In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

Vi said the completely unexpected. “Yes.”

Lynley held the jacket by its satin lining. It had doubtless been touched by a dozen people since being removed from Terry Cole's body on Tuesday night. But it had been touched by the killer as well, and if he hadn't realised that fingerprints could be lifted from leather nearly as easily as they could be lifted from glass or painted wood, there was an excellent chance that he'd left an unintentional calling card upon the garment.

Once the proprietor of the Black Angel understood the import of Lynley's request, he fetched all the employees to the bar for some questions post haste. He offered the inspector tea, coffee, or other refreshment to go along with his queries, seeking to be helpful with the sort of anxiety to please that generally struck people who found themselves inadvertently living on the county line between murder and respectability. Lynley demurred at all refreshment. He just wanted some information, he said.

Showing the jacket to the hotels proprietor and its employees didn't get him anywhere however. One jacket was much like another to them. None could say how or when the garment that Lynley was holding had appeared at the hotel. They made suitable noises of horror and aversion when he pointed out the copious amount of dried blood on the lining and the hole in the back, and while they looked at him with properly mournful expressions when he mentioned the two recent deaths on Calder Moor, not an eyelash among them so much as fluttered at the suggestion that a killer might have been in their midst.

“I reckon someone left that thing here. Tha's what happened. No mistake about it,” the barmaid said.

“Coats hanging on the porch rack all winter long,” one of the room maids added. “I never take notice of them one day to the next.”

“But that's just it,” Lynley said. “It isn't winter. And until today, I dare say there hasn't been rain enough for macs, jackets, or coats.”

“So what s'r point?” the proprietor said.

“How could all of you fail to notice a leather jacket on a coat rack if the leather jacket is hanging there alone?”

The ten employees who were gathered in the bar shifted about, looked sheepish, or appeared regretful. But no one could shed any light on the jacket or how it had come to be there. They came in to work through the back door, not through the front, they told him. They left the same way. So they wouldn't have even seen the coat rack in the course of their normal workdays. Besides, things often got left behind at the Black Angel Hotel: umbrellas, walking sticks, rain gear, rucksacks, maps. Everything ended up in lost property, and until things got there, no one paid them much mind.

Lynley decided on a full frontal approach. Were they acquainted with the Britton family? he wanted to know. Would they recognise Julian Britton if they saw him?

The proprietor spoke for everyone. “We all know the Brittons at the Black Angel.”

“Did any of you see Julian on Tuesday night?”

But no one had.

Lynley dismissed them. He asked for a bag in which to stow the jacket, and while one was being fetched for him, he walked to the window, watched the rain fall, and thought about Tideswell, the Black Angel, and the crime.

He himself had seen that Tideswell abutted the eastern edge of Calder Moor, and the killer-vastly more familiar with the White Peak than Lynley-would have known that as well. So in possession of a jacket with an incriminating hole that would have told the tale of the crime in short order had it been found on the scene, he had to be rid of it as soon as possible. What could have been easier than stopping at the Black Angel Hotel on his way home from Calder Moor, knowing, as an habitue of the bar, that coats and jackets accumulated for whole seasons before anyone thought to have a look at them.

But could Julian Britton have managed to hang up the leather jacket in the entrance without being seen by anyone inside? It was possible, Lynley thought. Risky as the devil, but possible.

And at this point Lynley was willing to accept that which was possible. It kept that which was probable out of his thoughts.

Barbara leaned forward in her chair, saying, “You know him? Matthew King-Ryder. You know him?” and trying to keep the excitement from her voice.

“Terry,” Vi murmured.

Her eyelids were getting heavy. But Barbara pressed the young woman anyway, against the rising protestations of Shelly Platt. “Terry knew Matthew King-Ryder? How?”

“Music” Vi said.

Barbara felt immediately deflated. Damn, she thought. Terry Cole, the Chandler music, and Matthew King- Ryder. There was nothing new in this. They were nowhere again.

Then Vi said, “Found it in the Albert Hall, did Terry.”

Barbara's eyebrows knotted. “The Albert Hall? Terry found the music there?”

“Under a seat.”

Barbara was gobsmacked. She tried to get her mind round what Vi Nevin was telling her even as Vi continued to tell her.

In the course of his job as card boy, Terry put cards regularly in South Kensington phone boxes. He always did this work at night, since there was less likelihood of finding himself on the receiving end of police aggro after dark. He'd been on his regular rounds in the neighbourhood of Queen's Gate, when the phone in one of the boxes rang.

“On the corner of Elvaston Place and one of the mewses, this was,” Vi said.

For a lark, Terry answered to hear a male voice say, “The package is in the Albert Hall. Circle Q, Row 7, Seat 19,” after which the line went dead.

The mysterious nature of the call piqued Terry's interest. The word package-with its intimations of either a money drop, a drug drop, or a dead letter box-clinched the deal. Since he was so close to Kensington Gore, where the Royal Albert Hall overlooked the south border of Hyde Park, Terry went to investigate. A concert audience was just leaving, so the Hall was open. He tracked down the seat high in one of the balconies and found a package of music beneath it.

The Chandler music, Barbara thought. But what the bloody hell was it doing there?

He thought at first that he'd been sent off on a fool's errand intended for whatever fool was supposed to answer that phone on the corner of Elvaston Place. And when he'd met up with Vi to collect a fresh batch of phone box cards, he'd told her about his brief adventure.

“I thought there might be money to be made,” Vi told Barbara. “So did Nikki when we told her about it.”

Shelly dropped Vis hand abruptly, saying, “I don't want to hear nothing about that bitch.”

To which Vi replied, “Come on, Shell. She's dead.”

Shelly flounced over to the chair she'd been sitting on earlier. She plopped down and began to sulk, arms crossed over her bony chest. Barbara speculated briefly on the uneasy future of a relationship between two women when one of them was so perilously dependent. Vi ignored the demonstration of pique.

They all had ambitions, she told Barbara. Terry had his Destination Art and Vi and Nikki had plans to start up a first class escort business. They also had a need to support themselves once Nikki broke with Adrian Beattie. Both operations depended upon an infusion of cash, and the music looked like a potential source of it. “See, I remembered when Sotheby's-or whoever it was-was set to auction a piece by Lennon and McCartney. And that was just one single sheet that was supposed to fetch a few thousand quid. This was a whole packet of music. I said Terry ought to try to sell it. Nikki offered to do the research and find the right auction house. We'd split the money when the music sold.”

“But why cut you in?” Barbara asked. “You and Nikki. It was Terry's find, after all.”

“Yeah. But he was soft on Nikki,” Vi said simply. “He wanted to impress her. This was the way.”

Barbara knew the rest. Neil Sitwell at Bowers had opened Terry's eyes to copyright law. He'd handed over the address for 31-32 Soho Square and informed the boy that King-Ryder Productions would put him in touch with the Chandler solicitors. Terry had gone to Matthew King-Ryder with the music in hand. Matthew King-Ryder had seen it and had realised how he could use it to make himself the fortune that his father's will denied him. But why not just buy the music from the boy right then? she wondered. Why kill him to get it? Better yet, why not just buy the rights to the music from the Chandler family? If the production that resulted from the music was anything like the King-