A Banquet of Consequences (12 page)

Clare hooted. “Darling, I’m strong as a horse. Unless . . . d’you mean early dementia or something? Absolutely not. I’m fit as a mule. Pardon the equine references. I do note I just gave you two. That’s certainly not a good sign.”

“I’m not joking. You’ve always had me to manage things when it comes to your book signings. You’ve had me as well if you needed someone when you’ve gone on tour. So now to have us both with you . . . I have to ask it. If there’s nothing gone wrong with you, with your health, is there something else happening that I need to know about?”

Clare took more olives. She looked at Rory frankly. “What would that be?” she asked.

“I don’t
know.
But I’m asking because I’m rather worried. Look, I understand how you might want her in Shaftesbury: dealing with your mail, managing your schedule, setting up appointments and
engagements, even keeping your house and doing your cooking. But beyond that . . . Clare, I must be frank. It seems as if she’s rather too dug
into
your life.”

“Because I brought her with me to London? That’s nothing. She wanted to see her son. He lives not far from here. She popped over there late this afternoon.” As Rory had done, Clare glanced towards the stairway before going on. “See here, Rory. This is what it is: Her younger boy died three years ago, a short time before she and I met. He killed himself, and there was no mistaking it for an accident. She’s had a rotten time of it since then. The way I see it is that she lost someone quite precious to her and when that happens, the survivor needs . . .” Clare seemed to catch the expression Rory couldn’t keep from her face because she said, “Oh Christ. I’m
so
bloody sorry.”

“It’s all right. Fiona didn’t kill herself.”

Clare nodded but her brow furrowed. From this, Rory knew she believed she’d gone too far. It was the wine, she was thinking. It made fools of them all. At her feet Arlo had begun to snore lightly. She glanced down at him, feeling how her heart actually did swell—as they always declared in novels—with love for the little beast. She said, “I’d be dead myself without this bloody little dog.”

“I don’t believe that. You owe your life to your courage. But Caroline doesn’t have that. And she’s not found a way to cope with her loss, aside from working for me.”

“Is that what she tells you?”

“It’s what I see.”

“So are you trying to do for her what you did for me, then? Giving her time and a place just to . . . I don’t know . . . just recover?”

“I’m giving her employment.”

“And is she at least good at her employment?”

“Not particularly. Not all of it.”

“Then why not have her do something else? Be . . . merely a housekeeper for you?”

Clare rose from the table and began removing the items. She told Rory to stay where she was in order not to disturb her sleeping dog. She loved the little pooch, perhaps not as much as Rory but with equal gratitude for how Arlo made it possible for Rory to go out again in
the world. She said, “I did try that, but she wouldn’t have it. Oh, she did a bit of housekeeping for me at first, but she kept declaring herself capable of so much more. Research, ideas, a resource of individuals available for me to interview or study, editorial services, website designs and maintenance, Twitter feeds, blogs, the whole lot of what you at the publishing house would have me do and what I’ve been avoiding. She asked me for a chance just to show me how many ways she could be useful to me and—for my sins—I decided to give her that chance. Well, heavens, darling, what else could I do? There was always the possibility that I’d stumbled on a gold mine of talent there in Shaftesbury.”

“So how has it worked out? Is she helping you with the next book? Has she blogged in your name? Is she maintaining a Twitter feed for you?”

Clare wrapped the salami, began to dump the olives and peaches and grapes into their separate containers. “I expect you know the answer to that.”

“Then why not sack her? Or if not that, why not say, ‘Afraid it has to be merely housekeeping full stop, old girl, as you’re not up to the rest’?”

“It’s simply not that easy.”

Rory frowned. There was something Clare wasn’t telling her. She could feel it there, just out of reach, hovering like one of the Huguenot ghosts who walked the nighttime streets of Spitalfields. She said, “Tell me why. Please.”

Clare seemed to think the request over as she stored their food in the fridge. She didn’t answer till she’d finally returned to the table and sat. Then she said, “As women, we have a responsibility to one another that men don’t have. I’ve lived my life trying to follow that creed.”

“As you did with me. I know.”

“So when I first met Caroline—this was at the Women’s League in Shaftesbury—and I heard her story, I thought how simple a thing it would be to extend my hand to her, if only to relieve one small part of the suffering she was going through. I’ve been enormously lucky in my own life and—”

“You grew up on a bloody sheep farm in the Shetland Islands. You had a brother who in the dark of night—”

“Yes. Right. Let’s not go there please. My point is that I had parents who believed in me, a bloody good education, a chance to travel the world, a wonderful gap year in East Asia that opened my eyes to what women in male-dominated societies—not to mention real poverty—have to endure. And on and on. While she had an early and very unhappy marriage to flee from her mum, and she never managed to find her own strength and purpose. She made her purpose her children, like so many women do, Rory. And then one of them killed himself. These are things I’ve never had to face. And when one’s been lucky as I’ve been lucky . . .” She shrugged. “I have no other way to explain it to you. Other than to say it’s who I am.”

Rory took this in. Everything Clare had said was the truth. She did believe in a fellowship of women. She had spent most of her life acting upon that belief. So there was really
nothing
untoward in what she’d been doing for Caroline Goldacre. Yet Rory continued to feel unsettled.

She said, “I suppose I have to accept it all then,” although she could hear the reluctance in her voice. “But . . . she’s not getting in the way of your next book, is she? How’s it coming along? It’s a brilliant idea as a follow-up to
Darcy
. I salivate each time I think of it, Clare.”

“The going’s a bit slow at the moment with all the
Darcy
hoopla. But, dear editor, I shall make the deadline as I ever have.”

“If you can’t, all you need to do is to let me know. Anything can be pulled from the catalogue.”

Clare waved off this idea. “I’m entirely dedicated to striking while the iron is et cetera, as you well know,” she said. “I fully intend to have it finished on time so that you and I can move into the future rich and fat and famous, my dear.”

VICTORIA

LONDON

A
s he approached her from the labyrinthine security area, Lynley didn’t realise at first that the woman waiting for one of the lifts was Dorothea Harriman. He had never seen the departmental secretary reading a book and because of this, he didn’t at first take note of the perfect ensemble and perfect blonde locks that marked her as forever Dorothea. It wasn’t until she said his name that he recognised, from her habitual use of his full rank, Dorothea as the speaker.

“Why’ve you got paint on your hands, Detective Inspector Lynley?” she enquired. “And are you aware there’s also quite a streak of it in your hair above your right ear?”

“Is there indeed?” He felt for the latter and recognised from its unusual texture that she was correct. Of course, the colour alone would have indicated paint to her since fuchsia rather announced itself in ways that, perhaps, brown would not have done. “Ah,” he said. “Clearly, not enough shampoo this morning.” And to divert her from repeating her question, he asked one of his own, “What are you reading? You looked fairly engrossed.”

She closed the book and handed it over. “Rubbish,” she said.

He read the cover.
Looking for Mr. Darcy: The Myth of Happily Ever After.
He took in the author’s name and flipped, as was his habit, to
see if there was a recent photo of the well-known feminist. There was. Over the years, Clare Abbott had become quite rakish in appearance, wildly grey-haired and looking fierce behind thick-framed spectacles of a style that had gone by the wayside at least seventy years earlier. He started to return the book to Dorothea, who held up her hands in a gesture that told him she wanted no further part of the thing. The lift doors opened, and they entered together. She punched for their floor and settled back against the railing that ran along the wall.

“You’re not enjoying it?” he asked politely.

“Stuff and nonsense written by a lesbian, a man-hater, or a general misotrist.”

Lynley didn’t correct her on the final word. He got the point. “So I suppose you’re
not
reading in advance of taking the marital plunge?”

“Detective Sergeant Havers gave it to me.” She gazed up at the numbers that lit to show them the floors they were passing. She sighed and gestured to the book. “This, I’m afraid, was the result of our first experience together in life beyond the walls of New Scotland Yard.”

“Are you saying you took her to a bookstore, Dee?”

She leveled a look at him. “Do you think I’m thick? I took her to Middlesex Street. I actually
revealed
to her the source of virtually my entire wardrobe. All right, not all of it. I mean, obviously, I do have some basic pieces—more or less foundations but not foundation
garments
in the strictest sense of the word, but building blocks on which anyone with any sense of fashion can begin to at least
structure
a wardrobe.”

Lynley felt all out at sea. Nonetheless, he tried to look encouraging. He said, “Ah,” and waited for more.

The lift doors opened. They stepped into the corridor, where Dorothea went on. “Essentially, I showed her everything. I explained how it’s done. We went over accessories and the importance of owning a very good steam iron and purchasing buttons to alter the look in order to make the piece seem more expensive.
And
I even told her where because if one wants vintage, one has to know where it can be found.”

He went with one word, “Vintage?”

“Vintage
buttons
, Detective Inspector. Leather-covered. Shell.
Oyster. Even Bakelite. One takes a very simple suit that costs twenty pounds—”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Yes, yes, they exist. Obviously
you
wouldn’t be seen dead in one, but—”

“That’s hardly the case. I was about to ask where such bargains can be—”

“Middlesex Street. Like I said. So if you take the suit or the jacket or whatever and change its buttons to something . . . well, rather flash . . . then people concentrate on the buttons instead of on the suit and because the buttons are special, they naturally conclude that the suit is as well.”

“I see.” He held up the book. “As to this?”

“She said she saw a poster advertising it. I have
no
idea where because within fifteen seconds of my getting her to the market, she’d disappeared in the direction of the food stalls.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“She didn’t find it in one of the food stalls, of course. She found several plates of pad Thai or something. At least that’s what she told me. But when she gave me that”—a nod at the book—“she said it was down to our jaunt to the clothing market and thank you very much, Dorothea. Don’t ask me how she discovered it. P’rhaps someone handed it over to her in the hope that . . . whatever. I do
not
know.”

Lynley opened the book and saw the inscription. He said, “It’s signed to you.”

“It never is!” When Dorothea saw the title page, her blue eyes widened. Then they narrowed, as she apparently took in the barb behind being given such a book. “She did it as a joke then, didn’t she? She thinks I exist
merely
to capture a man because I think that’s what life is all about. I find a man and he rescues me from this”—with a wave of her arm to encompass all of New Scotland Yard—“and takes me to . . . to Surrey where we buy a twee little cottage and make babies together.”

“Surely not Surrey,” Lynley said gravely but with a smile.

She smiled as well, in spite of herself. “Berkshire then. Perhaps Buckinghamshire.”

“Yes. Perhaps that,” he said.

“Well, I shall sort her, Detective Inspector Lynley. My first plan didn’t work. Obviously.” She frowned for a moment and tapped her foot. She said, “Gardening? Vegetable growing? One can meet all sorts of men these days in gardening centres . . .”

“Lord” was Lynley’s reply.

“DIY, then. Going into those shops where you have to ask questions of guys who’re only too happy . . .” A sudden thought seemed to strike her. “Which, by the way, brings us back to where we started, doesn’t it? You never answered me. Why d’you have paint in your hair? You’ve never seemed the DIY type.”

“Dorothea,” he said, “there are depths to me of which you are completely unaware.”

“Hmmm. But fuchsia, Detective Inspector Lynley?”

“Let it be our secret,” he replied.

BELSIZE PARK

LONDON

Fuchsia was merely the accent colour in the bathroom, a touch of it only in a horizontal stripe six inches above a wainscoting of white tiles set in, he’d learned, a pattern called subway. Otherwise, the room was a pale grey with darker grey towels and further touches of fuchsia in what Daidre called “the extras.” These consisted of a vase, a rug on the floor that was polka-dotted, and a vertical stripe rendered in special paint for fabric on the roman blind that covered the new double-glazed window—“energy-efficient, Tommy”—that she’d had installed. That window, the electrical wiring, and the plumbing were the three projects that Daidre Trahair had not taken on herself. The rest of the room she’d done by inches and degrees on her free time away from London Zoo, where she was the large-animal veterinarian. When Lynley had time and when he wished to see her, he was her man Friday in the DIY renovation of a disastrous flat in Belsize Park which she’d purchased in order to have a home near to the zoo. She could bicycle there, she’d declared. And once the flat was made liveable, she’d be in her element.

He’d had his doubts about the project, but Daidre had pooh-poohed them. She’d declared herself very handy, and she’d proved that over the months she’d been in residence. She’d done the bathroom as project number one, and the accent paint had gone up last. He’d lent a hand, not because he was particularly handy himself—he absolutely was not—but because it was the only way to spend a few hours with her at present.

Now with the key she’d given him, he let himself into the flat that same evening. He’d come armed with yet another pizza as their dinner, walking it down from the shops in Belsize village and trying not to consider that he’d not eaten so much pizza since his time at university. He set it under the bay window where they took their makeshift meals when he called upon her. Their seating consisted of two camping stools; their table was the discarded window from the bathroom placed over two rusty lobster pots that Daidre declared she’d found among the rubble in her back garden when she’d had the filthy stove and the disreputable fridge hauled away from where they’d been shoved by their previous owner.

There was no kitchen yet. There was barely a bedroom. Daidre slept on a camp bed kitted out with a sleeping bag in the larger of the two rooms designated for that purpose, but like the kitchen, that room remained what it had been when she’d made her purchase: a wreck with holes in the walls and a window painted blue and painted shut. It wasn’t high on her priority list, she said. The kitchen, she’d told him, had to come next. How are you with kitchens, Tommy? she’d asked. His skills there, he’d told her, were fairly comparable to those for bathrooms.

The nature of their relationship remained as she’d told him from the very first it would have to be. She held a large part of herself
to
herself, and Lynley understood that she believed she had to do this. But he continued to want to draw her out, and he’d begun to ask himself if this longing had to do with the challenge she presented or with something more than that. He had no answer yet. But she was, he thought, completely self-reliant and utterly self-sufficient, and this also made her profoundly intriguing.

He went to check on the kitchen. He saw that, according to
plan, the new double-glazed window had been installed sometime today. The French windows for behind the room’s eating area leaned against the far wall that, at present, featured only a narrow doorway to the garden. Those French windows would go in next, but only when the construction on the wall had been completed, which it had not. Nothing else had been done.

He returned to what would be the sitting room. He’d brought with him
Looking for Mr. Darcy
and he reached in his jacket for his spectacles and dipped into the book as he waited for Daidre. It began, he saw, with the subject of Tristan and Iseult. This myth, declared the author, was where the entire wrongheaded modern idea of romantic love had begun, centuries ago, within the tale of a knight, his lady, and the great impossibility of their passion for each other.

Lynley was deep into Tristan’s half of the tale when he heard Daidre’s key in the lock. He set the book aside, removed his glasses, and rose from the camping stool. She came in, rolling her bicycle into the flat and saying with a start, “Tommy! I didn’t see your car.” She looked back over her shoulder, apparently trying to work this out. “Surely you didn’t come by public transport.”

“You know me too well. It’s parked up in the village. I walked from there. With dinner, as it happens,” and he indicated the pizza box.

“Is someone minding the Healey Elliott, then? Are you paying a twelve-year-old to keep the dust from its bonnet?”

He smiled at this. “He’s fifteen.”

“And happy to be of service, I expect. Are you letting him sit in it?”

“Good Lord. I’d hardly go that far.”

She leaned the bicycle against the wall and said as he took a step towards her to kiss her hello, “Keep at a distance. I must have a shower. What have you brought?”

“They were having a special on goat at the Turkish restaurant.”

“Why do I see a pizza box, then?”

“A clever disguise. Had I walked out of the place with the appropriate takeaway carton, there’s a very good chance I would have been mobbed.”

“Hmmm. Yes. Well, I hope the ‘goat’ is olive, mushroom, and mozzarella.”

“Why else live I in our native land?”

She laughed. Once again, he began to cross the room to her. She held up her hand. “Elephants, today. Truly. I must have a shower.” She dashed away from him, down the narrow corridor and to the bathroom, where she closed the door.

She liked her showers long, so Lynley knew she would be a while. He took out his spectacles again, went back to his camping stool, and picked up the book along with a glass of the wine they’d not finished three nights earlier. He continued his reading.

He moved on to Iseult’s half of the tale, the Irish daughter of the sorceress Queen. She was the feminine ideal, he saw, the other half of a doomed courtly romance. He was on to the author’s analysis of this when Daidre returned. She stood behind him, put her hand on his shoulder, and he caught the fresh scent of her as she said, “
Looking for Mr. Darcy
? What on earth are you reading? Are you seeking some pointers in the area of masculine perfection? Or merely wondering why women are still smitten by someone so . . . so . . .”

“So?” he enquired, looking up at her.

“Well, he’s a terrible snob, isn’t he?”

“The marriage proposal
was
rather teeth-grating,” Lynley said. “But he was brought to his knees in the end by the love of a good woman. At least that’s what we’re led to believe, along with the assertion that despite having the most horrifying mother-in-law in literature, he and his wife managed to live happily ever after at Pemberley among the Van Dycks and Rembrandts and on the vast acreage inclusive, as I recall, of a very fine trout stream.”

“That was the ticket to their happiness, I expect. One does love fresh trout. So what is that, actually?” She nodded at the book.

He told her of the book’s origins, ending with, “Dorothea believes that Barbara must have a diversion from fixating on her work troubles. A sexual diversion, to be specific. For her part, Barbara apparently believes that Dorothea needs her thinking adjusted on the topic of men.”

“Sounds like a friendship made in heaven. And you?”

He set the book on the floor and rose. “I was merely engaged in some light reading as I waited for you.”

“Has your thinking undergone an adjustment from your reading?”

“It’s all so blasted difficult, isn’t it?”