Elizabeth George - In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

There were no rooms available for the evening, she told them quietly. And as there had been a sudden death in the family, the dining room would not be open tonight. But she would be happy to recommend several restaurants in the area should the gentlemen require one.

Hanken offered the woman his police identification and introduced

Lynley. The woman said, “You'll be wanting to speak to the Maidens. I'll fetch them,” and she ducked past the officers, hurried through the reception area, and began climbing the stairs.

Lynley walked to one of the lounge's two alcoves, where late afternoon light was filtering through lead-paned windows. These overlooked the drive that curved round the front of the house. Beyond it, a lawn had been reduced to a heat-baked mat of twisted blades in the previous months’ drought. Behind him, he could hear Hanken moving restlessly round the room. A few magazines shifted position and slapped down onto table tops. Lynley smiled at the sound. His fellow DI was doubtless giving in to his restless need to put things in order.

It was absolutely quiet inside the hunting lodge. The windows were open, so the sound of birds and a distant plane broke the stillness. But inside, it was as hushed as an empty church.

A door closed somewhere and footsteps crunched across gravel. A moment later, a dark-haired man in jeans and a sleeveless grey sweatshirt pedaled past the windows on a ten-speed bicycle. He disappeared into the trees as the Maiden Hall drive began to descend the hill.

The Maidens joined them then. Lynley turned from the window at the sound of their entrance and Hanken's formal “Mr. and Mrs. Maiden. Please accept our sympathies.”

Lynley saw that the years of his retirement had dealt with Andy Maiden kindly. The former SO 10 officer and his wife were both in their early sixties, but they looked at least a decade younger. Andy had developed the appearance of an outdoorsman: a tanned face, a flat stomach, a brawny chest, all of which seemed suited to a man who'd left behind a reputation for disappearing chameleon-like into his environment. His wife matched him in physical condition. She, too, was tanned and solid, as if she took frequent exercise. Both of them looked as if they'd missed more than one night's sleep though. Andy Maiden was unshaven, in rumpled clothing. Nan was haggard, beneath her eyes a puckering of skin that was purplish in hue.

Maiden managed a grateful half-smile. “Tommy. Thank you for coming.”

Lynley said, “I'm sorry it has to be under these circumstances,” and introduced himself to Maiden's wife. He said, “Everyone at the Yard sends condolences, Andy.”

“Scotland Yard?” Nan Maiden sounded dazed. Her husband said, “In a moment, love.” He made a gesture with his arm, indicating the alcove behind Lynley, where two sofas faced each other across a coffee table that was spread with copies of Country Life. He and his wife took one of the sofas, Lynley the other. Hanken swiveled an armchair round and positioned himself just a few inches away from the central point between the Maidens and Lynley. The action suggested that he would play a mediating influence between the parties. But Lynley noted that the DI was careful to place his chair several inches closer to Scotland Yard of the present than to Scotland Yard of the past.

If Andy Maiden was aware of Hanken's manoeuvre and what it implied, he gave no sign. Instead, he sat forward on the sofa with his hands balanced between his legs. Left hand massaged right. Right massaged left.

His wife observed him doing this. She passed him a small red ball that she took from her pocket, saying, “Is it still bad? Shall I phone the doctor for you?”

“You're ill?” Lynley asked.

Maiden squeezed the ball with his right hand and gazed at the spread fingers of his left. “Circulation,” he said. “It's nothing.”

“Please let me phone the doctor, Andy,” his wife said.

“That's not what's important.”

“How can you say-” Nan Maiden's eyes grew suddenly bright. “God. Did I forget even for a moment?” She leaned her forehead against her husband's shoulder and began to cry. Roughly, Maiden put his arm round her.

Lynley cast a look at Hanken. You or I? he asked silently. It's not going to be pleasant.

Hanken's reply was a sharp nod. It's yours, the nod said.

“There isn't going to be an easy time to talk about your daughter's death,” Lynley began gently. “But in a murder investigation-and I know that you're already aware of this, Andy-the first hours are critical.”

As he spoke, Nan Maiden raised her head. She tried to speak, failed, then tried again.

“Murder investigation,” she repeated. “What are you saying?”

Lynley looked from husband to wife. Hanken did likewise. Then they looked at each other. Lynley said to Andy, “You've seen the body, haven't you? You've been told what happened?”

“Yes,” Maiden said. “I've been told. But I-” “Murder?” His wife cried out in horror. “Oh my God, Andy. You never said Nicola was murdered!”

Barbara Havers had spent the afternoon in Greenford, making the decision to use the rest of her sick day to visit her mother in Hawthorn Lodge, an overnamed postwar semi-detached where Mrs. Havers had lived as a permanent resident for the last ten months. In the way of most people who attempt to gain support from others for a position that might be untenable, Barbara had found that there was a price to pay for successfully cultivating advocates among Inspector Lynley's friends and relatives. And because she didn't want to face any more price-paying in one afternoon, she sought a distraction.

Mrs. Havers was nothing if not adept at providing escape hatches from reality, since she herself no longer lived in that realm on a regular basis. Barbara had found her in the back garden of Hawthorn Lodge, where she was engaged in putting together a jigsaw puzzle. The puzzle's box top had been propped up against an old mayonnaise jar that was filled with coloured sand holding seven plastic carnations in position. On this box top, a smarmy cartoon prince-perfectly proportioned and demonstrating a sufficient amount of adoration for the occasion-was slipping a high-heeled glass shoe onto the slender and curiously toeless foot of Cinderella while the girl's two cowlike and resentful stepsisters watched jealously to one side, culling a richly deserved comeuppance.

With the tender encouragement of her nurse and keeper Mrs. Flo-as Florence Magentry was called by her three elderly residents and their families-Mrs. Havers had managed successfully to assemble Cinderella, part of the stepsisters, the prince's shoe-wielding arm, his manly torso, and his bent left leg. However as Barbara joined her, she was in the midst of attempting to pound the prince's face onto one of the stepsisters’ shoulders and when Mrs. Flo gently guided her hand towards the proper placement of the piece, Mrs. Havers shouted, “No, no, no!” and pushed the whole puzzle away, knocking over the jar, scattering its plastic carnations, and spilling sand across the table.

Barbara's intervention didn't help matters. Whether her mother recognised her during visits was always a matter of chance, and on this day Mrs. Havers’ clouded consciousness attached Barbara's face to someone called Libby O'Rourke, who apparently had been the school temptress during Mrs. Havers’ childhood. It seemed that Libby O'Rourke had operated in a female version of Georgie Porgie mode most of the time, and one of the boys whom she'd kissed was none other than Mrs. Havers’ own beau, an act of effrontery that Mrs. Havers felt compelled to avenge on this very day by throwing puzzle pieces, shouting invective coloured by the sort of language Barbara wouldn't have thought part of her mother's vocabulary, and ultimately crumpling into a weeping heap. It was a situation that had taken some handling: persuading her mother to leave the garden, urging her upstairs to her room, coaxing her to look through a family album long enough to see that Barbara's round and snubby face appeared on its pages far too often for her to be the loathsome Libby.