In Pursuit Of The Proper Sinner (37 page)

Ah. Good. How well? Lynley enquired mildly.

At which time Ferrer failed to understand English, although his anxious, polite smile—spurious though it might have been—indicated his willingness to do so.

Lynley switched to what he'd always referred to as his travel-and-survive French. He took a moment to telegraph a silent message of thanks to his fearsome aunt Augusta who'd often decreed—in the midst of a family visit—that ce soir, on parlera tous frangais a table et apres le diner. C'est la meilleure fagon de se préparer ` passer des vacances d’été en Dordogne, thus attempting to polish his rudimentary skills in a language in which he would otherwise only have been able to request a cup of coffee, a beer, or a room with a bath. He said in French, “Your expertise in the kitchen isn't in doubt, Monsieur Ferrer. What I'd like to know is how well you knew the girl. Her father tells me that all the family are cyclists. You're also a cyclist. Did you have occasion to ride with her?”

If Ferrer was surprised that a barbaric Englishman spoke his language—however imperfectly—he covered it well. He gave no quarter by slowing the pace of his reply though, forcing Lynley to ask him to repeat the answer, which gave the Frenchman the satisfaction he apparently needed. “Yes, of course, once or twice we rode together,” Ferrer told him in his native tongue. He had been riding from Grindleford to Maiden Hall on the road and, when she'd heard about this, the young lady had told him of a route through the forest that was rough going but more direct. She didn't wish him to become lost, so she rode it with him twice to make sure he took all the right paths.

“Grindleford is where you have lodgings?”

Yes. There were not enough rooms here at Maiden Hall to accommodate those who worked for the hotel and restaurant. It was, as the inspector had no doubt observed, a small establishment. So Christian-Louis Ferrer had a room with a widow called Madame Clooney and her spinster daughter who, if Ferrer's account was to be believed, had designs upon him that were—alas—impossible to gratify.

“I am, of course, married,” he told Lynley. “Although my beloved wife remains in Nerville le Forét until such a time as we can be together again.”

This, Lynley knew, was not an unusual arrangement. European couples often lived separately, one of them remaining with their children in their native country while the other emigrated to seek more gainful employment. However, an innate cynicism that he quickly assessed as having flourished within him through too much exposure to Barbara Havers over the past few years made him immediately suspicious of any man who used the adjective beloved in front of the noun wife. “You've been here the entire five years?” Lynley asked. “Do you get home much, for holidays and such?”

Alas, Ferrer confessed, a man of his profession was best served—as indeed were his beloved wife and dearest children—by spending his holiday time in the pursuit of cooking excellence. And while this pursuit could be done in France—and with far more felicitous results, considering with what licence the word cuisine was bandied about in this country—Christian-Louis Ferrer knew the wisdom of thrift. Should he travel back and forth between England and France at holiday time, there would be that much less money to save for the future of his children and the security of his old age.

“It must be difficult,” Lynley said, “such a long separation from one's wife. Lonely as well, I expect.”

Ferrer grunted. “A man does what he must do.”

“Still, there must be times when the loneliness makes one long for a connection with someone. We don't live on work alone, do we? And a man like you … It would be understandable.”

Ferrer crossed his arms in a movement that emphasised the prominence of his biceps and triceps. He was, in so many ways, the perfect image not only of virility but of virility's need to establish its presence. Lynley knew that he was engaging in the worst kind of stereotyping even to think so. But still he allowed himself to think it, and to see where the thinking would lead their conversation. He said with a meaningful, just-between-us-boys shrug, “Five years without one's wife … I couldn't do it.”

Ferrer's mouth—full-lipped, the mouth of a sensualist—curved and his eyes became hooded. He said in English, “Estelle and I understand each the other. It is why we are married for twenty years.”

“So there is the occasional dalliance here in England.”

“Nothing of significance. Estelle, I love. The other … ? Well, it was what it was.”

A useful slip, Lynley thought. “Was. It's over, then?”

And Ferrers face—so swiftly guarded—told Lynley the rest. “Were you and Nicola Maiden lovers?”

Silence in reply.

Lynley persevered. “If you and the Maiden girl were lovers, Monsieur Ferrer, it looks far less suspicious if you answer the question here and now rather than find yourself being confronted with the truth of it gathered from a witness who might have seen the two of you together.”

“It is nothing,” Ferrer said, again in English.

“That's not the assessment I'd make about coming under suspicion in a murder investigation.”

Ferrer switched back to French. “I don't mean suspicion. I mean with the girl.”

“Are you saying that nothing happened with the girl?”

“I'm saying that what happened was nothing. It meant nothing. To either of us.”

“Perhaps you'd tell me about it.”

Ferrer glanced at the Hall's front door. It stood open to the pleasant night air, and within, residents were moving towards the stairs, chatting amiably. Ferrer spoke to Lynley but kept his gaze on the residents. “A woman's beauty exists for a man to admire. A woman naturally wishes to augment her beauty to increase the admiration.”

“That's arguable.”

“It is the way of things. All of nature speaks to support this simple, true order of the world. One sex is created by God to attract the other.”

Lynley didn't point out that the natural order of which Ferrer spoke generally called for the male—not the female—of a species to be more attractive in order to be acceptable as a mate. Instead, he said, “Finding Nicola attractive, you did something to support God's natural order, then.”

“As I say, it meant nothing of a serious nature. I knew this. She knew it as well.” He smiled, not without fondness it seemed. “She enjoyed the game of it. I could see this in her when first we met.”

“When she was twenty?”

“It is a false woman who doesn't know her own allure. Nicola was not a false woman. She knew. I saw. She saw that I saw. The rest …” He gave another quintessentially Gallic shrug. “There are limits to every communion between men and women. If one remembers the limits, one's happiness within the communion is safeguarded.”

Lynley made the interruption adroitly. “Nicola knew you wouldn't leave your wife.”

“She did not require that I leave my wife. She had no interest there, believe me.”

“Then where?”

“Her interest?” He smiled, as if with memory. “The places we met. The exertion required of me to get to the places. What was left of my energy once I arrived. And how well I was able to use it.”

“Ah.” Lynley considered the places: the caves, the barrows, the prehistoric villages, the Roman forts. Oooh-la-la, he thought. Or, as Barbara Havers might have said, Bingo, Inspector. They had Mr. Postcard. “You and Nicola made love—”

“We had sex, not love. Our game was to choose a different site for each meeting. Nicola would pass a message to me. A map sometimes. Sometimes a riddle. If I could interpret it correctly, follow it correctly …” Again that shrug. “She would be there to provide the reward.”

“How long had you been lovers?”

Ferrer hesitated before replying, either doing the maths or assessing the damage of revealing the truth. Finally, he chose. “Five years.”

“Since you first came to the Hall.”

“This is the case,” he admitted. “I would, of course, prefer that Monsieur and Madame. … It would only serve to distress them unnecessarily. We were always discreet. We never left the Hall together. We returned first one, then the other later. So they never knew.”

And never had reason to sack you, Lynley thought.

The Frenchman seemed to feel the necessity for a further explanation. “It was that look she gave me when first we met. You know what I mean. I could tell from the look. Her interest matched my own. There is sometimes an animal need between a man and a woman. This is not love. This is not devotion. This is just what one feels—a pain, a pressure, a need—here.” He indicated his groin. “You, a man, you feel this as well. Not every woman has an ache that matches that of a man. But Nicola had. I saw that at once.”

“And did something about it.”

“As was her wish. The game of it came later.”

“The game was her idea?”

“Her way … It was why I never sought another woman while in England. There was no need. She had a way to make a simple affair …” He sought a word to describe it. “Magic,” he settled on. “Exciting. I would not have thought myself capable of fidelity to a mere mistress over five years. One woman had never held me more than three months before Nicola.”

“The game of it was what she enjoyed? That's what kept her tied to the affair with you?”

“The game kept me tied. For her, there was the physical pleasure, naturally.”

There was also the ego, Lynley thought wryly. He said, “Five years is a long time to keep a woman interested, especially with no hope of any future.”

“Of course, there were the tokens as well,” Ferrer admitted. “They were small, but all true symbols of my esteem. I have so little money because most of it … My Estelle would wonder if the money changed … what I send to her, you see … if it became less. So there were tokens only, but they were enough.”

“Gifts to Nicola?”

“Gifts, if you will. Perfume. A gold charm or two. This pleased her. And the game went on.” He dug into his pocket and removed the small tool he'd been using on the bicycle spokes. He hunkered down and went at them again, tightening each spoke with infinite patience. He said, “I shall miss her, my little Nicola. We didn't love. But how we laughed.”

“When you wanted the game to begin,” Lynley said, “how did you let her know?”

The Frenchman raised his head, his expression puzzled. “Please?”

“Did you leave her a note? Did you page her?”

“Ah. No. It was the look between us. Nothing else was needed.”

“So you never paged her?”

“Page? No. Why would I when the look was all that … ? Why do you ask this question?”

“Because evidently when she was at work in Buxton this past summer, someone paged her and phoned her a number of times. I thought it might have been you.”

“Ah. I had no need. But the other … He could not leave her alone. The buzzer. Every time it went off. Like a clock's work.”

Corroboration at last, Lynley thought. He clarified with “She received pages when you were together?”

“It was the only imperfection in our game, that little pager. Always, she would ring him back.” He tested the bicycle spokes with his fingers. “Bah. What was she doing with him? There was so little they could have had together. Sometimes when I think of what she had to experience with him, too young to know the first thing about giving a woman pleasure … What a crime against love, him with my Nicola. With him, she endured. With me, she enjoyed.”

Lynley filled in the blanks. “Are you saying it was Julian Britton who paged her?”

“Always he wanted to know when they could meet, when they could talk, when they could make plans. She would say, ‘Darling, how extraordinary that you'd page me now. I was just thinking of you. I swear I was. Shall I tell you what I was thinking? Shall I tell you what I'd do if we were together?’ And then she would tell. And he would be satisfied. With that. Just that” Ferrer shook his head in disgust.

“Are you certain it was Britton who paged her?”

“Who else? She talked to him as she talked to me. The way one talks to a lover. And he was her lover. Not the same as I, of course, but still her lover.”

Lynley set that area of discussion aside. “Did she always have the pager with her? Or did she have it only when she was away from the Hall?”

She always had it as far as he knew, Ferrer answered. She wore it tucked into the waistband of her trousers or her skirt or her hiking shorts. Why? he wanted to know. Was the pager of some importance in the inspector's investigation?

That, Lynley thought, was indeed the question.

Nan Maiden watched them. She'd moved from the office to the first floor corridor, where a bank of windows lined the wall. She stood in the embrasure of one of these windows, someone studying the moonlight striking the trees should any of the residents happen to see her. Nervously, she fingered the tie-back of the heavy curtains. It caught on the bitten skin round her nails. She watched the two men below in conversation, and she fought the desire—the impulse, the need—to run down the stairs with an excuse to join them, to offer explanations and to argue fine points of her daughter's character that might be misconstrued.

“Look, Mum,” Nicola had said, all of twenty years old with the Frenchman's scent clinging to her like the aftertaste of wine gone bad, “I know what I'm doing. I'm quite of an age to know my own mind, and if I want to fuck a bloke old enough to be my dad, then I'm going to fuck him. It's no one's business but my own and it isn't hurting a soul. So why're you in a state about it?” And she'd gazed at Nan with those clear blue eyes, so frank and open and reasonable. She'd unbuttoned her shirt and stepped out of her shorts, dropping bra and knickers on top of them. As she passed her mother and stepped into the tub, Ferrer's scent grew stronger, and Nan choked upon it. Nicola lowered herself into the water, sinking up to her shoulders so that it completely covered her teacup breasts. But not before Nan saw the marks of his teeth. And not before Nicola saw her see them. She said, “He likes it that way, Mummy. Rough. But he doesn't actually hurt me. And anyway, I do the same to him. Everything's okay. You're not to worry.”

Nan said, “Worry? I didn't bring you up to—”

“Mum.” She'd lifted the sponge from the tray and dipped it into the water. The room was steamy and Nan sat on the toilet lid. She felt dizzy and caught in a world gone mad. “You brought me up fine,” Nicola said. “And this isn't about how you brought me up anyway. He's sexy and he's fun and I like to fuck him. There's no need to make an issue out of something that isn't an issue for either one of us.”