A Suitable Vengeance

by Elizabeth George

  'Does Penellin expect his son to succeed him?'

  'I shouldn't think so. John's university educated himself. When he retires - which is a good time away in the future - he wouldn't expect me to give his job to someone whose sole experience at Howenstow has been mucking out the stables.'

  'And that's been the extent of Mark's experience?'

  'Oh, he's done some time in one or two of the dairies. Out on several of the farms as well. But there's more to managing an estate than that.'

  'Is he paid well?'

  Lynley twirled the stem of his brandy glass between his fingers. 'No, not particularly. But that's John's decision. I've got the impression from him in the past that Mark doesn't work well enough to be paid well. In fact the whole issue of Mark's salary has been a sore spot between them ever since Mark returned from Exeter.'

  'If he keeps him short of cash, wouldn't the money in Gull Cottage be a lure for him? Could he have known his brother-in-law's habits well enough to know that tonight he'd be doing the pay for the newspaper staff? After all, it looks as if he's living a bit above his means, if his salary here is as low as you indicate.'

  'Above his means? How?'

  'That stereo he was carrying must have set him back a few quid. The jacket looked fairly new as well. I couldn't see his boots clearly, but they looked like snake skin.'

  Lynley crossed the alcove to one of the windows and opened it. The early-morning air felt damp and cool at last, and the stillness of night amplified the distant sound of the sea.

  'I can't think that Mark would kill his brother-in-law in order to steal that money, St James, although it's not hard to picture him coming upon Mick's body, seeing the money on the desk, helping himself to it. Murder doesn't sound like Mark. Opportunism does.'

  St James looked at his notes for a moment and read his summary of their conversation with Nancy Cambrey at the lodge. 'So he'd go to the cottage for another reason, only to discover Mick dead? And finding him dead he'd help himself to the cash?'

  'Perhaps. I don't think Mark would plan out a robbery-. Surely he knows what that would do to his sister, and despite how they acted tonight Mark and Nancy have always been close.'

  'Yet he probably knew about the pay envelopes, Tommy.'

  'Everyone else probably knew as well. Not only the employees of the newspaper, but also the villagers. Nanrunnel's not large. I doubt it's changed much since I was a boy. And then, believe me, there were few enough secrets that the entire population didn't know.'

  'If that's the case, would others have known about the notes Mick kept in the cottage?'

  'I imagine the employees of the newspaper knew. Mick's father, no doubt; and, if he knew, why not everyone else? The Spokesman doesn't employ that many people, after all.'

  'Who are they?'

  Lynley returned to his chair. 'Aside from Mick, I didn't know any of them, except Julianna Vendale. If she's still employed there. She was the copy and wire service editor.'

  Something in his voice made St James look up. 'Julianna Vendale?'

  'Right. A nice woman. Divorced. Two children. About thirty-seven.'

  'Attractive to Mick?'

  'Probably. But I doubt that Mick would have interested Julianna. She's not thought much of men since her husband left her for another woman some ten years ago. No-one's got very far with her since.' He looked at St James, gave a rueful smile. 'I learned that the hard way one holiday here when I was twenty-six and feeling particularly full of myself. Needless to say, Julianna wasn't impressed.'

  'Ah. And Mick's father?'

  Lynley took up his brandy once again. 'Harry's a bit of local colour. Hard drinker, hard smoker, hard gambler. A mouth like a docker. According to Nancy, he had heart surgery last year, however, so perhaps he's had to change his style.'

  'Close to Mick?'

  'At one time, yes. I couldn't say now. Mick started out working on the Spokesman before he went off as a freelance writer.'

  'Did you know Mick, Tommy?'

  'Nearly all my life. We were of an age. I spent a great deal of time in Nanrunnel years ago. We saw each other on half-terms and holidays.'

  'Friends?'

  'More or less. We drank together, sailed together, did some fishing, scouted women in Penzance. As teenagers. I didn't see much of him once I went up to Oxford.'

  'What was he like?'

  Lynley smiled. 'A man who liked women, controversy and practical jokes just about equally. At least, he did when he was young. I can't think he changed much.'

  'Perhaps we've a motive somewhere in that.'

  'Perhaps.' Lynley explained the allusions to Mick's extramarital affairs which John Penellin had made that afternoon.

  'A good explanation for the condition of the body,' St James said. 'A husband getting back upon the man who cuckolded him. But that doesn't explain the mess in the sitting room, does it?' St James picked up his pen to make a note, but he put it down again without writing. Fatigue was getting the better of him. He could feel it like dust beneath his eyelids and he knew quite well that he wouldn't be good for any useful thinking for very much longer. Still, a half-formed memory plagued him, something said earlier that he knew he ought to recall. He stirred restlessly in his seat, catching sight of the piano in the drawing room and remembering Lady Asherton standing near it earlier in the evening. 'Tommy, didn't your mother say something about a story Mick was working on? Hadn't Nancy told her about it?'

  'She told me as well.'

  'Then . . .'

  'It's a possibility. I got the impression that Mick felt it was a significant piece. Certainly far more significant than the usual feature in the Spokesman. In fact, I don't think he intended it for the Spokesman at all.'

  'Is that something that might have irritated his father?'

  'Hardly enough to kill him. And certainly not enough to castrate him, St James.'

  'If,' St James pointed out, 'the killing and the castration were done by the same person. We both saw that the castration was done after death, Tommy.'

  Lynley shook his head. 'That doesn't work for me. First a killer - later a butcher.'

  St James had to admit that it didn't work for him all that well, either. 'Why do you suppose Nancy's lying about that phone call?' St James didn't wait for Lynley's response. He mused aloud. 'It doesn't look good for John Penellin that he was seen near the cottage.'

  'John didn't kill Mick. He's not the type. He couldn't have killed him.'

  'Not intentionally.'

  'Not at all.'

  There was a fair degree of certainty behind Lynley's words. St James met it by saying, 'Good men have been driven to violence before. You know that. Unintentional violence - that sudden blow delivered in rage. How many more deaths is a moment of madness - rather than premeditation - responsible for? And John was there, Tommy. That has to mean something.'

  Lynley got to his feet. He stretched in an easy, lithe movement. 'I'll talk to John in the morning. We'll sort it out.'

  St James turned to him but did not rise. 'What if the police decide they've found their man? What if the forensic evidence supports an arrest? Penellin's hair on the corpse, his fingerprints in the room, a drop of Mick's blood on the cuff of his trousers or the sleeve of his coat. If he was in the room tonight, there's going to be evidence to support it, far beyond the testimony of neighbours who saw him and other neighbours who heard a row. What will you do then? Does Boscowan know you're CID?'

  'It's nothing I broadcast.'

  'Will he ask the Yard for assistance?'

  Lynley answered with obvious reluctance, putting into words St James' own thoughts. 'Not if he thinks he's got his man in John Penellin. Why should he?' He sighed. 'It's damned awkward, for all Nancy's request that I help her father. We'll have to be careful, St James. We can't afford to step on official toes.'

  'And if we do?'

  'There'll be the devil to pay in London.' He nodded a good night and left the room.

  St James went back to his notes. From t
he desk he took out a second sheet of paper and spent several minutes creating columns and categories into which he put what little information they had. John Penellin. Harry Cambrey. Mark Penellin. Unknown Husbands. Newspaper Employees. Potential Motives for the Crime. The Weapon. The Time of Death. He wrote and listed and read and stared. The words began to swim before him. He pressed his fingers to his closed eyes. Somewhere a casement window creaked in the breeze. At the same moment the drawing room door opened and shut. His head jerked up at the sound. Deborah stood in the shadows.

  She wore a dressing gown whose ivory colour and insubstantial material made her look like a spectre. Her hair hung loosely round her face and shoulders.

  St James shoved his chair back, pushed himself to his feet. His weight was off-balance because of the awkward position of his leg, and he could feel the accompanying stress as it pulled at the muscles of his waist.

  Deborah looked down the length of the drawing room and then into the alcove. 'Tommy's not with you?' 'He's gone to bed.' She frowned. 'I thought I'd heard—' 'He was here earlier.' 'Oh,' she said. 'Right.'

  St James waited for her to leave, but instead she came into the alcove and joined him next to the desk. A lock of her hair caught against his sleeve, and he could smell the fragrance of lilies on her skin. He fixed his eyes on his notes and felt her do likewise. After a moment, she spoke.

  'Are you going to get involved in this?'

  He bent forward and jotted a few deliberately illegible words in the margin of the paper. A reference to notebooks on the cottage floor. The location of the call box. A question for Mrs Swann. Anything. It didn't matter.

  'I'll help if I can,' he answered. 'Although this sort of investigation isn't in my line at all, so I don't know how much good I'll do. I was just going through what Tommy and I were talking about. Nancy. Her family. The newspaper. That sort of thing.'

  'By writing it down. Yes. I remember your lists. You always had dozens of them, didn't you? Everywhere.'

  'All over the lab.'

  'Graphs and charts as well, I recall. I never had to feel contrite about the jumble of photographs I shed all over the house while you were in the lab, throwing darts at your own jumble in sheer frustration.'

  'It was a scalpel, actually,' St James said.

  They laughed together, but it was only an instant of shared amusement from which silence grew, first on his part then on hers. In it the sound of a clock's ticking seemed inordinately loud, as did the distant breaking of the sea.

  'I'd no idea Helen's been working with you in the lab,' Deborah said. 'Dad never mentioned it in any of his letters. Isn't that odd? Sidney told me this afternoon. She's so good at everything, isn't she? Even at the cottage. There I was, standing like an idiot while Nancy fell apart and the poor baby screamed. With Helen all the time knowing just what to do.'

  'Yes,' St James said. 'She's very helpful.'

  Deborah said nothing else. He willed her to leave. He added more notations to the paper on the desk. He frowned at it, read it, pretended to study it. And then, when it could no longer be avoided, when to do so would openly declare him the craven he pretended not to be, he finally looked up.

  It was the diffusion of light in the alcove that defeated him. In it, her eyes became darker and more luminescent. Her skin looked softer, her lips fuller. She was far too close to him, and he knew in an instant that his choices were plain: he could leave the room or take her into his arms. There was no middle ground. There never would be. And it was sheer delusion to believe a time might come when he would ever be safe from what he felt when he was with her. He gathered up his papers, murmured a conventional good night, and started to leave.

  He was halfway across the drawing room when she spoke.

  'Simon, I've seen that man.'

  He turned, perplexed. She went on.

  'That man tonight. Mick Cambrey. I've seen him. That's what I'd come to tell Tommy.'

  He walked back to her, placed his papers on the desk. 'Where?'

  'I'm not entirely sure if he is the same man. There's a wedding picture of him and Nancy in their bedroom. I saw it when I took the baby up, and I'm almost certain he's the same man I saw coming out of the flat next to mine this morning - I suppose yesterday morning now -in London. I didn't want to say anything earlier because of Nancy.' Deborah fingered her hair. 'Well, I waited to say something because the flat next to mine belongs to a woman. Tina Cogin. And she seems to be ... Of course, I couldn't say for certain, but from the way she talks and dresses and makes allusions to her experiences with men . . . The impression I got. . .'

  'She's a prostitute?'

  Deborah told the story quickly: how Tina Cogin had overheard their row in London; how she had appeared with a drink for Deborah, one that she herself claimed to use after her sexual encounters with men. 'But I didn't have a chance to talk to her much because Sidney arrived and Tina left.'

  'What about Cambrey?'

  'It was the glass. I still had Tina's glass and I hadn't thought about returning it till this morning.'

  She'd seen Cambrey as she approached Tina's door, Deborah explained. He came out of the flat, and realizing that she was actually in the presence of one of Tina's 'clients' Deborah hesitated, unsure whether to give the glass over to the man and ask him to return it to Tina, whether to walk on by and pretend she didn't notice him, whether to return to her own flat without a word. He had made the decision for her by saying good morning.

  'He wasn't embarrassed at all,' Deborah said ingenuously.

  St James reflected upon the fact that men are rarely embarrassed about their part in a sexual liaison, but he didn't comment. 'Did you talk to him?'

  'I just asked him to give the glass to Tina and to tell her I was off to Cornwall. He asked should he fetch her, but I said no. I didn't actually want to see her with him. It did seem so awkward, Simon. I wondered whether he would put his arm round her or kiss her goodbye? Would they shake hands?' Deborah shot him a fleeting smile. 'I don't handle that sort of thing well, do I? Anyway, he went back into the flat.'

  'Was the door unlocked?'

  Deborah glanced away, her expression thoughtful. 'No, he had a key.'

  'Had you seen him before? Or just that once?'

  'Just then. And a moment later. He went into the flat and spoke to Tina.' She flushed. 'I heard him say something about red-headed competition in the hallway. So he must have thought . . . Well, he really couldn't have. He was probably only joking. But she must have led him to believe that I was on the game because when he came out he said that Tina wanted me to know she'd take care of my gendemen callers while I was gone. And then he laughed. And he looked me over, Simon. At first I thought he'd taken Tina seriously, but he winked and grinned and it just seemed his way.' Deborah appeared to go back through what she had said, for her face brightened as she drew a conclusion from the facts. 'Then, she's probably not a prostitute, is she? If Mick had a key to her flat . . . Prostitutes don't generally give out keys, do they? I mean, s'pose one man stops by while another . . .' She gestured futilely.

  'It would create an awkward situation.'

  'So perhaps she isn't a prostitute. Could he be keeping her, Simon? Or even hiding her? Protecting her from someone?'

  'Are you sure it was Mick you saw?'

  'I think it was. If I got another look at a photograph, I could be certain. But I remember his hair because it was dark auburn, just exactly the shade I always wished mine might be. I remember thinking how unfair that such a colour should be wasted on a man who probably didn't treasure it nearly as much as I would have done.'

  St James tapped his fingers against the desk. He thought aloud. 'I'm sure we can manage to get a photograph of Mick. If not the one from the cottage, then surely another. His father would probably have one.' He considered the next logical step. 'Could you go to London and talk to Tina, Deborah? Good Lord, what am I thinking of? You can't dash off to London in the middle of your weekend here.'

  'Of course I can. There's
a dinner planned here for tomorrow night, but we've nothing after that. Tommy can fly me back Sunday morning. Or I can take the train.'

  'You need only find out whether she recognizes his picture. If she does, don't tell her he's dead. Tommy and I will see to that.' St James folded his papers, slipped them into his jacket pocket, and continued speaking pensively. 'If Mick's linked to her sexually, she may be able to tell us something which clarifies his murder, something which Mick might have told her inadvertently. Men relax after intercourse. They feel more important. They let down their guard. They become more honest.' He suddenly became aware of the nature of his words and stopped them, shifting in another direction without looking her way. 'Helen can go with you. I'll do some questioning here. Tommy'11 want to be part of that. Then we'll join you when . . . Damn! The photographs! I left the film from the cottage in your camera. If we can develop it, no doubt we'll . . . I'm afraid I used it all up.'

  She smiled. He knew why. He was starting to sound exactly like her.

  'I'll get it for you, shall I? It's just in my room.'

  She left him. He walked to the alcove window and looked out over the night-shrouded garden. Shapes alone defined the bushes there. Pathways were muted streaks of grey.

  St James considered the disjointed pieces of Mick Cambrey's life and death that had emerged that night. He wondered how they fitted together. Mick had been gone a great deal, Lady Asherton had said. He'd been working on a story in London. A big story. St James thought about this and the possible connections a story might have to Tina Cogin.

  One assumption was that she was Mick's lover, a woman being kept in London for his clandestine pleasure. Yet Deborah, nobody's fool when it came to judgement, had concluded from a first impression, a conversation, and a run-in with Mick that Tina was a prostitute. If this was the case, the resultant tie to a story was both logical and ineluctable. For Mick might be keeping the woman in London not for his pleasure but for her own protection as a source for a story that had the potential to make banner headlines and put Mick's name in the forefront of journalism. It certainly would not be the first time if a prostitute became involved in critically important news, nor would it be the first time if heads were to roll and careers were to fall because of a prostitute. And now with Mick dead and his sitting room ransacked - perhaps in the hope of finding Tina Cogin's address in London - no amalgamation of these details sounded outrageous.