Payment In Blood Part 18

PORTHILL GREEN was a village that looked as if it had grown, like an unnatural protuberance, out of the peat-rich earth of the East Anglian Fens. Close to the centre of a rough triangle created by the Suffolk and Cambridgeshire towns of Brandon, Mildenhall, and Ely, the village was not a great deal more than the intersection of three narrow lanes that wound through fields of sugar beets, traversing chalky brown ca.n.a.ls by means of bridges barely the width of a single car. It sat in a landscape largely given over to the colours grey, brown, and green-from the cheerless winter sky, to the loamy fields dotted irregularly by patchy snow, to the vegetation that bordered the lanes in thick abundance.

The village possessed little to recommend itself. Nine buildings of knapped flint and four of plaster, carelessly half-timbered in a drunken pattern, lined the high street. Those that were places of business announced that fact with signs of chipped and sooty paint. A lone petrol station, with pumps that appeared to be fabricated largely from rust and gla.s.s, stood sentry on the outskirts of the village. And at the end of the high street, marked by a weather-smoothed Celtic cross, lay a circle of dirty snow under which no doubt grew the gra.s.s for which the village was named.

Lynley parked here, for the green lay directly across from Wine's the Plough, a building no different from any of the other sagging structures on the street. He examined it while next to him Sergeant Havers b.u.t.toned her coat beneath her chin and gathered her notebook and shoulder bag.

Lynley could see that, originally, the pub had simply been called The Plough, and that on either side of its name had been fixed the words Wines and Liquors. The latter had fallen off sometime in the past, however, leaving merely a dark patch on the wall where the word had once been, the shape of its letters still legible. Rather than replace Liquors, or even repaint the building for that matter, to the first word had been added an apostrophe by means of a tin mug nailed into the plaster. Thus the building was renamed, no doubt to someone's amus.e.m.e.nt.

"It's the same village, Sergeant," Lynley said after a cursory examination through the windscreen. Aside from a liver-coloured mongrel sniffing along an ill-formed hedge, the place might have been abandoned.

"Same as what, sir?"

"As that drawing posted in Joy Sinclair's study. The petrol station, the greengrocers. There's the cottage set back behind the church as well. She'd been here long enough to become familiar with the place. I've no doubt someone will remember her. You take care of the high while I have a word with John Darrow."

Havers reached for the door handle with a sigh of resignation. "Always the footwork," she groused.

"Good exercise to clear your head after last night."

She looked at him blankly. "Last night?"

"Dinner, film? The chap from the supermarket?"

"Oh, that," Havers said, fidgeting in her seat. "Believe me, it was very forgettable, sir." She got out of the car, letting in a gust of air that commingled the faint odours of the sea, dead fish, and rotting debris, and strode over to the first building, disappearing behind its weathered black door.

By pub hours it was early yet, the drive from London having taken them less than two hours, so Lynley was not surprised to find the door locked when he tried to enter Wine's the Plough across the street. He stepped back from the building and looked above to what seemed to be a flat, but his observation gained him nothing. Limp curtains served as a barrier against prying eyes. No one was about at all, and there was no automobile or motorbike to indicate that the building was currently under anyone's ownership. Nonetheless, when Lynley peered through the grimy windows of the pub itself, a missing slat in one of the shutters revealed a light shining in a far doorway that appeared to lead to the building's cellar stairs.

He returned to the door and knocked upon it soundly. Within moments, he heard heavy footsteps. They trudged to the door.

"Not opened," a man's gravelly voice said behind it.

"Mr. Darrow?"

"Aye."

"Would you open the door please?"

"Y'r business is?"

"Scotland Yard CID."

That got a reaction, although not much of one. The door was unbolted and held open a mere six or seven inches. "All's in order in here." Eyes the shape and size of hazel nuts, the colour of a brown gone bad with yellow, dropped to the identification that Lynley held.

"May I come in?"

Darrow didn't look up as he considered the request and the limited responses available to him. "Not about Teddy, is it?"

"Your son? No, it's nothing to do with him."

Apparently satisfied, the man held the door open wider, stepped back, and admitted Lynley into the pub. It was a humble establishment, in keeping with the village it served. Its sole decoration appeared to be a variety of unlit signs behind and above the Formica-topped bar, identifying the liquors sold on the premises. There was very little furniture: half a dozen small tables surrounded by stools and a bench running beneath the front windows. This was padded, but the cushion was sun-bleached from its original red to rusty pink, and dark stains patterned it. A stinging burnt smell tinctured the air, a combination of cigarette smoke, a dead fire in a blackened fireplace, and windows too long closed against the winter weather.

Darrow positioned himself behind the bar, perhaps with the intention of treating Lynley like a customer in spite of the hour and his police identification. For his part, Lynley followed suit in front of it although it meant standing and he would much rather have conducted this interview at one of the tables.

Darrow, he guessed, was in his mid-forties, a rough-looking man who projected a decided air of suppressed violence. He was built like a boxer, squat, with long, powerful limbs, a barrel chest, and incongruously small, well-shaped ears which lay flat against his skull. His clothes suited him. They suggested a man able to make the transition from publican to brawler in the time it would take to ball up a fist. He wore a wool shirt, with cuffs turned up to reveal hirsute arms, and a pair of loose-fitting trousers for ease of movement. Evaluating all this, Lynley doubted that any fi st fights broke out in Wine's the Plough unless Darrow himself provoked them.

He had in his pocket the jacket of Death in Darkness, which he had taken from Joy Sinclair's study. Removing it, he folded it so that the author's smiling photograph was facing up. "Do you know this woman?" he asked.

Recognition flickered unmistakably in Darrow's eyes. "I know her. What of it?"

"She was murdered three nights ago."

"I was here three nights ago," Darrow replied. His tone was surly. "Sat.u.r.day's my busiest. Anyone in the village'll tell you as much."

It wasn't at all the reaction Lynley had been expecting. Perhaps surprise, perhaps confusion, perhaps reserve. But a reflex denial of culpability? That was unusual, to say the least.

"She's been here to see you," Lynley stated. "She telephoned this pub ten times in the last month."

"What of it?"

"I expect you to tell me that."

The publican seemed to be evaluating the even quality of Lynley's voice. He appeared disconcerted that his show of belligerent uncooperation produced virtually no reaction in the London detective. "I was having none of her," he said. "She wanted to write a flipping book."

"About Hannah?" Lynley asked.

The tightening of Darrow's jaw tensed every muscle in his face. "Aye. Hannah." He went to an upturned bottle of Bushmill's Black Label and pushed a gla.s.s against its spigot. He drained the whisky, not in a single gulp but in two or three slow swallows, all taken with his back to Lynley. "Have one?" he asked, drawing himself another.

"No."

The man nodded, drank again. "She came out of nowhere," he said. "Bringing a clutch of newspaper clippings about this and that book that she'd written, and going on about awards she'd received and...I don't know what else.

And she plain expected me to give her Hannah and be thankful for the attention. Well, I wouldn't. I wasn't having it. And I wasn't having my Teddy exposed to that kind of muck. It's bad enough with his mum doing herself in and providing the local ladies with gossip till he was ten years old. I wasn't about to have it start again. Raking it all up. Upsetting the lad."

"Hannah was your wife?"

"Aye. My wife."

"How did Joy Sinclair happen to know about her?"

"Claimed she'd been studying up on suicides for nine or ten months to find one she thought interesting, and she'd read of Hannah's. Caught her eye, she said." His voice was sour. "Can you credit that, man? Caught her eye. Han wasn't a person to her. She was a piece of meat. So I told her to f.u.c.k herself. In just those words."

"Ten telephone calls suggests that she was rather persistent."

Darrow snorted. "Made no difference. She was getting nowhere. Teddy was too young to know what had happened. So she couldn't talk to him. And she was getting nothing from me."

"May I take it that without your cooperation, there could be no book?"

"Aye. No book. Nothing. And that's the way it was going to stay."

"When she came to see you, was she alone?"

"Aye."

"Never anyone with her? Perhaps someone waiting out in the car?"

Darrow's eyes narrowed suspiciously. They darted to the windows and back. "What d'you mean?"

It had seemed a straightforward question to Lynley. He wondered if Darrow was temporising. "Did she come with a companion?"

"She was always alone."

"Your wife killed herself in 1973, didn't she? Did Joy Sinclair ever give you any indication why a suicide that long ago was of interest to her?"

Darrow's face darkened. His lips curled with loathing. "She liked the chair, Inspector. She was good enough to tell me that. She liked the bleeding chair."

"The chair?"

"Right. Han lost a shoe when she kicked over the chair. And the woman fancied that. She called it...poignant." He turned back to the Bushmill's. "Begging your pardon if I don't particularly care that someone murdered the b.i.t.c.h."

ST. JAMES and his wife were both working at their respective interests on the top floor of their house, St. James in his forensic laboratory and Deborah in her developing room that adjoined it. The door between the two was open, and looking up from the report that he was compiling for the defence team in an upcoming trial, St. James engaged in a moment of simple pleasure, watching his wife. She was frowning over a collection of her photographs, a pencil stuck behind one ear and a ma.s.s of curly hair drawn back from her face with a set of combs.The light above glittered against her head like a halo. Much of the rest of her was in shadow.

"Hopeless. Pathetic," she murmured, scribbling on the back of one picture and tossing another into a rubbish box at her feet. "Blasted light...G.o.d in heaven, Deborah, where did you learn the basic elements of composition!... Oh Lord, this is even worse!"

St. James laughed at that. Deborah looked up. "Sorry," she said. "Am I distracting you?"

"You always distract me, my love. Far too much, I'm afraid. And especially when I've been away from you for twenty-four hours or more."

A faint colour rose in her cheeks. "Well, after a year, I'm glad to hear there's a bit of romance left between us. I...silly though, isn't it? Were you really only gone one night to Scotland? I missed you, Simon. I find that I don't care for going to bed without you any longer." Her blush deepened when St. James got down from his tall stool and crossed the lab to join her in the semi-darkness of the developing room. "No, my love...I really didn't mean...Simon, we'll get no work done like this," she said in insincere protest when he took her into his arms.

St. James laughed quietly, said, "Well, we'll get other things done, won't we?" and kissed her. A long moment later, he murmured appreciatively against her mouth, "Lord. Yes. Far more important things, I think."

They parted guiltily at the sound of Cotter's voice. He was pounding up the stairway, talking several volumes louder than he usually did.

"Just up 'ere, they both are," he boomed. "Workin' in the lab, I should guess. Deb's got 'er snaps out and Mr. St. James is doin' a report o' some sort. 'Tis just up above. Not a bit of a climb. We'll be there in a tick."

This last p.r.o.nouncement was made louder than all the others. Deborah laughed when she heard it. "I never know whether to be appalled or amused by my father," she whispered. "How can he possibly be wise to what we're up to all the time?"

"He sees the way I look at you, and that's evidence enough. Believe me, your father knows exactly what I have on my mind." St. James dutifully returned to his lab and was writing away upon his report when Cotter appeared at the door with Jeremy Vinney behind him.

"'Ere you are," Cotter said expansively. "Bit of a climb that, isn't it?" He cast a look here and there as if to make certain he hadn't caught his daughter and her husband in flagrante delicto.

Vinney betrayed no surprise at the stentorian manner in which Cotter had heralded his arrival. Rather he came forward, a manila folder in one hand. His portly face bore the signs and shadows of fatigue, and on his jaw-line ran a thin line of whiskers that he'd missed in shaving. He had not as yet bothered to take off his overcoat.

"I think I have what you need," he said to St. James as Cotter directed an affectionate scowl at his daughter's impish smile before departing. "Perhaps a bit more. The fellow who covered Geoffrey Rintoul's inquest in sixty-three is one of our senior editors now, so we rooted through his files this morning and came up with three photographs and a set of old notes. They're hardly legible since they were done in pencil, but we might be able to make something out of them." He gave St. James a look that endeavoured to read beneath the surface. "Did Stinhurst kill Joy? Is that where you're heading?"

The question was a logical conclusion to everything that had gone before, and not an unreasonable one for the journalist to ask. But St. James was not unaware of what it implied. Vinney played a triple role in the drama that had occurred at Westerbrae, as newsman, friend of deceased, and suspect. It was to his advantage to have that last ent.i.tlement removed entirely in the eyes of the police, to see that suspicion pa.s.sed on to someone else. And after a show of fine, journalistic cooperation, what better person to see that it was done than St. James himself, known to be Lynley's friend? He answered Vinney cautiously.

"There's merely a small oddity about Geoffrey Rintoul's death that has us intrigued."

If the journalist was disappointed with the obliquity of the reply, he was careful not to show it. "Yes. I see." He shrugged out of his overcoat and accepted the introduction to St. James' wife. Placing the manila folder onto the lab table, he drew out its contents, a sheaf of papers and three tattered pictures. When he spoke again, it was with professional formality. "The inquest notes are quite complete. Our man was hoping for a feature on it, considering Geoffrey Rintoul's distinguished past, so he was careful about the details. I think you can rely on his accuracy."

The notes were written on yellow paper which did not make the faded pencil any easier to read. "It says something about an argument," St. James remarked, looking them over.

Vinney drew a lab stool over to the table. "The testimony of the family was fairly straightforward at the inquest. Old Lord Stinhurst-Francis Rintoul, the present earl's father-said there had been quite a row before Geoffrey took off that New Year's Eve."

"A row? About what?" St. James scanned for the details as Vinney supplied them.

"Apparently a semi-drunken spat that started delving into the family history."

That was very close to what Lynley had reported of his conversation with the current earl. But it was hard for St. James to believe that old Lord Stinhurst would have discussed his two sons' love triangle before a coroner's jury. Family loyalty would have precluded that. "Did he give any specifics?"

"Yes." Vinney pointed to a section midway down the page. "Apparently Geoffrey was hot to get back to London and decided to take off that night in spite of the storm. His father testified that he didn't want him to go. Because of the weather. Because he hadn't seen much of Geoffrey for the past six months and wanted to keep him there while he could. Evidently, their recent relationship hadn't been smooth, and the old earl saw this New Year's gathering as a way to heal the breach between them."

"What sort of breach?"

"I gathered that the earl had taken Geoffrey under considerable fire for not marrying. I suppose he wanted Geoffrey to feel duty bound to sh.o.r.e up the ancestral house. At any rate, that was what was at the heart of the trouble in their relationship." Vinney studied the notes before he went on delicately, as if he had come to understand how important a show of impartiality might be when discussing the Rintoul family. "I do get the impression that the old man was used to having things his way. So when Geoffrey decided to return to London, his father lost his temper and the argument grew from there."

"Is there any indication why Geoffrey wanted to return to London? A woman friend that his father wouldn't have approved of? Or perhaps a relationship with a man that he wanted to keep under wraps?"

There was an odd, unaccountable hesitation, as if Vinney were trying to read St. James' words for an additional meaning. He cleared his throat. "There's nothing to indicate that. No one ever came forward to claim an illicit relationship with him. And consider the tabloids. If someone had been involved with Geoffrey Rintoul on the side, he or she would probably have come forward and sold the story for a good deal of money once he was dead. G.o.d knows that's the way things were happening in the early sixties, with call girls servicing what seemed like half the top ministers in the government. You remember Christine Keeler's tales about John Profumo. That set the Tories reeling. So it does seem that if someone Geoffrey Rintoul was involved with needed the money, he or she would merely have followed in Keeler's footsteps."

St. James responded pensively. "There is something in what you're saying, isn't there? Perhaps more than we realise. John Profumo was state secretary for war. Geoffrey Rintoul worked for the Ministry of Defence. Rintoul's death and inquest were in January, the very same month that John Profumo's s.e.xual relationship with Keeler was brewing in the press. Is there some sort of connection between these people and Geoffrey Rintoul that we're failing to see?"

Vinney seemed to warm to the plural p.r.o.noun. "I wanted to think so. But if any call girl had been involved with Rintoul, why would she have held her tongue when the tabloids were willing to pay a fortune for a juicy story about someone in government?"

"Perhaps it wasn't a call girl at all. Perhaps Rintoul was involved with someone who didn't need the money and certainly wouldn't have benefitted from the disclosure."

"A married woman?"

Once again they were back to Lord Stinhurst's original story about his brother and his wife. St. James pushed past it. "And the testimony of the others?"

"They all supported the old earl's story of the argument, Geoffrey going off in a rage, and the accident on the switchback. There was something rather odd, however. The body was badly burned, so they had to send to London for X rays and dental charts to use in the formal identification. Geoffrey's physician, a man called Sir Andrew Higgins, brought them personally. He did the examination along with Strathclyde's pathologist."

"Unusual but not out of the range of belief."

"That's not it." Vinney shook his head. "Sir Andrew was a longtime school friend of Geoffrey's father. They'd been at Harrow and Cambridge together. They were in the same London club. He died in 1970."

St. James supplied his own conclusion to this new revelation. Sir Andrew may have hidden what needed to be hidden. He may have brought forth only what needed to be brought forth. Yet, all the disjointed pieces of information considered, the time period-January 1963-struck St. James as the most relevant item. He couldn't have said why. He reached for the photographs.

The first was of a group of black-garbed people about to climb into a row of parked limousines. St. James recognised most of them. Francesca Gerrard clinging to the arm of a middle-aged man, presumably her husband Phillip; Stuart and Marguerite Rintoul bending over to speak to two bewildered children, obviously Elizabeth and her older brother Alec; several people forming a conversational circle on the steps of the building in the background, their faces blurry. The second picture was of the accident site with its scar of burnt land. Standing next to it was a roughly dressed farmer, a border collie at his side. Hugh Kilbride, Gowan's father, St. James speculated, the first on the scene. The last picture was of a group leaving a building, most likely the site of the inquest itself. Once again, St. James recognised the people he had met at Westerbrae. But this photograph contained several unfamiliar faces.

"Who are these people? Do you know?"

Vinney pointed as he spoke. "Sir Andrew Higgins is directly behind the old Earl of Stinhurst. Next to him is the family solicitor. You know the others, I presume."

"Save this man," St. James said. "Who is he?" The man in question was behind and to the right of the old Earl of Stinhurst, his head turned in conversation to Stuart Rintoul, who listened, frowning, one hand pulling at his chin.

"Not a clue," Vinney said. "The chap who took the notes for the story might know, but I didn't think to ask him. Shall I take them back and have a go?"

St. James thought about it. "Perhaps," he said slowly, and then turned to the darkroom. "Deborah, will you have a look at these please?" His wife joined them at the table, gazing over St. James' shoulder at the photographs. After giving her a moment to evaluate them, St. James said, "Can you do a set of enlargements from this last one? Individual pictures of each person, mostly each face?"