He and Sumalee Goldacre had settled on meeting in the hospital’s restaurant. He found this in the basement of the main hospital building. The air inside was redolent of malt vinegar, and the speckled grey floors and faux ash tables were reassuringly spotless.
There were comfortable sofas, chairs, and coffee tables along two of the walls, and Sumalee was at one of these with a plain lunch bag resting unopened before her and her small feet flat on the floor. She stood when she saw him. When he crossed to her, she suggested they head out of doors. Despite the cool breeze outside, the day was sunny and in the garden just beyond the restaurant, there were tables, chairs, and benches where she and he might have a private word.
The privacy of it seemed to be important to Sumalee, so Lynley followed her to the far end of the restaurant where a fire door stood open to allow fresh autumn air into the building. Outside he saw that there was plenty of seating and few people were using it at present. Her choice was a quirky bench set on the edge of an area planted with rhododendrons and youthful limes. The bench’s back had been fashioned fancifully from a halved wagon wheel. The wheel’s size made the bench more of a settee and put them in close proximity to each other which would, he knew, make it easy for her to speak in a low voice. This appeared to be her preference.
The sunlight dappled her dark hair and her smooth olive skin. She was, he thought another time, very lovely. And the contrast between her exotic beauty and her professional uniform only added to her appeal. He waited for her to explain why she’d asked him to make the journey from Victoria. She did not hesitate or even begin with social niceties. She merely opened her lunch bag, told him that she would have to eat as they spoke, and removed a triangle of homemade egg-salad sandwich from a small plastic bag.
“I’d thought at first that you’d come to speak to Francis about Will” was how she began. “Perhaps because something had come to light regarding his suicide. It was more than three years ago, but it seemed to me that information might have fallen into your hands and you wanted Francis to know about it.”
“Were there lingering questions about his death?” Lynley asked.
She held the sandwich triangle in her two small hands, the way a priest might hold the Host in the moments before the consecration. “It was definitely suicide,” she said. “His partner was present, and more than one person saw her running after Will before he jumped from the cliff. But still . . . One never knows about these things. Not entirely.” She took a bite of her sandwich, chewed thoughtfully. She brought out a small container of grapes, and she offered him some. He shook his head. She went on. “I didn’t like to ask Francis about your call on him because . . . You know that there are sometimes matters that don’t bear bringing up in a marriage. Are you married, Inspector?”
“I was. My wife died nearly eighteen months ago.”
“I’m so sorry. I hope yours was a happy union?”
“Very much so. Which makes the loss, of course . . .” He raised his fingers, lowered them. Enough said, the gesture told Sumalee.
“I expect you know, then, that often there are subjects that one doesn’t touch upon with a partner, sometimes to respect his privacy and sometimes merely to keep the peace. In our case—Francis’s and mine—he has always been hesitant when it comes to talking about his first family, and I’ve learned to respect this. So it was only last night that he told me you’d come to speak to him about an interview he’d had with Clare Abbott.”
“That’s right,” Lynley said. “Did you know he’d been interviewed by Clare?”
“I did,” she said. “But Francis didn’t know that I knew.”
“Ah,” Lynley said.
She looked at him warily. “It’s not, perhaps, what you are thinking. I didn’t . . .” She frowned as if searching for the proper word. “I didn’t delve to discover this. I knew he’d had an interview with Clare because Clare told me. When she interviewed me.”
At this, Lynley altered his position on the bench, swinging slightly to face her profile. Her expression was as serene as it had been from the first. “When was this?” he asked her.
“Perhaps ten days after she interviewed Francis.”
“And did she tell you why she’d interviewed him and why she wanted to interview you?”
“About Will,” Sumalee said. “She wanted to know if I’d had a relationship of my own with him. As he was my stepson, I told her that of course I had.”
“What was she after?” Lynley asked.
Sumalee glanced his way another time, saying, “This is difficult for me as a second wife. I understand how it might appear: that a second wife wishes to cause trouble for this first wife by passing along gossip. Only it isn’t actually gossip and anyway it is not my intention to cause difficulties for Caroline nor was it ever. Indeed, I have no way of knowing if what I might tell you now is even important to Clare Abbott’s death.”
“I see the problem,” Lynley told her. “But as we’re attempting to sort out a great deal of information regarding Caroline and Clare’s relationship, whatever you tell us might be helpful.”
“I understand. I just don’t know if I can live with myself if it’s harmful to Caroline.”
Lynley waited. He wasn’t in a position to reassure her. He reckoned it wasn’t likely she possessed details that would lead them along a path of culpability whose destination was Caroline Goldacre, but one never knew.
Across from them, a group of nurses came out of the restaurant’s fire door and trooped over to one of the picnic tables squarely in the sun. As most Londoners would do, they positioned themselves to get the sunlight onto their faces. One of them unbuttoned her shirt to expose her chest.
Sumalee watched them, smiling faintly, before she went on. Her voice was lower than ever as she said, “She wanted to speak to me about Caroline’s treatment of Will, Inspector. She wanted to know if Caroline abused him.”
“Caroline? Not Francis?” And when she nodded, “What kind of abuse? Physical? Emotional?”
“Any kind of abuse.”
“What did you tell her?”
Sumalee’s appetite seemed to leave her. She replaced what remained of her triangle of sandwich into its bag. She took four grapes and rested them in her smooth, small palm. She said, “I told her that Will had always been troubled, from the time I have known Francis and—according to Francis—from long before that time. He would come to us on occasion, along with Charlie, and it seemed to me that he could never separate from Caroline completely although he did seem to try. But she didn’t want a separation from him.”
“What about from Charlie?”
“It was different with Charlie. He managed to get some distance from her. But Will . . . ? No. The way most young men want to be off on their own, establishing themselves and their own identity? Will couldn’t quite be talked into it until he met Lily Foster. Perhaps he was afraid to venture forth before that, but the feeling I had was that there was something else at the heart of his relationship with his mother. It made me uneasy.”
Her eyes were lowered, but Lynley could see that her gaze moved to take in his proximity to her. He could see a faint pulse in her temple. His thought was that she wanted to say more but was hesitant to do so.
He said, “Mrs. Goldacre, if you know something that might help us get to the bottom of Clare Abbott’s death, if this is somehow related . . . Let me put it this way. Did you tell her anything that might have come out later in a conversation she had with Caroline? Something that, when spoken, could have set Caroline on a path to harm her?” Or, Lynley added to himself, something that, when written and later discovered by Caroline, could have done the same thing.
Sumalee was quiet for a moment, as if considering this. Then, barely perceptible, came the nod. “I’ve never told Francis,” she said. “I could see no point and it did seem that it would only make matters worse if I said anything. I told Clare, tho
ugh. I probably should not have, and had Will not already been dead, I would have held my tongue.”
“So it was about Will?”
“For a time I told myself that he might have been lying to me. Indeed, I even told myself that it could be something among you English that I don’t understand. Every culture has its own . . . rituals, I suppose.”
A burst of laughter came from the women at the picnic table, along with “He didn’t!” and “He bloody well did!” Sumalee gazed at them. She took a moment, it seemed, to gather her thoughts before going on.
“Will was visiting us as he sometimes did. He was perhaps fourteen years old. I came upon him in his bedroom. I had some laundry—tee-shirts and jeans of his—to put away and I opened the door, not knowing he was there. He was . . . well, he was standing at the side of his bed with his trousers lowered and there were pictures of women . . . ? From magazines, these were, the sorts of pictures . . . nude and some of them quite explicit. He was seeing to himself, just staring at them, and it was the moment of his orgasm that I entered. The spray of it across the bed and on the pictures and it all happened so quickly that I gasped. It was the surprise and I suppose the shock, and I left the room quickly.” She didn’t look at him as she spoke and had she been of a different complexion, he reckoned that she might have been blushing but perhaps not. She didn’t tell the tale as if she was embarrassed but rather as if she felt some regret.
She went on. “Afterwards, I thought he might feel embarrassed or, perhaps, he would act as if nothing had happened. Or perhaps he would say something about my not telling his father what I had seen although Francis would not have been shocked, I think. I apologised to him for entering his room without knocking upon the door and what he said . . . He said, ‘No matter, Suma. I’m used to being watched.’”
Lynley felt a chill go through him. “Did he elaborate?”
Sumalee glanced at him, her fine eyebrows drawn together as she said, “He told me she taught him, Inspector.”
Lynley’s thought was that a boy hardly needed to be taught, so he wondered at this and the wonder must have shown on his face because Sumalee said, “What I mean is that when he was ten years old, she did this—she taught him to do it—to control the words. He had an affliction with language. Did you know this?”
“My sergeant has told me something about the problem.”
“It was something he couldn’t control. It didn’t happen often, but when it did . . . He told me that when the words came on badly, this was something he could do to stop them. Of course, he also said that often he just did it because he enjoyed it. But there were times, he said, when she watched to make sure he did it . . . I suppose properly is the word.”
“How long did this go on? Do you know?”
She shook her head. “When he grew older, I don’t know what might have happened between them, but when he fell apart in London and had to leave to stay with her and his stepfather in Dorset . . . ? He was in a very bad way and not coping well at all and I suppose anything, really, is possible. But at that point—in his twenties—what young man would ever admit to his mother watching while he gives himself pleasure? If, of course, this happened at all.”
“This is what you told Clare Abbott?” Lynley asked.
Sumalee nodded. “She wanted to record me, but I would not allow that. Nor would I allow her to take notes. I didn’t know what she was going to do with the information she was gathering, but since she was gathering it, I wanted her to have the truth.”
“Will could have been lying to you because you’d walked in on him,” Lynley pointed out. “The admission that he was used to being watched . . . that his mother taught him to masturbate? Could he have said that merely to shock you?”
“Certainly. And yet, what young man would lie about such a thing, Inspector? His mother teaching him . . . watching him . . . ? I do not think he was lying.”
“Would he have told anyone else?”
She smiled thinly. “Inspector, would you?” She smoothed the front of her trousers. Finally she took one of the grapes she held and she ate it, chewing thoughtfully. He asked her if she knew what Clare had intended to do with the information she had given her, and Sumalee said that she did not. Clare had been, however, clearly fascinated by what Sumalee had revealed to her. There had been no mistaking that.
Lynley nodded. He reckoned, however, that far more than mere fascination had been involved. He couldn’t believe that, given this explosive information, Clare Abbott wouldn’t have made immediate note of it somehow. She had to have written about her interview with Sumalee. And whatever she’d written and wherever she’d hidden the information, Caroline Goldacre must have found it.
SHAFTESBURY
DORSET
Alastair found himself wielding the mop with more energy than usual at the end of the baking morning. His assistant had just departed, having cleaned the machinery and used the antiseptic spray on all of the surfaces where the dough was shaped into cobs and bloomers and cottage loaves and where the confections were made. Caro had been after him for years to employ a cleaning crew to see to the bakery when the breads and the cakes had been loaded into the delivery vans, but Alastair liked to do most of it himself. That way, he reckoned, the job would be seen to properly. Had he the time, he would have done the antiseptic part of the cleaning as well. As it was, he was the broom-and-mop man.
This morning, he found, the employment suited him more than usual, especially the requirements involved in the physical part of it. Indeed, he was building up something of a sweat with all the scrubbing he was doing. Good, he thought. Perhaps he could rid himself of the thoughts that were tormenting him.
Charlie had phoned to tell him that Caro was returning home and that he himself was driving her to Dorset. Of course, Alastair had known at heart that she would return eventually. But he’d allowed himself a nonsensical fantasy in which she somehow conveniently disappeared off the face of the earth.
He’d spent the last two days with Sharon. He’d asked her to come to him, to be in the house with him, even though he expected that she would refuse, which of course she had. She also confessed that finally she’d broken down and told her daughter about him, and she said she’d got quite a lecture from her Jenny about “mixing it up with a married man, Mummy. What’re you thinking? Not that he’s going to leave his wife for you. They never do.”
She hadn’t told her daughter who the man was because, knowing Jenny, she’d’ve rung Alastair straightaway and she’d’ve given him a piece of her mind. As it was, Sharon confessed to him, Jenny had rung her brother instead, and hadn’t he then rung his mum to tell her she was worth more than “sneaking round the county with a married bloke who’s going to drop you the first time his wife says the word divorce. Just you wait and see.”
Sharon laughed gently, telling Alastair that they wanted her to start Internet dating, didn’t they, for there were piles of sites where she could look for a mate, they said. And hadn’t Jenny emailed her a dozen sites just to prove this to her. Then over the phone from San Francisco, hadn’t she walked her mother through how to access a site and how to mount her picture on it, and what to say about herself? And hadn’t Jenny refused to ring off till she’d made certain her mum had done as she was told? Not that she would ever consent to meeting a man that way should one actually contact her, Sharon assured him, but there was no saying no to Jenny when she got her dander up about something. Children have their ways of being insistent about these things, haven’t they, and sometimes wasn’t it easier just to go along with them?
Alastair had nodded. What else could he do? He said to her, “But Shar . . . the thought of you and some bloke off the Internet . . . Let me ring your kids. I’ll make ’em understand that you an’ me have a real future if I c’n only . . .”
She’d looked alarmed. “See here, my dear,” she said, “you’re not to think I’ll abandon you.”
But Alastair knew he could not hold her to that. The temptation of men wanting to meet her was going to be far too strong for Sharon to resist. And this was what he was thinking as he furiously mopped the floor right up to the shadow that fell across the cement from the open doorway. He looked up. It was the policewoman who’d been there before.
“That floor’s wet there,” he told her. “Mind you don’t—”
“I don’t,” she said. “Mind, that is.” And the maddening woman stepped right inside.
For the second bloody time, he couldn’t remember her name. This irritated him as much as her tramping on his clean floor. He said, “I just told you, didn’t I, that the floor was wet. I expect you c’n see I’m working at cleaning, and I’d be that grateful if you didn’t muck round leaving dirt everywhere.”
“Oh.” She laughed. “Thought you were worried I’d slip and break my head. Sorry. Look, can I have a word?” She looked round the mixing room, which was where he and she were at present. She’d come in quietly from the out-of-doors, and he’d been so deep into his thoughts that he’d not heard either her car or her entrance. He knew he had to pull himself together because if she’d come to call upon him, it couldn’t be a good thing.
He said, “What sort ’f word? You got my fingerprints off me. What more d’you want? And Caro’s not here any more ’n she was here last time you called.”
The woman—God, what was her bloody name?—dropped her shoulder bag on one of his newly and antiseptically cleaned work surfaces. She opened it up and rustled through it, shoving her bits and bobs round till she finally excavated a tattered notebook. She brought this forth along with a stub of a pencil that didn’t look good for anything, much less for writing. She flipped the notebook open and she flashed him a smile.