Believing the Lie (59 page)

Lynley had veered to the side of the road to take the call on his mobile. He was on his way back to Ireleth Hall to go over St. James’s conclusions with Bernard Fairclough. He said, “Isabelle,” on a sigh. “You’re angry with me. With very good reason. I’m terribly sorry.”

“Yes. Well. Aren’t we both. Barbara’s brought Winston into things, by the way. Is that down to you as well? I put a stop to it, but I wasn’t happy to find them cheek-to-cheek over a computer terminal on the twelfth floor.”

Lynley lowered his head, looked at his hand on the steering wheel of the Healey Elliott. He was still wearing his wedding ring and had not been able in the months since Helen’s death even to think about
removing it. It was a plain gold band, engraved inside: her initials and his and the date of their marriage.

More than anything on earth, he wanted her back. That desire would continue to govern every decision he made until he was able finally and forever to let her go by embracing the fact of her death instead of struggling with its grim reality day after day. Even when he was with Isabelle, Helen was there: both the spirit of her and the delightful essence of who she had been. This was no one’s fault, least of all Isabelle’s. It was simply, ineluctably, how things were.

He said, “No. I didn’t ask Winston’s help. But please, Isabelle, don’t blame Barbara for this. She’s only been trying to track down some information for me.”

“On this matter in Cumbria.”

“On this matter in Cumbria. I’d thought, as she had time off coming—”

“Yes. I do see what you thought, Tommy.”

He knew Isabelle was both wounded and hating the fact that she was wounded. When people felt like that, they needed to wound in turn, and he recognised that as well as understood it. But all of this was unnecessary at the moment, and he wanted, perhaps futilely, to make her see that. He said, “None of this was meant as a betrayal.”

“And what makes you think I’m seeing it that way?”

“Because in your position, I’d see it that way myself. You’re the guv. I’m not. I have no right to make requests of members of your team. Had there been any other way that I could have got the information quickly, believe me, I would have used it.”

“But there was another way, and that’s what concerns me. That you didn’t see that other way and that you apparently still don’t see it.”

“You mean that I could have come to you. But I couldn’t, Isabelle. I had no choice in the matter once Hillier gave the order. I was on the case and no one was to know about it.”

“No one.”

“You’re thinking of Barbara. But I didn’t tell her. She worked it out because it came down to Bernard Fairclough and things I needed to know about him, things in London and not in Cumbria. As soon
as she looked into him for me, she put it together. Tell me. What would you have done in my position?”

“I’d like to think I would have trusted you.”

“Because we’re lovers?”

“Essentially. I suppose that’s it.”

“But it can’t be,” he said. “Isabelle, think about things.”

“I’ve done little else. And that’s a real problem, as you can imagine.”

“I can. I do.” He knew what she meant, but he wanted to forestall her although he could not have said exactly why. He thought it had something to do with the vast emptiness of his life without Helen and how, ultimately, as social creatures mankind did not do well in isolation. But he knew this might be the crassest form of self-delusion, dangerous both to himself and to Isabelle. Still, he said, “There has to be a separation, doesn’t there? There must be a surgical cut—if you will—between what we do for the Met and who we are when we’re alone together. If you go forward in this job as superintendent, there are going to be moments when you’re put in a position of knowledge—by Hillier or by someone else—that you can’t share with me.”

“I’d share them anyway.”

“You wouldn’t, Isabelle. You won’t.”

“Did you?”

“Did I…? What d’you mean?”

“I mean Helen, Tommy. Did you share information with Helen?”

How could he possibly explain it? he wondered. He hadn’t had to share information with Helen because Helen had always known. She’d come to him in the bath and pour a bit of oil on her hands and work on his shoulders and murmur, “Ah, David Hillier again, hmm? Really, Tommy. I tend to think that never has knighthood caused such inflation in a man’s self-esteem.” He might then talk or he might not but the point was it didn’t matter to Helen. What he said was a matter of indifference to her. Who he was was everything.

He hated missing her most of all. He could bear the fact that he’d been the one to decide upon when her life—such as it had been at
that point, maintained by hospital machinery—would end. He could bear that she’d carried their child with her into the grave. He was coming to terms with the horror of her death’s being a senseless street murder that had come from nothing and resulted in nothing. But the hole that losing her had created within him…He hated it so much that there were moments when its presence brought him perilously close to hating her.

Isabelle said, “What am I to make of your silence?”

He said, “Nothing. Nothing at all. Just thinking.”

“And the answer?”

He’d honestly forgotten the question. “To?”

“Helen,” she said.

“I wish there were one,” he replied. “God knows I’d give it if I knew where to find it.”

She altered then, on the edge of a coin, in that way of hers that somehow kept him unbalanced with her but still bound to her. She said quietly, “God. Forgive me, Tommy. I’m devastating you. You don’t need that. I’m ringing you when I’m meant to be doing other things anyway. This isn’t the time for this conversation. I was upset about Winston and that’s not down to you. We’ll speak later.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Have you any idea when you’ll be back?”

That was, he thought wryly, the question in a nutshell. He looked out of the window. He was on the A592 in a heavily wooded area where the trees seemed to grow thickly right down to the shore of Lake Windermere. A few last leaves still stubbornly clung to the maples and the birches here, but another good storm would finish them off. He said, “Soon, I expect. Tomorrow, perhaps. The day after. I’ve had Simon with me and he’s finished his part with the forensics. Deborah’s still onto something, though. I’ll need to be here to see that part through. I’m not sure it relates, but she’s being stubborn and I can’t let her stay here alone in case things go badly in some way.”

She was quiet for a moment and he waited for her to make one of two choices dictated by his mention of Simon and Deborah. When she made it, he wanted to think it had been effortless for her,
but he knew how unlikely this was. She said, “It’s good they’ve been able to help you, Tommy.”

“It is,” he said.

“We’ll speak when you return.”

“We will.”

They rang off then, and he spent a moment in the lay-by looking at nothing. There were facts and feelings that had to be sorted out, and he knew he would have to get to them. But for the moment, there was Cumbria, along with what needed to be sorted out here.

He drove the rest of the distance to Ireleth Hall and found the gates standing open. When he reached the hall, he saw that a car was parked in front of it. He recognised this as one of the two vehicles he’d seen in Great Urswick. Fairclough’s daughter Manette would be here, then.

She’d not come alone, he discovered. She had her former husband with her, and Lynley found them with Manette’s parents in the great hall, in the aftermath of what apparently had been a visit from Nicholas. When Lynley and Fairclough exchanged a look, Valerie was the one to speak.

“I’m afraid we haven’t been entirely truthful with you, Inspector,” she said. “And it’s looking more and more like this is the moment for truth.”

Lynley looked at Fairclough again. Fairclough looked away. Lynley knew he’d been used for some reason unspoken at the moment, and at this he felt the inner burning that comes from the most useless sort of anger. He said, “If you’d care to explain,” to Valerie.

“Of course. I’m the reason you’ve been brought up to Cumbria, Inspector. No one knew this except Bernard. And now Manette, Freddie, and Nicholas know it.”

For an utterly mad moment Lynley thought the woman was actually confessing to murdering her husband’s nephew. The setting, after all, was perfect for it, in the best tradition of more than one hundred years of tea-in-the-vicarage and murder-in-the-library paperback novels sold in railway stations. He couldn’t imagine why she might be confessing, but he’d also never been able to understand why the characters in those novels sat quietly in the drawing room
or the sitting room or the library while a detective laid out all the clues leading to the guilt of one of them. No one ever demanded a solicitor in the midst of the detective’s maundering. He’d never been able to sort that one out.

Valerie clarified quickly, probably in answer to the confusion on his face. It was simple enough: She and not her husband had been the one who wanted to have the death of Ian Cresswell more closely looked into.

That, Lynley thought, explained a great deal, particularly when he considered what they’d uncovered about Fairclough’s private life. But it did not go the entire distance.
Why
still hung out there waiting for an answer.
Why Valerie and not Bernard?
was foremost.
Why at all?
was next since a conclusion of murder most likely would have meant that a member of her own family was culpable.

Lynley said, “I see. I’m not sure it matters entirely.” He went on to explain the results of his examination of everything connected to the death in the boathouse. Everything he had looked at and everything looked at by Simon St. James was in agreement with the coroner’s conclusion. A tragic accident had taken Ian Cresswell’s life. It could have happened to anyone using the boathouse. The dock’s stones were ancient; some were loose. Those that had been dislodged had not been tampered with. Had Cresswell been getting out of a different sort of boat, he might have merely stumbled. But getting out of a scull was trickier. The combination of its delicate balance and the dock’s loose stones had done him in. He’d pitched forward, hit his head, gone into the water, and drowned. No foul play had been involved.

In these circumstances, Lynley thought, one would expect a general sigh of relief to go around the room. One would expect something along the lines of “thank goodness” from Valerie Fairclough. But what came next was a long, tense silence in which he finally realised that something more than Ian Cresswell’s death had been the real reason for the investigation. And into this silence the front door opened, and Mignon Fairclough came into the hall.

She pushed her zimmer frame in front of her. She said, “Freddie, can you manage the door, darling? It’s a bit awkward for me,” and
as Freddie McGhie rose to do so, Valerie cut in with a sharp, “I expect you can cope quite well on your own, Mignon.”

Mignon tilted her head and managed an arch look at her mother. She said, “Very well, then,” and made something of a minor production out of turning herself and her zimmer and dealing with the door. She said, “There, then,” when it was closed and she’d turned back to them. “Such an excitement of comings and goings today, my darlings. Manette and Freddie à deux. My heart flutters with all the possibilities attendant on that. Then Nick roars up. Then Nick roars away. And now our handsome Scotland Yard detective is back among us, pitter-pattering our collective hearts. Forgive the idle curiosity, Mother and Dad, but I couldn’t bear to be outside looking in another moment with everything that’s going on round here.”

“It’s just as well,” Valerie said to her. “We’re discussing the future.”

“Whose, may I ask?”

“Everyone’s. Including yours. I’ve just learned today that for quite some time you’ve had something of pay rise in your monthly stipend. That’s at an end. As is the entire allowance.”

Mignon looked startled. Clearly, this was a turn of events she hadn’t anticipated. “Mother, darling, well obviously…I’m disabled. I can hardly go out like this and expect to become gainfully employed. So you can’t—”

“But that’s where you’re wrong, Mignon. I can. And I do.”

Mignon looked round, apparently for the source of this sudden alteration to her circumstances. She settled her gaze on Manette. Her eyes narrowed and she said, “You little bitch. I wouldn’t have thought you had it in you.”

“I say, Mignon,” Freddie declared.

“I expect you do,” Mignon replied to him. “What else will you
say
when we begin to talk about her and Ian, Freddie?”

“There is no me and Ian and you know it,” Manette cut in.

“There’s a shoe box crammed with letters, darling, some of them burned but the rest in
very
good condition. I can easily fetch them. Believe me, I’ve been waiting years to do so.”

“I had an adolescent infatuation with Ian. Make more of it if you like. It won’t get you far.”

“Not even the bits about ‘wanting you more than I’ll ever want anyone’ and ‘darling Ian please be my first’?”

“Oh please,” Manette said in disgust.

“I could go on, you know. I’ve endless bits memorised.”

“And none of us want to hear them,” Valerie snapped. “Enough has been said. We’re finished here.”

“Not nearly as finished as you think.” Mignon made her way to the sofa on which her sister and Freddie McGhie were sitting. She said, “If you don’t mind, darling Freddie…,” and began to lower herself. He had no choice but to have her in his lap or to move. He opted for the second and joined his former father-in-law at the fireplace.

Lynley could see everyone regrouping mentally. All of them seemed to know something was coming, although he reckoned that no one knew what it was. Mignon had obviously been gathering information for years on the members of her family. She’d not had to use it in the past, but now she seemed to be preparing to do so. She cast one look at her sister and another at her father. She kept her eyes on him and, with a smile, said, “You know, I don’t think things are going to change
quite
so much, Mother. And neither does Dad, I daresay.”