A Great Deliverance

  “Inspector—” He turned, his hand on the door handle. “You know where Russell is, don’t you?”

  She read the answer in his face, but she listened instead to the lie. “No,” he responded.

  Ezra Farmington lived directly across from the Dove and Whistle in the council house that abutted against Marsha Fitzalan’s. Like hers, its front garden was planted and cared for, but with less detailed concern, as if the man had started out with the best of intentions, but they, along with the plants, had become the worse for wear. Bushes were thriving but overgrown, weeds were assaulting the flower beds, dead annuals needed to be uprooted and discarded, and a small patch of lawn was looking long enough to be considered a potential source of fodder.

  Farmington was not at all pleased to see him. He opened the door to Lynley’s knock and placed his body squarely in the frame. Over his shoulder Lynley saw that the other man had been going through his work, for dozens of watercolours were spread upon the sitting room couch and scattered on the floor. Some were torn into shreds, others were crumpled into tight, angry balls, still others were abandoned to meet their fate underfoot. It was a haphazard purging of artistic effort, however, because the artist himself was more than halfway drunk.

  “Inspector?” Farmington asked with deliberate politeness.

  “May I come in?”

  The man shrugged. “Why not?” He opened the door wider and gestured Lynley inside with a lackadaisical sweep. “’Scuse the mess. Just cleaning out the crap.”

  Lynley stepped over several paintings. “From four years ago?” he asked blandly.

  It was the right choice of time. Farmington’s face told him so in the sudden flare of nostrils and the movement of lips.

  “What’s that s’posed to mean?” He was just on the edge of slurring his words, and, perhaps noticing this himself, he sought control visibly.

  “What time was it when you and William Teys argued?” Lynley asked, ignoring the man’s question.

  “Time?” Ezra shrugged. “No idea. Drink, Ins…Inspector?” He smiled glassily and stiffly crossed the room to pour himself a tumbler of gin. “No? You don’t mind if I…? Thank you.” He gulped back a mouthful, coughed, and laughed, swiping at his mouth so savagely with his wrist that the movement was as good as a blow. “Pulin’ wimp. Can’ even handle a drink.”

  “You were coming down from High Kel Moor. That’s not a walk you would make in the dark, is it?”

  “Course not.”

  “And you heard music from the farmhouse?”

  “Ha!” He waved his glass at Lynley. “Whole screamin’ band, In…spector. Thought I was in the middle of a flipping parade.”

  “Did you see only Teys? No one else?”

  “Are we counting sweet Nigel bringing the doggie home?”

  “Aside from Nigel.”

  “Nope.” He lifted his glass and drained it. “Course, Roberta was proba’ly inside the house changing the records, poor fat slob. She wasn’t much good for anything else. ’Cept,” his bleary eyes twinkled, “swinging an axe and sending Papa into the great beyond.” He laughed at his comment. “Like Lizzie Borden!” he added and laughed louder still.

  Lynley wondered why the man was being deliberately repugnant, wondered what was motivating him to go to such great lengths to develop and then display a side of his character so ugly as to be intolerable. Hatred and anger were the foundation here and a contempt so virulent that it was like a third person in the room. Farmington was obviously a talented man and yet a man blindly bent upon destroying the single creative force that gave his life meaning.

  As he clutched at himself with callous nonchalance and stumbled in the direction of the lavatory, Lynley looked at the paintings he left behind and saw the source of the man’s despair in the studies the artist could not bring himself to destroy.

  They were done from every possible angle, in charcoal, pencil, pastels, and paint. They chronicled movement, passion, and desire, and bore witness to the anguish of the artist’s soul. They were all of Stepha Odell.

  When Lynley heard the man’s returning footsteps, he forced his eyes from the work and his mind away from the implication. Instead, he made himself look at Farmington and in doing so he saw the other man clearly for the first time: womaniser and hypocrite, using past pain as an excuse for present behaviour. He saw that Farmington was at best his own mirror image, his second self, the man, indeed, he could choose to become.

  From King’s Cross Station, Barbara took the Northern Line to Warren Street. Fitzroy Square was only a few minutes’ walk from there. She spent that time meditating on a plan of attack. It was clear that Gillian Teys was involved in this situation up to her neck, but that was going to be extremely difficult to prove. If she was smart enough to disappear from sight for eleven years, certainly she was smart enough to have a cast-iron alibi for the night in question. It seemed to Barbara that the best approach—if indeed Gillian was Nell Graham and if she could be located using the scant information they had—was to give her no choice, arrest her if necessary, in order to get her back to Keldale that night. She thought about everything that had been said about Gillian: about her delinquent behaviour, her sexual licence, and her ability to hide both under an exterior of angelic refinement. There was only one way to deal with someone that clever. Be tough, be aggressive, be absolutely ruthless.

  Fitzroy Square—a tidily renovated patch of Camden Town—was an unusual spot to find a home for stray teenagers. Twenty years before, when the square had still been a postwar rectangle of sagging buildings, grubby pavements, and empty windowboxes, a home for the flotsam and jetsam of London life would be what one would expect to find. But now, when the entire face of the square was crisp and new, when the lovely green in the centre was carefully fenced off against vagrants, when every building was freshly painted and every burnished door gleamed in the fading light of the day, it was hard to believe that society’s forgotten and unwanted, frightened and pained still lived here.

  Number 11 was the home of Testament House, a Georgian building whose front was covered with scaffolding. A rubbish bin overflowing with plaster, empty paint tins, cardboard cartons, and dropcloths gave evidence to the fact that Testament House was joining its neighbours in an architectural renaissance. The front door stood open, and from within came the sound of music, not the rowdy rock-and-roll one might have expected from a gathering place for runaway teenagers, but the delicate strains of classical guitar and the kind of quiet that spoke of an audience held spellbound. However, those on this week’s kitchen duty were not taking part in the recital above stairs, Barbara guessed, for even outside the air was rich with the aroma of tomato sauce and spices, sure indication of the evening’s fare.

  She walked up the two steps and entered the building. The long hallway was covered with an old red runner, worn so thin in places that the wood of the floor beneath showed through. Walls were bare of decoration save bulletin boards that held employment information, messages received, and announcements posted. A schedule of classes at the university of Gower Street was given the most prominent position, with large cardboard arrows pointing to it encouragingly. Nearby clinics, drug programs, and Planned Parenthood offices were advertised for inhabitants, and the telephone number of a suicide hotline was printed repeatedly on tear-off sheets at the bottom of the board. Most of them, Barbara noted, were gone.

  “Hello,” a voice called cheerfully. “Need some help?”

  Barbara turned to find a plump middle-aged woman leaning over the reception counter, pushing a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles to the top of her clipped grey hair. Her smile was welcoming, but it faded immediately when her eyes fell upon the warrant card that Barbara produced. Above them, the intricate music continued.

  “Is there some sort of trouble?” the woman asked. “I suppose you want Mr. Clarence.”

  “No,” Barbara replied. “That may not be necessary. I’m looking for this young woman. Her name is Gillian Teys, but we think she may be using the nam
e Nell Graham.” She handed over the photograph, a gesture she knew would be unnecessary, for the moment she had said the name the other woman’s expression had altered and revealed.

  Nonetheless, she looked at the photograph cooperatively. “Yes, this is Nell,” she said.

  In spite of having been so certain, Barbara felt a surge of triumph. “Can you tell me how to locate her? It’s quite important that I find her as soon as possible.”

  “She’s not in trouble, is she?”

  “It’s important that I find her,” Barbara said again.

  “Oh yes, of course. I suppose you can’t tell me. It’s only that…” The woman fingered her chin nervously. “Let me get Jonah,” she said impulsively. “This is his concern.”

  Before Barbara could reply, the woman was running up the stairs. In a moment the guitar music stopped abruptly to a storm of protesting voices and then laughter. That was followed by the sound of footsteps. The hushed voice of the receptionist was met by a man’s response.

  When he came into sight on the stairway, Barbara saw that he was the musician, for he carried a fine guitar over his shoulder. He was far too young to be the Reverend George Clarence, but he wore clerical garb and his marked resemblance to the founder of Testament House indicated to Barbara that this must be the man’s son. For here were the same chiselled features, the same broad expanse of forehead, the same quick glance that assimilated and evaluated within an instant. Even his hair was the same, parted on the left, with an unruly tuft that no comb could discipline. He was not a big man, probably no more than five feet eight inches tall, and his build was slight. But there was something about the way he held his body that indicated the presence of an inner core of strength and self-confidence.

  He strode down the hall and extended his hand. “Jonah Clarence,” he said. His grip was firm. “Mother tells me you’re looking for Nell.”

  Mrs. Clarence had removed her spectacles from their perch on the top of her head. She chewed on the earpiece unconsciously as she listened to their conversation, her brow creased and her eyes moving back and forth between them as they spoke.

  Barbara handed him the photograph. “This is Gillian Teys,” she said. “Her father was murdered three weeks ago in Yorkshire, and she’s going to have to come with me for some questioning.”

  Clarence greeted the statement with no strong visible reaction beyond what appeared to be an inability to take his eyes from Barbara’s face. But he made himself do so, made himself look at the picture. Then his eyes met his mother’s. “It’s Nell.”

  “Jonah,” she murmured. “My dearest…” Her voice was laced with compassion.

  Clarence handed the photograph back to Barbara but spoke to his mother. “It had to happen one day, didn’t it?” he said. His tone was coloured by emotion.

  “Darling, shall I…Do you want to…”

  He shook his head. “I was just about to leave anyway,” he said, and looked at Barbara. “I’ll take you to Nell. She’s my wife.”

  Lynley gazed at the painting of Keldale Abbey and wondered why he had been so blind to its message. The painting’s beauty lay in its utter simplicity, its devotion to detail, its refusal to distort or romanticise the crumbling ruin, to make it anything other than what it was: a vestige of time dead, being devoured by time to come.

  Skeletal walls arched against a desolate sky, straining to lift themselves out of the inevitable end that waited for them on the ground below. They fought against flora: ferns that grew stubbornly out of barren crevices; wildflowers that bloomed on the edge of transept walls; grass that grew thickly and mingled with wild parsley on the very stones where monks had once knelt in prayer.

  Steps led to nowhere. Curving stairways that once had carried the devoted from cloister to parlour, from day room to court, now sank into moss-covered oblivion, submitting to changes that did not make them ignoble, but merely moulded them into a different shape and a purpose changed.

  Windows were gone. Where long ago stained glass had proudly enclosed presbytery and quire, nave and transept, nothing remained but gaping holes, gazing sightlessly out onto a landscape which rightfully proclaimed that it alone had ascendancy in the battle with time.

  How did one really define the remains of Keldale Abbey? Was it the plundered ruin of a glorious past or a tumbling promise of what the future could be? Wasn’t it all, Lynley thought, in the definition?

  He stirred at the sound of a car stopping at the lodge, of doors opening and the murmur of voices, of uneven footsteps approaching. He realised that darkness was falling in the lounge and switched on one of the lamps just as St. James entered the room. He was alone, as Lynley had known he would be.

  They faced each other across a short expanse of inoffensive carpeting, across a virtual chasm created and maintained by one man’s guilt and another man’s pain. They both knew and recognised these components of their history, and, as if to escape them, Lynley went behind the bar and poured each of them a whisky. He crossed the room and handed it to his friend.

  “Is she outside?” he asked.

  “She’s gone to the church. Knowing Deborah, to have one last look at the graveyard, I expect. We’re off tomorrow.”

  Lynley smiled. “You’ve been braver than I. Hank would have driven me off within the first five minutes. Are you fleeing to the lakes?”

  “No. To York for a day, then back to London. I’m to be in court to testify on Monday morning. I need a bit of time to complete a fibre analysis before then.”

  “Rotten luck to have had so few days.”

  “We’ve the rest of our lives. Deborah understands.”

  Lynley nodded and looked from St. James to the windows in which they saw themselves reflected, two men so entirely different from each other, who shared an afflicted past and who could, if he chose, share a full, rich future. It was all, he decided, in the definition. He tossed back the rest of his drink.

  “Thank you for your help today, St. James,” he said finally, extending his hand. “You and Deborah are wonderful friends.”

  Jonah Clarence drove them to Islington in his dilapidated Morris. It wasn’t a very long drive, and he was quiet for every moment of it, his hands on the wheel showing white knuckles that betrayed his distress.

  They lived on a peculiar little street called Keystone Crescent, directly off Caledonian Road. Blessed with two take-away food stores at its head—exuding the multicultural odours of frying egg rolls, falafel, and fish and chips—and a butcher shop at its foot on Pentonville Road, it was located in an area of town that was arguing between industrial and residential. Dressmaking factories, car hire firms, and tool companies gave way to streets which were trying very hard to become fashionable.

  Keystone Crescent was just that, a crescent lined on one side with concave and on the other with a convex terrace of houses. All were fenced by identical wrought iron, and where once diminutive gardens had bloomed, concrete paving provided additional parking for cars.

  The buildings were sooty brick, two storeys tall, topped by dormer windows and a thin scalloping of ornamentation at the roofline. Each building had its own basement flat, and while some of the houses had recently been refurbished in keeping with the neighbourhood effort towards chic, the one in front of which Jonah Clarence parked his car was definitely shabby, whitewashed and decorated with green woodwork at one time, but grimy now, with two unlidded dustbins standing in front of it.

  “It’s this way,” he said tonelessly.

  He opened the gate and led her down a set of narrow, steep steps to the door of a flat. Unlike the building itself, which was in sad disrepair, the door was sturdy, freshly painted, with a brass knob gleaming in its centre. He unlocked and opened it, gesturing Barbara inside.

  She saw at once that a great deal of care had gone into the decorating of the little home, as if the occupants wanted to drive a very firm wedge between the exterior grubbiness of the building and the crisp, clean loveliness of what existed within it. Walls were freshly painte
d; floors were covered with colourful rugs; white curtains hung in windows which housed a splendour of plants; books, photograph albums, a humble stereo system, a collection of phonograph records, and three pieces of antique pewter occupied a low shelving unit that ran along one wall. There were few pieces of furniture, but each one had been clearly selected for its workmanship and beauty.

  Jonah Clarence set his guitar carefully down on a stand and went to the bedroom door. “Nell?” he called.

  “I was just changing, darling. Out in a moment,” a woman’s voice replied cheerfully.

  He looked at Barbara. She saw that his face had become grey and ill. “I’d like to go in—”

  “No,” Barbara said. “Wait here. Please, Mr. Clarence,” she added when she read his determination to go to his wife.

  He sat down on a chair, moving painfully, as if he had aged years in their brief twenty-minute acquaintance. He fixed his eyes on the door. Behind it, brisk movement accompanied light-hearted humming, a lilting rendition of “Onward Christian Soldiers.” Drawers opened and closed. A wardrobe door creaked. There was a pause in the humming as footsteps approached. The song finished, the door opened, and Gillian Teys returned from the dead.

  She looked exactly like her mother, but her blonde hair was quite short, almost like a boy’s, and gave her the appearance of being ten years old, something that carried over to her manner of dress. She wore a plaid, pleated skirt, a dark blue pullover, and black shoes and knee socks. She might have been on her way home from school.

  “Darling, I—” She froze when she saw Barbara. “Jonah? Is something…?” Her breathing seemed to stop. She groped for the doorknob behind her.

  Barbara took a step forward. “Scotland Yard, Mrs. Clarence,” she said crisply. “I’d like to ask you some questions.”

  “Questions?” Her hand went to her throat. Her blue eyes darkened. “What about?”

  “About Gillian Teys,” her husband replied. He hadn’t moved from his chair.