Fairclough observed his daughter. His expression was so obviously one of distaste that Mignon chuckled.
“Have I offended you?” she asked. “So sorry.”
Her father poured sherry into a tumbler, a great deal of sherry. That, Lynley thought, was certainly going to do the job if the woman tossed it back. He had a feeling she fully intended to do so.
Fairclough was handing the drink over to his daughter when Valerie returned, towels in hand. She went to Mignon and set about drying her hair, gently. Lynley expected Mignon to show a burst of irritation and to brush the ministration aside. She didn’t. Instead, she allowed her hair to be seen to, along with her neck and her face.
She said, “Mother never comes for a friendly visit. Did you know that, Thomas? What I mean is that she brings me food— rather like giving alms to the poor like the lady of the manor she is— but just to drop in for a chat? That hasn’t happened in years. So when it did occur today, I was all amazement. What can the old dear want, I thought.”
Valerie dropped her hands and the towel from her daughter’s hair. She looked at her husband. He said nothing. They both seemed to gird themselves for some kind of onslaught, and Lynley found himself wondering how on earth they’d got themselves into this sort of position with their own daughter.
Mignon took a healthy gulp of her sherry. She held the glass with both hands, like a priest with a chalice. “Mother and I have nothing to talk about, you see. She has no interest in hearing about my life, and believe me, I have no interest in hers. This rather limits one’s conversation. After the weather, what’s there to talk about? I mean, aside from her dreary topiary garden and her even drearier children’s playground or whatever it is.”
Her father finally said, “Mignon, are you joining us for dinner or have you another purpose for your call?”
“Do not,” Mignon said, “back me into a corner. You do not want that.”
“Darling,” her mother began.
“Please. If there’s a darling in the family, we both know I’m not it.”
“That’s not true.”
“God.” Mignon rolled her eyes at Lynley. “It’s been Nicholas, Nicholas since the day he was born, Thomas. A son at last and all the attendant hallelujahs. But that’s not what I’ve come here about. I want to talk about that pathetic little cripple.”
For a moment, Lynley had no idea whom she actually meant. He was, of course, acutely aware that St. James was disabled since he himself had been the cause of the accident that had injured him. But to apply either pathetic or little to the man he’d known since their school days was so inapposite a description that for a moment he thought Mignon was speaking of someone else entirely. She disabused him of that notion when she went on.
“Mother didn’t last as long as she was evidently supposed to last in my company. Once she left, I wondered why she’d come at all, and it wasn’t difficult to suss that out. There you all were, Dad, coming up from the boathouse. You, Thomas here, and the cripple. And Thomas looked like he’d had a wetting if the towels and his hair were anything to go by. But not the cripple. He was quite dry. As you were, Dad.” Another hefty gulp of sherry followed before she continued. “Now the towels suggest our Thomas went down to the boathouse prepared. He didn’t just slip and fall into the water and since his clothes weren’t wet, I think we’ve got corroboration for that assumption. Which means he went into the water intentionally. This not being the season for taking a dip in the lake, he had to have had another reason. I’m thinking that reason has to do with Ian. How am I doing?”
Lynley felt Fairclough glance his way. Valerie looked nervously from her daughter to her husband. Lynley said nothing. It was, he reckoned, up to Fairclough to confirm or deny what was going on. As far as he was concerned, being open with his reasons for his visit to Ireleth Hall was wiser than attempting to maintain a pretence for his presence.
Fairclough, however, said nothing to his daughter. She took this for assent, it seemed. She said, “So that means you believe Ian’s death was no accident, Dad. At least that’s what I reckoned when I saw the three of you coming up from the lake. A few seconds on the Net was actually all it took to learn who our visitor here really is, by the way. Had you wanted to keep the information from me, you needed to come up with a pseudonym.”
“No one was keeping anything from you, Mignon,” her father informed her. “Tommy’s here at my invitation. The fact that he’s also a policeman has no bearing— ”
“A detective,” Mignon corrected. “A Scotland Yard detective, Dad, and I assume you know that. And since he’s here at your invitation and he’s prowling round the boathouse in the company of whoever that other bloke was, I think I can connect the dots well enough.” She turned in her chair so that her focus was on Lynley and not her father. Her mother had stepped away from her, towels in her hands. Mignon said to Lynley, “So you’re conducting a little investigation on the sly. Engineered by…? Well, it can’t be Dad, can it?”
“Mignon,” her father said.
She went on. “Because that suggests that Dad himself is innocent, which, frankly, isn’t very likely.”
“Mignon!” Valerie cried. “That’s a terrible thing to say.”
“Do you think so? But Dad’s got a reason for offing our Ian. Haven’t you, Dad?”
Fairclough made no reply to his daughter. His look at Mignon betrayed nothing. Either he was used to this sort of conversation with her or he knew she would go no further with what she was claiming. A tense moment passed as they all waited for more. Outside, a gust of wind sent something against the windows of the small drawing room. Valerie was the one to flinch.
Mignon said, “But then, so do I. Isn’t that correct, Dad?” She leaned back in her chair, enjoying herself. Looking at her father, she nonetheless directed her next words to Lynley. “Dad doesn’t know that I know Ian wanted to cut me off, Thomas. He was always pouring over the books, our Ian, looking for ways to save Dad money. Well, I’m certainly one of them. There’s the folly itself, which cost a bundle to build, and then there’s its maintenance, as well as my own. And as you no doubt used your detective skills to suss out when you paid your call upon me, I do like to spend a bit of money here and there. Considering the piles Dad’s made for the firm over the years, what I need isn’t a lot, of course. But to Ian it was far more than I deserved. To his credit, Dad never agreed with him. But we both know— Dad and I— that there was always a chance that he’d change his mind and go along with Ian’s suggestion to throw me out on my ear. Isn’t that correct?”
Fairclough’s face was stony. Her mother’s face was watchful. This offered more information than either of them might have given Lynley otherwise.
“Valerie,” Bernard finally said, his gaze on his daughter, “I think it’s time for dinner, don’t you? Mignon will be leaving presently.”
Mignon smiled. She gulped down the rest of her sherry. She said pointedly, “I believe I’ll need some help to get back to the folly, Dad.”
“I expect you’ll do fine on your own,” he replied.
8 NOVEMBER
CHALK FARM TO VICTORIA
LONDON
Barbara Havers shrieked when she saw herself in the bathroom mirror, having stumbled towards the loo upon rising in the early morning and having forgotten that her appearance was decidedly altered. Her heart leapt in her chest, and she swung round ready to confront the woman she saw in an oblique angle of the mirror. It was a matter of seconds only, but she felt every which way the fool as she came to her senses and all of yesterday came sweeping back in the form of a hot wave of what was not quite shame but not quite anything else, either.