Elizabeth George - A Great Deliverance

He knew he was near the body of the hydra, but the knowledge gave him neither triumph nor satisfaction. Instead, he wanted to flee from the final confrontation with the monster, knowing now that, although the heads were destroyed and the trunk well seared, he could not hope to emerge unscathed from the encounter.

“‘Fret not thyself because of evil-doers.’” It was an insubstantial, disembodied, wavering voice. It came out of nowhere, tremulous and uncertain, and it hovered mistily in the frigid air. It was some moments before Lynley located its black-robed source.

Father Hart knelt at the foot of the altar. He was bent over double, his forehead pressed to the floor. “‘Neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity. For they shall be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb. Trust in the Lord and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed. Delight thyself also in the Lord: and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Commit thy way unto the Lord; Trust also in him, and he shall bring it to pass. Evil-doers shall be cut off; But those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth. For yet a little while and the wicked shall not be.’”

Lynley listened to the words, anguished, and tried to deny their meaning. As a hush swept over the darkened church once more- broken only by the priest’s stertorous breath-ing-he sorted through himself, trying to fi nd the detachment he needed to carry him, disinterested, to the end of the case.

“Have you come to confess?”

He started at the voice. Unseen to him, the priest had materialised from the dark. Lynley stood. “No, I’m not a Catholic,” he replied. “I was just gathering my thoughts.”

“Churches are good places for that, aren’t they?” Father Hart smiled. “I always stop for a prayer before locking up for the night. I always check first, as well, to make sure no one is still inside. It wouldn’t do to be locked up in St. Catherine’s in this kind of cold, would it?”

“No,” Lynley agreed. “It wouldn’t do at all.” He followed the little priest to the end of the aisle and out into the night. Clouds obscured moon and stars. The other man was merely a shadow, without form or feature.

“How well do you know Pericles , Father Hart?”

The priest didn’t answer at first as he fumbled with his keys and locked the church door. “ Pericles? ” he repeated musingly. He moved past the other man, out into the graveyard. “It’s Shakespeare, isn’t it?”

“‘As flame to smoke.’ Yes, it’s Shakespeare.”

“I…well, I suppose I know it fairly well.”

“Well enough to know why Pericles fled from Antiochus? Why Antiochus wanted to have him killed?”

“I…” The priest groped in his pockets. “I don’t think I quite remember all the details of the play.”

“You remember enough, I daresay. Good night, Father Hart,” Lynley replied and left the graveyard.

He descended the hillock by the gravel path, his footsteps sounding unnaturally loud in the nighttime peace. On the bridge, he paused to gather his thoughts, and he leaned against its stone side, surveying the village. To his right, Olivia Odell’s house was dark, and woman and child slept in innocent safety within. Across the street, organ music fl oated eerily from Nigel Parrish’s cottage on the edge of the common. To his left the lodge awaited his entry, and beyond that the high street curved in the direction of the pub. From where he stood, he couldn’t see St. Chad’s Lane with its council houses. But he could imagine them. Not wanting to do that, he returned to the lodge.

He’d been gone less than an hour, but he knew as soon as he walked in the door that, during his absence, Stepha had returned. The building held its breath, waiting for him to discover and know. His feet felt like lead.

He wasn’t entirely sure where Stepha’s rooms would be, but his instinct told him that they were somewhere on the ground fl oor of the old building, past the reception desk, in the direction of the kitchen. He went through the door.

As he did so, he had his answers, palpably alive in the atmosphere that surrounded him. He could smell the cigarette smoke. He could almost taste the liquor in the air. He could hear the laughter, the whispered passion, the delight. He could feel the hands drawing him relentlessly forward. All that was left was to see the truth.

He knocked on the door. There was immediate quiet.

“Stepha?”

Movement within, hurried and suppressed. Stepha’s soft laugh hung in the air. At the last moment, he nearly stopped himself, but then he turned the knob, to enter and to know.

“Perhaps now you can give me an alibi that sticks,” laughed Richard Gibson, giving the woman a proprietary slap on her naked thigh. “I don’t think the inspector believed my little Madeline for a moment.”

Lady Helen saw him as they made their way over the crowded pedestrian walkway from the arrivals platform. It had been a harrowing enough two hours on the train, one moment afraid that Gillian might go all to pieces in any one of a dozen appalling ways; the next moment desperately trying to rouse Sergeant Havers from whatever black pit of humour she had decided to inhabit. The entire experience had filled Lady Helen with such anxiety that the very sight of Lynley, brushing his blond hair back off his forehead against the breeze of a departing train, made her nearly weak with relief. People in the crowded station bustled and pushed round him. But still he looked as if he were quite alone. He raised his head.

Their eyes met and her steps slowed momentarily.

Even at this distance, she could see the difference in him. The smoky darkness under his eyes. The tension in the set of his head and shoulders, the deepening lines round nose and mouth. He was Tommy still, but somehow not quite Tommy at all. There could be only one reason for it: Deborah.

He’d seen her in Keldale. His face told Lady Helen as much. And for some reason-in spite of the year that had passed since he’d broken his engagement to Deborah, in spite of the hours that she’d spent with him since then- Lady Helen found that she couldn’t bear the thought of him talking about seeing her. She desperately wanted to avoid giving him an opportunity to do so. It was craven. She despised herself for it. And she didn’t at that moment care to reflect upon why it had suddenly become so crucial that Tommy never speak to her of Deborah again.

He appeared to have been reading her thoughts-how typical of him, really-for he gave her that brief, quirky smile of his and walked to meet them at the foot of the stairs.

“How absolutely wonderful to see you, Tommy,” she said. “I spent half the journey- when I wasn’t frantically eating every pastry that wandered by-terrified that you’d be stuck in Keldale and we’d have to hire a car and drive wildly about the moors in best Earnshaw fashion, trying to find you. Well, it’s all ended for the best, hasn’t it, and I needn’t have given in to my craving for week-old pain au chocolat in order to dull my anxiety. The food is absolutely appalling on the train, isn’t it?” She tightened her arm round Gillian protectively. It was an instinctive gesture, for, although she knew the young woman had nothing to fear from Lynley, the last twelve hours had bonded Gillian to her and now she found herself reluctant to hand the young woman over. “Gillian, this is Inspector Lynley,” she murmured.

A tentative smile touched Gillian’s lips. Then she dropped her eyes. Lynley began to extend his hand to her, but Lady Helen shook her head in warning. At that, his glance slid to the young woman’s hands. The angry red scoring that covered them was ugly but not as deep or serious as the abrasions that covered her neck, breasts, and thighs, hidden by the dress that Lady Helen had carefully selected for her to wear.