Vi Nevin took the postcard from Lynley's fingers and, after glancing at it, set it carefully onto the spotless glass coffee table that served both the buttery sofa and the matching love seat which formed a right angle at one of its corners. She had placed herself on the sofa, leaving the love seat for Lynley and Nkata to crowd themselves onto. Nkata hadn't cooperated with the ploy, however. He'd stationed himself at the door to the maisonette, with his arms crossed and his body proclaiming no escape.
“You're the schoolgirl pictured on the card, aren't you?” Lynley began.
Vi reached for the portfolio she'd showed Havers and Nkata on the previous day. She slid this across the coffee table. “I pose for pictures, Inspector. That's what I do and that's what I get paid for. I don't know who's going to use them for what and I don't really care. As long as I get paid.”
“Are you saying that you're just a model for sexual services that someone else provides?” “That's what I'm saying.” “I see. Then what's the point of having your phone number on the card if you're not the ‘schoolgirl’ in question?”
Her gaze slid away from him. She was quick, fairly well educated, well spoken, and clever, but she hadn't thought quite that far ahead.
“You know, I don't have to talk to you,” she said. “And what I'm doing's not illegal, so please don't act like it is.”
Explaining the finer points of the law to her wasn't his purpose in coming to see her, Lynley told her. But if she was engaged in prostitution-
“Show me where it says on that card that anyone pays me for anything” she demanded.
If, Lynley repeated, she was engaged in prostitution, then he assumed she knew where the ice was thin and where it was not in her behaviour. That being the case-“Am I loitering somewhere. Am I soliciting in a public place?”
That being the case, he continued firmly, he would also assume that Miss Nevin was cognisant of how loosely and generously the word brothel could be defined by a magistrate with little patience with linguistic gymnastics. He glanced round the maisonette lest she not comprehend the full meaning of his comment.
She said, “Cops,” dismissively.
“Indeed” was Lynley's affable reply.
He and Nkata had driven directly to Fulham from New Scotland Yard. They'd found Vi Nevin unloading Sainsbury's carrier bags from a new Alfa Romeo, and when she'd caught a glimpse of Nkata as he eased his lengthy body from the Bentley, she said, “Why're you here again? Why aren't you out looking for Nikki's killer? Look, I don't have time to talk to you. I've an appointment in forty-five minutes.”
“Then I expect you'd like us to be gone in advance,” Lynley had said.
She'd flicked a glance at both men, looking for meaning. She said, “Give me a hand, then,” and passed two loaded carrier bags over to them.
She'd unpacked perishables into a large refrigerator: pâté, Greek olives, prosciutto, Camembert, dolmades…
“Having a party?” Lynley had asked her. “Or is the food part of the… appointment, perhaps?”
Vi Nevin had shut the refrigerator door smartly and walked into the sitting room, where she'd taken up her position on the sofa. There she still sat, a retro-garbed figure in brogues and white socks, turned-up blue jeans, a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the collar at attention, a scarf knotted at the throat, and a ponytail. She looked like a refugee from a James Dean film. All that was missing was the bubble gum.
She did not, however, speak like a refugee from a James Dean film. She might have been dressed like a gum-popping devotee of bop, but she spoke like a woman either born to advantage or self-made to appear that way. More likely the latter, Lynley would think as he interviewed her. Every now and then her careful persona slipped. Just a word here and there or a skewed pronunciation that inadvertently revealed her origins. Still, she wasn't what he would have expected to find at the other end of a phone box postcard advertising sex.
“Miss Nevin,” Lynley said, “I'm not here to strong-arm you. I'm here because a woman's been murdered, and if her murder is somehow connected with her source of income-”
“That's where you always head, isn't it? Right to one of our punters. ‘She's a slag and she got what she was asking for. It's damn lucky she lasted as long as she did, what with her lifestyle and the blokes who take part in it.’ Which is what you'd like to put an end to, isn't it? The lifestyle. So don't tell me what you do or don't intend with regard to my ‘source of income.’” She gazed at him evenly. “If you only knew how many warrant cards get set to one side when a bloke's in a hurry to climb out of his trousers. Hmph. I could name a few names.”
“I'm not interested in your clients. I'm interested in finding Nicola Maiden's killer.”
“Who, you think, is one of her clients. Why won't you admit it? And how do you expect those punters will feel when the cops come calling on them? And what do you think it'll do for business once word gets out that I'm naming names? If I know their names to begin with. And I don't, by the way. We go by first names only, and that's not going to help you much.”
Across the room Nkata took out his notebook, opened it, and said, “We're happy to take what's on offer, miss.”
“Forget it, Constable. I'm not that stupid.”
Lynley leaned towards her. “Then you know how simple it would be for me to shut you down. A uniformed constable walking this street every fifteen minutes would, I think, do some damage to your clients' sense of privacy. As would the word slipped to one or two tabloids who might want to see if anyone worthy of public notice is paying calls on you.”
“You wouldn't dare! I know my rights.”
“None of which preclude the presence of journalists, paparazzi looking for everyone from film stars to members of the Royal Family, or your local bobby who's just keeping the streets safe for elderly women walking their dogs.”
“You bloody outrageous-”
“It's a nasty world,” Nkata cut in solemnly.
She glared at both of them.
The telephone rang and she jumped to answer it. She said, “What's your pleasure…?” into the receiver.
Nkata looked heavenward.
Vi said, “Hang on. Let me check my book,” and she flipped through the pages of an engagement diary. “Sorry. I can't manage that. Someone's already booked…” She ran her finger down the page, saying, “I could do four o'clock… How long a session…?” She listened, then murmured, “Don't I always leave you fit for her afterwards?” And she jotted a reference into her diary. She rang off, stood with her fingers on the telephone as if in thought, her back to them. She sighed and said, “All right, then,” quietly. She went into the kitchen and returned with an envelope, which she handed over to Lynley.
“This is what you want. I hope it doesn't break your heart to be completely wrong about the punters.”
The envelope had already been unsealed. Lynley slid out its contents: one piece of paper and a single message, assembled from letters that appeared to come from glossy magazines, TWO BITCHES WILL DIE
IN THERE OWN PUKE. THEY'LL BEG FOR MERSEY AND GET NOTHING BUT PAIN. After reading it, Lynley handed the note to Nkata. The DC looked it over, then raised his head.
“Same as the others left at the scene.”
Lynley nodded. He told Vi Nevin about the anonymous notes that had been left at the murder site.
“I sent them to her,” she said.
Puzzled, Lynley turned over the envelope and saw it was addressed to Vi Nevin, with a local postmark. “But this appears identical to those.”
She said, “I don't mean I sent them to her like this. Without a name. Like a threat. I mean they came to me. Here. At home. They've been coming all summer long. I kept telling Nikki about them when we talked on the phone, but she just laughed them off. So I finally sent them up to her with Terry because I wanted her to see for herself that the situation was escalating and we both needed to start taking some care. Which,” she added bitterly, “Nikki didn't do. God, why wouldn't she ever listen?”
Lynley took the note back from Nkata. He examined it again, then carefully refolded and stowed it into its envelope. He said, “Perhaps you'd better start from the beginning.”
“Shelly Platt's the beginning” was her reply.
Vi went to the window, which overlooked the street. She looked down, as if expecting to see someone below. She said, “We were friends. It was always Shelly and Vi and it had been for years. But then Nikki came along, and I could see it made more sense to set myself up with her. Shelly couldn't cope with that, and she started causing trouble. I knew…” Her voice quavered. She halted. Then, “I knew she'd do something eventually. But Nikki never believed me. She just kept laughing it off.”
“It?”
“The letters. And the calls. We hadn't been in this place”-with her hand she indicated the maisonette-“two days before Shelly got her hands on the phone number and started ringing. And then sending letters. And then turning up in the street. And then pinching the cards…” Vi went to the drinks trolley. An ice bucket stood on it. She lifted this, and from beneath it she took a small stack of postcards. “She said she'd destroy us. She's a nasty little jealous-” She drew a quick breath. “She's jealous.”
The cards were the same schoolgirl advertisements that Lynley had already seen except that each had been defaced, with various sexually transmitted diseases scrawled upon it in bright felt pen.
“Terry found those when he was making his regular rounds of the boxes,” Vi said. “It was Shelly who did it, up to her tricks. She won't be happy till I'm ruined.”
“Tell us about Shelly Platt,” Lynley said.
“She was my maid. We met in C'est la Vie. Do you know it? It's a French bakery and caff over by South Ken Station. I had what you might call an arrangement there with the head baker-baguettes, quiches, and tarts in exchange for a few liberties in the gents’ loo-and Shelly was there one morning shoveling chocolate croissants into her mouth when Alf and I went below stairs. She saw him give me the food afterwards without taking any money, and she got interested in what was going on.”
“In order to blackmail you?”
Vi looked grimly amused by the question. “She wanted to know what she had to do to get her croissants for nothing. Plus, she liked the way I dress-I was doing a Mary Quant that morning-and she wanted a bit of that as well.”
“Your clothes?”
“My whole life, as things turned out.”
“I see. And as your maid, with access to your belongings-”
Vi laughed. At the drinks trolley, she took two cubes of ice from the bucket and a small tin of tomato juice from the bottom shelf. She deftly mixed herself a bloody Mary with the precision of long experience. “She wasn't that kind of maid, Inspector. She was the other kind. She took phone calls from punters and booked their appointments for me.” Vi stirred her drink with a glass rod surmounted by a bright green parrot. She set this neatly on a cocktail napkin and returned to the sofa, where she placed the glass on the coffee table and continued her explanation. She'd been employing a middle-aged Filipino woman to book her clients prior to meeting Shelly Platt in C'est la Vie. But everyone employed middle-aged Filipino women as their maids these days, so she thought it might be an added interest to have a teenager acting the part instead. Fixed up, Shelly wouldn't look half bad. And, more important, she was so ignorant of the ways of the profession that Vi knew she would be able to pay her a pittance. “I gave her room, board, and thirty pounds a week,” Vi told them. “And believe me, that's more than she was getting doing knee tremblers outside Earl's Court Station, which was how she was supporting herself when I met her.”
They were together for nearly three years, she went on. But then Vi met Nikki Maiden and saw how much more was possible if the two of them set up a business together. “We kept Shelly with us at first. But she hated Nikki because with her there, it wasn't just the two of us any longer. That's the way Shelly is, although I didn't know it when I first took her on.”
“‘The way she is?’”
“She gets her hooks into people and thinks she owns them. I should have seen it when she first talked about what had gone on with her boyfriend. She followed him to London from Liverpool, and when she got here and found out he didn't want to be her boyfriend any longer, she started her routine: following him everywhere, phoning him constantly, hanging round his flat, sending him letters, bringing him presents. Only I didn't know it was her routine, you see. I thought it was a one-off: her reaction to her first love not working out.” She took a stiff gulp of her drink. “Right bloody fool I was.”
“She did the same to you?”
“I should have seen, obviously. Stan-this was her boyfriend-came to the flat after she'd cut up his car tyres. He was all in a rage, and he must have thought he'd straighten her out. But he was the one who got straightened out.”
“How?”
“She cut him open with a butcher knife.”
Nkata glanced Lynley's way. Lynley nodded. A killer did generally have a favourite weapon. But why kill Nicola if Shelly's object was Vi? And why wait so many months to do it?
Vi seemed to recognise Lynley's unspoken questions. She said, “She didn't know where Nikki was. But she did know Terry was thick with her. If she followed him, it was only a matter of time before he led Shelly right to her.” She tossed down more of the drink, picking up a napkin to dab against the corner of her mouth. “Murdering little bitch,” she said quietly “I hope she rots.”
“‘This bitch has had it,’” Lynley murmured, now knowing the source of the note that had been found in Nicola Maiden's pocket. He said, “We'll need her address, if you have it. And we'll also need a list of Nicola's clients.”
“This isn't about clients. I've just told you that.”
“You have. But we've also been told that there was a man in London with whom Nicola had a relationship that was more than you'd expect between a client and…” He looked for a euphemism.
“His evening's companion,” Nkata supplied.
“And we may well find him among the men she serviced regularly,” Lynley finished.
“Well, if there was someone, I don't know about him,” Vi said.
“I have trouble believing that,” Lynley said. “You can't expect me to believe that a flat like this is paid for solely from your earnings in the sex trade.”
“Believe what you want,” Vi Nevin said. Her fingers crept to the scarf at her throat and loosened it quickly.
“Miss Nevin, we're looking for a killer. If he's the man who initially installed Nicola Maiden in this maisonette, then you need to give us his name. Because if he thought he had one kind of arrangement with her only to learn that it was another, he might well have been driven to kill her, and I dare say he won't like you hanging on here at his expense now that she's gone.”
“You've had my answer.”
“Is Reeve the bloke?” Nkata asked her.
“Reeve?” Vi reached for her glass again.
“Martin Reeve. MKR Financial Management.”
She didn't drink. Instead, she swirled the liquid and watched as it slid across the ice cubes, which rattled against the side of the glass. She finally said, “I lied about MKR. I've never worked for Martin Reeve. I don't even know him. I just knew about him and Tricia from what Nikki said. And when you asked about him yesterday, I followed your lead. I didn't know what you knew. About me. About Nikki. And in my line of work, it doesn't make sense to trust the police.”
“Then how did you two hook up in the first place?” Nkata asked her.
“Nikki and I? We met in a pub. Jack Horner on the Tottenham Court Road, near her college. She was being chatted up by a bald-headed bloke with a paunch and bad teeth, and once he left her alone, we had a laugh about him. We began to chat and…” She shrugged. “We just got on. Nikki was easy to talk to. Easy to tell the truth to. She was interested in my work, and when she knew how much money could be had on the job-a far sight more than what she was making at MKR-she decided to try it.”
“You didn't mind the competition?” Lynley asked.
“There wasn't any.”
“I don't understand.”
“Nikki didn't like it straight,” Vi explained. “She only serviced men if they wanted quirky sex. Costumes, play-acting, domination. I'll do little girls for men who prefer it from twelve-year-olds without the risk of going to gaol for their pleasure. But that's about as quirky as I get. I'll give hand relief and do oral in addition to the little-girl bit, naturally. Otherwise, what I have on offer is exactly what Nikki couldn't be bothered with: romance, seduction, and understanding. You'd be amazed how little of that goes on between husbands and wives.”
“So between the two of you,” Lynley concluded, sidestepping any discussion of what marriage could do by way of cocking up the works of a relationship, “you covered all tastes and all inclinations?”
“We did,” she replied. “And Shelly knew it. So she also knew that I wasn't about to choose her over Nikki if the two of them didn't get on once Nikki and I hooked up, which is why you need to talk to her. Not to some non-existent punter with money enough to give Nikki this place.”
“Where c'n we find this Shelly?” Nkata asked.
Vi didn't have her address. But she'd be easy enough to locate, she said. She was a regular at The Stocks, a club in Wandsworth that “catered to individuals with specific interests.” She was, Vi added, “special mates” with the barman.
“If she's not there now, he'll be able to tell you where to find her,” Vi told them.
Lynley examined her from his position on the love seat. He found that despite the volume of information she'd given them, he still wanted to give her some sort of veracity test. Glibness was one of the essentials for survival in her profession, and the course of wisdom-not to mention the years of rubbing elbows with those who lived on the edge of the law-suggested that he take her word as something less than gospel.
He said, “Nicola Maiden's movements in the months preceding her death seem at odds with each other, Miss Nevin. Was she using prostitution for a quick source of income to tide her over till her law work was profitable?”
“No law work is as profitable as this,” Vi said. “At least not when you're young. That's why Nikki dropped out of law college in the first place. She knew she could go back to the law when she was forty. But she couldn't be turning tricks at that age. It made sense to her to get the money while she could.”
“Then why did she spend the summer working for a lawyer? Or was she doing more than merely working for him?”
Vi shrugged. “You'll have to ask the lawyer.”
Barbara Havers worked the computer till midday. She'd left Lynley's office in the thrall of an effort to maintain such a strict control upon her anger that for an hour at the glowing screen, she'd been completely incapable of assimilating a single piece of information. But by the time she'd read through the seventh report, she'd calmed down. What had been rage metamorphosed into blind intent. No longer was her performance in the investigation a case of redeeming herself in the eyes of a man she'd long respected. It was now a matter of proving to them both-to herself as well as to Lynley-that she was right.
She could have dealt with anything other than the professional indifference with which he was making her current assignments. Had she seen the slightest indication on his patrician face of scorn, impatience, disregard, or loathing, she could have confronted him and they could have battled openly as they'd battled in the past. But he'd obviously concluded that she was criminally inadequate, marginally hysterical, and hence beneath his notice, and nothing she could say by way of explaining her actions was going to make him think otherwise. Her only option was to prove to him how incorrect his assessment was.
There was a single way to accomplish this. Barbara knew that to do it was to put her entire career on the line. But she also knew that she had no career of value at the moment. And she never again would be able to have one unless she freed herself from the shackles of judgement that were currently binding her.
She began with the idea of lunch. She'd been at the Yard since early morning, and she was due a break. So why not, she thought, take a stroll during the time that was due her? Nowhere was it written that she had to take all her meals in Victoria Street. Indeed, a little hike through Soho would be just the ticket to prime her with a bit of exercise before she faced a few more hours sifting through the SO 10 cases on CRIS.
She wasn't, however, so wedded to the idea of Soho and exercise that she considered walking there. Time was of the utmost importance. So she toddled out to her Mini in the Yard's underground car park, and she zipped up to Soho via Charing Cross Road.
The crowds were out. In an area of London that blended everything from book shops to skin shows, from street markets offering vegetables and flowers to sex shops selling vibrating dildos and pulsating ersatz vaginas, there would always be crowds on the pavements of
Soho. And on a sunny Saturday in September with the tourist season not yet on the wane, those crowds spilled from pavements into the streets, making the going treacherous once one turned off the theatre-oriented congestion of Shaftesbury Avenue and began heading up Frith Street.
Barbara ignored the restaurants that called to her like sirens. She inhaled through her mouth so as to avoid the beguiling fragrances of garlic-laden Italian food that were carried on the air. And she allowed herself a sigh of relief when at last she saw the timbered structure-part arbour and part tool shed-that marked the centre of the square.
She made a circuit once, looking for a place to park. Finding nothing available, she located the building she was seeking and resigned herself to giving half a day's wages to a car park a short distance from Dean Street. She hoofed it back in the direction of the square, digging from her shoulder bag the address that she'd found on the crumpled bit of paper she'd taken from a pair of Terry Cole's trousers in his flat. She verified the address: 31-32 Soho Square.
Right, she thought. So let's see what little Terry was up to.
She rounded the corner from Carlisle Street and sauntered to the building. It stood at the southwest corner of the square, a modern structure of brick with a mansard roof and transom windows. A portico supported by Doric columns sheltered the glass-doored entrance, and above this entrance in brass were identified the occupants of the building: Triton International Entertainment.
Barbara knew little enough about Triton, but what she did know was that she'd seen their logo at the end of television dramas and at the beginning of cinema films, which made her wonder if Terry Cole had hoped to have a career as an actor, in addition to his other questionable pursuits.
She tried the door. It was tightly locked. She muttered, “Damn,” and peered through the tinted glass to see what, if anything, she could deduce by having a look at the lobby of the building. Not much, as she discovered.
It was a marble plane, its surface interrupted by sepia-coloured leather chairs that apparently served as a waiting area. At the plane's centre, a kiosk stood, on which Triton's latest films were advertised. Near to the door curved a chest-high walnut reception station, and across from this a bank of three polished bronze lift doors reflected Barbara's image for her personal-albeit dubious-viewing pleasure.
On a Saturday there were no signs of life in the lobby. But as Barbara was about to curse her luck and turn tail for the Yard, one of the lift doors opened and revealed a grey-haired uniformed security guard in the act of zipping his trousers snugly and bobbing to adjust his testicles. He stepped into the lobby, started when he saw Barbara at the door, and waved her off.
“Not open,” he called out. And even from behind the glass, Barbara could hear the glottal stop of the North Londoner, born and bred.
She dug out her warrant card and raised it to the glass. “Police,” she called in turn. “Could I have a word, please?”
He hesitated, looking towards an enormous brass-faced clock that hung above a line of celebrity photographs on the wall to the left of the door. He called, “It's my lunch break.”
“Better still,” Barbara responded. “Its mine as well. Come on out. I'll buy, if you like.”
“What's this about, then?” He approached the door, but he maintained his distance across a rippled rubber door mat.
“Murder enquiry.” Barbara wiggled her warrant card meaningfully. Please note, her gesture told him.
He noted. Then he brought out a ring of what looked like two thousand keys and took his time about inserting the right one in the front door.
Once inside, Barbara got directly to the point. She was investigating the Derbyshire murder of a young Londoner called Terence Cole, she told the guard whose name tag announced him, unfortunately, as Dick Long. Cole had had this address among his things, and she was attempting to uncover the reason why.
“Cole, you say?” the guard repeated. “Terence the Christian name? Never had nobody here called that. Far as I know. Which isn't saying much, as I only work at the weekends, I do. Weekdays, I'm security at the BBC. Doesn't pay much either way, but it keeps me from sleeping rough somewhere.” He pulled on his nostrils and investigated his fingers to see if he'd mined anything of interest.
“Terry Cole had this address among his belongings,” Barbara said. “He could have come here passing himself off as an artist of sorts. A sculptor. Does this sound familiar?”
“No one here's an art buyer. What you want is one of them posh galleries, luv. Over in Mayfair or places like that. Though it does look a bit like a gallery in here, eh? What about that? What d'you think?”
What she thought was that she didn't have time to discuss Triton Entertainment's interior decoration. She said, “Could he have had a meeting with someone at Triton?”
“Or at any of the other companies,” Dick said.
“There're more groups than Triton at this address?” she asked.
“Oh yeh. Triton's only one. They get their name above the door 'cause they take up the most space. T'others don't mind, as their rent's lower.” Dick jerked his head in the direction of the lifts and led Barbara to a notice board between two of them. On this she saw names, departments, and lists of companies. They represented publishing, film making, and theatre. It would take hours-perhaps days-to talk to everyone whose name was Usted. And to everyone else whose name wasn't included because he or she played a supporting role.
Barbara turned away from the lifts and caught sight of the reception desk. She knew what such a desk meant at the Yard where security was paramount. She wondered if it meant the same here. She said, “Dick, do visitors sign in?”
“Oh yeh. They do.”
Excellent. “Can I have a look at the book?”
“Can't do that, miss… er, Constable. Sorry.”
“Police business, Dick.”
“Right. But 'tis locked up at the weekend, like. You can have a try of the desk drawers to make sure though.”
Barbara did so, slipping behind the walnut counter and pulling on the drawers to no avail. Damn, she thought. She hated having to wait till Monday. She was itching to slap handcuffs on a guilty party and to parade him in front of Lynley, shouting, “See? See?” And waiting nearly forty-eight hours to take another step closer to the perpetrator of the Derbyshire homicides was like asking hounds on the scent of a fox to have a bit of a kip once their quarry was in sight.
There was only one alternative. She didn't much like it, but she was willing to put in the time to give it a try. She said, “Tell me, Dick, have you a list of the people who work here?”
“Oh, miss… er, Constable… as to that…” He pulled on his nostrils again and looked uneasy.
“Yes. You do. Right? Because if something's dodgy in part of the building, you need to know who to contact. Yes? Dick, I need that list.”
“I'm not supposed to-”
“-give it out to anyone,” she concluded. “I know. But you're not giving it out to anyone. You're giving it to the police because someone's been murdered. And you understand that if you don't assist in the enquiry, it might look like you're involved in some way.”
He looked affronted. “Oh no, miss. I never been to Derbyshire.”
“But someone here may have been. On Tuesday night. And to be a party to protecting that someone… That never looks very good to the CPS.”
“Wha'? You think there's a murderer works here?” Dick glanced at the lifts as if expecting them to disgorge Jack the Ripper.
“Could be the case, Dick. Could very well be.”
He thought it over. Barbara let him think. He looked from the lift doors to Reception once again. He finally said, “As it's the police…” and joined Barbara behind the reception desk, where he opened what looked like a broom cupboard containing reams of paper and coffee supplies. He took from the top shelf a stapled sheaf of papers. He handed it over. “These're them,” he said.
Barbara thanked him fervently. He was making his mark for the cause of justice, she told him. She would need to take a copy of the document with her though. She was going to have to phone all of the employees listed, and she didn't expect that he wanted her to do so sitting in the empty lobby of the building.
Dick gave his reluctant permission and disappeared for five minutes to make a copy of the paperwork. When he returned, Barbara did her best to stride with dignity-and not dance with delight-out of the building. Maintaining her poise, she didn't take a look at the list until she rounded the corner into Carlisle Street. But once there, she dropped her gaze to it eagerly.
Her spirits plummeted. It was page after page. No fewer than two hundred names were printed.
She groaned at the thought of the job ahead of her.
Two hundred phone calls with no one to help her.
There had to be a more efficient way to serve up humble pie for Lynley's dining pleasure. And after a moment's thought, she decided what it might be.