Deborah St. James braked the car to a halt on a breath of laughter and turned to her husband. “Simon, have you never been told you’re quite the world’s worst navigator?”
He smiled and closed the road atlas. “Never once. But have a heart. Consider the fog.”
She looked out the windscreen at the large, dark building that loomed in front of them. “Poor excuse for not being able to read a road map, if you ask me. Are we at the right place? It doesn’t look as if a soul’s waited up for us.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised. I told them we’d arrive at nine and now it’s…” he peered at his watch in the weak interior light of the car, “good God, it’s half past eleven.” She heard the laughter in his voice. “Are you for it, my love? Shall we spend our wedding night in the car?”
“Teenagers grappling hotly in the backseat, do you mean?” She tossed her long hair back with a shake of her head. “Hmm, it is a thought. But I’m afraid in that case you should have hired something larger than an Escort. No, Simon, there’s nothing for it, I’m afraid, but banging on the doors and rousing someone. But you shall make all our excuses.” She stepped out into the chilly night air, taking a moment to study the building before her.
It was a pre-Elizabethan structure by initial design, but one which had undergone a number of Jacobean changes that added to its air of rakish whimsicality. Mullioned windows winked in the moonlight that fi ltered through the wispy fog which had settled on the moors and was now drifting down into the dales. Walls were covered with Virginia creeper, its leaves burning the old stone to rich russet. Chimneys germinated upon the roof in a helter-skelter pattern of capricious warts against the night sky. There was a contumacy about the building that denied the very existence of the twentieth century, and this quality spread to the grounds that surrounded it.
Here enormous English oaks stretched out their branches over lawns where statuary, encircled by flowers, interrupted the fl ow of the land. Pathways meandered into the woods beyond the house with a beckoning, siren charm. In the absolute stillness, the play of water from a fountain nearby and the cry of a lamb from a distant farm were the only auditory concomitants to the whisper of the breeze that soughed through the night. They might have been Richard and Anne, home to Middleham at last.
Deborah turned back to the car. Her husband had opened his door and was watching her, waiting in his usual patient fashion for her photographer’s reaction to the beauty of the place. “It’s wonderful,” she said. “Thank you, my love.”
He lifted his braced left leg from the car, dropped it with a thump onto the drive, and extended his hand. With a practised movement, Deborah helped him to his feet. “I feel as if we’ve been going round in circles for hours,” St. James remarked, stretching.
“That’s because we have,” she teased. “‘Just two hours from the station, Deborah. A wonderful drive.’”
He laughed softly. “Well, it was, love. Admit it.”
“Absolutely. The third time I saw Rievaulx Abbey, I was positively enchanted.” She glanced at the forbidding oak door before them. “Shall we try it then?”
They crunched across the gravel drive to the dark recess into which the door was set. A pitted wooden bench was tipped drunkenly against the wall next to it, and two enormous urns stood on either side. With the perversity of plants, one urn held a burgeoning beauty of flowers while the other was home to a withering colony of geraniums whose dried leaves fluttered raspingly to the ground as Deborah and her husband passed.
St. James applied some considerable strength to the large brass fixture that hung in the centre of the door. Silence greeted its fading echoes. “There’s a bell as well,” Deborah noticed. “Have a go with that.”
The ringing far back in the deepest reaches of the house immediately roused what sounded like an entire pack of hounds into furious howling. “Well, that’s certainly done it,” St. James laughed.
“Dammit, Casper! Jason! S’only the bell, you devils!” Pitched very much like a man’s but with the unmistakable cadence of a country woman born and bred, a raucous voice shouted brisk reprovals behind the door.
“Down with you! Out! Get back t’the kitchen.” A pause, followed by some desperate scuffling. “No, blast you! Out in the back! Why, you blackguard fiends! Give me my slips! Damn your eyes!” With that, a bolt shrieked back from the inside of the door, which was pulled briskly open. A barefooted woman hopped back and forth on the icy stones of the entry, her frizzy grey hair flying about her shoulders in bursts of electricity. “Mr. Allcourt-St. James,” she said without preamble. “Come in with you both. Damn!” She removed the woollen shawl she had thrown about her shoulders and dropped it to the floor, where it immediately became a rug for her feet. She tugged the edges of a voluminous, crimson dressing gown more closely round her and, the moment the others entered, energetically slammed home the door. “There, that’s better, thank God.” She laughed, a bellow both ungoverned and unrefined. “Pardon me, both. I’m generally not so awfully Emily Brontë. Did you get lost?”
“Extensively,” St. James admitted. “This is my wife, Deborah, Mrs. Burton-Thomas,” he added.
“You must be frozen solid,” their hostess noted. “Well, we’ll take care of that soon enough. Let’s get out of here and into the oak hall. I’ve a nice fire there. Danny!” she shouted over her left shoulder. Then, “Come, it’s just this way. Danny!”
They followed her through the old, stone-flagged room. White walled, dark beamed, it was bonechillingly cold, with recessed windows uncovered by curtains, a single black refectory table in the centre of the floor, and a large unlit fireplace sinking deep into the far wall. Above it hung an assortment of fi rearms and oddly peaked military helmets. Mrs. Burton Thomas nodded as St. James and Deborah gave their attention to these.
“Oh yes, Cromwell’s Roundheads were here,” she said. “They had a nice bite out of Keldale Hall for a stretch of ten months in the Civil War. Sixteen forty-four,” she added darkly, as if expecting them to commit to memory the year of infamy in the history of the Burton-Thomas clan. “But we rid ourselves of them just as soon as we could. Blackguard devils, the lot!”
She led them through the shadows of a darkened dining room and from there to a long, richly panelled chamber where scarlet curtains were drawn across embrasured windows and a coal fire roared in the grate. “Well, Lord, where’s she got herself to?” Mrs. Bur-ton-Thomas muttered and went to the door through which they’d just come. “Danny!” That brought a responding running of footsteps, and a tousle-haired girl of about nineteen appeared in the doorway.
“Sorry!” the newcomer laughed. “Got your slips, though.” She tossed these to the woman, who caught them deftly. “Chewed a bit here and there, I’m afraid.”
“Thanks, pet. Will you fetch some brandy for our guests? That dreadful Watson man finished off a good third of a decanter before he staggered off to bed tonight. It’s gone dry and there’s more in the cellar. Will you see to it?”
As the girl went to do so, Mrs. Burton-Thomas examined her slippers, frowning at a hole newly chewed in one heel. She muttered beneath her breath, put the slippers back on her feet, and replaced the shawl-which she had been using as a sort of earthbound fl ying carpet in their progress through the house- on her shoulders.
“Please do sit down. Didn’t want to light the fire in your room till you arrived, so we’ll have a bit of a chat whilst it heats up. Bloody cold for October, isn’t it? Early winter, they say.”
The cellar was obviously closer than the word itself implied, for within moments young Danny returned with a fresh bottle of brandy. She opened and decanted it at a Hepplewhite table which stood under a portrait of some glowering, hawk-featured Burton-Thomas ancestor, then returned to them with a tray on which three brandy glasses and a decanter sparkled.
“Shall I see to the room, Auntie?” She asked.
“Please. Get Eddie for the luggage. And do apologise to that American couple if they’re wandering about wondering what all the uproar is, will you?” Mrs. Burton-Thomas poured three healthy drinks as the girl left the room once again. “Ah, but they came here for atmosphere, and by God, I can dish it up in spades!” She laughed uproariously and threw down her drink in a single gulp. “I cultivate colour,” Mrs. Burton-Thomas admitted gleefully, pouring herself another. “Give them a bit of the old eccentric and you’ll make every guidebook from Frommer to Ronay.”
The woman’s appearance served as complete verification of this last statement. She was a combination of stately home and gothic horror: imposingly tall, with a man’s broad shoulders, she moved with a loose-limbed indifference to the priceless furniture with which the room was filled. She had the hands of a labourer, the ankles of a dancer, and the face of an aging Valkyrie. Her eyes were blue, deep-sunken above cheekbones jutting across her face. She had a hook-shaped nose that with the passage of years had grown more pronounced, so that now, in the uncertain light of the room, it seemed to be casting a shadow upon her entire upper lip. She looked about sixty-five years old, but age to Mrs. Burton-Thomas was obviously a very relative matter.
“Well,” she was looking them over, “hungry at all?” You did miss dinner by about…” a glance cast towards the grandfather clock ticking sonorously against a far wall, “two hours.”
“Hungry, my love?” St. James asked Deborah. His eyes, Deborah saw, were alive with amusement.
“Ah…no, not a bit.” She turned to Mrs. Burton-Thomas. “You’ve others staying here then?”
“Just one American couple. You’ll see them at breakfast. You know the sort. Polyester and showy gold chains. God-awful diamond ring on the man’s little finger. Kept me howlingly entertained last night with a discourse on dentistry. Wanted me to have my teeth sealed, it seems. The very latest thing.” Mrs. Burton-Thomas shuddered and downed another drink. “Bit Egyptian-sounding. Something for posterity, you know. Or was it to prevent cavities?” She shrugged with grand indifference. “Haven’t the slightest. What is this fi xation Americans all have with their teeth, I ask you? All straight and shiny. Well, God! Crooked teeth give a face a bit of dash, I say.” She poked ineffectually at the fi re, sending a shower of sparks out onto the rug, then stomped on these with terrific energy. “Well, delighted you’re here, is all I can say. Not that Grandpapa isn’t still doing fl ip-fl ops in the grave at my opening the place up to the tourist trade. But it was that or the bleeding National Trust.” She winked at them over the rim of her glass. “And pardon me for saying so, but this sort of life is ever so roaringly more amusing.”
There was a clearing of the throat from the direction of the doorway, where a boy stood awkwardly in plaid flannel pyjamas, an antique smoking jacket several sizes too large belted clumsily round his slender waist. It gave his appearance an anachronistic panache. He carried a pair of crutches in his hands.
“What is it, Eddie?” Mrs. Burton-Thomas asked impatiently. “You’ve done the luggage, haven’t you?”
“These’re in the boot, Auntie,” he responded. “Shall I do ’em as well?”
“Of course, you ninny!” He turned and scurried from her sight. She shook her head darkly. “I’m a martyr to my family. An absolute religious martyr. Well, come now, little ones, let me show you to your room. You must be dropping with fatigue. No, no, bring the brandy with you.”
They followed her back through the dining room to the stone hall and from there through another doorway that took them to the stairway. Polished, uncarpeted oak stairs led to the upper regions of the house, swathed in deep shadows. “Baronial stairway,” Mrs. BurtonThomas informed them, slapping her hand on its thick wood railing. “Don’t even make these dandies anymore. Come, it’s just this way.”
In the upper hall she led them down a dimly lit corridor in which ancestral portraits battled with three Flemish tapestries. Mrs. Burton-Thomas nodded moodily towards the latter. “Simply must move them. God knows they’ve been hanging there since 1822, but no one could ever convince Great-grandmama that these things look better from a bit of a distance. Tradition. You understand. I battle it everywhere. Here we are, little ones.” She threw open a door. “I shall leave you here. All the mod cons. But you’ll find them, no doubt.” With that she was gone, dressing gown fl apping round her ankles, slippers slapping comfortingly upon the fl oor.
A tumble of coals upon the hearth welcomed them into the bedroom. It was, Deborah thought as she entered, the most beautiful room she had ever seen. Oak panelled, with the beguiling faces of two Gainsborough women smiling down from either end, it embraced them with centuries’ old welcome and grace. Small table lamps with rose shades put forth a diffused radiance that burnished the mahogany of the enormous four-poster. A looming wardrobe cast an elongated shadow against one wall, and a dressing table held an array of crystal atomisers and silver-backed brushes. At one of the windows stood a cabriole-legged table on which an arrangement of lilies had been placed. Deborah walked to this and touched her fingers to the fluted edge of one ivory fl ower.
“There’s a card,” she said, pulled it off and read it. Her eyes filled with tears. She turned to her husband. He had gone to the hearth and lowered himself into an overstuffed chair that sat to one side of it. He was watching her as he so often did, with that familiar reserve, the only communication coming from his eyes. “Thank you, Simon,” she whispered. She tucked the card back into the flowers, swallowed an emotion she couldn’t define, and forced herself to speak lightly. “How did you ever fi nd this place?”
“Do you like it?” he asked in answer.
“You couldn’t possibly have chosen anything more wonderful. And you know it, don’t you?”
He didn’t reply. A knock at the door, and he looked at her, a smile dancing round the corners of his mouth, his expression plainly saying: What’s next? “Come in,” he called.
It was the girl, Danny, a pile of blankets in her arms. “Sorry. Forgot these. There’s an eiderdown already, but Auntie thinks the world’s as cold as herself.” She walked into the room with an air of friendly proprietorship. “Eddie get your things in?” she asked, opening the wardrobe and plopping the blankets unceremoniously inside. “He’s just a bit thick, you know. Got to excuse him.” She studied herself in the wavy mirror on the inside of the wardrobe door, fingered a few wandering hairs just a bit more out of place than they’d been before, and caught them watching her. “Now you’d best beware of the baby’s cry,” she pronounced solemnly. It was as if she’d spoken exactly on cue. The hounds would surely howl next.
“The baby’s cry? Have the Americans a child with them?” Deborah asked.
Danny’s dark eyes widened. She looked from woman to man. “You don’t know? Has no one ever told you?”
Deborah saw from the girl’s behaviour that they were soon to be enlightened, for Danny wiped her hands prefatorily down the sides of her dress, glanced from one end of the room to the other for unwanted listeners, and walked to the window. In spite of the cold, she unfastened the latch and swung it open. “Has no one told you about that?” she asked dramatically, gesturing out into the night.
There was nothing for it but to see what “that” was. Deborah and St. James joined Danny at the window, where, in the distance, the skeletal walls of a ruined building rose through the fog.
“Keldale Abbey,” Danny intoned and settled right in next to the fire for a confi dential chat. “That’s where the cry of the baby comes from, not from here.”
St. James pulled the window closed, drew across the heavy curtains, and led Deborah back to the fire. She curled up on the fl oor next to his chair, warming herself, allowing the fire to tingle against her skin.
“A ghost baby, I take it?” she said to Danny.
“An absolute one that I heard myself. You’ll hear it as well. Wait and see.”
“Ghosts always have legends attached,” St. James noted.
Glad you asked, Danny’s posture replied as she wriggled back into her chair. “As does this,” she said solemnly. “Keldale was Royalist, you know, during the war.” She spoke as though the late seventeenth century were only a week removed. “Loyal t’ the last man of ’em t’ the King. The village of Keldale, down the road a mile. You’ve seen it?”
St. James chuckled. “We should have, but I’m afraid we came in from a…different direction.”
“The scenic route,” Deborah added.
Danny chose to ignore the diversion. “Well,” she went on, “was towards the end of t’ war. And old blackguard devil Cromwell”-obviously Danny had learned her history at her auntie’s knee-“got word that the Lords o’ the North were planning an uprising. So he swept through the dales one last, grand time, taking manor houses, ruining castles, destroying Royalist villages. Keldale’s well hidden.”
“So we discovered,” St. James put in.
The girl nodded earnestly. “But days in advance the village got word that the murd’rous Roundheads was coming. ’Twasn’t the village that old Cromwell wanted, but the villagers themselves, all o’ them that was loyal t’ King Charlie.”
“To kill them, of course,” Deborah prompted as the girl paused in her story to catch her breath.
“T’ kill every last one!” she declared. “When word came that Cromwell was looking for the Kel, the village got a plan together. They’d move every stick, every stitch, every soul t’ the grounds o’ the abbey. So when the Round-heads arrived there’d be Keldale, all right, but not a soul in her.”
“Rather an ambitious plan,” St. James remarked.
“An’ it worked!” Danny replied proudly. Her pretty eyes danced above rosy cheeks, but she lowered her voice. “’Cept for the baby!” She inched forward in her chair; obviously they had reached the climax of the tale. “The Roundheads arrived. ’Twas just as the villagers hoped. ’Twas deserted, and silent with a heavy fog. And throughout all the village, not a soul, not a stitch, not a living creature. And then”-Danny’s swift glance made certain her audience was with her-“a baby began t’ cry in the abbey where all the villagers were. Ah God!” She clutched her lovely bosom. “The terror! For they’d escaped Cromwell only t’ be betrayed by a babe! The mother hushed the baby by offering her breast. But ’twas no good. The wee baby cried and cried. They were desperate in terror that the dogs from the village would begin t’ howl with the noise and Cromwell would find them. So they hushed the poor child. An’ they smothered it!”
“Good heavens!” Deborah murmured. She edged closer to her husband’s chair. “Just the sort of story one longs to hear on a wedding night, isn’t it?”
“Ah, but you must know.” Danny’s expression was fervent. “For the sound of the babe is terrible luck ’less you know what t’ do.”
“Wear garlic?” St. James asked. “Sleep with a crucifix clutched in one’s hand?”
Deborah punched him lightly on the knee. “I want to know. I insist upon knowing. Shall I have my life blighted because I’ve married a cynic? Tell me what to do, Danny, should I hear the baby.”
Gravely, Danny nodded. “’Tis always a’ night when the baby cries from the abbey grounds. You must sleep on your right side, your husband on his left. An’ you must hold on t’ one another close till the wailing stops.”
“That’s interesting,” St. James acknowledged. “Sort of an animated amulet. May we hope that this baby cries often?”
“Not terrible often. But I…” She swallowed, and suddenly they saw that this was no amusing legend for lovestruck honeymooners, for to her the fear and the story were real. “But I heard i’ myself some three years back! ’Tis not something I’ll soon forget!” She got to her feet. “You’ll remember what t’ do? You’ll not forget?”
“We’ll not forget,” Deborah reassured the girl as she vanished from the room.
They were quiet at her departure. Deborah rested her head against St. James’s knee. His long, thin fingers moved gently through her hair, smoothing the curly mass back from her face. She looked up at him.
“I’m afraid, Simon. I didn’t think I would be, not once this last year, but I am.” She saw in his eyes that he understood. Of course he did. Had she ever truly doubted that he would?
“So am I,” he replied. “Every moment today I felt just a little bit mad with terror. I never wanted to lose myself, not to you, not to anyone in fact. But there it is. It happened.” He smiled. “You invaded my heart with a little Cromwellian force of your own that I couldn’t resist, Deborah, and I find now that rather than lose myself, the true terror is that I might somehow lose you.” He touched the pendant he’d given her that morning, nestling in the hollow of her throat. It was a small gold swan, so long between them a symbol of commitment: choosing once, choosing for life. His eyes moved from it back to her own. “Don’t be afraid,” he whispered gently.
“Make love to me then.”
“With great pleasure.”
Jimmy Havers had little pig’s eyes that darted round the room when he was nervous. He might feel as if he were putting on the bravura performance of a lifetime, lying his way grandly out of everything from an accusation of petty larceny to being caught in flagrante delicto, but the reality was that his eyes betrayed him every time, as they were doing now.
“Didn’t know if you’d be home in time to get your mum the Greece stuff, so Jim went out himself, girl.” It was his habit to speak of himself in the third person. It allowed him to evade responsibility for virtually any unpleasantness that cropped up in his life. Like this one now. No, I didn’t go to the turf accountant.
Didn’t pick up snuff, either. If it was done at all, was Jimmy that done it, not me.
Barbara watched her father’s eyes dance their way round the sitting room. God, what a grim little death pit it was: a ten-by-fi fteenfoot room whose windows were permanently sealed shut by years of filth and grime, crammed with that wonderful three-piece suite so essential to delicate living, but this one a creation that had billed itself as “artifi cial horsehair” thirty-five years ago when even real horsehair was a hideous concept of comfort. The walls were papered with a maddening design of interlocking rosebuds that simpered their way to the ceiling. Racing magazines overflowed from tables onto the floor and argued there with the fi fteen simulated leather albums that assiduously documented every inch, every mile of her mother’s breakdown. And through it all Tony smiled and smiled and smiled.
A corner of the room held his shrine. The last picture of him before his illness-a distorted, unfocused little boy kicking a football into a temporary goal net set up in a garden that had once leapt with fl owers-was enlarged to beyond life-size proportions. On either side, suitably framed in mock oak, hung every school report he had ever done, every note of praise from every teacher he’d had, and-God have mercy on us all-given pride of place, the certificate of his death. Beneath this, an arrangement of plastic flowers did obeisance, a rather dusty obeisance considering the state of the room itself.
The television blared, as it always did, from the opposite corner, placed there “so Tony can watch it as well.” His favourite shows still played regularly to him, frozen in time, as if nothing had happened, as if nothing had changed. While the windows and doors were closed and locked, chained and barred to hold out the truth of that August afternoon and the Uxbridge Road.
Barbara strode across the room and switched off the set.
“Hey, girl, Jim was watching that!” her father protested.
She faced him. My God, he was a pig. When was the last time he’d had a bath? She could smell him from here-the sweat; the body oils that collected in his hair, on his neck, behind the creases of his ears; the unwashed clothing.
“Mr. Patel told me you were by,” she said, sitting down on the horrible couch. It prickled against her skin.
The eyes flicked around. From the dead television to the plastic flowers to the obscene roses scaling the wall. “Jim went to Patel’s, sure.” He nodded.
He grinned at his daughter. His teeth were badly stained, and along the gumline Barbara saw the liquid building within his mouth. The coffee tin was by his chair, inexpertly hidden by a racing form. She knew he wanted her to look away for a moment so that he’d have time to do his business without getting caught. She refused to play along.
“Spit it out, Dad,” she said patiently. “There’s no use swallowing it and making yourself sick, is there?” Barbara watched her father’s body sag in relief as he reached for the tin and spat the snuff-induced brown slime from his mouth.
He wiped himself off with a stained handkerchief, coughed into it heavily, and adjusted the tubes that fed the oxygen into his nose. Mournfully, he looked at his daughter for tenderness and found none. So his eyes quickly shifted and began their slither round the room.
Barbara watched him thoughtfully. Why wouldn’t he die? she wondered. He’d spent the last ten years decaying by degrees; why not one big jump into black oblivion? He’d like that. No more gasping for breath, no more emphysema. No more need for snuff to soothe his addiction. Just emptiness, nothingness, nothing at all.
“You’ll get cancer, Dad,” she said. “You know that, don’t you?”
“’Ey, Jim’s okay, Barb. Don’t you worry, girl.”
“Can’t you think of Mum? What would happen if you had to go into hospital again?” Like Tony. It hung unspoken in the air. “Shall I speak to Mr. Patel? I don’t want to have to do that, but I shall, you know, if you persist in this business with snuff.”
“Patel gave Jim the idea in the fi rst place,” her father protested. His voice was a whine. “After you told him to cut off Jim’s fags.”
“You know I did that for your own good. You can’t smoke round an oxygen tank. The doctors told you that.”
“But Patel said snuff was okay for Jim.”
“Mr. Patel is not a doctor. Now, give me the snuff.” She held out her hand for it.
“But Jim wants-”
“No argument, Dad. Give me the snuff.”
He swallowed. Twice. Hard. His eyes darted here and there. “Got to have something, Barbie,” he whimpered.
She winced at the name. Only Tony had called her that. On her father’s lips it was a malediction. Nonetheless, she moved to him, put her hand on his shoulder, and forced herself to touch his unwashed hair. “Dad, try to understand. It’s Mum we have to consider. Without you, she would never survive. So we’ve got to keep you healthy and fi t. Don’t you see? Mum…loves you so much.”
Was there a glimmer there at that? Did they still see each other in this little hell they so richly deserved, or was the fog too thick?
He gave a choked sob. A dirty hand went into his pocket and the small, round tin was produced. “Jim don’t mean no harm, Barbie,” he said as he handed the tin to his daughter. His eyes slid from her face to the shrine, to the plastic flowers in their plastic vases beneath it. She went to them at once, dumped out the fl owers, and confiscated the additional three tins of snuff hidden there.
“I’ll speak to Mr. Patel in the morning,” she said coldly and walked out of the room.
Of course it would be Eaton Terrace. Eaton Place was simply tpoo, too Belgravia, and Lynley would never stoop to ostentation. Besides, this was just the city townhouse. Howenstow-the Cornish estate-was where the Lynleys really hung their hats.
Barbara stood looking at the elegant white building. How enchantingly clean everything was in Belgravia, she thought. How upper-class chic. It was the only area in the city where people would consent to live in converted stables and boast about it to all their friends!
We’re in Belgravia now. Did we mention it? Oh, do stop by for tea! It’s nothing much. Just three hundred thousand pounds, but we like to think of it as such an investment. Five rooms. With the sweetest little cobblestone street that you’ve ever seen. Do say you’ll be here at half past four. You’ll recognise the place. I’ve planted bego nias in every window box.
Barbara mounted the spotless marble steps and, with a scornful shake of her head, noted the small Asherton coat of arms beneath the brass light fi xture. Armigerous, Lynley! No converted stable for you.
She lifted her hand to press the bell but stopped herself and turned to survey the street. Since yesterday there had been no time to consider her position. Her initial meeting with Webberly, fetching Lynley from the wedding, and the subsequent meeting at Scotland Yard with the peculiar little priest had all followed so swiftly that there had been no moment in which she could sort out her feelings and devise a strategy for surviving this new apprenticeship.
True, Lynley had not been as appalled at the assignment as she had thought he would be, certainly not as appalled and outraged as she herself had been. But then his mind had been occupied with other matters: the wedding of his friend and, no doubt, his late-night assignation with Lady Helen Clyde. Now, with some time to reflect upon it, he would surely allow her to feel the full brunt of his irritation at being saddled with such a pariah as herself.
So what to do? Here it was at last, the opportunity she had been waiting for-hoping for, praying for-the chance to prove herself in CID once and for all. It was the chance to make up for the arguments, the slips of the tongue, the impetuous decisions, the foolish mistakes of the past ten years.
“There’s a lot you might learn from working with Lynley.” Webberly’s words returned to her, and she knotted her brow. What could she possibly learn from Lynley? The right wine to order with dinner, a few dance steps, how to dazzle a roomful of people with engaging conversation? What could she learn from Lynley?
Nothing, of course. But she knew too well that he represented her only chance of being reassigned to CID. So, as she stood on his fi ne doorstep, she considered thoughtfully her best approach to getting along with the man.
It would have to be complete cooperation, she decided. She would offer no suggestions, would agree with every thought he had, with every statement he made.
Survive, she told herself, and turned and pressed the bell.
She had been expecting a buxom, uniformed, pert little maid to answer her ring, so she was surprised. For Lynley himself opened the door, a piece of toast in one hand, slippers on his feet, and his reading spectacles perched on the end of his aristocratic nose.
“Ah, Havers,” he said, looking over them at her, “you’re early. Excellent.”
He led the way to the back of the house and into an airy morning room, fresh with white wainscoting, pale green walls, and an unusually restrained Adams ceiling. French doors at one end were undraped to allow a view of a late-blooming garden, and breakfast was laid out in silver serving dishes along an ornate walnut sideboard. The room smelled invitingly of warm bread and bacon, and in answer to the odour, Barbara felt her stomach rumble hollowly. She pressed her arm against it and tried not to think of her own morning’s fare of a single overboiled egg and toast. The dining table was laid for two, a number that momentarily surprised Barbara until she remembered Lynley’s evening rendezvous with Lady Helen Clyde. Her ladyship was no doubt at this moment still in his bed, unused to rising before half past ten.
“Do help yourself.” Lynley motioned absently towards the sideboard with his fork and gathered up a few sheets of the police report that lay in haphazard fashion among the china. “There isn’t a person I know who can’t think better while eating. But avoid the kippers. They seem a bit off.”
“No, thank you,” she replied politely. “I’ve eaten, sir.”
“Not even a sausage? They, at least, are remarkably good. Do you find that the butchers are finally having a whack at putting more pork than meal into sausages these days? It’s refreshing, to say the least. Nearly fi ve decades after World War II and we’re fi nally coming off rationing.” He picked up a teapot. Like everything else on the table, it was antique bone china, no doubt part of the man’s family history. “What about something to drink? I have to warn you, I’m addicted to Lapsang Souchong tea. Helen claims that it tastes like dirty socks.”
“I…I could do with a cuppa. Thank you, sir.”
“Good,” he declared. “Have some and tell me what you think.”
She was adding a lump of sugar to the brew when the front bell rang again. Footsteps came running up a stairway in the back. “I’ll get it my lord,” a woman’s voice called. It was a Cornish accent. “Sorry about the last time. The baby and all.”
“It’s the croup, Nancy,” Lynley murmured to himself. “Take the poor child to the doctor.”
The sound of a woman’s voice fl oated down the hall. “Breakfast?” A lighthearted laugh. “What a propitious arrival I’ve effected, Nancy. He’ll never believe it’s purely coincidental.” Upon her last sentence Lady Helen breezed into the room and paralysed Barbara into a moment of breath-catching, ice-sheathed despair.
They were wearing identical suits. But while Lady Helen’s had obviously been cut by the designer himself to fi t her fi gure, Barbara’s own was off-the-rack, a through-the-lookingglass chain store copy with rucked seams and altered hemline to prove it. Only the differing colours might possibly save her from complete humiliation, she thought. She grasped her teacup but lacked the will to lift it to her lips.
Lady Helen paused only fractionally at the sight of the policewoman. “I’m in a mess,” she said frankly. “Thank God you’re here as well, Sergeant, for I’ve a terrible feeling it’ll take three heads to see me clear of the muddle I’ve made for myself.” That said, she deposited a large shopping bag on the nearest chair and went directly to the sideboard, where she began browsing through the covered dishes as if food alone were sufficient to see her through her dilemma.
“Muddle?” Lynley asked. He glanced at Barbara. “How do you like the Lapsang?”
Her lips felt stiff. “It’s very nice, sir.”
“Not that awful tea again!” Lady Helen groaned. “Really, Tommy. You’re a man without mercy.”
“Had I known you were coming, I’d hardly have been so remiss as to serve it twice in one week,” Lynley replied pointedly.
Unoffended, she laughed. “Isn’t he piqued, Sergeant? From the way he talks, you’d think I was here every morning, eating him out of house and home.”
“There is yesterday, Helen.”
“You vicious man.” She turned her attention back to the sideboard. “These kippers smell appalling. Did Nancy bring them up in her suitcase?” She joined them at the table with a plate piled high with a gastronomic argument of eggs and mushrooms, grilled tomatoes and bacon. “What’s she doing here, by the way? Why isn’t she at Howenstow? Where’s Denton this morning?”
Lynley sipped his tea, his eyes on the report on the table before him. “As I’ll be out of town, I’ve given Denton the next few days off,” he replied absently. “No need for him to come with me.”
A crisp piece of bacon halted in midair. Lady Helen stared. “You’re joking, of course. Tell me you’re joking, darling.”
“I’m perfectly capable of getting along without my valet. I’m not totally incompetent, Helen.”
“But that’s not what I mean!” Lady Helen drank a mouthful of the Lapsang Souchong, grimaced at the taste, and set down the cup. “It’s Caroline. She’s gone off on holiday for this entire week. You don’t think…Tommy, if she’s run off with Denton, I’ll be absolutely lost. No”-this as he was about to speak-“I know what you’re going to say. They have every right to their personal lives. I agree completely. But we simply must come to some sort of compromise over this-you and I-because if they get married and live with you-”
“Then you and I shall get married as well,” Lynley replied placidly. “And we’ll be as happy as hedgehogs, the four of us.”
“You think it’s amusing, don’t you? But just look at me. One morning without Caroline in the flat and I’m a complete disaster. Surely you don’t think this is an ensemble that she would approve of?”
Lynley regarded the ensemble in question. Barbara didn’t need to do so. The vision of Lady Helen was branded into her mind: a smartly tailored burgundy suit, silk blouse, and a mauve scarf that cascaded down to a trim waist.
“What’s wrong with it?” Lynley asked. “It looks fine to me. In fact, considering the hour”-he glanced at his pocket watch-“I’d say you’re almost too sartorially splendid.”
Lady Helen turned to Barbara in exasperation. “Isn’t that every bit just like a man, Sergeant? I end up this morning looking like an overripe strawberry and he murmurs ‘looks fine to me’ and buries his nose in a murder fi le.”
“Far better that than assist you with your clothing for the next few days.” Lynley nodded at the ignored shopping bag that had toppled over and now spilled a few assorted pieces of material onto the floor. “Is that why you’ve come?”
Lady Helen pulled the bag towards her. “I only wish it were that simple,” she sighed. “But it’s worse by far than the Denton-Caroline affair-we’ve not finished with that, by the way-and I’m at a total loss. I’ve mixed up Simon’s bullet holes.”
Barbara was beginning to feel as if she’d walked into something designed by Wilde. Surely at any moment Lane would enter stage left with the cucumber sandwiches.
“Simon’s bullet holes?” Lynley, more accustomed to Lady Helen’s pirouettes of thought, was patient.
“You know. We were working on the patterns of blood splattering based on trajectory, angle, and calibre. You remember that, don’t you?”
“The piece to be presented next month?”
“The very one. Simon had left it all organised for me in the lab. I was supposed to run off the preliminary set of data, attach them to the cloth, and set up the lab for the fi nal study. But I-”
“Mixed up the cloths,” Lynley fi nished. “St. James will go on about that, Helen. What do you propose to do?”
She looked forlornly down at the samples that she had dumped unceremoniously onto the floor. “Of course, I’m not hopelessly ignorant in the matter. After four years in the laboratory, at least I recognise the twenty-two calibre and can easily find the forty-fi ve and the shotgun. But as to the others…and even worse, as to which blood pattern goes with each trajectory…”
“It’s a muddle,” Lynley fi nished.
“In a word,” she agreed. “So I thought I’d pop by this morning to see if perhaps we could sort it all out.”
Lynley leaned down and fingered his way through the pile of material. “Can’t be done, old duck. Sorry, but you’ve hours of work here and we’ve a train to catch.”
“Then whatever shall I say to Simon? He’s been working on this for ages.”
Lynley pondered the question. “There’s one thing…”
“What?”
“Professor Abrams at Chelsea Institute. Do you know him?” When she shook her head, he went on. “He and Simon both have testifi ed as expert witnesses. They did in the Melton case only last year. They know each other. Perhaps he’d help. I could phone him for you before I leave.”
“Would you, Tommy? I’d be so grateful. I’d do anything for you.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Surely not the thing to say to a man over breakfast.”
She laughed engagingly. “Even the dishes! I’d even give up Caroline if it came to that.”
“And Jeffrey Cusick?”
“Even Jeffrey. Poor man. Traded for bullet holes without a second thought.”
“All right then. I’ll see to it as soon as we’ve finished our breakfast. I take it that we may now finish our breakfast?”
“Oh yes, of course.” She dug happily into her plate while Lynley put on his spectacles and looked at his papers once more. “What kind of case is it that has you two rushing off so early in the morning?” Lady Helen asked Barbara, pouring herself a second cup of tea, which she sugared and creamed with a liberal hand.
“A decapitation.”
“That sounds particularly grim. Are you travelling far?”
“Up to Yorkshire.”
The teacup was suspended and then lowered carefully to the saucer beneath. Lady Helen’s eyes moved to Lynley, regarding him for a moment before she spoke. “Where in Yorkshire, Tommy?” she asked impassively.
Lynley read a few lines. “A place called… here it is, Keldale. Do you know it?”
There was a minute pause. Lady Helen considered the question. Her eyes were on her tea, and although her face was without expression, a pulse began to beat in the vein at her throat. She looked up but the smile she offered did not touch her eyes. “Keldale? Not at all.”