Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [248]
Arnside House itself looked deserted, with no lights burning in the windows despite the gloom of the day. He couldn’t decide if this was bad or good. No car meant, at least, there was a very good chance that Deborah had not bulldogged her way into a bad situation. The best scenario of all would be no one at home, but he couldn’t rely on that.
He braked the Healey Elliott at the top of the driveway, where the gravel shaped into a winnow for parking. When he got out of the car, he found that the air had altered in the few hours he’d been gone. It felt nearly tubercular in his lungs. He moved through it like someone separating curtains, along the path to the heavy front door.
He heard the bell ring somewhere inside the place. He expected no answer, but this was not the case. He heard footsteps against a stone entry, and the door swung open. Then he faced the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
He was unprepared for the shock of Alatea Fairclough: the tawny skin, the wealth of wild, curly hair captured in tortoiseshell slides, the large dark eyes and sensuous mouth, the shape of a woman who was entirely woman. Only her hands betrayed her, and even then it was only by their size.
He had no trouble at all seeing how Alatea and Nicholas Fairclough had duped everyone around them. Had Barbara Havers not sworn this woman was, in fact, Santiago Vasquez y del Torres, Lynley would not have believed it. Truth to tell, he still couldn’t. So he was careful with his words.
“Mrs. Fairclough?” he said. When she nodded, he took out his identification. He said, “DI Thomas Lynley, New Scotland Yard. I’ve come to talk to you about Santiago Vasquez y del Torres.”
She went white so quickly that Lynley thought she would faint. She took a step away from the door.
He repeated the name. “Santiago Vasquez y del Torres. It seems the name’s familiar to you.”
She felt behind her for the oak bench that ran the length of one of the panelled walls of the entrance. She lowered herself onto it.
Lynley shut the door behind him. There was little light. What there was came from four small windows in the entrance, all of them stained glass in a stylised pattern of red tulips surrounded by greenery, which cast a subtle glow against the skin of the woman— or, he thought, whatever she was— who sat slumped on the bench.
He still wasn’t certain of his facts, but he chose to take a stab at being direct and waiting for the consequences. So he said, “We must speak. I’ve reason to believe you’re Santiago Vasquez y del Torres from Santa Maria de la Cruz, del los Angeles, y de los Santos in Argentina.”
“Please don’t call me that.”
“Is that your true name?”
“Not since Mexico City.”
“Raul Montenegro?”
She reared up at that, her back against the wall. “Has he sent you? Is he here?”
“I’ve not been sent by anyone.”
“I don’t believe you.” She rose then. She hurried past him, nearly losing her footing on the step that gave access through a doorway into a dark corridor panelled, like the entrance, in oak.
He followed her. A short distance along the corridor, she slid open two pocket doors with stained glass panes of lilies surrounded by drooping fronds, and she passed through them and into a hall. It was half restored and half in tatters, an odd mixture of medieval revival and Arts and Crafts, and there she made for an inglenook fireplace, where she sat in the most sheltered corner, drawing her knees up to her face.
“Please leave me,” she said, although she seemed to be speaking more to herself than to him. “Please leave.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible.”
“You