Elizabeth George - In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

“It's the contrast between pure and impure hearts.”

“Now, that's a new slant on gluttony.”

Lynley chuckled. He rose. He went to her and took her into his arms. She smelled of citrus and sleep, and her hair was as soft as a breeze when he bent his head to press his cheek against it. “I'm glad I woke you,” he murmured, and he settled into their embrace, finding within it enormous comfort.

“I wasn't asleep.”

“No?”

“No. Just making an attempt but not getting very far with it, I'm afraid.”

“That's not like you.”

“It isn't. I know.”

“Something's on your mind, then.” He released her and looked down at her, smoothing her hair away from her face. Her dark eyes met his and he made a study of them: what they revealed and what they tried to hide. “Tell me.”

She touched his lips with the tips of her fingers. “I do love you,” she said. “Much more than when I married you. More, even, than I loved you the first time you took me to bed.”

“I'm glad of it. But something tells me that's not what's on your mind.”

“No. That's not what's been on my mind. But it's late, Tommy. And you're far too exhausted for conversation. Let's go to bed.”

He wanted to do so. Nothing sounded better than sinking his head into a plump down pillow and seeking the soothing oblivion of sleep with his wife, warm and comforting, by his side. But something in Helen's expression told him that would not be the wisest course to take at the moment. There were times when women said one thing when they meant another, and this appeared to be one of those times. He said, half truth and half lie, “I am done in. But we've not talked properly today, and I won't be able to sleep till we do.”

“Really?”

“You know how I am.”

She searched his face and seemed satisfied with what she saw. She said, “It's really nothing much. Mental gymnastics, I suppose. I've been thinking all day about the lengths people go to when they want to avoid confronting something.”

A shudder passed through him.

“What?” she asked.

“Someone walking on my grave. What brought all this up?”

“The wallpaper.”

“Wallpaper?”

“For the spare rooms. You remember. I narrowed the choices down to six-which seemed quite admirable, considering what a muddle I was in about having to choose in the first place-and I spent all afternoon pondering them. I pinned them to the walls. I set furniture in front of them. I hung pictures round them. And still, I couldn't make up my mind.”

“Because you were thinking of this other?” he asked. “About people not confronting what they need to confront?”

“No. That's just it. I was consumed with wallpaper. And making a decision about it-or, rather, finding myself incapable of making a decision-became a metaphor for living my life. Do you see?”

Lynley didn't. He was too wrung out to see anything at all. But he nodded, looked pensive, and hoped that would do.

“You would have chosen and had done with it. But I couldn't do that, no matter how hard I tried. Why? I finally asked myself. And the answer was so simple: because of who I am. Because of who I was moulded to be. From the day of my birth to the morning of my wedding.”

Lynley blinked. “Who you were moulded to be?”

“Your wife,” she said. “Or the wife of someone exactly like you. There were five of us and each of us-every one of us, Tommy-was assigned a role. One moment we were safe in our mother's womb and the next we were in our father's arms and he was looking down at us, saying, ‘Hmmm. Wife of a count, I think.’ Or ‘I dare say she'll do as the next Princess of Wales.’ And once we knew what role he'd assigned us, we played along. Oh, we didn't have to, of course. And God knows neither Penelope nor Iris danced to the music he'd written for them. But the other three-Cybele, Daphne, and I-why, the three of us were nothing more than warm clay in his hands. And once I realised that, Tommy, I had to take the next step. I had to ask why.”

“Why you were warm clay.”

“Yes. Why. And when I asked that question and took a hard look at the answer, what do you expect it was?”

His head was spinning and his eyes burned with fatigue. Lynley said, reasonably enough, he thought, “Helen, what does this have to do with wallpaper?” and knew a moment later he'd failed her in some way.

She released herself from his embrace. “Never mind. This isn't the moment. I knew that. I can see you're exhausted. Let's just go to bed.”

He tried to regroup. “No. I want to hear this. I admit that I'm tired. And I got lost following all the dancing warm clay But I want to talk. And to listen. And to know…” To know what? he wondered. He couldn't have said.

She frowned at him, a clear warning sign that he should have heeded and did not. “What? Dancing warm clay? What are you talking about?”

“I'm talking about nothing. It was stupid. I'm an idiot. Forget it. Please. Come back. I want to hold you.”

“No. Explain what you meant.”

“Helen, it was nothing. It was just an inanity.”

“Just an inanity rising from my conversation.”

He sighed. “I'm sorry. You're right. I'm done in. When I get like this, I say things without thinking. You said that two of your sisters didn't dance to his tune while the rest of you did, which made you warm clay. I took that and wondered how warm clay could dance to his music and… Sorry. It was a stupid remark. I'm not thinking right.”

“And I'm not thinking at all,” she said. “Which, I suppose, shouldn't come as a surprise to either of us. But that's what you wanted, isn't it?”

“What?”

“A wife who couldn't think.”

He felt slapped. “Helen, that's not only bloody nonsense. It's an insult to us both.” He went to the table for his plate and cutlery, which he carried to the sink. He rinsed them, spent far too much time watching the water swirl round the drain, and finally said on a sigh, “Damn.” He turned to her. “I'm sorry, darling. I don't want us to be at odds with each other.”

Her face softened. “We aren't,” she said.

He went back to her, pulled her to him once again. “Then what?” he asked.

“I'm at odds with myself.”

Trying to pin down the individual whom Terry Cole had gone to see at King-Ryder Productions hadn't been as easy as Barbara Havers anticipated after her conversation with Neil Sitwell, even with the list of employees in her possession. Not only were there three dozen of them listed, but on a Saturday night most of those three dozen had not been at home. They were, after all, theatre people. And theatre people-so she discovered-were not in the habit of vegetating blissfully under their own roofs when they could be out on the town. So it had been after two in the morning before she'd tracked down Terry Coles contact at 31-32 Soho Square: Matthew King-Ryder, son of the deceased founder of the theatrical production company.

He'd agreed to see her-”after nine, if you don't mind. I'm completely fagged out”-at his home in Baker Street.

It was half past nine when Barbara found the address that had been listed along with Matthew King-Ryder's name and phone number. It was a mansion block, she saw, one of those enormous brick Victorian structures that-at the end of the nineteenth century-had signaled an alteration in lifestyle from the spacious and gracious to the more understated and the somewhat confined.

Relatively speaking, of course. Compared to Barbara's hovel, King-Ryder's flat was a virtual palace, although it did appear to be one of those ill-thought-out conversions of a larger flat in which cross-ventilation and natural lighting had been sacrificed to the cause of lining someone's pockets with monthly rental payments.