"But decapitate her first husband?"Havers frowned. "Would have been easier to divorce him, I'd think."
"No. Not for a Catholic."
"Even so, Russell's a better candidate if you ask me. Who knows where he went?"When Lynley didn't reply, she added, "Sir?"
"I…"Lynley hesitated, studying the road ahead. "Tessa's right. He's gone to London."
"How can you be certain of that?"
"Because I think I saw him, Havers. At the Yard."
"So he did go to turn her in. I suppose she knew all along that he would."
"No. I don't think so."
Havers offered a new thought. "Well, then there's Ezra."
Lynley flashed her a smile. "William in his jimjams in the middle of the
road ripping up Ezra's watercolours while Ezra curses him to hell and
back? We could have a motive for murder there. I don't think an artist
would take lightly to having someone rip up his work."
Havers opened her mouth, stopped. She reflected for a moment. "But it wasn't his pyjamas."
"Yes, it was."
"It wasn't. It was his dressing gown. Remember? Nigel said his legs
reminded him of a gorilla. So what was he doing in his dressing gown? It
was still light out. It wasn't time for bed."
"Changing for dinner, I dare say. He's up in his room, looks out the
window, sees Ezra trespassing, and comes charging into the yard."
"I suppose that could be it."
"What else?"
"Exercising, perhaps?"
"Deep knee bends in his underwear? That's hard to picture."
"Or…perhaps with Olivia?"
Lynley smiled. "Not if everything we've heard about him is true. William
sounds to me like a strictly after-marriage man. I don't think he'd try
any funny business with Olivia beforehand."
"What about Nigel Parrish?"
"What about him?"
"Walking the dog back to the farm out of the goodness of his heart, like
a card-carrying member of the RSPCA? Doesn't that whole story seem a
bit off to you?"
"It does. But do you really think Parrish would want to get his hands
dirty with a bit of William Teys's blood? Not to mention his head
rolling across the stall fl oor."
"To be honest, he seems the type to faint at the sight."
They laughed, a fi rst shared communication. It dropped almost
immediately into an uncomfortable silence at the sudden realisation that
they could become friends.
The decision to go to Barnstingham Mental Asylum grew out of Lynley's
belief that Roberta held all the cards in the current game they were
playing: the identity of the murderer, the motive behind the crime, and
the disappearance of Gillian Teys. He'd stopped an hour out of York to
make the arrangements by telephone, and now, pulling the car to a stop
on the gravel drive in front of the building, he turned to Barbara.
"Cigarette?"He offered his gold case.
"No, sir. Thank you."
He nodded, glanced at the imposing building, then back at her. "Rather
wait here, Sergeant?"he asked as he lit his cigarette with the silver
lighter. He took a few moments about replacing all the impedimenta of
his habit.
She watched him with speculative eyes. "Why?"
He shrugged casually. Too casually, she noted. "You look fagged out. I thought you might want a bit of a rest."
Fagged out. It was his public-school-fop act. She'd begun to notice how
he used it occasionally to serve the need of the moment. He'd dropped it
earlier. Why was he picking it up now?
"If we're talking about exhaustion, Inspector, you look just about ready to drop. What's up?"
He examined himself in the mirror at her words, his cigarette dangling
from his lips, his eyes narrowed against the smoke, part Sam Spade, part
Algernon Moncrieff. "I do look a sight."He busied himself about his
appearance for a moment: straightening his tie, examining his hair,
brushing at nonexistent lint on the lapels of his jacket. She waited.
Finally he met her eyes. The fop, as well as the other personae, was
gone. "The farm upset you a bit yesterday,"he said frankly. "I have an
idea that what we'll find in here is going to be a hell of a lot worse
than the farm."
For a moment she couldn't take her eyes from his, but she pressed her
hand to the door and flung it open. "I can deal with it, sir,"she said
abruptly and got out into the brisk autumn air.
"We've kept her confined,"Dr. Samuels was saying to Lynley as they
walked down the transverse passage that ran straight through the
building from east to west.
Barbara followed behind them, relieved to find that Barnstingham was not
exactly what she had pictured when she first heard the words mental
asylum. It was really not very hospital-like at all, an English baroque
building laid out on cross-axes. They had entered through a front hall
that rose two storeys, with fluted pilasters standing on plinths against
the walls. Light and colour were the operative words here, for the room
was painted a calming shade of peach, the decorative plasterwork was
white, the ankle-thick carpeting was merely a shade off rust, and while
the portraits were dark and moody, of the Flemish school, their subjects
managed to look suitably apologetic about the fact.
All this was a relief, for when Lynley had first mentioned the need to
see Roberta, to come to this place, Barbara had become quite faint, that
old insidious panic setting in. Lynley had seen it, of course. Damn the
man. He didn't miss a trick.
Now that she was inside the building, she felt steadier, a feeling that
improved once they left the great central hall and began their journey
down the passage. Here conviviality expressed itself in soothing
Constable landscapes and vases of fresh flowers and quiet voices in the
air. The sound of music and singing came from a distance.
"The choir,"Dr. Samuels explained. "Here, it's just this way."
Samuels himself had been a secondary source of both surprise and relief.
Outside the walls of the hospital, Barbara wouldn't have known he was a
psychiatrist. Psychiatrist somehow conjured up images of Freud: a
bearded Victorian face, a cigar, and those speculative eyes. But Samuels
had the look of a man who was more at home on horseback or hiking
across the moors than probing disturbed psyches. He was well-built,
loose limbed, and clean shaven, with a tendency, Barbara guessed, to be
less than patient with anyone whose intelligence did not match his own.
He was probably the devil on a tennis court as well.
She'd begun to feel quite at ease with the hospital when Dr. Samuels
opened a narrow door—funny how it had been concealed by some
panelling—and led them into the new wing of the building. This was the
locked ward, looking and smelling exactly as Barbara had supposed a
locked ward would. The carpeting was a very dark, serviceable brown. The
walls were the colour of sunbaked sand, unadorned and broken only by
doors into which small windows were set at eye level. The air was filled
with that medicinal smell of antiseptics and detergents and drugs. And
it was cut by a low moaning that seemed to come from nowhere and
everywhere. It could have been the wind. It could have been anything.
Here it is, she told herself. The place for psychos, for girls who
decapitate daddies, for girls who murder. Lots of things are murder,
Barb.
"There's been absolutely nothing since her original statement,"Dr.
Samuels was saying to Lynley. "She's not catatonic. She's merely said
what she intends to say, I think."He glanced at the clipboard he was
carrying. "‘I did it. I'm sorry.' On the day the body was found. She's
not spoken since."
"There's no medical cause? She's been examined?"
Dr. Samuel's lips tightened in offence. It was clear that this Scotland
Yard intrusion bordered on insult, and if he had to impart information,
it would be minimal at best.
"She's been examined,"he said. "No seizure, no stroke. She can speak. She chooses not to."
If he was bothered by the clipped nature of the doctor's response,
Lynley didn't let it show. He was used to encountering attitudes like
the psychiatrist's, attitudes proclaiming that the police were
antagonists to be thwarted rather than allies to be helped. He slowed
his steps and told Dr. Samuel about Roberta's cache of food. This, at
least, caught the man's attention. When he next spoke, his words walked
the line between frustration and deeper thought.
"I don't know what to tell you, Inspector. The food could, as you guess,
be a compulsion. It could be a stimulus or a response. It could be a
source of gratification or a form of sublimation. Until Roberta's
willing to give us something to go on, it could be damn well anything."
Lynley shifted to another area. "Why did you take her from the Richmond police? Isn't that a bit irregular?"
