Finished? Barbara thought. Wonderful news. Then lunch was in the offing.
Helen beckoned Barbara inside, calling out, “Charlie? Barbara is here. Have you had lunch, Barbara?”
“Well. No,” Barbara said, and she added,“I mean not exactly,” because brutal honesty strong-armed her into admitting that having toast with Chicken Tonight creamy garlic sauce on it for her elevenses might be considered an early lunch in some quarters.
“I've got to go out—Pen's coming up from Cambridge sans children this afternoon and we've promised ourselves a meal in Chelsea—but Charlie can do you a sandwich or a salad if you're feeling light-headed.”
“I'll survive,” Barbara told her, although even to herself she sounded doubtful.
She followed Helen into the house's well-appointed drawing room, where she saw that the breakfront cabinet which housed Lynley's stereo system was standing open. All of its various components were lit, and a CD's jacket lay splayed on the tuner. Helen beckoned Barbara to sit, and she took the same place she'd taken on the previous afternoon before Lynley had thrown her off the case.
She said, “I take it the inspector made it back to Derbyshire in one piece?” as a conversational opener.
Helen said, “I'm awfully sorry about the row between you two. Tommy is … well, Tommy's just Tommy.”
“That's one way of putting it,” Barbara admitted.
“We have something we'd like you to listen to,” Helen said.
“You and the inspector?”
“Tommy? No. He knows nothing about this.” Helen seemed to read something on Barbara's face, because she hastened to add rather obscurely, “It's just that we weren't certain how best to interpret what we had. So I said, ‘Let's phone Barbara, shall we?’”
“We,” Barbara said.
“Charlie and I. Ah. Here he is. Play it for Barbara, will you please, Charlie?”
Denton greeted Barbara and passed to her what he carried into the room: a tray on which sat a plate displaying a succulent-looking breast of chicken nestled in an arrangement of tri-coloured pasta. A glass of white wine and a roll accompanied this. A linen napkin cocooned cutlery in an artistic fashion. “Thought you might be able to do with a bite,” he told her. “I hope you like basil.”
“I consider it the answer to a young girl's prayer.”
Denton grinned. Barbara tucked in as he went to the cabinet. Helen joined Barbara on the sofa as Denton fiddled with buttons and dials, saying, “Have a listen to this.”
Barbara did so, munching Denton's excellent chicken and, as an orchestra began something heavy on the woodwinds, she thought that there were certainly worse ways to spend an afternoon.
A baritone began singing. Barbara caught some, but not all, of the words:
… to live, to live, to live onward or die
the question lingers in the mind till mankind questions why
to die, to die, to end the aching heart
to nevermore be shocked and scored as flesh accepts its part
in what it is to be a man, vows made in haste, afraid
why not take death into my breast, eternal sleep within my grave
to sleep, that sleep, the terrors waiting there
what dreams may come to men asleep who think without a care
that they've escaped the whips, the scorns that time brings those who live
That sleep allows a peace to grow within a man who can't forgive …
“It's nice,” Barbara said to Denton and Helen. “It's terrific, in fact. I've never heard it.”
“Here's why.” Helen handed over the very same manila envelope that Barbara herself had brought to Eaton Terrace.
When she slid the stack of papers out, Barbara saw that they were the hand-scored music Mrs. Baden had given her. She said, “I don't get it.”
“Look.” Helen directed Barbara's attention to the first of the sheets. In very short order, Barbara found herself following along with what the baritone was singing. She read the song's title at the top of the page, “What Dreams May Come,” and she took in the fact that the song had been written in his own hand with his very own signature scrawled across the top: Michael Chandler.
Her first reaction was a plummeting of her spirits. She said, “Damn,” as her theory of the motive behind the Derbyshire murders was shot straight to hell. “So the music's already been produced. That puts a serious screw in my thinking.” For there was certainly no point in Matthew King-Ryder's rubbing out Terry Cole and Nicola Maiden—not to mention beating up Vi Nevin—if the music he was purportedly after had already been produced. He couldn't mount a brand-new production with old music. He could only mount a revival. And that was nothing worth killing over, since the profits of a revival of anything by Chandler and King-Ryder would be governed by the terms of his father's will.