A Suitable Vengeance (21 page)

When St. James and Lady Helen entered, shortly after the pub’s morning opening, they found themselves alone with a large tabby cat that lounged in the bay window and a woman who stood behind the bar, drying innumerable pint and half-pint glasses. She nodded at them and went on with her work, her eyes following Lady Helen to the window where she stooped to pet the cat.

“Careful with ’um,” the woman said. “Watch he doesn’t scratch. He’s a mean ’un when he wants to be.”

As if with the intention of proving her a liar, the cat yawned, stretched, and presented a corpulent stomach for Lady Helen to attend to. Watching, the woman snorted and stacked glasses on a tray.

St. James joined her at the bar, reflecting upon the fact that if this was Mrs. Swann, she was trapped somewhere in the cygnet stage, for there was nothing the least bit swanlike about her. She was stout and solid, with minuscule eyes and a frizz of grey hair, a living contradiction to her name dressed in a dirndl skirt and a peasant blouse.

“What c’n I get you?” she asked and went on with her drying.

“It’s a bit early for me,” St. James replied. “We’ve come to talk to you, actually. If you’re Mrs. Swann.”

“Who wants to know?”

St. James introduced himself and Lady Helen, who had taken a seat next to the cat. “I’m sure you’ve heard Mick Cambrey’s been murdered.”

“Whole village knows. About that and the chop-up as well.” She smiled. “Looks like Mick got what was coming at last. Separated proper from his favourite toy, wasn’t he? No doubt there’ll be a regular piss-up here when the local husbands come round to celebrate tonight.”

“Mick was involved with some local women?”

Mrs. Swann drove her towel-covered fist into a glass and polished it vigorously. “Mick Cambrey’s involved in anyone willing to give him a poke.” That said, she turned to the empty shelves behind her and began placing glasses upside down on the mats. The implicit message was unavoidable: She had nothing more to tell them.

Lady Helen spoke. “Actually, Mrs. Swann, Nancy Cambrey’s our concern. We’ve come to see you mostly because of her.”

Mrs. Swann’s shoulders lost some of their stiffness, although she didn’t turn around when she said, “Dim girl, Nance. Married to that sod.” Her tight little curls shook with disgust.

“Indeed,” Lady Helen went on smoothly. “And she’s in the worst sort of situation at the moment, isn’t she? Not only to have her husband murdered but then to have her father questioned by the police.”

That re-engaged Mrs. Swann’s interest quickly enough. She faced them, fists on hips. Her mouth opened and shut. Then opened again. “John Penellin?”

“Quite. Nancy tried to tell the police that she talked to her father on the phone last night so he couldn’t have been in Nanrunnel killing Mick. But they—”

“And she did,” Mrs. Swann asserted. “That she did. She did. Borrowed ten pence from me to make the call. Not a coin in her bag, thanks to Mick.” She began to wax warmly to this secondary topic. “Always took her money, he did. Hers and his father’s and anyone else’s he could get his hands on. He was always after cash. He wanted to be a swell.”

“Are you sure Nancy spoke to her father?” St. James asked. “Not to someone else?”

Mrs. Swann took umbrage at St. James’ doubt. She pointed her finger for emphasis. “Course it was her father. Didn’t I get so tired of waiting for her—she must have been a good ten or fifteen minutes—that I went to the call box and yanked her out?”

“Where is this call box?”

“Outside the school yard. Right on Paul Lane.”

“Did you see her place the call? Could you see the call box itself?”

Mrs. Swann put the questions together and reached a quick conclusion. “You can’t be thinking
Nancy
killed Mick? That she slipped off to her cottage, chopped him up, then came back nice as nice to serve up the lager?”

“Mrs. Swann, can you see the call box from the school grounds?”

“No. What of it? I yanked the lass out myself. She was crying. Said her dad was dead angry that she’d borrowed some money and she was trying to set it to rights with him.” Mrs. Swann pressed her lips together as if she had said all that she would. But then a bubble of anger seemed to grow and burst within her, for she went on, her voice growing fierce. “And I don’t blame Nancy’s dad for that, do I? Everyone knew where any money would go that Nance gave to Mick. He’d pass it right on to his ladies, wouldn’t he? So full of himself, little worm. Got too big in his head when he went to university. Bigger still with his fancy writing. Started thinking he could live by his own rules, didn’t he? Right there in the newspaper office. He got what he deserved.”

“In the newspaper office?” St. James queried. “He met with women in the newspaper office?”

She flipped her head in a vicious nod towards the ceiling. “Right above stairs, it is. Has a nice little room in the back of it. With a cot and everything. Perfect little love nest. And he flaunted his doings. Proud of them all. He even kept trophies.”

“Trophies?”

Mrs. Swann leaned forward, resting her enormous breasts on the bar. She gusted hot breath in St. James’ face. “What d’you say to ladies’ panties, my lad? Two different pairs right there in his desk. Harry found them. His
dad
. Not six months out of hospital, poor man, and he comes on those. Sitting there real as real in Mick’s top drawer and they weren’t even clean. Oh, the screaming and shouting that went on then.”

“Nancy found out?”

“Harry was screaming, not Nance. You’ve a babe on the way, he says. And the paper! Our family! Is it all for nothing so you can please your own fancy? And he hits Mick so hard I thought he was dead from the sound he made when he hit the floor. Sliced his head on the edge of a cabinet as well. But in a minute or two, he comes storming down the stairs with his father just raving behind him.”

“When was this?” St. James asked.

Mrs. Swann shrugged. Her outrage seemed spent. “Harry can tell you. He’s right above stairs.”

John Penellin rolled up the Ordnance Survey map, put an elastic band round it, and placed it with half a dozen others in the old umbrella stand in his office. The late morning sunlight streamed in the windows, heating the room to an uncomfortable degree, and he opened the casement and adjusted the blinds as he spoke.

“So it’s been a fairly good year, all way round. And if we let that north acreage lie fallow for another season, the land can only benefit from it. That’s my suggestion, at any rate.” He resumed his seat behind the desk, and as if he had an inflexible agenda to which he was determined to adhere, he went on immediately with: “May we speak of Wheal Maen?”

It had not been Lynley’s intention to go through the account books or to engage in a detailed discussion of Penellin’s management of the estate, something he had been doing with great facility and against growing for a quarter of a century. Nonetheless, he cooperated, knowing that patience was more likely to encourage a confidence from Penellin than was a direct enquiry.

The entire appearance of the man suggested that an unburdening of his heart was more than in order. He looked whey-faced. He was still wearing last night’s clothes, but they gave no evidence of having been slept in, thus acting as testimony to the fact that Penellin had probably never been to bed. Part of what had kept him from sleep was depicted on his body: His fingers were still lightly stained with ink from having his prints taken by Penzance CID. Evaluating all this, Lynley ignored the real purpose of his visit for a moment and followed Penellin’s lead.

“Still a believer, John?” he said. “Mining in Cornwall is well over one hundred years dead. You know that better than I.”

“It’s not reopening Wheal Maen I want to speak of,” Penellin said. “The mine needs to be sealed. The engine house is a ruin. The main shaft’s flooded. It’s far too dangerous to be left as it is.” He swivelled his chair and nodded towards the large estate map on the office wall. “The mine can be seen from the Sennen road. It’s only a quick walk across a bit of moor to get to it. I think it’s time we tore the engine house down completely and sealed the shaft over before someone decides to go exploring and gets hurt. Or worse.”

“That road isn’t heavily trafficked at any time of year.”

“It’s true that few visitors go down that way,” Penellin said. “But local folks use the road all the time. It’s the children I worry about. You know how they are with their playing. I don’t want any of us having to face the horror of a child falling into Wheal Maen.”

Lynley left his seat to study the map. It was true that the mine was less than one hundred yards from the road, separated from it only by a dry stone wall, certainly an insufficient barrier to keep the public off the land in an area where countless footpaths led across private property, through open moors and into combes, joining one village to another.

“Of course you’re right,” he said and added reflectively, more to himself than to the other man, “How Father would have hated to see a mine sealed.”

“Times change,” Penellin said. “Your father wasn’t a man to hold onto the past.” He went to the filing cabinet and removed three more folders which he carried back to his desk. Lynley rejoined him.

“How’s Nancy this morning?” he asked.

“Coping.”

“What time did the police return you?”

“Half past four. Thereabouts.”

“Is that it, then? With the police?”

“For now.”

Outside, two of the gardeners were talking to each other as they worked among the plants, the clean sharp snap of their secateurs acting as interjections between their words. Penellin watched them through the blinds for a moment.

Lynley hesitated, caught between his promise to Nancy and his knowledge that Penellin wished to say no more. He was a private man. He did not want help. That much was clear. Yet Lynley felt that beneath Penellin’s natural taciturnity an undercurrent of inexplicable anxiety was flowing, and he sought to find the source of the other man’s worry in order to alleviate it as best he could. After so many years of relying on Penellin’s strength and loyalty, he could not turn away from offering reciprocal strength and loyalty now.

“Nancy told me she spoke to you on the phone last night,” Lynley said.

“Yes.”

“But someone saw you in the village, according to the police.”

Penellin made no response.

“Look, John, if there’s some sort of trouble—”

“No trouble, my lord.” Penellin pulled the files across the desk and opened the top one. It was a gesture of dismissal, the furthest he would ever go in asking Lynley to leave the office. “It’s as Nancy said. We spoke on the phone. If someone thinks I was in the village, it can’t be helped, can it? The neighbourhood is dark. It could have been anyone. It’s as Nancy said. I was at the lodge.”

“Dammit it all, we were standing right there when you walked in after two in the morning! You were in the village, weren’t you? You saw Mick. Neither you nor Nancy is telling the truth. John, are you trying to protect her? Or is it Mark? Because he wasn’t home either. And you knew that, didn’t you? Were you looking for Mark? Was he at odds with Mick?”

Penellin lifted a document from within the file. “I’ve started the initial paperwork on closing Wheal Maen,” he said.

Lynley made a final effort. “You’ve been here twenty-five years. I should like to think you’d come to me in a time of trouble.”

“There’s no trouble,” Penellin said firmly. He picked up another sheet of paper, and although he did not look at it, the single gesture was eloquent in its plea for solitude.

Lynley terminated the interview and left the office.

With the door closed behind him, he paused in the hall, where the old tile floor made the air quite cool. At the end of the corridor, the southwest door of the house was open, and the sun beat down on the courtyard outside. There was movement on the cobblestones, the pleasant sound of running water. He walked towards it.

Outside, he found Jasper—sometime chauffeur, sometime gardener, sometime stableman, and full-time gossip—washing down the Land Rover they’d driven last night. His trousers were rolled up, his knobby feet bare, his white shirt open on a gaunt chest of grizzled hair. He nodded at Lynley.

“Got it from ’un, did you?” he asked, directing the spray on the Rover’s windscreen.

“Got what from whom?” Lynley asked.

Jasper snorted. “’Ad it all this morning, we did,” he said. “Murder ’n police ’n John getting hisself carted off by CID.” He spat onto the cobblestones and rubbed a rag against the Rover’s bonnet. “With John in Nanrunnel ’n Nance lyin’ like a pig in the rain ’bout everthing she can…’oo’d think to see the like?”

“Nancy’s lying?” Lynley asked. “You know that, Jasper?”

“Course I know it,” he said. “Weren’t I down to the lodge at half ten? Din’t I go ’bout the mill? Wasn’t nobody home?
Course
she be lyin’.”

“About the mill? The mill in the woods? Has the mill something to do with Mick Cambrey’s death?”

Jasper’s face shuttered at this frontal approach. Too late Lynley remembered the old man’s fondness for hanging a tale on the thread of innuendo. In reply to the questions, Jasper whimsically chose his own conversational path.