Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [169]
“I see.” Valerie spoke pleasantly enough, but the fact that she’d stopped moving along the path suggested there were elements of Ian Cresswell’s death that she didn’t want St. James and Lynley to uncover. One of them, St. James knew, was now out of their sight line. The folly built for their daughter Mignon was no longer in view.
“‘There appears to be a dead man floating in my boathouse,’ is roughly what was said,” St. James told Valerie.
She glanced away. A ripple on the surface of her face was not unlike a ripple on the surface of the lake behind them. Something swimming beneath the water or a gust of wind across it but in either case, the moment comprised an instant in which her placidity failed her. She raised a hand to her forehead and brushed an errant hair away. She’d not put her baseball cap back on her head. The sunlight struck her face, showing the fine lines of an ageing that she seemed intent upon keeping at bay.
She said, “No one knows exactly how they’ll react in that kind of situation.”
“I entirely agree. But the second odd thing about that day was how you were dressed when you met the police and the ambulance on the drive. You weren’t dressed for walking, certainly not for an autumn walk and certainly not for anything other than a walk through the rooms of your house, I expect.”
Realising the direction St. James had been heading, Lynley said, “So you see, there are several possibilities that want exploring.” He gave her a moment to think about this before going on with, “You weren’t at the boathouse at all, were you? You weren’t the one to find the body and you weren’t the one to call nine-nine-nine.”
“I believe I gave my name when I phoned.” Valerie spoke stiffly, but she wasn’t stupid. She would know that at least this part of the game was over.
“Anyone can give any name,” St. James said.
“Perhaps it’s time you told the truth,” Lynley added. “It’s about your daughter, isn’t it? I daresay Mignon found the body, and Mignon placed the call. From the folly, she can see the boathouse. If she goes upstairs to the top floor of the tower, I should guess she can see everything from the door of the building to the boats leaving it to go out on the lake. The real question, then, is whether she had a reason to arrange Ian Cresswell’s death as well. Because she would have known he was out there on the lake that evening, wouldn’t she?”
Valerie raised her eyes to the sky. St. James was reminded unaccountably of a suffering Madonna and what motherhood brought and did not bring to a woman brave enough to engage in everything that it comprised. It never ended with the child’s entry into adulthood. It went on till death, either the mother’s or the child’s. Valerie said, “None of them…” She faltered. She looked at both of them, St. James and Lynley, before she spoke again. “My children are innocent in all matters.”
St. James said, “We found a filleting knife in the water.” He showed her the knife he’d used on the stones. “Not this one, of course, but one very similar.”
“That would be the one I lost a few weeks ago,” she said. “An accident, actually. I was cleaning a good-size trout, but I dropped the knife and it slid into the water.”
“Indeed?” Lynley said.
“Indeed,” she replied. “Clumsy of me but there you have it.”
Lynley and St. James glanced at each other. What they had, actually, was a lie, since the workbench for cleaning fish was on the other side of the boathouse from the spot where the filleting knife had fallen into the water. Unless St. James was very much mistaken about the nature of the tool, the knife would have had to swim in order to end up lying beneath Ian Cresswell’s scull.
KENSINGTON
LONDON
In person Vivienne Tully looked exactly like the photographs Barbara had seen of her on the Internet. They were of an age— she and Vivienne— but they couldn’t have been more dissimilar. Vivienne, Barbara reckoned, was exactly what acting Detective Superintendent Ardery would have her become: svelte of body,