Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

happy about that. A freehold, as well. And that’s nothing to sniff at, is it?”
    “Ah. Indeed not,” he said.
    “You’re less than wildly enthusiastic,” she said. “But you must consider its benefits.”
    “I’m all ears and ready to embrace them as they are spoken.”
    “Right.” She took his arm and they strolled back towards the sitting room, although in the narrow corridor this was something of a careful manoeuvre. “Number one is that it’s not terribly far from the zoo. I can bicycle there in a quarter hour. No need for transport. I could even sell my car. Which I won’t, of course, but the point is that I needn’t deal with traffic to get to work. That and the benefit of the exercise as well. It’s actually . . . well, it’s heavenly, Tommy.”
    “I’d no idea you were a cyclist,” he said mildly. “Roller derby, tournament darts, cycling . . . You’re full of surprises. Is there more I should know?”
    “Yoga, running, and skiing,” she said. “Trekking as well, but not as often as I would like.”
    “I’m humbled,” he said. “If I walk to the corner for a newspaper, I feel virtuous.”
    “I know you’re lying,” she told him. “I can see it in your eyes.”
    He smiled, then. He held up the bottle of champagne he carried. He said, “I’d thought . . . Well, I have to say I expected something . . . a bit different. Sitting on a sofa, perhaps. Or in a pleasant garden. Or even sprawled on a tasteful Persian rug. But in any case, christening the place and welcoming you to London and . . . I daresay, whatever followed.”
    Her lips curved. “I don’t see why we can’t do that anyway. I am, as you know, quite a simple girl at heart.”
    “Requiring what?” he asked. “I mean, of course, for the christening.”
    “Requiring, as it happens, only you.”
    BELGRAVIA
    LONDON
    It was just past midnight when he arrived home. He felt filled with emotions that would take time to sort through. There was, for the first time, a rightness about the life he was leading. Something fragile and previously broken was being reconstructed one extremely careful piece at a time.
    The house was dark. Denton had, as always, left a single light burning at the foot of the stairs. He switched it off and climbed upward in the darkness. He made his way to his room, where he felt for the wall and flipped on the light. He stood for a moment, considering all of it: the great mahogany bed, the chest of drawers, the two vast wardrobes. In silence, he crossed to the embroidered stool that stood in front of the dressing table. Across the glass-topped surface of this, Helen’s perfumes and jars still stood untouched as she had left them on the last day of her life.
    He picked up her brush. Still it held a few strands of her chestnut hair. For less than a year he’d been able to watch her as she’d brushed it at the end of the day, just a few strokes as she chatted to him.
Tommy darling, we’ve had an invitation to a dinner that—may I be honest?—will be nothing short of the soporific that the world of science has been seeking for decades. Can we come up with an artful excuse? Or do you wish for torture?
I can go either way, as it happens. You know my facility for looking fascinated while my brain atrophies. But I have my doubts about your ability to dissemble so well. So . . . what shall I do?
And then she’d turn, come to the bed, join him, and allow him to mess the hair she’d only just brushed. Whether they went to the dinner or not made little difference to him, as long as she was there.
    “Ah, Helen,” he whispered. “Helen.”
    He closed his fingers over the hairbrush. He carried it to his chest of drawers. He opened the top one and, deep at the back, he placed the brush like the relic it had become. He closed the drawer carefully upon its contents.
    Upstairs, Charlie Denton was asleep as Lynley had expected. He knew that he could leave things until the morning, but he felt that this was the moment and he did have some fear that it wouldn’t come again. So he went to Denton’s bed and touched his shoulder. He said his name, and the younger man was instantly awake.
    Denton said quite unusually, “Your brother . . . ?” for the fact of Peter Lynley’s addictions and his battles with them was something they did not generally discuss. But wakened so suddenly, what else would he think? Only that something terrible had occurred to a member of his family.
    Lynley said, “No, no.