A Place of Hiding

Lynley and Helen already had their coats on, however. They were three steps short of St. James’s front door. Lynley clasped their black umbrella in hand, and its condition—which was dry—told the tale of how long they’d already been gathered by the fire in the ground-floor study with St. James and his wife. At the same time, Helen’s condition—plagued at eleven o’clock at night by what in her case could only euphemistically be called morning sickness this second month into her pregnancy— suggested a departure that was imminent, rain or not. Still, St. James thought, there was always hope.

“We’ve not even talked about the Fleming trial yet,” he told Lynley, who’d been the Scotland Yard officer investigating that murder. “CPS got it to court quick enough. You must be pleased.”

“Simon, stop this,” Helen Lynley said quietly. But she gentled her words with a fond smile. “You can’t avoid things indefinitely. Talk to her about it. It’s not like you to avoid.”

It was, unfortunately, exactly like him, and had St. James’s wife heard Helen Lynley’s comment, she would have been the first to make that declaration. The undercurrents of life with Deborah were treacherous. Like an inexperienced boatman in an unfamiliar river, St. James habitually steered clear of them.

He looked over his shoulder at the study. The firelight and the candles within provided the only illumination there. He should have thought to brighten the room, he realised. While the subdued lighting could have been construed as romantic in other circumstances, in these circumstances it seemed downright funereal.

But we have no corpse, he reminded himself. This isn’t a death. Just a disappointment.

His wife had worked on her photographs for nearly twelve months leading up to this night. She’d accumulated a fine array of portraits taken across London: from fishmongers posing at five in the morning at Billingsgate to upmarket boozers stumbling into a Mayfair nightclub at midnight. She’d captured the cultural, ethnic, social, and economic diversity that was the capital city, and it had been her hope that her opening in a small but distinguished Little Newport Street gallery would be well enough attended to garner her a mention in one of the publications that fell into the hands of collectors looking for new artists whose work they might decide to buy. She just wanted to plant the seed of her name in people’s minds, she’d said. She didn’t expect to sell many pieces at first. What she hadn’t taken into account was the miserable late-autumnverging-on-winter weather. The November rain hadn’t concerned her much. The weather was generally bad that time of year. But as it had segued relentlessly into the ceaseless downpour of December, she’d begun to voice misgivings. Maybe she ought to cancel her show till spring? Until summer, even, when people were out and about well into the night?

St. James had advised her to hold firm to her plans. The bad weather, he told her, would never last until the middle of December. It had been raining for weeks, and statistically speaking if nothing else, it couldn’t go on much longer.

But it had done exactly that. Day after day, night after night, until the city parks began to resemble swamps, and mould started growing in cracks in the pavement. Trees were toppling out of the saturated ground and basements in houses close to the river were fast becoming wading pools. Had it not been for St. James’s siblings—all of whom attended with their spouses, partners, and children in tow—as well as his mother, the only attendees at his wife’s gala exhibit opening would have been Deborah’s father, a handful of personal friends whose loyalty appeared to supersede their prudence, and five members of the public. Many hopeful glances were cast in the direction of this latter group until it became obvious that three of them were individuals seeking only to get out of the rain while two others were looking for relief from the queue that was waiting for a table at Mr. Kong’s.