"Black," Lynley said. "It's black." Cashmere, hanging nearly to her ankles, and she loved to wear it with boots whose heels were so high that she laughed at herself at the end of the day when she hobbled to the sofa and fell upon it, claiming she was a mindless victim of male Italian shoe designers with fantasies of women bearing whips and chains. "Tommy, save me from myself," she would say. "Only foot binding could be worse than this."
Lynley looked out of the window. He saw the blur of faces and knew they'd made it as far as Westminster Bridge, where people on the pavements were caught in their own little worlds into which the sound of a siren and the sight of a panda car zooming by caused them only an instant of wondering, Who? What? And then forgetting because it didn't affect them.
"When?" he said to St. James. "What time?"
"Half past three. They'd thought to have tea at Claridge's, but as Helen was tired, they went home instead. They'd have it there. They bought...I don't know...tea cakes somewhere? Pastries?"
Lynley tried to absorb this. It was four forty-five. He said, "An hour? More than an hour? How can that be?"
St. James didn't reply at once, and Lynley turned to him and saw how drawn and gaunt he looked, far more than normal for he was a gaunt and angular man by birth. He said, "Simon, why in God's name? More than an hour?"
"It took twenty minutes for the ambulance to get to her."
"Christ," Lynley whispered. "Oh God. Oh Christ."
"And then I wouldn't let them tell you by phone. We had to wait for a second panda car-the first officers needed to stay at the hospital...to speak to Deborah..."
"She's there?"
"Still. Yes. Of course. So we had to wait. Tommy, I couldn't let them phone you. I couldn't do that to you, say that Helen...say that..."
"No. I see." And then he said fiercely after a moment, "Tell me the rest. I want to know it all."
"They were calling in a thoracic surgeon when I left. They haven't said anything else."
"Thoracic?" Lynley said. "Thoracic?"
St. James's hand tightened on his arm once again. "It's a chest wound," he said.
Lynley closed his eyes, and he kept them closed for the rest of the ride, which was mercifully brief.
At the hospital, two panda cars stood at the top of the sloping entrance to Accident and Emergency, and two of the uniformed constables who belonged to them were just coming out as Lynley and St. James entered. He saw Deborah at once, seated on one of the blue steel chairs with a box of tissues on her knees and a middle-aged man in a crumpled mackintosh talking to her, notebook in hand. Belgravia CID, Lynley thought. He didn't know the man, but he knew the routine.
Two other uniforms stood nearby, affording the detective privacy. Apparently, they knew St. James by sight-as they would, since he'd already been at the hospital earlier-so they let both of them approach the interview that was going on.
Deborah looked up. Her eyes were red. Her nose looked sore. A pile of sodden tissues lay on the floor next to her feet. She said, "Oh, Tommy...," and he could see her try to pull herself together.
He didn't want to think. He couldn't think. He looked at her and felt like wood.
The Belgravia man stood. "Superintendent Lynley?"
Lynley nodded.
"She's in the operating theatre, Tommy," Deborah said.
Lynley nodded again. All he could do was nod. He wanted to shake her, he wanted to rattle the teeth in her head. His brain shouted that it was not her fault, how could it be this poor woman's fault, but he needed to blame, he wanted to blame, and there was no one else, not yet, not here, not now...
He said, "Tell me."
Her eyes filled.
The detective-somewhere Lynley heard him say his name was Fire...Terence Fire, but that couldn't be right because what sort of name was Fire, after all?-said that the case was well in hand, he was not to worry, all stops were being pulled out because the entire station knew not only what had happened but who she was, who the victim-
"Don't call her that," Lynley said.
"We'll be in close contact," Terence Fire said. And then, "Sir...If I may...I am so terribly-"
"Yes," Lynley said.
The detective left them. The constables remained.
Lynley turned to Deborah as St. James sat next to her. "What happened?" he asked her.