Believing the Lie (39 page)

Mignon said, “I can hardly hold an umbrella while using this, can I?” in reference to the zimmer.

“A mac and a hat might have solved that problem,” her father said guilelessly. Notably, he hadn’t risen and his expression indicated he was fully aware of her ploy.

“I forgot it,” Mignon said.

Valerie said, “Here. Sit by the fire, darling. I’ll fetch some towels for your hair.”

“Don’t bother,” Mignon said. “I’ll be walking back in a moment.
You’re dining soon, aren’t you? As I had no invitation to join you this evening, I don’t want to take up too much of your time.”

“You don’t need an invitation,” Valerie said. “You’re always welcome. But since you’ve preferred…because of…” Clearly, she didn’t want to say more in front of Lynley.

Just as clearly, Mignon did. She said, “I’ve had a gastric band, Thomas. Big as an ox, I was. You wouldn’t believe how big. Destroyed my knees heaving my fat round the planet for a good twenty years, so they’ll be replaced next. The knees, I mean. Then I’ll be as good as new and some bloke’ll come along and take me off my parents’ hands. Or so they hope.”

She made her way across the room and lowered herself into the chair her mother had vacated. She said to her father, “I could do with a sherry myself,” and to Lynley, “I thought at first that’s why you’d come. Stupid of me, I know, but you’ve got to consider who my father is. Always has a scheme, my dad. I knew you were part of one as soon as I saw you. I just misjudged what the scheme actually was, thinking you’d come to have a look at me, if you know what I mean.”

“Mignon, really,” her mother said.

“I think I’ll take those towels after all.” Mignon seemed to like the idea of ordering Valerie about. She looked quite gratified when her mother went off to do her bidding. Her father in the meantime hadn’t moved, so she said to him, “That sherry, Dad?”

Bernard, Lynley thought, looked like a man who was about to say something he’d regret. In any other circumstances, Lynley would have waited to see what that something was, but his natural inclination towards civility got the better of him. He set his own glass of sherry on the table next to his chair. He said, “Let me,” and Bernard cut him off with, “I’ll get it, Tommy.”

“Make it a big one,” Mignon told her father. “I’ve just had a successful romantic interlude with Mr. Seychelles and while normally one has a fag for afters, I’d prefer to get sloshed.”

Fairclough observed his daughter. His expression was so obviously one of distaste that Mignon chuckled.

“Have I offended you?” she asked. “So sorry.”

Her father poured sherry into a tumbler, a great deal of sherry. That, Lynley thought, was certainly going to do the job if the woman tossed it back. He had a feeling she fully intended to do so.

Fairclough was handing the drink over to his daughter when Valerie returned, towels in hand. She went to Mignon and set about drying her hair, gently. Lynley expected Mignon to show a burst of irritation and to brush the ministration aside. She didn’t. Instead, she allowed her hair to be seen to, along with her neck and her face.

She said, “Mother never comes for a friendly visit. Did you know that, Thomas? What I mean is that she brings me food—rather like giving alms to the poor like the lady of the manor she is—but just to drop in for a chat? That hasn’t happened in years. So when it did occur today, I was all amazement. What
can
the old dear want, I thought.”

Valerie dropped her hands and the towel from her daughter’s hair. She looked at her husband. He said nothing. They both seemed to gird themselves for some kind of onslaught, and Lynley found himself wondering how on earth they’d got themselves into this sort of position with their own daughter.

Mignon took a healthy gulp of her sherry. She held the glass with both hands, like a priest with a chalice. “Mother and I have nothing to talk about, you see. She has no interest in hearing about my life, and believe me, I have no interest in hers. This rather limits one’s conversation. After the weather, what’s there to talk about? I mean, aside from her dreary topiary garden and her even drearier children’s playground or whatever it is.”

Her father finally said, “Mignon, are you joining us for dinner or have you another purpose for your call?”

“Do not,” Mignon said, “back me into a corner. You do not want that.”

“Darling,” her mother began.

“Please. If there’s a
darling
in the family, we both know I’m not it.”

“That’s not true.”

“God.” Mignon rolled her eyes at Lynley. “It’s been Nicholas, Nicholas since the day he was born, Thomas. A son at last and all
the attendant hallelujahs. But that’s not what I’ve come here about. I want to talk about that pathetic little cripple.”

For a moment, Lynley had no idea whom she actually meant. He was, of course, acutely aware that St. James was disabled since he himself had been the cause of the accident that had injured him. But to apply either
pathetic
or
little
to the man he’d known since their school days was so inapposite a description that for a moment he thought Mignon was speaking of someone else entirely. She disabused him of that notion when she went on.

“Mother didn’t last as long as she was evidently supposed to last in my company. Once she left, I wondered why she’d come at all, and it wasn’t difficult to suss that out. There you all were, Dad, coming up from the boathouse. You, Thomas here, and the cripple. And Thomas looked like he’d had a wetting if the towels and his hair were anything to go by. But not the cripple. He was quite dry. As you were, Dad.” Another hefty gulp of sherry followed before she continued. “Now the towels suggest our Thomas went down to the boathouse prepared. He didn’t just slip and fall into the water and since his clothes weren’t wet, I think we’ve got corroboration for that assumption. Which means he went into the water intentionally. This not being the season for taking a dip in the lake, he had to have had another reason. I’m thinking that reason has to do with Ian. How am I doing?”

Lynley felt Fairclough glance his way. Valerie looked nervously from her daughter to her husband. Lynley said nothing. It was, he reckoned, up to Fairclough to confirm or deny what was going on. As far as he was concerned, being open with his reasons for his visit to Ireleth Hall was wiser than attempting to maintain a pretence for his presence.

Fairclough, however, said nothing to his daughter. She took this for assent, it seemed. She said, “So that means you believe Ian’s death was no accident, Dad. At least that’s what I reckoned when I saw the three of you coming up from the lake. A few seconds on the Net was actually all it took to learn who our visitor here really is, by the way. Had you wanted to keep the information from me, you needed to come up with a pseudonym.”

“No one was keeping anything from you, Mignon,” her father informed her. “Tommy’s here at my invitation. The fact that he’s also a policeman has no bearing—”

“A detective,” Mignon corrected. “A Scotland Yard detective, Dad, and I assume you know that. And since he’s here at your invitation and he’s prowling round the boathouse in the company of
whoever
that other bloke was, I think I can connect the dots well enough.” She turned in her chair so that her focus was on Lynley and not her father. Her mother had stepped away from her, towels in her hands. Mignon said to Lynley, “So you’re conducting a little investigation on the sly. Engineered by…? Well, it can’t be Dad, can it?”

“Mignon,” her father said.

She went on. “Because
that
suggests that Dad himself is innocent, which, frankly, isn’t very likely.”

“Mignon!” Valerie cried. “That’s a terrible thing to say.”

“Do you think so? But Dad’s got a reason for offing our Ian. Haven’t you, Dad?”

Fairclough made no reply to his daughter. His look at Mignon betrayed nothing. Either he was used to this sort of conversation with her or he knew she would go no further with what she was claiming. A tense moment passed as they all waited for more. Outside, a gust of wind sent something against the windows of the small drawing room. Valerie was the one to flinch.

Mignon said, “But then, so do I. Isn’t that correct, Dad?” She leaned back in her chair, enjoying herself. Looking at her father, she nonetheless directed her next words to Lynley. “Dad doesn’t know that I know Ian wanted to cut me off, Thomas. He was always poring over the books, our Ian, looking for ways to save Dad money. Well, I’m certainly one of them. There’s the folly itself, which cost a bundle to build, and then there’s its maintenance, as well as my own. And as you no doubt used your detective skills to suss out when you paid your call upon me, I do like to spend a bit of money here and there. Considering the piles Dad’s made for the firm over the years, what I need isn’t a lot, of course. But to Ian it was far more than I deserved. To his credit, Dad never agreed with him. But we both
know—Dad and I—that there was always a chance that he’d change his mind and go along with Ian’s suggestion to throw me out on my ear. Isn’t that correct?”

Fairclough’s face was stony. Her mother’s face was watchful. This offered more information than either of them might have given Lynley otherwise.

“Valerie,” Bernard finally said, his gaze on his daughter, “I think it’s time for dinner, don’t you? Mignon will be leaving presently.”

Mignon smiled. She gulped down the rest of her sherry. She said pointedly, “I believe I’ll need some help to get back to the folly, Dad.”

“I expect you’ll do fine on your own,” he replied.

CHALK FARM TO VICTORIA
LONDON

B
arbara Havers shrieked when she saw herself in the bathroom mirror, having stumbled towards the loo upon rising in the early morning and having forgotten that her appearance was decidedly altered. Her heart leapt in her chest, and she swung round ready to confront the woman she saw in an oblique angle of the mirror. It was a matter of seconds only, but she felt every which way the fool as she came to her senses and all of yesterday came sweeping back in the form of a hot wave of what was not quite shame but not quite anything else, either.

She’d rung Angelina Upman on her mobile after she’d visited the building in which Bernard Fairclough’s associate Vivienne Tully lived. She’d said she was in Kensington and it looked like she was going to have to cancel “the hair thing,” as she called it, being so far from Chalk Farm at the moment. But Angelina enthused on the matter: Heavens, Kensington was just a hop from Knightsbridge. They’d meet there instead of going in each other’s company. Hadiyyah had weighed in, hearing her mother’s end of the conversation. She’d got onto the mobile and said, “You
can’t
, Barbara. And anyways,
you’re under
orders
, you know.
And
it’s not going to hurt.” She’d lowered her voice and gone on to say, “And it’s the Dorchester, Barbara. Tea at the
Dor
chester afterwards. Mummy says they’ve got someone who plays the piano while you have your tea and she says someone’s always walking round with silver trays
heaped
with sandwiches and she says someone brings fresh scones that’re hot and then there are cakes. Lots of cakes, Barbara.”

Barbara reluctantly agreed. She would meet them in Knightsbridge. Anything to be served tea sandwiches from a silver platter.

The big event at the hair salon had been what Barbara knew a pop psychologist would have called a growth experience. Dusty—Angelina’s stylist—had fully lived up to her description of him. When Barbara was ensconced in the chair of one of his underlings, he’d come over from his own station, taken one look at her, and said, “God. And what century is it that you’re representing?” He was thin, handsome, spiky haired, and so tan for the month of November that only hours in a tanning bed could have possibly effected such a dubious glow of precancerous health. He hadn’t waited for Barbara to come up with a witty reply to this. Instead, he’d turned to the underling and said, “Bob it, foil it with one-eighty-two and sixty-four.
And
I’m going to want to check your work.” He then said to Barbara, “Really, you’ve gone this long. You could have waited another six weeks and I’d have seen to you myself. What on earth do you use for shampoo?”

“Fairy Liquid. I use it for everything.”

“You’re joking of course. But it’s something from the shampoo aisle in the supermarket, isn’t it?”

“Where else am I supposed to buy shampoo?”

He rolled his eyes in horror. “God.” And then to Angelina, “You’re looking gorgeous as always,” after which he air-kissed her and left Barbara in the hands of the underling. Hadiyyah he ignored altogether.

At the end of what had seemed like a period in Hades to Barbara, she had emerged from the ministrations of Dusty’s underling with sleekly bobbed hair that was highlighted with streaks of shimmering blond and with subtle strands of auburn. The underling—who
turned out not to be Cedric after all but rather a young woman from Essex, nice despite her four lip rings and her chest tattooes—gave her instructions about the care and maintenance of her locks, which did not involve the use of Fairy Liquid or anything else save a supremely costly bottle of elixir that apparently was going to “preserve the colour, improve the body, repair the follicles,” and, one assumed, alter one’s social life.

Barbara paid for it all with a shudder. She wondered if women truly poured this much lolly into something that could as easily be seen to in the shower every now and again.

Nonetheless, when she showered that morning, she protected the costly hairstyle from the water by wrapping it in cling film first. She was shrouded in an overlarge pair of flannel drawstring trousers and a hoody and toasting herself a strawberry Pop-Tart when she heard the excited chatter of Hadiyyah at her door, followed by the little girl’s knock upon it.

“Are you there? Are you there?” Hadiyyah cried. “I’ve brought Dad to see your new hair, Barbara.”

“No, no, no,” Barbara whispered. She wasn’t actually ready for anyone to see her yet, least of all Taymullah Azhar, whose voice she could hear but whose words she could not distinguish. She waited in silence, hoping that Hadiyyah would assume she was already off for the day, but really, how could she? It wasn’t eight in the morning and Hadiyyah knew Barbara’s habits, and even if she hadn’t known, Barbara’s Mini was in full view of Azhar’s flat. There was nothing for it but to open the door.