Duke's, but even had that not been the case, the London traffic would have made it next to impossible. And Lynley couldn't see the killer getting to that cemetery on public transport.
When Frazer Chaplin arrived at Duke's, Lynley had the uneasy feeling he'd seen the man before. Exactly where he'd seen him hovered on the edge of his consciousness, but for the moment he couldn't insert the face into a location. He thought about where he'd been in recent days, but nothing clicked. He let it go for the moment.
He was no judge of male looks, but he could see Chaplin's appeal to women who liked their men dark and edgy, possessing an air of danger, a cross between a modern-day Heathcliff and Sweeney Todd. He wore a cream jacket and white shirt with a red bow tie over his dark trousers, an outfit giving reasonable testimony to why he would want to change his clothes at home and not carry them round with him or leave them at the ice rink. Like Abbott Langer, his hair verged on black, but unlike Langer's it was styled more in keeping with the times. It looked newly washed and he appeared to be freshly shaven. His hands looked manicured as well, and he wore an opal ring on his left ring finger.
He joined Lynley at once, having been given the word by the bartender. Lynley had taken a table quite near to the gleaming mahogany bar, and Frazer dropped into one of the chairs, extended his hand, and said, "Heinrich tells me you'd like a word? Have you something new to ask me? I've spoken to some other coppers already."
Lynley introduced himself and said, "You appear to be the last person to speak to Jemima Hastings, Mr. Chaplin."
Chaplin replied in his lilting accent, which, Lynley noted, would likely have appealed to the ladies as much as Frazer's tough masculinity, "Do I, now," but he made it a statement and not a question. "And how would you reckon that, Inspector?"
"From her mobile phone records," Lynley told him.
"Ah," he said. "Well, I expect the very last person to speak to Jemima would be the bloke who killed her, unless she was jumped on without preliminaries."
"She seems to have phoned you a number of times in the hours leading up to her death.
She phoned Abbott Langer as well, looking for you, according to him. Abbott seems to feel she was romantically involved with you, and he isn't the only person to make that observation."
"Would I be wrong to expect the other person is one Paolo di Fazio?" Chaplin asked.
"Where there's smoke, there's generally something in flames, in my experience," Lynley said. "What was your phone call to Jemima Hastings about, Mr. Chaplin?"
Frazer tapped his fingers on the glass-topped table. A silver bowl of mixed nuts sat upon it, and he reached for a few and held them in the palm of his hand. He said, "She was a lovely girl. I'll give you that. I'll give everyone that if anyone wants it. But while I might have seen her on the outside now and again - "
"On the outside?"
"Away from Mrs. McHaggis's lodgings. While I might have seen her now and again - the pub, the high street, having a meal somewhere, at a film, even? - that would be the extent of it. Now, I'll also give you the fact that it could have appeared to others we were involved. Truth to tell, it could have appeared that way to Jemima as well. Her coming to the ice rink like she did, her talking to that gypsy woman who does the fortunes, that sort of thing makes it look like the two of us had it going. But more than being friendly to her ... ? More than being friendly like I would be to anyone I shared lodgings with ... ? More than merely having or trying to have a friendship ... ? That's the stuff of fantasy, Inspector."
"Whose?"
"What?"
"Whose fantasy?"
He popped the nuts into his mouth. He sighed. "Inspector, Jemima drew conclusions.
Have you never known a woman to do that? One moment you're buying a lager for a girl, and the next she's got you married, with kids and living in a rose-covered cottage in the countryside.
That's not happened to you?"
"Not in my memory."
"Lucky you are, then, for it's happened to me."
"Tell me about your phone call to her on the day of her death."