Lynley watched her go, realising he'd lost touch with what it was like to be around a woman he knew well. Deborah St. James was nothing like Helen, but she matched her in energy and liveliness. That understanding brought with it sudden pain. Briefly, it took his breath.
"Let's go outside, shall we?" St. James said.
Lynley saw how well his old friend read him. "Thank you," he said.
They found a place beneath the ornamental cherry tree, where worn wicker furniture sat round a table. There Deborah joined them. She carried a tray on which she'd placed a jug of Pimm's, a bucket of ice, and glasses displaying the requisite spears of cucumber. Peach followed her and in her wake came the St. Jameses' great grey cat Alaska, who immediately took up slinking along the herbaceous border in pursuit of imagined rodents.
Around them were the sounds of Chelsea in summer: distant cars roaring along the Embankment, the twittering of sparrows in the trees, people calling out from the garden next door. On the air the scent of a barbecue rose, and the sun continued to bake the ground.
"I've had an unexpected visitor," Lynley said. "Acting Superintendent Isabelle Ardery."
He told them the substance of his visit from Ardery: her request and his indecision.
"What will you do?" St. James asked. "You know, Tommy, it might be time."
Lynley looked beyond his friends to the flowers that comprised the herbaceous border at the base of the old brick wall defining the edge of the garden. Someone - likely Deborah - had been giving them a great deal of care, likely by recycling the washing-up water. They looked better this year than they had in the past, bursting with life and colour. He said, "I managed to cope with the nursery at Howenstow and her country clothing. Some of the nursery here as well.
But I've not been able to face her things in London. I thought I might be ready when I arrived two weeks ago, but it seems I'm not." He took a drink of his Pimm's and gazed at the garden wall on which clematis climbed in a mass of lavender blooms. "It's all still there, in the wardrobe and the chest of drawers. In the bathroom as well: cosmetics, her scent bottles. The hairbrush still has strands of her hair ...It was so dark, you know, with bits of auburn."
"Yes," St. James said.
Lynley heard it in Simon's voice: the terrible grief that St. James would not express, believing as he did that, by rights, Lynley's own grief was so much greater. And this despite the fact that St. James, too, had loved Helen dearly and had once intended to marry her. He said,
"My God, Simon - " but St. James interrupted. "You're going to have to give it time," he said.
"Do," Deborah said, and she looked between them. And in this, Lynley saw that she, too, knew. And he thought of the ways one mindless act of violence had touched on so many people and three of them sat there in the summer garden, each of them reluctant to say her name.
The door from the basement kitchen opened, and they turned to anticipate whoever was about to come out. This turned out to be Deborah's father, who had long run the household and just as long been an aide to St. James. Lynley thought at first he meant to join them but instead Joseph Cotter said, "More company, luv," to his daughter. "Was wondering ... ?" He inclined his head a fraction towards Lynley.
Lynley said, "Don't please turn someone away on my account, Joseph."
"Fair enough," Cotter said, and to Deborah, "'Cept I thought his lordship might not want - "
"Why? Who is it?" Deborah asked.
"Detective Sergeant Havers," he said. "Not sure what she wants, luv, but she's asking for you."
THE LAST PERSON Barbara expected to see in the back garden of the St. James home was her erstwhile partner. But there he was and it took her only a second to process it: The amazing motor out in the street had to be his. It made perfect sense. He suited the car and the car suited him.
Lynley looked much better than when she'd last seen him two months earlier in Cornwall. Then, he'd been the walking wounded. Now, he looked more like the walking contemplative. She said to him, "Sir. Are you back as in back or are you just back?"