Well-Schooled in Murder - By Elizabeth George Page 0,4

frame and began to gather his papers together. "Ah.

Scotland," he replied. "Do I imagine this sentimental journey into the thistle is an indication that you've not tipped into your weekly allotment of alcohol, Sergeant?"

She grinned and sloughed off Robert Burns. "Let's pop round to the King's Arms, Inspector. You can buy. Two of the MacAllan and we'll both be singing „Coming Through the Rye.' You don't want to miss that. I've the very devil of a mezzo-soprano sure to bring tears to your lovely brown eyes."

Lynley polished his spectacles, replaced them on his nose, and began an examination of her work. "I'm flattered by the invitation.

Don't think I'm not. A proffered opportunity to hear you warbling touches me right to the heart, Havers. But surely there's someone else here today into whose wallet you haven't dipped your hand quite so regularly as mine. Where's Constable Nkata? Didn't I see him here this afternoon?"

"He's gone out on a call."

"More's the pity. You're out of luck, I'm afraid. I did promise Webberly this report in the morning."

Barbara felt a twinge of exasperation. He'd dodged her invitation more adroitly than she'd managed to phrase it. But she had other weapons, so she trotted out the first. "You've promised it to Webberly in the morning, sir, but you and I know he doesn't need it for another week. Get off it, Inspector. Don't you think it's about time you came back to the land of the living?"

"Havers..." Lynley didn't change his position. He didn't look up from the papers in his hand. His tone alone carried the implicit warning. It was a laying-down of boundaries, a declaration of superiority in the chain of command. Barbara had worked with him long enough to know what it meant when he said her name with such studied neutrality. She was barging into an area off-limits. Her presence was not wanted and would not be admitted without a fight.

Well and good, she thought with resignation. But she could not resist a final sortie into the guarded regions of his private life.

She jerked her head towards the postcard. "Our Helen's not giving you much to go on, is she?"

His head snapped up. He dropped the report. But the jarring ring of the telephone on his desk precluded reply.

Lynley picked up the phone to hear the voice of one of the girls who worked reception in the Yard's unfriendly grey-on-black marble lobby. Visitor below, the adenoidal voice announced without preliminaries. Bloke called John Corntel asking for Inspector Asherton. That's you, I s'pose? Though why some people can't ever keep a body's proper name straight...even when a body takes to stringing names together like some flipping royal and expects reception to know each and every one so's to sort it all out when old schoolmates come calling -

Lynley interrupted this verbal tally of woes. "Corntel? Sergeant Havers will come down to fetch him."

He hung up upon a martyred voice asking him what he thought he'd like to be called next week. Would it be Lynley, Asherton, or some other dusty family title that he thought he'd try out for a month or two? Havers, apparently anticipating his request from what she had heard of the conversation, was already heading out of his office for the lift.

Lynley watched her go, her wool trousers flapping round her stubby legs and a scrap of torn paper clinging like a moth to the elbow of her worn Aran sweater. He contemplated this unexpected visit from Corntel, a ghost from the past, to be sure.

They'd been schoolmates at Eton, Corntel a King's Scholar, one of the elite. In those days, Lynley recalled, Corntel had cut quite a figure among the seniors, a tall and brooding youth, very melancholy, favoured with hair the colour of sepia and a set of aristocratic features reminiscent of those endowed Napoleon on the romantically painted canvases by Antoine-Jean Gros. As if with the intention of holding true to physical type, Corntel had been preparing to take his A-levels in literature, music, and art. What had happened to him after Eton, Lynley could not have said.

With this image of John Corntel in mind, part of Lynley's own history, it was with some surprise that he rose to greet the man who followed Sergeant Havers into his office less than five minutes later. Only the height remained - two inches over six feet, eye to eye with Lynley. But the frame that had once allowed him to stand so tall and sure