, and put it into the breast pocket of his jacket. “I’ve rung Simon,” he told her. “He knows we’ll be coming home.”
“And?”
“Well, of course, he finds you the most maddening sort of woman. But, then, don’t we all?”
She sighed, saying, “Yes. Well. I think I’ve made things worse, Tommy.”
“Between you and Simon?”
“No, no. I’ll put that right. It does help to be married to the most tolerant man on the planet. But I’m talking about Nicholas Fairclough and his wife. I’ve had an awkward conversation with her, followed by an awkward conversation with her husband.”
She told him about both conversations, sketching in all the details as she remembered them, including the reactions of both Alatea and her husband. She explained Alatea’s offer of jewellery and money and she included the revelation about the man Montenegro. Tommy listened as he always had done, his brown eyes fixed on hers. Their coffee service came as she was talking. He poured them both a cup as she was concluding.
Her final words were, “So all along, Alatea apparently thought I was talking about this Raul Montenegro while I thought we were talking about the reporter from The Source. I suppose it wouldn’t have mattered much, except for the fact that I told her he was in Windermere— at least I think that’s where he went when he dropped me here after Lancaster— and when I told her that, she simply panicked, obviously thinking I meant Montenegro. Nicholas panicked as well.”
Lynley added a packet of sugar to his coffee. He stirred it, looking thoughtful all the while. Indeed, he looked so thoughtful that Deborah understood something she should have recognised earlier.
She said to him, “You know what’s actually going on with these people, don’t you, Tommy? I expect you’ve known from the first. Whatever it is, I wish you’d told me. At least I could have refrained from blundering in and doing whatever it is I’ve now managed to do to them.”
Lynley shook his head. “Actually, no. I think I’ve known less than you since I’d not met Alatea before today.”
“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”
“She’s quite…” He seemed to search for a better word, perhaps a more accurate one. He lifted his fingers as if to say that any choice he made would not do her justice. He settled on, “Rather amazing, actually. Had I not known about her before going to see her, I would never have believed she began life as a man.”
Deborah felt her jaw loosen with the surprise that swept through her. She said, “What?”
“Santiago Vasquez y del Torres. That’s who she was.”
“What do you mean was? Is she impersonating…?”
“No. She had surgery, financed by this bloke Montenegro. His intention, apparently, was to have her play his female lover in public to maintain his reputation and social position but, in private, to make love to her as a male to a male.”
Deborah swallowed. “Dear God.” She thought about Lancaster, about Lucy Keverne, about what she and Alatea Fairclough could have and must have actually planned between them. She said, “But Nicholas… Surely he knows?”
“She hasn’t told him.”
“Oh surely, Tommy, he’d be able to tell. I mean… Good heavens… There’d be signs, wouldn’t there? There’d be marks of incisions, scars, whatever.”
“In the hands of a world-class surgeon? With all the tools at hand? With lasers to deal with potential scarring? Deborah, everything would be altered. Even the Adam’s apple can go. If the man’s appearance was feminine to begin with— because of an extra X chromosome perhaps— then the shift to female would be even simpler.”
“But not to tell Nicholas? Why wouldn’t she have told him?”
“Desperation? Worry? Fear of his reaction? Fear of rejection? With Montenegro looking for her and apparently having the funds to go on looking indefinitely, she would need a safe place. To achieve it, she allowed Nicholas to believe what he wanted to believe about her. She married, giving her the right to remain in England once she came here.”
Deborah saw how this fitted in with what Tommy and Simon had come to Cumbria to do. She said, “Ian Cresswell? Did she murder him? Did he know?”
Lynley shook his head. “Consider her, Deborah. She’s something of a masterpiece. No one would know unless there was a reason to delve back into her past, and there was no reason. For all intents and purposes, she’s Nicholas Fairclough’s wife. If anyone bore looking into with regard to Ian’s death, it would have been Nicholas. As things happened, we didn’t need to go that far because Simon was right from the first and so was the coroner. There’s not a single sign of Ian Cresswell’s death being anything other than an accident. Someone may have wanted him to die. His death might have been a convenience to more than one person. But no one orchestrated it.”
Deborah said, “And now that terrible reporter’s going to write his story about this surrogacy situation and Alatea’s photo will be in the paper and I’m responsible. What can I do?”
“Appeal to his better angels?”
“He works for The Source, Tommy.”
“There is that,” he admitted.
Her mobile rang. Deborah hoped it was Zed Benjamin, reporting on a change of heart. Or perhaps Simon, telling her he understood the passions that had driven her to make such a mess of things at Arnside House. But it turned out to be Nicholas Fairclough, and he was in a panic. “What’ve you done to her?”
Deborah’s first horrified thought was that Alatea Fairclough had harmed herself. She said, “What’s happened, Mr. Fairclough?” and she looked at Tommy.
“She’s gone. I’ve searched the house and the grounds. Her car is still here and she couldn’t have passed us in the driveway without being seen. I’ve walked the length of the seawall as well. She’s gone.”
“She’ll be back. She won’t have gone far. How could she have done, with the weather so bad?”
“She’s gone onto the sands.”
“Surely not.”
“I tell you, she’s gone onto the sands. She has to have done. It’s the only place.”
“She’s taken a walk then. To have a think. She’ll be back soon and when she comes back, you can tell her I was talking about the reporter from The Source, not Raul Montenegro.”
“You don’t understand,” he cried. “God in heaven, you don’t understand! She’s not coming back. She can’t come back.”
“Whyever not?”
“Because of the fog. Because of the quicksands.”
“But we can— ”
“We can’t! Don’t you see what you’ve done?”
“Please, Mr. Fairclough. We can find her. We can phone… There’s going to be someone— ”
“There’s no one. Not for this, not for this.”
“This? What’s this?”
“The tidal bore, you stupid woman. The floodwaters are coming. The siren’s just gone off. Today’s a tidal bore.”
WINDERMERE
CUMBRIA
When her mobile phone finally vibrated, Manette was in a welter of nerves. She was lurking in the car park of the business centre, close to a wheelie bin. Tim had gone inside a business called Shots!— a photographic studio by the look of the front window, which displayed enormous enlargements of the village of Ambleside in autumn— and he’d been followed some minutes later by a harried-looking woman with two children in tow. That woman had left moments later on the arm of an Anglican priest, and they’d all climbed into a Saab estate car and vanished, upon which time someone within Shots! had switched the Open sign to Closed and Manette had given up on Freddie and phoned the police.