Payment In Blood Part 4

"And after that?"

"Joy and Stinhurst went upstairs. Separately. But they both looked dreadful. As if neither had won the argument and both wished it had never come about. Jeremy Vinney tried to say something to Joy when she came out into the hall, but she wouldn't talk. She may have been crying as well. I couldn't tell."

"Where did you go from there, Helen?" Lynley was studying the ashtray, the cigarette b.u.t.ts that littered it and the ashes that dusted the tabletop in mourning, grey mixed with black.

"I heard someone in the drawing room and went in to see who it was."

"Why?"

Lady Helen considered lying, manufacturing an amusing description of herself governed by curiosity, prowling about the house like a youthful Miss Marple. She chose the truth instead.

"Actually, Tommy, I'd been looking for Rhys."

"Ah. Disappeared, had he?"

She bristled at Lynley's tone. "Everyone had disappeared." She saw that St. James had finished his perusal of the room. He took a seat in the armchair near the door and leaned back against it, listening. Lady Helen knew he would take no notes. But he would remember every word.

"Was Davies-Jones in the drawing room?"

"No. Lady Stinhurst-Marguerite Rintoul-was there. And Jeremy Vinney. Perhaps he'd caught the scent of a story that he wanted to write for his newspaper because he seemed to be trying to question her about what had happened. With no success. I spoke to her as well because...frankly, she seemed to be in some sort of stupor. She did talk to me briefly. And strangely enough, she said something very similar to what Francesca had said earlier to Lord Stinhurst in the sitting room. 'Stop her.' Or something like that."

"Her? Joy?"

"Or perhaps Elizabeth, her daughter. I'd just mentioned Elizabeth. I think I'd said, 'Shall I fetch Elizabeth for you?'"

As she spoke, feeling very much a potential suspect being interrogated by the police, Lady Helen became aware of other sounds in the house: the steady scratching of Sergeant Havers' pencil upon her notebook paper; doors being unlocked at the other end of the corridor; the voice of Macaskin directing a search; and below in the library, upon the opening and closing of the door, angry shouting. Two men. She couldn't identify them.

"What time did you come to your room last night, Helen?"

"It must have been half past twelve. I didn't notice."

"What did you do when you got here?"

"I got undressed, got ready for bed, read for a time."

"And then?"

Lady Helen made no immediate reply. She was watching Lynley's face, completely free to do so since he would not meet her eyes. His features in repose had always combined every cla.s.sical beauty possible in a man, but as he continued to ask his questions, Lady Helen saw those features begin to take on a grim impenetrability that she had never seen before and could not have guessed that he even possessed. Confronted with it, she felt entirely cut off from him for the very first time in their long and close friendship, and in a desire to put an end to this division, she reached a hand forward, not with the intention of touching him but in a miming of contact where contact apparently would not be allowed. When he did not respond with anything that could have been taken for acknowledgement, she felt compelled to speak honestly.

"You seem terribly angry, Tommy. Please. Tell me. What is it?"

Lynley's right fist clenched and unclenched in a movement so quick that it looked like a reflex. "When did you start smoking?"

At that, Lady Helen heard the abrupt cessation of Sergeant Havers' writing. She saw, past Lynley, St. James' movement in his chair. And she knew that, for some reason, her question had allowed Lynley to reach a decision, one that advanced him from police work into a new arena altogether, an arena not at all governed by the manuals, codes, and procedures that formed the rigid boundaries of his job.

"You know I don't smoke." She withdrew her hand.

"What did you hear last night?" Lynley asked. "Joy Sinclair was murdered between two and six in the morning."

"Nothing, I'm afraid. It was terribly windy, enough to rattle the windows. That must have drowned out any noise from her room. If there was any noise."

"And, of course, even if it hadn't been windy, you weren't alone, were you? You were...distracted, I should guess."

"You're right. I wasn't alone." She saw the muscles tighten at Lynley's mouth. Otherwise, he was motionless.

"What time did Davies-Jones come to your room?"

"At one."

"And he left?"

"Shortly after five."

"You saw a watch."

"He woke me. He was dressed. I asked the time. He told me."

"And between one and five, Helen?"

Lady Helen felt a quick surge of disbelief. "What is it exactly that you want to know?"

"I want to know what happened in this room between one and five. To use your own word: exactly." His voice was ice.

Past the wretchedness she felt at the question itself, at the brutal intrusion into her life and the implied a.s.sumption that she would be only too willing to answer it, Lady Helen saw Sergeant Havers' mouth drop open. She closed it quickly enough, however, when Lynley's frosty glance swept over her.

"Why are you asking me this?" Lady Helen asked Lynley.

"Would you like a solicitor to explain exactly what I can and cannot ask in a murder investigation? We can telephone for one if you think it's necessary."

This wasn't her friend, Lady Helen thought bleakly. This wasn't her laughing companion of more than a decade. This was a Tommy she didn't know, a man to whom she could give no rational response. In his presence, a tumult of emotions argued for precedence within her: anger, anguish, desolation. Lady Helen felt them attack like an onslaught, not one after another but all at once. They gripped her with punishing, unforgiving force, and when she was able to speak, her words struggled desperately for indifference.

"Rhys brought me cognac." She indicated the bottle on the table. "We talked."

"Did you drink?"

"No. I'd had some earlier. I wanted none."

"Did he have any?"

"No. He...isn't able to drink."

Lynley looked towards Havers. "Tell Macaskin's men to check the bottle."

Lady Helen read the thought behind the order. "It's sealed!"

"No. I'm afraid it isn't." Lynley took Havers' pencil and applied it to the foil at the top of the cognac. It came off effortlessly, as if it had once been removed and then reapplied to wear the guise of a closure.

Lady Helen felt ill. "What are you saying? That Rhys brought something with him this weekend to drug me? So that he could safely get away with murdering Joy Sinclair-my G.o.d, his own cousin-and have me as an alibi for his innocence? Is that what you think?"

"You said you talked, Helen. Am I to understand that, having refused his offer of a drink of whatever is in this bottle, you spent the remainder of the night in scintillating conversation together?"

His refusal to answer her question, his rigid adherence to the formality of police interrogation when it served his needs, his casual decision to fix blame upon a man and then bend the facts to fit it, outraged her. Carefully, deliberately, giving each separate syllable its own private position in the balance on which she measured the gravity of what he was doing to their friendship, she replied.

"No. Of course there's more, Tommy. He made love to me. We slept. And then, much later, I made love to him."

Whatever she had hoped for, Lynley showed absolutely no reaction to her words. Suddenly the smell of burnt tobacco from the ashtray was overwhelming. She wanted to fling it from sight. She wanted to fling it at him.

"That's all?" he asked. "He didn't leave you during the night? He didn't get out of bed?"

He was too d.a.m.nably quick for her. When she couldn't keep the answer off her face, he said, "Ah. Yes. He did get out of bed. What time please, Helen?"

She looked down at her hands. "I don't know."

"Had you been asleep?"

"Yes."

"What awakened you?"

"A noise. I think it was a match. He was smoking, standing by the table."

"Dressed?"

"No."

"Just smoking?"

She hesitated momentarily. "Yes. Smoking. Yes."

"But you noticed something more, didn't you?"

"No. It's just that..." He was dragging words from her. He was compelling her to say things that belonged unspoken.

"That what? You noticed something about him, something not quite right?"

"No. No." And then Lynley's eyes-shrewd, brown, insistent-held her own. "I went to him and his skin was damp."

"Damp? He'd bathed?"

"No. Salty. He was...his shoulders...perspiring. And it was so cold in here."

Lynley looked automatically to Joy Sinclair's room. Lady Helen continued.

"Don't you see, Tommy? It was the cognac. He wanted it. He was desperate. It's like an illness. It had nothing at all to do with Joy."

She might not have spoken, for Lynley was clearly following his own line of thought. "How many cigarettes did he have, Helen?"

"Five. Six. What you see here."

He was designing a pattern. Lady Helen could see it. If Rhys Davies-Jones had taken the time to smoke the six cigarettes that lay crushed in the ashtray, if she had not awakened until he was smoking the very last one, what else might he have done? Never mind the fact that she knew perfectly well how he had spent the time while she slept: fighting off legions of demons and ghouls that had drawn him to the bottle of cognac like a man with an unquenchable thirst. In Lynley's mind, he had used the time to unlock the door, murder his cousin, and return, his body broken out with the sweat of apprehension. Lady Helen read all of that in the stillness-like a void-that followed her sentence.

"He wanted a drink," she said simply. "But he can't drink. So he smoked. That's all."

"I see. May I a.s.sume he's an alcoholic?"

Her throat felt numb. It's only a word, Rhys would have said with his gentle smile. A word alone has no power, Helen. "Yes."

"So he got out of bed, and you never awakened. He smoked five or six cigarettes, and you never awakened."

"And you want to add that he unlocked the door to murder Joy Sinclair and I never awakened, don't you?"

"His prints are on the key, Helen."

"Yes, they are! I've no doubt of it! He locked the door before he took me to bed. Or are you going to say that was part of his plan? To make certain I saw him lock the door so I could explain away his fingerprints later? Is that how you have it worked out?"

"It's what you're doing, isn't it?"

She drew in a broken breath. "What a rotten thing to say!"

"You slept through his getting out of bed, you slept through his smoking one cigarette after another. Are you going to try to argue now that, in reality, you're a light sleeper, that you would have known had Davies-Jones left your room?"

"I would have known!"

Lynley looked over his shoulder. "St. James?" he asked evenly. And those two words took the entire affair out of the realm of control.

Lady Helen sprang to her feet. Her chair toppled over. Her hand came down brutally against Lynley's face. It was a blow of lightning swiftness, driven by the power of her rage.

"You filthy b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" she cried and headed for the door.

"Stay where you are," Lynley ordered.

She whirled and faced him. "Arrest me, Inspector." She left the room, slamming the door behind her.

St. James followed her at once.

4.

BARBARA HAVERS closed her notebook.

It was a studied movement, one that bought her time while she thought.

Across from her, Lynley felt in the breast pocket of his jacket. Although colour still splodged his face where Lady Helen had struck him, his hands were quite steady. He brought out his cigarette case and lighter, used them both and handed them over. Barbara did likewise although after inhaling once, she grimaced and crushed out the cigarette.