Authors: Elizabeth George
“The key wasn’t in her lock from the inside?”
Francesca frowned. “No…It couldn’t have been, could it, or I wouldn’t have been able to unlock it with my own.”
“Take us through exactly what you did, Mrs. Gerrard.”
Willingly, Francesca retraced her route from her bedroom to Joy’s where she turned the door handle only to find the room locked; from Joy’s room to her own where she picked up her desk key from her chest of drawers; from her room to her office where she took the master keys from the bottom drawer of her desk; from her office to Joy’s room where she unlocked the door quietly, saw the necklace in the light from the corridor, took it, and relocked the door; from Joy’s room to her office where she returned the keys; from her office back to her own room where she replaced the necklace in her jewellery box.
“What time was this?” Lynley asked.
“Three-fifteen.”
“Exactly?”
She nodded and went on to explain. “I don’t know whether you’ve ever done anything impulsive that you regret, Inspector. But I regretted parting with the pearls directly after Elizabeth took them to Joy. I lay in bed trying to decide what to do. I didn’t want a confrontation with Joy, I didn’t want to burden my brother Stuart with anything else. So I…well, I suppose I stole them, didn’t I? And I know it was three-fifteen because I had been lying awake watching the clock and that’s what time it was when I finally decided to do something about getting my necklace back.”
“You said Joy was asleep. Did you see her? Hear her breathing?”
“The room was so dark. I…I suppose I assumed she was asleep. She didn’t stir, didn’t speak. She…” Her eyes widened. “Do you mean she might have been dead?”
“Did you actually see her in the room at all?”
“You mean in the bed? No, I couldn’t see the bed. The door was in the way and I hadn’t opened it more than a few inches. I just thought, of course…”
“What about your desk in your office? Was it locked?”
“Oh yes,” she replied. “It’s always locked.”
“Who has keys to it?”
“I have one key. Mary Agnes has the other.”
“And could anyone have seen you going from your room to Joy’s? Or going to the office? On either of the two trips?”
“I didn’t notice anyone. But I suppose…” She shook her head. “I just don’t know.”
“But you would have passed any number of rooms to make the trips, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course, anyone on the main corridor could have seen me if they were up and about. But surely I would have noticed that. Or heard a door opening.”
Lynley went to join Macaskin who was already on his feet, examining the floor plan that was still spread out upon the table from their earlier interview with David Sydeham. Four rooms had immediate access to the main corridor besides the rooms belonging to Lady Helen and Joy Sinclair: Joanna Ellacourt and David Sydeham’s room, Lord Stinhurst and his wife’s, the unused room of Rhys Davies-Jones, and Irene Sinclair’s at the junction of the main corridor and the west wing of the house.
“Surely there’s truth to what the woman is saying,” Macaskin muttered to Lynley as they looked the floor plan over. “Surely she would have heard something, seen something, been alerted to the fact that she was being watched.”
“Mrs. Gerrard,” Lynley said to her over his shoulder, “are you absolutely certain that Joy’s door was locked last night?”
“Of course,” she replied. “I thought of sending a note with her tea this morning, to tell her I’d taken the necklace back. Perhaps I really should have. But then—”
“And you did take the keys back to your desk?”
“Yes. Why do you keep asking me about the door?”
“And you locked the desk again?”
“Yes. I know I did that. It’s something I always do.”
Lynley turned from the table but remained next to it, his eyes on Francesca. “Can you tell me,” he asked her, “how Helen Clyde came to be given a room adjoining Joy Sinclair’s? Was that coincidental?”
Francesca’s hand rose to her beads, an automatic movement, companion to thought. “Helen Clyde?” she repeated. “Was it Stuart who suggested…No. That’s not right, is it? Mary Agnes took the call from London. I remember because Mary’s spelling is a bit phonetic, and the name she’d written was unfamiliar. I had to get her to say it for me.”
“The name?”
“Yes. She’d written down
Joyce Encare
, which of course made no sense until she said it.
Joy Sinclair
.”
“Joy had telephoned you?”
“Yes. So I returned the call. This was…it must have been last Monday evening. She asked if Helen Clyde might have the room next to hers.”
“Joy asked for Helen?” Lynley queried sharply. “Asked for her by name?”
Francesca hesitated. Her eyes dropped to the plan of the house, then rose back to meet Lynley’s. “No. Not exactly by name. She merely said that her cousin was bringing a guest and could that guest be given the room next to hers. I suppose I assumed she must have known….” Her voice faltered as Lynley pushed himself away from the table.
He looked from Macaskin to Havers to St. James. There was no point in further procrastination. “I’ll see Davies-Jones now,” he said.
R
HYS
D
AVIES
-J
ONES
did not appear to be cowed in the presence of the police, in spite of the escort of Constable Lonan who had followed him like an unfortunate reputation from his room, down the stairs, and right to the door of the sitting room. The Welshman evaluated St. James, Macaskin, Lynley, and Havers with a look entirely straightforward, the deliberate look of a man intent upon showing that he had nothing to hide.
A dark horse which had never been thought of…
Lynley nodded him to a seat at the table.
“Tell me about last night,” he said.
Davies-Jones gave no perceptible reaction to the question other than to move the liquor bottle out of his line of vision. He played the tips of his fingers round the edge of a packet of Players that he took from his jacket pocket, but he did not light one. “What about last night?”
“About your fingerprints on the key to the door that adjoined Helen’s and Joy’s rooms, about the cognac you brought to Helen, about where you were until one in the morning when you showed up at her door.”
Again, Davies-Jones did not react, either to the words themselves or to the current of hostility that ran beneath them. He answered frankly enough. “I took cognac up to her because I wanted to see her, Inspector. It was stupid of me, a rather adolescent way of getting into her room for a few minutes.”
“It seems to have worked well enough.”
Davies-Jones didn’t respond. Lynley saw that he was determined to say as little as possible. He found himself instantly equally determined to wring every last fact from the man. “And your fingerprints on the key?”
“I locked the door, both doors in fact. We wanted privacy.”
“You entered her room with a bottle of cognac and locked both the doors? Rather a blatant admission of your intentions, wouldn’t you say?”
Davies-Jones’ body tensed fractionally. “That’s not how it happened.”
“Then do tell me how it happened.”
“We talked for a bit about the read-through. Joy’s play was supposed to have brought me back into London theatre after my…trouble, so I was rather upset about the way everything turned out. It was more than a little bit obvious to me that whatever my cousin had in mind in getting us all up here to look at the revisions in her script, putting on a play had little enough to do with it. I was angry at having been used as a pawn in what was clearly some sort of vengeance game Joy was playing against Stinhurst. So Helen and I talked. About the read-through. About what in God’s name I would do from here. Then, when I was going to leave, Helen asked me to stay the night with her. So I locked the doors.” Davies-Jones met Lynley’s eyes squarely. A faint smile touched his lips. “You weren’t expecting it to have happened quite that way, were you, Inspector?”
Lynley didn’t reply. Rather, he pulled the whisky bottle towards him, twisted off its cap, poured himself a drink. The liquor flashed through his body satisfactorily. Deliberately, he set the glass down on the table between them, a full inch still in it. At that, Davies-Jones looked away, but Lynley didn’t miss the tight movements of the man’s head, the tension in his neck, traitors to his need. He lit a cigarette with unsteady hands.
“I understand you disappeared right after the read-through, that you didn’t show up again until one in the morning. How do you account for the time? What was it, ninety minutes, nearly two hours?”
“I went for a walk,” Davies-Jones replied.
Had he claimed that he had gone swimming in the loch, Lynley could not have been more surprised. “In a snowstorm? With a wind-chill factor of God only knows how far below freezing, you went for a walk?”
Davies-Jones merely said, “I find walking a good substitute for the bottle, Inspector. I would have preferred the bottle last night, frankly. But a walk seemed like the smarter alternative.”
“Where did you go?”
“Along the road to Hillview Farm.”
“Did you see anyone? Speak to anyone?”
“No,” he replied. “So no one can verify what I’m telling you. I understand that perfectly. Nonetheless, it’s what I did.”
“Then you also understand that as far as I’m concerned you could have spent that time in any number of ways.”
Davies-Jones took the bait. “Such as?”
“Such as collecting what you’d need to murder your cousin.”
The Welshman’s answering smile was contemptuous. “Yes. I suppose I could have. Down the back stairs, through the scullery and kitchen, into the dining room, and I’d have the dirk without anyone seeing me. Sydeham’s glove is a problem, but no doubt you can tell me how I managed to get it without him being the wiser.”
“You seem to know a great deal about the layout of the house,” Lynley pointed out.
“I do. I spent the early part of the afternoon looking it over. I’ve an interest in architecture. Hardly a criminal one, however.”
Lynley fingered the tumbler of whisky, swirling it meditatively. “How long were you in hospital?” he asked.
“Isn’t that a bit out of your purview, Inspector Lynley?”
“Nothing that touches this case is out of my purview. How long were you in hospital for your drinking problem?”
Davies-Jones answered stonily. “Four months.”
“A private hospital?”
“Yes.”
“Costly venture.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? That I stabbed my cousin for her money to pay my bills?”
“Did Joy have money?”
“Of course she had money. She had plenty of money. And you can rest assured she didn’t leave any of it to me.”
“You know the terms of her will, then?”
Davies-Jones reacted to the pressure, to being in the close presence of alcohol, to having been led so expertly into a trap. He stubbed out his cigarette angrily in the ashtray. “Yes, blast you! And she’s left every last pound to Irene and her children. But that’s not what you wanted to hear, is it, Inspector?”
Lynley seized the opportunity he had gained through the other man’s anger. “Last Monday Joy asked Francesca Gerrard that Helen Clyde be given a room next to hers. Do you know anything about that?”
“That
Helen…
” Davies-Jones reached for his cigarettes, then pushed them away. “No. I can’t explain it.”
“Can you explain how she knew Helen would be with you this weekend?”
“I must have told her. I probably did.”
“And suggested that she might want to get to know Helen? And what better way than by asking to be given adjoining rooms.”
“Like schoolgirls?” Davies-Jones demanded. “Rather transparent for a ruse leading to murder, wouldn’t you say?”
“I’m certainly open to your explanation.”
“I don’t bloody have one, Inspector. But my guess is that Joy wanted Helen next to her to act as a buffer, someone without a vested interest in the production, someone who wouldn’t be likely to come tapping at her door, hoping for a chat about line and scene changes. Actors are like that, you know. They generally don’t give a playwright much peace.”
“So you mentioned Helen to her. You planted the idea.”
“I did nothing of the kind. You asked for an explanation. That’s the best I can do.”
“Yes. Of course. Except that it doesn’t hold with the fact that Joanna Ellacourt had the room on the other side of Joy’s, does it? No buffer there. How do you explain it?”
“I don’t. I have absolutely no idea what Joy was thinking. Perhaps she had no idea herself. Perhaps it means nothing and you’re looking for meaning wherever you can find it.”
Lynley nodded, unaffected by the anger in the implication. “Where did you go once everyone was let out of the library this evening?”
“To my room.”
“What did you do there?”
“I showered and changed.”
“And then?”
Davies-Jones’ eyes made their way to the whisky. There was no noise at all save for a rustle from one of the others in the room, Macaskin fishing a roll of mints from his pocket. “I went to Helen.”
“Again?” Lynley asked blandly.
His head snapped up. “What the hell are you suggesting?”
“I should guess that would be obvious enough. She’s provided several rather good alibis for you, hasn’t she? First last night and now this evening.”
Davies-Jones stared at him incredulously before he laughed. “My God, that’s absolutely unbelievable. Do you think Helen’s stupid? Do you think she’s so naïve that she’d allow a man to do that to her? And not once, but twice? In twenty-four hours? What kind of a woman do you think she is?”
“I know exactly the kind of woman Helen is,” Lynley responded. “One absolutely vulnerable to a man who claims to be in possession of a weakness that only
she
can cure. And that’s how you played it, isn’t it? Right into her bed. If I bring her down here now, no doubt I’ll discover that this evening in her room was just another variation on last night’s tender theme.”
“And by God, you can’t bear the thought of that, can you? You’re so sick with jealousy that you stopped seeing straight the moment you knew I’d slept with her. Face the facts, Inspector. Don’t twist them about to pin something on me because you’re too goddamned afraid to take me on in any other way.”