Elizabeth George - This Body of Death

“She ended her relationship with Paolo prior to the postcards and Langer never saw them.”

“-Jayson Druther if it comes down to it. Frazer has a bloody alibi, Thomas.”

“Let’s break it, then. Let’s do it now.”

FIRST, LYNLEY TOLD her, they needed to stop in Chelsea for another call upon Deborah and Simon St. James. It was on the route they were going to take anyway, he said, and he reckoned the St. Jameses had in their possession something that might prove quite useful.

A pause in the incident room brought forth information from Winston Nkata that the CCTV tapes were showing nothing more than they had showed before, which was also nothing. Specifically, there was documented on film no lime-coloured Vespa belonging to Frazer Chaplin and shouting advertisements for DragonFly Tonics. Hardly a surprise, Isabelle thought.

She also discovered that like Lynley, DS Nkata had spoken to the maddening Barbara Havers that morning. “According to Barb, tip of the thatcher’s crook shows who made it,” he said. “But she says to cross the brother off the list. Robert Hastings’s got blacksmith clobber on his property, she says, but it’s not been used. ’N the other hand, Jossie’s got three kinds of crooks and one of the kinds’s like our weapon. She wants to know ’bout the e-fits ’s well.”

“I’ve asked Dee to send them down to her,” Lynley told him.

Isabelle told Nkata to carry on, and she followed Lynley to the car park.

At the St. James house, they found the couple at home. St. James himself came to the door with the family dachshund barking frantically round his ankles. He admitted Isabelle and Lynley and admonished the dog, who blithely ignored him and continued barking until Deborah called out, “Good Lord, Simon! Do something about her!” from a room to the right of the staircase. This turned out to be the dining room, a formal affair of the sort one found in creaking old Victorian houses. It was decorated as such as well, at least as far as the furniture went. There was, mercifully, no plethora of knickknacks and no William Morris wallpaper although the dining table was heavy and dark and a sideboard held a mass of English pottery.

When they joined her, Deborah St. James was apparently using the table to examine photographs, which she quickly gathered up as they entered. Lynley said to her, “Ah. No?” in some sort of reference to these.

Deborah said, “Really, Tommy. I’d be far happier if you read me less easily.”

“Teatime not being…?”

“My cup of tea. Right.”

“That’s disappointing,” Lynley said. “But I did think afternoon tea might not be…hmm…shall I say a strong enough vignette to display your talents?”

“Very amusing. Simon, are you going to allow him to make fun or do you plan to rise to my defence?”

“I thought I’d wait to discover how far the two of you could carry an appalling pun.” St. James had come only to the doorway, and he was leaning there against the jamb.

“You’re as merciless as he is.” Deborah said hello to Isabelle-calling her Superintendent Ardery-and she excused herself “to throw this wretched stuff” into the rubbish. Over her shoulder as she went out of the room, she asked if they wanted a coffee. She admitted that it had been sitting on the hot plate in the kitchen for hours but with the addition of milk and “several tablespoons of sugar” she reckoned it would be drinkable. “Or I could make fresh,” she offered.

“We’ve not got time,” Lynley said. “We were hoping to have a word with you, Deb.”

Isabelle heard this with some surprise, as she’d concluded they’d come to Chelsea not to pay a call on Deborah St. James but rather on her husband. Deborah seemed as surprised as Isabelle, but she said, “In here, then. It’s much more hospitable.”

“In here” was a library of sorts, Isabelle reckoned as she and Lynley entered. It was situated where one would normally expect to find a sitting room, with its window overlooking the street. There were masses of books-on shelves, on tables, and upon the floor-along with comfortable chairs, a fireplace, and an ancient desk. There were newspapers as well, piles of them. It looked to Isabelle as if the St. Jameses subscribed to every broadsheet in London. As a woman who liked to travel light and live unencumbered, Isabelle found the place overwhelming. Deborah appeared to note her reaction because she said, “It’s Simon. He’s always been like this, Superintendent. You c’n ask Tommy. They were at school together, and Simon was the despair of their housemaster. He’s not improved in the least since. Please just shove something to the floor and sit. And it’s not usually this bad. Well, you know that, Tommy, don’t you?” She glanced at Lynley as she said this last. Then her gaze went back to Isabelle, and she smiled quickly. It was not in amusement or friendliness, Isabelle realised, but to cover something.

Isabelle found a spot that required the least amount of removal. She said, “Please. It’s Isabelle, not superintendent,” and again that quick smile in return from Deborah followed by her glance at Lynley. She was reading something directly off him, Isabelle reckoned. She also reckoned that Deborah St. James knew Thomas far better than her airiness suggested.

“Isabelle, then,” Deborah said. And then to Lynley, “He’s got to have it tidied by next week at any rate. He’s promised.”

“Your mother’s paying a visit, I take it?” Lynley said to St. James.

All of them laughed.

It came to Isabelle once again that the group of them spoke some form of shorthand. She wanted to say, “Yes, well, let’s get on with things,” but something held her back and she didn’t like what that something told her: either about herself or about her feelings. She didn’t have feelings in this matter.

Lynley brought them round to the purpose of their call. He asked Deborah St. James about the National Portrait Gallery show. Might he have another copy of the magazine with pictures taken on the opening night? Barbara Havers had the magazine off him, but he recalled Deborah had another. Deborah said of course and went to one of the stacks of periodicals where she dug down to unearth a magazine. She handed this over. Then she found another-a different one, this-and handed that to Lynley as well. She said, “Really, I didn’t buy them all, Tommy. Simon’s brothers and his sister…And then Dad was rather proud…” Her face had coloured.

Lynley said solemnly, “In your position I’d have done exactly the same.”

“She’s claiming her fifteen minutes,” St. James said to Lynley.

“You’re both impossible,” Deborah said, and to Isabelle, “They like to tease me.”

St. James asked, not unreasonably, what Lynley wanted with the magazine. What was happening? he wanted to know. This had to do with the case, hadn’t it?

Indeed, Lynley told him. They had an alibi to break, and he reckoned the photos of the gallery opening were going to be helpful in breaking it.

With the magazines in their possession, they were ready to set out on the next phase of their journey. Isabelle couldn’t see how a set of society photographs were going to be useful, and that was what she told Lynley once they were out on the pavement again. They got into the Healey Elliott before he replied. He handed the magazines to her. He leaned over when she found the photos of the National Portrait Gallery’s opening show, and he pointed to one of them. Frazer Chaplin, he said. The fact that he was at the opening was going to serve as the wedge they needed.

“For what?”

“To separate a lie from the truth.”

She turned to him. He was, of a sudden, disturbingly close. He seemed to know this because he looked as if he was about to say something else or, worse, do something that both of them would come to regret.