“That,” Lynley said, “is a stroke of luck. Let’s go in.”
Inside, the theatre buzzed with the activity attendant to a new production. The auditorium doors were open; conversation and laughter mixed with the noise of a crew at work, taking measurements for a set. Production assistants hurried by with clipboards in their hands and pencils behind their ears. In a corner by the bar, a publicist and a designer held a huddle over a large sheet of paper onto which the latter was sketching advertising draughts. It was altogether a place of creativity, humming with excitement, but this morning Lynley did not find himself at all regretful that he would be the instrument of bringing all these people’s pleasure to an end. As would be the case once Stinhurst faced arrest.
They were walking towards the door to the production offices at the far side of the building when Lord Stinhurst came out of it, followed by his wife. Lady Stinhurst was speaking in an agitated rush, twisting a large diamond ring on her fi nger. She stopped everything- ring-twisting, speaking, walking-when she saw the police.
Stinhurst was cooperative enough when Lynley requested a private place to talk. “Come into my office,” he said. “Shall my wife…” He hesitated meaningfully.
Lynley, however, had already decided exactly how Lady Stinhurst’s presence could be turned to his advantage. Part of him-the better part, he thought-wanted to let her go in peace, and shrank from making her a chessman in the game of fact and fiction. But the other part of him needed her as a tool of blackmail. And he hated that part of himself, even as he knew he would use her.
“I’d like Lady Stinhurst there as well,” he said briefl y.
With Constable Nkata posted outside the door and instructions to Stinhurst’s secretary to put no calls through that were not for the police, Lynley and Havers joined Lord Stinhurst and his wife in the producer’s offi ce. It was a room much like the man himself, coldly decorated in black and grey, fitted out with a compulsively neat hardwood desk and luxuriously upholstered wingback chairs, the air holding an almost imperceptible odour of pipe tobacco. The walls were hung with tastefully framed posters of former Stinhurst productions, proclamations of over thirty years of success: Henry V, London; The Three Sisters, Norwich; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Keswick; A Doll’s House, London; Private Lives, Exeter; Equus, Brighton; Amadeus, London. At one side of the room were grouped a conference table and chairs. Lynley directed them towards these, unwilling to allow Stinhurst the comfort and command of facing the police across the width of his polished desk.
As Havers rooted for her notebook, Lynley took out the photographs of the inquest as well as the enlargements which Deborah St. James had made. He laid them out on the table wordlessly. If everything St. James had said was true, Stinhurst had no doubt telephoned Sir Kenneth Willingate yesterday afternoon. He would be well fortified for this coming interview. Through a long, sleepless night Lynley had carefully reviewed the various ways he might head off another well-crafted set of lies. He had come to the realisation that Stinhurst did have at least one Achilles’ heel. Lynley aimed his first remark in its direction.
“Jeremy Vinney knows the entire story, Lord Stinhurst. I don’t know whether he’ll write it since for the moment he has no hard evidence to back it up. But I have no doubt that he intends to start looking for that evidence.” Lynley straightened the photographs with deliberate attention. “So you can tell me another lie. Or we can explore in detail the one you created for me this past weekend at Westerbrae. Or you can tell the truth. But let me point out to you that had you told me the truth about your brother in the first place, it would probably have gone no further than St. James, in whom I confided. But because you lied to me, and because that lie didn’t fi t in with your brother’s grave in Scotland, Sergeant Havers knows about Geoffrey, as does St. James, as does Lady Helen Clyde, as does Jeremy Vinney. As will everyone with access to my report at Scotland Yard once I fi le it.” Lynley saw Stinhurst’s eyes go to his wife. “So what’s it to be?” he asked, relaxing into his chair. “Shall we talk about that summer thirty-six years ago when your brother Geoffrey was in Somerset and you travelled the country in the regionals and your wife-”
“Enough,” Stinhurst said. He smiled icily. “Hoist with my own petard, Inspector? Bravo.”
Lady Stinhurst’s hands writhed in her lap. “Stuart, what is all this? What have you told them?”
The question could not have come at a better time. Lynley waited for the man’s response. After a long and thoughtful perusal of the police, Stinhurst turned to his wife and began to speak. However, when he did so, it was to prove beyond a doubt that he was a master player in the game of disarmament and surprise.
“I told him you and Geoffrey were lovers,” he said. “I claimed that Elizabeth was your child, and that Joy Sinclair’s play was about your affair. I told them that she had revised her play without my knowledge to revenge herself upon us for Alec’s death. God forgive me, at least that last part was true enough. I’m sorry.”
Lady Stinhurst sat in uncomprehending silence, her mouth contorting with words that would not emerge. One side of her face seemed to collapse with the effort. Finally she managed, “Geoff? You never thought that Geoffrey and I…oh my God, Stuart!”
Stinhurst started to reach towards his wife, but she cried out involuntarily and shrank from the gesture. He withdrew fractionally, leaving his hand lying on the table between them. The fi ngers curled, then tightened into the palm.
“No, of course not. But I needed to tell them something. I needed…I had to keep them away from Geoff.”
“You needed to tell them…But he’s dead.” Her face transformed with growing revulsion as she took in the enormity of what her husband had done. “Geoff’s dead. And I’m not. Stuart, I’m not! You made a whore out of me to protect a dead man! You sacrifi ced me! My God! How could you have done that?”
Stinhurst shook his head. His words were laboured. “Not a dead man. Not dead at all. But alive and in this room. Forgive me if you can. I was a coward, first, last, and always. I was only trying to protect myself.”
“From what? You’ve done nothing! Stuart, for God’s sake. You did nothing that night! How can you say-”
“It isn’t true. I couldn’t tell you.”
“Tell me what? Tell me now!”
Stinhurst stared long at his wife, as if he were trying to summon courage from an examination of her face. “I was the one who gave Geoff over to the government. All of you learned the worst about him on that New Year’s Eve. But I…God help me, I’d known he was a Soviet agent since 1949.”
STINHURST HELD himself perfectly still as he spoke, perhaps in the belief that a single movement would cause the floodgates to open and the accumulated anguish of thirty-nine years to come pouring out. His voice was matter-offact, and although his eyes became increasingly red-rimmed, he shed no tears. Lynley found himself wondering if Stinhurst was even capable of weeping after so many years of deceit.
“I knew that Geoff was a Marxist when we were at Cambridge. He made no secret of it, and frankly, I took it as a bit of a lark, something he would outgrow in time. And if he didn’t, I thought what a laugh it would be to have the future Earl of Stinhurst committed to the workers’ struggle to change the tide of history. What I didn’t know was that his proclivities had been duly noted, and that he had been seduced into espionage while he was still a student.”
“Seduced?” Lynley asked.
“It is a process of seduction,” Stinhurst replied. “A combination of flattery and cajolery, making the student believe he plays an important role in the scheme of change.”