“Curious that Vinney’s presence sticks in your mind.”
“Not at all. Years ago he had a small part in a production I did in Norwich. And I remember thinking when I saw him yesterday that he has about as much stage presence now as he did then. Which is to say he has none. He’s always looked like someone who’s just dropped fifteen lines and can’t think how to ad-lib his way out of the mess. He couldn’t even manage to rhubarb successfully. Poor man. The stage was not his gift, I’m afraid. But then he’s awfully dumpy to play any signifi cant role.”
“What time did you return to your room last night?”
“I’m really not certain, as I didn’t check the time. It’s not the sort of thing one does as a matter of course. I just played records until I was sufficiently cooled off.” She gazed at the fi re. Her unruffled composure altered a degree as she ran a hand along the fine crease in her trousers. “No, that’s not quite true, is it? I wanted to make certain David had time to fall asleep. Face-saving, I suppose, although when I think about it now, why I wanted to give him a chance to save face is beyond me.”
“To save face?” Lynley queried.
Joanna smiled quickly, without apparent cause. It appeared to be a distraction, a way of automatically concentrating an audience’s attention on her beauty rather than the quality of her performance. “David is in the wrong about this entire contract situation with Robert Gabriel, Inspector. And had I come back sooner, he would have wanted to put the anger between us at rest. But…” She looked away again, touching the tip of her tongue to her lips as if in the need to buy time. “I’m sorry. I just don’t think I can tell you after all. Silly of me, isn’t it? I suppose you might even want to arrest me. But there are some things…I know David wouldn’t have told you himself. But I couldn’t go back to our room until he was asleep. I just couldn’t. Please understand.”
Lynley knew she was asking for permission to cease talking, but he said nothing, merely waiting for her to continue. When she did so, she kept her face averted, and she drew on her cigarette several times before crushing it out altogether.
“David would have wanted to make it up. But he hasn’t been able to…for nearly two months now. Oh, he would have tried anyway. He’d have felt he owed me that. And if he failed, everything would have been that much worse between us. So I stayed out of the room until I thought he’d be asleep. Which he was. And I was glad of it.”
This was a fascinating piece of information, to be sure. It made the longevity of the Ellacourt-Sydeham marriage even more diffi cult to understand. As if in recognition of this fact, Joanna Ellacourt spoke again. Her voice became sharp, unclouded by either sentiment or regret.
“David’s my history, Inspector. I’m not ashamed to admit that he made me what I am. For twenty years he’s been my biggest supporter, my biggest critic, my best friend. One doesn’t throw that over simply because life gets a little inconvenient now and again.”
Her final statement declared marital loyalty more eloquently than anything Lynley had ever heard. Nonetheless, it was diffi cult for him to put aside David Sydeham’s evaluation of his wife. She was, indeed, one hell of an actress.
FRANCESCA GERRARD’S bedroom was tucked far away into the corner of the upper northeast corridor, where the hallway narrowed and an old disused harp, covered haphazardly, cast a Quasimodo shadow against the wall. No portraits hung here. No tapestries served as buffers against the cold. Here were no overt illustrations of comfort and security. Only monochromatic plaster, showing the tracery of age like fine webbing, and a paper-thin carpet running along the fl oor.
Casting a hasty look behind her, Elizabeth Rintoul slipped down this hallway and paused at her aunt’s door, listening intently. From the upper west corridor, she could hear the rumble of voices. But from inside the room there was nothing. She tapped her fingernails against the wood, a nervous movement that resembled the pecking of small birds. No one called entrance. She knocked again.
“Aunt Francie?” A whisper was all she was willing to risk. Again there was no response.
She knew her aunt was inside, for she’d seen her walk down this corridor not fi ve minutes past when the police had finally unlocked all their rooms. So she tried the doorknob. It turned, feeling slippery under her sweaty hand.
Inside, the air held a smell of musty pomanders, sweetly suffocating face powder, pungent analgesic, and inexpensive cologne. The room’s furnishings acted as companion pieces to the bleak paucity of decoration in the corridor outside: a narrow bed, a single wardrobe and chest of drawers, a cheval glass that cast strange green reflections, distorted so that foreheads were bulbous and chins were too small.
Her aunt had not always used this as her bedroom. It was only after her husband’s death that she had moved to this part of the house, as if its inconvenience and inelegance were part of the process of mourning him. She appeared to be engaged in that process now, for she was sitting upright on the very edge of the bed, her attention given to a studio photograph of her husband that was hanging on the wall, the room’s sole decoration. It was a solemn picture, not at all the Uncle Phillip that Elizabeth remembered from her childhood, but undeniably the melancholy man he had become. After New Year’s Eve. After Uncle Geoffrey.
Elizabeth shut the door quietly behind her, but as the wood scraped against the strike plate, her aunt gave a choked, mewling gasp. She rose swiftly from the bed and spun, both hands raised in front of her like claws, as if in defence.
Elizabeth stiffened. How a gesture, so simple, could bring everything back, a memory suppressed and believed forgotten. A six-yearold girl, wandering happily out to the stable in Somerset; seeing the kitchen maids squatting to look through a fissure in the building’s stone wall where the mortar had worn away; hearing them whisper to her Come and see some nancy boys, luv; not knowing what it meant but eager-always so pathetically eager-to be friends; bending to the peephole and seeing two stable-boys, their clothes strewn carelessly round a stall, one of them on all fours and the other rearing and plunging and snorting behind him and both of their bodies sheened with a sweat that glistened like oil; frightened and recoiling from the sight only to hear the girls’ stifled laughter. Laughter at her. At her innocence and her blind naïveté. And wanting to strike out at them, to hurt them, to claw at their eyes. With hands just like Aunt Francie’s were now.
“ Elizabeth!” Francesca dropped her arms. Her body sagged. “You startled me, my dear.”
Elizabeth watched her aunt warily, afraid to contend with any other memories that might be stirred by another inadvertent gesture. Francesca, she saw, had begun to make herself ready for dinner when her husband’s picture had drawn her into the reverie that Elizabeth had interrupted. Now she was peering at her reflection in the mirror as she ran a brush through her thinning grey hair. She smiled at Elizabeth, but her lips quivered to belie whatever air of tranquillity she was straining to project.
“As a girl, you know, I got used to looking in the mirror without seeing my own face. People say it can’t be done, but I mastered it. I can do my hair, my make-up, my earrings, anything. And I never have to see how homely I am.”
Elizabeth didn’t bother to offer a soothing denial. Denial was insult, for her aunt spoke the truth. She was homely and had always been so, burdened by a long, horsey face, a preponderance of teeth, and very little chin. Possessing a gangling body, she was all arms, legs, and elbows, the recipient of every genetic curse of the Rintoul family. Elizabeth had often thought that homeliness was the reason her aunt wore so much costume jewellery, as if it might somehow distract one’s attention from the gross misfortunes of her face and body.