Elizabeth George - Deception on His Mind

ELIZABETH GEORGE is the author of award-winning and internationally bestselling novels, including In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner, A Traitor to Memory, and A Place of Hiding. Her novels have been filmed for television by the BBC and broadcast in the United States on PBS's Mystery!

She lives in Seattle and London.

HOEVER SAID APRIL IS THE CRUELLEST MONTH HAD never been in London in the midst of a summer heat wave. With air pollution dressing the sky in designer brown, diesel lorries draping the buildingsand the inside of nosesin basic black, and tree leaves wearing the very latest in dust and grit, London in late June was the cruellest month. Indeed, it was a veritable hellhole. This was Barbara Havers's unsentimental evaluation of her nation's capital as she drove through it on Sunday afternoon, heading homeward in her rattling Mini.

She was ever so slightlybut nonetheless pleasantlytanked up. Not enough to be a danger to herself or to anyone else on the streets, but enough to review the events of the day in the pleasant afterglow produced by expensive French champagne.

She was returning home from a wedding. It hadn't been the social event of the decade, which she'd long expected that the marriage of an earl to his longtime beloved was supposed to be. Rather, it had been a quiet affair in a tiny church close to said earl's home in Belgravia. And instead of bluebloods dressed to the nines, its guests had been only the earl's closest friends as well as a few of his fellow police officers from New Scotland Yard. Barbara Havers was one of this latter group. At times, she liked to think that she was also one of the former.

Upon reflection, Barbara realised that she should have expected of Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley just the sort of quiet wedding that he and Lady Helen Clyde had produced. He'd been downplaying the Lord Asherton side of his life for as long as she'd known him, and the last thing he would have wanted in the way of nuptials was an ostentatious ceremony attended by a well-heeled crowd of Hooray Henrys. So instead of that, sixteen decidedly unHenrylike guests had assembled to watch Lynley and Helen take the marital plunge, after which they'd all repaired to La Tante Claire in Chelsea, where they'd tucked into six kinds of hors d'oeuvre, champagne, late lunch, and more champagne.

Once the toasts were made and the couple seen off to a honeymoon destination which they had both laughingly refused to disclose, the rest of the wedding party disbanded. Barbara stood on the frying-pan pavement of Royal Hospital Road and exchanged a few words with the other guests, among them Lynley's best man, a forensic specialist called Simon St. James. In best English fashion, they'd commented upon the weather first. Depending upon the speaker's level of toleration for heat, humidity, smog, fumes, dust, and glare, the atmosphere was deemed wonderful, hideous, blessed, bloody awful, delightful, delectable, insufferable, heavenly, or plain effing hell. The bride was pronounced beautiful. The groom was handsome. The food was delicious. After this, there was a general pause in which the company decided upon two courses of action: talk that ventured beyond banalities or friendly farewells.

The group parted ways. Barbara was left with St. James and his wife, Deborah. Both were wilting in the merciless sun, St. James dabbing a white handkerchief to his brow and Deborah fanning herself enthusiastically with an old theatre programme which she'd fished from her capacious straw bag.

Will you come home with us, Barbara? she asked. We're going to sit in the garden for the rest of the day, and I plan to ask Dad to turn the hose pipe on us.

That sounds like the ticket, Barbara said. She rubbed her neck where sweat had soaked her collar.

Good.

But I can't. To tell you the truth, I'm whacked.

Understandable, St. James said. How long has it been?

Deborah added quickly, How stupid of me. I'm sorry, Barbara. I'd completely forgotten.

Barbara doubted this. The bandages across her nose and the bruises on her facenot to mention her chipped front toothmade it unlikely that anyone who saw her would miss the fact that she'd recently served sentence in a hospital. Deborah was merely too polite to notice this. Two weeks, Barbara replied to St. James's question.