Playing for the Ashes (102 page)

They didn’t speak until she had
fin
ished reading, and by then another piece of music had begun.

She said, “So you were right.” And when he nodded, “You knew it all.”

“Not all. I didn’t know how she’d managed it. And I didn’t know who she had hoped would be arrested if it came down to it.”

“Who?” Helen asked.

“Jean Cooper.”

“The wife? I don’t see—”

“She hired a blue Cavalier. She dressed in a fashion she never would have worn otherwise. Had either she or the car been seen at the cottage that night, the description any witness gave would match Jean Cooper.”

“But the boy…Tommy, didn’t the boy say the woman he saw had light hair?”

“Light hair, grey hair. He wasn’t wearing his glasses. He recognised the car, he only half saw the woman, he assumed the rest. He thought his mother had come to see his father. And she had reason to see him, reason to kill Gabriella Patten as well.”

Helen nodded thoughtfully. “If Fleming had told Miriam Whitelaw that he was going to Kent to end his affair with Gabriella…”

“He’d still be alive.”

“So why didn’t he tell her?”

“Pride. He’d made a mess of his life once before. He wouldn’t have wanted her to know how close he’d come to making a mess of it again.”

“But she would have known eventually.”

“True. But he could have presented his breaking off the affair as having outgrown Gabriella, having had enough of her, having realised what sort of woman she was. Which is what he probably would have told Miriam eventually. He just wasn’t ready to tell her that yet.”

“So it was all about timing.”

“In a sense, it was.” Lynley reached for her hand and watched as her fingers naturally found their way to twine with his. He was unexpectedly moved by that twining, by what it promised and what it revealed.

Helen said hesitantly, “As to the rest. The animal rescue business.”

“What about it?”

“What’re you going to do?”

He was silent, pondering the question, evaluating the implications behind each answer he might give her. When he didn’t reply, she went on.

“Miriam will go to Holloway, Tommy.”

“Yes.”

“And do you know who’s working on the other ones? The animal rescue cases? Who’s investigating them?”

“It’s easy enough to
fin
d out.”

He felt her fingers tighten on his. “But if you turn Chris Faraday over to whoever’s working on the break-ins and the rescues… Tommy, she won’t have anyone left. She’ll have to go into a home or a hospital. All this— what you’ve asked her to do—it will be for nothing.”

“It will be to bring a murderer to justice, Helen. That’s hardly nothing.”

He wasn’t looking at her but he could sense that she was searching his face, trying to read behind and beneath his expression in order that she might know what he intended to do. Which he didn’t know himself. Not now. Not yet.

I want things simple, he thought. I want them cut and dried. I want to draw lines that no one thinks of crossing. I want an end to the play when sometimes it’s only an interlude in the action. That’s the miserable fact of my life. That fact has always been my curse.

Decide, Inspector. He could almost hear Olivia’s voice. Decide. Decide. And then live afterwards with the decision. As I will. As I do.

Yes, Lynley thought. In an odd sort of way he owed her that much. He owed her his own distinct act of bearing the burden of choice, the weight of conscience, and the lifelong knowledge of responsibility.

“This is a homicide investigation,” he
fin
ally said in answer to Helen’s unasked question. “That’s where it began. That’s where it ends.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to extend grateful acknowledgment to the people in England who assisted with background material for this novel. I thank Alex Prowse for time, conversation, and photographs on his barge in the Pool of Little Venice; John Gilmore for a tour of the Clermont Club; Susan Monson for an introduction to the East End; the docents of Linley-Sanbourne house for fielding my questions on Victoriana; Sandy Shafernich for assistance with background material on the anti-vivisection movement; Ruth Schuster for risking life, limb, and liberty all in the name of verisimilitude; David Crane, John Blake, and John Lyon for the herculean task of schooling an American in the mysteries of that most elegant of games: cricket; Joan and Colin Randall for hours and days of hospitality and kindness in Kent. I thank also my favorite old Carthusian, Tony Mott, as well as Vivienne Schuster for everything they do to smooth the way.

In the United States, many thanks to Orange County fire investigator John McMasters and to Investigator Gary Bale of the Sheriff’s Department for background in arson and arrest; to Ira Toibin for patiently living through yet another fourteen months of the creative process; to Suzanne Forster and Roger Angle for being there to prop up the pieces when the going gets rough; to Julie Mayer for reading yet another rough draft; to Kate Miciak for constant editorial support; to Deborah Schneider for belief and abiding friendship.

It should be noted that although the places mentioned in this novel do exist in London, they are being used fictitiously. It should also be noted that any errors or missteps found herein are mine alone.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ELIZABETH GEORGE is the author of award-winning and internationally bestselling novels, including
A Great Deliverance, Payment in Blood
, and
A Traitor to Memory
. Her novels have been filmed for television by the BBC and broadcast in the United States on PBS’s

Mystery!

She lives in Seattle and London.