A Great Deliverance

  “Tell me about Paul.”

  She raised herself on one elbow, touched her finger to his lips, traced their shape. The light struck her hair, her shoulders, her breasts. She was fire and cream, scented almost imperceptibly with the sweetness of Devon violets.

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to know about you. Because he was your brother. Because he died.”

  Her eyes moved from his. “What did Nigel say?”

  “That Paul’s death changed everyone.”

  “It did.”

  “Bridie said that he went away, that he never said goodbye.”

  Stepha lowered herself next to him, into his arms. “Paul killed himself, Thomas,” she whispered. Her body trembled on the words. He held her closer. “Bridie’s not been told. We say he died of Huntington’s, and he did, in a way. It was Huntington’s that killed him. Have you ever seen people with the disease? St. Vitus’ dance. They’ve no control over their bodies. They twitch and stagger and leap and fall. And then their minds go at the last. But not Paul. By God, not Paul.” Her voice caught. She drew in a breath. His hand found its way to her hair and he pressed his lips to the top of her head.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “He had just enough mind left to know that he no longer recognised his wife, no longer knew the name of his child, no longer had any control over his body. He had just enough mind left to decide it was time for him to die.” She swallowed. “I helped him. I had to. He was my twin.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Nigel didn’t tell you?”

  “No. Nigel’s in love with you, isn’t he?”

  “Yes.” She answered without artifice.

  “Did he come to Keldale to be near you?”

  She nodded. “We were all at university together: Nigel, Paul, and I. I might have married Nigel at one time. He was less mad then, less angry. I’m the source of his madness, I’m afraid. But I’ll never marry now.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Huntington’s is a hereditary disease. I’m a carrier. I don’t want to pass it on to a child. It’s bad enough seeing Bridie every day and thinking every time she stumbles or drops something that she’s got the bloody disease herself. I don’t know what I’d do if I had a child of my own. Probably drive myself mad with worry.”

  “You don’t have to have children. Or you could adopt.”

  “Men say that, of course. Nigel does all the time. But there’s no point to marriage as far as I’m concerned if I can’t have my own child. My own healthy child.”

  “Was the baby in the abbey a healthy child?”

  She drew herself up to look at him. “On duty, Inspector? An odd time and place for it, wouldn’t you say?”

  He smiled wryly. “Sorry. Reflex action, I’m afraid.” And then he added, unrepentant, “Was she?”

  “Wherever did you hear about the baby in the abbey? No, don’t tell me. Keldale Hall.”

  “I understand it was a bit of a legend come true.”

  “Of sorts. The legend—fanned by the Burton-Thomases at every opportunity—is that sometimes one can hear a baby cry from the abbey at night. The reality, I’m afraid, is much as you’d expect. It’s a trick of wind when it’s blowing with just the right force from the north through a crack in the wall between the north transept and nave. It happens several times a year.”

  “How do you know?”

  “When we were teenagers, my brother and I camped there for a fortnight one spring until we’d tracked the sound down. Of course, we didn’t disappoint the Burton-Thomases by telling them the truth. But to be honest, even that wind doesn’t sound a great deal like a baby.”

  “And the real baby?”

  “Ah, back to that, are we?” She rested her cheek on his chest. “I don’t know much about it. It was just over three years ago. Father Hart found her, managed to stir up a great deal of local outrage about her, and it fell to Gabriel Langston to sort it all out. Poor Gabriel. He never was able to discover anything at all. The furor died down after a few weeks. There was a funeral that everyone of conscience attended and that was the end of it, I’m afraid. It was all rather grim.”

  “And you were glad when it was over?”

  “I was. I don’t like grimness. I don’t want it in my life. I want life filled with laughter and wild, crazy joy.”

  “Perhaps you’re afraid of feeling anything else.”

  “I am. But I’m mostly afraid of ending up lost like Olivia, of loving someone so much and then having that person ripped out of my life. I can’t bear to be near her any longer. After Paul died, she went into a fog bank and never emerged. I don’t want to be like that. Ever.” She spoke the last word on a hard note of anger, but when she raised her head her eyes shone with tears. “Please. Thomas,” she whispered, and his body responded with the quicksilver flame of desire.

  He pulled her to him roughly, felt her heat and passion, heard her cry of pleasure, felt the shadows drift away.

  “What about Bridie?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s like a little lost soul. Just Bridie and that duck.”

  Stepha laughed. She curled on her side, her smooth back a pleasant pressure against him. “Bridie’s special, isn’t she?”

  “Olivia seems oddly detached from her. It’s as if Bridie’s growing up without parents at all.”

  “Liv wasn’t always that way. But Bridie’s like Paul. So exactly like. I think it hurts Olivia even to see her. She’s not really over Paul yet. I doubt she ever will be.”

  “Then why on earth was she going to remarry?”

  “For Bridie’s sake. Paul was a very strong father. Olivia seems to have felt duty bound to replace him with someone else. And William was eager to be the replacement, I suppose.” Her voice was growing sleepy. “I don’t quite know what she thought it was going to be like for herself. But I think she was more interested in getting Bridie under control. It would have worked well, too. William was very good to Bridie. So was Roberta.”

  “Bridie says you are as well.”

  She yawned. “Does she? I fixed her hair, poor little pumpkin. I’m not certain I’m good at anything else.”

  “You chase ghosts away,” he whispered. “You’re very good at that.” But she was asleep.

  He awoke to find the reality this time. She lay, childlike, curled with her knees drawn up, with both of her fists under her chin. She was frowning with her dream, and a strand of hair was caught between her lips. He smiled at the sight.

  A glance at his watch told him it was nearly seven. He bent and kissed her bare shoulder. She awoke at once, coming fully awake in an instant, not the least bit confused about where she was. She raised her hand, touching his cheek, pulling him down to her.

  He kissed her mouth, then her neck, and heard the delicate change in her breathing that signalled her pleasure when he reached her breast. His hand slid the length of her body. She sighed.

  “Thomas.” He lifted his head. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright. “I must go.”

  “Not just yet.”

  “Look at the time.”

  “In a moment.” He bent to her, felt her hands in his hair.

  “You…I…Oh Lord.” She laughed as she realised how her body was betraying her.

  He smiled. “Go if you must, then.”

  She sat up, kissed him a last time, and crossed to the bathroom. He lay there, filled with a contentment that he had thought was entirely lost to him, and listened to the familiar noises she made. He found himself wondering how he’d survived the last year of isolation. Then she was returning to him, smiling, running his hairbrush through her tangled hair. She reached for her grey dressing gown and began to put it on, lifting one arm gracefully as she did so.

  And it was in that movement in the early morning light that he saw the unmistakable evidence on her body that she had borne a child.

  Barbara finally got up when she heard Lynley’s door open and close softly. She’d been l
ying on her side, her eyes fixed desperately upon a single spot on the wall, her teeth grinding together so fiercely that her entire jaw ached. She had willed conscious feeling into absolute death for the last seven hours, ever since the first moment when she’d heard them together in his room.

  She walked now to the window on legs that felt numb. She stared stonily out into the Keldale morning. The village seemed lifeless, a place without colour or sound. How appropriate, she thought.

  The real agony was the bed: the unmistakable, rhythmic creaking of his bed. It went on and on until she wanted to scream, to pound her fists against the wall to bring it to an end. But the silence that fell just as suddenly was worse. It beat against her eardrums in angry pulsations that she finally came to recognise as the pounding of her heart. And then the bed again, endlessly. And the woman’s muffled cry.

  She put a dry, hot hand onto the windowpane and felt with listless surprise the damp, cool glass. Her fingers slipped, left streaks. She examined them meticulously.

  So much for his unrequited love for Deborah, Barbara thought acidly. Christ, I must have been absolutely out of my mind! When had he ever been more than what he’d been last night: a real stud, a bona fide bull, a hard, hot stallion of a man who had to prove his virility between the legs of every woman he met.

  Well, you proved it last night, Inspector. Took her directly up to heaven three or four times, didn’t you? You’ve got solid gold talent, all right.

  She laughed soundlessly, mirthlessly. It was a pleasure, really, to discover that he was just what she’d always assumed him to be: an alley cat on the prowl for any female in heat, cleverly disguised under a refulgent veneer of upper-class breeding. But what a thin veneer it was after all! Scratch the surface of the man and the truth oozed out.

  The bath began running noisily in the next room, a rushing of water that sounded to Barbara like a burst of applause. She stirred, turned from the window, and made her decision about how to face the day.

  “We’re going to have to take the house apart one room at a time,” Lynley said.

  They were in the study. Havers had gone to the bookshelves and was sullenly flipping through a dog-eared Brontë. He watched her. Other than monosyllabic, expressionless replies to every remark he’d made at breakfast, she had said nothing at all. The fragile thread of communication they had established between them seemed to be utterly broken. To make matters worse, she’d returned to her hideous light blue suit and ridiculous, coloured tights.

  “Havers,” he said sharply. “Are you listening to me?”

  Her head turned with slow insolence. “To every word…Inspector.”

  “Then start with the kitchen.”

  “One of the two places where a little woman belongs.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Not a thing.” She left the room.

  His eyes followed her, perplexed. What in God’s name had got into the woman? They had been working so well together, but now she was acting as if she could hardly wait to throw it all away and return to uniform. It made no sense. Webberly was offering her a chance to redeem herself. Given that, why would she deliberately attempt to prove justifiable every prejudice held against her by the other DIs at the Yard? He muttered an oath and summarily dismissed her from his thoughts.

  St. James would be in Newby Wiske by now, the corpse of the dog wrapped in a polystyrene shroud in the boot of the Escort and Roberta’s clothing in a cardboard carton on the rear seat. He would perform the autopsy, supervise the tests, and report the results with his usual efficiency. Thank God. St. James’s involvement would ensure that at least something in the case was handled correctly.

  Chief Constable Kerridge of the Yorkshire Constabulary had been only too delighted to hear that Allcourt-St. James would be coming to use their well-equipped lab. Anything, Lynley thought, to put another nail in Nies’s coffin. He shook his head in disgust, went to William Teys’s desk, and opened the top drawer.

  It held no secrets. There were scissors, pencils, a wrinkled map of the county, a typewriter ribbon, and a roll of tape. The map caused a flurry of short-lived interest and he unfolded it eagerly: perhaps it marked out a careful search for Teys’s older daughter. But it was unmarred by any cryptogrammic message that indicated the location of a missing girl.

  The other drawers were as devoid of pertinent facts as the first: a pot of glue, two boxes of unused Christmas cards, three packets of photographs taken on the farm, account books, records of lambing, a roll of aging breath mints. But nothing of Gillian.

  He leaned back in the chair. His eyes fell on the bookstand and the Bible it held. Struck by a thought, he opened it to the previously marked page. “And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, ‘Forasmuch as God hath showed thee all this, there is none so discreet and wise as thou art. Thou shalt be over my house, and according unto thy word shall all my people be ruled: only in the throne will I be greater than thou.’ And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, ‘See, I have set thee over all the land of Egypt.’ And Pharaoh took off his ring from his hand, and put it on Joseph’s hand, and arrayed him in vestures of fine linen, and put a gold chain about his neck; and he made him to ride in the second chariot which he had; and they cried before him, ‘Bow the knee’: and he made him ruler over all the land of Egypt.”

  “Seeking guidance from the Lord?”

  Lynley looked up. Havers was leaning against the study door, her shapeless body silhouetted sharply by the morning light, her face a blank.

  “Have you finished the kitchen?” he asked.

  “Thought I’d take a break.” She sauntered into the room. “Got a smoke on you?”

  He handed her his cigarette case absently and went to the bookshelves, running his eyes over them, seeking a volume of Shakespeare. He found it and began looking.

  “Is Daze a redhead, Inspector?”

  It took a moment for the odd question to strike him. When he looked up, Havers was back at the door, running her fingers meditatively against the wood, apparently indifferent to whatever answer he might give. “I beg your pardon?”

  She flipped open the cigarette case and read its inscription. “‘Darling Thomas. We’ll always have Paris, won’t we? Daze.’” Coldly, she met his eyes. It was then that he noticed how pale she was, how the skin beneath her eyes was dark with fatigue, how the gold case shook in her hand. “Aside from her rather hackneyed use of Bogart, is she a redhead?” Havers repeated. “I only ask because you seem to prefer them. Or is the truth that anyone will do?”

  Horrified, Lynley realised too late what the change in her was and his own responsibility for having brought it about. There was nothing he could say. There was no quick answer he could give. But he could tell at once that none was necessary, for she had every intention of continuing without his response.

  “Havers—”

  She held up a hand to stop him. She was deathly white. Her features looked flat. Her voice was tight. “You know, it’s really poor form not to go to the woman’s room for your trysts, Inspector. I’m surprised you didn’t know that. With your experience I should think that a little social nicety like that would be the last thing you’d forget. Of course, it’s just a small lapse, and it probably doesn’t really bother a woman at all, not when it’s compared with the ecstatic experience of fucking you.”

  He recoiled from the brutal ugliness that her tone gave the word. “I’m sorry, Barbara,” he said.

  “Why be sorry?” She forced a guttural laugh. “No one thinks about listeners in the heat of passion. I know I never do.” She gave a brittle smile. “And it certainly was the old heat of passion last night, wasn’t it? I couldn’t believe it when you two started banging away on a second go. And so soon! Lord, you barely gave it a rest.”

  He watched her move to the shelf and run a finger along the spine of a book. “I didn’t know you could hear us. I apologise, Barbara. I’m terribly sorry.”

  She swung back to him quickly. “Why be sorry?” she repeated, her voice louder t
his time. “You aren’t on duty twenty-four hours a day. And besides, it’s not really your fault, is it? How were you to know Stepha would howl like a banshee?”

  “Nonetheless, it was never my intention to hurt your feelings—”

  “You haven’t hurt my feelings at all!” She laughed shrilly. “Where on earth did you get an idea like that? Let’s say you’ve merely piqued my interest. As I listened to you sending Stepha to the moon—was it three times or four?—I wondered if Deborah used to howl as well.”

  It was a wild shot in the dark, but the barb had gone home. He knew that she saw it, for her face blazed with triumph. “That’s hardly your concern, is it?”

  “Of course not! I know that! But during your second session with Stepha—it was at least an hour, wasn’t it?—I couldn’t help thinking about poor old Simon. He must have to struggle like hell to follow your act.”

  “You’ve certainly done your homework, Havers. I’ll say that much for you. And when you take off the gloves, you do shoot to kill. Or am I mixing my metaphors?”

  “Don’t you patronise me. Don’t you dare!” she shouted. “Just who the hell do you think you are?”

  “Your superior officer, for a start.”

  “Oh, that’s right, Inspector. Now’s the time to pull rank. Well, what shall I do? Shall I get to work in here? Don’t mind if I’m not quite up to par. I didn’t sleep well last night.” She pulled a book angrily from the shelf. It toppled to the floor. He could see she was struggling not to cry.

  “Barbara—” She continued to pull books down, to turn the pages savagely, to drop them to the floor. They were mildewed and damp, filling the air with the unpleasant odour of neglect. “Listen to me. You’ve done good work so far. Don’t be foolish now.”

  She pivoted, trembling. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You have a chance to be back in CID. Don’t throw it away because you’re angry with me.”

  “I’m not angry with you! I don’t give a shit about you.”

  “Of course not. I didn’t mean to imply that you did.”