Believing the Lie

by Elizabeth George

  “Sounds as if you don’t see much of each other.”

  Fairclough smiled. “Secret of a long and happy marriage. Bit unusual, but it’s worked all these years. Ah. There’s Valerie now.”

  Lynley moved his gaze from Fairclough to the three terraces, assuming the man’s wife had come into view from elsewhere on the property. But he indicated the lake and upon it a rowingboat. A figure had just put oars into water and was bending to the task of rowing towards the shore. It was impossible at this distance to tell if the oarsman was male or female, but Fairclough said, “She’ll be heading towards the boathouse. Let me take you to her. You’ll be able to see where Ian… Well, you know.”

  Outside, Lynley took note of the fact that the boathouse wasn’t visible from the main house. To gain it, Fairclough led him to the south wing of Ireleth Hall, where through shrubbery formed by the autumn red foliage of a mass of spiraea over six feet tall, an arbour gave way to a path. This wound through a garden thick with the twin of holly, mahonia, which appeared to have grown in the spot for one hundred years. The path curved downwards through a little plantation of poplars and ultimately opened onto a fanlike landing. The boathouse was here: a fanciful structure faced in the stacked slate of the district with a steeply pitched roof and a land-side single door. There were no windows.

  The door stood open and Fairclough entered first. Inside, they stood on a narrow stone dock that ran round three sides of the building, the lake water lapping against it. A motorboat and a scull were tied to this dock, as well as an ancient canoe. According to Fairclough, the scull had belonged to Ian Cresswell. Valerie Fairclough had not gained the boathouse yet, but they could see her from its water-side door, and it was obvious she would be with them within minutes.

  “Ian capsized the scull when he fell,” Fairclough said. “Just over there. You can see where the stones are missing. There were two of them— side by side— and he apparently grasped one and lost his balance when it came loose. He fell and the other stone went as well.”

  “Where are they now?” Lynley went to the spot and squatted for a better look. The light was bad inside the boathouse. He would need to come back with a torch.

  “What?”

  “The stones that came loose. Where are they? I’ll want a look at them.”

  “They’re still in the water as far as I know.”

  Lynley looked up. “No one brought them up for examination?” That was unusual. An unexpected death raised all sorts of questions and one of them was the one that asked how a stone on a dock— no matter the dock’s age— had loosened. Wear and tear might have done it, of course. So might a chisel, however.

  “The coroner ruled it an accident, as I’ve told you. It looked straightforward to the policeman who came to the scene. He phoned an inspector who came, had a look, and reached the same conclusion.”

  “Were you here when this happened?”

  “In London.”

  “Was your wife alone when she found the body?”

  “She was.” And with a glance towards the lake, “Here she is now.”

  Lynley rose. The rowingboat was approaching quickly, the oarsman applying muscular strokes. When she was close enough for the boat to glide the rest of the way into the boathouse on its own power, Valerie Fairclough removed the oars from the oarlocks, rested them in the bottom of the boat, and floated inside.

  She was wearing rainclothes: yellow slicker and waxed trousers, gloves, and boots. She had nothing on her head, however, and her grey hair was managing to look perfectly kempt despite the fact she’d been out on the water.

  “Any luck?” Fairclough asked.

  She looked over her shoulder but did not appear startled. She said, “There you are, then. Rotten luck entirely, I’m afraid. I was out for three hours and all I managed were two miserable little things who looked at me so pathetically, I was forced to toss them back into the water. You must be Thomas Lynley”— this to Lynley. “Welcome to Cumbria.”

  “It’s Tommy.” He extended his hand to her. She threw him the dock line instead of grasping it.

  “Cleat hitch,” she said. “Or do I speak Greek?”

  “Not to me.”

  “Good man.” She handed her fishing gear to her husband: a tackle box, a rod, and a pail of squirming bait that Lynley recognised as maggots. Clearly, she wasn’t a squeamish woman.

  She clambered out of the rowingboat as Lynley tied it up. She was extremely agile, impressive for her age since Lynley knew she was sixty-seven years old. When she was on the dock, she shook his hand. “Welcome again,” she said. “Has Bernie given you the tour?” She tugged off her rain slicker and removed the trousers. She hung these from pegs on the boathouse wall as her husband stowed her fishing kit beneath a wooden workbench. When he turned to her, she offered her cheek for a kiss. She said, “Darling,” as ostensible greeting and added, “How long’ve you been back?” to which he said, “Noon,” to which she said, “You should have sent up a flare.” She added, “Mignon?” and he said, “Not yet. She’s well?” to which she replied, “Slow process, but better.” It was, Lynley knew, that shorthand of all couples who’ve been together so many years.

  Valerie said to him with a nod at the scull, “You were having a look at where our Ian drowned, weren’t you. Bernie and I aren’t of the same mind on this subject, but I expect he’s told you that.”

  “He’s mentioned that you found the body. It must have been a shock.”

  “I hadn’t even known he’d gone out rowing. I hadn’t known he was on the property at all as he hadn’t parked his car near the house. He’d been in the water nearly twenty-four hours when I got to him, so you can imagine what he looked like at that point. Still, I’m glad I found him and not Mignon. Or Kaveh. I can only imagine what would have happened then.”

  “Kaveh?” Lynley asked.

  “Ian’s partner. He’s doing some work for me here on the property. I’m putting in a children’s area and he’s done the design. He’s overseeing the work as well.”

  “He’s here every day?”

  “Perhaps three times a week? He doesn’t check in with me, and I don’t keep track.” She regarded Lynley as if evaluating what was going on in his mind. She said, “As the Americans say on their television programmes, do you like him for the murder?”

  Lynley smiled briefly. “It may well turn out that the coroner was right.”

  “I have every confidence that it will.” She looked from Lynley to her husband. Fairclough, Lynley saw, was gazing intently through the water-side opening in the boathouse, out onto the lake. She said, “It was a terrible thing to have happened. We were very fond of Ian, Bernie and I. We should have kept a closer eye on the dock. It’s quite old— more than a hundred years— and it’s never been out of use. Stones become loose. See here. There’s another.”

  She used her toe against a stone next to the spot from which the other two had fallen. It was, as she said, unsteady as well. But of course, Lynley thought, that might have been owing to the fact that someone had deliberately loosened it.

  “When accidents happen, we want to blame someone,” Valerie said. “And this was a wretched thing to have happened because it leaves those poor children with one mad parent and no tempering influence whatsoever. If there’s fault here, however, it’s mine, I’m afraid.”

  “Valerie,” her husband said.

  “I’m in charge of Ireleth Hall and the property, Bernie. I fell down on the job. Your nephew died as a result.”

  “I don’t blame you,” her husband replied.

  “Perhaps you should consider doing so.”

  They exchanged a look from which Bernard broke away first. That look said more than their words had done. There were, Lynley reckoned, deep waters here. They went far beyond those found in the lake.

  4 NOVEMBER

  MILNTHORPE AND ARNSIDE

  CUMBRIA

  When they’d laid their plans for taking a few days to help Tommy in Cumbria, Deborah St. James had enter
tained visions of herself and Simon being domiciled in a hotel draped in a stunning display of Virginia creeper in its autumnal glory, overlooking one of the lakes. She would even have settled for a situation viewing a mere waterfall as the county appeared to have a plethora of them. But where she ended up was an old inn called the Crow and Eagle exactly at the point one would expect an inn to be sitting: at an intersection of two roads down which lorries seemed to rumble at all hours of the night. This intersection was in the middle of the market town of Milnthorpe, so far south of the Lakes as not to be considered part of the Lakes at all, and the only water it boasted was the River Bela— nowhere in view— which appeared to be one of the countless tributaries that debouched into Morecambe Bay.

  Simon had seen her expression at the first glimpse of the place. He’d said, “Ah,” and, “Well, we’re not here on holiday, are we, my love, but we’ll take a day or two when we’ve finished. A grand hotel with a view of Windermere, roaring fires, scones, tea, and whatever else.” He’d leered at her playfully.

  She’d eyed him and said, “I’m planning to hold you to that, Simon.”

  “I’d have it no other way.”

  On the evening of their arrival, she’d received on her mobile the call that she’d been awaiting. She answered as she’d been answering every call for the last twenty-four hours, just for the practice. She’d said, “Deborah St. James Photography,” and she’d nodded to Simon when the caller identified himself as Nicholas Fairclough. It hadn’t taken long to make the arrangements: He was willing to meet with her and discuss the project that she had phoned about. He’d said, “But this documentary… it’s not about me, is it? At least not about my private life.” She’d assured him that it was only about the project he had developed for recovering addicts. It would be a preliminary interview, she told him. She would give a report to a filmmaker from Query Productions, who would ultimately make the decision regarding the project’s inclusion in his documentary. “This is purely on spec,” she told him. She liked this jargon. Anything to make her seem like the genuine article to this man. “I’ve no idea if you’d actually be in the film at the end of the day, you understand.” This seemed to relieve him. He sounded quite buoyant when he said, “Right, then. When shall we meet?”

  She was readying herself for that meeting now. Simon was on his mobile with the coroner, spinning his own tale about a lecture he would be giving to a class at University College, London. He was, she was finding, far more glib than she. This surprised her, for while he had always been the most confident of men and his credentials were impressive enough to make him confident, his confidence had always seemed to be connected to his relationship with the truth. That he could dissemble so well gave her pause. One didn’t like to know one’s husband was quite so adept at lying when he had to.

  Her own mobile rang as she was gathering her things. She looked at the number and recognised it. No need to be Deborah St. James Photography at the moment. The caller was Simon’s brother David.

  She knew at once why David was ringing her. She was more or less ready for the call.

  “Just thought I’d answer any questions you might have,” was how David brought up the subject. His voice had that encouraging ring to it, jollying her along. “The girl’s quite keen to meet you, Deborah. She’s had a look at your website: the photos and all that. Simon said you were worrying a bit about the London placement since she lives here in Southampton. I daresay she wouldn’t have considered it, but she knows Simon’s my brother, and her father’s worked at the company here for a good twenty years. Part of the accounting department,” he added hastily. That was synonymous with she’s from a good family, as if he felt that the girl’s having a dockworker as a father would constitute the possession of tainted blood.

  They wanted her to decide. Deborah understood this. David and Simon both saw the situation as the perfect solution to a problem having gone on for years. They were both the sort of man who takes each difficulty in life as it comes up and deals with it as soon as possible and just as efficiently. Neither of them was like her, projecting into the future and seeing how complicated and potentially heartbreaking was the scenario they were proposing.

  She said, “David, I just don’t know. I don’t think it would work. I can’t see how— ”

  “Are you saying no?”

  That was another one of the problems. Saying no meant no. Asking for more time meant not taking a position. Why on earth, Deborah wondered, could she not take a definite position on this matter? Last chance and only chance seemed like the reasons, but she was still frozen in place, unwilling to speak.

  She said she’d ring him back. At the moment, she had to set off for Arnside. A heavy sigh at his end told her he wasn’t happy with this, but he rang off. Simon said nothing, although he’d obviously heard her side of the call as he’d finished with his own. They parted at the sides of their respective hire cars, wishing each other luck.

  Deborah’s drive was the lesser one. Nicholas Fairclough lived just on the far outskirts of the village of Arnside, and Arnside was southwest of Milnthorpe, a short distance along the side of a muddy flat of sand that gave onto the Kent Channel. There were fishermen here, positioned along the road and down the bank, although Deborah couldn’t tell exactly where they were fishing. From the car, it didn’t look as if there was any water in the mud flat at all. She could see, however, where the shifting tide from Morecambe Bay had scoured out depressions in the sand, creating banks and drops that suggested danger.

  Arnside House was the name of Nicholas Fairclough’s property. It sat at the end of the Promenade, an impressive display of Victorian mansions that had no doubt at one time served as the summer homes of industrialists from Manchester, Liverpool, and Lancaster. Most of these were stately-looking conversions now: flats possessing unimpeded views of the channel, of the railway viaduct that stretched across the water towards Grange-over-Sands, and of Grange-over-Sands itself, just visible today through a mild autumn mist.

  Unlike the mansions that preceded it, Arnside House was an unadorned structure, utterly plain and whitewashed over a roughcast exterior that was itself a finishing surface over what was undoubtedly stone or brick. Its windows featured unpainted sandstone surrounds, and its many gables displayed rounded chimneys whitewashed like the rest of the building. Only the rainwater heads were other than plain, and these were highly stylised in a design Deborah recognised as Arts and Crafts. Shades of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, she thought. Once inside the structure, however, she discovered a whimsical blend of everything from the medieval to the modern.

  Nicholas Fairclough answered the door. He admitted her into an oak-panelled entrance hall whose marble floor was detailed in a pattern of diamonds, circles, and squares. He took her coat from her and led her down an uncarpeted corridor and past a large room having the look of a medieval banqueting hall, complete with minstrels’ gallery above a fireplace inglenook. This hall was something of a wreck as far as Deborah could tell, and as if in explanation of this, Nicholas Fairclough said, “We’re restoring the old pile bit by bit. That’s going to be last, I’m afraid, as we need to find someone who can cope with the most astounding wallpaper. Peacocks and Petunias, I call it. Peacocks is accurate but I can’t swear to the other. Here, we can talk in the drawing room.”

  This was sunshine yellow with a white plaster frieze of hawthorn berries, birds, leaves, roses, and acorns. In any other room, this elaborate decoration would have been the main feature, but the drawing room’s fireplace served as a remarkable focal point of bright turquoise tiles and a hearth that duplicated the diamonds, circles, and squares of the entrance. A fire was burning here and although the fireplace— like the one in the great hall— formed part of an inglenook with bench seats, bookshelves, and stained glass windows, Nicholas motioned Deborah to one of two low-slung chairs in one of the bay windows from which they had a view of the water. A table stood between the chairs, a coffee service and three cups on it, along with a fan of magazine
s.

  “I wanted to speak to you for a moment before I fetch my wife,” Nicholas said. “I must tell you that I’m completely on board with talking to you and with having the project featured in this film if it comes to it. But Allie’s going to take some convincing. I thought I’d give you a heads-up.”

  “I see. Can you give me some idea…?”

  “She’s rather private,” he said. “She’s from Argentina and she’s self-conscious about her English. Frankly, I think she speaks it perfectly well, but there you have it. Plus…” He tipped his fingers beneath his chin and looked thoughtful for a moment before saying, “She’s protective of me, as well. There’s that.”

  Deborah smiled. “This film isn’t an exposé or anything, Mr. Fairclough. Although, to be honest it could turn into that if you’re enslaving recovering addicts for your own purposes. I suppose I should ask if you need protecting for some reason?”

  She’d meant it lightheartedly, but she couldn’t help noting how seriously he took the question. He appeared to be tossing round a few possibilities, and she found this detail rather telling. He finally said, “Here’s what I think it is. She worries that I’ll be disappointed in some way. And she worries where disappointment will lead me. She wouldn’t say that, but one has a way of knowing these things about one’s wife. After a bit of time together. If you know what I mean.”

  “How long have you been married?”

  “Two years last March.”

  “You’re quite close then.”

  “We are indeed, I’m pleased to say. Let me fetch her to meet you. You don’t look all that frightening, do you.”

  He sprang up from his chair and left her in the drawing room. Deborah looked around. Whoever had decorated it had an artistic flair that she could well appreciate. The furniture reflected the period from which the house had come, but it managed to remain secondary to the features of the room. Aside from the fireplace, the most notable of these were columns: slender poles surmounted with capitals that were bowls carved with birds and fruits and leaves. They stood at the sides of the bay windows, they formed the ends of the inglenook’s benches, they held up a shelf that ran round the room just beneath the frieze. The restoration of this room alone must have cost a fortune, Deborah reckoned. She wondered where a reformed drug addict had managed to come up with such a sum.