“It doesn’t work that way,” Lynley said. “Fleming’s killer—”
“The kid.”
“I’m sorry. Yes. The boy—Jimmy, the killer—knew that someone was in the cottage. And that someone was indeed the intended victim. But in the killer’s mind—”
“In Jimmy’s mind.”
“—that someone in the cottage wasn’t Fleming at all. It was Gabriella Patten.”
Olivia ground her cigarette against the tin. She sent Faraday a look. He brought her another. She lit up again and held the smoke in. Lynley could imagine it swirling through her blood to buzz round her skull.
“How’d you come up with this?” she finally asked.
“Because no one knew Fleming was going to Kent. And his killer—”
“The boy,” Olivia said tersely. “Why d’you keep saying ‘Fleming’s killer’ when you know it’s the boy?”
“Sorry. Force of habit. I’m falling back on police terminology.”
“You said you were off duty.”
“And I am. Bear with my lapses if you will. Fleming’s killer—Jimmy—loved him but had good reason to hate Gabriella Patten. She was a disruptive influence. Fleming was in love with her, but their affair kept him in turmoil, which he was unable to conceal. Beyond that, their affair promised great changes in Fleming’s life. If he actually married Gabriella, his circumstances would alter dramatically.”
“Specifically, he’d never go back home.” Olivia sounded comfortable with this conclusion. “Which is what the boy wanted, isn’t it? Didn’t he want his dad to come home?”
“Yes,” Lynley said, “I dare say that was the motive behind the crime. To keep Fleming from marrying Gabriella Patten. It’s ironic, however, when you think about the situation.”
She didn’t say, What situation? She merely lifted her cigarette and observed him from behind its smoke.
Lynley continued. “No one would have died at all had Fleming himself had less masculine pride.”
In spite of herself, Olivia drew her eyebrows together.
“His pride is the basis for the crime in the first place,” Lynley explained. “Had Fleming only been less proud, had he only been willing to reveal that he was going to Kent to end the affair with Mrs. Patten because he’d discovered he was just one in a long line of her lovers, his killer—forgive me, I’m doing it again; Jimmy, the boy—would have had no need to eliminate the woman. There would have been no mistake about who was staying in the cottage that night. Fleming himself would still be alive. And the kil—And Jimmy wouldn’t go through the rest of life tormented by the thought of having murdered—by mistake—someone he loved so much.”
Olivia took a moment to examine the tin’s contents before she ground her cigarette out against its side. She placed the tin on the floor and folded her hands in her lap. “Yeah,” she said. “Well, what do they say about always hurting the one we love? Life’s rotten, Inspector. The kid’s just learning early.”
“Yes. He is learning, isn’t he? All about what it’s like to be branded a parricide, to have charges brought against him, to be fingerprinted and photographed, to face a criminal trial. And after that—”
“He should’ve thought first.”
“But he didn’t, did he? Because he—the killer, Jimmy, the boy—thought the crime was perfect. And it almost was.”
She watched, wary. Lynley thought he could hear her breathing change.
He said, “There was only one detail that marred it.”
Olivia reached for her walker. She intended to rise, but Lynley could see that the depth of the armchair made it difficult for her to do so without assistance. She said, “Chris,” but Faraday didn’t move. She jerked her head in his direction. “Chris. Give a hand.”
Faraday looked at Lynley and asked the question, which Olivia was avoiding. “What detail marred it?”
“Chris! Goddamn—”
“What detail?” he asked again.
“A telephone call made by Gabriella Patten.”
“What about it?” Faraday asked.
“Chris! Help me. Come on.”
“It was answered as it should have been,” Lynley said. “But the person who allegedly answered doesn’t even know the phone call was made. I find that curious when—”
“Oh too right,” Olivia snapped. “Do you remember every phone call you get?”
“—when I consider the time the call was made and the nature of the message. After midnight. Abusive.”
“Maybe there was no call,” Olivia said. “Did you ever think of that? Maybe she lied about making it.”
“No,” Lynley said. “Gabriella Patten had no reason to lie. Not when lying extended an alibi to Fleming’s killer.” He leaned towards Olivia, resting his elbows on his knees. “I’m not here as a policeman, Miss Whitelaw. I’m here simply as a man who’d like to see justice done.”
“It’s being done. The kid confessed. What more do you want?”
“The real killer. The killer that you can identify.”
“Bollocks.” But she wouldn’t look at him.
“You’ve seen the papers. Jimmy’s confessed. He’s been arrested. He’s been charged. He’ll go to court. But he didn’t kill his father, and I think you know it.”
She reached for the tin. Her intentions were obvious. But Faraday wouldn’t accommodate her.
“Don’t you think the boy’s been through enough, Miss Whitelaw?”
“If he didn’t do it, then let him go.”
“That’s not the way it works. His future was mapped out the moment he said he murdered his father. What happens next is a trial. After that, prison. The only way he can clear himself is if the real killer is apprehended.”
“That’s your job, not mine.”
“It’s everyone’s job. That’s part of the price we pay for choosing to live among others in an organised society.”
“Oh, is it?” Olivia shoved the tin to one side. She grasped the walker and pulled herself forward. She grunted with the strain of lifting and moving the uncooperative mass of her muscles. Beads of perspiration began to dot her forehead.
“Livie.” Faraday got up from his chair and came to her side.
She shrank away from him. “No. Forget it.” By the time she was upright, her legs were quaking so badly that Lynley wondered if she would be able to remain on her feet much more than a minute. She said, “Look at me. Look…at…me. Do you know what you’re asking?”
“I know,” Lynley said.
“Well, I won’t. I won’t. He’s nothing to me. They’re nothing to me. I don’t care about them. I don’t care about anyone.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Try. You’ll manage.”
She wrenched the walker to one side and followed it with her body. With painful slowness, she faltered from the room. As she passed the table in the galley, the cat sprang to the floor, twined between her legs, and followed her out of sight. More than a minute went by before they heard the sound of a door closing behind her.
Faraday looked as if he wanted to follow her, but he stayed where he was, standing next to her chair. Although he kept his gaze pointed in the direction Olivia had taken, he said to Lynley in a low rapid voice, “Miriam wasn’t there that night. Not when we got there. But her car was there and the lights were on and she’d left music playing so we both assumed…I mean it was logical for us to assume she’d just popped over to a neighbour’s for a minute.”
“Which is what anyone who happened to knock on her door was meant to think.”
“Except we didn’t knock. Because Livie had the key. We let ourselves in. I…I looked round the house to tell her Livie had arrived. But she wasn’t there. Livie told me to shove off, so I did.” He turned to Lynley. He asked, sounding desperate, “Is that enough? For the boy?”
“No,” Lynley said and when Faraday’s expression became even more bleak, “I’m sorry.”
“What’s going to happen? If she doesn’t tell the truth?”
r /> “A sixteen-year-old boy’s future hangs in the balance.”
“But if he didn’t do it—”
“We have his confession. It’s perfectly solid. The only way we can negate it is by identifying who did.”
Lynley waited for Faraday to respond in some fashion. He hoped for a single clue as to what might happen next. He’d reached the absolute bottom of his bag of tricks. If Olivia didn’t break, he’d smeared the name and the life of an innocent boy for nothing.
But Faraday didn’t make a reply. He merely went to the table in the galley, where he sat and dropped his head into his hands. His fingers pressed into his skull until their nails were white.
“God,” he said.
“Talk to her,” Lynley said.
“She’s dying. She’s afraid. I don’t have the words.”
Then they were lost, Lynley concluded. He picked up his newspapers, folded them, and went out into the evening.
OLIVIA
The footsteps came on. They were certain, determined. My mouth got dry as they closed in on the morning room door. They stopped abruptly. I heard someone take a sharp breath. I turned in my chair. It was Mother.
We stared at each other. She said, “God in heaven,” with her hand on her breast, and she stayed where she was. I waited for the sound of Kenneth following her. I waited for his voice saying, “What is it, Miriam?” or “Darling, is something wrong?” But the only sound was the grandfather clock in the corridor bonging out three o’clock. The only voice was Mother’s. “Olivia? Olivia? My God, what on earth…”
I thought she would come into the room, but she didn’t. She remained in the dark corridor just beyond the doorway, where she reached with one hand for the jamb and climbed the other to the collar of her dress. This she pinched closed. She was fairly hidden in the shadows, but I could see enough to know she wasn’t wearing one of her Jackie Kennedy sheaths. Instead she had on a bright spring number of green with a pattern of daffodils climbing from the hem to a gathered waist. It looked like something one might notice in a C & A window display heralding the change in seasons. It wasn’t like anything Mother had ever worn before, and it emphasised her hips in an unflattering manner. I felt odd, seeing her dressed like that, and I wondered if she’d hung a gay straw boater with streamers on the hook just inside the garden door. I half expected to look at her feet and see sweet little white T-strap shoes upon them. I was embarrassed for her. It didn’t take an advanced degree in human psychology to delve past the costume to the intention beneath it.
“I was writing you a letter,” I said.
“A letter.”
“I must’ve fallen asleep.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Since half past ten. Something like that. Chris—bloke I live with—he dropped me off. I was waiting for you. Then I decided to write. He’ll be by in a while, Chris. I fell asleep.”
I felt thick-headed. This wasn’t working out the way I had planned. I was supposed to be at ease and in control, but when I looked at her, I found that I didn’t know how to go on. Come on, come on, I told myself roughly, who gives a shit what she’s doing with herself to keep her honey lamb interested? Be first to establish the whip hand here. Surprise is on your side, just like you wanted.
But surprise was on her side as well, and she wasn’t doing anything to make things less awkward between us. Not that she owed me an easy transition back into her world. I’d given up all rights to chummy mother-daughter chats some years ago.
Mother’s eyes held mine. She appeared determined not to look at my legs, not to notice the aluminium walker sitting next to the davenport, and not to question what my legs, the walker, and most of all my presence in her house at three in the morning meant.
“I’ve been reading about you in the papers from time to time,” I said. “You. Kenneth. You know.”
“Yes,” she said, as if my admission was only to be expected.
I could feel that my armpits were wet. I longed to blot them with a handkerchief or something. “Seems like a nice enough bloke. I remember him from when you were a teacher.”
“Yes,” she said.
I thought, Shit damn hell. Where was this going? She should be saying, What’s happened to you, Olivia? I should be saying, I’ve come to talk, I need your help, I’m going to die.
Instead I sat in a chair in front of the davenport, half turned in her direction. She stood in the corridor with the floor lamp shooting light along the hem of her silly shirtwaister. I couldn’t move to her without making an awkward scene of it. And clearly, she had no intention of moving towards me. She was clever enough to know that I’d come to ask for something. She was vindictive enough to make me crawl across coals of discomfort in order to ask it.
All right, I thought. I’ll give you your petty victory. You want me to crawl? I’ll crawl. I’ll be the artist of crawl.
I said, “I’ve come to talk to you, Mother.”
“At three in the morning?”
“I didn’t know it would be three.”
“You said you’ve written a letter.”
I looked down at the sheets of paper I’d filled. I couldn’t use a biro any longer. She’d had no pencils in the davenport. The scrawl came from the hand of an unschooled child. I raised my hand to the papers. My fingers crumpled them.
“I need to talk to you,” I repeated. “This doesn’t say it the way…I need to talk. I’ve made a hash of this, obviously. I’m sorry about the time. If you want me to come back tomorrow, I’ll ask Chris—”
“No,” she said. Apparently, I’d crawled long enough to satisfy. “Let me change. I’ll make tea.”
She left me quickly. I heard her go up the first then the second flight of stairs to her room. It was more than five minutes before she came down again. She passed the morning room door without looking inside at me. She went down to the kitchen. Ten more minutes creeped by. She was going to make me stew for a while. She was going to enjoy it. I wanted to even the score, but I didn’t exactly know how to do it.
I got up from the balloon-back chair by the davenport, positioned myself behind the walker, and began to shuffle in the direction of the settee. I made the perilous turn-around prior to lowering myself onto the old velvet and looked up to see that Mother stood in the doorway, a tray of tea in her hands. We gazed across the room at each other.
“Long time no see,” I said.
“Ten years, two weeks, four days,” she said.
I blinked, turned my head to the wall. It was still hung with a mishmash of Japanese prints, small portraits of dead Whitelaws, and a minor old master of the Flemish school. I stared at this as Mother came into the room and set the tea tray on a games table next to the chesterfield.
“The same?” she asked me. “Milk and two sugars?”
Damn her, I thought, damn her, goddamn her. I nodded. I looked at the Flemish painting: a centaur with forelegs pawing the air, clasping a woman on to his back, his left and her right arm raised for some reason into an arch. They looked as if they both wanted it this way, the monstrous creature and the bare-legged woman who would be his prize. She wasn’t even fighting to escape him.
“I’ve got something called ALS,” I said.
Behind me I heard the comforting and so familiar sound of hot liquid splashing against a porcelain cup. I heard a clink as the cup in its saucer tapped against the table. Then I felt her near me, next to me. I felt her hand on the walker.
“Sit down,” she said. “Here’s your tea. Shall I help you?” Her breath, I thought. She smelled of alcohol, and I realised she’d fortified herself for this encounter while she was changing her clothes and making the tea. It comforted me to know that. She said again, “Do you need help, Olivia?”
I shook my head. She moved the walker to one side when I’d lowered myself to the settee. She handed me the teacup, placing its saucer on my knee and holding it there until I reached for it and steadied it myself.
She’d changed into a navy dressing
gown. She looked more like a mother I could recognise.
“ALS,” she said.
“I’ve had it for about a year.”
“It gives you difficulty walking?”
“At the moment.”
“The moment?”
“For now, it’s walking.”
“And later?”
“Stephen Hawking.”
She’d lifted her teacup to drink. Over the top of it, her eyes met mine. She put the cup back into its saucer slowly, the tea undrunk. She put the saucer and cup onto the table. So careful were her movements that she made no noise. She sat at the corner of the chesterfield. Our bodies were at right angles to each other, our knees separated by less than six inches.
I wanted her to say something. But her only response was to raise her right hand to her temple and press her fingers against it.
I considered saying that I could come back at another time. Instead I said, “Two to five years, basically. Seven if I’m lucky.”
She dropped her hand. “But Stephen Hawking—”
“He’s the exception. Which doesn’t exactly matter because I don’t want to live like that anyway.”
“You can’t know that yet.”
“Believe me, I can.”
“An illness allows one to define life differently.”
“No.”
I told her how it started, with the stumble on the street. I told her about the physical examinations and the tests. I told her about the futile programme of exercise, about the healers. Finally, I told her about the disease’s progress. “It’s on its way into my arms,” I finished. “My fingers are weakening. If you look at the letter I was trying to write you—”
“Damn you,” she said, although the words contained no element of passion. “Damn you, Olivia.”
Now was the time for the lecture. I had wanted the whip hand. I had wanted to win. But how could I have expected either? I’d not returned to Staffordshire Terrace triumphant. I’d returned like a prodigal, ruined physically instead of financially, holding on to aphorisms like “Blood’s thicker, isn’t it?” as if they could rebuild a bridge that I had so much enjoyed destroying. I waited to live through what she believed I should hear at the moment: This is what you get…. How does it feel to have your body go to pieces…. You broke your father’s heart…. You destroyed every one of our lives….