“I expect I can have something sent up to my room,” Lynley said, “providing they have rooms available tonight.”
“Let’s be off then,” Daidre said.
They made their second drive to the Salthouse Inn more slowly as there was no rush, and they encountered two more police vehicles and an ambulance on the way. They didn’t speak and when Daidre glanced over at her companion, she saw that his eyes were closed and his hands rested easily on his thighs. He looked asleep, and she didn’t doubt that he was. He’d seemed exhausted. She wondered how long he’d been hiking along the coastal path.
At the Salthouse Inn, she stopped the Vauxhall in the car park, but Lynley didn’t move. She touched him gently on the shoulder.
He opened his eyes and blinked slowly, as if clearing his head of a dream. He said, “Thank you. It was kind-”
“I didn’t want to leave you in the clutches of the police,” she cut in. Then, “Sorry. I forget you’re one of them.”
“After a fashion, yes, I am.”
“Well, anyway…I thought you might like a respite from them. Although from what she said…the inspector…it doesn’t appear you’ve escaped them for long.”
“No. They’ll want to talk to me at length tonight. The first person on the scene is always suspect. They’ll be intent on gathering as much information as possible as quickly as possible. That’s the way it’s done.”
They were silent then. A gust of wind-stronger than any other so far-hit the car and rocked it. It stirred Daidre to words once more. She said, “I’ll come round for you tomorrow, then.” She made the declaration without thinking through all the ramifications of what it meant, what it could mean, and what it would look like. This wasn’t like her, and she shook herself mentally. But the words were out there, and she let them lie. “You’ll need to get things from Casvelyn, I mean. I don’t expect you want to walk round in that boiler suit for long. You’ll want shoes as well. And other things. Casvelyn’s the closest place to get them.”
“That’s good of you,” Lynley told her. “But I don’t want to trouble you.”
“You said that earlier. But it isn’t and you’re not. It’s very strange, but I feel that we’re in this together although I don’t quite know what this is.”
“I’ve caused you a problem,” he said. “More than one. The window in your cottage. Now the police. I’m sorry about it.”
“What else were you to do? You could hardly walk on once you’d found him.”
“No. I couldn’t walk on, could I?”
He sat for a moment. He seemed to be watching the wind play with the sign hanging above the inn’s front door.
He finally said, “May I ask you something?”
She said, “Certainly.”
“Why did you lie?”
She heard an unexpected buzzing in her ears. She repeated the last word, as if she’d misheard him when she’d heard him only too clearly.
He said, “The first time we came here, you told the publican that the boy in the cove was Santo Kerne. You said his name. Santo Kerne. But when the police asked you…” He gestured, a movement saying finish the rest for yourself.
The question reminded Daidre that this man, disheveled and filthy though he was, was himself a policeman, and a detective at that. From this moment, she needed to take extraordinary care.
She said, “Did I say that?”
“You did. Quietly, but not quietly enough. And now you’ve told the police at least twice that you didn’t recognise the boy. When they’ve said his name, you’ve said you don’t know him. I’m wondering why.”
He looked at her, and she instantly regretted her offer to take him into Casvelyn for clothing in the morning. He was more than the sum of his parts, and she hadn’t seen that in time.
She said, “I’ve come for a holiday. At the time it seemed-what I said to the police-the best way of ensuring I have one. A holiday. A rest.”
He said nothing.
She added, “Thank you for not betraying me to them. Of course, I can’t stop you from betraying me later when you speak to them again. But I’d appreciate it, if you’d consider…There’re things the police don’t need to know about me. That’s all, Mr. Lynley.”
He didn’t reply. But he didn’t look away from her and she felt the heat rising up her neck to her cheeks. The door of the inn banged open then. A man and a woman stumbled into the wind. The woman twisted her ankle, and the man put his arm round her waist and then kissed her. She shoved him away. The gesture was playful. He caught her up again and they staggered in the wind towards a line of cars.
Daidre watched them as Lynley watched her. She finally said, “I’ll come for you at ten, then. Will that do for you, Mr. Lynley?”
His response was a long time in coming. Daidre thought he must be a good policeman.
“Thomas,” he said to her. “Please call me Thomas.”
IT WAS LIKE AN old-time film about the American west, Lynley thought. He ducked into the inn’s public bar, where the local drinkers were gathered, and silence fell. This was a part of the world where you were a visitor until you had become a permanent resident and you were a newcomer until your family had lived in the place for two generations. So he went down as a stranger among them. But he was more than that. He was also a stranger dressed in a white boiler suit and wearing nothing but socks on his feet. He had no coat against the cold, the wind, and the rain, and if that were not enough to make him a novelty, had anyone other than a bride entered this establishment in the past wearing white from shoulder to ankle, it probably hadn’t happened in the living memory of anyone present.
The ceiling-stained with the soot of fires and the smoke of cigarettes and crossed with black oak beams from which horse brasses were nailed-hung less than twelve inches above Lynley’s head. The walls bore a display of ancient farm implements, given mostly to scythes and pitchforks, and the floor was stone. This last was uneven, pockmarked, scored and scoured. Thresholds made of the same material as the floor were cratered by hundreds of years of entrances and exits, and the room itself that defined the public bar was small and divided into two sections described by fireplaces, one large and one small, which seemed to be doing more to make the air unbreathable than to warm the place. The body heat of the crowd was seeing to that.
When he’d been at the Salthouse Inn earlier with Daidre Trahair, just a few late-afternoon drinkers had been present. Now, the place’s nighttime crowd had arrived, and Lynley had to work his way through them and through their silence to get to the bar. He knew it was more than his clothing that made him an object of interest. There was the not small matter of his smelclass="underline" unwashed from head to toe for seven weeks now. Unshaven and unshorn as well.
The publican-Lynley recalled that Daidre Trahair had referred to him as Brian-apparently remembered him from his earlier visit because he said abruptly into the silence, “Was it Santo Kerne out there on the cliffs?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know who it was. But it was a young man. An adolescent or just older than that. That’s all I can tell you.”
A murmur rose and fell at this. Lynley heard the name Santo repeated several times. He glanced over his shoulder. Dozens of eyes-young and old and in between-were fixed on him.
He said to Brian, “The boy-Santo-he was well known?”
“He lives hereabouts,” was the unhelpful reply. That was the limit of what Brian appeared to be willing to reveal to a stranger. He said, “Are you after a drink, then?”
When Lynley asked for a room instead, he recognised in Brian a marked reluctance to accommodate him. He put this down to what it likely was: a logical unwillingness to allow an unsavoury stranger such as himself access to the inn’s sheets and pillows. God only knew what vermin might be crawling upon him. But the novelty he represented at the Salthouse Inn was in his favour. His appearance was in direct conflict with his accent and his manner of speaking, and if that were not enough to make him an object of fascination, there was the intriguing matter of his finding the body, which had likely been the subject of conversation inside the inn before he entered.