Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [77]
St. James didn’t, exactly, although like Alice he was finding the information curiouser and curiouser. He said, “As to the boathouse itself…”
“Hmm?”
“Was everything in order? Aside from the missing stones on the dock, of course.”
“Far as Mrs. Fairclough could tell.”
“What about the boats themselves?”
“They were all inside.”
“As usual?”
Schlicht knotted his eyebrows. He’d finished with his chicken pie and was prising the lid from the raspberry fool. “Not sure I receive your meaning.”
“Were the boats always kept in the order they were in when you saw the body? Or was that order arbitrary?”
Schlicht’s lips rounded into a whistle, but he made no sound. He also gave no reply for a moment, but St. James could tell that in spite of his informal manner of address, he was not a fool. “That’s something,” he said, “that we didn’t ask. Bloody hell, Mr. St. James. I hope it doesn’t mean what I think it means.”
For an arbitrary order suggested a likely accident. Anything else suggested murder.
MIDDLEBARROW FARM
CUMBRIA
The Middlebarrow Pele Project was situated to the east of the hill that comprised Arnside Wood, which gave entrance to a protected area called Arnside Knot. Deborah St. James and Nicholas Fairclough skirted this hill on the way to the project, curving through the upper part of Arnside village and then down again, following signs that directed them towards a place called Silverdale. As they drove, Nicholas Fairclough chatted in what seemed to Deborah to be a habitually friendly manner. He appeared open and forthright, the least likely individual to have planned the murder of his own cousin, had it actually been a murder. He made no mention of Ian Cresswell’s death, of course. The drowning of the man— as unfortunate as it was— bore no relationship to the ostensible reasons for Deborah’s visit to this place. She wasn’t sure she was meant to keep it this way, however. It seemed to her that one way or another she had to bring Cresswell into the picture.
This wasn’t her forte. Chatting up people in general was difficult for her, although she’d improved over the years since she’d learned the value of having her photographic subjects relax while she snapped their pictures. But that kind of chatting up was, at least, honest in its own way. This brand of chatting up— when she was pretending to be someone she utterly was not— left her in a quandary.
Luckily, Nicholas didn’t appear to notice. He was too intent upon reassuring her of his wife’s support of the work he was doing.
“She’ll be standoffish till you get to know her,” he told Deborah as they zipped along the narrow road. “It’s her nature. You’re not to take it personally. Allie doesn’t trust people much as a rule. It’s to do with her family.” He cast her a smile. He had an oddly youthful face— like a boy’s when he hasn’t come into his manhood yet— and Deborah reckoned he’d remain young looking right to the grave. Some people were lucky that way. “Her dad’s the mayor of the town she was born in. In Argentina. He’s been mayor for years, so she grew up in the spotlight there and she had to learn to monitor everything she did. So she always thinks someone’s watching her, to catch her out doing… I don’t know what. Anyway, it makes her skittish at first. Everyone has to earn her trust.”
“She’s quite attractive, isn’t she,” Deborah said. “I expect that