Payment In Blood (2 page)

Overpowering these odours, however, was a more peculiar smell, the product of last night’s sudden, inexplicable flare of passion. Gowan had just come into the great hall with a tray of glasses and five bottles of liqueurs to serve to their guests when Mrs. Gerrard tore wildly out of her little sitting room, sobbing like a baby. The resulting blind collision between them had thrown Gowan to the floor, creating a mess of shattered Waterford crystal and a pool of alcohol a good quarter-inch deep from the sitting-room door stretching all the way to the reception desk beneath the stairs. It had taken nearly an hour for Gowan to clean the mess up—cursing dramatically whenever Mary Agnes walked by—and all that time people had been coming and going, shouting and crying, pounding up the stairs and down every corridor.

What all the excitement had been about was something that Mary Agnes had never quite determined. She knew only that the company of actors had gone into the sitting room with Mrs. Gerrard to read through a script, but within fifteen minutes their meeting had dissolved into little better than a furious brawl, with a broken curio cabinet, not to mention the disaster with the liqueurs and crystal, as evidence of it.

Mary Agnes crossed the hall to the stairs, mounting them carefully, trying to keep her feet from thundering against the bare wood. A set of house keys, bouncing importantly against her right hip, buoyed her confidence.

“Knock quietly first,” Mrs. Gerrard had instructed. “If there’s no answer, open the door—use the master key if you must—and leave the tray on the table. Open the curtains and say what a lovely day it is.”

“And if ’tisna a luvely day?” Mary Agnes had asked impishly.

“Then pretend that it is.”

Mary Agnes reached the top of the stairs, took a deep breath to steady herself, and eyed the row of closed doors. The first belonged to Lady Helen Clyde, and although Mary Agnes had seen Lady Helen help Gowan last night in the friendliest fashion with the spilled mess of liqueurs in the great hall, she wasn’t confident enough to have her first-ever tray of early morning tea go to the daughter of an earl. There was too much chance of making a mistake. So she moved on, choosing the second room, whose occupant was far less likely to notice if a few drops of tea spilled onto her linen napkin.

There was no answer to her knock. The door was locked. Frowning, Mary Agnes balanced her tray on her left hip, and fumbled about with the keys until she found the master to the bedroom doors. This done, she unlocked the door, pushed it open, and entered, trying to keep all her rehearsed comments in mind.

The room, she discovered, was terribly cold, very dark, and completely soundless, where one would have expected at least the gentle hiss of the radiator at work. But perhaps the room’s sole occupant had decided to pop into bed without turning it on. Or perhaps, Mary Agnes smiled to herself, she wasn’t in the bed alone, but was snuggling up to one of the gentlemen under the eiderdown. Or more than snuggling. Mary Agnes stifled a giggle.

She walked to the table beneath the window, set down the tray, and pulled open the curtains as Mrs. Gerrard had instructed. It was not much after dawn, the sun only an incandescent sliver above the misty hills beyond Loch Achiemore. The loch itself shone silver, its surface a silky sheen upon which hills, sky, and the nearby forest were duplicated exactly. There were few clouds, just shredded bits like wisps of smoke. It promised to be a beautiful day, quite unlike yesterday with its bluster and storm.

“Luvely,” Mary Agnes commented airily. “Guid mornin’ tae ye.”

She swung around from the curtains, straightened her shoulders to head back towards the door, and paused.

Something was wrong. Perhaps it was the air, too hushed as if the room itself had drawn in a quick breath. Or the odour it carried, rich and cloying, vaguely reminiscent of the scent that flew up when her mother pounded meat. Or the mounding of the bedcovers, as if pulled up in a hurry and left undisturbed. Or the absolute lack of movement beneath them. As if no one stirred. As if no one breathed…

Mary Agnes felt the bristling of hairs on the back of her neck. She felt rooted to the spot.

“Miss?” she whispered faintly. And then a second time, a bit louder, for indeed the woman might be sleeping very soundly. “
Miss?
”

There was no response.

Mary Agnes took a hesitant step. Her hands were cold, her fingers stiff, but she forced her arm forward. She jiggled the edge of the bed.

“Miss?” This third invocation brought no more reply than the previous two.

Seemingly on their own, her fingers curled round the eiderdown and began pulling it away from the figure beneath it. The blanket, feeling damp with that kind of bone-chilling cold that comes with a heavy winter storm, snagged, then slid away. And then Mary Agnes saw that horror had a life all its own.

The woman lay on her right side as if frozen, her mouth a rictus in the blood that pooled crimson about her head and shoulders. One arm was extended, palm up, as if in supplication. The other was tucked between her legs as if for warmth. Her long black hair was everywhere. Like the wings of ravens, it spread across the pillow; it curled against her arm; it soaked itself to a pulpy mass in her blood. This had begun to coagulate, so the crimson globules edged in black looked like petrified bubbles in a hellbroth. And in the centre of this, the woman was held immobilised, like an insect on a display board, impaled by the horn-handled dirk that plunged through the left side of her neck right into the mattress beneath her.

2

D
ETECTIVE
I
NSPECTOR
Thomas Lynley received the message shortly before ten that morning. He had gone out to Castle Sennen Farm for a look at their new livestock and was on his way back in the estate Land Rover when his brother intercepted him, hailing him from horseback as he reined in a heaving bay whose breath steamed from flaring nostrils. It was bitterly cold, far more so than was normal in Cornwall even at this time of year, and Lynley’s eyes narrowed against it defensively as he lowered the Rover’s window.

“You’ve a message from London,” Peter Lynley shouted, wrapping the reins expertly round his hand. The mare tossed her head, sidestepping deliberately close to the dry-stone wall that served as border between field and road. “Superintendent Webberly. Something about Strathclyde CID. He wants you to phone him as soon as you can.”

“That’s all?”

The bay danced in a circle as if trying to rid herself of the burden on her back, and Peter laughed at the challenge to his authority. They battled for a moment, each determined to dominate the other, but Peter controlled the reins with a hand that knew instinctively when to let the horse feel the bit and when it would be an infringement on the animal’s spirit to do so. He whipped her round in the fallow field, as if to circle had been an agreed-upon idea between them, and brought her chest forward to the frostrimed wall.

“Hodge took the call.” Peter grinned. “You know the sort of thing. ‘Scotland Yard for his lordship. Shall I go or you?’ Oozing disapproval from every pore as he spoke.”

“Nothing’s changed there,” was Lynley’s response. Having been in his family’s employ for over thirty years, the old butler had for the last twelve refused to come to terms with what he stubbornly referred to as “his lordship’s whimsy,” as if at any moment Lynley might come to his senses, see the light, and begin to live in its radiance in a manner to which Hodge fervently hoped he would become accustomed—in Cornwall, at Howenstow, as far as possible from New Scotland Yard. “What did Hodge tell him?”

“Probably that you were engaged in receiving obsequious servilities from your tenants. You know. ‘His lordship is out on the land at the moment.’” Peter did a fair imitation of the butler’s funereal tones. Both brothers laughed. “Do you want to ride back? It’s faster than the Rover.”

“Thanks, no. I’m afraid I’ve grown far too attached to my neck.” Lynley put the car noisily in gear. Startled, the horse reared and plunged to one side, ignoring bit, rein, and heels in her desire to be off. Hooves clashed against rocks, whinny changed to a rolling-eyed call of fear. Lynley said nothing as he watched his brother struggle with the animal, knowing it was useless to ask him to be careful. The immediacy of danger and the fact that a wrong move could mean a broken bone were what attracted Peter to the horse in the first place.

As it was, Peter flung back his head in exhilaration. He’d come without a hat, and his hair shone in the winter sunlight, close-cropped to his skull like a golden cap. His hands were work-hardened, and even in winter his skin retained its tan, coloured by the months that he spent toiling in the southwestern sun. He was vibrantly alive, inordinately youthful. Watching him, Lynley felt decades more than ten years his senior.

“Hey, Saffron!” Peter shouted, wheeled the horse away from the wall, and, with a wave, shot off across the field. He would indeed reach Howenstow long before his brother.

When horse and rider had disappeared through a windbreak of sycamores at the far side of the field, Lynley pressed down on the accelerator, muttered in exasperation as the old car slipped momentarily out of gear, and hobbled his way back down the narrow lane.

L
YNLEY PLACED
his call to London from the small alcove off the drawing room. It was his personal sanctuary, built directly over the entrance porch of his family’s home and furnished at the turn of the century by his grandfather, a man with an acute understanding of what made life bearable. An undersized mahogany desk sat beneath two narrow mullioned windows. Bookshelves held a variety of entertaining volumes and several bound decades of
Punch
. An ormolu clock ticked on the overmantel of the fireplace, near which a comfortable reading chair was drawn. It had always been an altogether welcoming site at the end of a tiring day.

Waiting for Webberly’s secretary to track down the superintendent and wondering what both of them were doing at New Scotland Yard on a winter weekend, Lynley gazed out the window at the expansive garden below. His mother was there, a tall slim figure buttoned into a heavy pea jacket with an American baseball cap covering her sandy hair. She was involved in a discussion with one of the gardeners, a fact which prevented her from noticing that her retriever had fallen upon a glove she had dropped and was treating it as a midmorning snack. Lynley smiled as his mother caught sight of the dog. She shrieked and wrestled the glove away.

When Webberly’s voice crackled over the line, it sounded as if he had come to the phone on a run. “We’ve a dicey situation,” the superintendent announced with no prefatory remarks. “Some Drury Laners, a corpse, and the local police acting as if it’s an outbreak of the bubonic plague. They put in a call to their local CID, Strathclyde. Strathclyde won’t touch it. It’s ours.”

“Strathclyde?” Lynley repeated blankly. “But that’s in Scotland.”

He was stating the obvious to his commanding officer. Scotland had its own police force. Rarely did they call for assistance from the Yard. Even when they did so, the complexities of Scottish law made it difficult for the London police to work there effectively and impossible for them to take part in any subsequent court prosecutions. Something wasn’t right. Lynley felt suspicion nag, but he temporised with:

“Isn’t there someone else on call this weekend?” He knew that Webberly would supply the rest of the details attendant to that remark: it was the fourth time in five months that he had called Lynley back to duty in the middle of his time off.

“I know, I know,” Webberly responded brusquely. “But this can’t be helped. We’ll sort it all out when it’s over.”

“When
what’s
over?”

“It’s one hell of a mess.” Webberly’s voice faded as someone else in his London office began to speak, tersely and at considerable length.

Lynley recognised that rumbling baritone. It belonged to Sir David Hillier, chief superintendent. Something
was
in the wind, indeed. As he listened, straining to catch Hillier’s words, the two men apparently reached some sort of decision, for Webberly went on in a more confidential tone, as if he were speaking on an unsafe line and were wary of listeners.

“As I said, it’s dicey. Stuart Rintoul, Lord Stinhurst, is involved. Do you know him?”

“Stinhurst. The producer?”

“The same. Midas of the Stage.”

Lynley smiled at the epithet. It was very apt. Lord Stinhurst had made his reputation in London theatre by financing one successful show after another. A man with a keen sense of what the public would love and a willingness to take enormous risks with his money, he had a singular ability to recognise new talent, to cull prize-winning scripts from the chaff of mundanity that passed across his desk every day. His latest challenge, as anyone who read
The Times
could report, had been the acquisition and renovation of London’s derelict Agincourt Theatre, a project into which Lord Stinhurst had invested well over a million pounds. The new Agincourt was scheduled to open in purported triumph in just two months. With that hovering so near in the future, it seemed inconceivable to Lynley that Stinhurst would leave London for even a short holiday. He was a single-minded perfectionist, a man in his seventies who had not taken any time off in years. It was part of his legend. So what was he doing in Scotland?

Webberly went on, as if answering Lynley’s unasked question. “Apparently Stinhurst took a group up there to do some work on a script that was supposed to take the city by storm when the Agincourt opens. And they’ve a newspaperman with them—some chap from
The Times
. Drama critic, I think. Apparently he’s been reporting on the Agincourt story from day one. But from what I was told this morning, right now he’s frothing at the mouth to get to a telephone before we can get up there and muzzle him.”

“Why?” Lynley asked and in a moment knew that Webberly had been saving the juiciest item for last.

“Because Joanna Ellacourt and Robert Gabriel are to be the stars of Lord Stinhurst’s new production. And they’re in Scotland as well.”

Lynley could not suppress a low whistle of surprise. Joanna Ellacourt and Robert Gabriel. These were nobility of the theatre indeed, the two most sought-after actors in the country at the moment. In their years of partnership, Ellacourt and Gabriel had electrified the stage in everything from Shakespeare to Stoppard to O’Neill. Although they worked apart as often as they appeared together, it was when they took the stage as a couple that the magic occurred. And then the newspaper notices were always the same.
Chemistry, wit, hot-wired sexual tension that an audience can feel
. Most recently, Lynley recalled, in
Othello
, a Haymarket production that had run to sell-out crowds for months before finally closing just three weeks ago.

“Who’s been killed?” Lynley asked.

“The author of the new play. Some up-and-comer, evidently. A woman. Name of…” There was a rustle of paper. “Joy Sinclair.” Webberly
harrumphed
, always prelude to an unpleasant piece of news. It came with his next statement. “They’ve moved the body, I’m afraid.”

“Damn and blast!” Lynley muttered. It would contaminate the murder scene, making his job more difficult.

“I know. I know. But it can’t be helped now, can it? At any rate, Sergeant Havers will meet you at Heathrow. I’ve put you both on the one o’clock to Edinburgh.”

“Havers won’t work for this, sir. I’ll need St. James if they’ve moved the body.”

“St. James isn’t Yard any longer, Inspector. I can’t push that through on such short notice. If you want to take a forensic specialist, use one of our own men, not St. James.”

Lynley was quite ready to parry the finality of that decision, intuitively comprehending why he had been called in on the case rather than any other DI who would be on duty this weekend. Stuart Rintoul, the Earl of Stinhurst, was obviously under suspicion for this murder, but they wanted the kind of kid-glove handling that would be guaranteed by the presence of the eighth Earl of Asherton, Lynley himself. Peer speaking to peer in just-one-of-us-boys fashion, probing delicately for the truth. That was all well and good, but as far as Lynley was concerned, if Webberly was going to play fast and loose with the duty roster in order to orchestrate a meeting between Lords Stinhurst and Asherton, he was not about to make his own job more difficult by having Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers along, chomping at the bit to be the first from her grammar school to slap handcuffs on an earl.

To Sergeant Havers, life’s central problems—from the crisis in the economy to the rise in sexual diseases—all sprang from the class system, fully blown and developed, a bit like Athena from the head of Zeus. The entire subject of class, in fact, was the sorest of tender spots between them and it had proved to be the foundation, the structure, and the finial of every verbal battle Lynley had engaged in with her during the fifteen months that Havers had been assigned as his partner.

“This case doesn’t speak to Havers’ particular strengths,” Lynley said reasonably. “Any objectivity she has will be shot to hell the minute she learns that Lord Stinhurst might be involved.”

“She’s grown past that. And if she hasn’t, it’s time she did if she wants to get anywhere with you.”

Lynley shuddered at the thought that the superintendent might be implying that he and Sergeant Havers were about to become a permanent team, joined in a wedlock of careers he would never be able to escape. He looked for a way to use his superior’s decision about Havers as part of a compromise that would meet his own needs. He found it by playing to a previous comment.

“If that’s your decision, sir,” he said equably. “But as to the complications attached to the removal of the body, St. James has more crime-scene experience than anyone currently on staff. You know better than I that he was our best crime-scene man then and…”

“Our best crime-scene man now. I know the standard line, Inspector. But we’ve a time problem here. St. James can’t possibly be given—” A short bark of conversation from Chief Superintendent Hillier interrupted in the background. It was immediately muffled, no doubt by Webberly’s hand over the mouthpiece. After a moment, the superintendent said, “All right. St. James has approval. Just get going, get up there and see to the mess.” He coughed, cleared his throat, and finished with, “I’m not any happier than you are about this, Tommy.”

Webberly rang off at once, allowing no time for either further discussion or questions. It was only when he was holding the dead telephone in his hand that Lynley had a moment to consider two curious details inherent to the conversation. He had been told virtually nothing about the crime, and for the first time in their twelve years of association, the superintendent had called Lynley by his Christian name. An odd cause for unease, to be sure. Yet he found himself wondering for the briefest of moments what was really at the root of this murder in Scotland.