Playing for the Ashes

“Wednesday night. He’d had it planned for months. It was Jimmy’s birthday present. Just the two of them were going.”

  “You’re certain about the trip? You’re certain he meant to leave Wednesday night?”

  “I helped him carry his luggage to the car.”

  “A taxi?”

  “No. His car. I’d said I’d drive him to the airport, but he’d only had the car for a few weeks. He loved the excuse to take it out on the road. He was going to fetch Jimmy and then they’d be off. Just the two of them. On a boat. Round the islands. For just a few days because we’re so close now to the first test match.” Her eyes filled with tears. She pressed her handkerchief beneath them and cleared her throat. “Forgive me.”

  “Please. It’s all right.” Lynley waited a moment as she tried to regain her composure. He said, “What sort of car did he have?”

  “A Lotus.”

  “The model?”

  “I don’t know. It was old. Restored. Low to the ground. Headlamps like pods.”

  “A Lotus-7?”

  “It was green.”

  “There was no Lotus at the cottage. Just an Aston Martin in the garage.”

  “That would have been Gabriella’s,” she said. She moved her handkerchief to press it against her upper lip. She spoke from behind her hand. More tears pooled in her eyes. “I can’t think that he’s dead. He was here on Wednesday. We had an early dinner together. We talked about the printworks. We talked about the test matches this summer. The Australian spin bowler. The challenge he would be for a batsman. Ken was worrying over whether he’d be selected for the England team again. He always has doubts every time the selectors begin to choose. I tell him his fears are ridiculous. He’s such a fine player. His form’s never off. Why should he ever worry about not being selected? He’s…Present tense. Oh God, I’m using present tense. It’s because he’s been…he was…Forgive me, please. If you will. Please. If I can only piece myself together. I mustn’t fall apart. I mustn’t. Later. I can fall apart later. There are things to be seen to. I know that. I do.”

  Lynley managed to get several tablespoons of sherry from what was left in the decanter. He offered the glass to her and held her hand steady. She gulped the liquor like medicine.

  “Jimmy,” she said. “He wasn’t at the cottage as well?”

  “Only Fleming.”

  “Only Ken.” She moved her gaze to the fire. Lynley saw her swallow, saw her fingers begin to tighten, then relax.

  “What is it?” he said.

  “Nothing. It isn’t important in the least.”

  “Let me be the one to decide that, Mrs. Whitelaw.”

  Her tongue passed over her lips. “Jimmy would have been expecting his father to fetch him for the flight on Wednesday. If Ken didn’t show up, he’d have phoned here to know why.”

  “And he didn’t?”

  “No.”

  “You were here at home once Fleming left Wednesday evening? You didn’t go out yourself? Even for a few minutes? Could you have missed a call from him?”

  “I was here. No one phoned.” Her eyes widened marginally as she said the last word. “No. No, that’s not quite true.”

  “Someone phoned?”

  “Earlier. Just before dinner. For Ken, not for me.”

  “Do you know who it was?”

  “Guy Mollison.”

  Longtime captain of the England team, Lynley thought. It wasn’t strange that he’d be phoning Fleming. But the timing was interesting. “Did you hear Fleming’s end of the conversation?”

  “I answered the phone in the kitchen. Ken took the call in the morning room.”

  “Did you listen in?”

  She looked away from the fire to him. She appeared too exhausted to be offended by the question. But, still, her voice was reserved when she replied, “Of course not.”

  “Not even before you replaced the receiver? Not for a moment to make sure Fleming was on the line? It would be natural to do that.”

  “I heard Ken’s voice. Then Guy’s. That’s all.”

  “Saying?”

  “I’m not certain. Something…Ken said hullo. And Guy said something about a row.”

  “An argument between them?”

  “He said something about wanting the Ashes back. Something like, ‘We want the bloody Ashes back, don’t we? Can we forget the row and get on with things?’ It was test-match talk. Nothing more.”

  “And the row?”

  “I don’t know. Ken didn’t say. I assumed it had something to do with cricket, with Guy’s influence over the selectors, perhaps.”

  “How long was their conversation?”

  “He came down to the kitchen five minutes, perhaps ten minutes later.”

  “He said nothing about it then? Or over dinner?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Did he seem changed after he talked to Mollison? More subdued, perhaps? More agitated, more pensive?”

  “Not at all.”

  “And in the past few days? The past week? Had he seemed changed at all to you?”

  “Changed? No. He was the same as ever.” She cocked her head. “Why? What are you asking, Inspector?”

  Lynley considered how best to answer the question. The police had the advantage at the moment, in the form of knowledge only the arsonist would possess. He said carefully, “There are some irregularities about the fire at the cottage.”

  “You said a cigarette? In one of the armchairs?”

  “Had he been despondent in the last several weeks?”

  “Despondent? Of course he wasn’t despondent. Worried, yes, about being chosen to play for England. Perhaps a bit concerned about going off with his son for a few days in the midst of his training. But that was the extent of it. What on earth had he to be despondent about?”

  “Had he personal troubles? Family troubles? We know his wife and children live apart from him. Were there difficulties with them?”

  “No more than usual. Jimmy—the eldest—was a source of worry to Ken, but what sixteen-year-old isn’t a worry to his parents?”

  “Would Fleming have left you a note?”

  “A note? Why? What sort of note?”

  Lynley leaned forward in his chair. “Mrs. Whitelaw, we must rule out suicide before we can proceed in any other direction.”

  She stared at him. He could see her trying to work her way through the emotional mire created first by the shock of Fleming’s death and now by the allegation of suicide.

  “May we check his bedroom?”

  She swallowed but did not reply.

  “Consider it a necessary formality, Mrs. Whitelaw.”

  Tentatively, she rose, one hand grasping the arm of her chair. She said quietly, “This way, then,” and led them out of the room and up another flight of stairs.

  Kenneth Fleming’s room was on the second floor overlooking the back garden. Most of the space was dominated by a large brass bed across from which an enormous oriental fan spread across the fireplace. As Mrs. Whitelaw took a seat in the room’s only chair—a wingback tucked into the corner—Lynley went to a chest of drawers that stood beneath the window while Havers opened a mirrored wardrobe.

  “These are his children?” Lynley asked. From the top of the chest of drawers, he picked up one photograph after another. There were nine of them, haphazardly framed snapshots of babies, toddlers, and children.

  “He has three children,” Mrs. Whitelaw said. “They’ve grown since those were taken.”

  “No recent pictures?”

  “Ken wanted to take them, but Jimmy wouldn’t cooperate whenever Ken got the camera out. As Jimmy goes, so go his brother and sister.”

  “There was friction between Fleming and the older boy?”

  “Jimmy’s sixteen,” she told them once again. “It’s a difficult age.”

  Lynley couldn’t disagree. His own sixteenth year had been the start of a downhill slide in parental relationships that had only ended when he was thirty-two.

  There was not
hing else on the top of the chest of drawers, nothing but soap and a folded towel on the washstand, nothing propped up on the pillows of the bed awaiting notice, and only a worn copy of Graham Swift’s Waterland on the bedside table. Lynley flipped through this. Nothing fell out.

  He began to go through the chest of drawers. He saw that Fleming was compulsively neat. Every jersey and sweatshirt was identically folded. Even his socks were arranged in their drawer by colour. Across the room, Sergeant Havers was apparently drawing this same conclusion from the row of shirts on their hangers, followed by trousers, followed by jackets, with shoes lined up in a row beneath them.

  “Blimey,” she said. “Not a stitch out of place. They do that sometimes, don’t they, sir?”

  “Do what?” Miriam Whitelaw asked.

  Havers looked as if she was sorry she had spoken. “Suicides,” Lynley said. “They generally put everything in order first.”

  “They generally leave a note as well, don’t they?” Mrs. Whitelaw said.

  “Not always. Especially if they want the suicide to look like an accident.”

  “But it was an accident,” Mrs. Whitelaw said. “It had to be an accident. Ken didn’t smoke. So if he were going to kill himself and make it look like an accident, why would he have used a cigarette?”

  To cast suspicion on someone else, Lynley thought. To make it look like a murder. He answered her question with one of his own. “What can you tell us about Gabriella Patten?”

  Mrs. Whitelaw didn’t answer at first. She seemed to be evaluating the implications behind Lynley’s having asked the question on the heels of her own. She said, “What do you want to know?”

  “Is she a smoker, for example?”

  Mrs. Whitelaw looked towards the window in which they all were reflected against the nighttime panes. She appeared to be trying to picture Gabriella Patten both with and without a cigarette. She finally said, “She never smoked here, in this house. Because I don’t. Ken doesn’t…didn’t. Otherwise, I don’t know. She may be a smoker.”

  “What was her relationship to Fleming?”

  “They were lovers.” And to Lynley’s raised eyebrows, she added, “It wasn’t general knowledge. But I knew. We talked about it most nights—Ken and I—and had done since the situation first developed between them.”

  “The situation?”

  “He was in love with her. He wanted to marry her.”

  “And she?”

  “She said at times that she wanted to marry him.”

  “At times only?”

  “That was her way. She liked to keep him off guard. They’d been seeing each other since…” Her hand rose to touch her necklace as she thought. “It was sometime last autumn when they began the affair. He knew straightaway that he wanted to marry her. She was less certain.”

  “She’s married, I understand.”

  “Separated.”

  “When they began seeing each other?”

  “No. Not then.”

  “And now?”

  “Formally?” she asked.

  “And legally.”

  “She had her solicitors ready, as far as I know. Her husband had his. According to Ken, they’d met five or six times, but they hadn’t reached an agreement on anything.”

  “But a divorce was pending?”

  “On her part? Probably, but I couldn’t say.”

  “What did Fleming say?”

  “Ken sometimes felt she was dragging her feet, but he was like that…impatient to have things settled in his life as soon as possible. He was always that way when he made up his mind about something.”

  “And in his own life? Had he settled things?”

  “He’d finally talked to Jean about divorcing, if that’s what you mean.”

  “When was this?”

  “About the same time Gabriella left her husband. Early last month.”

  “Did his wife agree to the divorce?”

  “They’ve lived apart for four years, Inspector. Her agreement wasn’t really an issue, was it?”

  “Nonetheless, did she agree?”

  Mrs. Whitelaw hesitated. She shifted in the chair. A spring creaked beneath her. “Jean loved Ken. She wanted him back. That never changed all the years he was gone, so I can’t imagine it changed just because he finally mentioned divorce.”

  “And Mr. Patten? What do you know of him? Where did he stand in all this? Did he know about his wife’s relationship with Fleming?”

  “I doubt it. They tried to be discreet.”

  “But if she was staying in your cottage,” Sergeant Havers put in, turning from the wardrobe where she was systematically going through Fleming’s clothes, “that pretty much makes an announcement of the situation, wouldn’t you say?”

  “As far as I know, Gabriella didn’t tell anyone where she was staying. She needed a place to live once she left Hugh. Ken asked me if she could use the cottage. I agreed.”

  “Your way of giving tacit approval to their relationship?” Lynley asked.

  “Ken didn’t ask for my approval.”

  “If he had?”

  “He’s been like my son for years. I wanted to see him happy. If he believed that marriage to Gabriella was the source of his happiness, that was fine with me.”

  It was an interesting answer, Lynley thought. There was a world of meaning beneath the word believed. He said, “Mrs. Patten’s gone missing. Have you any idea where she might be?”

  “None at all, unless she’s gone back to Hugh. She threatened to do that whenever she and Ken had a row. She might have made good on her words.”

  “Had they had a row?”

  “I doubt it. Ken and I usually talked it over when they had.”

  “They quarrelled frequently?”

  “Gabriella likes to have things her way. Ken does as well. Occasionally they found it difficult to compromise. That’s all.” She seemed to see where the questions were heading, because she added, “Really, you can’t think Gabriella…That’s unlikely, Inspector.”

  “Who knew she was at the cottage, aside from you and Fleming?”

  “The neighbours would have known, of course. The postman. The milkman. People from Lesser Springburn if she went into the village.”

  “I mean here, in London.”

  “No one,” she said.

  “Besides yourself.”

  Her face was grave but unoffended. “That’s right,” she said. “No one besides myself. And Ken.”

  She met Lynley’s eyes as if she were waiting for the accusation and expecting him to make it. Lynley said nothing. She claimed Kenneth Fleming was like a son to her. He wondered about that.

  “Ah. Here’s something,” Sergeant Havers said. She was opening a narrow folder that she had taken from a pocket of one of the jackets. “Plane tickets,” she said and looked up. “Greece.”

  “Is there a flight date on them?”

  Havers held them towards the light. Her forehead wrinkled as she scanned the writing. “Here. Yes. They’re for—” She did a mental calculation with the date. “Last Wednesday.”

  “He must have forgotten them,” Mrs. Whitelaw said.

  “Or never intended to take them in the first place.”

  “But his luggage, Inspector,” Mrs. Whitelaw said. “He had his luggage. I watched him pack. I helped him carry his things to the car. Wednesday. Wednesday night.”

  Havers tapped the tickets pensively against her open hand. “He may have changed his mind. Postponed the trip. Delayed his departure. That would explain why his son never phoned when Fleming failed to show up to fetch him for the flight.”

  “But it doesn’t explain why he packed as if he intended to go on in the first place,” Mrs. Whitelaw insisted. “Or why he said, ‘I’ll send you a card from Mykonos,’ before he drove off.”

  “That’s easy enough,” Havers said. “For some reason he wanted you to think that he was still going to Greece. Right then.”

  “Or perhaps he didn’t want you to think he was going to
Kent first,” Lynley added.

  He waited as Mrs. Whitelaw made an effort to assimilate the information. The fact that it was an effort for her was made evident by the distress that caused her gaze to falter. She tried, and failed, to fix on her face an expression that would communicate to them that she was unsurprised by the knowledge that Kenneth Fleming had lied to her.

  Just like a son, Lynley thought. He wondered if Fleming’s lie made him more or less son-like to Mrs. Whitelaw.

  OLIVIA

  When the tour barges pass, I can feel our barge do a little bob-and-sway on the water. Chris says I imagine it because those are singles and leave practically no wake while ours is a double and impossible to move. Still, I swear I can feel the rise and fall of the water. If I’m having a lie down and I’ve made my room dark, it’s like being in the womb, I expect.

  Farther down, in the direction of Regent’s Park, all the barges are singles. They’re painted brightly and lined up something like railway carriages along both sides of the canal. The tourists going to Regent’s Park or Camden Lock take photographs of them. They probably try to imagine what it’s like, living on a barge in the middle of a city. They probably assume that one can forget one’s in the middle of a city altogether.

  Our barge isn’t photographed often. Chris built it to be practical, not to be coy, so it’s not much to look at, but it does for a home. I spend most of my time here in the cabin. I watch Chris do the sketches for his mouldings. I take care of the dogs.

  Chris hasn’t returned from his run yet. I knew he’d be an age. If he got as far as the park and took the dogs inside, he won’t be back for hours. But, if that’s the case, he’ll also bring a take-away meal back with him. Unfortunately, it’ll be tandoori something. He’ll forget I don’t like it. I won’t blame him for that. He’s got a lot on his mind.

  So do I.

  I can’t get away from seeing his face. This is something that would have made me rave at one time—the idea of a person I don’t even know having the cheek to make an ethical demand upon me, asking me to have principles, for God’s sake. But curiously this unspoken request has given me the oddest sense of peace. Chris would say it’s because I’ve finally reached a decision and am acting on it. Perhaps he’s right. Mind you, I don’t relish the thought of sharing any of my dirty laundry with you, but I’ve seen his face again and again—I keep seeing his face—and his face is what’s made me come to terms with the fact that if I declare myself responsible, then I must explain how and why.