He finally said, “I must think about it.”

“How long?”

“Have you a mobile?”

“Of course.”

“Give me the number, then. I’ll let you know by the end of the day.”

THE REAL QUESTION for him was what it meant, not whether he would do it. He’d tried to leave police work behind him, but police work had found him and was likely to continue to find him whether he willed it or not.

Once Isabelle Ardery left him, Lynley went to the window and watched her stride back to her car. She was quite tall-six feet at least because he was six feet two inches and they’d been virtually eye to eye-and everything about her shouted professional, from her tailored clothing to her polished pumps to her smooth amber-coloured hair falling just below her ears and tucked behind them. She’d had on gold button-shaped earrings and a necklace with a similarly shaped pendant of gold, but that had been the extent of her jewellery. She wore a watch but no rings, and her hands were well cared for, with manicured nails cut to her fingertips and skin that looked soft. She was definitely a mixture of masculine and feminine, as she would have to be. To succeed in their world, she would be regularly forced to be one of the boys while remaining, at heart, one of the girls. It wouldn’t be easy.

He watched her open her bag at her car. She dropped her keys, scooped them up, and unlocked the vehicle. She paused to search through her shoulder bag for something, but apparently she couldn’t find it because she tossed her bag inside the car and in a moment she’d started it and had driven off.

He stood looking at the street for a moment once she’d gone. He hadn’t done this in quite some time as it was in the street that Helen had died, and he’d not been able to bring himself to look lest his imagination take him back to that moment. But looking now, he saw that the street was merely a street like so many others in Belgravia. Stately white buildings, wrought-iron railings that gleamed in the sunlight, window boxes that spilled forth ivy and star jasmine in a sweet perfume.

He turned from the sight. He made for the stairway and climbed, but he did not return to the library where he’d been reading the Financial Times. Instead, he went to the bedroom next to the room he’d shared with his wife, and he opened its door for the first time since the previous February. And for the first time since the previous February, he also went inside.

It was not quite finished. A cot required assembling, as they’d only got it as far as unloaded from its box. Six rolls of wallpaper tilted against the wainscoting, which had been painted once but definitely needed another coat. A new ceiling light remained in its box, and a changing table stood beneath one of the windows, but it was still bare of appropriate padding. The quilted padding was itself rolled up in a Peter Jones carrier bag, among other carrier bags that contained pillows, nappies, a breast pump, bottles…It was astonishing how much gear was required for a creature likely weighing upon birth seven pounds or less.

The room was airless and quite hot, and Lynley moved to the windows and shoved them open. There was little breeze to mitigate the temperature, and he wondered they hadn’t thought of that when they’d chosen this room for their son’s nursery. Of course, it had been late autumn then, and on into winter, so summer heat would have been the last thing on their minds. Instead, they’d been consumed with the fact of the pregnancy alone, and not actually with what the pregnancy was going to produce. He supposed many couples approached it that way. Get through the tough bits leading up to and through childbirth and then shift into parenting mode. One couldn’t be a parent or think like a parent without someone to parent, he concluded.

“M’ lord.”

Lynley swung around. Charlie Denton was in the doorway. He knew Lynley disliked the use of his title, but they’d never settled on what Denton was supposed to say or do to get his attention aside from using the title in some form, mumbled if necessary or said in the midst of a cough.

“Yes? What is it, Charlie? Are you off, then?”

He shook his head. “I’ve been already.”

“And?”

“One never knows about these things. I thought the manner of dress would do it, but there were no words of approbation from the director.”

“Were there not? Damn.”

“Hmm. I did hear someone murmur, ‘He has the look,’ but that was it. The rest is waiting.”

“As always,” Lynley said. “How long will it take?”

“For a callback? Not long. Commercials, you know. They’re picky but they’re not that picky.”

He sounded resigned. It was, Lynley thought, the way of the acting world. Making one’s way there was a microcosm of life itself. Desire and compromise. Putting oneself in a position of chance and feeling the slap of rejection more often than the embrace of success. But there was no success without taking the chance, without risk and consequence, without a willingness to leap.

He said, “In the meantime, Charlie, while you’re waiting to be cast as Hamlet…”

“Sir?” Denton said.

“We need to pack up this room. If you’ll make us a jug of Pimm’s and bring it up here, we should be able to accomplish it by the end of the day.”

Chapter Seven

MEREDITH FINALLY TRACKED GORDON JOSSIE TO FRITHAM. She’d assumed he’d still be working on the building in Boldre Gardens where Gina Dickens had met him, but when she got there it was obvious from the state of the roof that he was long gone to another job. The thatch had been dressed and Gordon’s signature piece was in place on the ridge: an elegant peacock whose tail protected the vulnerable corner of the ridge and trailed in sculpted straw several feet down the roof.

Meredith muttered a disappointed expletive-low so that Cammie couldn’t hear it-and said to her daughter, “Let’s wander over to the duck pond, shall we, ’cause there’s supposed to be a pretty green bridge over it that we can walk on.”

The duck pond and the bridge ate up an hour, but it turned out to be well spent as things happened. They stopped at the refreshment kiosk afterwards and while purchasing a Cornetto for Cammie and a bottle of water for herself, Meredith learned where she could find Gordon Jossie without having to ring him and thus allow him time to ready himself to see her.

He was working on the pub near Eyeworth Pond. She gathered this from the girl at the till who apparently possessed the information because she’d had her eye on Gordon’s apprentice for the entire time the two men had worked at Boldre Gardens. She’d managed to make inroads into this person’s affections, apparently, and despite-or perhaps because of-having legs so bowed she was shaped like a turkey wishbone. That’s where Meredith could find the thatchers, she said, near Eyeworth Pond. She narrowed her eyes and asked which one of the men Meredith was looking for. Meredith wanted to tell her to save her anxiety for something worthwhile. A man in any condition, of any age, and in any form was the last thing she wished to add to her life. But she said she was trying to find Gordon Jossie, at which point the girl helpfully indicated the exact location of Eyeworth Pond, just east of Fritham. And the pub was nearer to Fritham than it was to the pond anyway, she added.

The idea of another pond and more ducks made it easy to get Cammie from the lawns and flowers of Boldre Gardens into the car, never her favourite place to be because she positively loathed the restrictions of her car seat and the vehicle’s lack of air-conditioning, and she had long been very happy to make her displeasure known. As luck would have it, though, Fritham was some quarter hour only from the gardens, just on the other side of the A31. Meredith drove there with all the windows rolled down and instead of her affirmation tape, she popped in a cassette that was a favourite of Cammie’s. Cammie was partial-of all things-to tenors, and she could actually warble “Nessuno Dorma” with astonishing operatic flair.