had been through, Lynley found himself feeling a sore spot of anger. A life had been taken, callously, coldbloodedly. And for fifteen years the death had gone unavenged. "But why did you do all that?" he asked. "Surely you wanted her murderer brought to justice."
Darrow's look betrayed a derisive weariness. "You've no idea what it's like in a village like this, do you, pommy boy? You've no idea how it'd feel to a man, having his neighbours all know that his randy little wife'd been snuffed while she was trying to leave him for some ponce she thought'd make her feel better between her legs. And not snuffed by her husband, mind you, which everyone in the village would have understood, but by the very bastard who was poking her behind her husband's back. Are you trying to tell me that, had I let Hannah stand as murdered, none of that would have come out?" Although his voice rose incredulously, Darrow continued, as if to shun a response. "At least this way, Teddy's never had to know what his mum was really like. As far as I was concerned, Hannah was dead. And Teddy's peace of mind was worth letting her murderer go free."
"Better his mother should be a suicide than his father a cuckold?" Lynley enquired.
Darrow pounded a fist hard onto the stained table between them. "Aye! For it's me he's been living with these fifteen years. It's me he's to look in the eye every day. And when he does, he sees a man, by God. Not some puling fairy who couldn't hold a woman to her marriage vows. And do you think that bloke could have held on to her any better?" He poured more liquor, spilling it carelessly when the bottle slipped against the glass. "He promised her acting coaches, lessons, a part in some play. But when that all fell through, how much fl aming-"
"A part in a play? Coaches? Lessons? How do you know that? Was it in her note?"
Jerking himself towards the fire, Darrow didn't answer. But Lynley suddenly saw a sure reason why Joy Sinclair must have made ten telephone calls to him, what she had been insistently seeking in her conversation with the man. No doubt in his anger he had inadvertently revealed to her the existence of a source of information she desperately needed to write her book.
"Is there a record, Darrow? Are there diaries? A journal?"
There was no response.
"Good God, man, you've come this far! Do you know her killer's name?"
"No."
"Then what do you know? How do you know it?"
Still Darrow watched the fi re impassively. But his chest heaved with repressed emotion. "Diaries," he said. "Girl was always too bloody full of herself. She wrote everything down. They were in her valise. With all her other things."
Lynley took a desperate shot, knowing that if he phrased it as a question the man would claim he had destroyed them years ago. "Give the diaries to me, Darrow. I can't promise that Teddy will never learn the truth about his mother. But I swear to you that he won't learn it from me."
Darrow's chin lowered to his chest. "How can I?" he muttered.
Lynley pressed further. "I know Joy Sinclair brought everything back to you. I know she caused you grief. But for God's sake, did she deserve to die alone, with an eighteen-inch dagger plunged through her neck? Who of us deserves that kind of death? What crime committed in life is worth that kind of punishment? And Gowan. What about the boy? He'd done absolutely nothing, yet he died as well. Darrow! Think, man! You can't let their deaths count for nothing!"
And then there were no more words to be said. There was only waiting for the man to decide. The fire popped once. A large ember dislodged and fell from the grate to roll against the fender. Above them, Darrow's son continued with his chores. After an agonising pause, the man raised his heavy head.
"Come up to the flat," he said tonelessly.
THE FLAT was reached by an outer rather than an inner stairway, running up the rear of the building. Below it, a gravel-strewn path led through the tangled mass of a forlorn garden to a gate, beyond which the endless stretch of fields lay, broken only by an occasional tree, a canal, the hulking shape of a windmill on the horizon. Everything was colourless under the melancholy sky, and the air carried upon its rich peaty scent