Playing for the Ashes

by Elizabeth George

  “It seems that way.”

  “Then what was she in Kent?”

  “That’s the question,” Lynley said. He got to his feet. “Let’s start looking for the answer.”

  CHAPTER

  4

  The houses in Staffordshire Terrace ran across the southern slope of Campden Hill and reflected the apogee of Victorian architecture in the northern part of Kensington. They were classical Italianate in style, complete with balustrades, bay windows, dog-toothed cornices, and other white stucco ornamentation that served to decorate what would otherwise be plain, solid structures of pepper-coloured bricks. Behind black wrought-iron fences, they lined the narrow street with repetitive dignity, their exteriors differing from one another only through the choice of flowers growing in window boxes and planters.

  At Number 18, the flower was jasmine, and it grew in dense, undisciplined profusion from a bay window’s three boxes. Unlike most of the other houses in the street, Number 18 had not been converted into flats. There was no panel of doorbells, just a single bell, which Lynley and Havers rang some twenty-five minutes after Inspector Ardery had left them.

  “Pish posh.” Havers jerked her head in the direction of the street. “I counted three BMW’s, two Range Rovers, a Jaguar, and a Coupe de Ville.”

  “Coupe de Ville?” Lynley said, looking back at the street upon which the Victorian lampposts were shedding a yellow glow. “Is Chuck Berry in the neighbourhood?”

  Havers grinned. “And I thought you never listened to rock ’n’ roll.”

  “Some things one knows through osmosis, Sergeant, through exposure to a common cultural experience that slyly becomes part of one’s stockpile of knowledge. I call it subliminal assimilation.” He looked to the fan window above the door. Light shone through it. “You did phone her, didn’t you?”

  “Just before we left.”

  “Saying?”

  “That we wanted to talk to her about the cottage and the fire.”

  “Then where—”

  Behind the door a firm voice said, “Who is it, please?”

  Lynley identified himself and his sergeant. They heard the sound of a deadlock being turned. The door swung open, bringing them face-to-face with a grey-haired woman stylishly dressed in a navy sheath with a matching jacket that hung nearly to the hem of the dress. She wore fashionable, large-framed spectacles that winked in the light as she looked from Lynley to Havers.

  “We’re here to see Miriam Whitelaw,” Lynley said, offering the woman his warrant card.

  “Yes,” she said. “I know. I’m she. Please come in.”

  Lynley felt rather than saw Sergeant Havers shoot a look in his direction. He knew she was doing exactly what he was: deciding whether they ought to make a rapid reassessment of their previous conclusions about the nature of the relationship between Kenneth Fleming and the woman with whom he lived. Miriam Whitelaw, although beautifully dressed and groomed, appeared to be somewhere in her late sixties, more than thirty years older than the dead man in Kent. In the modern age, the term living with carried an unmistakable connotation. Both Lynley and Havers had bought into it without thinking. Which, Lynley realised with some self-disgust, wasn’t the most propitious of signs indicating how they were going to fare as the case progressed.

  Miriam Whitelaw stepped back from the door and beckoned them into the entry. She said, “Shall we go up to the drawing room?” and led them down a corridor towards the stairway. “I’ve a fire burning there.”

  A fire would be needed, Lynley thought. Despite the month, the interior of the house seemed only several degrees warmer than a walk-in refrigerator.

  Miriam Whitelaw apparently read his thoughts, because she said over her shoulder, “My late husband and I put in central heating after my father had a stroke in the late sixties. I don’t use it much. I suppose I’m rather more like my father than I would have expected. Except for the electricity, which he finally accepted just after the Second World War, he wanted the house to remain as his parents had fashioned it in the 1870s. Sentimental, I know. But there you have it.”

  Lynley couldn’t see that her father’s wishes had been in any way ignored. Stepping into the entry of Number 18 Staffordshire Terrace was like walking into a time capsule filled with William Morris paper, countless prints on the walls, Persian rugs on the floor, blue-globed former gaslights serving as sconces, and a velvet-topped fireplace in the centre of which dangled a bronze gong. It was decidedly odd.

  The anachronic sensation only increased as they climbed the stairs, initially passing walls given over to a display of faded sporting prints and then after the mezzanine, an entire wall of framed caricatures from Punch. These were arranged according to year. They began with 1858.

  Lynley heard Havers breathe, “Jesus,” as she looked about. He saw her shiver, and he knew it had nothing to do with the cold.

  The room to which Miriam Whitelaw led them could have served as either an admirable set for a television costume drama or a museum’s reproduction of a Victorian drawing room. It had two tiled fireplaces, both with marble surrounds and overmantels of gilt Venetian mirrors in front of which sat ormolu clocks, Etruscan vases, and small bronze sculptures favouring Mercury, Diana, and sinewy men wrestling each other in the nude. A fire burned in the farther of the two fireplaces, and Miriam Whitelaw walked towards this. As she passed a baby grand piano, the fringe on a silk shawl covering the top of it caught on a ring she was wearing. She paused to untangle it, to straighten the shawl, and to right one of the dozen or more photographs that stood in silver frames on the piano top. It wasn’t so much a room as it was an obstacle course consisting of tassels, velvet, arrangements of dried flowers, nursing chairs, and minuscule footstools that threatened the unwary with a headlong fall. Lynley idly wondered if a Miss Havisham were in residence.

  Again as if reading his thoughts, Mrs. Whitelaw said, “It’s the sort of thing one actually gets used to, Inspector. This was a magical place to visit when I was a child. All these intriguing knickknacks to stare at, think about, and weave stories from. When the house came to me, I couldn’t bring myself to alter it. Please. Sit down.”

  She herself chose a nursing chair covered in green velvet. She motioned them towards the armchairs nearer the hard coal fire that was putting off a blaze of heat. The armchairs were deep and plushly upholstered. In them, one didn’t so much sit as sink.

  Next to the nursing chair stood a tripod table on which sat a decanter and small, stemmed glasses. One of these was half-full. Miriam Whitelaw drank from it, saying, “I’ve always had sherry after dinner. A social solecism, I know. Brandy or cognac would be more appropriate. But I’ve never liked either. Would you like a sherry?”

  Lynley said no. Havers looked as if she would have jumped at the chance to have a Glenlivet had it been offered. But she shook her head and plunged her hand into her shoulder bag, bringing forth her notebook.

  Lynley explained to Mrs. Whitelaw how the case would be handled, coordinated from the two locations of Kent and London. He gave her Inspector Ardery’s name. He handed her one of his cards. She took it, read it, and turned it over. She laid it next to her glass.

  “Forgive me,” she said. “I don’t quite understand. What do you mean, ‘coordinated’?”

  “Have you not spoken to the Kent police?” Lynley asked. “Or the fire brigade?”

  “I spoke to the fire brigade. Sometime after lunch. I can’t recall the gentleman’s name. He phoned me at work.”

  “Where’s this?” Lynley saw Havers beginning to write.

  “A printing factory. In Stepney.”

  At this, Havers raised her head. Miriam Whitelaw didn’t exactly look the part of either Stepney or a factory worker.

  “Whitelaw Printworks,” she clarified. “I run it.” She reached in her pocket and brought out a handkerchief, which she held in her palm, curling her fingers round it. “Can you tell me exactly what’s going on, please?”

  “What have you been told so far?”
Lynley asked.

  “The gentleman from the fire brigade told me there’d been a fire in the cottage. He said they’d had to break through the door. He said they’d found that the fire was out and there wasn’t much damage aside from smoke and soot. I wanted to go out and have a look for myself, but he told me that they’d sealed off the cottage and I wouldn’t be able to get in until the investigation was completed. I asked him what investigation. I asked him why we needed an investigation if the fire was out. He asked me who was staying in the cottage. I told him. He said thank you and rang off.” She curled the handkerchief further against her palm. “I phoned down there twice during the afternoon. No one would tell me anything. They took my name and my number each time and said thank you very much and they’d be in touch directly they had some news. That was the extent of it. Now you’re here and…Please. What’s happened?”

  “You told them a woman called Gabriella Patten was staying in the cottage,” Lynley said.

  “She is. The gentleman who phoned asked how to spell her name. He asked if anyone was staying with her. I told him no, as far as I knew. Gabriella had gone out there for seclusion, and I couldn’t imagine she’d be up to entertaining. I asked the gentleman if Gabriella was all right. He said he’d be in touch as soon as he knew.” She raised the handkerchief hand to the necklace she was wearing. This was gold, constructed of heavy links. Her earrings matched it. “As soon as he knew,” she said pensively. “How could he not know…? Was she hurt, Inspector? Is that why you’ve come? Is Gabriella in hospital?”

  “The fire started in the dining room,” Lynley said.

  “That much I know. Was it the carpet? Gabriella likes fires, and if an ember shot out from the fireplace while she was in another room—”

  “Actually, it was a cigarette in an armchair. Several nights ago.”

  “Cigarette?” Miriam Whitelaw’s eyes lowered. Her expression altered. She didn’t look as understanding as she had done at the thought of an unfortunate fireplace ember being the cause of the blaze.

  Lynley leaned forward. “Mrs. Whitelaw, we’ve come to talk to you about Kenneth Fleming.”

  “Ken? Why?”

  “Because, unfortunately, there’s been a death at your cottage. And we need to gather some information in order to sort out what happened.”

  She didn’t stir at first. Then it was only her fingers on the handkerchief, another tight roll along its hem. “A death? But the fire brigade didn’t say. They asked me how to spell her name. They said they’d let me know the moment they discovered anything…And now you’re saying that all along they knew—” She drew a breath. “Why didn’t they tell me? They had me on the phone and they didn’t even bother to say that someone was dead. Dead. In my cottage. And Gabriella…. Oh my God, I must notify Ken.”

  In her words, Lynley heard the fleeting echo of the thane’s distraught wife in Inverness: What, in our house? He said, “There’s been a death, but it wasn’t Gabriella Patten’s, Mrs. Whitelaw.”

  “Wasn’t…?” She looked from Lynley to Havers. She stiffened in her chair, as if she suddenly realised that a horror was about to befall her. “Then that’s why the gentleman wanted to know if someone else was staying there with her.” She swallowed. “Who? Tell me. Please.”

  “I’m sorry to say it’s Kenneth Fleming.”

  Her face altered to a perfect blank. Then it became perplexed. She said, “Ken? That’s not possible.”

  “I’m afraid it is. We’ve had a formal identification of the body.”

  “By whom?”

  “His—”

  “No,” she said. The colour was rapidly draining from her face. “There’s been a mistake. Ken’s not even in England.”

  “His wife identified his body late this afternoon.”

  “It can’t be. It can not be. Why wasn’t I asked…?” She reached out to Lynley. She said, “Ken’s not here. He’s gone with Jimmy. They’re sailing…. They’ve gone sailing. They’ve taken a brief holiday and…They’re sailing and I can’t remember. Where did he…? Where?”

  She struggled to her feet as if standing upright would allow her to think. She looked right and left. Her eyes rolled back dangerously in her head. She crashed to the floor, knocking over the tripod table and its drink.

  Havers said, “Holy hell!”

  The crystal decanter and glasses scattered. The liquor sloshed onto the Persian rug. The scent of sherry was honey-sweet.

  Lynley had risen to his feet as Mrs. Whitelaw got to hers, but he wasn’t quick enough to catch her. Now he moved swiftly to her crumpled body. He checked her pulse, removed her spectacles, and lifted her eyelids. He took her hand between his. Her skin felt clammy and cold.

  “Find a blanket somewhere,” Lynley said. “There’ll be bedrooms above.”

  He heard Havers dash from the room. She pounded up the stairs. He removed Mrs. Whitelaw’s shoes, pulled one of the tiny footstools over, and elevated her feet. He checked her pulse again. It was strong. Her breathing was normal. He took off his dinner jacket and covered her with it. He rubbed her hands. As Sergeant Havers bounded back into the room, a pale green counterpane in her arms, Mrs. Whitelaw’s eyelids fluttered. Her forehead creased, deepening the incisionlike line between her eyebrows.

  “You’re all right,” Lynley said. “You’ve fainted. Lie still.”

  He replaced his jacket with the counterpane, which Havers had apparently ripped from an upstairs bed. He righted the tripod table as his sergeant collected the glasses and decanter and used a packet of tissues to sop up at least part of the sherry that had pooled out in the shape of Gibraltar, soaking into the rug.

  Beneath the counterpane, Mrs. Whitelaw trembled. The fingers of one hand crept out from beneath the cover. She clutched at its edge.

  “Shall I get her something?” Havers asked. “Water? A whisky?”

  Mrs. Whitelaw’s lips twitched with the effort at talking. She fastened her eyes on Lynley. He covered her fingers with his hand and said to his sergeant, “She’s all right, I think.” And to Mrs. Whitelaw, “Just be still.”

  Her eyes squeezed shut. Her breathing grew ragged, but it appeared to be a battle for emotional control rather than an indication of a physical crisis.

  Havers added another several coals to the fire. Mrs. Whitelaw raised her hand to her temple. “Head,” she whispered. “God. The hammering.”

  “Shall we phone for your doctor? You may have hit it badly.”

  She shook her head weakly. “Comes and goes. Migraines.” Her eyes filled with tears and she widened them, it seemed, in an effort to keep the tears from spilling over. “Ken…he knew.”

  “He knew?”

  “What to do.” Her lips looked dry. Her skin seemed cracked, like old glaze on porcelain. “My head. He knew. He could always make the pain go.”

  But not this pain, Lynley thought. He said, “Are you alone here in the house, Mrs. Whitelaw?” She nodded. “Shall we phone for someone?” Her lips formed the word no. “My sergeant can stay with you the night.”

  Her hand shook the counterpane in a gesture of refusal. “I…I shall be…” She blinked hard. “I shall be…all right presently,” she said, although her voice was faint. “Forgive me, please. So sorry. The shock.”

  “Don’t apologise. It’s quite all right.”

  They waited in a silence broken only by the hissing of the coal as it burned and the ticking of several clocks in the room. Lynley felt oppression closing in on all sides. He wanted to throw open the stained and painted windows. Instead, he remained where he was, one hand on Mrs. Whitelaw’s shoulder.

  She began to raise herself. Sergeant Havers came to her side. She and Lynley eased the older woman to a sitting position and from there to her feet. She wobbled. They kept their hands on her elbows and guided her to one of the overstuffed chairs. Sergeant Havers handed her her spectacles. Lynley found her handkerchief under the nursing chair and returned it to her. He wrapped the counterpane round her shoulders.

  She c
leared her throat and said, “Thank you,” with some dignity. She put on her spectacles and straightened her clothes. She said tentatively, “If you don’t mind…If I might have my shoes as well,” and waited until she had them on before she spoke again. When she did, it was with the trembling fingers of her right hand pressed into her temple in an attempt to master whatever pounding she felt in her skull. She said in a quiet voice, “Are you certain?”

  “That it was Fleming?”

  “If there was a fire, surely it’s possible that the body was…” She pressed her lips together so hard that the impressions of her teeth showed against her skin. “There could be a mistake, couldn’t there?”

  “You’ve forgotten. It wasn’t that kind of fire,” Lynley said. “He wasn’t burned. The body was only discoloured.” When she flinched, he said quickly to reassure her, “From carbon monoxide. Smoke inhalation. His skin would have been deeply flushed. But it wouldn’t have prevented his wife from recognising him.”

  “No one told me,” she said dully. “No one even phoned.”

  “The police generally notify the family first. The family takes it from there.”

  “The family,” she repeated. “Yes. Well.”

  Lynley took her place in the nursing chair as Sergeant Havers returned to her original position and picked up her notebook. Mrs. Whitelaw’s colour was still bad, and Lynley wondered how much questioning they could expect her to endure.

  She stared at the pattern in the Persian rug. Her voice was slow, as if she recalled each fact moments before stating it.

  “Ken said he was going…It was Greece. A few days’ boating in Greece, he said. With his son.”

  “You mentioned Jimmy.”

  “Yes. His son. Jimmy. For his birthday. That’s the reason Ken was cutting some training to go. He had…they had a flight from Gatwick.”

  “When was this?”