“Please. Stuart.” Lady Stinhurst hated herself for the tremor behind her words, but she couldn’t stop them now. “You must tell her the truth. She’s had twenty-five years of believing you’re a murderer! You can’t let it continue. My God, you can’t do that!”
Stinhurst didn’t look at her. His voice was low. “No.”
She couldn’t believe him. “You didn’t kill your brother! You weren’t even responsible! You did everything in your power-”
“How can I destroy the only warm memories Elizabeth has? She has so little, after all. For God’s sake, at least let her keep that.”
“At the expense of her love for you? No! I won’t have it.”
“You will.” His voice was implacable, bearing the sort of unquestionable authority that Lady Stinhurst had never once disobeyed. For to disobey was to step out of the role she had been playing her entire life: daughter, wife, mother. And nothing else. As far as she knew, there was only a void beyond the narrow boundaries set up by those who governed her life. Her husband spoke again. “Go to bed. You’re tired. You need to sleep.”
As always, Lady Stinhurst did as she was told.
IT WAS PAST TWO in the morning when Inspector Macaskin finally left, with a promise to telephone with the postmortems and the forensic reports as soon as he could. Barbara Havers saw him out and returned to Lynley and St. James in the sitting room.They were at the table, with the items from Joy Sinclair’s shoulder bag spread out before them.The tape recorder was playing yet another time, Joy’s voice rising and falling with the broken messages that Barbara had long ago memorised. Hearing it now, she realised that the recording had begun to take on the quality of a recurring nightmare, and Lynley the quality of a man obsessed. His were not quantum leaps of intuition in which the misty image of crime-motiveperpetrator took recognisable shape. Rather, they bore the appearance of contrivance, of an attempt to find and assess guilt where only by the wildest stretching of the imagination could it possibly exist. For the first time in that endless harrowing day, Barbara began to feel uneasy. In the long months of their partnership, she had come to realise that, for all his exterior gloss and sophistication, for all his trappings of upper-class splendour that she so mightily despised, Lynley was still the fi nest DI she had ever worked with.Yet Barbara knew intuitively that the case he was building now was wrong, founded on sand. She sat down and reached restlessly for the book of matches from Joy Sinclair’s bag, brooding upon it.
It bore a curious imprint, merely three words, Wine’s the Plough, with the apostrophe an inverted pint glass spilling lager. Clever, Barbara thought, the sort of amusing memento one picks up, stuffs into a handbag, and forgets about. But she knew that it was only a matter of time before Lynley would grasp at the matchbook as another piece of evidence affirming Davies-Jones’ guilt. For Irene Sinclair had said that her sister did not smoke. And all of them had seen that Davies-Jones did.
“We need physical evidence, Tommy,” St. James was saying. “You know as well as I that all this is purest conjecture. Even Davies-Jones’ prints on the key can be explained away by the statement Helen gave us.”
“I’m aware of that,” Lynley replied. “But we’ll have the forensic report from Strathclyde CID.”
“Not for several days, at least.”
Lynley went on as if the other man had not spoken. “I’ve no doubt that some piece of evidence will turn up. A hair, a fibre. You know as well as I how impossible it is to carry off a perfect crime.”
“But even then, if Davies-Jones was in Joy’s room earlier in the day-and from Gowan’s report, he was-what have you gained by the presence of one of his hairs or a fibre from his coat? Besides, you know as well as I that the crime scene was contaminated by the removal of the body, and there’s not a barrister in the country who won’t know it as well. As far as I’m concerned, it comes back to motive again and again. The evidence is going to be too weak. Only a motive can give it strength.”
“That’s why I’m going to Hampstead tomorrow. I’ve a feeling that the pieces are lying there, ready to be put together, in Joy Sinclair’s fl at.”
Barbara heard this statement with disbelief. It was beyond consideration that they should leave so soon. “What about Gowan, sir? You’ve forgotten what he tried to tell us. He said he didn’t see someone. And the only person he told me he saw last night was Rhys Davies-Jones. Don’t you think that means he was trying to change his statement?”
“He didn’t finish the sentence, Havers,” Lynley replied. “He said two words, didn’t see.
Didn’t see whom? Didn’t see what? Davies-Jones? The cognac he was supposed to be carrying? He expected to see him with something in his hand because he came out of the library. He expected liquor. A book. But what if he only thought that’s what he saw? What if he realised later that what he saw was something quite different, a murder weapon?”
“Or what if he didn’t see Davies-Jones at all and that’s what he was trying to tell us? What if he only saw someone else attempting to look like Davies-Jones, perhaps wearing his overcoat? It could have been anyone.”
Lynley stood abruptly. “Why are you so determined to prove the man is innocent?”
From his sharp tone, Barbara knew what direction his thoughts were taking. But he wasn’t the only one with a gauntlet to throw down. “Why are you so determined to prove that he’s guilty?”
Lynley gathered Joy’s belongings. “I’m looking for guilt, Havers. It’s my job. And I believe the guilt lies in Hampstead. Be ready by half past eight.”
He started for the door. Barbara’s eyes begged St. James to intercede in an area where she knew she could not go, where friendship had stronger ties than the logic and rules that govern a police investigation.
“Are you certain it’s wise to go back to London tomorrow?” St. James asked slowly. “When you think of the inquest-”
Lynley turned in the doorway, his face caught by the cavern of shadows in the hall. “Havers and I can’t give professional evidence here in Scotland. Macaskin will handle it. As for the rest of them, we’ll collect their addresses. They’re not about to leave the country when their livelihood’s tied up on the London stage.”
With that, he was gone. Barbara struggled to find her voice. “I think Webberly’s going to have his head over this. Can’t you stop him?”
“I can only try to reason with him, Barbara. But Tommy’s no fool. His instincts are sound. If he feels he’s onto something, we can only wait to see what he fi nds.”
In spite of St. James’ assurance, Barbara’s mouth was dry. “Can Webberly sack him for this?”
“I suppose it depends on how it all turns out.”
Something in his guarded statement told her everything she wanted to know. “You think he’s wrong, don’t you? You think it’s Lord Stinhurst, too. God in heaven, what’s wrong with him? What’s happened to him, Simon?”
St. James picked up the bottle of whisky. “Helen,” he said simply.
THE KEY in his hand, Lynley hesitated at Lady Helen’s door. It was half past two. No doubt she would be asleep by now, his intrusion both disruptive and unwelcome. But he needed to see her. And he didn’t lie to himself about the purpose of this visit. It had nothing to do with police work. He knocked once, unlocked the door and went in.
Lady Helen was on her feet, coming across the room, but she halted when she saw him. He closed the door. He said nothing at fi rst, merely noting the details and striving to understand what they might imply.
Her bed was undisturbed, its yellow and white counterpane pulled up round the pillows. Her shoes, slim black pumps, were on the floor next to it. They were the only article of clothing that she had removed other than her jewellery: gold earrings, a thin chain, a delicate bracelet on the nightstand. This last object caught his eyes, and for a painful moment he considered how small her wrists were that such a piece could encircle them so easily. There was nothing else to see in the room, save a wardrobe, two chairs, and a dressing table in whose mirror they both were reflected, warily confronting one another like two mortal enemies come upon each other unexpectedly and without suffi cient energy or will to do battle again.