He followed her. A short distance along the corridor, she slid open two pocket doors with stained glass panes of lilies surrounded by drooping fronds, and she passed through them and into a hall. It was half restored and half in tatters, an odd mixture of medieval revival and Arts and Crafts, and there she made for an inglenook fireplace, where she sat in the most sheltered corner, drawing her knees up to her face.
“Please leave me,” she said, although she seemed to be speaking more to herself than to him. “Please leave.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible.”
“You must leave. Don’t you see? No one here knows. You must leave at once.”
Lynley thought it unlikely that no one knew. Indeed, he thought it wildly improbable. He said, “I daresay Ian Cresswell knew.”
At that she raised her head. Her eyes were luminous, but her expression was shifting from distraught to confused. “Ian?” she said. “There’s no possible way. How could he ever have known?”
“As a homosexual man, still in the closet, his was a double life. He would have come into contact with people like you. It would have been easier for him than for other people to recognise— ”
“Is that what you think I am?” she asked. “A homosexual man? A transvestite? A cross-dresser?” A dawning knowledge came over her face. She added, “You’re thinking that I killed Ian, aren’t you? Because he… what? He discovered something? Because then he threatened to betray me if I didn’t… what? Pay him money that I didn’t have? Oh my God, had that only been the case.”
Lynley found himself quite down the rabbit hole. The nature of her initial response to the name Santiago Vasquez y del Torres had indicated she was indeed the long-ago adolescent boy who’d run off from the town of his birth and somehow ended up on the arm of one Raul Montenegro. But her reaction to the suggestion that Ian Cresswell had come to know who and what she was was beginning to alter Lynley’s thoughts on the subject.
She said, “Ian didn’t know. No one here knew. Not a single person.”
“Are you telling me that Nicholas doesn’t know?” Lynley stared at her. He tried to take her in. Making sense of what she was telling him demanded he take a leap into an area that was completely unknown to him. He was like a blind man trying to get himself to a hidden doorway in a room cluttered with furniture whose misshapen nature only confused him. He said, “If that’s the case, I don’t quite understand. How could Nicholas not have known?”
“Because,” she said, “I never told him.”
“But I daresay his own eyes…” And then Lynley began to understand what she was actually revealing about herself. If she’d never told Nicholas Fairclough about Santiago Vasquez y del Torres, and if Nicholas Fairclough’s own eyes hadn’t told him, there was only one reason for this.
“Yes,” she said, apparently reading the dawning knowledge on his features. “Only my immediate family in Argentina know, along with one cousin, Elena Maria. And Elena Maria, she always knew. Right from the first, even when we were children.” Alatea pushed her hair from her face, a distinctly feminine gesture that was discommoding to Lynley, putting him off balance, as perhaps she intended. “She shared with me: her dolls when we were children, her clothes and her makeup when we grew older.” Alatea looked away for a moment, then back at him directly, her expression earnest as she said, “Can you understand this? It was a way for me just to be. It was the only way for me just to be, and this Elena Maria understood. I don’t know how or why, but she simply did. Before anyone, she knew who and what I was.”
“A woman.” Lynley finally put it into words. “Trapped in a man’s body. But still a woman.”
“Yes,” Alatea agreed.
Lynley took this in. He could see that she was waiting for his reaction, perhaps steeling herself to whatever it would be: revulsion, confusion, curiosity, disgust, pity, abhorrence, interest, acceptance. She’d been one of five brothers in a world where being male equated with being accorded privileges that women had had to fight for and were still fighting for. She would know that most men would never comprehend why any man from that world would wish to change the gender into which he’d been born. Yet this, apparently, was what she had done, as she went on to clarify, saying:
“Even when I was Santiago, I was a woman. I had the body of a male. But I was not male. To live like that… belonging nowhere… having a body that is not your own body… so that you look upon it with loathing and would do anything to alter it in order to be who you are…”
“So you became a woman,” Lynley said.
“I transitioned,” she said. “This is what it’s called. I left Santa Maria because I wished to live as a woman and could not do it there. Because of my father, his position, our family. Many things. And then came Raul. He had the money I needed to become a woman and he had his own needs. So we made a deal, he and I. No one else was involved and no one else knew.” She looked at him, then. Over the years, he’d seen the various expressions that flitted across the faces of desperate, crafty, or sly people when they attempted to play with the truth. They always thought they could hide who they were, but only the sociopath ever succeeded. Because the reality was that eyes were indeed windows into the soul, and only the sociopath was soulless.
There was a bench seat opposite Alatea’s position in the inglenook. Lynley went to it and sat. He said, “The death of Ian Cresswell— ”
“I had nothing to do with that. If I were to kill anyone, it would be Raul Montenegro, but I don’t want to kill him. I never wanted to kill him. I just wanted to flee him, and even then it wasn’t because Raul’s intention was to betray who I am. He wouldn’t have done that because he needed to have a woman on his arm. Not a real woman, you see, but a man who could pass as a woman, to safeguard his reputation in his world. What he didn’t understand and what I didn’t tell him was that I didn’t want to pass as a woman because I already was one. I only needed surgery to make it so.”
“He paid for it?”
“In exchange, he thought, for the perfect relationship between two men, one of whom looks to all of the world like a woman.”
“A homosexual relationship.”
“A form of one. Which really cannot exist when one of the partners is not of the same sex, you see. Our problem— mine and Raul’s— was that we did not clearly understand each other before we began this… this venture. Or perhaps I deliberately misunderstood what he wanted from me because I was desperate and he was my only way out.”
“Why do you think he’s pursuing you now?”
She said without irony or self-congratulation, “Wouldn’t you, Thomas Lynley? He spent a great deal of money to make me, and he’s had little enough return on his investment.”
“What does Nicholas know?”
“Nothing.”
“How can that be?”
“I had the final surgery many years ago in Mexico City. When I knew I could not be what Raul wanted me to be, I left him. And Mexico. I was here and there, never remaining any place long. Finally, I was in Utah. And so was Nicky.”
“But you would have had to tell him— ”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because…” Well, it was obvious. There were certain things her body was never going to be able to do.
She said, “I thought I could go forever as a woman without Nicky knowing. But then he wished to come home to England, and he wished even more to make his father proud. He saw a single way to do it, a certain guarantee of his father’s happiness. We would do what neither of his sisters had managed to do. We would have a child and give Bernard a grandchild and this would heal forever the damage Nicky had done to his relationship with his father— and his mother— during all his years of addiction.”
“So now you must tell him.”
She shook her head. “How can I tell him of such betrayal? Could you?”
“I don’t know.”
“I could love him. I could be a lover to him. I could make a home for him and do everything a wom
an might do for a man. Except this one thing. And to submit to a doctor’s examination as to why I haven’t yet become pregnant…? I’ve lied to Nicky from the first because I was used to lying, because that’s what we do, because that’s what we have to do to get on in the world. It’s called stealth and it’s how we live. The only difference between me and the rest of the people who have transitioned from male to female is that I hid it from the man I love because I thought if he knew he would not wish to marry me and take me to a place where Raul Montenegro would never find me. That was my sin.”
“You know you must tell him.”
“I must indeed do something,” she said.
ARNSIDE
CUMBRIA
He was drawing his car keys from his pocket when Deborah drove her hire car up to Arnside House. He remained where he was, and their eyes locked on each other. She pulled up next to the Healey Elliott, got out, and stood there looking at him for a moment. At least, he thought, she had the grace and decency to look regretful.
She said, “I’m so sorry, Tommy.”
“Ah,” he said. “Well.”
“Have you waited all this time?”
“No. I was on my way back to London, about an hour from here. Barbara rang my mobile. There were a few loose ends. I thought it best to tie them.”
“What sort of loose ends?”
“None that actually have anything to do with Ian Cresswell’s death as things turn out. Where have you been? Lancaster again?”
“You know me too well.”
“Yes. There’ll always be that between us, won’t there?” He looked past her to see that during his time inside Arnside House, the fog had reached the seawall. It was beginning to billow up and over it, reaching long cold fingers onto the lawn. He needed to leave at once in order to reach the motorway before the mist became impenetrable. But with it fast making all of Cumbria dangerous, he didn’t see how he could in conscience depart unless Deborah was with him.
Deborah said, “I needed to speak to her one more time— Lucy Keverne— but I knew you’d not allow it.”
Lynley raised an eyebrow. “I don’t ‘allow’ or not allow anything. You’re a free agent, Deborah. I told you on the phone I merely wanted your company on the drive back to town.”
She dropped her head. That red hair of hers— always her most becoming feature— swung down from her shoulders and he saw how quickly it was being affected by the mist. Curls of it were separating, forming other curls. Medusa, he thought. Well, she’d always had that effect on him, hadn’t she?
“As it turns out, I was right,” she said. “I mean, there was more to the story than Lucy Keverne told me. I’m just not sure it would go far as a motive for anyone to murder Ian Cresswell.”
“What is it, then?”
“That Alatea was indeed going to pay her to carry a baby, more than her expenses, that is. So… Well, I suppose the story’s not as sensational as I thought it might be. I can’t really imagine anyone committing murder over it.”
This told Lynley that Lucy Keverne— whoever she was— either didn’t know the full truth about Alatea Fairclough or she’d not told the full truth to Deborah. For the actual story was sensational in spades. Driven by those three prongs that dominated human behaviour— sex, power, and money— the story gave anyone in possession of it reason to ride it as far as it would go. But to murder as well? Deborah was probably correct in this. The one part of the story Ian Cresswell might have been murdered over was the part of the story Lucy Keverne had not known, if Alatea Fairclough was to be believed. And he thought she was.
“And now?” he said to Deborah.
“Actually, I’ve come to apologise to Alatea. I’ve made her life a misery for these past days, and I think I’ve put paid to her plans with Lucy as well. I didn’t intend to, but that infernal reporter from The Source burst into our conversation and announced that I was the Scotland Yard detective in Cumbria to investigate Ian Cresswell’s death and— ” She sighed. She shook her hair off her shoulders and fingered it back in a gesture exactly like Alatea’s. She said, “If I’ve made Lucy afraid to carry this baby for Alatea, Tommy, I’ve done her a serious wrong. She’ll have to go back to square one and find another surrogate. I thought… Well, we have something in common, she and I, don’t we? This business about babies. I wanted to tell her that much at least. Along with an apology. And the truth about who I am.”
She meant well, Lynley thought, but he couldn’t help wondering if she would make things worse for Alatea. He didn’t see how. Deborah didn’t know the full truth and he wasn’t about to tell her. There was no need at this point. His business was finished here, Ian Cresswell was gone, and who Alatea Fairclough was and what she would reveal to her husband were matters for a divinity, which he certainly was not.
Deborah said, “Will you wait for me? I’ll not be long. Perhaps at the hotel?”
He thought about it. It seemed the best solution. Still he said, “If you change your mind, ring me this time, all right?”
“I promise,” she said. “And I won’t change my mind.”
MILNTHORPE
CUMBRIA
Zed didn’t go back to his B & B in Windermere. All things considered, it was too far to drive with what he had simmering on the back burner of his brain. And what he had was a stop-the-presses story, one that he had to get written in order to stop those presses as soon as possible. He felt more alive than he had in months.
Nick Fairclough had tried to hide everything from him, but he succeeded just about as well as a fat man trying to remain unseen by hiding behind a sapling. From start to finish, the poor dumb bloke had been completely in the dark about what his wife had been cooking up with Lucy Keverne. The way Zed reckoned it, the two women had planned to go the turkey baster route and spring the situation on poor Nick when Lucy was too far up the duff for Nick to cry foul and demand they do something about it. Zed didn’t quite have all the finer points of the tale since so far Nick had been as mute as a lump of coal on the topic of his semen and what Alatea had been doing with it or whether, even, she’d got her hands on it, but the way he saw it, that was a minor detail. The crux of the story was a husband being duped by two women for a delicious reason that was bound to emerge once the first part of the tale appeared on the front page of The Source. Within twenty-four hours of that occurring, the usual suspects would crawl out from beneath their rocks to spill whatever beans they were holding in their pots on the topic of Nick, Lucy, and Alatea. Not to mix too many metaphors, Zed thought, but the truth behind his kind of journalism was that one story always led to another like day to night to day again. First, though, he had to get the story he had thus far onto the front page of the paper. And oh what a story it was: Scotland Yard in Cumbria to investigate a murder only to stumble upon a nefarious plot in which a duplicitous wife meets a scheming young playwright willing to sell off her womb like a room to let. There were shades of prostitution here as well, Zed reckoned. For if Lucy Keverne was selling one part of her body, didn’t it stand to reason that at one time or another she’d been selling other parts of her body as well?
Since Zed’s route took him by the Crow and Eagle, he pulled into its car park. They’d have an Internet connection here, wireless or otherwise, because how likely was it that a hotel hoping to stay in business in this day and age existed sans a connection to the Web? No hotel at all. He put his money on that.
He had no laptop with him, but that wasn’t going to matter. He intended to hand over a wad of cash for the use of the hotel’s computer. At this time of year there weren’t going to be hordes of potential tourists sending enquiries to the place via e-mails needing instantaneous answers. Twenty minutes online was all he required. He’d fine-tune the piece once Rod read it. And Rod would read it. For as soon as Zed was finished with the piece, he’d fire it off to his editor and ring him as well.
Zed zipped into the car park and gathered up his notes. These he always carried with him. They were his stock in trade, hi
s jewels, his little precious. Where he went, they went, for the simple reason that one never knew where a story would appear.
Inside the place, he approached the reception desk with his wallet out and his money ready. He counted out one hundred pounds. He’d put it on his expense account later. Right now, though, there was a story waiting.
He leaned over her desk and put the money onto the keyboard of the young woman’s computer. Its screen was on, but she hadn’t been using it. Instead, she’d been yammering on the phone to someone apparently requiring information about the exact dimensions of every bedroom in the place. She looked at Zed, then at the money, then at Zed. She said, “Moment, please,” into the phone and held the earpiece against her bony shoulder as she waited for Zed’s explanation.
He gave it quickly enough. And she was quick enough to decide. She rang off on whoever had been at the other end of her phone conversation, scooped up the money, and said, “Let voice mail take the calls if any come in. You won’t say …?” and she gestured round to complete her question.
“You’ve gone to see about a room for me,” he assured her. “I’ve just booked in and you’re letting me use this thing to check for crucial messages. Twenty minutes?”
She nodded. She pocketed the ten- and twenty-pound notes and headed for the stairs to play her part. He waited till she’d mounted them and made the turn round the landing before he began to write.
The story led in every direction. Its parts were like tributaries pouring into the Amazon, and all he had to do was paddle up them. He began to do so.
He went first with the Scotland Yard angle and the irony attached to it: A detective sent up to Cumbria to investigate the drowning of Ian Cresswell ends up stumbling upon an illegal surrogacy deal that could— bet on it— lead to an entire illegal surrogacy ring that fed on the desperation of couples struggling to conceive. Then he touched on the artistic angle: The struggling playwright so desperate to support herself that she was willing to sell her body in pursuit of the higher calling of her art. He moved directly from there to the deception angle and was pounding away at the tale of Nick Fairclough’s ignorance in the manner of his wife’s deal with Lucy Keverne when his cell phone rang.