the wardrobe, opening the doors. Inside, clothes hung in a haphazard arrangement; shoes were tossed to the back; a pair of blue jeans was in a heap on the floor; a suitcase yawned, displaying stockings and brassieres.
Lynley looked through these items and turned back to Macaskin. "Why not?" he asked him as St. James crossed the room to the chest of drawers and began going through it.
"Because of what she was wearing," Macaskin explained. "You couldn't have recognised much from the CID photographs, but she had on a man's pyjama top."
"Doesn't that make it even more likely that someone was with her?"
"You're thinking that she had on the pyjama top of whoever came to see her. I can't agree."
"Why not?" Lynley closed the wardrobe door and leaned against it, his eyes on Macaskin.
"Realistically then," Macaskin began with the assurance of an exponent who has given his subject a great deal of prior thought, "does a man bent on seduction go to a woman's room in his oldest pyjamas? Top she had on was thin, washed many times and worn through at the elbows in two separate spots. At least six or seven years old, I should guess. Possibly older. Not exactly what one would expect a man to have on or, for that matter, to leave as a memento for a woman to wear after a night of lovemaking."
"How you describe it," Lynley said thoughtfully, "it sounds more like a talisman, doesn't it?"
"Indeed." Lynley's agreement seemed to encourage Macaskin to warm to his topic. He paced the distance from bed to dressing table and from there to the wardrobe, using his hands for emphasis. "And supposing it had always belonged to her and came from no man at all. Would she wait for a lover in her oldest bedclothes? I hardly think so."
"I agree," St. James said from the chest of drawers. "And considering that we've not one reasonable sign of a struggle, we have to conclude that even if she wasn't asleep when the murderer entered-if it was someone she let in the room for a friendly chat-she certainly was asleep when he plunged the dirk through her throat."
"Or perhaps not asleep," Lynley said slowly. "But taken completely by surprise, by someone she had reason to trust. But in that case, wouldn't she have locked the door herself?"
"Not necessarily," Macaskin said. "The murderer could have locked it, killed her, and-"
"Returned to Helen's room," Lynley finished coldly. His head snapped towards St. James. "By God-"
"Not yet," St. James replied.
THEY GATHERED at a small magazine-covered table by the window and sat surveying the room companionably. Lynley fl ipped through the assortment of periodicals; St. James lifted the lid of the teapot on the abandoned morning tray and gave consideration to the transparent film that had formed on the liquid; and Macaskin tapped a pen in staccato against the bottom of his shoe.
"We've two lapses of time," St. James said. "Twenty minutes or more between the discovery of the body and the call to the police. Then nearly two hours between the call to the police and their arrival here." He gave his attention to Macaskin. "And your crime-scene men weren't able to go over the room thoroughly before you had the call from your CC, ordering you back to the station?"
"That's right."
"Then you may as well have them go over the room now if you want to phone for them. I don't expect we'll gain much from the effort, though. Any amount of apocryphal evidence could have been planted in here during that time."
"Or removed," Macaskin noted blackly. "With only Lord Stinhurst's word that he locked all the doors and waited for us and did nothing else."
That remark struck a chord in Lynley. He got to his feet and went without speaking from the chest of drawers to the wardrobe to the dressing table. The other two watched as he opened doors and drawers and looked behind furniture.
"The script," he said. "They were here to work on a script, weren't they? Joy Sinclair was the author. So where is it? Why are there no notes? Where are all the scripts?"
Macaskin jumped to his feet. "I'll see to that," he said and vanished in an instant.
As the one door closed behind him, the second door opened. "We're ready in here," Sergeant Havers said from Lady Helen's room.
Lynley looked at St. James. He peeled off his gloves. "I'm not the least looking forward to this," he admitted.