Payment in Blood

He grabbed her arm. “Do you think I killed your sister?” His face looked ill, perhaps from lack of sleep, perhaps from guilt.

She laughed hoarsely, shaking him off. “Killed her? No, that’s not at all your style. Dead, Joy was absolutely no good to you, was she? After all, you aren’t the least bit interested in screwing a corpse.”

“That didn’t happen!”

“Then what did I hear?”

“I don’t know what you heard! I don’t know who you heard! Anyone could have been with her.”

“In your room?” she demanded.

His eyes widened in panic. “In my…Renie, good God, it’s not what you think!”

She flung his coat off her shoulders. Dust leaped from the floor when it dropped. “It’s worse than knowing you’ve always been a filthy liar, Robert. Because now I realise that I’ve become one. God help me. I used to think that if Joy died I’d be free of the pain. Now I believe I’ll only be free of it when you’re dead as well.”

“How can you say that? Is that what you really want?”

She smiled bitterly. “With all my heart. God, God! With all my heart!”

He stepped away from her, away from the coat on the floor between them. His face was ashen. “So be it, love,” he whispered.

LYNLEY FOUND Jeremy Vi

“Making an early start of it,” Lynley remarked.

The journalist nodded towards the house where dark early morning shadows were painted like ink along the stone walls. “Not really a spot for lingering, is it?” He slammed the boot lid home and checked to see that it was securely locked. Fumbling a bit with his keys, he dropped them and cleared his throat raspily as he bent to retrieve them in their worn leather case. When he finally looked at Lynley, it was to reveal a face upon which grief played subtly, the way it often does when an initial shock has been lived through and the immensity of a loss begins to be measured against the endlessness of time.

“Somehow,” Lynley said, “I should think a journalist would be the last to leave.”

At this, Vi

Lynley answered the question by asking one. “Why were you actually here this weekend, Mr. Vi

“Didn’t you get a good enough picture from our attractive Elizabeth last evening? I was wild to get Joy in bed. Or better yet, I was picking her brains for material to bolster my career. Choose either one.”

“Frankly, I’d prefer the reality.”

Vi

Lynley was not untouched by the man’s distress. He noticed, however, that Vi

“She said she was worried about how Stinhurst and the actors would receive the revisions she’d made to the play. She wanted a friend along, she said, for moral support should things not go her way. I’d been following the Agincourt renovation for months. It seemed reasonable that I might ask to be included in the setting-up of the play for its opening. So I came. To support her, as she asked. But I didn’t support her at all in the end, did I? She may as well have been here alone.”

“I saw your name in her engagement book.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised. We met for lunch regularly. We’ve done so for years.”

“At these meetings, did she tell you anything about this weekend? What it would be like? What to expect?”

“Just that it was a read-through and that I might find it an interesting story.”

“The play itself?”

Vi

Lynley commented upon neither the man’s apparent belief in the inability of the police to ferret out the truth nor the egotistical likelihood of a single journalist’s being able to do it for them. Nonetheless, he catalogued the fact that Vi

“Are you saying she was concerned about her safety?”

“She didn’t say that,” Vi

“Why was she in your room the other night?”

“She said she was too keyed up to sleep. She’d had it out with Stinhurst and went to her room. But she felt restless, so she came to mine. To talk.”

“What time was this?”

“A bit after midnight. Perhaps a quarter past.”

“What did she talk about?”

“The play at first. How she was bound and determined to see to it that it was produced, with or without Stinhurst. And then about Alec Rintoul. And Robert Gabriel. And Irene. She felt rotten about everything that had happened to Irene, you know. She…she was desperate for her sister to get back with Gabriel. That’s why she wanted Irene in the play. She thought if the two of them were thrown together enough, nature would take its course.

She said she wanted Irene’s forgiveness and knew she couldn’t have it. But more than that, I think she wanted to forgive herself. And she couldn’t do that as long as Gabriel and her sister were apart.”

It was a glib enough recital, seemingly straightforward. Yet Lynley’s instincts told him there was more to be said about Joy’s nocturnal visit to Vi

“You make her sound rather saintly.”

Vi

“What time did Elizabeth Rintoul come to your room with the necklace?”

Vi