had neither fame nor fortune. His birth was humble - more than humble, I dare say. In recent months, he'd become morose, melancholy. His father described it like being in a trance. Noncommunicative."
Deborah felt a shiver of apprehension. "Then Stoke Poges was chosen deliberately."
"By someone who had a vehicle, someone Matthew knew, someone with a perverted interest in little boys, someone who knew the poem well."
"Do you know who it is?"
"I don't think I want to." He pushed himself off the ottoman, paced the distance to the window and back. And again to the window. He rested his hand on the sill and looked out into the street.
"What happens next?" Deborah asked him.
"The autopsy has got to give us more. Fibres, hairs, deposits of some kind to explain where Matthew was from Friday afternoon until Sunday. He wasn't killed in that field. He was dropped in that field. So for at least twenty-four hours, perhaps more, he was a prisoner somewhere. The autopsy may give us an idea where. And a sure cause of death. Once we have that, we'll have a clearer direction."
"But don't you have a direction now? Because from what you were saying - "
"It's not clear enough! I can't make an arrest on the strength of a poem, ownership of a car, position of trust at the school, and the curious manner of describing a little boy to me. Not to mention being head of English, a literature master into the bargain."
"So you do know," Deborah said. "Tommy, is it someone you...?" She saw the answer on his face. "How dreadful for you. How perfectly awful."
"I don't know. That's just it. He has no clear motive."
"Except the curious manner of describing a little boy?" She reached for her photographs and chose her words with care. "He'd been tied up. I could see that. There were abrasions, places where the skin was raw and chafed. And the burns...Tommy, it's the worst sort of motive.
What's making you afraid to face it?"
He swung round from the window. "What's making you afraid?" he demanded.
The words buffeted the brittle calm that their few minutes of conversation had allowed her to develop. She felt her skin blanch.
"Tell me," he said. "Deborah, for God's sake, do you think I'm blind?"
She shook her head. Of course he wasn't blind. He saw far too much. That had always been at the root of the problem. He persisted.
"I saw how the two of you were acting this morning. You were like strangers. Worse than strangers."
Still she said nothing. She willed him to stop speaking. But he went on.
"You're removing Simon from the grief, aren't you, Deb? You believe he feels no loss or at least that it doesn't compare to yours. So you're cutting him off. You're cutting everyone off.
You want to suffer alone, don't you? As if it's your fault. As if you're being punished."
She felt her face betray her and knew she had to divert the conversation. She sought direction in vain.
Somewhere in the house, the dog began barking, excited yelping that generally meant a demand for reward for some trick performed. She heard her father's answering laughter.
Lynley left the window and went to the wall of her photographs across the room.
Deborah saw him looking at a small black and white study, one of her earliest efforts, taken shortly after her fourteenth birthday. In it, Simon lay in the garden on a chaise, covered by a wool blanket, his crutches at his side. His head canted to the left, and although his eyes were closed, his face was a revealing study of despair.
"Did you never wonder why he leaves this hanging here?" Lynley asked. "He could remove it, you know. He could insist you replace it with something else, something more uplifting, something soothing."
"Something false."
"But he won't do that, will he? Have you ever wondered why?"
She saw it. She knew it. It lay at the centre of what she loved about her husband. Not physical strength, not spiritual virtue, not unyielding and implacable rectitude, but a willingness to accept, an ability to continue, a determination to struggle on. Those qualities in him spoke to her eloquently from the backward infinity of their lives together.
What irony, she thought, that it should have turned out like this. With both of us damaged. But in Simon's case, he'd had no control of the car or the accident itself. While she had had perfect control. She had made the decision to maim herself, because it had seemed easier