Well-Schooled in Murder (62 page)

“Had to
negotiate
to get him into South Ealing, don’ you know. Had to buy the plot
special
. They’ve had it for
years
. That’s their son in the next grave.”

“She found him, I hear. Barbie. He’d been dead all day. Her mum was right there and she didn’t even
know
he was gone.”

“No surprise to me, that. Batty, her mum is. Has been for ages.”

“
Senile?
”

“Just batty. Can’t be left alone for ten minutes.”

“Cor. What’s Barbie to do?”

“Put her away, I’d guess. There has to be
some
home as will take her.”

“Not likely to be easy. Just look at the poor thing.”

It was the first time Lynley had seen Sergeant Havers’ mother. He was still trying to come to terms with the sight of her, and with his own previous reluctance to invade the closed world that was Barbara Havers’ life. He had known Barbara for years, had worked with her closely for the past eighteen months, yet every time she had fended off a circumstance that might have allowed him to know her as more than merely a colleague, he had allowed her to do so with very little protest. It was as if, all along, he had taken the full measure of the secrets she was trying to hide and was only too willing to allow her to go on hiding them indefinitely.

Her mother had clearly been one of them. Dressed in an overlarge black coat that dangled round her ankles, she clung to Barbara’s arm, smiling, her head cocked to one side. She did not seem to be aware of the funerary rites going on round her. Rather, she cast diffident glances at the group that stood opposite her in a semicircle round the yawning grave, and she whispered to her daughter and stroked her arm. Barbara’s only response was to pat her mother’s hand, although she attended to her briefly by fastening the top button of her coat and brushing away several grey hairs that lay on its collar. That done, she returned her attention to the clergyman. Her face was composed; her eyes rested on the coffin. She appeared to be giving her thoughts to the service.

Lynley could not. He could ground himself only in the here and now. Prayers for eternity meant less than nothing. He examined the mourners.

Across the grave, St. James held an umbrella over his wife, while Deborah took further shelter in the curve of his arm. Next to them, Superintendent Webberly stood bareheaded in the drizzle, his hands driven into the pockets of his raincoat. Behind him were three other DI’s, and next to them the singular black face of Constable Nkata. The small crowd was dotted with other representatives from the Yard. They were here for Barbara. They had never known her father.

Beyond them, a woman in pink plastic gloves was digging industriously in an urn at the side of a marble-topped grave. She paid no attention to the service going on, squishing round in galoshes as if she were alone. She only looked up from her employment when a car approached, its tyres slashing through the puddles along the lane behind Lynley that led from the cemetery’s entrance on South Ealing Road. It stopped, motor running. A door opened and shut. The car drove off. Quick footsteps crossed the pavement. Someone had come—quite late—to join the mourners.

Lynley saw that Havers had descried the newcomer, for her eyes moved from the grave to the back of the group and then immediately, as if inadvertently, to him. She averted her gaze at once, but not quickly enough. He knew Havers. He read her well. He realised who had come. Even had he not drawn this instant conclusion from Havers’ expression, the faces of St. James and Deborah would have told him. No doubt it was they in the first place who had put through the call to Corfu that brought Helen Clyde home.

And it
was
Helen who stood at the edge of the crowd. Lynley knew it. He could feel it. He did not even need to turn and see her for verification. He would sense her presence in the very air whenever she was near him, to the end of his life. Two months of her absence had made no change in that. Two decades would not do so.

The clergyman ended his prayers, stepped back, and watched the attendants lower the casket. When it was settled, Sergeant Havers urged her mother forward a few tottering steps and helped her throw a handful of spring flowers into the grave. Mrs. Havers had been clutching them throughout the service. She had dropped them twice on the way from the chapel. They were bedraggled now, a flutter of stems and petals without definition any longer. They floated out from her hand, were quickly sodden by the rain.

The clergyman murmured a final invocation for peace and eternal rest. He spoke to Sergeant Havers and her mother. He stepped away. The mourners pressed forward to murmur condolences.

Lynley watched them do so. St. James and Deborah, Webberly and Nkata. Neighbours and colleagues and distant relations. He stayed by the grave. He stared down into it. Dull light winked from the small brass plaque on the coffin lid. Now that he was released from the proprieties required of one during a funeral, now that turning, greeting Helen, and making conversation were all behaviours expected of him, Lynley found that he could bring himself to do nothing at all. Even if he could mouth harmless inanities in an effort to prevent Helen from leaving him again, how could he hope to manage that without his face declaring everything that he wished to conceal?

Two months changed nothing. Nothing at all. They did not lessen his love for her, nor did they do anything to attenuate desire.

“Tommy.”

His eyes cast down, he saw her shoes first. Despite his discomfiture, he had to smile. They were, as always, so completely Helen: impractical, beautiful bits of leather offering absolutely no protection from the weather, cut in a fashion only a masochist could endure.

“How on earth can you wear those things, Helen?” he asked her. “They look like misery.”

“Agony,” Lady Helen corrected. “My feet are so sore that my eyeballs actually hurt. I feel like an experiment for podiatric torture. If a war were on, I’d already have told the enemy everything I know.”

He laughed quietly, raising his head to look at her. She was unchanged. The smooth chestnut hair still framed her face. The dark eyes still held his own unwaveringly. The figure was slender, the carriage upright and proud.

“Have you come from Greece this morning?” he asked her.

“It was the first flight I could get. I’ve come straight from the airport.”

Which explained her clothing, light and springlike in shades of peach, entirely unsuited to a funeral. He removed his trench coat and handed it to her.

“Am I that awful?” she asked.

“Not at all. You’re getting wet. The shoes look beyond redemption at this point, but there’s no reason to ruin the dress.”

She shrugged her way into the coat. It was absurdly enormous upon her.

“At least you’ve an umbrella,” he noted. It was dangling from her fingers, unopened.

“Yes indeed. One of those wretched collapsible things. I bought it at the airport. It’s been collapsing quite cooperatively ever since.” She cinched in the coat’s belt. “Have you spoken to Barbara?”

“On the phone several times since Wednesday. But not today. Not yet.”

Lady Helen watched the assembled people moving towards Sergeant Havers. Lynley watched Lady Helen. When she turned back to him suddenly, he felt the heat take his face. Her words surprised him.

“Simon told me about the case, Tommy. About the school. That little boy.” She hesitated. “It sounded particularly dreadful.”

“Parts of it were. The school mostly.” He looked away. At the next gravesite, the woman in the pink gloves was still digging in the urn. On the ground next to her an azalea waited to be planted.

“Because of Eton?”

How she knew him. How she did. How she always would. How she could touch him to the core of his being—to his very essence—without even trying. “I prayed for him at Eton, Helen. Did I ever tell you that? In the memorial chapel. With those four archangels in each corner looking down on me and guaranteeing that my prayers would be heard. I went there every day. I knelt. I prayed. Please, God, let my father live. I’ll do anything, God. Just let my father live.”

“You loved him, Tommy. That’s what children do when they love their parents. They don’t want them to die. There’s no sin in that.”

He shook his head. “That isn’t it. I didn’t know. I didn’t think. I prayed for him to live. Helen, to
live
. I never thought to pray that he might be cured. And my prayer was answered. He lived. For six horrible years.”

“Oh, Tommy.”

Her warmth and compassion were far too much. He spoke without consideration. “How I’ve missed you.”

“And I you,” she said. “Truly.”

He wanted to take hope from those four simple words. He wanted to infuse them with both meaning and promise. Hearing them, he wanted to risk it all once again, to offer Helen his life, to declare his love, to insist that she recognise and embrace the union that had long existed between them. But if they had not allowed him to forget her for a moment, the past two months without her had at least taught him a degree of restraint.

“I’ve a new sherry at home,” he said in answer. “Will you try it sometime and tell me what you think?”

“Tommy, you know I’m a hopeless victim to sherry. It could be decanted right through someone’s dirty socks and I’d still taste it and pronounce it delicious.”

“In any other circumstance that could be a problem,” he admitted. “But not in this case.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve only used clean socks.”

She laughed. It lit her face.

Encouraged, he asked, “Will you come tonight?” And then he added hastily, “Or tomorrow. Or later. Of course, you’re exhausted from your trip.”

“And after the sherry?” she asked him. “What then?”

He let pretence go. “I don’t know, Helen. Perhaps you’ll tell me about your trip. Perhaps I’ll tell you about my work. If it gets late, perhaps we’ll scramble eggs and burn them and throw out the lot. Or perhaps we’ll just share the evening together. I don’t know. That’s the best I can do. I don’t know.”

Lady Helen hesitated. She looked towards Sergeant Havers and her mother. The cluster of people round them was getting thin. Lynley knew she wanted to go to Barbara, knew he himself ought to be standing in that group of people near her and not waiting here for the woman he loved to say something—anything—that would indicate what his future might be. He was irritated with himself. Once again, he had put Helen into an untenable position. His need to
know
, to have instantaneous resolution, would drive her away from him again and again.

“Look. I’m sorry,” he said abruptly. “I wasn’t thinking. That seems to be a chronic condition of mine. Shall we let it go for now and talk to Barbara?”

Lady Helen looked relieved. “Yes. Let’s do that.”

She took his arm and they walked towards the group that still stood under the plastic canopy.

“Tommy,” Lady Helen said reflectively after a moment. “You know, I’m awfully fond of sherry. I always have been.”

“I know. That’s why I thought—”

“What I mean is yes. Tasting the sherry. I’d like to do that tonight.”

Her hesitancy was a call for caution. Lynley refused to allow himself to misunderstand. He merely said as she had, “And after the sherry?”

“I don’t know. Like you, that’s the best I can do. Is it enough for you this time?”

It was not enough. It would never be enough. Only certainty would satisfy. But that would not come at once.

“It’s enough,” he lied. “For now. It’s enough.”

They joined St. James and Deborah. They waited to speak to Barbara. Lynley took what pleasure he could from Helen’s hand on his arm. He drew a measure of contentment from the pressure of her shoulder against his, from her presence at his side, from the sound of her voice. It was not at all what he wanted from her. It never would be. But he knew it would have to suffice for now.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ELIZABETH GEORGE is the author of thirteen award-winning and internationally bestselling novels, including
A Great Deliverance, Payment in Blood
, and
A Traitor to Memory
. Most of her novels have been filmed for television by the BBC and broadcast in the United States on PBS’s
Mystery!

She lives in Seattle, Washington, and London.

ALSO BY ELIZABETH GEORGE

A Great Deliverance

Payment in Blood

A Suitable Vengeance

For the Sake of Elena

Missing Joseph

Playing for the Ashes

In the Presence of the Enemy

Deception on His Mind

In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

A Traitor to Memory

I, Richard

A Place of Hiding

WELL-SCHOOLED IN MURDER

A Bantam Book