Payment In Blood

by Elizabeth George

  “Telephone the publishing house, Sergeant. Find out what you can. Then do the same for the rest of the long-distance calls on the print out. I’m going up above.”

  While Joy Sinclair’s personality had seemed absent on the lower floor of the house, her presence asserted itself with chaotic abandon once Lynley reached the top of the stairs. Here was the life centre of the building, an eclectic jumble of personal possessions collected and treasured. Here, Joy Sinclair was everywhere, in the photographs covering the walls of the narrow hall, in an overfull storage cabinet stuffed with everything from linens to crusty paintbrushes, in the curtain of lingerie in the bathroom, even in the air, which held the faint fragrance of bath powder and perfume.

  Lynley went into the bedroom. It was a riot of multicoloured pillows, battered rattan furniture, and clothes. On the table next to her unmade bed stood a photograph that he examined briefly. An arrow-thin, sensitive-looking young man stood by the fountain in the Great Court of Trinity College, Cambridge. Lynley noted the way his hair grew back from his forehead, recognised something familiar in the set of his shoulders and head. Alec Rintoul, he guessed, and replaced it. He went on to the front of the house. Here, Joy’s study was no different from the other rooms, and upon his first look at it, Lynley wondered how anyone could manage to produce a book in an atmosphere so totally devoid of order.

  He stepped over a pile of manuscripts near the door and walked to the wall where two maps were hung above a word processor. The first map was large, a regulation district map of the sort bookstores sell to tourists who want to make a thorough scrutiny of a particular area of the country. This one was for Suffolk, although parts of Cambridgeshire and Norfolk were included on it. Evidently, Joy had been using it for some sort of research, Lynley saw, for the name of a village was circled heavily in red ink, and some two inches from it a large X had been drawn not far from Mildenhall Fen. Lynley put on his spectacles to get a better look. Porthill Green, he read beneath the red circle.

  And then, a moment later, he made the connection. P. Green in Joy’s engagement diary. Not a person at all, but a place.

  Further circles appeared here and there on the map: Cambridge, Norwich, Ipswich, Bury St. Edmunds. Routes were traced out from each of these to Porthill Green and from Porthill Green out to the X near Mildenhall Fen. Lynley considered the implications attached to the presence of the map as below him he heard Sergeant Havers making one telephone call after another, muttering to herself occasionally when a response displeased her or when she was kept waiting or a line was engaged.

  Lynley dropped his eyes to the second map on the wall. This was hand-drawn and rough, a pencilled depiction of a village with buildings common to any spot in England. They were only identified in the most generic of terms as church, greengrocers, pub, cottage, petrol station. The map told him nothing. Unless, of course, it was a rough delineation of Porthill Green. And even then it only indicated Joy’s interest in the spot. Not why she was interested, or what she would have done had she gone there.

  Lynley gave his attention to her desk. Like everything else in the room, it had the appearance of disordered confusion, of the sort in which the originator of the mess knows exactly where everything is but of which no other human being could ever make sense. Books, maps, notebooks, and papers covered its surface, as well as an unwashed teacup, several pens, a stapler, and a tube of heat-producing analgesic to be rubbed on tired muscles. He considered it for several minutes as Havers’ voice continued its rise and fall of conversation below him.

  There had to be some strange system involved, Lynley thought, looking through it. And it wasn’t too long before he understood what it was. Although the piles of material made no superficial sense as a whole, taken individually, they were perfectly rational. One stack of books seemed to be reference materials. There were three psychology texts dealing with depression and suicide, two textbooks on the workings of the British police. Another stack was a collection of newspaper articles, all detailing one sort of death or another. A third stack contained a collection of booklets and pamphlets describing various sections of the country. A last stack was correspondence, thick and probably gone unanswered.

  He looked through this, ignoring the fan letters, working on instinct, hoping it would guide him to something significant. He found it thirteen letters into the stack.

  It was a brief note from Joy Sinclair’s editor, fewer than ten sentences long. When, the editor asked, might we expect to see the first draft of Hanging’s Too Good? You’re six months overdue on it and as your contract stipulates…

  Suddenly everything on Joy’s desk began to take on a marked coherence. The texts on suicide, the workings of the police, the articles about death, the title of a new book. Lynley felt the tightening of excitement that always came with knowing he was on the right track.

  He turned back to the word processor. It had two disks in it, he saw, both a program disk and one that would contain Joy’s work.

  “Havers,” he shouted, “what do you know about computers?”

  “A minute,” she returned. “I’ve got…” Her voice lowered as she spoke into the phone.

  Impatiently, Lynley switched the machine on. In a moment, directions appeared on the screen. It was far simpler than he would have ever imagined. Within a minute he was looking at Joy’s working copy of Hanging’s Too Good.

  Unfortunately, the sum total of her manuscript—six months overdue to her publishers and no doubt the cause of her dispute with them—was one simple sentence: “Hannah decided to kill herself on the night of March 26, 1973.” That was it.

  Fruitlessly, Lynley searched for something else, using every direction that the computer program had to offer him. But nothing was there. Either her work had been erased, or that single sentence was as far as Joy Sinclair had gone. No wonder her editor is frothing at the mouth and talking about legal action, Lynley thought.

  He switched the machine off and gave his attention back to her desk. He spent the next ten minutes trying to find something more in the material there. Failing that, he went to her filing cabinet and began searching through its four drawers. He was on his second one when Havers came into the room.

  “Anything?” she asked him.

  “A book called Hanging’s Too Good, someone named Hannah who decided to commit suicide, and a place called Porthill Green, P. Green, I should guess. What about you?”

  “I’ve begun to get the feeling that no one goes to work in New York much before noon, but I was able to find out that the New York number was for a literary agent.”

  “And the others?”

  “The Somerset call was to Stinhurst’s home.”

  “What about the letter from Edna? Did you telephone the publishing house about it?”

  Havers nodded. “Joy sold a proposal to them early last year. She wanted to do something different, not a study of a criminal and victim which was her usual bent, but a study of a suicide, what led up to it and its aftereffects. The publisher bought the proposal—they’ve not had to worry about her meeting deadlines before this. But that was the end of it. She never gave them a thing. They’ve been after her for months. In fact, the reaction to her death sounded as if one of them may have been praying for it on a nightly basis.”

  “What about the other numbers?”

  “The number in Suffolk was an interesting one,” Havers replied. “A boy answered—sounded like a teenager. But he didn’t have the slightest idea who Joy Sinclair was or why she might have been phoning his number.”

  “So what’s so interesting about that?”

  “His name, Inspector. Teddy Darrow. His father’s name is John. And he was speaking to me from a pub called Wine’s the Plough. And that pub is sitting right in the middle of Porthill Green.”

  Lynley grinned, felt that swift surge of power that comes from validation. “By God, Havers. Sometimes I think we’re one hell of a team. We’re onto it now. Can’t you feel it?”

  Havers didn’t respond. Sh
e was browsing through the material on the desk.

  “So we’ve found the John Darrow that Joy talked about both at dinner and on her tape,” Lynley mused. “We’ve the explanation for the reference on her calendar to P. Green. We’ve the reason for the matchbook in her shoulder bag—she must have been in the pub. And now we’re looking for a connection between Joy’s book and John Darrow, between John Darrow and Westerbrae.” He looked at Havers sharply. “But there was another set of phone calls, wasn’t there? To Wales.”

  Lynley watched her leaf through the newspaper clippings on the desk in an apparent need to scrutinise each one of them. She didn’t appear to be reading, however. “They were to Llanbister. To a woman called Anghared Mynach.”

  “Why did Joy phone her?”

  Again, there was hesitation. “She was looking for someone, sir.”

  Lynley’s eyes narrowed. He closed the filing drawer whose contents he had been examining. “Who?”

  Havers frowned. “Rhys Davies-Jones. Anghared Mynach is his sister. He was staying with her.”

  BARBARA SAW in Lynley’s face the swift assimilation of a series of ideas. She knew quite well the set of facts he was combining in his mind: the name John Darrow that was mentioned at dinner the night Joy Sinclair was murdered; the reference to Rhys Davies-Jones on Joy’s tape recorder; the ten telephone calls to Porthill Green, and mixed in with those calls, six to Wales. Six calls made to Rhys Davies-Jones.

  To avoid a discussion of all of this, Barbara went to the pile of manuscripts lying near the study door. She began riffling through them curiously, noting the range of Joy Sinclair’s interest in murder and death: an outline for a study of the Yorkshire Ripper, an unfinished article on Crippen, at least sixty pages of material on Lord Mountbatten’s death, a bound galley from a book called The Knife Plunges Once, three heavily edited versions of another book called Death in Darkness. But there was something missing.

  As Lynley involved himself again with the filing cabinet, Barbara went to the desk. She opened the top drawer. In it, Joy had kept her computer disks, two long rows of floppy black squares, all labelled by subject on the upper right-hand corner. Barbara flipped through them, reading the titles. And as she did so, the knowledge began to flourish within her, like a growth that was swelling, not with malignancy but with tension. The second and third drawers were much the same, containing stationery, envelopes, ribbons for the printers, staples, ancient carbon paper, tape, scissors. But not what she was looking for. Nothing like that at all.

  When Lynley moved to the bookshelves and began looking through the materials there, Barbara went to the filing cabinet.

  “I’ve been through that, Sergeant,” Lynley said.

  She sought an excuse. “Just a hunch, sir. It’ll only take a moment.”

  The fact was that it took nearly an hour, but by that time Lynley had removed the jacket from a copy of Joy Sinclair’s most recent book, putting this into his pocket before going on into the bedroom and from there to the storage cabinet at the top of the stairs where Barbara could hear him rooting systematically through the assortment of belongings. It was after four o’clock when she concluded her search of the files and rested back on her heels, satisfied with the validity of her hypothesis. Her only decision now was whether to tell Lynley or to hold her tongue until she had more facts, facts that he would be incapable of brushing aside.

  Why, she wondered, had he not noticed it himself? How could he possibly have missed it? With the glaring absence of material right before his eyes, he was seeing only what he wanted to see, what he needed to see, a trail of guilt leading directly to Rhys Davies-Jones.

  This guilt was so seductive a presence that it had become for Lynley an effective smokescreen hiding the one crucial detail that he had failed to note. Joy Sinclair had been in the midst of writing a play for Stuart Rintoul, Lord Stinhurst. And nowhere in the study was there a single reference to it. Not a draft, not an outline, not a list of characters, not a scrap of paper.

  Someone had been through the house before them.

  “I’LL DROP YOU in Acton, Sergeant,” Lynley said when they were back outside. He headed down the street towards his car, a silver Bentley that had collected a small group of admiring schoolboys who were peering into its windows and running pious hands along its gleaming wings. “Let’s plan on an early start out to Porthill Green tomorrow. Half past seven?”

  “Fine, sir. But don’t bother about Acton. I’ll catch the Tube. It’s just up on the corner of Heath Street and the high.”

  Lynley paused, turned back to her. “Don’t be ridiculous, Barbara. That’ll take an age. A change of stations and God only knows how many stops. Get in the car.”

  Barbara heard it as the order it was and looked for a way to deflect it without raising his ire. She couldn’t possibly waste the time of having him drive her all the way home. Her day was far from over, in spite of what he thought.

  Without considering how unlikely it would sound to him, she took a stab with the first excuse that came into her mind. “Actually, I’ve a date, sir,” she said. And then knowing how ridiculous the idea was, she smoothed over the absurdity with, “Well, it’s not a date exactly. It’s someone I’ve met. And we thought…well, perhaps we’d have dinner and see that new film at the Odeon.” She winced inwardly at that last piece of creativity and took a moment to pray that there was a new film at the Odeon. Or at least if there wasn’t, that he wouldn’t be the wiser.

  “Oh. I see. Well. Anyone I know?”

  Hell, she thought. “No, just a bloke I met last week. At the supermarket, actually. We banged trolleys somewhere between tinned fruit and tea.”

  Lynley smiled at that. “Sounds exactly the way a meaningful relationship starts. Shall I drop you at the Tube?”

  “No. I could do with the walk. I’ll see you tomorrow, sir.”

  He nodded, and she watched him stride towards his car. In an instant he was surrounded by the eager children who had been admiring it.

  “This your car, mister?”

  “How much it cost?”

  “Those seats leather?”

  “C’n I drive it?”

  Barbara heard Lynley laugh, saw him lean against the car, fold his arms, and take a moment to engage the group in friendly conversation. How like him, she thought. He’s had all of three hours sleep in the last thirty-three, he’s facing the fact that half of his world may be as good as in ruins, and still he takes the time to listen to children’s chatter. Watching him with them—fancying from this distance that she could see the lines of laughter round his eyes and the quirky muscle that crooked his smile—she found herself wondering what she might actually be capable of doing to protect the career and integrity of a man like that.

  Anything, she decided, and began her walk to the Tube.

  SNOW WAS FALLING when Barbara arrived at the St. James home on Cheyne Row in Chelsea that evening at eight. In the tawny glow of the street lamps, snowflakes looked like slivers of amber, floating down to blanket pavement, cars, and the intricate wrought iron of balconies and fences. The flurry was mild by way of winter storms, but even so, enough to snarl the traffic on the Embankment a block away. The usual roar of passing cars was considerably muted, and the occasional horn, honking in a burst of temper, explained why.

  Joseph Cotter, who played the unusual dual role of manservant and father-in-law in St. James’ life, answered the door to Barbara’s knock. He was, she guessed, no older than fifty, a balding man of short, solid physique, so physically unlike his willowy daughter that for some time after she had first met Deborah St. James, Barbara had had no idea that she was even related to this man. He was carrying a coffee service on a silver tray and doing his best to avoid trampling a small, long-haired dachshund and a plump grey cat who were vying for attention at his feet. All of them threw grotesquely shaped shadows against the dark panelling on the wall.

  “Off wi’ you, Peach! Alaska!” he said, before he turned his ruddy face to greet Barbara. The ani
mals retreated a respectable six inches. “Come in, Miss…Sergeant. Mr. St. James is in the study.” He looked Barbara over critically. “’Ave you eaten yet, young lady? Those two ’ave only finished just now. Let me get you a bite in a tick, shall I?”

  “Thank you, Mr. Cotter. I could do with something. I haven’t had a thing since this morning, I’m afraid.”

  Cotter shook his head. “Police,” he said, in brief and eloquent disapproval. “You just wait in ’ere, miss. I’ll fix you up something nice.”

  He knocked once on the door at the foot of the stairs and without waiting for a response, swung it open. Barbara followed him into St. James’ study, a room of tall, crowded bookshelves, scores of photographs, and intellectual jumble, one of the most pleasant locations in the Cheyne Row house.

  A fire had been lit, and the room’s mixed odours of leather and brandy formed a comfortable redolence, not unlike that one might find in a gentleman’s club. St. James occupied a chair by the hearth, his bad leg resting upon a worn ottoman, while across from him, Lady Helen Clyde was curled into a corner of the couch. They were sitting quietly, in the manner of an old married couple or of friends too close to need the bridge of conversation.

  “’Ere’s the sergeant now, Mr. St. James,” Cotter said, bustling forward with the coffee, which he set down on a low table in front of the fire. Flames there cast a glow against the porcelain, flickered like moving gold in a reflection on the tray. “An’ she’s not ’ad a bite to eat, so I’ll see to that at once if you’ll do the coffee on your own.”

  “I think we can manage that without disgracing you more than two or three times, Cotter. And if there’s any chocolate cake left, would you cut another piece for Lady Helen? She’s longing to have one, but you know how she is. Far too well bred to ask for more.”

  “He’s lying as usual,” Lady Helen interjected. “It’s for himself but he knows how you’ll disapprove.”

  Cotter looked from one to the other, undeceived by their exchange. “Two pieces of chocolate cake,” he said meaningfully. “An’ a meal for the sergeant as well.” Flicking at the arm of his black jacket, he left the room.