“Of course she did.”
“What time? In an hour? In two? In three?”
“I don’t know.”
“But surely her movement in the room would have awakened you.”
Sydeham’s voice grew impatient. “Have you ever slept off a binge, Inspector? Pardon the expression, but it would have been like waking the dead.”
Lynley persisted. “You heard nothing? No wind? No voices? Nothing at all?”
“I told you that.”
“Nothing from Joy Sinclair’s room? She was on the other side of yours. It’s hard to believe that a woman could meet her death without making a sound. Or that your own wife could be in and out of the room without your awareness. What other things might have gone on without your knowledge?”
Sydeham looked sharply from Lynley to Havers. “If you’re pinning this on Jo, why not on me as well? I was alone for part of the night, wasn’t I? But that’s a problem for you, isn’t it? Because, saving Stinhurst, so was everyone else.”
Lynley ignored the anger that rode just beneath Sydeham’s words. “Tell me about the library.”
There was no alteration in expression at this sudden, new direction in the questioning. “What about it?”
“Was anyone there when you went for the whisky?”
“Just Gabriel.”
“What was he doing?”
“The same as I was about to. Drinking. Gin by the smell of it. And no doubt hoping for something in a skirt to wander by. Anything in a skirt.”
Lynley picked up on Sydeham’s black tone. “You don’t much like Robert Gabriel. Is it merely because of the advances he’s made towards your wife, or are there other reasons?”
“No one here much likes Gabriel, Inspector. No one anywhere much likes him. He gets by on sufferance because he’s such a bloody good actor. But frankly, it’s a mystery to me why he wasn’t murdered instead of Joy Sinclair. He was certainly asking for it from any number of quarters.”
It was an interesting observation, Lynley thought. But more interesting was the fact that Sydeham had not answered the question.
APPARENTLY, Inspector Macaskin and the Westerbrae cook had decided to carry a burgeoning conflict to the sitting room, and they arrived at the door simultaneously, bearing two disparate messages. Macaskin insisted upon being the first heard, with the white-garbed cook lurking in the background, wringing her hands together as if every wasted moment brought a souffl e closer to perdition in her oven.
Macaskin gave David Sydeham a head-totoe scrutiny as the man moved past him into the hall. “We’ve done all that’s to be done,” he said to Lynley. “Fingerprinted the whole lot. Clyde and Sinclair rooms are sealed off, crimescene men are done. Drains appear clean, by the way. No blood anywhere.”
“A clean kill save for the glove.”
“My man will test that.” Macaskin jerked his head towards the library and went on curtly. “Shall I let them out? Cook says she’s got dinner and they’ve asked for a bit of a wash.”
The request, Lynley saw, was out of character for Macaskin. Giving the reins of an investigation over to another officer was not an accustomed routine for the Scot, and even as he spoke, the tips of his ears grew red against his fi ne, grey hair.
As if she recognised a concealed message within Macaskin’s words, the cook belligerently continued, “Ye canna keep them from fude. ’Tisna richt.” Clearly, it was her expectation that the police modus operandi was to put the entire group on bread and water until the killer was found. “I do hae a bit prepared. They’ve ha nowt but one wee san’wich a’ day, Inspector. Unlike the police,” she nodded meaningfully, “who hae been feeding themsel’ since this mornin’ from what I can tell by lookin’ a’ my kitchen.”
Lynley flipped open his pocket watch, surprised to see that it was half past eight. He couldn’t have been less hungry himself, but since the crime-scene men were finished, there was no further purpose to keeping the group from adequate food and from the relatively restricted, supervised freedom of the house. He nodded his approval.
“Then we’ll be off,” Macaskin said. “I’ll leave Constable Lonan with you and get back myself in the morning. I’ve a man ready to take Stinhurst to the station.”
“Leave him here.”
Macaskin opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, throwing protocol to the wind long enough to say, “As to those scripts, Inspector.”
“I’ll see to it,” Lynley said fi rmly. “Burning evidence isn’t murder. He can be dealt with when the time arrives.” He saw Sergeant Havers move in a recoiling motion, as if she wished to distance herself from what she saw as a poor decision.
For his part, Macaskin seemed to consider arguing the point and decided to let it go. His official good-night comprised the brusque words: “We’ve put your things in the northwest wing. You’re in with St. James. Next to Helen Clyde’s new room.”
Neither the political manoeuvring nor the sleeping arrangements of the police were of interest to the cook, who had remained in the doorway, eager to resolve the culinary dispute that had brought her to the sitting room in the first place. “Twinty minutes, Inspector.” She turned on her heel. “Bey on time.”
It was a fine point of conclusion. And that is how Macaskin used it.
RELEASED at last from their day’s confi nement in the library, most of the group were still in the entrance hall when Lynley asked Joanna Ellacourt to step into the sitting room. His request, made so soon after his interview with her husband, reduced the small cluster of people to breath-holding suspense, as if they were waiting to see how the actress would respond. It was, after all, couched as a request. But none of them were foolish enough to believe that it was an invitation that might be politely rebuffed should Joanna choose to do so.
It looked as if she was considering that as a possibility, however, walking a quick line between outright refusal and hostile cooperation. The latter seemed ascendant, and as she approached the sitting-room door, Joanna gave vent to the umbrage she felt after a day of incarceration by favouring neither Lynley nor Havers with so much as a word before she passed in front of them and took a seat of her own choosing, the ladder-back chair by the fire that Sydeham had avoided and Stinhurst had only reluctantly occupied. Her choice of it was intriguing, revealing either a determination to see the interview through in the most forthright manner possible or a desire to choose a location where the benefits of fi relight playing upon her skin and hair might distract an idle watcher at a crucial moment. Joanna Ellacourt knew how to play to an audience.
Looking at her, Lynley found it hard to believe that she was nearly forty years old. She looked ten years younger, possibly more, and in the forgiving light of the fire that warmed her skin to a translucent gold, Lynley found himself recalling his first sight of François Boucher’s Diana Resting, for the splendid glow of Joanna’s skin was the same, as were the delicate shades of colour across her cheeks and the fragile curve of her ear when she shook her hair back. She was absolutely beautiful, and had her eyes been brown instead of cornfl ower blue, she might herself have posed for Boucher’s painting.
No wonder Gabriel’s been after her, Lynley thought. He offered her a cigarette which she accepted. Her hand closed over his to steady the lighter’s flame with fingers that were long, very cool, flashing several diamond rings. It was a stagey sort of movement, intentionally seductive.
“Why did you argue with your husband last night?” he asked.
Joanna raised a well-shaped eyebrow and spent a moment taking in Sergeant Havers from head to toe, as if in an evaluation of the policewoman’s grubby skirt and sootstained sweater. “Because I’d grown tired of being on the receiving end of Robert Gabriel’s lust for the last six months,” she replied frankly, and paused as if in the expectation of a response- a nod of sympathy, perhaps, or a cluck of disapproval. When it became evident that none was forthcoming, she was forced to continue her story. Which she did, her voice a bit tight. “He had a nice hard-on every night in my last scene in Othello, Inspector. Just about the time he was supposed to smother me, he’d begin squirming about on the bed like a pubescent twelve-year-old who’s just discovered how much fun he can have with that sweet little sausage between his legs. I’d had it with him. I thought David understood as much. But apparently he didn’t. So he arranged a new contract, forcing me to work with Gabriel again.”