He shook his head. She could feel the heavy beating of his heart. “Have they questioned you yet?” she asked.
“No.” His cool fingers rested on the nape of her neck, and he spoke over her head carefully, as if each word was chosen with deliberation. “They do think I killed her, don’t they, Helen?”
Her arms tightened of their own volition, speaking the answer for her. He went on. “I’ve been considering how they might think I did it. I came to your room, brought you cognac to make you drunk, made love to you as a distraction, then stabbed my cousin. Why, of course, remains to be seen. But no doubt they’ll think of something soon enough.”
“The cognac was unsealed,” Lady Helen whispered.
“Do they think I put something in it? Good God. And what about you? Do you think that as well? Do you think I came to you, intent upon drugging you and then murdering my cousin?”
“Of course not.” Looking up, Lady Helen saw a mixture of fatigue and sadness melt together on his face, tempered by relief.
“When I got out of your bed, I unsealed it,” he said. “God knows I wanted the stuff. I felt desperate to have it. But then you woke up. You came to me. And frankly, I discovered that I wanted you more.”
“You don’t need to tell me.”
“I was inches from a drink. Centimetres. I haven’t felt like that in months. If you hadn’t been there…”
“It doesn’t matter. I was there. I’m here now.”
Voices came to them from the room next door: Lynley’s raised hotly for a moment, followed by St. James’ placid murmur. They listened. Rhys spoke.
“Your loyalties are going to be tested brutally through this, Helen. You know that, don’t you? And even if you’re presented with irrefutable truths, you’re going to have to decide for yourself why I came to your room last night, why I wanted to be with you, why I made love to you. And, most of all, what I was doing all that time while you slept.”
“I don’t need to decide,” Lady Helen declared. “There aren’t two sides to this story as far as I’m concerned.”
Rhys’ eyes darkened to black. “There are. His and mine. And you know it.”
WHEN ST. JAMES and Lynley entered the drawing room, they saw it was destined to be a most unpleasant dinner.The assembled group could not have placed themselves across the oriental carpet with any more effective staging to depict their displeasure with the fact that they would be sitting down to dine with New Scotland Yard.
Joanna Ellacourt had selected a centre-stage location. Having established herself somewhere between sitting and draping on a rosewood chaise near the fi replace, she favoured the two newcomers with a glacial look before she turned away, sipped on what looked like white-capped pink syrup, and cast her eyes upon the George II chimney-piece as if its pale green pilasters needed memorising. The others were gathered round her on couches and chairs; their desultory conversation ceased entirely at the entrance of the two men.
Lynley’s eyes swept over the group, making a quick note of the fact that some of them were missing, making especial note of the fact that among the missing were Lady Helen and Rhys Davies-Jones. At a drinks trolley at the far end of the room, Constable Lonan sat like a guardian angel, keeping sharp eyes on the company as if in the expectation that one or more of them might commit some new act of violence. Lynley and St. James went to join him.
“Where are the others?” Lynley asked.
“Not down yet,” Lonan replied. “The one lady just got in here herself.”
Lynley saw that the lady in question was Lord Stinhurst’s daughter, Elizabeth Rintoul, and she was approaching the drinks trolley like a woman going to her execution. Unlike Joanna Ellacourt, who had dressed for the dinner in clinging satin as if it were a social occasion of the highest order, Elizabeth wore a tan tweed skirt and bulky green sweater, both decidedly old and ill-fi tting, the latter decorated with three moth holes that made an isosceles triangle high on her left shoulder.
She was, Lynley knew, thirty-five years old, but she looked far older, like a woman approaching spinsterly middle age in the worst possible way. Her hair, perhaps in an unsuccessful attempt to achieve strawberry blonde, had been coloured an artificial shade of brown that had since gone brassy. It was heavily permed so that it formed a screen from behind which she could observe the world. Both the colour and the style suggested a choice made from a magazine photograph and not one that took into consideration the demands of her complexion or the shape of her face. She was very gaunt, with features that were pinched and pointed. Her upper lip was beginning to develop the creasing lines of age.
Uneasiness limned itself on her bloodless face as she crossed the room. One hand caught at her skirt and squeezed the material. She didn’t bother to introduce herself, didn’t bother with any introductory formality at all. It was clear that she had waited more than twelve hours to ask her question and was not about to be put off another moment. Nonetheless, she didn’t actually look at Lynley as she spoke. Her eyes-shadowed inexpertly with a peculiar shade of aquamarine-merely touched his face to establish contact and from that moment forward remained riveted on the wall just beyond him, as if she were addressing the painting that hung there.
“Do you have the necklace?” she asked stiffly.
“I beg your pardon?”
Elizabeth ’s hands splayed out against her skirt. “My aunt’s pearl necklace. I gave it to Joy last night. Is it in her room?”
There was a murmur from the group at the fireplace, and Francesca Gerrard got to her feet. Coming to Elizabeth ’s side, she put her hand on her elbow, attempting to draw her back to the others. She kept her eyes off the police.
“It’s all right, Elizabeth,” she murmured. “Really. Quite all right.”
Elizabeth jerked away. “It’s not all right, Aunt Francie. I didn’t want to give it to Joy in the first place. I knew it wouldn’t work. Now that she’s dead, I want you to have it back.” Still, she looked at no one. Her eyes were bloodshot, a condition that her eyeshadow only heightened.
Lynley looked at St. James. “Were there pearls in the room?” The other man shook his head.
“But I took the necklace to her. She wasn’t in her room yet. She’d gone to…So I asked him to…” Elizabeth stopped, her face working. Her eyes sought and then fastened on Jeremy Vinney. “You didn’t give it to her, did you? You said you would, but you didn’t. What have you done with that necklace?”
Vinney’s gin and tonic stopped midway to his lips. His fingers, too plump and overly hairy, tightened on the glass. Clearly, the accusation came as a surprise. “I? Of course I gave it to her. Don’t be absurd.”
“You’re lying!” Elizabeth shrilled. “You said she didn’t want to talk to anyone! And you put it in your pocket! I heard the two of you in your room, you know! I know what you were after! But when she wouldn’t let you do it, you followed her back to her room, didn’t you? You were angry! You killed her! And then you took the pearls as well!”
Vinney was on his feet at that, a quick man in spite of the weight he carried. He tried to push aside David Sydeham, who grabbed his arm.
“You dried-up little shrew,” he fl ared. “You were so goddamned jealous of her, you probably killed her yourself! Snooping about, listening at doors. That’s about as close as you’ve come to having any, isn’t it?”
“Jesus God, Vinney-”
“And what were you doing with her?” Angry colour shot across Elizabeth ’s cheeks in patches. Her lips contorted into a sneer. “Hoping to get your own creative juices up by bleeding off hers? Or smelling her up like every other man here?”
“ Elizabeth!” Francesca Gerrard pleaded weakly.
“Because I know why you came! I know what you were after!”
“She’s mad,” Joanna Ellacourt muttered in disgust.
Lady Stinhurst broke at that. She spat a response at the actress. “Don’t you say that!
Don’t you dare! You sit there like an ageing Cleopatra who needs men to-”