Playing for the Ashes (11 page)

“Shall I get her something?” Havers asked. “Water? A whisky?”

Mrs. Whitelaw’s lips twitched with the effort at talking. She fastened her eyes on Lynley. He covered her fingers with his hand and said to his sergeant, “She’s all right, I think.” And to Mrs. Whitelaw, “Just be still.”

Her eyes squeezed shut. Her breathing grew ragged, but it appeared to be a battle for emotional control rather than an indication of a physical crisis.

Havers added another several coals to the fire. Mrs. Whitelaw raised her hand to her temple. “Head,” she whispered. “God. The hammering.”

“Shall we phone for your doctor? You may have hit it badly.”

She shook her head weakly. “Comes and goes. Migraines.” Her eyes
fil
led with tears and she widened them, it seemed, in an effort to keep the tears from spilling over. “Ken…he knew.”

“He knew?”

“What to do.” Her lips looked dry. Her skin seemed cracked, like old glaze on porcelain. “My head. He knew. He could always make the pain go.”

But not this pain, Lynley thought. He said, “Are you alone here in the house, Mrs. Whitelaw?” She nodded. “Shall we phone for someone?” Her lips formed the word
no
. “My sergeant can stay with you the night.”

Her hand shook the counterpane in a gesture of refusal. “I…I shall be…” She blinked hard. “I shall be…all right presently,” she said, although her voice was faint. “Forgive me, please. So sorry. The shock.”

“Don’t apologise. It’s quite all right.”

They waited in a silence broken only by the hissing of the coal as it burned and the ticking of several clocks in the room. Lynley felt oppression closing in on all sides. He wanted to throw open the stained and painted windows. Instead, he remained where he was, one hand on Mrs. Whitelaw’s shoulder.

She began to raise herself. Sergeant Havers came to her side. She and Lynley eased the older woman to a sitting position and from there to her feet. She wobbled. They kept their hands on her elbows and guided her to one of the overstuffed chairs. Sergeant Havers handed her her spectacles. Lynley found her handkerchief under the nursing chair and returned it to her. He wrapped the counterpane round her shoulders.

She cleared her throat and said, “Thank you,” with some dignity. She put on her spectacles and straightened her clothes. She said tentatively, “If you don’t mind…If I might have my shoes as well,” and waited until she had them on before she spoke again. When she did, it was with the trembling
fin
gers of her right hand pressed into her temple in an attempt to master whatever pounding she felt in her skull. She said in a quiet voice, “Are you certain?”

“That it was Fleming?”

“If there was a
fir
e, surely it’s possible that the body was…” She pressed her lips together so hard that the impressions of her teeth showed against her skin. “There could be a mistake, couldn’t there?”

“You’ve forgotten. It wasn’t that kind of fire,” Lynley said. “He wasn’t burned. The body was only discoloured.” When she flinched, he said quickly to reassure her, “From carbon monoxide. Smoke inhalation. His skin would have been deeply
flu
shed. But it wouldn’t have prevented his wife from recognising him.”

“No one told me,” she said dully. “No one even phoned.”

“The police generally notify the family first. The family takes it from there.”

“The family,” she repeated. “Yes. Well.”

Lynley took her place in the nursing chair as Sergeant Havers returned to her original position and picked up her notebook. Mrs. Whitelaw’s colour was still bad, and Lynley wondered how much questioning they could expect her to endure.

She stared at the pattern in the Persian rug. Her voice was slow, as if she recalled each fact moments before stating it.

“Ken said he was going…It was Greece. A few days’ boating in Greece, he said. With his son.”

“You mentioned Jimmy.”

“Yes. His son. Jimmy. For his birthday. That’s the reason Ken was cutting some training to go. He had…they had a
fli
ght from Gatwick.”

“When was this?”

“Wednesday night. He’d had it planned for months. It was Jimmy’s birthday present. Just the two of them were going.”

“You’re certain about the trip? You’re certain he meant to leave Wednesday night?”

“I helped him carry his luggage to the car.”

“A taxi?”

“No. His car. I’d said I’d drive him to the airport, but he’d only had the car for a few weeks. He loved the excuse to take it out on the road. He was going to fetch Jimmy and then they’d be off. Just the two of them. On a boat. Round the islands. For just a few days because we’re so close now to the
fir
st test match.” Her eyes filled with tears. She pressed her handkerchief beneath them and cleared her throat. “Forgive me.”

“Please. It’s all right.” Lynley waited a moment as she tried to regain her composure. He said, “What sort of car did he have?”

“A Lotus.”

“The model?”

“I don’t know. It was old. Restored. Low to the ground. Headlamps like pods.”

“A Lotus-7?”

“It was green.”

“There was no Lotus at the cottage. Just an Aston Martin in the garage.”

“That would have been Gabriella’s,” she said. She moved her handkerchief to press it against her upper lip. She spoke from behind her hand. More tears pooled in her eyes. “I can’t think that he’s dead. He was here on Wednesday. We had an early dinner together. We talked about the printworks. We talked about the test matches this summer. The Australian spin bowler. The challenge he would be for a batsman. Ken was worrying over whether he’d be selected for the England team again. He always has doubts every time the selectors begin to choose. I tell him his fears are ridiculous. He’s such a fine player. His form’s never off. Why should he ever worry about not being selected? He’s… Present tense. Oh God, I’m using present tense. It’s because he’s been…he was…Forgive me, please. If you will. Please. If I can only piece myself together. I mustn’t fall apart. I mustn’t. Later. I can fall apart later. There are things to be seen to. I know that. I do.”

Lynley managed to get several tablespoons of sherry from what was left in the decanter. He offered the glass to her and held her hand steady. She gulped the liquor like medicine.

“Jimmy,” she said. “He wasn’t at the cottage as well?”

“Only Fleming.”

“Only Ken.” She moved her gaze to the fire. Lynley saw her swallow, saw her
fin
gers begin to tighten, then relax.

“What is it?” he said.

“Nothing. It isn’t important in the least.”

“Let me be the one to decide that, Mrs. Whitelaw.”

Her tongue passed over her lips. “Jimmy would have been expecting his father to fetch him for the flight on Wednesday. If Ken didn’t show up, he’d have phoned here to know why.”

“And he didn’t?”

“No.”

“You were here at home once Fleming left Wednesday evening? You didn’t go out yourself? Even for a few minutes? Could you have missed a call from him?”

“I was here. No one phoned.” Her eyes widened marginally as she said the last word. “No. No, that’s not quite true.”

“Someone phoned?”

“Earlier. Just before dinner. For Ken, not for me.”

“Do you know who it was?”

“Guy Mollison.”

Longtime captain of the England team, Lynley thought. It wasn’t strange that he’d be phoning Fleming. But the timing was interesting. “Did you hear Fleming’s end of the conversation?”

“I answered the phone in the kitchen. Ken took the call in the morning room.”

“Did you listen in?”

She looked away from the fire to him. She appeared too exhausted to be offended by the question. But, still, her voice was reserved when she replied, “Of course not.”

“Not even before you replaced the receiver? Not for a moment to make sure Fleming was on the line? It would be natural to do that.”

“I heard Ken’s voice. Then Guy’s. That’s all.”

“Saying?”

“I’m not certain. Something…Ken said hullo. And Guy said something about a row.”

“An argument between them?”

“He said something about wanting the Ashes back. Something like, ‘We want the bloody Ashes back, don’t we? Can we forget the row and get on with things?’ It was test-match talk. Nothing more.”

“And the row?”

“I don’t know. Ken didn’t say. I assumed it had something to do with cricket, with Guy’s influence over the selectors, perhaps.”

“How long was their conversation?”

“He came down to the kitchen
fiv
e minutes, perhaps ten minutes later.”

“He said nothing about it then? Or over dinner?”

“Nothing.”

“Did he seem changed after he talked to Mollison? More subdued, perhaps? More agitated, more pensive?”

“Not at all.”

“And in the past few days? The past week? Had he seemed changed at all to you?”

“Changed? No. He was the same as ever.” She cocked her head. “Why? What are you asking, Inspector?”

Lynley considered how best to answer the question. The police had the advantage at the moment, in the form of knowledge only the arsonist would possess. He said carefully, “There are some irregularities about the
fir
e at the cottage.”

“You said a cigarette? In one of the armchairs?”

“Had he been despondent in the last several weeks?”

“Despondent? Of course he wasn’t despondent. Worried, yes, about being chosen to play for England. Perhaps a bit concerned about going off with his son for a few days in the midst of his training. But that was the extent of it. What on earth had he to be despondent about?”

“Had he personal troubles? Family troubles? We know his wife and children live apart from him. Were there difficulties with them?”

“No more than usual. Jimmy—the eldest—was a source of worry to Ken, but what sixteen-year-old isn’t a worry to his parents?”

“Would Fleming have left you a note?”

“A note? Why? What sort of note?”

Lynley leaned forward in his chair. “Mrs. Whitelaw, we must rule out suicide before we can proceed in any other direction.”

She stared at him. He could see her trying to work her way through the emotional mire created first by the shock of Fleming’s death and now by the allegation of suicide.

“May we check his bedroom?”

She swallowed but did not reply.

“Consider it a necessary formality, Mrs. Whitelaw.”

Tentatively, she rose, one hand grasping the arm of her chair. She said quietly, “This way, then,” and led them out of the room and up another flight of stairs.

Kenneth Fleming’s room was on the second floor overlooking the back garden. Most of the space was dominated by a large brass bed across from which an enormous oriental fan spread across the fireplace. As Mrs. Whitelaw took a seat in the room’s only chair—a wingback tucked into the corner— Lynley went to a chest of drawers that stood beneath the window while Havers opened a mirrored wardrobe.

“These are his children?” Lynley asked. From the top of the chest of drawers, he picked up one photograph after another. There were nine of them, haphazardly framed snapshots of babies, toddlers, and children.

“He has three children,” Mrs. Whitelaw said. “They’ve grown since those were taken.”

“No recent pictures?”

“Ken wanted to take them, but Jimmy wouldn’t cooperate whenever Ken got the camera out. As Jimmy goes, so go his brother and sister.”

“There was friction between Fleming and the older boy?”

“Jimmy’s sixteen,” she told them once again. “It’s a difficult age.”

Lynley couldn’t disagree. His own sixteenth year had been the start of a downhill slide in parental relationships that had only ended when he was thirty-two.

There was nothing else on the top of the chest of drawers, nothing but soap and a folded towel on the washstand, nothing propped up on the pillows of the bed awaiting notice, and only a worn copy of Graham Swift’s
Waterland
on the bedside table. Lynley
fli
pped through this. Nothing fell out.

He began to go through the chest of drawers. He saw that Fleming was compulsively neat. Every jersey and sweatshirt was identically folded. Even his socks were arranged in their drawer by colour. Across the room, Sergeant Havers was apparently drawing this same conclusion from the row of shirts on their hangers, followed by trousers, followed by jackets, with shoes lined up in a row beneath them.

“Blimey,” she said. “Not a stitch out of place. They do that sometimes, don’t they, sir?”