Elizabeth George - Careless in Red

Only in the centre of the room could Lynley actually stand upright. Seeing this, Siobhan said, “They were shorter in those days, weren’t they? P’rhaps this isn’t the best choice, Mr…?”

“Lynley,” he said. “This is fine. Does that phone work?”

Indeed, it did. Could she bring him anything? There were towels in the wardrobe and soap as well as shampoo in the bathroom-she sounded encouraging as she said this last bit-and if he wanted a meal, that could be arranged. Up here. Or in the dining room below, naturally, if that was what he wanted. She added this last as a hasty afterthought although it was fairly clear that the more he kept to his room, the happier everyone would be.

He said he wasn’t hungry, which was more or less the truth. She left him then. When the door closed behind her, he gazed at the bed. It was nearly two months since he’d slept in one, and even then he’d not done much sleeping anyway. When he slept, he dreamed, and he dreaded his dreams. Not because they were disturbing but because they ended. It was, he’d found, more bearable not to sleep at all.

Because there was no point in putting it off, he went to the phone and punched in the numbers. He was hoping that there would be no answer, just a machine picking up so that he could leave a brief message without the human contact. But after five double rings, he heard her voice. There was nothing for it but to speak.

He said, “Mother. Hullo.”

At first she said nothing and he knew what she was doing: standing next to the phone in the drawing room or perhaps her morning room or elsewhere in the grand sprawling house that was his birthright and even more his curse, raising one hand to her lips, looking towards whoever else was in the room and that would likely be his younger brother or perhaps the manager of the estate or even his sister in the unlikely event that she was still down from Yorkshire. And her eyes-his mother’s eyes-would communicate the information before she said his name. It’s Tommy. He’s phoned. Thank God. He’s all right.

She said, “Darling. Where are you? How are you?”

He said, “I’ve run into something…It’s a situation up in Casvelyn.”

“My God, Tommy. Have you walked that far? Do you know how-” But she didn’t say the rest. She meant to ask whether he knew how worried they were. But she loved him and she wouldn’t burden him further.

As he loved her, he answered her anyway. “I know. I do. Please understand that. It’s just that I can’t seem to find my way.”

She knew, of course, that he wasn’t referring to his sense of direction. “My dear, if I could do anything to remove this from your shoulders…”

He could hardly bear the warmth of her voice, her unending compassion, especially when she herself had borne so many of her own tragedies throughout the years. He said to her, “Yes. Well,” and he cleared his throat roughly.

“People have phoned,” she told him. “I’ve kept a list. And they’ve not stopped phoning, the way you think people might. You know what I mean: One phone call and there, I’ve done my duty. It hasn’t been like that. There has been such concern for you. You are so deeply loved, my dear.”

He didn’t want to hear it, and he had to make her understand that. It wasn’t that he didn’t value the concern of his friends and associates. It was that their concern-and what was worse, their expression of it-rubbed a place in him already so raw that having it touched by anything was akin to torture. He’d left his home because of this, because on the coast path there was no one in March and few enough people in April and even if he ran across someone in his walk, that person would know nothing of him, of what he was doing trudging steadily forward day after day, or of what had led up to his decision to do so.

He said, “Mother…”

She heard it in his voice, as she would do. She said, “Dearest, I’m sorry. No more of it.” Her voice altered, becoming more businesslike, for which he was grateful. “What’s happened? You’re all right, aren’t you? You’ve not been injured?”

No, he told her. He wasn’t injured. But he’d come upon someone who had been. He was the first to come upon him, it seemed. A boy. He’d been killed in a fall from one of the cliffs. Now the police were involved. As he’d left at home everything that would identify him…Could she send him his wallet? “It’s form, I daresay. They’re just in the process of sorting everything out. It looks like an accident but, obviously, until they know, they won’t want me going off. And they do want me to prove I am who I say I am.”

“Do they know you’re a policeman, Tommy?”

“One of them, apparently. Otherwise, I’ve told them only my name.”

“Nothing else?”

“No.” It would have turned things into a Victorian melodrama: My good man-or in this case woman-do you know who you’re talking to? He’d go for the police rank first and if that didn’t impress, he’d try the title next. That should produce some serious forelock pulling, if nothing else. Only, DI Hannaford didn’t appear to be the sort who pulled on forelocks, at least not her own. He said, “So they’re not willing to take me at my word and who can blame them. I wouldn’t take me at my word. Will you send the wallet?”

“Of course. At once. Shall I have Peter drive it up to you in the morning?”

He didn’t think he could bear his brother’s anxious concern. He said, “Don’t trouble him with that. Just put it in the post.”

He told her where he was and she asked-as she would-if the inn was pleasant, at least, if his room was comfortable, if the bed would suit him. He told her everything was fine. He said that he was, in fact, looking forward to bathing.

His mother was reassured by that, if not entirely satisfied. While the desire for a bath did not necessarily indicate a desire to continue living, it at least declared a willingness to muddle forward for a while. That would do. She rang off after telling him to have a good, long, luxurious soak and hearing him say that a good, long, luxurious soak was exactly his intention.

He replaced the phone on the dressing table. He turned from the table and, because there was no help for it, he looked at the room, the bed, the tiny washbasin in the corner. He found that his defences had fallen-his mother’s conversation had done it to him-and there was her voice, with him suddenly. Not his mother’s voice this time, but Helen’s voice. It is a bit monastic in here, isn’t it, Tommy? I feel absolutely nunlike. Determined to be chaste but faced with such horrific temptation to be very very naughty indeed.

He heard her so clearly. The Helen-ness of her. The nonsense that drew him out of himself when he most needed to be drawn. She’d been intuitive that way. One look at his face in the evening and she’d known exactly what was required. It had been her gift: a talent for observation and insight. Sometimes it was the touch of her hand on his cheek and the three words Tell me, darling. Other times it was the superficial frivolity that dissipated his tension and brought forth his laughter.

He said into the silence, “Helen,” but that was all that he said, and certainly the extent to which he could-at the moment-acknowledge what he’d lost.

DAIDRE DIDN’T RETURN TO the cottage when she left Thomas Lynley at the Salthouse Inn. Instead, she drove east. The route she took twisted like a discarded spool of ribbon through the misty countryside. It passed through several hamlets where lamps shone at windows in the dusk, then dipped through two woodlands. It divided one farmhouse from its outbuildings, and ultimately it came out on the A388. She took this road south and veered off on a secondary road that tracked east through pastureland where sheep and dairy cows grazed. She turned off where a sign pointed to CORNISH GOLD with VISITORS WELCOME printed beneath the name of the place.