"I"ve been through that, Sergeant," Lynley said.
She sought an excuse. "Just a hunch, sir. It"ll only take a moment."
The fact was that it took nearly an hour, but by that time Lynley had removed the jacket from a copy of Joy Sinclair"s most recent book, putting this into his pocket before going on into the bedroom and from there to the storage cabinet at the top of the stairs where Barbara could hear him rooting systematically through the a.s.sortment of belongings. It was after four o"clock when she concluded her search of the files and rested back on her heels, satisfied with the validity of her hypothesis. Her only decision now was whether to tell Lynley or to hold her tongue until she had more facts, facts that he would be incapable of brushing aside.
Why, she wondered, had he not noticed it himself? How could he possibly have missed it? With the glaring absence of material right before his eyes, he was seeing only what he wanted to see, what he needed to see, a trail of guilt leading directly to Rhys Davies-Jones.
This guilt was so seductive a presence that it had become for Lynley an effective smokescreen hiding the one crucial detail that he had failed to note. Joy Sinclair had been in the midst of writing a play for Stuart Rintoul, Lord Stinhurst. And nowhere in the study was there a single reference to it. Not a draft, not an outline, not a list of characters, not a sc.r.a.p of paper.
Someone had been through the house before them.
"I"LL DROP YOU in Acton, Sergeant," Lynley said when they were back outside. He headed down the street towards his car, a silver Bent-ley that had collected a small group of admiring schoolboys who were peering into its windows and running pious hands along its gleaming wings. "Let"s plan on an early start out to Porthill Green tomorrow. Half past seven?"
"Fine, sir. But don"t bother about Acton. I"ll catch the Tube. It"s just up on the corner of Heath Street and the high."
Lynley paused, turned back to her. "Don"t be ridiculous, Barbara. That"ll take an age. A change of stations and G.o.d only knows how many stops. Get in the car."
Barbara heard it as the order it was and looked for a way to deflect it without raising his ire. She couldn"t possibly waste the time of having him drive her all the way home. Her day was far from over, in spite of what he thought.
Without considering how unlikely it would sound to him, she took a stab with the first excuse that came into her mind. "Actually, I"ve a date, sir," she said. And then knowing how ridiculous the idea was, she smoothed over the absurdity with, "Well, it"s not a date exactly. It"s someone I"ve met. And we thought...well, perhaps we"d have dinner and see that new film at the Odeon." She winced inwardly at that last piece of creativity and took a moment to pray that there was a new film at the Odeon. Or at least if there wasn"t, that he wouldn"t be the wiser.
"Oh. I see. Well. Anyone I know?"
h.e.l.l, she thought. "No, just a bloke I met last week. At the supermarket, actually. We banged trolleys somewhere between tinned fruit and tea."
Lynley smiled at that. "Sounds exactly the way a meaningful relationship starts. Shall I drop you at the Tube?"
"No. I could do with the walk. I"ll see you tomorrow, sir."
He nodded, and she watched him stride towards his car. In an instant he was surrounded by the eager children who had been admiring it.
"This your car, mister?"
"How much it cost?"
"Those seats leather?"
"C"n I drive it?"
Barbara heard Lynley laugh, saw him lean against the car, fold his arms, and take a moment to engage the group in friendly conversation. How like him, she thought. He"s had all of three hours sleep in the last thirty-three, he"s facing the fact that half of his world may be as good as in ruins, and still he takes the time to listen to children"s chatter. Watching him with them-fancying from this distance that she could see the lines of laughter round his eyes and the quirky muscle that crooked his smile-she found herself wondering what she might actually be capable of doing to protect the career and integrity of a man like that.
Anything, she decided, and began her walk to the Tube.
SNOW WAS FALLING when Barbara arrived at the St. James home on Cheyne Row in Chelsea that evening at eight. In the tawny glow of the street lamps, snowflakes looked like slivers of amber, floating down to blanket pavement, cars, and the intricate wrought iron of balconies and fences.The flurry was mild by way of winter storms, but even so, enough to snarl the traffic on the Embankment a block away. The usual roar of pa.s.sing cars was considerably muted, and the occasional horn, honking in a burst of temper, explained why.
Joseph Cotter, who played the unusual dual role of manservant and father-in-law in St. James" life, answered the door to Barbara"s knock. He was, she guessed, no older than fifty, a balding man of short, solid physique, so physically unlike his willowy daughter that for some time after she had first met Deborah St. James, Barbara had had no idea that she was even related to this man. He was carrying a coffee service on a silver tray and doing his best to avoid trampling a small, long-haired dachshund and a plump grey cat who were vying for attention at his feet. All of them threw grotesquely shaped shadows against the dark panelling on the wall.
"Off wi" you, Peach! Alaska!" he said, before he turned his ruddy face to greet Barbara. The animals retreated a respectable six inches. "Come in, Miss...Sergeant. Mr. St. James is in the study." He looked Barbara over critically. ""Ave you eaten yet, young lady? Those two "ave only finished just now. Let me get you a bite in a tick, shall I?"
"Thank you, Mr. Cotter. I could do with something. I haven"t had a thing since this morning, I"m afraid."
Cotter shook his head. "Police," he said, in brief and eloquent disapproval. "You just wait in "ere, miss. I"ll fix you up something nice."
He knocked once on the door at the foot of the stairs and without waiting for a response, swung it open. Barbara followed him into St. James" study, a room of tall, crowded bookshelves, scores of photographs, and intellectual jumble, one of the most pleasant locations in the Cheyne Row house.
A fire had been lit, and the room"s mixed odours of leather and brandy formed a comfortable redolence, not unlike that one might find in a gentleman"s club. St. James occupied a chair by the hearth, his bad leg resting upon a worn ottoman, while across from him, Lady Helen Clyde was curled into a corner of the couch. They were sitting quietly, in the manner of an old married couple or of friends too close to need the bridge of conversation.
""Ere"s the sergeant now, Mr. St. James," Cotter said, bustling forward with the coffee, which he set down on a low table in front of the fire. Flames there cast a glow against the porcelain, flickered like moving gold in a reflection on the tray. "An" she"s not "ad a bite to eat, so I"ll see to that at once if you"ll do the coffee on your own."
"I think we can manage that without disgracing you more than two or three times, Cotter. And if there"s any chocolate cake left, would you cut another piece for Lady Helen? She"s longing to have one, but you know how she is. Far too well bred to ask for more."
"He"s lying as usual," Lady Helen interjected. "It"s for himself but he knows how you"ll disapprove."
Cotter looked from one to the other, undeceived by their exchange. "Two pieces of chocolate cake," he said meaningfully. "An" a meal for the sergeant as well." Flicking at the arm of his black jacket, he left the room.
"You look about done in," St. James said to Barbara when Cotter was gone.
"We all look done in," Lady Helen added. "Coffee, Barbara?"
"At least ten cups," she replied. She tugged off her coat and knit cap, tossed them down on the couch, and walked to the fire to thaw out her numb fingers. "It"s snowing."
Lady Helen shuddered. "After this past weekend, those are the last two words I look forward to hearing." She handed St. James a cup of coffee and poured out two more. "I do hope your day was more productive than mine, Barbara. After spending five hours exploring Geoffrey Rintoul"s past, I"ve begun to feel as though I"m working for one of those committees in the Vatican who recommend candidates for canonisation." She smiled at St. James. "Can you bear to hear it all again?"
"I long to," he replied. "It allows me to examine my own disreputable past and feel suitable guilt over it."
"As well you should." Lady Helen returned to the couch, shaking back a few feathery strands of hair that fell against her cheek. She slipped off her shoes, curled her legs underneath her, and sipped her coffee.
Even in exhaustion, she was graceful, Barbara noticed. Utterly confident. Completely at ease. Being in her presence was always an exercise in feeling ungainly and decidedly unattractive, and observing the woman"s understated elegance, Barbara wondered how St. James" wife placidly endured the fact that her husband and Lady Helen worked side by side three days each week in his forensic laboratory on the top floor of the house.
Lady Helen reached for her handbag and pulled from it a small, black notebook. "After several hours with Debrett"s and Burke"s and Landed Gentry-not to mention a forty-minute stretch on the telephone with my father, who knows everything about everyone who"s ever had a t.i.tle-I"ve managed to come up with a rather remarkable portrait of our Geoffrey Rintoul. Let me see." She opened the notebook, and her eyes skimmed down the first page. "Born November 23, 1914. His father was Francis Rintoul, fourteenth Earl of Stinhurst, and his mother was Astrid Selvers, an American debutante in the fashion of the Vanderbilts who apparently had the audacity to die in 1925, leaving Francis with three small children to raise. He did so, with outstanding success, considering Geoffrey"s accomplishments."
"He never remarried?"
"Never. It doesn"t even appear that he engaged in discreet affairs, either. But s.e.xual disinclination seems to run in the family, as you shall note momentarily."
"How does that fit?" Barbara asked. "Considering the affair between Geoffrey and his sister-in-law."
"A possible inconsistency," St. James acknowledged.
Lady Helen continued. "Geoffrey was educated at Harrow and Cambridge. Graduated from Cambridge in 1936 with a first in economics and a.s.sorted honours in speech and debate which went on and on forever. But he didn"t come to anyone"s particular attention until October of 1942, and really, he appeared to be the most astonishing man. He was fighting with Montgomery at the twelve-day battle at El Alamein in North Africa."
"His rank?"
"Captain. He was part of a tank crew. Apparently in one of the worst days of the fighting, his tank was. .h.i.t, incapacitated, and ignited by a German sh.e.l.l. Geoffrey managed to get two wounded men out, dragging them more than a mile to safety. All in spite of the fact that he was wounded himself. He was awarded the Victoria Cross."
"Hardly the sort of man one expects to find buried in an isolated grave," Barbara commented.
"And there"s more," Lady Helen said. "At his own request, and in spite of the severity of his wounds that could well have put him out of action for the remainder of the war, he finished it up in the Allied front in the Balkans. Churchill was trying to preserve some British influence there in the face of potential Russian predominance, and evidently Geoffrey was a Churchill man through and through. When he came home, he moved into a job in Whitehall working for the Ministry of Defence."
"I"m surprised a man like that didn"t stand for Parliament."
"He was asked. Repeatedly. But he wouldn"t do it."
"And he never married?"
"No."
St. James made a movement in his chair, and Lady Helen held out a hand to stop him. She rose herself and poured him a second cup of coffee, without a word. She merely frowned when he used the sugar too heavily and took the sugar bowl from him entirely when he dipped a spoon into it for the fifth time.
"Was he h.o.m.os.e.xual?" Barbara asked.
"If he was, then he was discretion itself. Which applies to any affairs he may have had. Not a whisper of scandal about him. Anywhere."
"Not even anything that attaches him to Lord Stinhurst"s wife, Marguerite Rintoul?"
"Absolutely not."
"He"s too good to be true," St. James remarked. "What do you have, Barbara?"
As she was about to pull her own notebook from the pocket of her coat, Cotter entered with the promised food: cake for St. James and Lady Helen and a platter of cold meats, cheeses, and bread for Barbara. With, she saw, a third piece of cake to end her improvised meal. She smiled her thanks and Cotter gave her a friendly wink, checked the coffeepot, and disappeared through the door. His footsteps sounded on the stairs in the hall.
"Eat first," Lady Helen advised. "With this chocolate cake in front of me, I"m afraid I shall be markedly distracted from anything you say. We can go on when you"ve finished your dinner."
With a grateful nod for the nicely veiled understanding so typical of Lady Helen, Barbara fell upon the food eagerly, devouring three pieces of meat and two large wedges of cheese like a prisoner of war. Finally, with the cake before her and another cup of coffee, she pulled out her notebook.
"A few hours browsing through the public library and all I could find is that Geoffrey"s death appeared to be an entirely straightforward affair. Most of this is from the newspaper accounts of the inquest. There was a tremendous storm on the night he died at Westerbrae, or actually in the early morning hours of January 1, 1963."
"That much is believable, considering what the weather was like this last weekend," Lady Helen noted.
"According to the officer in charge of the investigation-an Inspector Glencalvie-the section of the road where the accident occurred was sheeted with ice. Rintoul lost control on the switchback, went right over the side, and rolled the car several times."
"He wasn"t thrown out?"
"Apparently not. But his neck was broken and his body was burned."
Lady Helen turned to St. James at this. "But couldn"t that mean-"
"No body-swapping in this day and age, Helen," he interrupted. "No doubt they had dental charts and X rays to identify him. Was anyone a witness to the accident, Barbara?"
"The closest they could get to a witness was the owner of Hillview Farm. He heard the crash and was first on the scene."
"And he is?"
"Hugh Kilbride, Gowan"s father." They ruminated upon this information for a moment. The fire crackled and popped as the flames reached a hard bubble of sap. "So I kept thinking," Barbara went on slowly, "what did Gowan really mean when he said those two words didn"t see to us? Of course, at first I thought it had something to do with Joy"s death. But perhaps it didn"t at all. Perhaps it referred to something his father had told him, a secret he was keeping."
"It"s a possibility, to be sure."
"And there"s something else." She told them about her search through Joy Sinclair"s study, about the absence of any materials that referred to the play she had been writing for Lord Stinhurst.
St. James" interest was piqued. "Was there any sign of forcible entry to the house?"
"None that I noticed."
"Could someone else have had a key?" Lady Helen asked, then went on to say, "But that"s not quite right, is it? Everyone with an interest in the play was at Westerbrae, so how could her house...Unless someone rushed back to London and managed to get everything out of the study before you arrived. Yet that doesn"t seem at all likely, does it? Or even possible. Besides, who would have a key?"
"Irene, I imagine. Robert Gabriel. Perhaps even..." Barbara hesitated.
"Rhys?" Lady Helen asked.
Barbara felt a stirring of discomfort. She could read worlds into the manner in which Lady Helen had said the man"s name. "Possibly. There were a number of phone calls to him on her telephone bill. They were interspersed with calls to a place called Porthill Green." Her loyalty to Lynley prevented her from saying anything else. The ice she was walking on in this private investigation was insubstantial enough without giving Lady Helen any information which she might inadvertently or deliberately pa.s.s on to someone else.
But Lady Helen required no further information. "And Tommy thinks that Porthill Green somehow gives Rhys a motive for murder. Of course. He"s looking for a motive. He told me as much."
"And yet, none of this takes us any closer to understanding Joy"s play, does it?" St. James looked at Barbara. "Va.s.sal," he said. "Does that mean anything to you?"
She frowned. "Feudalism and fiefs. Should it mean something more?"
"It"s somehow connected to all of this," Lady Helen answered. "It"s the only part of the play that stuck in my mind."
"Why?"
"Because it made no sense to anyone but the members of Geoffrey Rintoul"s family. And it made perfect sense to them. They reacted when they heard the character say that he wasn"t about to become another va.s.sal. It seemed to be some sort of familial code word that only they understood."
Barbara sighed. "So where do we go from here?"
Neither St. James nor Lady Helen had an answer for her. They fell into several minutes of meditation that were broken by the sound of the front door opening and a young woman"s pleasant voice calling, "Dad? I"m home. Absolutely freezing and in desperate need of food. I"ll eat anything. Even steak and kidney pie, so you can see how immediately in danger of starvation I am." Her light laughter followed.
Cotter"s voice replied sternly from one of the upper floors. "Your "usband"s eaten every crumb in the "ouse, luv. And that"ll teach you to leave the poor man to "is own devices all these hours. What"s the world comin" to?"
"Simon? He"s home so soon?" Footsteps sounded hurriedly in the hall, the study door burst open, and Deborah St. James said eagerly, "My love, you didn"t-" She stopped abruptly when she saw the other women. Her eyes went to her husband and she pulled off a beret the colour of cream, loosing an undisciplined ma.s.s of coppery red hair. She was dressed in business clothes-a fine coat of ivory wool over a grey suit-and she carried a large metal camera case which she set down near the door. "I"ve been doing a wedding," she explained. "And together with the reception, I thought I"d never escape. You"re all of you back from Scotland so soon? What"s happened?"
A smile broke over St. James" face. He held out his hand and his wife crossed the room to him. "I know exactly why I married you, Deborah," he said, kissing her warmly, tangling his hand in her hair. "Photographs!"
"And I always thought it was because you were absolutely mad for my perfume," she replied crossly.
"Not a bit of it." St. James pushed himself out of his chair and went to his desk. There, he rooted through a large drawer and pulled out a telephone directory which he opened quickly.
"Whatever are you doing?" Lady Helen asked him.
"Deborah"s just given us the answer to Barbara"s question," St. James replied. "Where do we go from here? To photographs." He reached for the telephone. "And if they exist, Jeremy Vinney is the one man who can get them."
11.