Playing for the Ashes (27 page)

“Did you discuss your reservations with him?”

“We discussed everything, Inspector. Despite what the tabloids have on occasion suggested about us, Ken was like a son in my life. He
was
, in fact, a son in every way save the formalities of either birth or adoption.”

“You have no other children?”

She watched a Porsche pass them, followed by a motorcyclist with long red hair streaming like banners from beneath an SS-shaped helmet. “I have a daughter,” she said.

“Is she in London?”

Again, the long pause before she answered, as if the traffic they passed were giving her an indication of which words she should choose and how many. “As far as I know. She and I have been estranged for a number of years.”

“Which must have made Fleming doubly important to you,” Sergeant Havers noted.

“Because he took Olivia’s place? I only wish it were that easy, Sergeant. One doesn’t replace one child with another. It’s not like owning a dog.”

“But can’t a relationship be replaced?”

“A new relationship can develop. But the cicatrix of the old one remains. And nothing grows on a cicatrix. Nothing grows through it.”

“But it can become as important as a relationship that has preceded it,” Lynley noted. “Will you agree with that?”

“It can become more important,” Mrs. Whitelaw said.

They veered onto the M20 and began heading southeast. Lynley didn’t make his next remark until they were spinning along comfortably in the far right lane.

“You’ve a great amount of property,” he said. “The factory in Stepney, the house in Kensington, the cottage in Kent. I should guess you’ve other investments as well, especially if the printworks is a going concern.”

“I’m not a wealthy woman.”

“I dare say you’re not straitened either.”

“What the company makes is reinvested into the company, Inspector.”

“Which makes it a valuable commodity. Is it a family business?”

“My father-in-law began it. My husband inherited it. When Gordon died, I took it over.”

“And upon your death? Have you arranged for its future?”

Sergeant Havers, apparently seeing where Lynley was heading, shifted in her seat to give Mrs. Whitelaw her attention. “What does your will say about your fortune, Mrs. Whitelaw? Who gets what?”

She took off her sunglasses and slid them into a leather case, which she removed from her purse. She returned her regular spectacles to her nose. “My will is written to bene
fit
Ken.”

“I see,” Lynley said thoughtfully. He saw Sergeant Havers reach in her shoulder bag and bring out her notebook. “Did Fleming know about this?”

“I’m afraid I don’t see the point of your question.”

“Might he have told someone? Have you told anyone?”

“It hardly matters now that he’s dead.”

“It matters a great deal. If that’s why he’s dead.”

Her hand reached for her heavy necklace in much the same way she’d reached for it on the previous night. “You’re suggesting—”

“That someone might not have appreciated the fact that Fleming was your beneficiary.

That someone might have felt he’d used—” Lynley searched for a euphemism, “extraordinary means to win your affection and trust.”

“That happens,” Havers said.

“I assure you. It didn’t happen in this case.” Mrs. Whitelaw’s words teetered between polite calm and cool anger. “As I said, I’ve known…I knew Ken Fleming from the time he was
fif
-teen years old. He started out my pupil. Over time he became my son and my friend. But he was not…he was
not
…” Her voice wavered and she stopped herself until she could control it. “He was not my lover. Even though, Inspector, I am frankly still woman enough to have more than once wished myself a twenty-
fiv
eyear-old girl with her life instead of her death ahead of her. A wish, I imagine you agree, that is not completely without its logic. Women are still women and men are still men, no matter their ages.”

“And if their ages don’t matter? To either of them?”

“Ken was unhappy in his marriage. He needed time to sort things out. I was happy to be able to give him that. First in the Spring-burns when he played for Kent. Then in my home when the Middlesex team offered him a contract. If that looks to people as if he were playing the gigolo with me, or as if I were attempting to put my gnarled claws into a younger man, it simply can’t be helped.”

“You were the brunt of gossip.”

“Which was of no consequence to us. We knew the truth. You now know it as well.”

Lynley wondered about that. He’d discovered long ago that the truth was rarely as simple as a verbal explanation made it out to be.

They exited the motorway and began to weave through the country roads towards the Springburns. In the market town of Greater Springburn, Saturday morning meant an open air market, which filled the square and clogged the streets with cars looking for spaces to park. They inched through the traffic and headed east on Swan Street, where ornamental cherry trees splashed blossoms the colour of candy floss onto the ground.

Beyond Greater Springburn, Mrs. Whitelaw directed them through a series of lanes sided by tall hedgerows of yew and blackberry brambles. They finally turned into a lane marked Water Street, and she said, “It’s just along here,” as they passed a line of cottages at the edge of an open field of
fla
x. Just beyond this, they began to make a twisting descent towards a cottage that sat on a slight rise of land, surrounded by conifers and a wall, its drive closed off by crime scene tape. Two cars were drawn up to the wall, one a panda car and the other a metallic blue Rover. Lynley parked in front of the Rover, edging the Bentley part way into the cottage drive.

He surveyed the area—the hop field opposite, the scattering of old cottages farther along the lane, the distinctive cocked-hat chimneys of a line of oast roundels, the grassy paddock immediately next door. He turned to Mrs. Whitelaw. “Do you need a minute?”

“I’m ready.”

“There’ll be some interior damage to the cottage.”

“I understand.”

He nodded. Sergeant Havers hopped out and opened Mrs. Whitelaw’s door. The older woman stood still for a moment, breathing in the strong, medicinal scent of rape that made an enormous yellow coverlet on a slope of farmland farther along the lane. A cuckoo was calling somewhere in the distance. Swifts were darting into the sky, wheeling higher and higher on scimitar wings.

Lynley ducked under the police tape, then held it up for Mrs. Whitelaw. Sergeant Havers followed her, notebook in hand.

At the top of the drive, Lynley swung the garage door open and Mrs. Whitelaw stepped inside to verify that the Aston Martin within looked like Gabriella Patten’s. She couldn’t be absolutely certain, she told them, because she didn’t know the number plates of Gabriella’s car. But she knew Gabriella drove an Aston Martin. She’d seen it when the woman had come to Kensington to see Ken. This looked like the same car, but if asked to swear to it…

“That’s
fin
e,” Lynley said as Havers noted the number plates. He asked her to look round the garage to see if anything was amiss.

There was little enough inside: three bicycles, two of which had flat tyres; one bicycle pump; an ancient three-pronged pitchfork; several baskets hanging from hooks; a folded chaise longue; cushions for outdoor furniture.

“This wasn’t here before,” Mrs. Whitelaw said in reference to a large sack of cat litter. “I don’t keep cats.” Everything else, she said, seemed to be in order.

They returned to the drive where they walked through the latticework gate and into the front garden. Lynley looked over its colourful abundance, not for the
fir
st time re
fle
cting upon the universal obsession that his countrymen and women seemed to have with urging flora to burst from the soil. He always thought it was a direct reaction to the climate. Month upon month of dreary, wet, grey weather acted as a stimulus to which the only response was a starburst of colour the moment spring gave the remotest hint of appearing.

They found Inspector Ardery on the terrace behind the cottage. She was sitting at a wicker table beneath a grape arbour, talking into a cellular phone and using a biro to scribble aimless marks on a pad as she did so. She was saying pleasantly, “Listen to me, Bob, I don’t exactly give a shit about your plans with Sally. I have a case. I can’t take the boys this weekend. End of discussion… Yes.
Bitch
is exactly the epithet I’d choose as well…. Don’t you bloody dare do that…. Bob, I won’t be home, and you know it. Bob!” She folded the mouth piece closed. “Bastard,” she muttered. She set the phone on the table, between a manila folder and a notebook. She looked up, saw them, and said without embarrassment, “Ex-husbands. A species apart.
Homo infuriatus
.” She rose, brought an ivory hairslide out of the pocket of her trousers, and used it to fasten her hair at the nape of her neck. “Mrs. Whitelaw,” she said and introduced herself. She took several pairs of surgical gloves from her brief case and handed them round. “The dab boys have already come and gone, but I like to be careful all the same.”

She waited until they had the gloves on before she ducked under the lintel of the kitchen door and led the way into the cottage. Mrs. Whitelaw hesitated just inside,
fin
gering the lock that the fire brigade had broken to get inside. “What should I…?”

“Take your time,” Lynley told her. “Look round the rooms. Notice as much as you can. Compare what you see to what you know about the place. Sergeant Havers will be with you. Talk to her. Say anything that comes into your mind.” He said to Havers, “Start above.”

She replied, “Right,” and led Mrs. Whitelaw through the kitchen, saying, “Stairway’s this direction, ma’am?”

They heard Mrs. Whitelaw say, “Oh dear,” when she saw the condition of the dining room. She added, “The smell.”

“Soot. Smoke. Lots of this stuff’ll probably have to go, I’m afraid.”

Their voices faded as they climbed the stairs. Lynley took a moment to scrutinise the kitchen. The building itself was more than four centuries old, but the kitchen had been modernised to include new tiles on the work tops and floor, a leaf-green Aga, chrome fixtures at the sink. Glass-fronted cupboards held dishes and tinned goods. Window sills displayed pots of drooping maidenhair fern.

“We’ve taken what was in the sink,” Inspector Ardery said as Lynley bent to inspect a double-bowled animal dish just inside the kitchen door. “It looked like dinner for one: plate, wineglass, water glass, one place setting of cutlery. Cold pork and salad from the fridge. With chutney.”

“Have you come across the cat?” Lynley began to open and close the kitchen drawers.

“Kittens,” she said. “There were two of them, according to the milkman. The Patten woman found them abandoned by the spring.

We managed to locate them at one of the neighbours. They were wandering in the lane early Thursday morning. The kittens, not the neighbours. We’ve had some interesting news at that end of things, by the way. I’ve had some probationary DCs out interviewing the neighbours since yesterday afternoon.”

Lynley found nothing unusual in the drawers of cutlery, cooking utensils, and tea towels. He moved to the cupboards. “What did the DCs hear?”

“It’s what the neighbours heard, actually.” She waited patiently until Lynley turned from the cupboard, his hand on the knob. “An argument. A real screamer, from what John Freestone said. He farms the acreage that begins right across the paddock.”

“That’s a good forty yards. He must have exceptional ears.”

“He was doing a fast-walk by the cottage. Around eleven Wednesday night.”

“Odd time for a stroll.”

“He’s on a schedule of prescribed cardiovascular activity, or so he said. The truth is, Freestone may just have hoped to get a glimpse of Gabriella’s evening ablutions. According to several accounts, she was well worth glimpsing and not overly particular about drawing

the curtains when she began to undress.”

“And did he? Glimpse her, that is.”

“He heard a row. Male and female. But mostly female. Lots of colourful language, including some interesting and illuminating names for sexual activities and the male genitalia. That sort of thing.”

“Did he recognise her voice? Or the man’s?”

“He said one woman’s shrieking is about the same as another woman’s shrieking to his way of thinking. He couldn’t be sure who it was. But he did voice some surprise that ‘that sweet woman would know setch lang’age.’” She smiled wryly. “I don’t think he gets about much.”

Lynley chuckled and opened the
fir
st cupboard to see an orderly arrangement of plates, glasses, cups, and saucers. He opened the second cupboard. One packet of Silk Cut lay on the shelf in front of assorted tins of everything from new potatoes to soup. He examined the packet. It was still sealed in cellophane.

“Kitchen matches,” he said more to himself than to Ardery.