Elizabeth George - Payment in Blood

“When was the last time you saw Joy?” Lynley asked.

Sydeham shifted restlessly on his feet. He looked as if he wanted to go back to his chair. Lynley decided he wanted him standing.

“A while after the read-through. Perhaps half past eleven. Perhaps later. I wasn’t paying much attention to the time.”

“Where?”

“In the upstairs corridor. She was heading towards her room.” Sydeham looked momentarily uncomfortable but continued. “As I said before, I’d had a row with Joanna over the play. She’d stormed out of the read-through, and I found her in the gallery. We had some fairly nasty words. I don’t much care for rowing with my wife. I was feeling low afterwards, so I was going to the library to fetch myself a bottle of whisky. That’s when I saw Joy.”

“Did you speak to her at all?”

“She didn’t look very much like she wanted to speak to anyone. I just brought the whisky back to my room, had a few drinks, well… maybe four or five. Then I simply slept it off.”

“Where was your wife all this time?”

Sydeham’s eyes drifted to the fi replace. His hands automatically sought the pockets of his grey tweed jacket, perhaps in a fruitless search for cigarettes to still his nerves. Obviously, this was the question he had hoped to avoid answering.

“I don’t know. She’d left the gallery. I don’t know where she went.”

“You don’t know,” Lynley repeated carefully.

“That’s right. Look, I learned a good number of years ago to leave Joanna to herself when she’s in a temper, and she was in a fair one last night. So that’s what I did. I had the drinks. I fell asleep, passed out, call it whatever you want to. I don’t know where she was. All I can say is that when I woke up this morn-ing-when the girl knocked on the door and babbled at us to get dressed and meet in the drawing room-Joanna was in bed beside me.” Sydeham noticed that Havers was writing steadily. “Joanna was upset,” he asserted. “But it was at me. No one else. Things have been…a bit off between us for a while. She wanted to be away from me. She was angry.”

“But she did return to your room last night?”

“Of course she did.”

“What time? In an hour? In two? In three?”

“I don’t know.”

“But surely her movement in the room would have awakened you.”

Sydeham’s voice grew impatient. “Have you ever slept off a binge, Inspector? Pardon the expression, but it would have been like waking the dead.”

Lynley persisted. “You heard nothing? No wind? No voices? Nothing at all?”

“I told you that.”

“Nothing from Joy Sinclair’s room? She was on the other side of yours. It’s hard to believe that a woman could meet her death without making a sound. Or that your own wife could be in and out of the room without your awareness. What other things might have gone on without your knowledge?”

Sydeham looked sharply from Lynley to Havers. “If you’re pinning this on Jo, why not on me as well? I was alone for part of the night, wasn’t I? But that’s a problem for you, isn’t it? Because, saving Stinhurst, so was everyone else.”

Lynley ignored the anger that rode just beneath Sydeham’s words. “Tell me about the library.”

There was no alteration in expression at this sudden, new direction in the questioning. “What about it?”

“Was anyone there when you went for the whisky?”

“Just Gabriel.”

“What was he doing?”

“The same as I was about to. Drinking. Gin by the smell of it. And no doubt hoping for something in a skirt to wander by. Anything in a skirt.”

Lynley picked up on Sydeham’s black tone. “You don’t much like Robert Gabriel. Is it merely because of the advances he’s made towards your wife, or are there other reasons?”

“No one here much likes Gabriel, Inspector. No one anywhere much likes him. He gets by on sufferance because he’s such a bloody good actor. But frankly, it’s a mystery to me why he wasn’t murdered instead of Joy Sinclair. He was certainly asking for it from any number of quarters.”

It was an interesting observation, Lynley thought. But more interesting was the fact that Sydeham had not answered the question.

APPARENTLY, Inspector Macaskin and the Westerbrae cook had decided to carry a burgeoning conflict to the sitting room, and they arrived at the door simultaneously, bearing two disparate messages. Macaskin insisted upon being the first heard, with the white-garbed cook lurking in the background, wringing her hands together as if every wasted moment brought a souffl e closer to perdition in her oven.

Macaskin gave David Sydeham a head-totoe scrutiny as the man moved past him into the hall. “We’ve done all that’s to be done,” he said to Lynley. “Fingerprinted the whole lot. Clyde and Sinclair rooms are sealed off, crimescene men are done. Drains appear clean, by the way. No blood anywhere.”

“A clean kill save for the glove.”

“My man will test that.” Macaskin jerked his head towards the library and went on curtly. “Shall I let them out? Cook says she’s got dinner and they’ve asked for a bit of a wash.”

The request, Lynley saw, was out of character for Macaskin. Giving the reins of an investigation over to another officer was not an accustomed routine for the Scot, and even as he spoke, the tips of his ears grew red against his fi ne, grey hair.

As if she recognised a concealed message within Macaskin’s words, the cook belligerently continued, “Ye canna keep them from fude. ’Tisna richt.” Clearly, it was her expectation that the police modus operandi was to put the entire group on bread and water until the killer was found. “I do hae a bit prepared. They’ve ha nowt but one wee san’wich a’ day, Inspector. Unlike the police,” she nodded meaningfully, “who hae been feeding themsel’ since this mornin’ from what I can tell by lookin’ a’ my kitchen.”

Lynley flipped open his pocket watch, surprised to see that it was half past eight. He couldn’t have been less hungry himself, but since the crime-scene men were finished, there was no further purpose to keeping the group from adequate food and from the relatively restricted, supervised freedom of the house. He nodded his approval.

“Then we’ll be off,” Macaskin said. “I’ll leave Constable Lonan with you and get back myself in the morning. I’ve a man ready to take Stinhurst to the station.”

“Leave him here.”

Macaskin opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, throwing protocol to the wind long enough to say, “As to those scripts, Inspector.”

“I’ll see to it,” Lynley said fi rmly. “Burning evidence isn’t murder. He can be dealt with when the time arrives.” He saw Sergeant Havers move in a recoiling motion, as if she wished to distance herself from what she saw as a poor decision.

For his part, Macaskin seemed to consider arguing the point and decided to let it go. His official good-night comprised the brusque words: “We’ve put your things in the northwest wing. You’re in with St. James. Next to Helen Clyde’s new room.”

Neither the political manoeuvring nor the sleeping arrangements of the police were of interest to the cook, who had remained in the doorway, eager to resolve the culinary dispute that had brought her to the sitting room in the first place. “Twinty minutes, Inspector.” She turned on her heel. “Bey on time.”

It was a fine point of conclusion. And that is how Macaskin used it.

RELEASED at last from their day’s confi nement in the library, most of the group were still in the entrance hall when Lynley asked Joanna Ellacourt to step into the sitting room. His request, made so soon after his interview with her husband, reduced the small cluster of people to breath-holding suspense, as if they were waiting to see how the actress would respond. It was, after all, couched as a request. But none of them were foolish enough to believe that it was an invitation that might be politely rebuffed should Joanna choose to do so.