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“Can you remember what you and Lula talked about that day?”
“Well, I had been given so many painkillers, you understand I had had a very serious operation I can’t remember every detail”
“But you re to see you?” asked Strike
“Oh yes,” she said “She woke ”
“Can you remember what you talked about?”
“My operation, of course,” she said, with just a touch of asperity “And then, a little bit, about her big brother”
“Her big…?”
“Charlie,” said Lady Bristow, pitifully “I told her about the day he died I had never really talked to her about it before The worst, the very worst day of my life”
Strike could iy, but no less resentful for all that, holding her unwilling daughter there at her side by talking about her pain, and her dead son
“How could I have known that that would be the last time I would ever see her?” breathed Lady Bristow “I didn’t realize that I was about to lose a second child”
Her bloodshot eyes filled She blinked, and two fat tears fell down on to her hollow cheeks
“Could you please look in that drawer,” she whispered, pointing a withered finger at the bedside table, “and get me out my pills?”
Strike slid it open and sawtypes and with various labels upon them
“Which…?”
“It doesn’t matter They’re all the same,” she said
He took one out; it was clearly labeled Valiuh in there to overdose ten times
“If you could pop a couple out for me?” she said “I’ll take theh”
He handed her her pills and the cup; her hands treht, inappropriately, of a priest offering communion
“Thank you,” sheback on to her pillows as he replaced her tea on the table, and fixing him with her plaintive eyes “Didn’t John tell me you knew Charlie?”
“Yes, I did,” said Strike “I’ve never forgotten him”
“No, of course not He was a most lovable child Everyone always said so The sweetest boy, the very sweetest I have ever known I le day”
Outside the , the children shrieked, and the plane trees rustled, and Strike thought of how the rooo, when the trees must have been bareli, with her beautiful eyes perhaps fixed on the picture of dead Charlie while her groggy mother told the horrible story
“I had never really talked to Lula about it before The boys had gone out on their bikes We heard John screa…”
Strike’s pen had notwoman’s face as she talked
“Alec wouldn’t let me look, wouldn’t let me anywhere near the quarry When he told ht I would die I wanted to die I could not understand how God could have let it happen
“But since then, I’ve come to think that perhaps I have deserved all of it,” said Lady Bristow distantly, her eyes fixed on the ceiling “I’ve wondered whether I’ punished Because I loved them too much I spoiled them I couldn’t say no Charlie, Alec and Lula I think it must be punishment, because otherwise it would be too unspeakably cruel, wouldn’t it? To ain”
Strike had no answer to give She invited pity, but he found he could not pity her even as , wrapped in invisible robes ofher helplessness and passivity to hi was distaste
“I wanted Lula so much,” said Lady Bristow, “but I don’t think she ever…She was a darling little thing So beautiful I would have done anything for that girl But she didn’t love me the way Charlie and John loved ot her too late
“John was jealous when she first came to us He had been devastated about Charlie…but they ended up being very close friends Very close”
A tiny frown crumpled the paper-fine skin of her forehead
“So Tony was quite wrong”
“What was he wrong about?” asked Strike quietly
Her fingers twitched upon the covers She sed
“Tony didn’t think we should have adopted Lula”
“Why not?” asked Strike
“Tony never liked any of my children,” said Yvette Bristow “My brother is a very hard s after Charlie died Alec hit him It wasn’t true It wasn’t true—what Tony said”
Her limpsed the woman she y, a little childish, prettily dependent, an ultra-feminine creature, protected and petted by Sir Alec, who strove to satisfy her every whim and wish
“What did Tony say?”
“Horrible things about John and Charlie Awful things I don’t,” she said weakly, “want to repeat them And then he phoned Alec, when he heard that ere adopting a little girl, and told hiht not to do it Alec was furious,” she whispered “He forbade Tony our house”
“Did you tell Lula about all this when she visited that day?” asked Strike “About Tony, and the things he said after Charlie died; and when you adopted her?”
She seemed to sense a reproach
“I can’t remember exactly what I said to her I had just had a very serious operation I was a little drowsy fros I can’t remember precisely what I said now…”
And then, with an abrupt change of subject:
“That boy reminded me of Charlie Lula’s boyfriend The very handsome boy What is his name?”
“Evan Duffield?”
“That’s right He cao, you know Quite recently I don’t know exactly…I lose track of tis now But he came to see me It was so sweet of him He wanted to talk about Lula”
Strike remembered Bristow’s assertion that his mother had not knoho Duffield was, and he wondered whether Lady Bristow had played this little ga herself out to be more confused than she really was, to stimulate his protective instincts
“Charlie would have been handsoer, or an actor He loved perfor, do you remember? I felt very sorry for that boy Evan He cried here, withanother man”
“What other man was that?”
“The singer,” said Lady Bristow vaguely “The singer who’d written songs about her When you are young, and beautiful, you can be very cruel I felt very sorry for hi to feel guilty about”
“Why did he say he felt guilty?”
“For not following her into her apart”
“If we could just go back for a moment, Yvette, to the day before Lula’s death?”
She looked reproachful
“I’ else I’ve told you everything I reiven s, for the pain”
“I understand that I just wanted to knohether you re you that day?”
There was a pause, and Strike saw so harden in the weak face
“No, I don’t re,” said Lady Bristow at last “I know he says he was here, but I don’t re Maybe I was asleep”
“He clai,” said Strike
Lady Bristow gave the sile shoulders