Payment In Blood Part 15

"Until this weekend."

"Yes. Until this weekend. That's the kind of friends we were."

"Is it your habit to travel with your parents on a theatrical outing such as this?"

"Not at all. But I'm fond of my aunt. It was a chance to see her. So I came." An unpleasant smile played round Elizabeth's mouth, quivered at her nostrils, and disappeared. "Of course, there was also Mummy's plan for my l.u.s.ty liaison with Jeremy Vinney. And I couldn't disappoint her when she was depending so much upon this being the weekend that my rose was finally plucked, if that's not too much of a metaphor for you."

Lynley ignored the implication. "Vinney's known your family long," he concluded.

"Long? He's known Daddy forever, on both sides of the footlights. Years ago in the regionals, he fancied himself the next Olivier, but Daddy set him straight. So Vinney moved on to drama criticism, where he's been ever since, happily getting his jollies by trashing as many productions in a year as he can. But this new play...well, it was something close to my father's heart. The Agincourt re-opening and all. So I suppose my parents wanted me to be here to ensure good reviews. You know what I mean, just in case Vinney decided to respond to a...shall we say, less than delectable bribe?" She swept a hand rudely down the length of her body. "Myself in exchange for a favourable commentary in The Times. It would meet the needs of both my parents, don't you see? My mother's desire to have me properly serviced at last. My father's desire to take London in triumph."

She had deliberately returned to her prior theme in spite of Lynley's offer to turn the tide of conversation. Cooperatively, he took up her thought.

"Is that why you went to Jeremy Vinney's room the night Joy died?"

Elizabeth's head shot up at that. "Of course not! Smarmy little man with fingers like hairy sausages." She stabbed her fork at her plate. "As far as I was concerned, Joy could have the little beast. I think he's pathetic, rubbing up to theatre people in the hope that hanging about might give him the talent he lacked to make it on the stage years ago. Pathetic!" The sudden burst of pa.s.sion seemed to disconcert her. As if to negate it, she shifted her eyes and said, "Well, perhaps that's why Mummy considered him such a suitable candidate for me. Two little blobs of pathos, drifting into the sunset together. G.o.d, what a romantic thought."

"But you went to his room-"

"I was looking for Joy. Because of Aunt Francie and her b.l.o.o.d.y pearls. Although now I think about it, Mummy and Aunt Francie probably had the entire scene planned out in advance. Joy would rush off to her room, salivating over her new acquisition, leaving me alone with Vinney. No doubt Mummy had already been in his room with flower petals and holy water, and all that was left was the act itself. What a pity. All that effort she went to, only to have it wasted on Joy."

"You seem fairly certain about what was going on between them in Vinney's room. I do wonder about that. Did you see Joy? Are you certain she was with him? Are you sure it wasn't somebody else?"

"I..." Elizabeth stopped. She toyed jerkily with knife and fork. "Of course it was Joy. I heard them, didn't I?"

"But you didn't see her?"

"I heard her voice!"

"Whispering? Murmuring? It was late. She'd have kept it low, wouldn't she?"

"It was Joy! Who else could it have been? And what else would be going on between them after midnight, Inspector? Poetry readings? Believe me, if Joy went to a man's room, it was with only one thing on her mind. I know it."

"She did that with Alec when she visited at your home?"

Elizabeth's mouth shut, tightened. She went back to her plate.

"Tell me what you did when you left the read-through the other night," Lynley said.

She moved the sliced sausage into a neat little triangle. Then with the knife, she began cutting the circular pieces in half. Each slice was sparely made and carried out with acute concentration. It was a moment before she replied. "I went to my aunt. She was upset. I wanted to help."

"You're fond of her."

"You seem surprised, Inspector. As if it's a miracle of sorts that I could be fond of anything. Is that right?" In the face of his refusal to rise to her taunting, she put down knife and fork, pushed her chair fully back, and regarded him straightforwardly. "I took Aunt Francie to her room. I put a compress on her head. We talked."

"About?"

Elizabeth smiled one last time, but it was, inexplicably, a reaction that seemed to mix both amus.e.m.e.nt and the knowledge of having bested an opponent. "The Wind in the Willows, if you really must know," she said. "You're familiar with the story, aren't you? The toad. The badger. The rat. And the mole." She stood, reached for her cape, and swung it round her shoulders. "Now if there's nothing more, Inspector, I've things to see to this morning."

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 fingered 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.

"G.o.d 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. G.o.d, 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. G.o.d 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 G.o.d-"

"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 filthy laugh! All I needed to do was open the door to find 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 hoa.r.s.ely, 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 s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g 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 G.o.d, 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. G.o.d 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. G.o.d, G.o.d! 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 m.u.f.fled 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 s.p.a.ce 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?"

Lynley answered the question by asking one. "Why were you actually here this weekend, Mr. Vinney? Every other presence can be accounted for in one way or another. But you remain a bit of a mystery. Can you shed some light on it for me?"

"Didn't you get a good enough picture from our attractive Elizabeth last evening? I was wild to get Joy in bed. Or better yet, I was picking her brains for material to bolster my career. Choose either one."

"Frankly, I'd prefer the reality."

Vinney swallowed. He seemed discomfited, as if he expected something other than equanimity from the police. Bellicose insistence upon the truth, perhaps, or a finger stabbed provocatively into his chest. "She was my friend, Inspector. Probably my best friend. Sometimes I think my only friend. And now she's gone." His eyes looked burnt out as he turned them towards the untroubled surface of the loch in the distance. "But people don't understand that kind of friendship between a man and a woman, do they? They want to make something of it. They want to cheapen it up."

Lynley was not untouched by the man's distress. He noticed, however, that Vinney had sidestepped his question. "Was Joy the one who actually arranged for you to be here? I know you did the phoning to Stinhurst, but did she smooth the way? Was it her idea?" When Vinney nodded, he asked, "Why?"

"She said she was worried about how Stinhurst and the actors would receive the revisions she'd made to the play. She wanted a friend along, she said, for moral support should things not go her way. I'd been following the Agincourt renovation for months. It seemed reasonable that I might ask to be included in the setting-up of the play for its opening. So I came. To support her, as she asked. But I didn't support her at all in the end, did I? She may as well have been here alone."

"I saw your name in her engagement book."

"I shouldn't be surprised. We met for lunch regularly. We've done so for years."

"At these meetings, did she tell you anything about this weekend? What it would be like? What to expect?"

"Just that it was a read-through and that I might find it an interesting story."

"The play itself?"

Vinney didn't answer at first. His vision appeared fixed on nothing. When he replied, however, his voice sounded thoughtful, as if he'd been struck by an idea unconsidered before. "Joy said she wanted me to think about writing an early article on the play. It would be a piece about the stars, the plot, perhaps the format she was using. Coming here would give me an idea about how the play would be staged. But I...I could easily have got that information in London, couldn't I? We see... saw...each other often enough. So could she... could she have been worried that something like this might happen to her, Inspector? Good G.o.d, could she have hoped I'd see to it that the truth were told?"

Lynley commented upon neither the man's apparent belief in the inability of the police to ferret out the truth nor the egotistical likelihood of a single journalist's being able to do it for them. Nonetheless, he catalogued the fact that Vinney's remark was astonishingly close to Lord Stinhurst's own a.s.sessment of the columnist's presence.

"Are you saying she was concerned about her safety?"

"She didn't say that," Vinney admitted honestly. "And she didn't act concerned."

"Why was she in your room the other night?"

"She said she was too keyed up to sleep. She'd had it out with Stinhurst and went to her room. But she felt restless, so she came to mine. To talk."

"What time was this?"

"A bit after midnight. Perhaps a quarter past."

"What did she talk about?"

"The play at first. How she was bound and determined to see to it that it was produced, with or without Stinhurst. And then about Alec Rintoul. And Robert Gabriel. And Irene. She felt rotten about everything that had happened to Irene, you know. She...she was desperate for her sister to get back with Gabriel. That's why she wanted Irene in the play. She thought if the two of them were thrown together enough, nature would take its course.

She said she wanted Irene's forgiveness and knew she couldn't have it. But more than that, I think she wanted to forgive herself. And she couldn't do that as long as Gabriel and her sister were apart."

It was a glib enough recital, seemingly straightforward. Yet Lynley's instincts told him there was more to be said about Joy's nocturnal visit to Vinney's room.

"You make her sound rather saintly."

Vinney shook his head in denial. "She wasn't a saint. But she was a decent friend."

"What time did Elizabeth Rintoul come to your room with the necklace?"

Vinney brushed the snow from the Morris' roof before answering. "Not long after Joy came in. I...Joy didn't want to talk to her. She expected it would be another row about the play. So I kept Elizabeth out. I only opened the door a crack; she couldn't see inside. So when I wouldn't invite her in, of course she a.s.sumed Joy was in my bed. That's fairly typical of her. Elizabeth can't conceive that members of the opposite s.e.x might just be friends. With her, a conversation with a man is an access route to some sort of s.e.xual encounter. It's rather sad, I think."

"When did Joy leave your room?"

"Shortly before one."

"Did anyone see her leave?"

"There was no one about. I don't think anyone saw her, unless Elizabeth was peering out her door somehow. Or maybe Gabriel. My room was between both of theirs."

"Did you see Joy to her room?"

"No. Why?"

"Then she might not have gone there at once. If, as you said, she thought she wouldn't be able to sleep."

"Where else would she go?" Understanding swept across his face. "To meet someone? No. She wasn't interested in any of these people."

"If, as you say, Joy Sinclair was merely your friend, how can you be certain that she didn't share something more than friendship with someone else? With one of the other men here this weekend. Or one of the women, perhaps."

At the second suggestion, Vinney's face clouded. He blinked and looked away. "There were no lies between us, Inspector. She knew everything. I knew everything. Surely she would have told me if..." He stopped, sighing, rubbing the back of his gloved hand wearily across his forehead. "May I be off? What else is there to say? Joy was my friend. And now she's dead." Vinney spoke as if there were a connection between the last two ideas.

Lynley couldn't help wondering if there was. Curious about the man and his relationship with Joy Sinclair, he chose another subject.

"What can you tell me about a man called John Darrow?"