“When did Joy leave your room?”

“Shortly before one.”

“Did anyone see her leave?”

“There was no one about. I don’t think anyone saw her, unless Elizabeth was peering out her door somehow. Or maybe Gabriel. My room was between both of theirs.”

“Did you see Joy to her room?”

“No. Why?”

“Then she might not have gone there at once. If, as you said, she thought she wouldn’t be able to sleep.”

“Where else would she go?” Understanding swept across his face. “To meet someone? No. She wasn’t interested in any of these people.”

“If, as you say, Joy Sinclair was merely your friend, how can you be certain that she didn’t share something more than friendship with someone else? With one of the other men here this weekend. Or one of the women, perhaps.”

At the second suggestion, Vinney’s face clouded. He blinked and looked away. “There were no lies between us, Inspector. She knew everything. I knew everything. Surely she would have told me if…” He stopped, sighing, rubbing the back of his gloved hand wearily across his forehead. “May I be off? What else is there to say? Joy was my friend. And now she’s dead.” Vinney spoke as if there were a connection between the last two ideas.

Lynley couldn’t help wondering if there was. Curious about the man and his relationship with Joy Sinclair, he chose another subject.

“What can you tell me about a man called John Darrow?”

Vinney dropped his hand. “Darrow?” he repeated blankly. “Nothing. Should I know who he is?”

“Joy did. Evidently. Irene said she even mentioned him at dinner, perhaps in reference to her new book. What can you tell me about it?” Lynley watched Vinney’s face, waiting to see a flicker of recognition from the man with whom Joy had ostensibly shared everything.

“Nothing.” He appeared embarrassed about this apparent contradiction in what he had previously said. “She didn’t talk about her work. There was nothing.”

“I see.” Lynley nodded thoughtfully. The other man shifted his weight back and forth on his feet. He played his keys from one hand to the other. “Joy carried a tape recorder in her shoulder bag. Did you know?”

“She used it whenever a thought struck her. I knew that.”

“She made reference to you on it, asking herself why she was in such a lather over you. Why might she have said that?”

“In a lather over me?” His voice rose incredulously.

“‘Jeremy. Jeremy. Oh Lord, why be in such a lather over him? It’s hardly a lifetime proposition.’ Those were her words. Can you shed light on them?”

Vinney’s face was tranquil enough, but the unrest in his eyes betrayed him. “No. I can’t. I can’t think what she meant. We didn’t have that sort of friendship. At least not on my side. Not at all.”

Six denials. Lynley knew his man well enough to discern the fact that his last remarks had deliberately misdirected the conversation. Vinney wasn’t a good liar. But he was skilled in seizing the moment and using it cleverly. He’d just done so. But why?

“I won’t keep you any longer, Mr. Vinney,” Lynley concluded. “No doubt you’re anxious to get back to London.”

Vinney looked as if he wanted to say more, but instead he got into the Morris and switched on its ignition. At fi rst the car made that rolling sound that comes from an engine unwilling to start. But then it coughed and fi red into life, releasing exhaust fumes dyspeptically. Vinney cranked down the window while the front wipers worked to free the windscreen of snow.

“She was my friend, Inspector. Just that. Nothing more.” He reversed the car. The tyres spun fiercely on a patch of ice before gaining hold on the gravel. He shot down the drive towards the road.

Lynley watched Vinney’s departure, intrigued by the man’s compulsion to repeat that last remark, as if it contained an underlying meaning that a detective’s close scrutiny would instantly reveal. For some reason-perhaps because of the distant presence of Inverness-it took him back to Eton and a fifth form’s passionate debate over the obsessions and compulsions evidenced by Macbeth, that pricking of conscience spurring his tormented references to sleep once the deed was done. What need is going unfulfilled in the man despite his successful completion of the act that he thought would bring him joy? His pacing literature master would ask the question insistently, pointing at this boy or that for assessments, evaluations, speculations, defence. Needs drive compulsions. What need? What need? It was a very good question, Lynley decided.

He felt for his cigarette case and started back across the drive just as Sergeant Havers and St. James came round the corner of the house. Snow clung to their trouser legs as if they’d been thrashing in it. Lady Helen was right behind them.

For an awkward moment, the four of them stared at one another wordlessly. Then Lynley said, “Havers, put a call in to the Yard, will you? Let Webberly know we’re on our way back to London this morning.”

Havers nodded, disappearing through the front door. With a quick glance from Lady Helen to Lynley, St. James did likewise.

“Will you come back with us, Helen?” Lynley asked when they were alone. He put his cigarette case back into his pocket, unopened. “It’ll be a quicker trip for you. We’ve a helicopter waiting near Oban.”

“I can’t, Tommy. You know that.”

Her words were not unkind. But they were unmercifully final. There seemed to be nothing more for them to say to each other. Still, Lynley found himself struggling to break her reserve in some manner, no matter how shadowy or inconsequential. It was inconceivable that he should part from her this way. And that’s what he told her, before common sense or pride or stiff propriety could prevent him from doing so.

“I can’t bear your going away from me like this, Helen.”

She was caught before him in a streak of sunlight. It slanted through her hair, turning it the colour of a fine, old brandy. Just for a moment her lovely dark eyes held an unreadable emotion. Then it vanished.

“I must go,” she said quietly, passed by him and entered the house.

It’s like a death, Lynley thought. But without a proper burial, without a period of mourning, without an end to lamentation.

IN HIS CLUTTERED London offi ce, Superintendent Malcolm Webberly placed the telephone receiver back into its cradle.

“That was Havers,” he said. In a characteristic gesture, he raked his right hand through his thinning, sandy hair and pulled on it roughly, as if to encourage his incipient baldness.

Sir David Hillier, Chief Superintendent, did not move from the window where he had been standing for the last quarter hour, his eyes placidly evaluating the serried collection of buildings that composed the city skyline. As always, he was impeccably dressed, and his posture suggested a man at ease with success, comfortable with navigating the treacherous straits of political power. “And?” he asked.

“They’re on their way back.”

“That’s all?”

“No. According to Havers, they’re tracking a lead to Hampstead. Apparently, Sinclair was working on a book there. At her home.”

Hillier’s head turned slowly, but with the sun behind him his face was in shadow. “A book? In addition to the play?”

“Havers wasn’t all too clear about it. However, I got the impression it was something that struck Lynley, something that he feels he must follow through.”

Hillier smiled coolly at this. “Thank God for Inspector Lynley’s remarkably creative intuition.”

“He’s my best man, David,” Webberly said bitterly.

“And he’ll follow orders, of course. As will you.” Hillier turned back to his contemplation of the city.