Well-Schooled in Murder - By Elizabeth George Page 0,3
left him shortly after noon that day, alone in his office, blond head cupped in one hand, his attention directed towards his own section of the report which was spread across the top of his desk. The late Sunday afternoon sun threw long shadows against walls and across the floor, making perusing typescript without artificial light next to impossible.
And since Lynley's reading spectacles had slipped disregarded to the end of his nose, Barbara entered the room noiselessly, certain that he was fast asleep.
That would not have surprised her. For the past two months Lynley had been burning the candle not only at both ends but right through the middle. His presence at the Yard had been so unceasing - generally requiring her own reluctant presence as well - that he'd been jokingly christened Mr. Ubiquitous by the other DI's in his division.
"Go hame, laddie," Inspector MacPherson would roar when he saw him in a corridor, in a meeting, or in the officers' mess. "Ye're black'ning the rest o' us. Hearkening after a super's position? Canna rest on the laurels o' promotion if ye're deid."
Lynley would laugh in his characteristically affable fashion and sidestep the reason behind this sixty-day stint of unremitting toil. But Barbara knew why he remained on the job long hours into the night, why he volunteered to be on call, why he took other officers' duty at the first request. It was all represented in the single postcard that lay at the moment on the edge of his desk. She picked it up.
It was five days old, badly creased from a hard journey across Europe from the Ionian Sea. Its subject was a curious procession of incense bearers, sceptre-wielding officials, and gold-gowned, bearded Greek Orthodox priests who carried a bejewelled sedan chair upon their shoulders, its sides made of glass. Resting within the chair, his shrouded head leaning against the glass as if he were asleep and not more than a thousand years dead, were the remains of Saint Spyridon. Barbara turned the card over and unabashedly read its message. She could have guessed before doing so what the tenor of the words would be.
Tommy darling, Imagine having your poor remains carried through the streets of Corfu town four times a year! Good Lord, it does give one pause to think about the wisdom of dedicating one's life to sanctity, doesn't it? You'll be pleased to know that I've made my bow to intellectual growth with a pilgrimage to Jupiter's Temple at Kassiope. I dare say you'd approve of such Chaucerian endeavour.H.
Barbara knew that this card was the tenth such communication from Lady Helen Clyde that Lynley had received in the last two months. Each previous one had been exactly the same, a friendly and amusing commentary upon one aspect of Greek life or another as Lady Helen moved gaily round the country in a seemingly endless journey that had begun in January only days after Lynley had asked her to marry him. Her answer had been a definitive no, and the postcards - all sent to New Scotland Yard and not to Lynley's home in Eaton Terrace - underscored her determination to remain unfettered by the claims of the heart.
That Lynley thought daily, if not hourly, about Helen Clyde, that he wanted her, that he loved her with a single-minded intensity were the facts which, Barbara knew, comprised the heretofore unspoken rationale behind his infinite capacity for taking on new assignments without protest. Anything to keep the howling hounds of loneliness at bay, she thought. Anything to keep the pain of living without Helen from knotting steadily, like a tumour within him.
Barbara returned the card, retreated a few steps, and expertly sailed her part of their report into his In tray. The subsequent whoosh of air across his desk, the fluttering of his papers to the floor, woke him. He started, grimaced disarmingly at having been caught sleeping, rubbed the back of his neck, and removed his spectacles.
Barbara plopped into the chair next to his desk, sighed, and ruffled her short hair with an unconscious energy that made most of it stand on end like bristles on a brush. She spoke. "Ah yes, do ye hear those bonny bells of Scotland calling to ye, lad? Tell me ye do."
His reply made its way past a stifled yawn. "Scotland, Havers? What on earth - "
"Aye. Those wee bonny bells. Calling ye home to that land of malt. Those blessit smoky tastes of liquid fire..."