A Great Deliverance (27 page)

“Webberly thought my presence might make him more cooperative, God knows how,” he said drily. “Unfortunately, I seem to be having the opposite effect on the man.”

“But how awful for you! After what Nies put you through in Richmond, why did they assign you to this case? Couldn’t you have turned it down?”

He smiled at her white-faced indignation. “We’re not usually given that option, Deb. May I drive you back to the hall?”

She responded in an instant. “Oh no, you don’t need to. I’ve—”

“Of course. I wasn’t thinking.” Lynley set down her camera case and bleakly watched the doves grooming and settling themselves on the bell tower of the church. Her hand touched his arm.

“It isn’t that,” she said gently. “I’ve a car just over there. You probably didn’t notice it.”

Now he saw the blue Escort parked under a chestnut that was blanketing the ground with crisp, autumn leaves. He picked up her case and carried it to the car. She followed some paces behind.

She unlocked the boot and watched as he put the case inside. She took more time than was necessary to arrange it in a safe travelling position for the short mile back to the hall. And then, because it could no longer be avoided, she looked at him.

He was watching her, making a passionate study of her features as if she were about to vanish forever and all he would have left was the image in his mind.

“I remember the flat in Paddington,” he said. “Making love to you there in the afternoon.”

“I haven’t forgotten that, Tommy.”

Her voice was tender. For some reason that did nothing but hurt him further. He looked away. “Will you tell him you saw me?”

“Of course I will.”

“And what we talked about? Will you tell him of that?”

“Simon knows how you feel. He’s your friend. So am I.”

“I don’t want your friendship, Deborah,” he said.

“I know. But I hope you will someday. It’ll be there when you do.”

He felt her fingers on his arm again. They tightened, then loosened in farewell. She opened the car door, slipped inside, and was gone.

Alone, he walked back towards the lodge, feeling the cloak of desolation settle more firmly round his shoulders. He had just reached the Odell house when the garden door opened and a little figure hurtled determinedly down the steps. She was followed moments later by her duck.

“You wait here, Dougal!” Bridie shouted. “Mummy put your new food in the shed yesterday.”

The duck, unable to navigate the steps anyway, sat patiently waiting as the child tugged open the shed door and disappeared inside. She was back in a moment, lugging a large sack behind her. Lynley noticed that she wore a school uniform, but it was badly rumpled and not particularly clean.

“Hello, Bridie,” he called.

Her head darted up. Her hair, he noticed, had been managed somewhat more expertly since yesterday’s fiasco. He wondered who had done it.

“Got to feed Dougal,” she said. “Got to go to school today as well. I hate school.”

He joined her in the yard. The duck watched his approach warily, one brown eye on him and the other on the promised breakfast. Bridie poured a gargantuan portion onto the ground and the duck flapped his wings eagerly.

“Okay, Dougal, here you go,” Bridie said. She lifted the bird lovingly from the steps and placed him on the damp ground, watching fondly as he plunged headfirst into the food. “He likes breakfast best,” she confided to Lynley, taking an accustomed place on the top step. She rested her chin on her knees and gazed adoringly at the mallard. Lynley joined her on the step.

“You’ve fixed your hair quite nicely,” he commented. “Did Sinji do it for you?”

She shook her head, eyes still on duck. “Nope. Aunt Stepha did it.”

“Did she? She did a very nice job.”

“She’s good at stuff like that,” Bridie acknowledged in a tone that indicated there were other things that Aunt Stepha was not at all good at. “But now I have to go to school. Mummy wouldn’t let me go yesterday. She said it was ‘too humiliating for words.’” Bridie tossed her head scornfully. “It’s my hair, not hers,” she added, practically.

“Well, mothers have a way of taking things a bit personally. Haven’t you noticed?”

“She could’ve taken it the way Aunt Stepha did.
She
just laughed when she saw me.” She hopped off the steps and filled a shallow pan with water. “Here, Dougal,” she called. The duck ignored her. There was a chance the food might be taken away if he did not eat it all as fast as he could. Dougal was a duck who never took chances. Water could wait. Bridie rejoined Lynley. Companionably, they watched as the duck gorged himself. Bridie sighed. She was inspecting the scuffed tops of her shoes and she rubbed at them ineffectually with a dirty finger. “Don’t know why I have to go to school anyway. William never did.”

“Never?”

“Well … not after he was twelve years old. If Mummy’d married William I wouldn’t’ve had to go to school. Bobba didn’t go.”

“Ever?”

Bridie adjusted her information. “William never made her go after she was sixteen. I don’t know what I’ll do if I have t’ wait till I’m sixteen. Mummy’ll make me go. She wants me to go to university, but I don’t want to.”

“What would you rather do?”

“Take care of Dougal.”

“Ah. Not that he doesn’t look like the picture of complete health, Bridie, but ducks don’t live forever. It’s always nice to have something to fall back on.”

“I can always help Aunt Stepha.”

“At the lodge?”

She nodded. Dougal had finished his breakfast and was now beak deep into the water pan. “I tell Mummy that, but it’s no use. ‘I don’t want you spending your life at that lodge.’” She did a disconcertingly fair imitation of Olivia Odell’s distracted voice. She shook her head darkly. “If William and Mummy had married, it would all be different. I could leave school and do all my learning at home. William was awfully clever. He could have taught me. He would have. I know it.”

“How do you know it?”

“‘Cause he always would read to me and Dougal.” The duck, hearing his name, waddled contentedly back to them in his peculiar, lopsided fashion. “Mostly Bible stuff, though.” Bridie polished one shoe on the back of her sock. “I don’t much like the Bible. Old Testament especially. William said it was because I didn’t understand it, and he told Mummy I ought to have religious ’structions. He was real nice and explained stories to me, but I didn’t understand ’em very well. It’s mostly ’cause no one ever got in trouble for their lies.”

“How’s that?” Lynley sought fruitlessly through his own limited religious instruction for successful biblical liars.

“Everybody was always lying with other people. Least, that’s what the stories said. And no one ever got told it was wrong.”

“Ah. Yes. Lying.” Lynley studied the mallard, who was examining his shoelaces with a knowing beak. “Well, things are a bit symbolic in the Bible,” he said breezily. “What else did you read?”

“Nothing. Just the Bible. I think that’s all William and Bobba ever read. I tried to like it, but I didn’t. I didn’t tell William that ’cause he was trying to be nice, and I didn’t want to be rude. I think he was trying to get to know me,” she added wisely. “’Cause if he married Mummy, I’d be round all the time.”

“Did you want him to marry your mummy?”

She scooped the bird up and placed it on the step between them. With a level, dispassionate look at Lynley, Dougal began grooming his shining feathers.

“Daddy read to me,” Bridie said in answer. Her voice was a shade lower and her concentration on her shoe tops was total. “And then he went away.”

“Went away?” Lynley wondered if this was a euphemism for his death.

“He went away one day.” Bridie rested her cheek on her knee, pulled the bird to her side, and stared at the river. “He didn’t even say goodbye.” She turned and kissed the duck’s smooth head. He pecked at her cheek in return. “I would’ve said goodbye,” she whispered.

“Would you use the word
angel
or
sunshine
to describe someone who drank, swore, and ran around like mad?” Lynley asked.

Sergeant Havers looked up from her morning eggs, stirred sugar into her coffee, and thought about it. “I suppose it depends on your definition of rain, doesn’t it?”

He smiled. “I suppose so.” He pushed his plate away from him and regarded Havers thoughtfully. She wasn’t looking half bad this morning: there was a hint of colour on her eyelids, cheeks, and lips, and her hair had a noticeable curl to it. Even her clothes had distinctly improved, for she wore a brown tweed skirt and matching pullover which, even if they weren’t exactly the best colour for her skin tone, at least were a marked improvement over yesterday’s ghastly blue suit.

“Why the question?” she asked.

“Stepha described Gillian as wild. A drinker.”

“Who ran around like mad.”

“Yes. But Father Hart said she was sunshine.”

“That
is
peculiar.”

“He said Teys was devastated when she ran away.”

Havers knotted her thick eyebrows and, without thinking about how the action redefined their relationship, poured Lynley a second cup of coffee. “Well, that does explain why her photos are gone, doesn’t it? He’d devoted his life to his children and look at his reward for the effort. One of the two vanishes into the night.”

The last four words struck a chord in Lynley. He rummaged through the file on the table between them and brought out the picture of Russell Mowrey that Tessa had given them.

“I’d like you to take this round the village today,” he said.

Havers took the photograph, but her expression was quizzical. “But you said he was in London.”

“Now, yes. Not necessarily three weeks ago. If Mowrey was here then, he would have had to ask someone for directions to the farm. Someone would have had to see him. Concentrate on the high and the patrons of the pubs. You might go to the hall as well. If no one’s seen him—”

“We’re back to Tessa, then,” she finished.

“Or someone else with a motive. There seem to be several.”

Madeline Gibson answered the door to Lynley’s knock. He’d climbed his way over two quarrelling children in the war-torn front garden, manoeuvred past a broken tricycle and a dismembered doll, and avoided a plate of congealing fried eggs on the front steps. She surveyed all this with a bored glance and adjusted an emerald green peignoir over high, pointed breasts. She wore nothing under it and made no secret of the fact that he couldn’t have arrived at a more inconvenient time.

“Dick,” she called, her sultry eyes on Lynley, “put it back in your trousers. It’s Scotland Yard.” She gave him a lazy smile and held the door open wider. “Do come in, Inspector.” She left him in the tiny entryway among the toys and the dirty clothes and strolled to the stairwell. “Dick!” she called again. She turned, folded her arms across her breasts, and kept her eyes on Lynley. A smile played over her features. A well-formed knee and thigh showed themselves between the folds of thin satin.

There was movement above them, a man’s mumbling, and Richard Gibson appeared. He clattered noisily to the bottom of the stairs and caught sight of his wife. “Jesus Christ, put on some clothes, Mad,” he said.

“You didn’t want them on five minutes ago,” she replied, looked him over with a knowing smile, and made her way deliberately—revealing as much of her slim body as possible—up the stairs.

Gibson watched her with wry amusement. “You should see what she’s like when she
really
wants it,” he confided. “She’s just teasing now.”

“Ah. Yes. I see.”

The farmer laughed through his nose. “At least it keeps her happy, Inspector. For a while.” He scrutinised the chaos of the cottage and added, “Let’s go out in front.”

Lynley thought the front garden was even less appealing a place for their encounter than the malodorous cottage, but he held his tongue and followed the other man.

“Go in to your mother,” Gibson ordered his two wrangling children. With his foot, he pushed the plate to the edge of the front step. In a moment, the family’s mangy cat appeared from the tangle of dry and dying bushes and began to devour the remains of the eggs and toast. It was the greedy, surreptitious eating of a scavenger, and it reminded Lynley of the woman upstairs.

“I saw Roberta yesterday,” he said to Gibson. The other man had sat down on the step and was lacing his work shoes tightly.

“How was she? Any improvement?”

“No. When we first met, you didn’t mention the fact that you’d signed Roberta into the asylum, Mr. Gibson.”

“You didn’t ask, Inspector.” He finished with the boots and got to his feet. “Did you expect me to leave her with the police in Richmond?”

“Not especially. Have you arranged for a solicitor as well?”

Gibson, Lynley saw, wasn’t a man who expected the police to concern themselves with the legal representation of confessed murderesses. The question surprised him. His eyelids quivered and he spent a moment tucking his flannel shirt into his blue jeans. He took his time about answering.

“A solicitor? No.”

“Intriguing that you’d make arrangements to have her put into hospital but not make arrangements for her legal interests. Convenient as well, wouldn’t you say?”

A muscle worked in Gibson’s jaw. “No, I wouldn’t say.”

“Can you explain yourself, then?”

“I don’t think I need to explain myself to you,” Gibson said tersely. “But it seems to me that Bobby’s mental problems were a wee bit more pressing than her legal ones.” His swarthy skin had darkened.

“Indeed. And if she’s found incompetent to stand trial—as no doubt she will be—you’re in a good position, aren’t you?”

Gibson faced him. “By God, I am, yes,” he retorted angrily. “Free to take the damn farm, free to have the damn house, free to screw my damn wife on the dining room table if I want. And all without Bobby hulking about. That’s what you want to hear, isn’t it, Inspector?” He thrust his face forward belligerently, but when Lynley offered no reaction to this aggression, he backed away. His words, however, were no less angry. “I’ve just about had it with people believing I’d hurt Bobby, with people believing Madeline and I would be only too happy to see her put away for life. You think I don’t know that’s what everyone believes? You think Madeline doesn’t know it?” He laughed bitterly. “No, I
didn’t
get her a solicitor. I got one myself. And if I can get her certified mentally incompetent, I intend to do so. Do you think that’s worse than seeing she ends up in prison?”