Payment In Blood Part 23

Darrow shook his head. "He's finished. Like his mum in that. Didn't hold much with books."

"Your wife didn't read?"

"Hannah? Girl never opened a book that I saw. Didn't even own one."

Lynley felt in his pocket for his cigarettes, lit one thoughtfully, opened the file on Hannah Darrow's death. He removed her suicide note. "That's odd, then, isn't it? Where do you suppose she copied this from?"

Darrow pressed his lips together as he recognised the paper Lynley had shown him once before. "I've nothing more to say on't."

"You do, I'm afraid." Lynley joined the man at the bar, Hannah's note in his hand. "Because she was murdered, Mr. Darrow, and I think you've known that for fifteen years. Frankly, up until this morning, I was certain you'd done the murdering yourself. Now I'm not so sure. But I have no intention of leaving today until you tell me the truth. Joy Sinclair died because she came too close to understanding what happened to your wife. So if you think her death is going to be swept aside because you'd rather not talk about what happened in this village in 1973, I suggest you reconsider. Or we can all go into Mildenhall and chat with Chief Constable Plater. The three of us. You and Teddy and I. For if you won't cooperate, I've no doubt your son has some pertinent memory of his mother."

"You leave the lad out of it! He's nothing to do with this! He's never known! He can't know!"

"Know what?" Lynley asked. The publican played with the porcelain pulls on the ale and the lager, but his face was wary. Lynley continued. "Listen to me, Darrow. I don't know what happened. But a sixteen-year-old boy- just like your son-was brutally murdered because he came too close to a killer. The same killer-I swear it, I feel it-who murdered your wife. And I know she was murdered. So for G.o.d's sake, help me before someone else dies."

Darrow stared at him dully. "A boy, you say?"

Lynley heard rather than saw the initial crumbling of Darrow's defences. He pressed the advantage mercilessly. "A boy called Gowan Kilbride. All he wanted in life was to go to London to be another James Bond. A boy's dream, wasn't it? But he died on the steps of a scullery in Scotland, with his face and chest scalded like cooked meat and a butcher knife in his back. And if the killer comes here next, wondering how much Joy Sinclair managed to learn from you...How in G.o.d's name will you protect your son's life or your own from a man or woman you don't even know!"

Darrow openly struggled with the weight of what Lynley was asking him to do: to go back into the past, to resurrect, to relive. This, in the hope that he and his son might be secure from a killer who had touched their lives with devastating cruelty so many years ago.

His tongue flicked across his dry lips. "It was a man."

DARROW LOCKED the pub door, and they moved to a table by the fire. He brought an unopened bottle of Old Bushmill's with him, twisted off the seal, and poured himself a tumbler. For at least a minute, he drank without speaking, fortifying himself for what he would ultimately have to say.

"You followed Hannah when she left the flat that night," Lynley guessed.

Darrow wiped his mouth on the back of his wrist. "Aye. She was to help me and one of the local la.s.ses in the pub, so I'd gone upstairs to fetch her, and I found a note on the kitchen table. Only, wasn't the same note as you've there in the file. Was one telling me she was leaving. Going with some fancy n.o.b to London. To be in a play."

Lynley felt a stirring of affirmation and with it a nascent vindication that told him that, in spite of everything he had heard from St. James and Helen, Barbara Havers and Stinhurst, his instincts had not led him wrong after all. "That's all the note said?"

Darrow shook his head darkly and looked down into his gla.s.s. The whisky gave off a heady smell of malt. "No. She took me to task...as a man. And did a bit of comparing so I'd know for certain what she'd been up to and what'd made her decide to leave. She wanted a real man, she said, one who knew how to love a woman proper, please a woman in bed. I'd never pleased her, she said. Never. But this bloke...She described how he did it to her so, she said, if I ever fancied having a woman in the future, I'd know how to do it right, for once. Like she was doing me a favour."

"How did you know where to find her?"

"Saw her. When I read the note, I went to the window. She must've only just left a minute or two before I went up to the flat because I saw her down at the edge of the village, carrying a big case, setting off on the path to the ca.n.a.l that runs through Mildenhall Fen."

"Did you think of the mill at once?"

"I thought of nothing but getting my hands on the b.l.o.o.d.y little b.i.t.c.h and beating her silly. But after a moment, I thought how much tastier it would be to follow her, catch her with him, and have at them both. So I kept my distance."

"She didn't see you following her?"

"It was dark. I kept to the far edge of the path where the growth is thickest. She turned round two or three times. I thought she knew I was there. But she just kept walking. She got a bit ahead of me where there's a bend in the ca.n.a.l, so I missed the turn to the mill and kept going for...perhaps three hundred yards. When I finally saw I'd lost her, I figured where she must be heading-there was little else out there-so I doubled back quick and made my way along the track to the mill. Her case was lying some thirty yards down the way."

"She'd gone on without it?"

"It was dead heavy. I thought she'd gone on to the mill to have that bloke come back for it. So I decided to wait and have at him right there on the path. Then I'd go on and see to her in the mill." Darrow poured himself another drink and shoved the bottle towards Lynley, who demurred. "But no one came back for the case," he went on. "I waited some five minutes. Then I crept up along the path to have a better look. Hadn't got as far as the clearing when this bloke come out of the mill at a run. He tore round the side. I heard a car start and take off. That was it."

"Did you get a look at him?"

"Too dark. I was too far away. I went on to the mill after a moment. And I found her." He set his gla.s.s on the table. "Hanging."

"Was she exactly as the police pictures show her?"

"Aye. Except there was a bit of paper sticking from her coat pocket, so I pulled that out. It was the note I gave to the police. When I read it, I saw how it was meant to look like a suicide."

"Yes. But it wouldn't have looked like suicide had you left her suitcase there. So you brought it home with you."

"I did. I took it upstairs. Then I raised a cry, using the note from her pocket. The other note I burned."

In spite of what the man had been through, Lynley found himself feeling a sore spot of anger. A life had been taken, callously, coldbloodedly. And for fifteen years the death had gone unavenged. "But why did you do all that?" he asked. "Surely you wanted her murderer brought to justice."

Darrow's look betrayed a derisive weariness. "You've no idea what it's like in a village like this, do you, pommy boy? You've no idea how it'd feel to a man, having his neighbours all know that his randy little wife'd been snuffed while she was trying to leave him for some ponce she thought'd make her feel better between her legs. And not snuffed by her husband, mind you, which everyone in the village would have understood, but by the very b.a.s.t.a.r.d who was poking her behind her husband's back. Are you trying to tell me that, had I let Hannah stand as murdered, none of that would have come out?" Although his voice rose incredulously, Darrow continued, as if to shun a response. "At least this way, Teddy's never had to know what his mum was really like. As far as I was concerned, Hannah was dead. And Teddy's peace of mind was worth letting her murderer go free."

"Better his mother should be a suicide than his father a cuckold?" Lynley enquired.

Darrow pounded a fist hard onto the stained table between them. "Aye! For it's me he's been living with these fifteen years. It's me he's to look in the eye every day. And when he does, he sees a man, by G.o.d. Not some puling fairy who couldn't hold a woman to her marriage vows. And do you think that bloke could have held on to her any better?" He poured more liquor, spilling it carelessly when the bottle slipped against the gla.s.s. "He promised her acting coaches, lessons, a part in some play. But when that all fell through, how much flaming-"

"A part in a play? Coaches? Lessons? How do you know that? Was it in her note?"

Jerking himself towards the fire, Darrow didn't answer. But Lynley suddenly saw a sure reason why Joy Sinclair must have made ten telephone calls to him, what she had been insistently seeking in her conversation with the man. No doubt in his anger he had inadvertently revealed to her the existence of a source of information she desperately needed to write her book.

"Is there a record, Darrow? Are there diaries? A journal?"

There was no response.

"Good G.o.d, man, you've come this far! Do you know her killer's name?"

"No."

"Then what do you know? How do you know it?"

Still Darrow watched the fire impa.s.sively. But his chest heaved with repressed emotion. "Diaries," he said. "Girl was always too b.l.o.o.d.y full of herself. She wrote everything down. They were in her valise. With all her other things."

Lynley took a desperate shot, knowing that if he phrased it as a question the man would claim he had destroyed them years ago. "Give the diaries to me, Darrow. I can't promise that Teddy will never learn the truth about his mother. But I swear to you that he won't learn it from me."

Darrow's chin lowered to his chest. "How can I?" he muttered.

Lynley pressed further. "I know Joy Sinclair brought everything back to you. I know she caused you grief. But for G.o.d's sake, did she deserve to die alone, with an eighteen-inch dagger plunged through her neck? Who of us deserves that kind of death? What crime committed in life is worth that kind of punishment? And Gowan. What about the boy? He'd done absolutely nothing, yet he died as well. Darrow! Think, man! You can't let their deaths count for nothing!"

And then there were no more words to be said. There was only waiting for the man to decide. The fire popped once. A large ember dislodged and fell from the grate to roll against the fender. Above them, Darrow's son continued with his ch.o.r.es. After an agonising pause, the man raised his heavy head.

"Come up to the flat," he said tonelessly.

THE FLAT was reached by an outer rather than an inner stairway, running up the rear of the building. Below it, a gravel-strewn path led through the tangled ma.s.s of a forlorn garden to a gate, beyond which the endless stretch of fields lay, broken only by an occasional tree, a ca.n.a.l, the hulking shape of a windmill on the horizon. Everything was colourless under the melancholy sky, and the air carried upon its rich peaty scent an acknowledgement of the generations of flooding and decay that had gone into the composition of this desolate part of the country. In the distance, drainage pumps rhythmically tuh-tumped.

Opening the door, John Darrow admitted Lynley into the kitchen where Teddy was on his hands and knees with scouring pads, rags, and a pail of water, seeing to the interior of a grimy oven well past its youth. The floor surrounding him was damp and dirty. From the radio on a counter, a male singer squawked in a catarrhal voice. At their entrance, Teddy looked up from his toil, grimacing disarmingly.

"Waited too long on this mess, Dad. I'd do a sight better with a chisel, I'm afraid." He grinned, wiping his hand on his face and laying a streak of something sludgy from cheekbone to jaw.

Darrow spoke to him with gruff affection. "Get below with you, lad. See to the pub. The oven can wait."

The boy was more than agreeable. He hopped to his feet and flicked off the radio. "I'll take a few rubs at it every day, shall I? That way," again the grin, "we might have it cleaned by next Christmas." He sketched a light-hearted salute in the air and left them.

When the door closed on the boy, Darrow spoke to Lynley. "I've her things in the attic. I'll thank you to look through them up there so Teddy won't come upon you and want to have a look for himself. It's cold. You'll want your coat. But at least there's a light."

He led the way through a meagrely furnished sitting room and down a shadowy hall off of which the flat's two bedrooms opened. At the end of this, a recessed trapdoor in the ceiling gave them access to the attic. Darrow shoved the door upwards and pulled down a collapsible metal stairway, fairly new by the look of it.

As if reading Lynley's mind, he said, "I come up here time and again. Whenever I need reminding."

"Reminding?"

Darrow responded to the question drily. "When I feel the urge for a woman. Then I have a look through Hannah's diaries. That cures the itch like nothing else." He heaved himself up the stairs.

The attic bore qualities not entirely unlike those of a tomb. It was eerily still, airless, and only slightly less cold than the out-of-doors. Dust hung thickly upon cartons and trunks, and sudden movements sent clouds of it fl ying upwards in suffocating bursts. It was a small room, filled with the scent of age: those vague odours of camphor, of musty clothing, of damp and rotting wood. A weak shaft of afternoon light sifted its way through a single, heavily streaked window near the roof.

Darrow pulled on a cord hanging from the ceiling, and a bulb cast a cone of light onto the floor beneath it. He nodded towards two trunks that sat on either side of a single wooden chair. Lynley noted that neither chair nor trunks were dusty. He wondered how often Darrow paid visits to this sepulchre of his marriage.

"Her things're in no sort of order," the man said, "as I wasn't much concerned with what I did with everything. The night she died I just dumped the case out into her chest of drawers as fast as I could before getting the village up to search. Then later, after the funeral, I packed everything up in those two trunks."

"Why did she wear two coats and two sweaters that night?"

"Greed, Inspector. She couldn't fit anything more into her case. So if she wanted to take them, she had to wear or carry them. I suppose wearing seemed easier. It was cold enough." Darrow took a set of keys from his pocket and unlocked the trunks on either side of the chair. He shoved the top off each and then said, "I'll leave you to it. The diary you want's on the top of the stack."

When Darrow was gone, Lynley put on his reading spectacles. But he did not reach at once for the five bound journals that lay on top of the clothes. Rather, he began by examining her other belongings, developing an idea of what Hannah Darrow had been like.

Her clothes were of the sort that are cheaply made with the hope of pa.s.sing themselves off as expensive. They were showy-beaded sweaters, clingy skirts, short gauzy dresses cut very low, trousers with narrow legs and flared bottoms and zips in the front. When he examined these, he saw how the material stretched and pulled away from the metal teeth. She had worn her clothes tight, moulded to her body.

A large plastic case gave off the strange odour of animal fat. It held a variety of inexpensive cosmetics and creams-a painter's box of eyeshadows, half a dozen tubes of very dark lipstick, an eyelash curler, mascara, three or four kinds of lotion, a package of cotton wool. Tucked into a pocket was a five months' supply of birth control pills. One set of the pills was partially used.

A shopping bag from Norwich contained a collection of new lingerie. But here again, her selections were tawdry, an uneducated girl's idea of what a man might find seductive. Insubstantial bikini panties of scarlet, black, or purple lace, overhung with garter belts of the same material and colour; diaphanous bra.s.sieres, cut low to the nipple and decorated with strategically placed, coy little bows; slithering petticoats slit to the waist; two nightgowns designed identically, without bodices and merely concocted with two wide satin straps that crisscrossed from waist to shoulders, covering nothing much at all.

Underneath this was a stack of photographs. Looking through them, Lynley saw that they were all of Hannah herself: each one showing her off at her best, whether she was posing on a stile, laughing down from horseback, or sitting on the beach with the wind in her hair. Perhaps they were to be publicity photographs. Or perhaps she had needed rea.s.surance that she was pretty or validation that she existed at all.

Lynley picked up the journal on top of the stack. Its cover was cracked with age, several of the pages were stuck together and a number of others had become swollen with the damp. He leafed through them carefully until he found the final entry, one-third of the way through. Written on March 25, 1973, it was the same childish handwriting that was on the suicide note, but unlike that note, this work was rich with misspellings and other errors.

Its settled. Im leaving tommorrow night. Im so glad its finally decided between us. We talked and talked tonight for hours to get it all planned out. When it was decided for good and all, I wanted to love him but he said no weve not enough time, Han, and for a moment I thought praps he was angry becouse he even pushed my hand away but then he smiled that melty smile of his and said darling love we'll have plenty of time for that every night of the week once we get to London. London!!! LONDON!!! This time tommorrow! He said his flats ready and that hes taken care of everything. I cann't think how Im going to get threw tommorrow thinking about him. Darling love. Darling love!

Lynley looked up, his eyes on the attic's single window and on the dust motes that floated in its weak oblong of light. He had not considered the possibility that he might feel even slightly moved by the words of a woman so long dead, a woman who painted herself with a garish array of colours, dressed herself with an eye for lubricity, and still managed to become caught up with excitement at the idea of a new life in a city that was for her a place of promise and dreams. Yet her words had indeed touched him somehow. With her buoyant confidence, she was like a water-starved plant, thriving for the very first time under someone's skill and attention. Even in addressing herself awkwardly to sensuality, she wrote with an unconscious innocence. Unschooled in the world, Hannah Darrow had ultimately made herself the perfect victim.

He began to flip forward through the journal, skimming the entries, looking for the point at which her relations.h.i.+p with the unidentified man began. He found it on January 15, 1973, and as he read, he felt the fire of certainty begin its slow burn through his veins.

Had the best time ever in Norwich today which is fair hard to beleive after the row with John. Me and Mum went to shop there as she said that should cheer me up proper. We stopped in for Aunt Pammy and took her along as well. (She'd been tippling again since the morning and smelled of gin-it was awful.) At lunch we saw a playbill and Pammy said we owed ourselfs a treat so she took us to the play mostly, I think, becouse she wanted to sleep it off which she did with proper snoring till the man behind her kicked her seat. I was never at a play befor, can you credit that? It was about some dutchess who gets pa.s.sed a dead mans hand and then ends up getting strangled and then everyone stabs each other. And one man kept talking about being a wolf. Quite a piece, I say. But the customes were real pretty Ive never seen nothing like them all these long gowns and head pieces. The ladys so pretty and the men wearing funny tights with little pouches in front. And in the end they gave the dutchess lady flowers and people stood and clapped. I read in the programe whear they travel all round the country doing plays. Fancy that. Made me want to do somthing as well. I hate being stuck in PGreen. Somtimes the pub makes me want to scream. And John wants to do it to me all the time and I just dont want it anymore. Ive not been right since the baby but he wont beleive me.

There followed a week in which she wearily catalogued her life in the village: a round of doing laundry, seeing to the baby's needs, talking to her mother on the telephone daily, cleaning the flat, working in the pub. She seemed to have no female friends. Nothing other than work and television occupied her time. On January 25, Lynley found the next pertinent entry.

Somthing happened. I can harly beleive it even when I think about it. I lied and told John I was bleeding again and had to see the doctor. A new doctor in Norwich, a specalist, I said. Said I'd stop by Aunt Pammy's for supper as well so he was not to worry if I was late. I cant think why I was clever enough to say that! I just wanted to see that play again and those customes! I didnt get a very good seat I was way in the back without my specs and it was a different play. Dead boring with lots of people talking about getting married or moving away and these three ladys hating the woman there brother married. Funny thing is that it was the same actors! And they were all so different from the other play. I cant think how they dont get mixed up. After it was over, I went round to the back. I just thought praps I could say a word to one or two of them or have them sign my programe. I waited for an hour. But everyone came out in couples or groups. Only 1 bloke was alone. I dont know who he played becouse like I said my seat was too far back but I wanted him to sign my programe only I got nervous. So I followed him!!! I cant think what made me do it. But he went to a pub and got himself a meal and drank and I watched him and finally I just walked up and said your in that play arent you? Will you sign my programe? Just like that. Cor he was hansome. He was real suprised so he asked me to sit down and we got to talking about the theatre and he said hes been involved in it for lots of years. I told him how much I liked the dutchess play and how pretty the customes were. And he said did I want to come back to the theatre and have a real look at them. He said they werent much to look at up close. He said I could probaly even try a custome on if no one was about. So we went back there! Its so big behind the stage! I didnt know what to think. All these dressing rooms and waiting areas and tables filled with props. And the sets! There made of wood and they look just like stones!!! We went into a dressing room and he showed me this row of customes. They were velvet! I never touched nothing so soft ever. So he said do you want to try it on. No one will know. And I did!!! Only when I took it off, my hair got caught in it and he worked it loose and then he started kissing my neck and running his hands all over me. And there was this couch thing in the corner but he said no, no right now on the floor and he pulled down all the gowns and we made love in the middle of them! Afterwards we heard a womans voice in the theatre and I was real scared and he said I dont b.l.o.o.d.y care who it is, Oh G.o.d I dont care, I dont care, and he laughed so happy and started in on me again! And it didnt even hurt!!! I was hot and cold and things happened inside and he laughed again and said silly girl thats how its sposed to be! He asked me will I come to him next week.Will I!!! I got home after midnight but John was still down in the pub so he didnt know. I hope he dosent want it. I cant think but it'll still hurt with him.

The next five days in the journal were reflections on the Norwich lovemaking, the sort of dramatic nonsense that lives in a young girl's head the first time a man fully awakens her to the joys-rather than the duties-of the flesh. The sixth day took her thoughts in another direction. It was dated January 31.

He wont be there forever. Its a tour ing company and there off in March!

I cant bear the thought. I shall see him tommorrow. I shall try to get his home address. John asks why Im off to Norwich again and I said I have to see the doctor. I said I have a bad pain inside and the doctor said he was not to touch me for a while till it goes away. How long, he wanted to know. What kind of pain? I said when you do it to me it hurts and the doctor said thats not right so your not to do it to me until the pain stops. Ive not been right since Teddys birth, I told him. I dont know if he beleives me but hes not touched me thank G.o.d.

On the next page she reported her meeting with her lover.

He took me to his rooms!!! Well, there not much. Just a grotty bed-sit in an old house near the cathedral. He dosent have harly anything in it becouse his real digs are in London. And I cant think why hes taken a place so far from the theatre. He says he likes to walk. Besides, he said with that smile of his, we dont need much, do we? He undressed me right by the door and we did it first standing!!! Then after I told him I knew he was leaving in March with the theatre group. I said I thought I could be an actress. It dosent look hard. I could do as well as those ladys I've seen. He said yes, that I ought to think about it, that he could see to it I got acting lessons and a coach. And then I said I was hungry and could we go out for somthing to eat. And he said he was hungry as well...but not for food!!!!

Apparently, for the next week, Hannah had no contact with the man. But she spent most of her time planning out a future with him. It centred itself on the theatre, which was to be the way she tied herself to him and escaped Porthill Green. She wrote briefly about her plans on February 10.

He cares for me. He said as much. Mum would say all men say that when there having a grind and you just as well not trust them till there trousers are up. But this is different. I know he means it. So Ive thought it out and it seems the best way is to join the company. I wouldent expect a big part at first. I dont know much about what to do but I could memerise easy enough. And if Im in the company we wont have to worry about being apart. I dont want to lose him. I gave him the number so he could ring me here in the flat but he hasent yet. I know hes busy. But if he dosent ring me by tommorrow Im going back to Norwich to see him. I'll wait by the theatre.

Her visit to Norwich was not recorded until February 13.

LOTS has happened. I did go into Norwich. I waited and waited outside the theatre. Then he came out. But he wasnt alone. He was with one of the ladys in the play and another man. They were talking together like it was some sort of argument. I said his name. At first he didnt here me so I went up to him and touched him on the arm.They went all just sort of dead when I did that.Then he smiled and said, h.e.l.lo I didnt see you there. Have you been waiting long? Excuse me for a moment. And he and the lady and the other man went to a car. The lady and man got in and left but he came back to me. He was mad, I could tell. But I said why didnt you interduce me to them? And he said what are you doing here without letting me know your coming? And I said why should I are you embra.s.sed of me? And he said dont be a little fool. Dont you know Im trying to get you into the company? But I cann't make a move too soon before your ready. These are professonals and they wont accept anyone whos not a professonal as well so start acting like one. So I started to cry. And he said oh d.a.m.n, Han, dont do that. Come on. So we went to his rooms. Lord I was there till 2 a.m. I went back the day before yesterday and he said he was working on an awdition for me but I would have to learn a very hard scene from a play. I was hoping it would be the dutchess play but it was the other one. He said to copy the part down and then to memerise it. It seemed awfully long and I asked why I had to write it why couldent he just give me a script. But he said there arent enough and it would be missed and then they would know and my awdition wouldent be a surprise. So I copied. But I didnt get it done and will have to go back tommorrow. We made love. He didnt seem to want to at first but he was happy enough after we did it!!

Lynley did not miss the perfunctory quality of the girl's final statements, and he wondered that she did not notice it herself. But apparently she had been too intent upon joining the theatrical company and starting life with a new man to notice the moment that lovemaking became simply an expected routine.

Her next entry was on February 23.

Teddy was ill for 5 days. Bad. John went on and on about it till I thought I would scream. But I got away 2x to finish copying that old script. I dont know why I just cant have one but he says they would know. He says just to memerise my part and not to worry about how to act it. He says h.e.l.l show me how to act it. Of course he should know!!! Thats what hes good at. Anyway its only 8 pages. So what Im going to do is suprise him. I'll act it for him! Then he wont have any douts about me. Sometimes I think he dose have douts. Except when we go to bed. He knows how mad I am for him. I can harly be round him without wanting to take off his close. He likes that. He says oh G.o.d Hannah you know what I like dont you? You really know how, better than anyone. Your better than anything. Then he forgets what were talking about and we do it.

Hannah had devoted her next several entries to a detailed description of their lovemaking. These pages were heavily thumbed, no doubt the section that John Darrow turned to whenever he wanted to remember his wife in the worst possible light. For she was meticulous in description, omitting nothing, and at the last comparing her husband's endowments and his performance with those of her lover. It was a brutal evaluation, nothing that a man would get over very quickly. It gave Lynley an idea of what her farewell note to John Darrow must have been like.

The penultimate entry was on March 23.

Ive been practicing all week when Johns down in the pub.Teddy watches me from his cot and laughs something wicked to see his mum prancing round like a russion lady. But Ive got it down. Was dead easy, that. And in 2 nights Im off to Norwich so we can decide what to do and when Im to have my awdition. I can harly wait. Im lonely for him right now. John was on me like a pig this morning. He said its been 2 months since the doctor said he couldent and he was threw with waiting for him to say he could. It almost made me sick when he put his tong in my mouth. He tasted like s.h.i.+t I swear it. He said thats better now isnt it Han and he did me so hard I tried not to cry.When I think that till 2 months ago I thought thats what it was sposed to be like and I was just sposed to put up with it. I have to laugh now. I know better. And Ive decided to tell John befor I leave. He deserves it after this morning. He thinks hes such a MAN. If he only knew what a real man and I do to each other in bed hed probaly faint. G.o.d, I dont know if I can wait 2 more days to see him again. I miss him so. I DO LOVE HIM.

Lynley snapped the journal closed as Hannah Darrow's comments came together in his mind, like a puzzle finally completed. Prancing around like a Russian lady. A play about a man who gets married, whose sisters hate his wife. People talking endlessly about moving away or marrying. And the poster itself-as big as life-on Lord Stinhurst's office wall. The Three Sisters, Norwich. The life and death of Hannah Darrow.

He began searching through the rest of her belongings, digging past clothes and handbags and gloves and jewellery. But he did not find what he was looking for until he turned to the second trunk. There at the bottom, past sweaters and shoes, beneath a girlhood sc.r.a.pbook filled with clippings and mementoes, was the old theatre programme he had prayed to find, Hannah's wire-rimmed spectacles hooked onto its cover. Designed with a diagonal stripe across the front to serve as division between the two pieces that the company were doing in repertory, the programme was fas.h.i.+oned with stark letters, white upon black on the top half and the reverse on the bottom: The d.u.c.h.ess of Malfi and The Three Sisters.

Impatiently, Lynley skimmed through the pages, looking for the cast. But when he came to it, he stared incredulously, scarcely believing the obscene twist of mocking chance that had governed the casting of the performances. For with the exception of Irene Sinclair and the addition of actors and actresses in whom he had no interest, everyone else was absolutely the same. Joanna Ellacourt, Robert Gabriel, Rhys Davies-Jones, and, to complicate matters further, Jeremy Vinney in a minor role, no doubt the swan song of a brief career on the stage.

Lynley tossed the programme to one side. He got up from the chair and paced across the little room, rubbing his forehead. There had to be something that he had not noticed in the few entries Hannah had made about her lover. Something that revealed his ident.i.ty in even an oblique fas.h.i.+on, something Lynley himself had already read without realising what it meant. He returned to his chair, picked up the journal, and began it all again.

It was not until the fourth time through that he found it: He says h.e.l.l show me how to act it. Of course he should know!!! Thats what hes good at. The words implied only two possibilities: the director of the production or the actor who was in the scene from which Hannah's "suicide note" had been drawn. The director would be skilled in showing an untutored girl the rudiments of a performance. An actor from the same scene would be able to show her how to play the role with ease, since he had been performing opposite an actress doing it for several weeks.

A quick survey of the programme told Lynley that Lord Stinhurst had been the director. He scored a point for Sergeant Havers' intuition. Now all that was left was to find out where in The Three Sisters the "suicide note" belonged and who played the roles in that scene. For he could visualise it now-Hannah going to the mill to meet her lover, in her pocket the eight pages of script that she had meticulously copied by hand for her audition. And the man who killed her, who took those eight pages, tore off the single part that would look like a suicide note, and took the rest with him, leaving her body hanging from the ceiling.

Lynley closed the trunks, turned off the light, and grabbed the stack of journals and the programme. Downstairs in the flat, he found Teddy in the sitting room with his feet propped up on a cheap, food-splattered coffee table, eating fi sh fingers from a blue tin plate. A pint of ale stood on the floor, half drunk. A small colour television was tuned in to a sports programme, downhill skiing by the look of it. Seeing Lynley, the boy hopped to his feet and turned off the television.

"Have you any books of plays in the flat?" Lynley asked, although he was fairly certain what the reply would be.

"Books of plays?" the boy repeated with a shake of his head. "Not a one. You're sure you want a book? We've records and such. Magazines as well." He seemed to realise as he spoke that Lynley was not looking for sources of entertainment. "Dad says you're a cop. Says I'm not to talk to you."