least the size of the glass. “I become putty in his wily hands although I don’t expect he’s worked out how he’s going to get me off the floor, out of the restaurant, and back to the hotel if I drink this entire thing.”
“A trolley,” St. James said. He indicated a nearby table with its unoccupied chairs. Lynley dragged one of them over and joined them.
“Anything?” St. James said to him.
Lynley knew he didn’t mean food or drink. “There are motives, I’m finding. It’s becoming a case of turn over a stone and find a motive.” He ticked them off for his friends: an insurance policy with Niamh Cresswell as the beneficiary; the land and the farm going to Kaveh Mehran; the potential loss of funds to Mignon Fairclough; the potential gain of position at Fairclough Industries by Manette or Freddie McGhie or, for that matter, Nicholas Fairclough; Niamh Cresswell’s need for revenge. “There’s also something not quite right about Cresswell’s son, Tim. Evidently he’s a day pupil in a school called Margaret Fox, which turns out to be an institution for troubled children. A phone call got me that much but no one’s saying anything else about him.”
“So
“It could.” Lynley went on to tell them about the Cresswell children’s being unceremoniously dumped first upon their father and his lover and now upon the lover alone. “The sister — Manette McGhie — was in quite a state about the situation this afternoon.”
“Who wouldn’t be?” Deborah noted. “That’s ghastly, Tommy.”
“I agree. The only people so far who don’t seem to have motives are Fairclough himself and his wife. Although,” Lynley added thoughtfully, “I do have the impression that Fairclough’s holding something back. So I have Barbara looking at the London end of his life.”
“But why ask you to look into matters if he’s got something to hide?” Deborah asked.
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Lynley said. “It hardly makes sense for a killer, who’s got away with the murder, to head for the cops asking for a closer look.”
“As to that…” He’d been to see the forensic pathologist, St. James told Lynley. It seemed that all the i’s had been dotted and all the t’s crossed. He’d had a look at the reports and the X-rays and from the latter, it was perfectly obvious that Ian Cresswell’s skull had been fractured. As Lynley well knew when a skull was fractured, it didn’t bear the imprint of that which had fractured it. The skull either cracked like an egg with a spiderweb of breaks spreading out from the point of impact or it suffered a lateral break in the form of a semicircle on the surface. But in either case, one needed to examine the potential instruments that could have caused the fracture in order to decide how it had occurred.
“And?” Lynley asked.
And this had been done. There was blood on one of the stones remaining upon the dock when the others had dislodged and had fallen into the water. DNA analysis of this blood indicated it had come from Ian Cresswell. There were hairs, skin, and fibres as well, and when they were tested, they proved to be from Ian Cresswell, too.
“I tracked down the coroner’s officers who did the investigation prior to the inquest,” St. James went on, “There were two of them: a former detective from the constabulary offices in Barrow-in-Furness and a paramedic who does this sort of work on the side. They felt they were looking at an accident, not a murder, but they checked all alibis just in case.”
Like Lynley, St. James ticked them off, consulting a notepad that he withdrew from the breast pocket of his jacket: Kaveh Mehran, he said, was at home, and although the Cresswell children could have confirmed this, they were not interviewed in order to spare them further trauma; Valerie Fairclough was at home on the estate, having entered the house at five in the afternoon after fishing on the lake and not leaving until the next morning when she went out to speak to the gardeners working in her topiary garden; Mignon Fairclough was at home as well although no one could confirm her alibi that she was sending e-mails since anyone with access to her computer and her password could have been sending e-mails in her name; Niamh Cresswell was en route to taking the children back to Bryan Beck farm and afterwards she was en route back to Grange-over-Sands, although no one could confirm this-
“Leaving both herself and Kaveh Mehran without confirmable alibis for a period of time,” Lynley noted.
“Indeed.” St. James went on: Manette and Freddie McGhie were both at home, where they remained for the evening; Nicholas was at home with his spouse, Alatea; Lord Fairclough was in London having dinner with a member of the board of his foundation. This was a woman called Vivienne Tully, and she confirmed, St. James concluded. “Of course, the essential difficulty resides in the way the man died.”
“It does,” Lynley agreed. “If the stones on the dock were tampered with, it could have been done at any time. So we’re back to access, which roughly means we’re back to nearly everyone.”
“We’re back to a closer examination of the dock as well as bringing up the missing stones. Either that or we’re back to calling it an accident and calling it a day. I suggest a closer examination if Fairclough wants to be certain.”
“He says he does.”
“So we need to get into the boathouse with bright lights and someone needs to get into the water for the stones.”
“Unless I can convince Fairclough to bring this all into the open, we may well have to do it on the sly,” Lynley said.
“Any idea why he’s playing his cards so close?”
Lynley shook his head. “It’s to do with his son, but I don’t know why, aside from what one would expect.”
“Which is?”
“I can’t imagine him wanting his only son to know his father harbours suspicions about him, no matter how chequered a past he has. He’s supposed to have turned over a new leaf, after all. He was welcomed home with open arms, evidently.”
“And, as you said, he has an alibi.”
“Home with the wife. There’s that,” Lynley agreed.
Deborah had been listening to all this, but at this final mention of Nicholas Fairclough, she brought a sheaf of papers from her handbag. She said, “Barbara’s faxed me the pages I wanted from
“Relevant?” Lynley could see they comprised advertisements, both personal and professional.
She said, “They fit in with what Nicholas told me about wanting to start a family.”
Lynley exchanged a look with St. James. He knew the other man was thinking what he himself was thinking: How objective could Deborah be if it turned out she’d stumbled onto a woman suffering the very same problems as she herself was suffering?
Deborah saw the look. She said, “Really, you two. Aren’t you supposed to remain expressionless in the presence of a suspect?”
Lynley smiled. “Sorry. Force of habit. Please continue.”
She
“The
“I don’t think it’s likely someone else removed them, do you? Look. We have advertisements for just about anything you can think of relating to the process of reproduction. We have ads for solicitors who’re specialists in private adoptions, ads for sperm banks, ads from lesbian couples looking for sperm donors, ads for adoption agencies, ads for solicitors specialising in surrogacy, ads looking for university girls willing to have their eggs harvested, ads looking for university boys willing to make regular deposits of semen for a price. It’s become an industry, courtesy of modern science.”
Lynley gauged the passion in Deborah’s voice and considered what it might mean, especially as it applied to Nicholas Fairclough and his wife. He said, “Protecting one’s wife is important to a man, Deb. Fairclough might well have seen the magazine and torn these pages out so Alatea wouldn’t come across them.”
“Perhaps,” she said. “But that hardly means Alatea never knew they were there.”
“All right. But how does this relate to Ian Cresswell’s death?”
“I don’t know yet. But if you’re exploring every possible avenue, Tommy, then this has to be one of
