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from what I was told this morning, right now he’s frothing at the mouth to get to a telephone before we can get up there and muzzle him.”
    “Why?” Lynley asked and in a moment knew that Webberly had been saving the juiciest item for last.
    “Because Joanna Ellacourt and Robert Gabriel are to be the stars of Lord Stinhurst’s new production. And they’re in Scotland as well.”
    Lynley could not suppress a low whistle of surprise. Joanna Ellacourt and Robert Gabriel. These were nobility of the theatre indeed, the two most sought-after actors in the country at the moment. In their years of partnership, Ellacourt and Gabriel had electrified the stage in everything from Shakespeare to Stoppard to O’Neill. Although they worked apart as often as they appeared together, it was when they took the stage as a couple that the magic occurred. And then the newspaper notices were always the same.
Chemistry, wit, hot-wired sexual tension that an audience can feel
. Most recently, Lynley recalled, in
Othello
, a Haymarket production that had run to sell-out crowds for months before finally closing just three weeks ago.
    “Who’s been killed?” Lynley asked.
    “The author of the new play. Some up-and-comer, evidently. A woman. Name of…” There was a rustle of paper. “Joy Sinclair.” Webberly
harrumphed
, always prelude to an unpleasant piece of news. It came with his next statement. “They’ve moved the body, I’m afraid.”
    “Damn and blast!” Lynley muttered. It would contaminate the murder scene, making his job more difficult.
    “I know. I know. But it can’t be helped now, can it? At any rate, Sergeant Havers will meet you at Heathrow. I’ve put you both on the one o’clock to Edinburgh.”
    “Havers won’t work for this, sir. I’ll need St. James if they’ve moved the body.”
    “St. James isn’t Yard any longer, Inspector. I can’t push that through on such short notice. If you want to take a forensic specialist, use one of our own men, not St. James.”
    Lynley was quite ready to parry the finality of that decision, intuitively comprehending why he had been called in on the case rather than any other DI who would be on duty this weekend. Stuart Rintoul, the Earl of Stinhurst, was obviously under suspicion for this murder, but they wanted the kind of kid-glove handling that would be guaranteed by the presence of the eighth Earl of Asherton, Lynley himself. Peer speaking to peer in just-one-of-us-boys fashion, probing delicately for the truth. That was all well and good, but as far as Lynley was concerned, if Webberly was going to play fast and loose with the duty roster in order to orchestrate a meeting between Lords Stinhurst and Asherton, he was not about to make his own job more difficult by having Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers along, chomping at the bit to be the first from her grammar school to slap handcuffs on an earl.
    To Sergeant Havers, life’s central problems—from the crisis in the economy to the rise in sexual diseases—all sprang from the class system, fully blown and developed, a bit like Athena from the head of Zeus. The entire subject of class, in fact, was the sorest of tender spots between them and it had proved to be the foundation, the structure, and the finial of every verbal battle Lynley had engaged in with her during the fifteen months that Havers had been assigned as his partner.
    “This case doesn’t speak to Havers’ particular strengths,” Lynley said reasonably. “Any objectivity she has will be shot to hell the minute she learns that Lord Stinhurst might be involved.”
    “She’s grown past that. And if she hasn’t, it’s time she did if she wants to get anywhere with you.”
    Lynley shuddered at the thought that the superintendent might be implying that he and Sergeant Havers were about to become a permanent team, joined in a wedlock of careers he would never be able to escape. He looked for a way to use his superior’s decision about Havers as part