A Great Deliverance Page 8

  “The piece to be presented next month?”

  “The very one. Simon had left it all organised for me in the lab. I was supposed to run off the preliminary set of data, attach them to the cloth, and set up the lab for the final study. But I—”

  “Mixed up the cloths,” Lynley finished. “St. James will go on about that, Helen. What do you propose to do?”

  She looked forlornly down at the samples that she had dumped unceremoniously onto the floor. “Of course, I’m not hopelessly ignorant in the matter. After four years in the laboratory, at least I recognise the twenty-two calibre and can easily find the forty-five and the shotgun. But as to the others…and even worse, as to which blood pattern goes with each trajectory…”

  “It’s a muddle,” Lynley finished.

  “In a word,” she agreed. “So I thought I’d pop by this morning to see if perhaps we could sort it all out.”

  Lynley leaned down and fingered his way through the pile of material. “Can’t be done, old duck. Sorry, but you’ve hours of work here and we’ve a train to catch.”

  “Then whatever shall I say to Simon? He’s been working on this for ages.”

  Lynley pondered the question. “There’s one thing…”

  “What?”

  “Professor Abrams at Chelsea Institute. Do you know him?” When she shook her head, he went on. “He and Simon both have testified as expert witnesses. They did in the Melton case only last year. They know each other. Perhaps he’d help. I could phone him for you before I leave.”

  “Would you, Tommy? I’d be so grateful. I’d do anything for you.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Surely not the thing to say to a man over breakfast.”

  She laughed engagingly. “Even the dishes! I’d even give up Caroline if it came to that.”

  “And Jeffrey Cusick?”

  “Even Jeffrey. Poor man. Traded for bullet holes without a second thought.”

  “All right then. I’ll see to it as soon as we’ve finished our breakfast. I take it that we may now finish our breakfast?”

  “Oh yes, of course.” She dug happily into her plate while Lynley put on his spectacles and looked at his papers once more. “What kind of case is it that has you two rushing off so early in the morning?” Lady Helen asked Barbara, pouring herself a second cup of tea, which she sugared and creamed with a liberal hand.

  “A decapitation.”

  “That sounds particularly grim. Are you travelling far?”

  “Up to Yorkshire.”

  The teacup was suspended and then lowered carefully to the saucer beneath. Lady Helen’s eyes moved to Lynley, regarding him for a moment before she spoke. “Where in Yorkshire, Tommy?” she asked impassively.

  Lynley read a few lines. “A place called…here it is, Keldale. Do you know it?”

  There was a minute pause. Lady Helen considered the question. Her eyes were on her tea, and although her face was without expression, a pulse began to beat in the vein at her throat. She looked up but the smile she offered did not touch her eyes. “Keldale? Not at all.”

  5

  Lynley tossed down his newspaper and considered Barbara Havers. There was no need to do so surreptitiously, for she was bent over the glaucous-hued Formica train table between them, perusing the Keldale murder report. He gave momentary, idle consideration to the depths to which British Rail was sinking with its current colour scheme designed to take maximum wear with minimum upkeep, but then his thoughts returned to the officer opposite him.

  He knew about Havers. Everyone did. She’d failed miserably through her first tenure in CID, swiftly alienating MacPherson, Stewart, and Hale, three of the easiest DIs with whom one could ever hope to work. MacPherson especially, with his rolling highland humour and his paternal approach, should have been a mentor extraordinaire for someone like Havers. The man was a virtual teddy bear. Had any DS ever failed to work successfully at his side? Only Havers.

  Lynley remembered the day of Webberly’s decision to put her back in uniform. Everyone had known it was coming, of course. It had been coming for months. But no one had been quite prepared for the woman’s reaction.

  “If I was lah-dee-dah Eton, you’d be keeping me,” she’d shouted in Webberly’s office in a broken voice loud enough for the entire floor to hear. “If I’d a cheque-book large enough and a title on my name and a willingness to screw everything in sight—woman, man, child, or animal—I’d be quite good enough for your precious department!”

  At the mention of Eton, three heads had swivelled in Lynley’s direction. By the end of the diatribe, a quick cessation of workday noise indicated to him that every person within range of vision was looking his way. He’d been standing at a cabinet, rooting about for the file on that miserable little worm Harry Nelson, but found that his fingers had suddenly become clumsy. Of course, he really didn’t need the file. Not exactly at the moment. Indeed, he couldn’t stand there forever; he had to turn, to go back to his desk.

  He made himself do it, made himself say quite lightly, “Good Lord, I always draw the line at animals,” and made himself walk casually across the room.

  Nervous, uncomfortable laughter greeted his remark. Then Webberly’s door slammed and Havers stormed wildly down the corridor. Her mouth was twisted with rage, her face blotched and mottled with tears that she wiped off savagely with the sleeve of her coat. Lynley felt the entire force of her hatred wash over him as her eyes met his and her lips curled in contempt. It was like being struck by an illness for which there was no cure.

  A moment later, MacPherson lumbered by his desk, tossed down the file on Harry Nelson, and said, “Ye’re a class act, laddie,” in his amiable rumble. But still, it had taken at least ten minutes for his hands to stop shaking so that he could dial the phone for Helen.

  “Lunch, old duck?” he had asked her.

  She could tell. She could hear it at once. “Absolutely, Tommy. Simon’s been forcing me all morning to look at the most hideous hair samples imaginable—did you know that scalp actually comes off when you pull out someone’s hair, darling?—and somehow lunch seems just the very thing. Shall we say the Connaught?”

  Blessed Helen. God, what a wonderful anchor she’d been in his life this past year! Lynley pushed the thought from his mind and returned to his study of Havers. She reminded him just a bit of a turtle. Especially this morning when Helen had come into the room. The poor wretch had absolutely frozen, muttered less than ten words, and retreated right into her shell. What bizarre behaviour! As if she had something to fear from Helen! He felt in his pockets for his cigarette case and lighter.

  Sergeant Havers glanced up at his movement, then returned to her report, her face impassive. She doesn’t smoke or drink, Lynley thought and smiled wryly. Well, get used to it, Sergeant. I’m not at all a man who neglects his vices. Not in the past year, at least.

  He’d never quite been able to comprehend the woman’s remarkable antipathy towards him. There was, if one thought about it, the entire ridiculous subject of class—and God knows he’d taken a fair share of ribbing once his colleagues discovered he’d inherited a title. Yet after a week or two of their mocking bows and fanfares whenever he entered a room, the title had simply ceased to be an issue at all. But not for Havers, who seemed to hear the orotund words Eighth Earl of Asherton booming out every time he walked anywhere near her, something he’d scrupulously avoided doing since she’d been returned to uniform.

  He sighed. And here they were now together. What was it exactly that Webberly had in mind in establishing this grotesque alliance of theirs? The super was by far the most intelligent man he’d ever run across at the Yard, so this quixotic little partnership hadn’t come out of nowhere. He looked out the rain-splattered window. If I can only determine which one of us is Sancho Panza, we’ll get on famously. He laughed.

  Sergeant Havers looked up curiously but said nothing. Lynley smiled. “Just look for windmills,” he told her.

  They were drinking the railway’s Styrofoam
coffee from its Styrofoam cups when Sergeant Havers tentatively brought up the question of the axe.

  “No prints on it at all,” she observed.

  “It does seem odd, doesn’t it?” Lynley replied. He winced at the taste of the liquid and shoved the cup aside. “Kill your dog, kill your father, sit there waiting for the police to arrive, but wipe the axe handle clean of your fingerprints? It doesn’t follow.”

  “Why do you think she killed the dog, Inspector?”

  “To silence it.”

  “I suppose so,” she agreed reluctantly.

  Lynley saw that she wanted to say something more. “What do you think?”

  “I…It’s nothing. You’re probably quite right, sir.”

  “But you have another idea. Let’s hear it.” Havers was eyeing him warily. “Sergeant?” he prompted.

  She cleared her throat. “I was only thinking that she really wouldn’t need to silence it. I mean…it was her dog. Why would it bark at her? I could be wrong, but it seems that it would bark at an intruder and an intruder would want to silence it.”

  Lynley studied the tips of his steepled fingers. “‘The curious incident of the dog in the night-time,’” he murmured. “It would bark at a girl it knew if she were killing her father,” he argued.

  “But…I was thinking, sir.” Havers nervously pushed her clipped hair behind her ears, a gesture that made her more unattractive than ever. “Doesn’t it look as if the dog was killed first?” She leafed through the papers that she had replaced in the folder and took out one of the photographs. “Teys’s body has collapsed right over the dog.”

  Lynley examined the picture. “Yes, of course. But she could have arranged it.”

  Havers’s sharp little eyes widened in surprise. “I don’t think she could, sir. Not really.”

  “Why not?”

  “Teys was six feet four inches tall.” She clumsily pulled out more of the report. “He weighed…here it is, fourteen and one-half stone. I can’t see this Roberta slinging round fourteen and one-half stone of dead weight just to arrange a crime scene. Especially if she intended to confess immediately after. It doesn’t seem possible. Besides, the body had no head, so you’d think there’d be a bit of blood on the walls if she’d slung it about. But there wasn’t.”

  “Score a point for you, Sergeant,” Lynley said, pulling his reading spectacles out of his pocket. “I think I agree. Here, let me have a look at that.” She handed him the entire file. “Time of death was put at between ten and midnight,” he said, more to himself than to her. “Had chicken and peas for dinner. Something wrong, Sergeant?”

  “Nothing, sir. Someone walked over my grave.”

  A charming expression. “Ah.” He read on. “And barbiturates in the blood.” He looked up, his brow furrowed, and stared sightlessly at Sergeant Havers over the tops of his spectacles. “Somehow one never thinks of a man like that needing sleeping pills. There he is, putting in a hard day’s work on a farm, out in that wonderful fresh air of the dales. He eats a hearty dinner and just drops off to sleep by the fire. Bucolic bliss. So why sleeping pills?”

  “It looks as if he’d only just taken them.”

  “Obviously. One hardly expects him to have somnambulated his way out to the barn.”

  She froze at once at his tone, retreated back into her shell. “I only meant—”

  “Excuse me,” Lynley interrupted quickly. “I was joking. I do sometimes. It relieves the tension. You’ll have to try to get used to it.”

  “Of course, sir,” she replied with deliberate courtesy.

  The man accosted them as they walked over the pedestrian bridge towards the exit. He was extremely thin, anaemic-looking, obviously someone who was victim to at least a thousand different kinds of stomach problems that were the bane of his existence. Even as he approached them, he popped a tablet into his mouth and began chewing upon it with furious determination.

  “Superintendent Nies,” Lynley remarked affably. “Have you come all the way from Richmond to meet us? That’s quite a drive for you.”

  “Sixty bloody miles, so let’s get it straight right from the top, Inspector,” Nies snapped. He’d stopped dead in front of them, blocking their way to the stairs that would lead them down to the departures platform and out of the station. “I don’t want you here. This is Kerridge’s goddamned game and I’ve nothing to do with it. You want anything, you get it from Newby Wiske, not from Richmond. Is that perfectly clear? I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to hear from you. If you’ve come up here with a personal vendetta in mind, Inspector, then just shove it up your arse right now. Got it? I’ve not time for poncey schoolboys itching for a pretty scratch of revenge.”

  There was a moment of silence. Watching Nies’s dyspeptic face, Barbara wondered if anyone ever spoke to Lord Asherton in such a colourful manner on his Cornish estate.

  “Sergeant Havers,” Lynley said mildly, “I don’t believe you’ve ever been introduced to Chief Superintendent Nies of the Richmond police force.”

  She had never seen a man driven to a loss so swiftly, done with an impeccable show of manners. “Nice to meet you, sir,” she said dutifully.

  “Damn you to hell, Lynley,” Nies snarled. “Just stay out of my way.” With that, he turned on his heel and pushed his way through the crowd towards the exit.

  “Nicely done, Sergeant.” Lynley’s voice was serene. His eyes searched through the swarm of humanity in the terminal. It was nearly noon, and the usual bustle of York’s station was intensified by the lunch hour as people took the opportunity to purchase tickets, to argue car hire prices with the station agents, to meet loved ones who had timed arrivals to fit into the schedules of a working world. Lynley found the person he was looking for, said, “Ah, I see Denton up ahead,” and raised his hand in acknowledgment to a young man who was approaching them.

  Denton had just come out of the cafeteria, caught in the midst of a meal. He was chewing, swallowing, and wiping his mouth with a paper napkin as he dodged through the crowd. He additionally managed to comb his thick dark hair neatly, straighten his necktie, and give a quick glance at his shoes, all before reaching them.

  “Good trip, my lord?” he asked, handing Lynley a set of keys. “The car’s just outside.” He smiled pleasantly, but Barbara saw that he avoided Lynley’s eyes.

  Lynley gazed at his valet critically. “Caroline,” he said.

  Denton’s round, grey eyes grew immediately rounder. “Caroline, my lord?” he repeated innocently. His cherubic face became, if possible, even more cherubic. He flicked a nervous glance back in the direction from which he’d just come.

  “Don’t ‘Caroline, my lord?’ me. We’ve a few things to straighten up here before you go off on this holiday of yours. This is Sergeant Havers, by the way.”

  Denton gulped and nodded quickly at Barbara. “Pleased, Sergeant,” he said and turned his eyes back to Lynley. “My lord?”

  “Stop being so obsequious. You don’t do it at home and in public it makes my skin positively crawl with embarrassment.” Impatient, Lynley shifted his black overnight case from one hand to the other.

  “Sorry.” Denton sighed and dropped the pose. “Caroline’s in the cafeteria. I’ve a cottage lined up in Robin Hood’s Bay.”

  “What a romantic you are,” Lynley observed drily. “Spare me the details. Just tell her to phone Lady Helen and reassure her you’re not off to Gretna Green. Will you do that, Denton?”

  The young man grinned. “Will do. In a tic.”

  “Thank you.” Lynley reached into his pocket and from his wallet extracted a credit card. He handed it to the man. “Don’t get any ideas,” he warned. “I want only the car on this. Is that clear?”

  “Absolutely,” Denton replied crisply. He glanced over his shoulder to the cafeteria, where a pretty young woman had come outside and was watching them. She was as fashionably dressed and as fashionably coiffured as Lady Helen Clyde herself always was. Practically her clone if it came down to it, Barbara t
hought sourly and wondered if it was a requirement of the job: handmaiden to the youngest daughter of an earl, just like someone stepping out of the nineteenth century. The only real difference between Caroline and her ladyship was a minor lack of self-assurance evidenced by Caroline’s grip upon her handbag: a two-fisted clinging to the handles as if it were to be used as a defensive weapon.

  Denton spoke. “Shall I be off then?”

  “Be off,” Lynley responded, and added as the man scurried back in the direction he had come, “Take some care, will you?”

  “Not a fear, my lord. Not a fear,” was the swift reply.

  Lynley watched him disappear into the crowd, the young woman on his arm. He turned to Barbara. “I think that’s the last interruption,” he said. “Let’s be on our way.”

  With that, he led her out onto Station Road and directly up to a sleek, silver Bentley.

  “I—have—got—the—poop,” Hank Watson said confidentially from the next table. “The—straight—certified—verified—poop!” Satisfied that he had the undivided attention of the others in the dining room, he went on. “About the baby-in-the-abbey story. JoJo-bean and I had the straight, certified from Angelina this morning.”

  St. James looked at his wife. “More coffee, Deborah?” he asked politely. When she demurred, he poured some for himself and gave his attention back to the other couple.

  Hank and JoJo Watson hadn’t wasted much time becoming elbow-rubbing intimates of the only other guests at Keldale Hall. Mrs. Burton-Thomas had seen to that by seating them at adjoining tables in the hall’s immense dining room. She hadn’t bothered with introductions. She knew quite well there would be no need. The beautiful bolection mouldings of the room’s panelled walls, the Sheraton sideboard, and the William and Mary chairs became entirely lost to the American couple’s interest once St. James and Deborah entered the room.

  “Hank, hon, maybe they don’t want to hear about the baby in the abbey.” JoJo fingered her gold chain, from which were hanging a veritable excrescence of trinkets. #1 Mom, Applepie, and Sugarbean danced alongside a Mercedes-Benz symbol, a diminutive spoon, and a minuscule Eiffel Tower.