That said, she left him. Lynley heard her bark of laughter echo in the hall.
IRENE SINCLAIR had herself just heard the news when Robert Gabriel found her in what Francesca Gerrard optimistically labelled her games room. Behind the last door in the lower northeast corridor, almost obscured behind a pile of disused outdoor garments, the room was completely isolated, and once inside, Irene welcomed its smell of mildew and wood rot and the pervasive congestion of dust and grime. Obviously, the renovation of the house had not reached this far corner yet. Irene found herself glad of it.
An old billiard table sat in the centre of the room, its baize covering loosely rippled, the netting under most of the pockets either torn or missing altogether. There were cue sticks on a rack on the wall, and Irene fi ngered these absently as she made her way to the window. No curtains covered it, a condition that contributed to the numbing want of heat. Since she wore no coat, she held her body tightly and rubbed her hands along her arms, pressing hard against the wool sleeves of her dress, feeling the answering friction like a kind of pain.
From the window there was little to see, just a grove of winter-bare alders beyond which the slate top of a boathouse seemed to be sprouting from a hillock like a triangular excrescence. It was an optical illusion, fabricated from the angle of the window and the height of the hill. Irene considered this idea, brooding over the continuing place that illusions seemed to be making in her life.
“God in heaven, Renie. I’ve been looking for you everywhere. What are you doing in here?” Robert Gabriel crossed the room to her. He had come in noiselessly, managing to shut the warped door without a sound. He was carrying his overcoat and said in explanation of it, “I was just about to go outside and start a search.” He dropped the coat on her shoulders.
It was a meaningless enough gesture, yet Irene still felt a distinct aversion to his touch. He was so near that she could smell the cologne he wore and the last vestige of coffee fighting with toothpaste upon his breath. It made her feel ill.
If Gabriel noticed, he gave no sign. “They’re letting us leave. Have they made an arrest? Do you know?”
She couldn’t bring herself to look at him. “No. No arrest. Not yet.”
“Of course, we’re to be available for the inquest. God, what a dashed inconvenience it is to have to run back and forth from London. But at least it’s better than having to stay in this ice pit. The hot water’s entirely gone, you know. And little hope of having repairs done on that old boiler for at least three days. That’s taking roughing it to the limit, isn’t it?”
“I heard you,” she said. Her voice was a whisper, small and despairing. She felt him looking at her.
“Heard?”
“I heard you, Robert. I heard you with her the other night.”
“Irene, what are you-”
“Oh, you needn’t worry that I’ve told the police. I wouldn’t do that, would I? But that’s why you’ve come looking for me, I dare say. To make sure my pride ensures my silence.”
“No! I don’t even know what you’re talking about. I’m here because I want to take you back to London. I don’t want you to be going off on your own. There’s no telling-”
“Here’s the most amusing part,” Irene interrupted acidly. “I’d actually come looking for you. God help me, Robert, I think I was ready to have you back. I’d even-” To her shame, her voice broke and she moved away from him as if by that she would regain her self-control. “I’d even brought you a picture of our James. Did you know he was Mercutio at school this year? I had two photographs made, one of James and one of you in a double frame. Remember that photo of you as Mercutio all those years ago? Of course, you don’t look very much alike because James has my colouring, but all the same I thought you’d want to have the pictures. Mostly because of James. No, I’m lying to myself. And I swore last night that I’d stop it. I wanted to bring you the pictures because I hated you and I loved you and just for a moment the other night when you and I were together in the library, I thought there was a chance…”
“Renie, for the love of God-”
“No! I heard you! It was Hampstead all over again! Exactly! And they say that life doesn’t repeat itself, don’t they? What a fi lthy laugh!
All I needed to do was open the door to fi nd you a second time having my sister. Just as I did last year, with the only difference being that I was alone this time. At least our children would have been spared a second go at the sight of their father sweating and panting and moaning over their lovely aunt Joy.”
“It isn’t-”
“What I think?” Irene felt her face quiver with encroaching tears. Their presence angered her-that he should still be able to reduce her to this. “I don’t want to hear it, Robert. No more clever lies. No more, ‘It only happened once.’ No more anything.”
He grabbed her arm. “Do you think I killed your sister?” His face looked ill, perhaps from lack of sleep, perhaps from guilt.
She laughed hoarsely, shaking him off. “Killed her? No, that’s not at all your style. Dead, Joy was absolutely no good to you, was she? After all, you aren’t the least bit interested in screwing a corpse.”
“That didn’t happen!”
“Then what did I hear?”
“I don’t know what you heard! I don’t know who you heard! Anyone could have been with her.”
“In your room?” she demanded.
His eyes widened in panic. “In my…Renie, good God, it’s not what you think!”
She flung his coat off her shoulders. Dust leaped from the floor when it dropped. “It’s worse than knowing you’ve always been a filthy liar, Robert. Because now I realise that I’ve become one. God help me. I used to think that if Joy died I’d be free of the pain. Now I believe I’ll only be free of it when you’re dead as well.”
“How can you say that? Is that what you really want?”
She smiled bitterly. “With all my heart. God, God! With all my heart!”
He stepped away from her, away from the coat on the floor between them. His face was ashen. “So be it, love,” he whispered.
LYNLEY FOUND Jeremy Vinney outside on the drive, stowing his suitcase into the boot of a hired Morris. Vinney was muffled against the cold in coat, gloves, and scarf; his breath steamed the air. His high domed forehead gleamed pink where the sun struck it and he looked, surprisingly, as if he were perspiring. He was also, Lynley noted, the first to leave. A decidedly strange reaction in a newspaperman. Lynley crossed the drive to him, his footsteps grating against the gravel and ice. Vinney looked up.
“Making an early start of it,” Lynley remarked.
The journalist nodded towards the house where dark early morning shadows were painted like ink along the stone walls. “Not really a spot for lingering, is it?” He slammed the boot lid home and checked to see that it was securely locked. Fumbling a bit with his keys, he dropped them and cleared his throat raspily as he bent to retrieve them in their worn leather case. When he finally looked at Lynley, it was to reveal a face upon which grief played subtly, the way it often does when an initial shock has been lived through and the immensity of a loss begins to be measured against the endlessness of time.
“Somehow,” Lynley said, “I should think a journalist would be the last to leave.”
At this, Vinney gave an abrupt, little laugh. It seemed self-directed, punitive, and unkind. “Hot after a story at the scene of the crime? Looking for a good ten inches of space on page one? Not to mention a byline and a knighthood for having solved the crime single-handedly? Is that how you see it, Inspector?”