He saw Deborah’s hand drop from the teapot, saw it tighten on the pleats of her russet wool skirt. St. James lifted his head.
“That’s too much to ask,” he responded.
It was the answer Lynley had expected, the answer he knew was owed to him. Yet, in spite of this, he pressed them. “I can’t change what happened. I can’t change the fact that I was a fool. But at least I can apologise. At least I can tell her-”
“It’s not time. She’s not ready.”
Lynley felt a surge of anger at such implacable resolution. “Damn you, St. James. She tried to warn him off! Did she tell you that as well? When he came over the wall, she gave a cry that he heard, and we nearly lost him. Because of Helen. So if she’s not ready to see me, she can tell me that herself. Let her make the decision.”
“She’s decided, Tommy.”
The words were spoken so coolly that his anger died. He felt his throat tighten in quick reaction. “She’s gone with him, then. Where? To Wales?”
Nothing. Deborah moved, casting a long look at her husband, who had turned his head to the unlit fire.
Lynley felt rising desperation at their refusal to speak. He’d met with the same kind of refusal from Caroline Shepherd at Helen’s fl at earlier, the same kind of refusal on the telephone when he spoke to Helen’s parents and three of her sisters. He knew it was a punishment richly due him, and yet in spite of that knowledge, he railed against it, refused to accept it as just and true.
“For God’s sake, Simon.” He felt riven by despair. “I love her. You, above all people, know what it means to be separated like this from someone you love. Without a word. Without a chance. Please. Tell me.”
Unexpectedly then, he saw Deborah reach out quickly. She grasped her husband’s thin hand. Lynley barely heard her voice as she spoke to St. James.
“My love, I’m sorry. Forgive me. I simply can’t do this.” She turned to Lynley. Her eyes were bright with tears. “She’s gone to Skye, Tommy. She’s alone.”
HE FACED only one last task before heading north to Helen, and that was to see Superintendent Webberly and, through seeing him, to put a period to the case. To other things as well. He had ignored the early-morning message from his superior, with its offi cial congratulations for a job well done and its request for a meeting as soon as possible. Filled with the realisation of how blind jealousy had governed every step of his investigation, Lynley had hardly wanted to hear anyone’s praise. Much less the praise of a man who had been perfectly willing to use him as an unwitting tool in the master game of deceit.
For beyond Sydeham’s guilt and Davies-Jones’ innocence, there still remained Lord Stinhurst. And Scotland Yard’s dance of attendance upon the commitment of the government to keeping a twenty-five-year-old secret out of the public eye.
This remained to be dealt with. Lynley had not felt himself ready for the confrontation earlier in the day. But he was ready now.
He found Webberly at the circular table in his office. There, as usual, open fi les, books, photographs, reports, and used crockery abounded. Bent over a street map which was outlined heavily in yellow marking pen, the superintendent held a cigar clenched between his teeth, filling the already claustrophobic room with a malodorous pall of smoke. He was talking to his secretary, who sat behind his desk, cooperatively nodding and note-taking and all the time waving her hand in front of her face in a useless attempt to keep the cigar smoke from permeating her well-tailored suit and smooth blonde hair. She was, as usual, as close a replica of the Princess of Wales as she could make herself.
She rolled her eyes at Lynley, wrinkled her nose delicately in distaste at the smell and the clutter, and said, “Here’s Detective Inspector Lynley, Superintendent.”
Lynley waited expectantly for Webberly to correct her. It was a game the two of them played. Webberly preferred mister to the use of titles. Dorothea Harriman (“call me Dee, please”) vastly preferred titles to anything else.
This afternoon, however, the superintendent merely growled and looked up from his map, saying, “Did you get everything, Harriman?”
His secretary consulted her notes, adjusting the high scalloped collar of her Edwardian blouse. She wore a pert bow tie beneath it. “Everything. Shall I type this lot up?”
“If you will. And run thirty copies. The usual routing.”
Harriman sighed. “Before I leave, Superintendent?…No, don’t say it. I know, I know. ‘Put it on the tick, Harriman.’” She shot Lynley a meaningful look. “I’ve so much time on the tick right now that I could take my honeymoon on it. If someone would be so good as to pop the question.”
Lynley smiled. “Blimey. And to think I’m busy tonight.”
Harriman laughed at the answer, gathered up her notes, and brushed three paper cups from Webberly’s desk into the rubbish. “See if you can get him to do something about this pit,” she requested as she left.
Webberly said nothing until they were alone. Then he folded the map, slid it onto one of his filing cabinets, and went to his desk. But he did not sit. Rather, puffing on his cigar contentedly, he looked at the London skyline beyond the window.
“Some people think it’s lack of ambition that makes me avoid promotion,” Webberly confided without turning. “But actually it’s the view. If I had to change offices, I’d lose the sight of the city coming to light as darkness falls. And I can’t tell you what pleasure that’s given me through the years.” His freckled hands played with the watch fob on his waistcoat. Cigar ash fluttered, ignored, to the fl oor.
Lynley thought about how he had once liked this man, how he had respected the fi ne mind inside the dishevelled exterior. It was a mind that brought out the best in those under his command, conscientiously using each one to his personal strength, never to his weakness. That quality of being able to see people as they really were had always been what Lynley admired most in his superior. Now, however, he saw that it was double-edged, that it could be used-indeed, had been used in his case- to probe a man’s weakness and use that weakness to meet an end not of his own devising.
Webberly had known without a doubt that Lynley would believe in the given word of a peer. That kind of belief was part and parcel of Lynley’s upbringing, a precious clinging to “my word as a gentleman” that had governed people of his class for centuries. Like the laws of primogeniture, it could not be sloughed off easily. And that is what Webberly had depended upon, sending Lynley to hear Lord Stinhurst’s manufactured tale of his wife’s infi delity. Not MacPherson, Stewart, or Hale, or any other DI who would have listened sceptically, called in Lady Stinhurst to hear the story herself and then moved on to uncover the truth about Geoffrey Rintoul without a second thought.
Neither the government nor the Yard had wanted that to happen. So they had sent in the one man they believed could be depended upon to take the word of a gentleman and hence to sweep all connections to Lord Stinhurst right under the carpet. That, to Lynley, was the unpardonable offence. He couldn’t forgive Webberly for having done it to him.
He couldn’t forgive himself for having mindlessly lived up to their every expectation.
It didn’t matter that Stinhurst had been innocent of Joy Sinclair’s death. For the Yard had not known that, had not even cared, had desired only that key information in the man’s past not come to light. Had Stinhurst been the killer, had he escaped justice, Lynley knew that neither the government nor the Yard would have felt a moment’s compunction as long as the secret of Geoffrey Rintoul was safe.
He felt ugly, unclean. He reached into his pocket for his police identification and tossed it onto Webberly’s desk.
The superintendent’s eyes dropped to the warrant card, raised back to Lynley. He squinted against the smoke from his cigar. “What’s this?”