Payment in Blood

“Why?”

“Because in the original photo from which all of these were taken, he’s talking to you. And for some reason you look in that picture as if you know him quite well.”

“Indeed. I may have at the time. But my brother’s inquest was twenty-five years ago. And at this distance, I don’t think I can be expected to remember everyone who was there.”

“That’s true,” St. James replied and considered the fascinating fact that he had not mentioned that the photographs were from Geoffrey Rintoul’s inquest at all.

Stinhurst was getting to his feet. “If there’s nothing else, Mr. St. James, I’ve things to see to before my day ends here.”

He did not look at the photographs again as he spoke, gathering pipe and tobacco, readying himself to leave. And that was so unlikely a human reaction. It was as if the man had to keep his eyes from them lest his face reveal more than he had been willing to say. One thing was a certainty, St. James concluded: Lord Stinhurst knew exactly who the man in the photograph was.

CERTAIN KINDS of lighting refuse to lie about the relentless, ineluctable process of ageing. They are entirely unforgiving, capable of exposing flaws and baring the truth. Direct sunlight, the harsh overhead fl uorescent lights of a business establishment, the fl ood lights used to film without soft-focus fi lters-these are proficient at doing their worst. In her dressing room, Joa

The air was quite cool, the way she always liked it in order to keep the flowers fresh when they arrived from a score of admirers before her performances. There were no fl owers now. Instead, the air held that combination of odours peculiar to every dressing room she had ever inhabited, the mingling scents of cold cream, astringent, and lotion that littered the tabletop. Joa

She smiled in self-mockery at the thought that she had escaped nearly everything that had constituted the psychological quicksand of her life. Her family’s grubby fi veroom council house in Nottingham; the sight of her father sitting daily in unshaven gloom at his window, a machinist on the dole whose dreams had died; the sound of her mother whining about the cold that persistently seeped through the poorly sealed windows, or the black and white telly whose knobs were broken off so that the sound remained at a constant nerve-shattering pitch; the future that each of her sisters had chosen, one that repeated the history of their parents’ marriage, an endless, bone-grinding repetition of producing babies at intervals of eighteen months and living without either hope or joy. She had escaped all that. But she could not escape that process of slow decomposition that awaits every man.

Like so many egocentric creatures whose beauty dominates the stage and the screen and the covers of countless magazines, she had thought for a time that she might elude it. She had, in fact, grown to believe that she would. For David had always allowed her to do so.

Her husband had been more than her liberation from the miseries of Nottingham. David had been the one true constant in a fickle world in which fame is ephemeral, in which the critics’ apotheosis of a new talent could mean the ruin of an established actress who has given her life to the stage. David knew all about that, knew how it frightened her, and through his continual support and love-in spite of her tantrums, her demands, her fl irtations-he had assuaged her fears. Until Joy Sinclair’s play had come along, changing everything irrevocably between them.

Fixing her eyes on her refl ection without really seeing it, Joa

David had betrayed her. She forced herself to think of it again and again, lest the decades of their shared intimacy insinuate themselves into her consciousness and demand that she forgive him. She would never do so.

He had known how much she had depended upon Othello being the last time she performed with Robert Gabriel. He had known how much she despised Gabriel’s pursuit of her, flavoured with accidental encounters, casually inadvertent movements that grazed his hand across the very tips of her breasts, longing stage kisses in front of enormous audiences who grew to believe it was part of the show, private double-edged compliments attached to references to his sexual prowess.

“Like it or not, you and Gabriel have magic when you’re on the stage together,” David had said.

Not the least bit jealous, not the least bit concerned. She had always wondered why. Until now.

He had lied to her about Joy Sinclair’s play, telling her that Robert Gabriel’s participation was Stinhurst’s idea, telling her that Gabriel couldn’t possibly be dropped from the cast. But she knew the real truth although she couldn’t bear to face what it implied. To insist upon Gabriel’s being sacked would mean a decrease in revenues for the show itself, which would cut into her percentage-into David’s percentage. And David liked his money. His Lobb shoes, his Rolls, his home on Regent’s Park, his cottage in the country, his Savile Row wardrobe. If all this could be maintained, what did it matter that his wife would have to fight off Robert Gabriel’s sweaty advances for another year or so? She’d been doing it for more than a decade, after all.

When her dressing-room door opened, Joa

But she was beyond considering any of that now. So she reached for hairbrush and hairpins, pushed her makeup case to one side, and began to see to her hair, counting the strokes from one to one hundred as if each took her further away from the long stretch of history she shared with David Sydeham.

He didn’t speak when he entered the room. He merely walked to the chaise as he always did. But this time he did not sit. Nor did he speak until she fi nally finished with her hair, dropped her brush to the table, and turned to look at him expressionlessly.

“I suppose I can rest a bit more easily if I simply know why you did it,” he said.

LADY HELEN arrived at the St. James home shortly before six that evening. She felt both discouraged and disheartened. Even a tray in St. James’ study, burdened with fresh scones, cream, tea, and sandwiches, did little to brighten her.

“You look as if you could do with a sherry,” St. James observed once she had removed her coat and gloves.

Lady Helen dug through her handbag for her notebook. “That sounds like exactly what I need,” she agreed heavily.

“No luck?” Deborah asked. She was sitting on the ottoman to the right of the hearth, sneaking an occasional bit of scone down to Peach, the scruffy little dachshund who waited patiently at her feet, occasionally testing the flavour of her ankle with a delicate and loving pink tongue. Nearby, the grey cat Alaska was curled happily onto a pile of papers in the centre of St. James’ desk. Although his eyes slitted open, he did not otherwise stir at Lady Helen’s entrance.