far from here. But you know that, don't you, as you've been to the house." He sounded rather awkward with the invitation, which Isabelle - despite her growing concerns about the investigation - found a bit charming. She recognised the immediate dangers of getting to know Thomas Lynley better, however. She didn't particularly want to expose herself to any of them.
He said, "I'd like to talk to you about the case."
She said, "That's all?" and she was very surprised to see him flush. He didn't strike her as a flushing kind of man.
He said, "Of course. What else?" Then he added, "Well, I suppose there's Hillier as well.
The press. John Stewart. The situation. And then there's Hampshire."
"What about Hampshire?" She asked the question sharply.
He indicated the pub. "Come to the King's Head," he said. "We need to take a break."
THEY STAYED THREE hours. Lynley told himself it was all in the service of the case in hand. Still, there was more to their elongated sojourn at the King's Head and Eight Bells than sorting out the various aspects of the investigation. There was the matter of getting to know the acting superintendent and seeing her somewhat differently.
She was careful with what she revealed about herself, like most people, and what she did reveal was painted in positives: an older brother sheep farming in New Zealand, two parents alive and well near Dover where Dad was a ticket agent for a ferry line and Mum was a housewife who sang in the church choir; education in RC schools although she was not now a member of any religion; former husband a childhood sweetheart whom she married too young, unfortunately, before either of them was really prepared for what it takes to make a marriage work.
"I hate to compromise," she admitted. "I want what I want and there you have it."
He said, "And what do you want, Isabelle?"
She looked at him frankly before she answered. It was a long look that could have communicated any one of a number of things, he supposed. She said at last with a shrug, "I expect I want what most women want."
He waited for more. Nothing more was offered. Round them in the pub the noise of the nighttime drinkers seemed suddenly muted, until he realised what muted them was his heartbeat, which was unaccountably loud in his ears. "What's that?" he asked her.
She fingered the stem of her glass. They'd had wine, two bottles of it, and he'd pay the price the following morning. But they'd stretched the drinking over the hours, and he didn't feel in the least drunk, he told himself.
He said her name to prompt her to reply, and he repeated his question. She said, "You're an experienced man, so I think you know very well."
His heartbeat again, and this time it occluded his throat, which didn't make sense. But it did prevent him from giving a reply.
She said, "Thank you for dinner. For the St. Jameses as well."
"There's no need - "
She rose from the table then, adjusted her bag over her shoulder, and laid her hand on his as she made ready to depart. She said, "Oh, but there is. You could have presented what you'd already concluded about that shirt during our meeting. I'm not blind to that, Thomas. You could have made a perfect fool of me and forced my hand with regard to Matsumoto, but you chose not to. You're a very kind and decent man."
Chapter Twenty-Four
AN ESTABLISHMENT CALLED SHELDON POCKWORTH NUMISMATICS had
sounded to Lynley like a place tucked away in an alley in Whitechapel, a shop whose proprietor was a Mr. Venus type, articulating bones instead of dealing in medals and coins. The reality he found was far different. The shop itself was clean, sleek, and brightly lit. Its location was not far from Chelsea's Old Town Hall, in a spotless brick building on the corner of the King's Road and Sydney Street where it shared what was doubtless expensive space with a number of dealers in antique porcelain, silver, jewellery, paintings, and fine china.
There was no Sheldon Pockworth, nor had there ever been. There was instead one James Dugue, who looked more like a technocrat than a purveyor of coins and military medals from the Napoleonic Wars. When Lynley entered that morning, he found Dugue leafing through a heavy volume set upon a spotless glass counter. Beneath this gleamed gold and silver coins on a rotating rack. When Dugue looked up, his chic steel-rimmed