A Suitable Vengeance (8 page)

“Have I?”

“Walking on bubbles with not a trouble in the world. If this is love, I’ll take a double portion, thank you.”

He smiled, sorted through the files, and handed two of them to her. “Take these instead, will you? Webberly’s waiting for them.”

Harriman sighed. “I want love and he gives me”—she examined them—“fibre optic reports from a killing in Bayswater. How romantic. I’m in the wrong line of work.”

“But it’s noble work, Harriman.”

“Just what I need to hear.” She left him, calling out to someone to answer a phone that was ringing in an unmanned office nearby.

Lynley folded the memo and flipped open his pocket watch. It was half past five. He’d been on duty since seven. There were at least three more reports on his desk waiting for comment, but his concentration was dwindling. It was time to join her, Lynley decided. They needed to talk.

He left his office, making his way down to the lobby and out the revolving doors onto Broadway. He walked along the side of the building—such an unprepossessing combination of glass, grey stone, and protective scaffolding—towards the green.

Deborah still stood where he had seen her from his office window, in the corner of that misshapen trapezoid of lawn and trees. She appeared to be alternating between studying the top of the Suffragette Scroll and gazing at it through her camera, which she had mounted on its tripod perhaps ten feet away.

Whatever she hoped to capture through the lens seemed to elude her, however. For as Lynley watched, she scrunched up her nose, dropped her shoulders in disappointment, and began disassembling her equipment, packing it away in a sturdy metal case.

Lynley prolonged the moment before he crossed the green to join her, taking pleasure in a study of her movements. He savoured her presence. Even more, he savoured the fact that she was home. He had no fondness for the tender angst of being in love with a woman who was six thousand miles away. So Deborah’s absence had created anything but an easy time for him. Most of it he had spent with his mind fixed upon when he would next see her in one or another of his quick trips to California. But now she was back. She was with him. He was fully determined to keep it that way.

He crossed the lawn, scattering pigeons who were pecking about in search of crumbs from afternoon lunches. They took hasty flight, and Deborah looked up. Her hair, which had been pulled back with a haphazard arrangement of combs, tumbled towards freedom. She muttered in exasperation and began to fuss with it.

“You know,” she said by way of greeting him, “I always wanted to be one of those women who’re described as having hair like silk. You know what I mean. An Estella Havisham type.”

“Did Estella Havisham have hair like silk?” He pushed her hand away and saw to the snarls himself.

“She must have. Can you imagine poor Pip falling for someone who didn’t have hair like silk?
Ouch!
”

“Pulling?”

“A bit. Honestly, isn’t it pathetic? I lead one life and my hair leads another.”

“Well, it’s fixed now. Sort of.”

“That’s encouraging.”

They laughed together and began gathering her belongings which were scattered on the lawn. She’d come with tripod, camera case, a shopping bag containing three pieces of fruit, a comfortable old pullover, and her shoulder bag.

“I saw you from my office,” Lynley told her. “What are you working on? A tribute to Mrs. Pankhurst?”

“Actually, I was waiting for the light to strike the top of the scroll. I thought to create some diffraction with the lens. Utterly defeated by the clouds, I’m afraid. By the time they decided to drift away, the sun had done so as well.” She paused reflectively and scratched her head. “What an appalling display of ignorance. I think I mean the earth.” She fished in her shoulder bag and brought out a mint which she unwrapped and popped into her mouth.

They strolled back towards Scotland Yard.

“I’ve managed to get Friday off,” Lynley told her. “Monday as well. So we’re free to go to Cornwall. I’m free, that is. And if you’ve nothing planned, I thought we might…” He stopped, wondering why he was adding the verbal apologia.

“Cornwall, Tommy?” Deborah’s voice was no different when she asked the question, but her head was turned away from him so he couldn’t see her expression.

“Yes. Cornwall. Howenstow. I think it’s time, don’t you? I know you’ve only just come back and perhaps this is rushing things. But after all, you’ve never met my mother.”

Deborah said only, “Ah. Yes.”

“Your coming to Cornwall would give your father an opportunity to meet her as well. And it’s time they met.”

She frowned at her scuffed shoes and made no reply.

“Deb, it can’t be avoided forever. I know what you’re thinking. They’re worlds apart. They’ll have nothing to say to each other. But that isn’t the case. They’ll get on. Believe me.”

“He won’t want to do this, Tommy.”

“I’ve already thought of that. And of a way to manage it. I’ve asked Simon to come along. It’s all arranged, in fact.”

He did not include in the information the details of his brief encounter with St. James and Lady Helen Clyde at the Ritz, they on their way to a business dinner and he en route to a reception at Clarence House. He also didn’t mention St. James’ ill-concealed reluctance nor Lady Helen’s quick excuse. An enormous backlog of work, she’d said, promising to keep them busy for every weekend over the next month.

Helen’s declining the invitation had been too quick to be believable, and the speed of her refusal, in combination with the effort she made not to look at St. James, told Lynley how important absence from Cornwall was to them both. Even if he had wanted to lie to himself, he couldn’t do so in the face of their behaviour. He knew what it meant. But he needed them in Cornwall for Cotter’s sake, and the mention of the older man’s possible discomfort was what won them over. For St. James would never send Cotter alone to be wretchedly enthroned as a weekend visitor to Howenstow. And Helen would never abandon St. James to what she clearly visualised as four days of unmitigated misery. So Lynley had used them. It was all for Cotter’s sake, he told himself, and refused to examine the secondary reasons he had—even more compelling than Cotter’s comfort—for arriving at Howenstow with a surfeit of companions.

Deborah was inspecting the silver letters on the Yard’s revolving sign. She said, “Simon’s to go?”

“And Helen. Sidney as well.” Lynley waited for her further reaction. When there was none other than the smallest of nods, he decided they were finally close enough to the single area of discussion which they had long avoided. It lay between them, unspoken, putting down roots of potential doubt which needed to be extirpated once and for all.

“Have you seen him, Deb?”

“Yes.” She shifted her tripod from one hand to the other. She said nothing else, leaving everything up to him.

Lynley felt in his pocket for cigarette case and lighter. He lit up before she had a chance to admonish him. Feeling weighted down by a burden he did not wish to define, he sighed.

“I want to get us through this, Deb. No, that’s not quite true, is it? We need to get through it.”

“I saw him the night I got home, Tommy. He was waiting up for me in the lab. With a homecoming present. An enlarger. He wanted me to see it. And then the next afternoon, he came to Paddington. We spoke.”

That’s all
was left unsaid.

Lynley tossed his cigarette to one side, angry with himself. He wondered what it was that he really wanted Deborah to say and why he expected her to account for a relationship with another man that had spanned her entire life, and how on earth she could ever begin to do so. He disliked the belief that was eating at his confidence, a gnawing conviction that somehow Deborah’s return to London had the power to nullify every word and act of love that had passed between them in the last several years. Perhaps, hidden beneath the most troubling of his feelings, was the real reason he was determined to have St. James with them in Cornwall: to prove to the other man once and for all that Deborah was his. It was a contemptible thought.

“Tommy.”

He roused himself to find that Deborah was watching him. He wanted to touch her. He wanted to tell her how he loved the way her green eyes were flecked with bits of gold, the way her skin and hair reminded him of autumn. But all of that seemed ridiculous right now.

“I love you, Tommy. I want to be your wife.”

That, Lynley decided, didn’t seem ridiculous at all.

PART III

BLOOD SCORE

CHAPTER

4

N
ancy Cambrey scuffed her feet along the gravel drive that wound from the Howenstow lodge to the great house. She sent up delicate puffs of dust like miniature brown rain clouds. It had been an unusually dry summer thus far, so a greyish patina of grime dressed the leaves of the rhododendrons that lined the roadway, and the trees arching overhead seemed not so much there to provide shade as to trap the heavy, dry air beneath their boughs. Out from under the trees the wind whipped round from Gwennap Head on its way into Mount’s Bay from the Atlantic. But where Nancy walked, the air was still as death, and it smelled of foliage burnt to cinders by the sun.

Perhaps, she thought, the heaviness pressing so uneasily upon her lungs was not really born of the air at all, but was instead a child of her dread. For she had promised herself that she would speak to Lord Asherton the first time he came on one of his rare visits to Cornwall. Now he was coming.

She ran her fingers through her hair. It felt limp, its ends brittle. In the last few months she had taken to wearing it pulled back with a piece of plain elastic at the nape of her neck, but today she had given herself a shampoo and left her hair to dry, hanging straight and simple, bluntly cut round her face and shoulders. It didn’t feel right. She knew it didn’t look right, unattractive and unflattering when once it had been a source of bashful pride.

How your hair shines, Nance
. Yes. How it had.

The sound of voices up ahead made her pause and squint myopically through the trees. Vague figures moved near a table set out on the lawn where an old oak provided a substantial area of shade. Two of the Howenstow dailies were at work there.

Nancy recognised their voices. They were girls she had known from childhood, acquaintances who had never quite become her friends. They belonged to that collection of humanity who lived behind the barrier which she had erected between herself and others on the estate, barring her from intimacy with the Lynley children as effectively as with the children of the tenants, the farmers, the day workers, and the servants.

Nowhere Nancy, she had labelled herself, and her life had been an effort to carve out a singular place where she might belong. She had that place now, nominal at best, but decidedly her own, a world circumscribed by a five-month-old baby daughter, Gull Cottage, and Mick.

Mick. Michael Cambrey. University graduate. Journalist. World traveller. Man of ideas. And husband of Nancy.

She had wanted him from the first, eager to bask in his charm, to relish his looks, to hear his conversation and his easy laughter, to feel his eyes upon her and hope to be the cause of their animation. So when she went on her weekly visit to his father’s newspaper to check over the bookkeeping as she’d done for two years, when she found Mick there in place of his father, his invitation to linger and chat for a bit had been welcome.

How he loved to talk. How she loved to listen. With little to contribute save her admiration, however, how simple it had been to arrive at the belief that she needed somehow to contribute more to their relationship. And she had done so—on the mattress in the old Howenstow mill where they’d spent an entire April making love, starting January’s baby.

She’d given little thought to how her life might change. She’d given less thought to how Mick himself might change. Only the moment existed, only sensation mattered. His hands and mouth, his hard, male body insistent and eager, the faint salt on his skin, his groan of pleasure as he took her. The knowledge that he wanted her superseded any reflection upon the possible consequences. They were insubstantial.

How different it was now.

“Can we talk about it, Roderick?” she’d heard Mick say. “With our money situation being what it is, I hate to see you make a decision like this. Let’s talk about it when I get back from London.”

He’d listened, laughed once, replaced the telephone receiver, and turned to find her shrinking back from the doorway, a flame-faced eavesdropper. But he wasn’t concerned by her presence. He merely ignored her and returned to his work while above them in the bedroom little Molly wailed.

Nancy had watched as he tapped on the keys of his new word processor. She heard him mutter and saw him pick up the manual to read a few pages. She didn’t cross the room to speak to him. Instead, she wrung her hands.

With our money situation being what it is
…They didn’t own Gull Cottage. It was merely a rental, let to them on a monthly basis. But money was tight. Mick spent it too freely. The last two rental payments hadn’t been made. If Dr. Trenarrow intended an increase now, if that increase were added to what they already owed, they would sink. And if that happened, where on earth could they go? Certainly not to Howenstow where they would have to live in the lodge on her father’s angry charity.