A Banquet of Consequences

by Elizabeth George

  “And Rory Statham as well.”

  “Indeed. Rory Statham as well. So you have your work cut out for you.”

  “No, it’ll be Barbara’s work, if things go my way,” Lynley said.

  VICTORIA

  LONDON

  “How many different ways do I have to say no, Tommy?” Detective Superintendent Isabelle Ardery set her cutlery at the appropriate I’ve-finished-my-meal angle. She’d had the plaice. He’d had the beef. She’d pronounced her fish perfectly cooked, and he’d wished he could have said the same.

  He’d talked her into a late lunch at Peeler’s instead of her usual, which was a sandwich either at her desk or taken on the run. She’d accepted and they’d had their meal à deux without being interrupted by anyone as there was no one else there at this hour. This allowed Lynley ample time to broach the subjects of one death, one poisoning, two investigations, and the completely sensible need for someone to see to it that the flow of information between the disparate investigations was well maintained. Since Shaftesbury was also part of the mix, there were many complications that could result in something vital to the uncovering of the truth being cast aside, ignored, or deliberately swept under the carpet. That could result in an internal investigation of the sort that went on for months, produced ill will everywhere, and cost a fortune. They didn’t want that to happen, did they?

  “None of that is our concern.” Ardery had spoken pleasantly enough, but Lynley could see the glint of warning in her eyes.

  He’d continued, undaunted. As a case in point, he stressed, the detective superintendent needed to consider the source of the sodium azide. It had to have come from somewhere, and it had to have been carefully placed in a substance that had been ingested, breathed, or cutaneously applied. Thus, both victims’ belongings were meant to be forensically studied. She would agree to that, wouldn’t she?

  “Of course, but it’s not within our purview to orchestrate a forensic examination of anything, I’m afraid. Shall I ask for the bill? Let’s make this dutch as I’ve obviously not gone the route you’d hoped and the guilt ensuing from allowing you to pay will doubtless give me indigestion.”

  “Hear me out,” he said.

  “When it will make no difference?” She sighed. She nodded at the waiter and ordered a coffee. She then said to him, “All right. You’ve ten more minutes. Do go ahead.”

  He explained that, upon the erroneous conclusion of the initial forensic pathologist that Clare Abbott had died of natural causes, those belongings that she’d had with her in Cambridge—previously in the possession of the Cambridge police—had been sent along to her friend and editor Rory Statham. Those belongings—wherever they were and one presumed in Shaftesbury—now needed to be returned to Cambridge for close examination. In the meantime, Rory Statham’s flat and everything in it needed to be handled by SO7. Additionally, the contents of Clare Abbott’s two homes would have to be considered, one by the Shaftesbury police and the other by the police out of the Bishopsgate station, which was nearest to her London home. The chance of all these different groups being consistently and continually willing to communicate with one another in order to share information that could be vital to sorting out exactly what happened to these two women was, they needed to face it, remote.

  Isabelle had remained unmoved and she stayed unmoved as her coffee arrived along with milk and sugar, neither of which she used.

  Lynley said to her, “Someone got to both of these women. With an identical means of murder and of attempted murder in front of us—”

  “We don’t know the first is murder at all, Tommy. And—unless you’ve recently become prescient—we don’t know if the second situation is even identical to the first.”

  “Come along, Isabelle—”

  She shot him a look.

  “Guv, what else could they be when the condition of the women was identical?”

  “Considering one is dead and one is alive—”

  “She’s in a coma. She’s clinging to life.”

  “—I’d hardly call their conditions identical. Nor can you, incidentally. Nor can Sergeant Havers, Tommy. Because this is about Barbara Havers, isn’t it, at the end of the day? You can’t have asked me to lunch because you’re determined to talk me into handing yet another investigation over to you. Aren’t you occupied enough?”

  He decided to sidestep. He said, in reference to her earlier remark, “I seriously doubt a rational person would choose sodium azide as a means of suicide, Isabelle.”

  She looked up sharply once again at his use of her given name. She said nothing. He went on.

  “Consider it: One woman in Cambridge and another in London and both of them technically alone when it happened. And both ingesting an identical deadly poison.”

  “Yes, I see it’s all suspicious or whatever you’d like to call it,” Isabelle said, “if the second woman was poisoned using the same means at all which, let me press this point as I seem not to be getting through to you, we do not know at present. But in any case, we’re not about to go banging into someone else’s investigation. It’s just not on. As far as I can tell, an investigation into the Cambridge death will begin the moment that someone hands over the second autopsy report to the police there, which I assume is going to happen today or, pray God, has already happened. In the meantime, the locals in Fulham will handle whatever needs to be handled once they determine the situation of the second woman, who—let’s face it—might merely have been attempting suicide.”

  “She’d rung Barbara Havers. She’d left a message to arrange a meeting. That hardly seems a prologue to suicide. You have to admit that her phone call to Barbara doesn’t suggest the kind of despair that leads one to make an attempt on one’s life.”

  “She’s lost her friend, Tommy. Someone she loves, let’s presume. She hardly expected her to die so suddenly, so she’s grief-stricken, bereft. She feels as if the world has ended because her own life now seems—” Isabelle clocked his expression and he saw her clock it. She said quickly, “Good God. I’m sorry. That was unforgivable.”

  Lynley wasn’t about to go near the topic of Helen’s death. He said, “She wouldn’t have killed herself or even made the attempt and left her dog just to remain in her flat. She would have made some sort of arrangement for him.”

  “I never would have taken you for an animal lover. Where is it?”

  “What?”

  “What have you done with that dog? If you’ve not already taken it to Battersea—”

  “This is a dog apparently trained to help her in some way,” he said. “I’m not about to hand it over to a dog home while its owner is in hospital. Barbara took him from the flat.”

  “And? Where is it then? Please don’t tell me one of you has tied the creature up next to your desk.”

  “I don’t tie up dogs as a rule,” he said stiffly.

  “Damn it, Tommy—”

  “Underneath.”

  “What?”

  “The dog. He’s lying underneath my desk. Untied, as it happens.”

  “You’re impossible. Do something with him at once. We’re not running an animal shelter, for the love of God. Although truth is I sometimes think we’re running a zoo.”

  “Of course. A zoo,” he said, the solution to the problem of Arlo in front of him. “It’s for a brief time only. I have a place for him to go.”

  “See to it, then.”

  “As to the other . . . ? Guv, you made the arrangement for Berwick-upon-Tweed with a single phone call, and I know you can do the same for this. Beyond that . . . Barbara’s intent upon proving herself to you. She’d like very much to allay your concerns about her.”

  “She’d like very much for me to shred the transfer request. And that, I must tell you, is not going to happen.”

  He sighed. They were going round and round and ending up each time where they began. H
e reached for a roll that had been left on their table. He pocketed it as he nodded at the waiter for the bill.

  “What are you doing with that roll?” Isabelle asked him sharply.

  “I’m giving it to the dog,” he told her.

  15 OCTOBER

  BELSIZE PARK

  LONDON

  He’d had to have Arlo with him on the following day at work, but he’d managed this with the help of his colleagues. Between enjoying walkies in the company of whoever was available, having surreptitious snacks beneath one desk or another, and being dashed off into the ladies’ or gents’ when the coast looked to become unclear, the dog had remained a secret from the detective superintendent. That additional day keeping Arlo at the Met was all that Lynley needed, as it happened: He had an engagement with Daidre for dinner in the evening.

  This particular night promised to be the unveiling of Daidre’s new kitchen in which, she declared, she was going to prepare him a celebratory gourmet meal that matched the beauties she’d managed to bring about in the renovation of the room. Aside from one brief glimpse, he hadn’t yet seen it as she’d not let him set a foot near it once she’d begun what she’d referred to as “the serious part of the work,” and because of this, he’d brought champagne along for a proper christening, in addition to Arlo.

  She saw the dog at his side at once when she opened the door. She said, “What have we here? How sweet! What a face! Have you a dog now, Tommy?” which he adroitly sidestepped by presenting the champagne, kissing her hello, and telling the truth: “I’ve missed you.”

  Daidre said, “Have you? It’s been only a week. Or is it ten days? No matter. I’ve missed you as well. It was this final push in the kitchen. I needed every free moment. And now it’s completed. You must see it at once.”

  He followed her, stood in the kitchen doorway, and simply admired. Aside from the electrical work and the plumbing, Daidre had as usual done everything. She was, he thought, a most remarkable woman. Everything about her kitchen was state-of-the-art. Stainless steel appliances, granite work tops, tiled backsplashes, sleek cupboards, modern lighting, six-burner cooker, microwave, espresso maker . . . The flooring was hardwood, the windows were double glazed, the walls were replastered and perfectly painted, and the comfortable eating area looked out of the French windows and onto the garden-yet-to-be.

  Lynley turned to her. “I’m beginning to wonder if there’s anything you can’t do, Daidre. You never needed me to repair the glazing in that window in Cornwall, did you?”

  “The one that you broke to get into my cottage?” She smiled. “Actually? No. But it did give you employment and I saw you needed that.”

  “Perhaps,” he said. “But perhaps I needed you rather more.”

  “That’s the sort of remark that tends to lead men and women directly to the bedroom.”

  “Does it indeed? Tell me you’ve completed it, then.”

  “The bedroom? Not yet.”

  He did wonder about that, whether she was putting off the bedroom for reasons having to do not with the logic of completing the more difficult projects first but rather with keeping him at a safe distance from her. He didn’t mind so much that she was still insisting upon sleeping inside a sleeping bag on a camp bed. But it did prevent him spending the night, which he minded a great deal. He also minded that she was still refusing to spend a night beneath his own roof. She’d dine with him. She’d allow herself to be seduced into an hour or more in his bedroom, but that was it. It wasn’t owing to Helen, she told him. It was rather the idea that she might actually become too comfortable spending time in his home.

  “What’s the problem with becoming comfortable?” he’d asked her.

  “I think you know the answer to that.”

  When she gestured round his Eaton Terrace townhouse, he forced himself to see it through her eyes. It was no matter that the antiques had been in his family since they weren’t antiques, and it was no matter that the same applied to the paintings on the walls, the silver on the sideboard, and the porcelain in the cabinets. The very presence of these items marked the difference between them, a form of Rubicon that—in Daidre’s mind—neither of them could cross.

  Now she took the champagne from him and fetched two flutes for it. From the fridge, she brought forth a tray of various toppings meant, she told him, to give them something she called “a bruschetta buffet.” She announced that she’d not had lunch that day, and she’d be cross if he wasn’t famished. She poured the champagne, clicked glasses with him, put her hand to his cheek and said, “It is so lovely to see you, Tommy,” and then asked him about the dog.

  “Ah. Arlo.” He made as quick a job of it as he could, telling her what little he knew of Arlo’s purpose in the life of Rory Statham. He told her of Rory’s condition in hospital and of the earlier death of her friend Clare Abbott. He explained how he himself had come to have Rory’s dog in his possession, touching upon Barbara Havers’ part in everything. Daidre already knew how tenuous was Barbara’s position at New Scotland Yard, and Lynley had many weeks earlier put her into the picture of the potential transfer to the north of England that Barbara had ostensibly “requested.” What he hadn’t told her was his own part in the most recent knot in the skein that comprised the death in Cambridge and the poisoning in London, if such it was. This had involved a second and far less official telephone call to Detective Chief Superintendent Daniel Sheehan of the Cambridge police.

  Isabelle, he’d assured himself before contacting Sheehan, had brought it all on. She was being as bloody-minded about Barbara Havers as Barbara Havers was being bloody-minded about inserting herself into an investigation that did not belong to the Met. But between the two of them, Barbara’s bloody-mindedness did at least seem to Lynley to have a potential positive outcome, whereas Isabelle’s obdurate refusal to allow Barbara enough slack to give her wiggle room seemed absolutely destined to take the detective sergeant once more afoul of her duty.

  He’d been honest with Daniel Sheehan. Eschewing Oscar Wilde, he’d resorted to the plain and simple truth. Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers needed to work on the Clare Abbott death in some fashion in order to prove herself to Detective Superintendent Isabelle Ardery, he’d explained to Sheehan. She also needed to work on the Clare Abbott death in some fashion in order to prove herself to herself. This had to involve an exercise in police work in which she was able to operate within guidelines she’d been given by her superintendent: obeying orders as she was given them but at the same time following her own instincts, within the boundaries of regular police work, of course.

  Sheehan had remembered Barbara Havers, which was no surprise to Lynley since he and Havers had spent several days on Sheehan’s patch as intermediaries between the Cambridge Constabulary and the officials at St. Stephen’s College when one of their female students was murdered. Once Lynley explained to him the complexities of the case in hand—one death, an ostensible poisoning by means of the same substance, two locations, a third location which had housed the first victim—Sheehan had been willing to do what he could to get Barbara involved.

  When this had been accomplished, Isabelle’s fury had been, admittedly, somewhat unnerving. Her shout of “Inspector Lynley, in my office—now” reminded him of his school days although he’d never been one to be hauled into the headmaster’s domain for a proper dressing-down, so cooperative a pupil had he always been. When Isabelle refused to allow him to shut her office door—the better to discipline him at a volume guaranteed to display her displeasure to his colleagues—he bore with their meeting as his just due.

  “You’ve deliberately orchestrated this in defiance of my orders,” she hissed, “and I goddamn well ought to have paperwork drawn up for your transfer to the Hebrides.”

  To his mild and completely spurious “Guv . . . I’ve not the least idea—” she picked up a holder for pens and pencils and threw it at him.

  “Don’t you say
a bloody word,” she shouted. “I’ve heard from Sheehan, he’s made his request, he’s paved the way, and the rest is history. But you listen to me and you hear me well, Detective Inspector. If you ever again defy me on a matter of personnel or anything else, I’ll have you up before CIB2 so fast you won’t know what hit you. How dare you go behind my back and make arrangements for anyone—let alone that infuriating undisciplined excuse of a police detective—to work a case that is not in our jurisdiction let alone—”

  “Isabelle.” He’d walked towards the door to shut it.

  “Stay where you are!” she shrieked. “I did not give you leave to move a single inch and I don’t intend to until I’ve finished with you. Is that clear?”

  He shot her a look and then took a breath to calm himself.

  She evidently caught this and said, “Not used to it, are you? His mighty lordship hasn’t been dressed down in his entire career, has he? Well, you listen to me. The next time you take it upon yourself to machinate an assignment, it will be your last. I’m in charge here. You are not. This isn’t a game, Inspector. No one is your chess piece. Now get the hell out of my sight and stay there.”

  He walked to the door, having been given leave to do so, but instead of leaving he closed it.

  She fairly howled, “Get out!”

  He said, “Isabelle.”

  “Guv!” she shouted. “Boss. Ma’am. Superintendent. Do you ever do anything you prefer not to do?”

  He walked over to her. She was behind her desk, but he made no attempt to join her there, just stood in front of her and spoke quietly. “You see me as wanting my way in things that don’t concern me.”

  “Bloody damn well right.”