With No One As Witness by Elizabeth George Read Free Book Online Page B

family situations that ends up being blown out of proportion if one doesn’t handle it correctly.” She looked at him and offered a quirky smile. “It’s utterly stupid, isn’t it? Hardly comparable to what you’re dealing with. What time did you actually get home last night? Did you find your dinner in the fridge?”
    “I thought I’d eat it for breakfast, actually.”
    “Take-away garlic chicken?”
    “Well. Perhaps not.”
    “Any suggestions you care to make about the christening clothes, then? And don’t suggest we forego the christening altogether, because I don’t want to be responsible for my father’s having a stroke.”
    Lynley thought about the situation. On the one hand, the christening garments from his own family had been used for at least five—if not six—generations of infant Lynleys as they were ushered into Christendom, so there was a tradition established in using them. On the other hand, if the truth were told, the clothes were beginning to look as if five or six generations of infant Lynleys had worn them. On the other, other hand—presuming three hands were possible in this matter—every child of every one of the five Clyde sisters had worn the more recently vintaged Clyde family raiment, and thus a tradition was being started there, and it would be pleasant to uphold it. So…what to do?
    Helen was right. It was just the sort of idiotic situation that bent everyone out of shape. Some sort of diplomatic resolution was called for.
    “We can claim both sets were lost in the post,” he offered.
    “I had no idea you were such a moral coward. Your sister already knows hers arrived, and in any case, I’m a dreadful liar.”
    “Then I must leave you to work out a Solomon-like solution.”
    “A distinct possibility, now that you mention it,” Helen remarked. “A careful application of the scissors first, right up the middle of each. Then needle, thread, and everyone’s happy.”
    “And a new tradition’s begun into the bargain.”
    They both gazed at the two christening ensembles and then at each other. Helen looked mischievous. Lynley laughed. “We don’t dare,” he said. “You’ll work it out in your inimitable fashion.”
    “Two christenings, then?”
    “You’re on the path to solution already.”
    “And what path are you on? You’re up early. Our Jasper Felix awakened me doing gymnastics in my stomach. What’s your excuse?”
    “I’d like to head off Hillier if I can. The Press Bureau are setting up a meeting with the media, and Hillier wants Winston there, right at his side. I’m not going to be able to talk him out of that, but I’m hoping to get him to keep it low key.”
    He maintained that hope all the way to New Scotland Yard. There, however, he soon enough saw that forces superior even to AC Hillier were at work, making Big Plans in the person of Stephenson Deacon, head of the Press Bureau and intent upon justifying his present job and possibly his entire career. He was doing this by means of orchestrating the assistant commissioner’s first meeting with the press, which apparently involved not only the presence of Winston Nkata at Hillier’s side but also a dais set up before a curtained background with the Union Jack draped artfully nearby, as well as detailed press kits manufactured to present a dizzying amount of noninformation. At the rear of the conference room, someone had also arranged a table that looked suspiciously intended for refreshments.
    Lynley evaluated all of this bleakly. Whatever hopes he’d had of talking Hillier into a subtler approach were thoroughly dashed. The Directorate of Public Affairs were involved now, and that division of the Met reported not to AC Hillier but to his superior, the deputy comissioner. The lower downs—Lynley among them—were obviously being transformed into cogs in the vast machinery of public relations. Lynley realised that the best he could do was to protect Nkata from the exposure as much as