state of mind. When Inspector Macaskin unlocked and pushed open the library door, she was the fi rst one on her feet, and whatever had been simmering on the back burner of her self-control was clearly about to boil over. She took three steps forward, her slippers moving soundlessly on what looked like-but could not possibly have been-an Aubusson carpet.
"Now you listen to me. I absolutely insist..." Her words were hot with fury, but they iced over into mute astonishment when she saw the new arrivals.
Whatever Lynley might have thought he would feel at this first sight of Lady Helen, he was not prepared for tenderness. Yet it overcame him in an unexpected rush. She looked so pathetic. She was wearing a man's greatcoat over her dressing gown and slippers. The cuffs had been folded back, but there was nothing at all to be done about the garment's length or about its wide shoulders, so it hung on her baggily, dangling to her ankles. Her usually smooth, chestnut hair was dishevelled, she wore absolutely no make-up, and in the half-light of the room she looked like one of Fagin's boys, all of twelve years old and badly in need of rescue.
It passed through Lynley's mind that this was probably the first time he had ever seen Helen at a loss for words, and he said to her drily, "You always did know how to dress for an occasion."
"Tommy," Lady Helen replied. A hand went to her hair in a gesture that was born more of confusion than self-consciousness. She added, inanely, "You're not in Cornwall."
"Indeed. I'm not in Cornwall."
That brief exchange charged those assembled in the library into furious action. They had been fairly spread out across the room, seated near the fire, standing by the bar, gathered in a collection of chairs under the glass-fronted bookshelves. But now nearly everyone began to move-and to shout-at once. Voices came from all directions with no desire for answer, merely a need to give vent to wrath. It was instantaneous pandemonium.
"My solicitor shall hear-"
"Bloody police kept us locked-"
"...the most outrageous behaviour I've ever seen!"
"We're supposed to be living in a civilised-"
"...no wonder to me that the country's gone to hell!"
Unmoved by their anger, Lynley passed his eyes over them and made a quick survey of the room. The heavy rose curtains were drawn and only two lamps had been lit, but there was quite enough light for him to study the company as they continued to make vociferous demands, which he continued to ignore.
He recognised the principal players in the drama, mostly by their relative proximity to what was clearly the main attraction and dominant force in the room: Britain 's foremost actress, Joanna Ellacourt. She was standing by the bar, a wintry blonde beauty whose white angora sweater and matching wool trousers seemed to emphasise the temperature of disdain with which she greeted the arrival of the police. As if in the expectation of meeting some need of hers, at Joanna's elbow stood a brawny, older man, with heavy-lidded eyes and coarse, greying hair-no doubt her husband, David Sydeham. Only two steps away on Joanna's other side, her leading man turned abruptly back to a drink that he was nursing at the bar. Robert Gabriel was either not interested in the newcomers or eager not to be seen until properly fortified for the encounter. And in front of Gabriel, having risen quickly from the couch on which he had been sitting, Stuart Rintoul, Lord Stinhurst, studied Lynley intently as if with the purpose of casting him in some future production.
There were others in the room whose identities Lynley could only guess at for the moment: two older women near the fi re, most likely Lord Stinhurst's wife and his sister, Francesca Gerrard; an angry-faced, pudgy man somewhere in his thirties who smoked a pipe, wore newish tweeds, and seemed to be the journalist Jeremy Vinney; sharing a settee with him, an exceedingly ill-dressed, unattractive middle-aged spinster type whose extreme lankiness if not her resemblance to Lord Stinhurst indicated that she had to be his daughter; the two teenagers employed at the hotel, together at the furthest corner of the room; and in a low chair nearly obscured by shadows, a black-haired woman who raised a haunted face to Lynley, hollow-cheeked, dark-eyed, with an undercurrent of passion held in savagely tight rein. Irene Sinclair, Lynley guessed, the victim's sister.
But none of these was the one person Lynley was looking for, and he