Havers said, “Dr. Trahair.”
“What about her?”
“She was in the car park when I left this morning. I think she was waiting for him.”
“Was she indeed?” Bea looked up from the paperwork. “That’s an interesting wrinkle.” She handed the sheets to Havers. “Have a look at these,” she told her.
“What are they, then?”
“They’re age progressions. From that photograph Thomas handed over. I think you’re going to find them of interest.”
DAIDRE TRAHAIR HESITATED JUST outside his door. She could hear the sound of the hair dryer from within, so she knew that Sergeant Havers had been telling her the truth. It hadn’t seemed so. Indeed, when Daidre had confronted the sergeant in the car park of the Salthouse Inn, asking for Thomas Lynley, the idea that he might not be present because he was actually drying his socks had sounded like the lamest sort of excuse for his absence from Sergeant Havers’s side. On the other hand, the DS from London hardly had a reason to invent an activity for Lynley to be engaging in in order to hide the fact that he might instead be spending yet another day scouring through the detritus of Daidre’s past. For it seemed to Daidre at this point that he’d done as much scouring as he’d be able to do without her own participation.
She knocked on his door sharply. The dryer switched off. The door swung open. “Sorry, Barbara. I’m afraid they’re still not-” He saw it was Daidre. “Hullo,” he said with a smile. “You’re out and about early, aren’t you?”
“The sergeant told me…I saw her in the car park. She said you were drying your socks.”
He had a sock in one hand and the dryer in the other, proof of the matter. He said, “I did try to wear them at breakfast, but I found there’s something particularly disturbing about damp socks. Shades of World War I and life in the trenches, I suppose. Would you like to come in?” He stepped back and she passed him, into the room. The bed was unmade. A towel lay in a heap on the floor. A notebook had scribbles of pencil in it, with car keys sitting on its open pages. “I thought they’d dry by morning,” he said. “Foolishly, I washed both pairs. I hung them by the window all night. I even cracked it open for air. It was all for nothing. According to Sergeant Havers, I should have shown some common sense and considered the radiator. You don’t mind…?”
She shook her head. He began his work with the hair dryer again. She watched him. He’d nicked himself shaving, and he’d apparently not noticed: A thin line of blood traced along his jaw. It was the sort of thing his wife would have seen and told him about as he left the house in the morning.
She said, “This isn’t the sort of thing I’d expect the lord of the manor to be doing.”
“What? Drying his own socks?”
“Doesn’t someone like you have…What do you call them? People?”
“Well, I can’t see my sister drying my socks. My brother would be as useless as I am, and my mother would likely throw them at me.”
“I don’t mean family people. I mean people people. Servants. You know.”
“I suppose it depends on what you think of as servants. We have staff at Howenstow-that’s the family pile, if I’ve not mentioned its name-and I’ve a man who oversees the house in London. But I’d hardly call him a servant and can a single employee actually be called staff? Besides that, Charlie Denton comes and goes fairly at will. He’s a theatre lover with personal aspirations.”
“Of what sort?”
“Of the sort involving greasepaint and the crowd. He longs to be onstage but the truth of the matter is that he stands little chance of being discovered as long as he limits his range to what it currently is. He vacillates between Algernon Moncrieff and the porter in Macbeth.”
Daidre smiled in spite of herself. She wanted to be angry with him and part of her remained so. But he made it difficult.
She said, “Why did you lie to me, Thomas?”
“Lie to you?”
“You said you hadn’t gone to Falmouth asking questions about me.”
He clicked off the hair dryer. He set it on the edge of the basin and considered it. “Ah,” he said.
“Yes. Ah. Strictly speaking, I realise, you were telling me the truth. You didn’t go personally. But you sent her, didn’t you? It wasn’t her plan to go there.”
“Strictly speaking, no. I’d no idea she was in the area. I thought she was in London. But I did ask her to look into your background, so I suppose…” He made a small gesture with his hand, a European gesture telling her to complete the thought on her own.
Which she was happy enough to do. “You lied. I don’t appreciate that. You might have asked me a few questions.”
“I did, actually. You likely didn’t think I’d check on the answers.”
“To verify them. To make sure-”
“That you yourself weren’t lying.”
“I seem so questionable to you. So like a murderer.”
He shook his head. “You seem as unlike a murderer as anyone I’ve ever come across. But it’s part of the job. And the more I asked, the more I discovered there were areas in your story-”
“I thought we were getting to know each other. Foolish me.”
“We were, Daidre. We are. That was part of it. But from the beginning, there were inconsistencies in what you said about yourself, and they couldn’t be ignored.”
“You mean you couldn’t ignore them.”
He gazed at her. His expression was frank. “I couldn’t ignore them,” he said. “Someone is dead. And I’m a cop.”
“I see. D’you want to share what you’ve discovered?”
“If you like.”
“I like.”
“Bristol Zoo.”
“I work there. Has someone claimed that I don’t?”
“There is no Paul keeping primates there. And there is no Daidre Trahair born in Falmouth, at home or elsewhere. Do you want to explain?”
“Are you arresting me?”
“No.”
“Then come along. Gather your things. I want to show you something.” She headed for the door but paused there. She offered him a smile that she knew was brittle. “Or d’you want to phone DI Hannaford and Sergeant Havers first, and tell them you’re coming with me? After all, I may send you over a cliff, and they’ll want to know where to find your body.”
She didn’t wait to hear him reply or to see whether he took her up on the offer. She headed for the stairs and from there out to her car. She assured herself that one way or another it didn’t really matter if he followed or not. She congratulated herself on feeling absolutely nothing. She’d come a long way, she decided.
LYNLEY DIDN’T PHONE DI Hannaford or Barbara Havers. He was a free agent, after all, not on loan, on duty, or on anything at all. Nonetheless, he took the mobile with him once he’d donned his socks-thankfully far drier than they’d been during breakfast-and gathered up his jacket. He found Daidre in the car park, her Vauxhall idling. She’d gone rather pale during their conversation, but her colour had returned as she’d waited for him to join her.
He got into the car. In closer proximity to her, he could smell the scent she was wearing. It put him in mind of Helen, not the scent itself but the fact of the scent. Helen had been citrus, the Mediterranean on a sunny day. Daidre was…It seemed like the aftermath of rain, fresh air after a storm. He passed through a fleeting moment in which he missed Helen so much he thought his heart might stop. But it didn’t, of course. He was left with the seat belt, which he fumbled into place.