A Suitable Vengeance (48 page)

“But that doesn’t account for Brooke’s death.”

“Which the police have said from the first was an accident.”

Lynley took his cigarette case from his jacket pocket, staring down at it thoughtfully before he spoke. He flipped open his lighter but did not use it at once. “The pub,” he said. “Peter said Brooke wasn’t in the Anchor and Rose on Friday night, St. James.”

“After he left Gull Cottage?”

“Yes. Peter went to the pub. He was there at a quarter to ten and beyond. Brooke never showed up.”

“So it fits, doesn’t it?”

Deborah spoke. “Did Justin Brooke know Peter was taking him to see Mick Cambrey? Did Peter name Mick before they left for the village? Or did he just say it was someone in Nanrunnel?”

“He must not have known in advance,” St. James said. “He’d hardly have gone had he known Mick Cambrey was the man with the money Peter intended to borrow. He wouldn’t have wanted to run the risk of exposure.”

“It seems that Mick was in more danger of exposure than Justin Brooke,” Deborah said. “The cocaine, the cross-dressing, his second life in London. God knows what else you’ve yet to tumble up.”

Lynley lit his cigarette, spoke with a sigh that expelled a gust of smoke. “Beyond that, there’s Sasha Nifford. If Brooke killed Cambrey and then fell to his death, what happened to Sasha?”

St. James attempted to look noncommittal. He made himself ask, “What did the Met have to say about Sasha?”

“It was ergotamine and quinine.” Lynley took a white envelope from his inner breast pocket. He handed it to St. James. “She seems to have thought it was heroin.”

He read the brief report, finding it all at once difficult to assimilate technical information that should have been like a natural second language. Lynley was continuing to speak, giving facts which St. James had himself possessed for years.

“A massive dose constricts all the arteries. Blood vessels rupture in the brain. Death is immediate. But we saw that, didn’t we? She still had the needle in her arm.”

“The police aren’t calling it an accident.”

“Quite. They were still questioning Peter when I left.”

“But if it wasn’t an accident,” Deborah said, “doesn’t that mean…”

“There’s a second killer,” Lynley concluded.

St. James went to his bookshelves once again. He was sure his movements, jerky and awkward, gave him away.

“Ergotamine,” he said. “I’m not entirely sure…” He let his voice drift off, hoping for a display of natural curiosity, the reaction typical to a man of science. But all the time, dread and knowledge were seeping through his skin. He pulled down a medical volume.

“It’s a prescription drug,” Lynley was saying.

St. James flipped through the pages. His hands were clumsy. He was at
G
and then
H
before he knew it. He aimlessly read without seeing a word.

“What’s it for?” Deborah asked.

“Migraine headaches mostly.”

“Really? Migraine headaches?” St. James felt Deborah turn towards him, willed her not to ask. Innocently, she did so. “Simon, do you take it for your migraines?”

Of course, of course. She had known he took it. Everyone knew. He never counted the tablets. And the bottle was large. So she had gone to his room. She’d taken what she needed. She’d crushed them. She’d mixed them. She’d created the poison. And she’d handed it over, intending it for Peter, but killing Sasha instead.

He had to say something to direct them back to Cambrey and Brooke. He read for another moment, nodded as if caught in heavy contemplation, then shut the book.

“We need to go back to Cornwall,” he said decisively. “The newspaper office should give us the definite connection between Brooke and Cambrey. Harry was looking for a story right after Mick’s death. But he was looking for something sensational: gunrunning into Northern Ireland, call girls visiting Cabinet ministers. That sort of thing. Something tells me he would have overlooked oncozyme.” He didn’t add the fact that leaving London by tomorrow would buy him time, making him unavailable to the police when they came calling to question him about a silver bottle from Jermyn Street.

“I can manage that,” Lynley said. “Webberly’s been good enough to extend my time off. And it’ll clear Peter’s name. Will you come as well, Deb?”

St. James saw that she was watching him closely. “Yes,” she said slowly. Then, “Simon, is there—”

He couldn’t allow the question. “If you’ll both excuse me, I’ve a number of reports to see to in the lab,” he said. “I’ve got to make at least some sort of start on them before tomorrow.”

He hadn’t come down for dinner. Deborah and her father had finally taken their meal alone after nine o’clock in the dining room. Dover sole, asparagus, new potatoes, green salad. A glass of wine with the food. A cup of coffee afterwards. They didn’t speak. But every few minutes, Deborah caught her father glancing her way.

A division had come into their relationship since her return from America. Where once they had spoken freely to each other, with great affection and trust, now they were wary. Entire subjects were taboo. She wanted it that way. She had been in such a rush to move from the Chelsea house in the first place to avoid a sharing of confidences with her father. For in the long run, he knew her better than anyone. And he was the most likely person to push back through the present to examine the past. He had, after all, the most at stake. He loved them both.

She pushed back her chair and began gathering their plates. Cotter stood as well. “Glad to have you here tonight, Deb,” he said. “Old times, seems like. The three of us.”

“The two of us.” She smiled in what she hoped would be affectionate and dismissive at once. “Simon didn’t come to dinner.”

“Three of us in the house, I meant,” Cotter said. He handed her the tray from the sideboard. She stacked the plates on it. “Works too much, does Mr. St. James. I worry the man’ll wear ’imself down to nothing.”

Cleverly, he’d moved to stand near the door. She couldn’t escape without making obvious her desire to do so. And surely, her father would pounce upon that. So she cooperated by saying, “He
is
thinner, Dad, isn’t he? I can see that.”

“That ’e is.” And then adroitly he took the opening. “These last three years didn’t go easy on Mr. St. James, Deb. You think they did, don’t you? But you’ve got it wrong.”

“Well, of course, there were changes in all of our lives, weren’t there? I expect he hadn’t thought much about my running round the house until I wasn’t here to do it any longer. But he got used to it in time. Anyone can see—”

“You know, luv,” her father interrupted, “you’ve never in your life been one to talk false to yourself. I’m sorry to see you start doing it now.”

“Talk false? Don’t be ridiculous. Why would I do that?”

“You know the answer. Way I see it, Deb, you and Mr. St. James both know the answer more’n quite well. All it takes is one o’ you to be brave enough to say it and the other brave enough to stop living a lie.”

He put their wine glasses on the tray and took it from her hands. She had inherited her mother’s height, Deborah knew, but she’d forgotten how that only made it easier for her father to look directly into her eyes. He did so now. The effect was disconcerting. It drew a confidence from her when she wanted to avoid giving it.

“I know how you want it to be,” she said. “But it can’t be that way, Dad. You need to accept it. People change. They grow up. They grow apart. Distance does things to them. Time makes their importance to each other fade away.”

“Sometimes,” he said.

“
This
time.” She saw him blink rapidly at the firmness of her voice. She tried to soften the blow. “I was just a little girl. He was like my brother.”

“He was that.” Cotter moved to one side to let her pass.

She felt bereft by his reaction. She wanted nothing so much as his understanding but didn’t know how to explain the situation in any way that would not destroy the dearest of his dreams. “Dad, you must see that it’s different with Tommy. I’m not a little girl to him. I never was. But to Simon, I’ve always been…I’ll always be…”

Cotter’s smile was gentle. “You’ve no need to convince me, Deb. No need.” He straightened his shoulders. His tone became brisk. “At least we need to get some food in the man. Will you take a tray up? He’s still in the lab.”

It was the least she could do. She followed him down the stairs to the kitchen and watched him put together a tray of cheese, cold meats, fresh bread, and fruit, which she carried up to the lab where St. James was sitting at one of the work-tables, gazing at a set of photographed bullets. He held a pencil, but it lay unused between his fingers.

He’d turned on several lights, high intensity lamps scattered here and there throughout the sprawling room. They created small pools of illumination within great caverns of shadow. In one of these, his face was largely screened by the darkness.

“Dad wants you to eat something,” Deborah said from the doorway. She entered the room and set the tray on the table. “Still working?”

He wasn’t. She doubted that he’d got a single thing done in all these past hours he’d spent in the lab. There was a report of some sort lying next to one of the photographs, but its front page didn’t bear even a crease from having been folded back. And although a pad of paper lay beneath the pencil he held, he’d written nothing upon it. So all of this was rote behaviour on his part, a falling back on his work as an act of avoidance.

It all involved Sidney. Deborah had seen that much in his face when Lady Helen told him she hadn’t been able to find his sister. She had seen it again when he had returned to her flat and placed call after call, trying to locate Sidney himself. Everything he had done from that moment—his journey to Islington-London, his discussion with Tommy about Mick Cambrey’s death, his creation of a scenario to fit the facts of the crime, his need to get back to work in the lab—all of this was diversion and distraction to escape the trouble that had Sidney at its core. Deborah wondered what St. James would do, what he would allow himself to feel, if someone had hurt his sister. Once again, she found herself wanting to help him in some way, giving him a peace of mind that appeared to elude him.

“It’s just a bit of meat and cheese,” she said. “Some fruit. Bread.” All of which was obvious. The tray was lying in his line of vision.

“Tommy’s gone?” he asked.

“Ages ago. He went back to Peter.” She drew one of the lab stools to the other side of the table and sat facing him. “I’ve forgotten to bring you something to drink,” she said. “What would you like? Wine? Mineral water? Dad and I had coffee. Would you like a coffee, Simon?”

“Thank you, no. This is fine.” But he made no move to eat. He straightened on the stool, rubbed the muscles of his back.

The darkness did much to alter his face. Harsh angles were softened. Lines disappeared. The years drained away, taking with them the evidence of their companion pain. He was left looking younger and far more vulnerable. He seemed all at once so much easier to reach, the man to whom Deborah had once said anything at all, without fear of either derision or rejection, secure in the knowledge that he would always understand.

“Simon,” she said and waited until he had looked up from the plate of food which she knew he would not touch. “Tommy told me what you tried to do for Peter today. That was so kind of you.”

His expression clouded. “What I tried—”

She reached across the table, grasping his hand lightly. “He said that you were going to take the container so that it wouldn’t be there when the police arrived. Tommy was so moved by that act of friendship. He would have said something this afternoon in the study, but you left before he had the chance.”

She saw that his eyes were on her ring. The emerald shimmered like a translucent liquid in the light. His hand beneath hers was very cool. But as she waited for him to respond, it balled into a fist and then jerked away. She pulled her own hand back, feeling momentarily struck, feeling that any foolhardy lowering of her defences, any attempt to reach him in simple friendship, condemned her to failure again and again. Across from her, he swung to one side. The shadows deepened on the planes of his face.

“God,” he whispered.

At the word, at his expression, she saw that his pulling away had nothing to do with her. “What is it?” she asked.

He leaned into the light. Every line reappeared with every angle newly honed. Dominant bones seemed to draw the skin against his skull. “Deborah…how can I tell you? I’m not the hero that you think I am. I did nothing for Tommy. I didn’t think of Tommy. I didn’t care about Peter. I
don’t
care about Peter.”

“But—”

“The container belongs to Sidney.”

Deborah felt herself drawing back at this statement. Her lips parted, but for a moment she did nothing but stare incredulously at his face. Finally, she managed, “What are you saying?”

“She thinks Peter killed Justin Brooke. She wanted to even the score. But somehow, instead of Peter—”

“Ergotamine,” Deborah whispered. “You do take it, don’t you?”

He shoved the tray to one side. But that was the only reaction he appeared to be willing to allow himself. His words—if not their connotation—were perfectly cool. “I feel like an idiot. I can’t even think what to do to help my own sister. I can’t even find her. It’s pathetic. Obscene. I’m perfectly useless and this entire day has been nothing more than an illustration of that fact.”