"You're drunk."

Which was certainly more than halfway true. As if in response to this, Francesca Gerrard stood up uneasily, pushing herself away from the couch she was sharing with her brother, Lord Stinhurst. She seemed to want to take control of the situation, perhaps to act out the role of hotel proprietress in even so inconsequential a manner as she chose when she turned to Barbara.

"If we could have some coffee..." Her hand fluttered up to a collection of coloured beads which she wore across her chest like mail. Contact with them seemed to give her courage. She spoke again, with more authority. "We'd like some coffee. Will you arrange it?"

When Barbara didn't reply, she turned to Lord Stinhurst. "Stuart..."

He spoke. "I'd appreciate your arranging for a pot of coffee," he said to Barbara. "Some of the party want sobering up."

Barbara gave fleeting and delighted thought to how many opportunities she would ever have again to put an earl in his place.

"Sorry," she replied tartly. And then she said to Lady Helen, "If you'll come with me now, I should guess the inspector will want to see you first."

LADY HELEN CLYDE felt more than a little numb as she fumbled her way across the library. She told herself that it was the lack of food, the endless and appalling day, the ghastly discomfort of sitting hour after hour in her nightclothes in a room that had continually alternated between subfreezing and claustrophobic. Reaching the doorway, she gathered the greatcoat about her with as much dignity as she could muster and stepped out into the hall. Sergeant Havers was an unacknowledged companion behind her.

"Are you quite all right, Helen?"

Gratefully, Lady Helen turned to see that St. James had waited for her. He stood in the shadows just outside the door. Lynley and Macaskin had already disappeared up the stairs.

She smoothed her hand against her hair in an attempt to arrange it but gave up the effort with a small, chagrined smile. "Can you possibly imagine what it's been like to spend an entire day with a roomful of individuals who communicate directly with Thespis?" she asked St. James. "We've run the gamut since half past seven this morning. From rage to hysteria to grief to paranoia. Frankly, by noon, I would have sold my soul for just one of Hedda Gabler's pistols." She drew the greatcoat up to her throat and held it closed at her neck, stifling a shiver. "But I'm fine. At least, I think so." Her eyes took in the stairs and then moved back to St. James. "Whatever's wrong with Tommy?"

Behind her, Sergeant Havers moved with inexplicable sharpness, but it was a gesture Lady Helen couldn't clearly see. St. James, she noted, took his time about replying, using a moment to brush at the leg of his trousers. There was nothing on them for his attention, however, and when he chose to speak, it was to ask a question of his own.

"What on earth are you doing here, Helen?"

She glanced back at the closed library door. "Rhys invited me. He was to direct Lord Stinhurst's new production for the opening of the Agincourt Theatre, and this weekend was to be a run-through-a sort of preliminary reading of the new script."

"Rhys?" St. James repeated.

"Rhys Davies-Jones. You don't remember him? My sister used to see him. Years ago. Before he..." Lady Helen twisted a b.u.t.ton at the throat of the greatcoat, hesitating, wondering how much to say. She settled on, "He's been working in regional theatre over the past two years. This was to be his first London production since...The Tempest. Four years ago. We were there. Surely you remember." She saw that he did.

"Lord," St. James said with some reverence. "Was that Davies-Jones? I'd completely forgotten."

Lady Helen wondered how that was even possible, for it was something she knew she could never forget: that awful night at the theatre when Rhys Davies-Jones, the director, had taken the stage himself and everyone had seen he was inches short of delirious. Shoving actors and actresses alike to one side, chasing demons only he could see, he had publicly ended his career with a vengeance. She could see it all still-the stage, the pandemonium, the devastation he had wrought upon himself and others. For it had been during the act 4 speech when his drunken frenzy broke into the lovely words, blotting out both his past and future in an instant, leaving, indeed, not a single rack behind.

"He spent four months in hospital after that. He's quite ...recovered now. I ran into him early last month in the Brompton Road. We had dinner and...well, ever since we've seen a good deal of each other."

"His recovery must be complete indeed if he's working with Stinhurst, Ellacourt, and Gabriel. Lofty company for-"

"A man of his reputation?" Lady Helen frowned down at the floor, touching her slippered foot delicately to one of the pegs that held the wood in place. "Yes, I suppose. But Joy Sinclair was his cousin. They were very close, and I think she saw the opportunity to give him a second chance in London theatre. She was instrumental in talking Lord Stinhurst into giving Rhys the contract."

"She had influence with Stinhurst?"

"I've got the impression Joy had influence with everyone."

"Meaning?"

Lady Helen hesitated. She was not a woman given to saying anything that might denigrate others, even in a murder investigation. Doing so now went against the grain, even with St. James, always a man she could trust implicitly, waiting for her answer. She gave it reluctantly, prefacing it with a quick look at Sergeant Havers to read her face for its degree of discretion.

"Apparently she had an affair with Robert Gabriel last year, Simon. They had a tremendous row about it only yesterday afternoon. Gabriel wanted Joy to tell his former wife that he slept with her just once. Joy refused. It... well, the row was heading towards violence when Rhys burst into Joy's room and broke it up."

St. James looked perplexed. "I don't understand. Did Joy Sinclair know Robert Gabriel's wife? Did she even know he was married?"

"Oh yes," Lady Helen answered. "Robert Gabriel was married for nineteen years to Irene Sinclair. Joy's sister."

INSPECTOR MACASKIN unlocked the door and admitted Lynley and St. James into Joy Sinclair's room. He felt for the wall switch, and two serpentine bronze ceiling fixtures spilled light down on the wealth of contradictions below. It was, Lynley saw, a beautiful room, the sort one expects the play's star performer to be given, not its author. Expensively papered in green and yellow, it was furnished with a four-poster Victorian bed and nineteenth-century chest of drawers, wardrobe, and chairs. A comfortably faded Axminster carpet covered the oak floor, and the boards creaked with age when they walked across it.

Yet the room was still very much the scene of a brutal crime, and the frigid air was a rich effluvium of blood and destruction. The bed acted as centrepiece with its writhing confusion of blood-soaked linens and its single, deadly gash that spoke eloquently of the manner in which the woman had died. Donning latex gloves, the three men approached it with a fair degree of respect: Lynley taking in the room with a sweeping glance, Macaskin pocketing Francesca Gerrard's master keys, and St. James scrutinising those scant feet and inches of horrifying catafalque as if they could reveal to him the ident.i.ty of their maker.

As the other two watched, St. James removed a small folding ruler from his pocket and, leaning over the bed, delicately probed the ugly puncture at the centre top. The mattress was unusual, wool-filled in the manner of a tick. Packing of this sort would make it soothingly comfortable, moulded to shoulders, hips, and the small of one's back. And it had the additional benefit of having shaped itself cooperatively round the intrusive murder weapon, faultlessly reproducing the direction of entry.

"One thrust," St. James said to the others over his shoulder. "Right-handed, delivered from the left side of the bed."

Inspector Macaskin spoke curtly. "Possible for a woman?"

"If the dirk was sharp enough," St. James responded, "it would take no great force to drive it through a woman's neck. Another woman could have done it." He looked pensive. "But why is it that one can't really imagine a woman committing a crime such as this?"

Macaskin's eyes were on the immense stain that was not yet dry upon the mattress. "Sharp, yes. d.a.m.ned sharp," he said moodily. "A killer covered with blood?"

"Not necessarily. I should guess that he would have blood on his right hand and arm, but if he managed it quickly and shielded himself with the bed linen, he might well have got away with just a spot or two. And that, if he didn't panic, could easily be wiped off on one of the sheets and that spot on the sheet then mingled in with the blood that the wound produced."

"What about his clothing?"

St. James examined the two pillows, set them on a chair, and peeled back the bottom sheet from the mattress a careful inch at a time. "The killer might well have worn no clothes at all," he noted. "It would be far easier to see to it in the nude. Then he could return to his room, or to her room," this with a nod at Macaskin, "and wash the blood off with soap and water. If there was any on him in the first place."

"That would be a risk, wouldn't it?" Macaskin asked. "Not to mention cold as the d.i.c.kens."

St. James paused to compare the hole in the sheet with that in the mattress. "The entire crime was a risk. Joy Sinclair might well have awakened and screamed like a banshee."

"If she was asleep in the first place," Lynley noted. He had gone to the dressing table near the window. A jumble of articles took up its surface: make-up, hair brushes, hair dryer, tissues, a ma.s.s of jewellery among which were three rings, five silver bangles, and two strings of coloured beads. A gold hoop earring lay on the floor. "St. James," Lynley said, his eyes on the table, "when you and Deborah go to an hotel, do you lock the door?"

"As soon as possible," he replied with a smile. "But I suppose that comes from living in the same house with one's father-in-law. A few days out of his presence and we become hopeless reprobates, I'm ashamed to say. Why?"

"Where do you leave the key?"

St. James looked from Lynley to the door. "In the keyhole, generally."

"Yes." From the dressing table, Lynley picked up the door key by the metal ring that attached the key to its plastic identification tab. "Most people do. So why do you suppose Joy Sinclair locked the door and put the key on the dressing table?"

"There was an argument last night, wasn't there? She was part of it. She may well have been distracted or upset when she came in. She may have locked the door and tossed the key there in a fit of temper."

"Possibly. Or perhaps she wasn't the one who locked the door at all. Perhaps she didn't come in by herself but with someone else who did the locking up while she waited in the bed." Lynley noticed that Inspector Macaskin was pulling at his lip. He said to him, "You don't agree?"

Macaskin chewed on the side of his thumb for a moment before he dropped his hand with a look of distaste, as if it had climbed to his mouth of its own volition. "As to someone being with her," he said, "no, I don't think so."

Lynley dropped the key back on to the dressing table and went to the wardrobe, opening the doors. Inside, clothes hung in a haphazard arrangement; shoes were tossed to the back; a pair of blue jeans was in a heap on the floor; a suitcase yawned, displaying stockings and bra.s.sieres.

Lynley looked through these items and turned back to Macaskin. "Why not?" he asked him as St. James crossed the room to the chest of drawers and began going through it.

"Because of what she was wearing," Macaskin explained. "You couldn't have recognised much from the CID photographs, but she had on a man's pyjama top."

"Doesn't that make it even more likely that someone was with her?"

"You're thinking that she had on the pyjama top of whoever came to see her. I can't agree."

"Why not?" Lynley closed the wardrobe door and leaned against it, his eyes on Macaskin.

"Realistically then," Macaskin began with the a.s.surance of an exponent who has given his subject a great deal of prior thought, "does a man bent on seduction go to a woman's room in his oldest pyjamas? Top she had on was thin, washed many times and worn through at the elbows in two separate spots. At least six or seven years old, I should guess. Possibly older. Not exactly what one would expect a man to have on or, for that matter, to leave as a memento for a woman to wear after a night of lovemaking."

"How you describe it," Lynley said thoughtfully, "it sounds more like a talisman, doesn't it?"

"Indeed." Lynley's agreement seemed to encourage Macaskin to warm to his topic. He paced the distance from bed to dressing table and from there to the wardrobe, using his hands for emphasis. "And supposing it had always belonged to her and came from no man at all. Would she wait for a lover in her oldest bedclothes? I hardly think so."

"I agree," St. James said from the chest of drawers. "And considering that we've not one reasonable sign of a struggle, we have to conclude that even if she wasn't asleep when the murderer entered-if it was someone she let in the room for a friendly chat-she certainly was asleep when he plunged the dirk through her throat."

"Or perhaps not asleep," Lynley said slowly. "But taken completely by surprise, by someone she had reason to trust. But in that case, wouldn't she have locked the door herself?"

"Not necessarily," Macaskin said. "The murderer could have locked it, killed her, and-"

"Returned to Helen's room," Lynley finished coldly. His head snapped towards St. James. "By G.o.d-"

"Not yet," St. James replied.

THEY GATHERED at a small magazine-covered table by the window and sat surveying the room companionably. Lynley flipped through the a.s.sortment of periodicals; St. James lifted the lid of the teapot on the abandoned morning tray and gave consideration to the transparent film that had formed on the liquid; and Macaskin tapped a pen in staccato against the bottom of his shoe.

"We've two lapses of time," St. James said. "Twenty minutes or more between the discovery of the body and the call to the police. Then nearly two hours between the call to the police and their arrival here." He gave his attention to Macaskin. "And your crime-scene men weren't able to go over the room thoroughly before you had the call from your CC, ordering you back to the station?"

"That's right."

"Then you may as well have them go over the room now if you want to phone for them. I don't expect we'll gain much from the effort, though. Any amount of apocryphal evidence could have been planted in here during that time."

"Or removed," Macaskin noted blackly. "With only Lord Stinhurst's word that he locked all the doors and waited for us and did nothing else."

That remark struck a chord in Lynley. He got to his feet and went without speaking from the chest of drawers to the wardrobe to the dressing table. The other two watched as he opened doors and drawers and looked behind furniture.

"The script," he said. "They were here to work on a script, weren't they? Joy Sinclair was the author. So where is it? Why are there no notes? Where are all the scripts?"

Macaskin jumped to his feet. "I'll see to that," he said and vanished in an instant.

As the one door closed behind him, the second door opened. "We're ready in here," Sergeant Havers said from Lady Helen's room.

Lynley looked at St. James. He peeled off his gloves. "I'm not the least looking forward to this," he admitted.

LADY HELEN had never really thought about how much her self-confidence was tied up in a daily bath. Having been forbidden that simple luxury, she had become ridiculously consumed by a need to bathe that was thwarted by Sergeant Havers' simple, "Sorry. I have to stay with you and I should guess you'd rather not have me scrubbing your back." As a result, she felt at odds with herself, like a woman forced to wear skin that was not her own.

At least they had compromised on makeup, although seeing to her face under the watchful eye of the detective sergeant made Lady Helen distinctly uncomfortable, as if she were a mannequin on display. This feeling increased while she dressed, pulling on clothing that first came to hand without the least regard for what it was or how it looked upon her. She knew only the cool movement of silk, the scratchy pull of wool. As to what the garments were, as to whether they matched one another or were a battle of colours taking her appearance down to perdition, she could not have said.

And all the time she could hear St. James, Lynley, and Inspector Macaskin in the next room. They were not talking at any particular volume, yet she heard them with ease. So she wondered what on earth she would tell them when they asked her-as they no doubt would-why she had never managed to hear a single sound in the night from Joy Sinclair. She was still pondering this question when Sergeant Havers opened the second door to let St. James and Lynley into the room.

She turned to face them. "What a mess I am, Tommy," she said with a cheerful smile. "You must swear by every sartorial G.o.d there is that you'll never tell anyone I was wearing a dressing gown and slippers at four in the afternoon."

Without answering, Lynley stopped by an armchair. It was high-backed, upholstered in a pattern that matched the room's wallpaper-roses on cream-and set on an angle three feet from the door. He appeared to be examining it for no particular reason and at some considerable length. Then he bent, and from behind it he picked up a man's black tie which he laid across the back of the chair with steady deliberation. With a final look round the room, he nodded at Sergeant Havers, who opened her notebook. At all this, Lady Helen's additional score of light-hearted preliminary remarks, designed to break through the professional reticence that she had encountered from Lynley in the library, died a sudden death. He had the upper hand. Lady Helen saw in an instant how he meant to use it.

"Sit down, Helen." When she would have chosen another place, he said, "At the table, please."

Like the arrangement of furniture in Joy Sinclair's room, the table was placed beneath a bay window, the curtains undrawn. Darkness had fallen quickly outside, and the pane reflected both ghostly reflections and gold streaks of lamplight from the bedside table against the far wall. A cobwebbing of frost patterned itself against the window outside, and Lady Helen knew that if she put her hand to the gla.s.s, it would feel burning cold, like a clear sheet office.

She walked to one of the chairs. They were eighteenth-century pieces upholstered in yet unfaded tapestry bearing a mythological scene. Lady Helen knew she should recognise the young man and nymph-like woman who reached out to each other in the pastoral set-ting-indeed, she knew that Lynley himself probably did. But whether it was Paris eager for the promised reward after rendering judgement, or Echo pining for Narcissus, she could not have said. And more, at the moment, she didn't particularly care.

Lynley joined her at the table. His eyes rested on the telling items that covered it: a bottle of cognac, an overfull ashtray, and a Delft plate of oranges, one partially peeled but then discarded, yet still exuding a faint citrus scent. He took these in as Sergeant Havers pulled the dressing table's stool over to join them and St. James made a slow circuit of the room.

Lady Helen had seen St. James work a hundred times before. She knew how unlikely it was that any detail would escape him. Yet, watching his familiar routine directed at her this time, she felt a tightening of muscles as she witnessed him engage in a cursory examination of the tops of chest of drawers and dressing table, of wardrobe and floor. It was like a violation, and when he threw back the covers of her unmade bed and ran his eyes speculatively over the sheets, her self-control snapped.

"My G.o.d, Simon, is that absolutely necessary?"

None of them answered. But their silence was enough. And the combination of having been locked up for nearly nine hours like a common criminal and sitting here now while they proposed to question her dispa.s.sionately-as if they were not all three tied together by years of pain and friendship-caused anger to swell like a tumour within her. She fought against it with limited success. Her eyes moved back to Lynley, and she made herself ignore the sounds of St. James' movement in the room behind her.

"Tell us about the row that occurred last night."

From their behaviour, Lady Helen had expected Lynley's first question to concern itself with the bedroom. This unexpected start took her by surprise, disarming her momentarily as he no doubt intended.

"I wish I could. All I know for certain is that it involved the play Joy Sinclair was writing. Lord Stinhurst and she had a terrible quarrel about it. Joanna Ellacourt was furious as well."

"Why?"

"From what I could gather, the play Joy brought with her for this weekend run-through was considerably different from the play that everyone signed on to do in London. She did announce at dinner that she'd made a few changes here and there, but evidently the changes were far more extensive than anyone was prepared for. It was still a murder mystery, but little else was the same. So the argument grew from there."

"When did all this occur?"

"We'd gone into the sitting room to do a read-through of the script. The quarrel broke out not five minutes into it. It was so odd, Tommy. They'd hardly begun when Francesca-Lord Stinhurst's sister-absolutely leaped to her feet, as if she'd had the most dreadful shock of her life. She began shouting at Lord Stinhurst, saying something like, 'No! Stuart, stop her!' and then she tried to get out of the room. Only she became confused, or lost her way, because she backed directly into a large curio cabinet and smashed it to pieces. I can't think how she managed not to cut herself to shreds in the process, but she didn't."

"What was everyone else doing?"

Lady Helen sketched out each person's behaviour as best she remembered it: Robert Gabriel staring at Stuart Rintoul, Lord Stinhurst, obviously waiting for him either to deal with Joy or to go to his sister's aid; Irene Sinclair growing pale to the very lips as the situation escalated; Joanna Ellacourt flinging her script down and stalking out of the room in a rage, followed a moment later by her husband David Sydeham; Joy Sinclair smiling across the walnut reading table at Lord Stinhurst, and that smile apparently firing him into action so that he jumped to his feet, grabbed her arm, and dragged her into the morning room next door, slamming the door behind them. Lady Helen concluded with: "And then Elizabeth Rintoul went after her aunt Francesca. She appeared...it was hard to tell, but she may have been crying, which seems a bit out of character for her."

"Why?"

"I don't know. Elizabeth seems to have given up crying some time ago," Lady Helen replied. "She's given up on lots of things, I think. Joy Sinclair, among them. They used to be close friends, from what Rhys told me."

"You haven't mentioned what he did after the read-through," Lynley pointed out. But he gave her no time to answer, saying instead, "Stinhurst and Joy Sinclair had the quarrel by themselves, then? The others weren't involved?"

"Only Stinhurst and Joy. I could hear their voices from the morning room."

"Shouting?"

"A bit from Joy. But actually I didn't hear much from Stinhurst. He doesn't seem to be the kind of man who has to raise his voice to get one's attention, does he? So the only thing I really heard clearly was Joy shouting hysterically about someone called Alec. She said Alec knew and Lord Stinhurst killed him because of it."

Next to her, Lady Helen heard Sergeant Havers' indrawn breath, which was followed by a speculative look in Lynley's direction. Immediately comprehending, Lady Helen hurried on to say: "But surely that was a metaphorical statement, Tommy. A bit like, 'If you do that, you'll kill your mother.' You know what I mean. And at any rate, Lord Stinhurst didn't even respond to it. He just left, saying something like as far as he was concerned, she was through. Or words to that effect."