Elizabeth’s head shot up at that. “Of course not! Smarmy little man with fingers like hairy sausages.” She stabbed her fork at her plate. “As far as I was concerned, Joy could have the little beast. I think he’s pathetic, rubbing up to theatre people in the hope that hanging about might give him the talent he lacked to make it on the stage years ago. Pathetic!” The sudden burst of passion seemed to disconcert her. As if to negate it, she shifted her eyes and said, “Well, perhaps that’s why Mummy considered him such a suitable candidate for me. Two little blobs of pathos, drifting into the sunset together. God, what a romantic thought.”
“But you went to his room-”
“I was looking for Joy. Because of Aunt Francie and her bloody pearls. Although now I think about it, Mummy and Aunt Francie probably had the entire scene planned out in advance. Joy would rush off to her room, salivating over her new acquisition, leaving me alone with Vinney. No doubt Mummy had already been in his room with fl ower petals and holy water, and all that was left was the act itself. What a pity. All that effort she went to, only to have it wasted on Joy.”
“You seem fairly certain about what was going on between them in Vinney’s room. I do wonder about that. Did you see Joy? Are you certain she was with him? Are you sure it wasn’t somebody else?”
“I…” Elizabeth stopped. She toyed jerkily with knife and fork. “Of course it was Joy. I heard them, didn’t I?”
“But you didn’t see her?”
“I heard her voice!”
“Whispering? Murmuring? It was late. She’d have kept it low, wouldn’t she?”
“It was Joy! Who else could it have been? And what else would be going on between them after midnight, Inspector? Poetry readings? Believe me, if Joy went to a man’s room, it was with only one thing on her mind. I know it.”
“She did that with Alec when she visited at your home?”
Elizabeth’s mouth shut, tightened. She went back to her plate.
“Tell me what you did when you left the read-through the other night,” Lynley said.
She moved the sliced sausage into a neat little triangle. Then with the knife, she began cutting the circular pieces in half. Each slice was sparely made and carried out with acute concentration. It was a moment before she replied. “I went to my aunt. She was upset. I wanted to help.”
“You’re fond of her.”
“You seem surprised, Inspector. As if it’s a miracle of sorts that I could be fond of anything. Is that right?” In the face of his refusal to rise to her taunting, she put down knife and fork, pushed her chair fully back, and regarded him straightforwardly. “I took Aunt Francie to her room. I put a compress on her head. We talked.”
“About?”
Elizabeth smiled one last time, but it was, inexplicably, a reaction that seemed to mix both amusement and the knowledge of having bested an opponent. “The Wind in the Willows, if you really must know,” she said. “You’re familiar with the story, aren’t you? The toad. The badger. The rat. And the mole.” She stood, reached for her cape, and swung it round her shoulders. “Now if there’s nothing more, Inspector, I’ve things to see to this morning.”
That said, she left him. Lynley heard her bark of laughter echo in the hall.
IRENE SINCLAIR had herself just heard the news when Robert Gabriel found her in what Francesca Gerrard optimistically labelled her games room. Behind the last door in the lower northeast corridor, almost obscured behind a pile of disused outdoor garments, the room was completely isolated, and once inside, Irene welcomed its smell of mildew and wood rot and the pervasive congestion of dust and grime. Obviously, the renovation of the house had not reached this far corner yet. Irene found herself glad of it.
An old billiard table sat in the centre of the room, its baize covering loosely rippled, the netting under most of the pockets either torn or missing altogether. There were cue sticks on a rack on the wall, and Irene fi ngered these absently as she made her way to the window. No curtains covered it, a condition that contributed to the numbing want of heat. Since she wore no coat, she held her body tightly and rubbed her hands along her arms, pressing hard against the wool sleeves of her dress, feeling the answering friction like a kind of pain.
From the window there was little to see, just a grove of winter-bare alders beyond which the slate top of a boathouse seemed to be sprouting from a hillock like a triangular excrescence. It was an optical illusion, fabricated from the angle of the window and the height of the hill. Irene considered this idea, brooding over the continuing place that illusions seemed to be making in her life.
“God in heaven, Renie. I’ve been looking for you everywhere. What are you doing in here?” Robert Gabriel crossed the room to her. He had come in noiselessly, managing to shut the warped door without a sound. He was carrying his overcoat and said in explanation of it, “I was just about to go outside and start a search.” He dropped the coat on her shoulders.
It was a meaningless enough gesture, yet Irene still felt a distinct aversion to his touch. He was so near that she could smell the cologne he wore and the last vestige of coffee fighting with toothpaste upon his breath. It made her feel ill.
If Gabriel noticed, he gave no sign. “They’re letting us leave. Have they made an arrest? Do you know?”
She couldn’t bring herself to look at him. “No. No arrest. Not yet.”
“Of course, we’re to be available for the inquest. God, what a dashed inconvenience it is to have to run back and forth from London. But at least it’s better than having to stay in this ice pit. The hot water’s entirely gone, you know. And little hope of having repairs done on that old boiler for at least three days. That’s taking roughing it to the limit, isn’t it?”
“I heard you,” she said. Her voice was a whisper, small and despairing. She felt him looking at her.
“Heard?”
“I heard you, Robert. I heard you with her the other night.”
“Irene, what are you-”
“Oh, you needn’t worry that I’ve told the police. I wouldn’t do that, would I? But that’s why you’ve come looking for me, I dare say. To make sure my pride ensures my silence.”
“No! I don’t even know what you’re talking about. I’m here because I want to take you back to London. I don’t want you to be going off on your own. There’s no telling-”
“Here’s the most amusing part,” Irene interrupted acidly. “I’d actually come looking for you. God help me, Robert, I think I was ready to have you back. I’d even-” To her shame, her voice broke and she moved away from him as if by that she would regain her self-control. “I’d even brought you a picture of our James. Did you know he was Mercutio at school this year? I had two photographs made, one of James and one of you in a double frame. Remember that photo of you as Mercutio all those years ago? Of course, you don’t look very much alike because James has my colouring, but all the same I thought you’d want to have the pictures. Mostly because of James. No, I’m lying to myself. And I swore last night that I’d stop it. I wanted to bring you the pictures because I hated you and I loved you and just for a moment the other night when you and I were together in the library, I thought there was a chance…”
“Renie, for the love of God-”
“No! I heard you! It was Hampstead all over again! Exactly! And they say that life doesn’t repeat itself, don’t they? What a fi lthy laugh!
All I needed to do was open the door to fi nd you a second time having my sister. Just as I did last year, with the only difference being that I was alone this time. At least our children would have been spared a second go at the sight of their father sweating and panting and moaning over their lovely aunt Joy.”
“It isn’t-”
“What I think?” Irene felt her face quiver with encroaching tears. Their presence angered her-that he should still be able to reduce her to this. “I don’t want to hear it, Robert. No more clever lies. No more, ‘It only happened once.’ No more anything.”