Twins had been fashioned from three of the few remaining town houses in the area not razed by someone’s idea of redevelopment in the nineteenth century. It was marked only by a discreet bronze plaque to the right of the doorbell and by an azure flag with the eponymous founders of the club memorialised upon it. They’d been conjoined, or so at least it seemed by their depiction on the flag. As far as Lynley knew, no one had delved deeply enough into the history of the place to learn whether this was an apocryphal account of the club’s genesis.
He was admitted not by a doorman but rather by an elderly woman in black with a crisp white pinafore apron pinned to her chest. She looked like someone from another century and, as things developed, she moved like that as well. He stated his business in an entry hung with Victorian paintings of uncertain quality that loomed above a marble draughtsboard floor. The woman nodded and negotiated something like a three-point turn before leading him to a door to the right of an impressive staircase broken by a mezzanine. There a sculpture of Venus on the half shell stood, backed by a window that arched to display the upper part of a garden, evidenced by the remains of a tree strangled by ivy.
The woman knocked, opened, and admitted him into a darkly panelled dining room, closing the door behind him. The room was empty of diners at this hour but occupied by two men at one of the linen-covered tables. They had a porcelain coffee service between them. There were three cups.
One of the men was the assistant commissioner, and the other was a bespectacled bloke who was, perhaps, too well-dressed for the time of day and the present environment, although, for that matter, so was Hillier. They seemed of an age but unlike Hillier, the other man had a receding hairline that he emphasised rather than hid, by combing his remaining locks straight back, where they lay flat against his skull in defiance of fashion and looks. His hair was uniform in colour — mousy brown would have best described it — and thus seemed to be dyed. Also in defiance of fashion, his spectacles were thick rimmed with enormous black frames, and these in combination with an astoundingly overlarge upper lip unmatched to his lower made him look like someone begging to be caricatured. This, in fact, suggested to Lynley that he knew of the man, although he couldn’t have stated his name.
Hillier did that. “Lord Fairclough,” he said. “Bernard, this is DI Lynley.”
Fairclough stood. He was far shorter than both Lynley and Hillier, perhaps five feet five inches, and he carried something of a gut on him. His handshake was firm, and during the ensuing meeting, nothing he said or did indicated that he was anything but strong willed and confident.
“David’s told me about you,” Fairclough said. “I hope we can work well together.” His accent placed him from the north and its nature surprised Lynley, for it spoke of an education decidedly not undergone in a hallowed public school. He glanced at Hillier. It was completely like the AC to rub elbows with someone in possession of a title. It was completely
“Lord Fairclough and I were knighted on the same day,” Hillier said, as if he felt an explanation for their association was required. He added, “Fairclough Industries,” as a means of clarification, as if the name of Fairclough’s source of wealth — if he had any — would be apparent at once.
“Ah,” Lynley said.
Fairclough smiled. “The Fairloo,” he said as means of clarification.
That did it, of course, as it would do. Bernard Fairclough had come to prominence first because of a most unusual lavatory invented and then widely produced by Fairclough Industries. He’d sealed his place in the firmament of those receiving titles from a grateful nation, however, by establishing a charitable foundation whose focus was raising funds to research a cure for pancreatic cancer. However, Fairclough had never been able to escape his association with the lavatory, and much amusement had been generated by tabloids referring to his knighthood and subsequent elevation to the peerage with such declarations as “It was a royal flush.”
Hillier gestured at the table. Lynley was meant to join them. Without asking, Hillier poured him a cup of coffee and, as Lynley sat and Fairclough resumed his own place at the table, slid the cup in his direction along with the milk and sugar.
“Bernard’s asked a favour of us,” Hillier said. “It’s an entirely confidential matter.”
Which explained their meeting at Twins, Lynley thought. Which also explained their meeting at Twins at a time of day when the only members in the building were probably either dozing over newspapers in the library or playing squash in a basement gym. Lynley nodded but said nothing. He glanced at Fairclough, who removed a white handkerchief from his pocket and patted it against his forehead. This bore a moderate sheen of sweat. It was not overly warm in the room.
He said, “My nephew — Ian Cresswell, my late sister’s son — drowned ten days ago. South end of Lake Windermere sometime after seven in the evening. His body wasn’t found till the next afternoon. My wife was the one who found him.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.” It was, of course, an automatic response to being given such information. Hearing it, Fairclough’s face remained a blank.
“Valerie likes to fish,” he told Lynley, a remark that sounded apropos of nothing till he went on with, “She takes a small rowingboat out a few times each week. Odd hobby for a woman but there it is. She’s fished for years. We keep the boat along with several other craft in a boathouse on the property, and that’s where Ian’s body was. Facedown in the water, open gash on his head, although at that point there was no blood.”
“What seems to have happened?”
“Lost his footing getting out of a single scull. It’s how he took his exercise, that, the scull. He went down, hit his head on the dock — it’s stone — and fell into the water.”
“Couldn’t swim or unconscious?”
“The latter. A terrible accident, according to the inquest.”
“You think otherwise?”
Fairclough turned in his seat. He seemed to look at a painting over a fireplace at the far side of the room. This was a circus scene painted in the style of Hogarth: part of the rake’s progress, with assorted human oddities from the circus in place of the rake. It was another vote for the conjoined twins. They’d have been circus material, certainly. Fairclough studied the scene depicted before he finally said, “He fell because two large stones came loose on the dock. They dislodged.”
“I see.”
Hillier said, “Bernard thinks there’s a chance the stones had some help, Tommy. The boathouse has stood for more than one hundred years and it was built to stand a hundred more. So was the dock.”
“Yet if the coroner has ruled an accident — ”
“I don’t actually disbelieve him,” Fairclough said quickly. “But …” He looked at Hillier as if asking the AC to finish.
Hillier complied. “Bernard wants to be certain it was an accident, as anyone might. There are family concerns.”
“What sort of family concerns?”
The other men were silent. Lynley looked from one to the other. He said, “I can hardly make certain of anything if I’m in the dark, Lord Fairclough.”
“It’s Bernard,” Fairclough said, although Hillier’s look in his direction suggested that such familiarity was going to breed the usual. “It’s Bernie, actually, among the family. But Bernard will do.” Fairclough reached for his coffee cup. Hillier had topped it up, but it seemed that Fairclough wanted the cup more for something to do with his hands than for drinking. He turned it, examined it, and finally said, “I want to be certain that my son Nicholas wasn’t involved in Ian’s death.”
Lynley let a moment hang while he absorbed this information and what it could imply about the father, the son, and the deceased nephew. He said, “Have you reason to believe Nicholas might be involved?”
“No.”
“Then?”
Again that glance towards Hillier, which prompted the AC to say, “Nicholas has had a… We’d have to call it a troubled youth. He seems to have got over it, but as he’s seemed to get over it before, Bernard’s fear is that the boy — ”
“A man now,” Fairclough cut in. “He’s thirty-two. He’s married as well. When I look at him, things seem to have changed.
