his time about replying, using a moment to brush at the leg of his trousers. There was nothing on them for his attention, however, and when he chose to speak, it was to ask a question of his own.
"What on earth are you doing here, Helen?"
She glanced back at the closed library door. "Rhys invited me. He was to direct Lord Stinhurst's new production for the opening of the Agincourt Theatre, and this weekend was to be a run-through-a sort of preliminary reading of the new script."
"Rhys?" St. James repeated.
"Rhys Davies-Jones. You don't remember him? My sister used to see him. Years ago. Before he..." Lady Helen twisted a button at the throat of the greatcoat, hesitating, wondering how much to say. She settled on, "He's been working in regional theatre over the past two years. This was to be his fi rst London production since...The Tempest. Four years ago. We were there. Surely you remember." She saw that he did.
"Lord," St. James said with some reverence. "Was that Davies-Jones? I'd completely forgotten."
Lady Helen wondered how that was even possible, for it was something she knew she could never forget: that awful night at the theatre when Rhys Davies-Jones, the director, had taken the stage himself and everyone had seen he was inches short of delirious. Shoving actors and actresses alike to one side, chasing demons only he could see, he had publicly ended his career with a vengeance. She could see it all still-the stage, the pandemonium, the devastation he had wrought upon himself and others. For it had been during the act 4 speech when his drunken frenzy broke into the lovely words, blotting out both his past and future in an instant, leaving, indeed, not a single rack behind.
"He spent four months in hospital after that. He's quite...recovered now. I ran into him early last month in the Brompton Road. We had dinner and...well, ever since we've seen a good deal of each other."
"His recovery must be complete indeed if he's working with Stinhurst, Ellacourt, and Gabriel. Lofty company for-"
"A man of his reputation?" Lady Helen frowned down at the floor, touching her slippered foot delicately to one of the pegs that held the wood in place. "Yes, I suppose. But Joy Sinclair was his cousin. They were very close, and I think she saw the opportunity to give him a second chance in London theatre. She was instrumental in talking Lord Stinhurst into giving Rhys the contract."
"She had infl uence with Stinhurst?"
"I've got the impression Joy had infl uence with everyone."
"Meaning?"
Lady Helen hesitated. She was not a woman given to saying anything that might denigrate others, even in a murder investigation. Doing so now went against the grain, even with St. James, always a man she could trust implicitly, waiting for her answer. She gave it reluctantly, prefacing it with a quick look at Sergeant Havers to read her face for its degree of discretion.
"Apparently she had an affair with Robert Gabriel last year, Simon. They had a tremendous row about it only yesterday afternoon. Gabriel wanted Joy to tell his former wife that he slept with her just once. Joy refused. It... well, the row was heading towards violence when Rhys burst into Joy's room and broke it up."
St. James looked perplexed. "I don't understand. Did Joy Sinclair know Robert Gabriel's wife? Did she even know he was married?"
"Oh yes," Lady Helen answered. "Robert Gabriel was married for nineteen years to Irene Sinclair. Joy's sister."
INSPECTOR MACASKIN unlocked the door and admitted Lynley and St. James into Joy Sinclair's room. He felt for the wall switch, and two serpentine bronze ceiling fi xtures spilled light down on the wealth of contradictions below. It was, Lynley saw, a beautiful room, the sort one expects the play's star performer to be given, not its author. Expensively papered in green and yellow, it was furnished with a four-poster Victorian bed and nineteenth-century chest of drawers, wardrobe, and chairs. A comfortably faded Axminster carpet covered the oak floor, and the boards creaked with age when they walked across it.
Yet the room was still very much the scene of a brutal crime, and the frigid air was a rich effluvium of blood and destruction. The bed acted as centrepiece with its writhing confusion of blood-soaked linens and its single, deadly gash that spoke eloquently of the manner in which the woman had died. Donning latex gloves, the three men approached it with a fair degree of respect: Lynley taking in the