A Great Deliverance

by Elizabeth George

  He found his voice. “Thomas Lynley,” he said idiotically. “This is Sergeant Havers.”

  “Do come in.” Stepha Odell’s voice was warm and pleasant. “I’ve your rooms ready. You’ll find us a quiet inn at this time of year.”

  There was a chill in the building they entered, an atmosphere produced by thick walls and stone floors. These were covered with a faded Axminster carpet. She led them into a tiny reception area, moving with a swift, unconscious grace, and produced an oversized register for them to sign. “You’ve been told I only do breakfast, haven’t you?” she asked earnestly, as if satisfying hunger were the uppermost thing on his mind at this moment.

  Do I look that desperate? “We’ll manage, Mrs. Odell,” Lynley said. Tricky move, old boy. Transparent as hell. Havers stood mute at his side, her face without expression.

  “Miss,” their hostess replied. “Stepha really. You can get meals at the Dove and Whistle on St. Chad’s Lane or at the Holy Grail. Or if you want something special, there’s Keldale Hall.”

  “The Holy Grail?”

  She smiled. “The pub across from St. Catherine’s.”

  “That name must certainly propitiate the abstinent gods.”

  “At least it does Father Hart. But he’s been known to tip a pint or two in an evening there. Shall I show you your rooms?”

  Without waiting for an answer, she led them up the crooked stairs, displaying, Lynley noted, a remarkably pretty pair of ankles and above which rose an even prettier pair of legs. “You’ll find us glad to have you in the village, Inspector,” she stated as she opened the door to the first room and then with a gesture of her hand indicated the room next door with the unspoken message that it was up to them to decide who stayed where.

  “That’s helpful. I’m glad to hear it.”

  “We’ve none of us anything against Gabriel, you see. But he’s not been a popular man round here since they carted Roberta off to the asylum.”

  6

  Lynley was positively white with rage, but there was not the slightest indication of that emotion in his voice. Barbara watched his performance on the telephone with grudging admiration. A virtuoso, she admitted.

  “The name of the admitting psychiatrist?…There wasn’t one? What a fascinating procedure. Then upon whose authority…When exactly did you expect me to stumble upon this information, Superintendent, since you’ve conveniently left it out of the report?…No, you’ve got things backwards, I’m afraid. You don’t move a suspect to an institution without formal paperwork.…It’s unfortunate that your police matron is on holiday, but you find a replacement. You don’t move a nineteen-year-old girl into a mental hospital for the simple reason that she refuses to speak to anyone.”

  Barbara wondered if he would allow himself to explode, if he would show even a crack in that well-tailored Savile Row armour of his.

  “I’m afraid that bathing daily is not the preeminent indication of unshakable sanity, either…. Don’t pull rank on me, Superintendent. If this is any indication of the manner in which you’ve handled this case, there’s no wonder to me that Kerridge is after your skin…. Who’s her solicitor?…Shouldn’t you be getting her one yourself, then?…Don’t tell me what you have no intention of doing. I’ve been brought in on this case and henceforth it shall be conducted correctly. Am I being quite clear? Now please listen carefully. You have exactly two hours to get everything to me in Keldale: every warrant, every paper, every deposition, every note that was taken by every officer on this case. Do you understand? Two hours…Webberly. W-e-b-b-e-r-l-y. Phone him then and have done with it.” Stone-faced, Lynley handed the telephone back to Stepha Odell.

  She replaced it behind the reception counter and ran a finger along the receiver several times before looking up. “Should I have said nothing?” she asked, a trace of anxiety in her voice. “I don’t want to cause trouble between you and your superiors.”

  Lynley flipped open his pocket watch and checked the time. “Nies is not my superior. And yes, you should have told me. Thank you for doing so. You saved me a needless trip to Richmond that no doubt Nies was longing to force me to make.”

  Stepha didn’t pretend to understand. Instead, she gestured vaguely to a door on their right. “I…May I offer you a drink, Inspector? You as well, Sergeant? We’ve got a real ale that, as Nigel Parrish is fond of saying, ‘sets you to rights.’ Come this way.”

  She led them into a typical English country inn lounge, whose air was heavy with the scent of a recent fire. The room had been cleverly designed with enough home-like qualities to keep residents comfortable while maintaining a formal enough atmosphere to keep villagers out. There were a variety of plump, chintz-covered couches and chairs decorated with petit point pillows; tables spread out in no particular arrangement were maple, well used and ringed on their tops where too many glasses had been placed on the wood without protection; the carpet was a floral design, patchy with darker colours in some sections where furniture had recently been moved; suitably tedious prints hung on the walls: riding to hounds, a day at Newmarket, a view of the village. But behind the bar at the far side of the room and over the fireplace were two watercolours that displayed a distinctive talent and remarkable taste. Both were views of a ruined abbey.

  Lynley wandered to one of these as Stepha worked behind the bar. “This is lovely,” he remarked. “A local artist?”

  “A young man named Ezra Farmington does them,” she replied. “They’re of our abbey. Those two are how he paid for his board here one autumn. He lives in the village permanently now.”

  Barbara watched the redheaded woman deftly work the taps and scoop the foam from the churning brew that was developing a life of its own in the glass. Stepha laughed in a breathless, charming way when the foam slipped over the side and onto her hand, and she unconsciously raised her fingers to her lips to lick the residue. Barbara idly wondered how long it would take Lynley to get her into bed.

  “Sergeant?” Stepha asked. “An ale for you as well?”

  “Tonic water, if you have it,” Barbara replied. She looked out the window. On the common, the old priest who had been to see them in London was having an anxious conversation with another man. From the gesturing and pointing at the silver Bentley, the news of their arrival was apparently the topic of the village. A woman crossed from the bridge to join them. She was wispy-looking, an effect produced by a dress too gauzy for the season and by baby-fine hair which the smallest air current ruffled. She rubbed her arms for warmth, and, rather than joining in the conversation of the two men, she merely listened as if waiting for one or the other of them to walk off. In a moment the priest said a few final words and meandered back towards the church. The other two remained standing together. Their conversation went in fits and starts, with the man saying something with a quick look at the woman and then away and the woman replying briefly. There were long silences in which the woman looked at the bank of the river next to the common and the man focused his attention on the lodge—or perhaps the car in front of it. Someone was significantly interested in the arrival of the police, Barbara decided.

  “A tonic water and an ale,” Stepha was saying as she placed both glasses on the bar. “It’s a home brew, my father’s recipe. We call it Odell’s. You must tell me what you think of it, Inspector.”

  It was a rich, brown liquid shot through with gold. “Has a bit of a kick, doesn’t it?” Lynley said when he tasted it. “Are you sure you won’t have one, Havers?”

  “Just the tonic water, thank you, sir.”

  He joined her at the couch in front of which he had earlier spilled out the contents of the report on the Teys murder and had icily flipped through every paper looking for the explanation of Roberta Teys’s placement in Barnstingham Mental Asylum. There had been none. That had set him off on the telephone to Richmond. Now he began to go through the paperwork again, stacking things in categorical fashion. From the bar, Stepha Odell watched them with friendly interest, sipping an ale that she’d pour
ed for herself.

  “We’ve got the original warrants, the forensics report, the signed depositions, the photographs.” Lynley fingered the materials as he named them. He looked up at Barbara. “No keys to the farmhouse. Damn the man.”

  “Richard has a set of those if you need them,” Stepha said quickly, as if hoping to make up for her remark about Roberta that had set Lynley off on a collision course with the Richmond police in the first place. “Richard Gibson. He was…is William Teys’s nephew. He lives in the council cottages on St. Chad’s Lane. It’s just off the high street.”

  Lynley looked up. “How does he come to have keys to the farmhouse?”

  “Having arrested Roberta…well, I suppose they just gave them to Richard. He’s to inherit it anyway once the estate’s all settled,” she added. “In William’s will. I suppose he’s seeing to the place in the meantime. Someone must.”

  “He’s to inherit? How was Roberta treated in the will?”

  Stepha gave the bar a thoughtful sweep with a cloth. “It was fixed between Richard and William that the farm would go to Richard. It was a sensible arrangement. He works there with William…. Worked there,” she corrected herself, “ever since he returned to Keldale two years ago. Once they got over their row about Roberta, it all worked out to everyone’s advantage. William had someone to help him, Richard had a job and a future, and Roberta had a place to live for life.”

  “Sergeant.” Lynley nodded at her notebook, which was lying unused next to her tonic water. “If you would please…”

  Stepha flushed as she saw Barbara reach for her pen. “Is this an interview then?” she asked, flashing an anxious smile. “I don’t know how much I can help you, Inspector.”

  “Tell us about the row and Roberta.”

  She came round the bar and joined them, pulling a comfortable, cushioned chair to the other side of the table. She sat down, tucking her legs to one side, and glanced at the stack of photographs in front of her. She looked away quickly.

  “I’ll tell you what I can, but it isn’t much. Olivia’s the one who can tell you more.”

  “Olivia Odell…your…”

  “Sister-in-law. My brother Paul’s widow.” Stepha placed her glass of ale on the table and used the same movement to cover the photographs with a pile of forensic reports. “If you don’t mind…”

  “Sorry,” Lynley said quickly. “We get so used to looking at horrors like that that we become immune.” He replaced it all in the folder. “Why did they have a row about Roberta?”

  “Olivia told me later—she was with them at the Dove and Whistle when it happened—that it was all due to the way Roberta looks.” She fingered her glass, made a pattern of lace on the moisture of its surface. “Richard’s from Keldale, you see, but he’d been gone a good few years trying his luck with barley in the fens. He’d married down there, had two children as well. When the farming didn’t work out, he returned to the Kel.” She smiled at them. “They say that the Kel never lets one go easily, and that was the case for Richard. He was gone for eight or nine years and, when he returned, he was quite a bit shocked to see the change in Roberta.”

  “You said it was all due to the way she looks?”

  “She didn’t always look as she does now. She was always a big girl, of course, even at eight when Richard left. But she was never…” Stepha hesitated, clearly searching delicately for the right word, for a euphemism that would be factual at the same time as it was noncommittal.

  “Obese,” Barbara finished. Like a cow.

  “Yes,” Stepha went on gratefully. “Richard had always been great friends with Roberta, for all he’s twelve years her senior. And to come back and find his cousin so sadly deteriorated—physically, I mean, she was much the same otherwise—was a terrible shock to him. He blamed William for ignoring the girl. Said she had done it to herself to try to get his attention. William raged at that. Olivia said she’d never seen him so angry. Poor man, there’d been problems enough in his life without an accusation like that from his own nephew. But they got it sorted out. Richard apologised the very next day. William wouldn’t take Roberta to a doctor—he wouldn’t bend that far—but Olivia found a diet for the girl, and from that time on, all went well.”

  “Until three weeks ago,” Lynley observed.

  “If you choose to believe that Roberta killed her father, then yes, it all went well until three weeks back. But I don’t believe she killed him. Not for one blessed moment.”

  Lynley looked surprised at the force behind her words. “Why not?”

  “Because aside from Richard—who heaven knows has enough trouble just dealing with that family of his own—William was all that Roberta had. Besides her reading and dreams, there was only her father.”

  “She’d no friends her own age? No other girls nearby on the farms or in the village?”

  Stepha shook her head. “She kept to herself. When she wasn’t working on the farm with her father, mostly she read. She was here every day for the Guardian, in fact, for years on end. They never did take a paper on the farm, so she’d come every afternoon once everyone’d seen it and we’d let her take it home with her. I think she’d read every book of her mother’s in the house, all of Marsha Fitzalan’s, and the newspaper was the only thing left for her. We’ve no lending library, you see.” She frowned down at the glass in her hands. “She stopped looking at the paper a few years back, though. When my brother died. I couldn’t help thinking…” Her grey-blue eyes darkened. “That perhaps Roberta was in love with Paul. After he died four years ago, we saw nothing of the girl for quite some time. And she never came again to ask for the Guardian.”

  If a village as small as Keldale could even have an undesirable area out of which residents aspired to escape, St. Chad’s Lane would have been that spot. It was more like an alley than a street, an unpaved thoroughfare to nowhere, having the one distinction of a pub on the corner. This was the Dove and Whistle, its doors and woodwork painted a blinding shade of purple, itself looking very much as if it wished it could have had the good fortune to be settled somewhere—anywhere—else.

  Richard Gibson and his brood lived in the last attached house in this lane, a pinched stone building with chipped window sashes and a front door that had once been painted royal blue but now was fading to a decided grey. This stood open to the late afternoon, mindless of the rapidly dropping temperature in the dale, and from within the confines of the tiny house came the noise of a family quarrelling passionately.

  “God damn you, do something with him, then. He’s your son as well. Jesus Christ! You’d think he was a miraculous little version of virgin birth from all the interest you take in his upbringing!” It was a woman speaking, a shrieking that sounded as if at any moment it would choose hysteria or cachinnation as a second line of attack.

  A man’s voice rumbled in answer, indistinguishable in the general uproar.

  “Oh, it will be better then? That’s a fine laugh, Dick. When you’ve the whole bleeding farm to use as an excuse? Just like last night! You couldn’t wait to get there, could you? So don’t tell me about the farm! We’ll never see you then when you’ve five hundred acres to hide in!”

  Lynley rapped sharply with the rust-grimed knocker on the open door, and the scene froze before them.

  With a plate on his knee, obviously attempting to eat some sort of utterly unappetising afternoon meal, a man sat on a sagging couch in a cramped sitting room while in front of him a woman stood, her arm upraised, a hairbrush in her hand. Both stared at the unexpected visitors.

  “You’ve caught us at our very best moment. It was straight to bed next,” Richard Gibson said.

  The Gibsons were a portrait of contrasts: the man was enormous, nearly six and a half feet, with black hair, swarthy skin, and sardonic, brown eyes. He was bullnecked, with the thick limbs of a labourer. His wife, on the other hand, was a scrap of a blonde, sharp-featured and, at the moment, white to the lips with rage. But there was an electricity in the air between the
m that gave credence to what the man had said. Here was a relationship where every argument and discussion was merely a skirmish before the major battle of who would be master between the sheets. And the answer to that, judging from what Lynley and Havers could see before them, was clearly a toss-up.

  Shooting a final, smouldering look at her husband that spoke of desire as much as rage, Madeline Gibson left the room, slamming the kitchen door behind her. The big man chuckled when she was gone.

  “Eight stone of tiger,” he commented, getting to his feet. “One hell of a woman.” He extended a large paw. “Richard Gibson,” he said genially. “You must be Scotland Yard.” When Lynley had made the introductions, Gibson went on. “Sundays are always the worst round here.” He jerked his head towards the kitchen, from which a steady wailing indicated the state of the relationship between mother and what sounded like fourteen children. “Roberta used to help out. But we’re without her now. Of course you know that. That’s why you’ve come.” He hospitably indicated two antiquated chairs that were belching stuffing onto the floor. Lynley and Havers picked their way across the room to them, avoiding broken toys, scattered newspapers, and at least three plates of half-consumed food that lay on the bare floor. Somewhere, a glass of milk had been left too long in the room, for its sour smell overcame even the other odours of poorly cooked food and plumbing gone bad.

  “You’ve inherited the farm, Mr. Gibson,” Lynley began. “Will you move there soon?”

  “It can’t be soon enough for me. I’m not sure my marriage can survive another month of this place.” Gibson toed his plate away from the couch. A scrawny cat slid out of nowhere, sniffed at the dried bread and pungent sardines, and rejected the offering by attempting to bury it. Gibson watched the animal, his face amused.

  “You’ve lived here several years, haven’t you?”