A Suitable Vengeance

by Elizabeth George

  'Simon!' Deborah flew back into the room. He swung round from the window to find her trembling, arms wrapped round herself tightly as if she were cold.

  'What is it?'

  'Sidney. Someone's with Sidney. I heard a man's voice. I heard her cry. I thought that Justin might be—'

  St James didn't wait for her to finish the sentence. He hurried from the room and rushed down the main corridor towards the north-west wing. With each step his anxiety grew, as did his anger. Every image from the afternoon manifested itself before him once again. Sidney in the water. Sidney on the sand. Brooke straddling her, punching her, tearing at her clothes. But there was no cliff to separate him from Justin Brooke now. He blessed that fact.

  Only years of dealing with his sister caused St James to pause at her door rather than throw himself into her room. Deborah came up next to him as he listened against the wood. He heard Sidney cry out, he heard Brooke's voice, he heard Sidney's moan. Damn and blast, he thought. He took Deborah's arm, guiding her away from the door and down the long corridor that led to her own room in the south corner of the house.

  'Simon!' she whispered.

  He didn't reply until they were in her room with the door shut behind them. 'It's nothing,' he said. 'Don't worry.'

  'But I heard her.'

  'Deborah, she's all right. Believe me.'

  'But . . .' Sudden comprehension swept across Deborah's face. She turned away with a gulp. 'I only thought,' she said but gave up the effort and concluded with, 'Why am I such a fool?'

  He wanted to reply, to assuage her embarrassment, but he knew that any comment only held the promise of making things worse. Frustrated, angry at the changes in their lives that seemed to bind him to inaction, he looked aimlessly round her room as if it could formulate an answer for him. He took in the black oak panelling upon the walls, the formal Asherton armorial display in the plaster overmantel of the fireplace, the lofty barrel ceiling that soared into the darkness. An immense four-poster bed dominated the floorspace, its headboard carved with grotesques that writhed their way through flowers and fruit. It was a horrible place to be alone. It felt just like a tomb.

  'Sidney's always been a bit hard to understand,' St James settled upon saying. 'Bear with her, Deborah. You couldn't have known what that was all about. It's all right. Really.'

  To his surprise, she turned to him hotly. 'It isn't all right. It isn't and you know it. How can she make love with him after what he did to her today? I don't understand it. Is she mad? Is he?'

  That was the question and the answer all at once. For it was a true madness, white, hot and indecent, obliterating everything that stood in its way.

  'She's in love with him, Deborah,' he finally replied. 'Aren't people all just a little bit mad when they love?'

  Her response was a stare. He could see her swallow.

  'The film. Let me get it,' she said.

  12

  The Anchor and Rose benefited from having the most propitious location in all Nanrunnel. It not only displayed from its broad bay windows a fine", unobstructed view of the harbour guaranteed to please the most discerning seeker of Cornish atmosphere, but it also sat directly across from Nanrunnel's single bus stop and was, as a result, the first structure a thirsty visitor's eyes fell upon when disembarking from Penzance and regions beyond.

  The interior of the pub was engaged in the gentle process of deterioration. Once creamy walls had taken their place on the evolutionary path towards grey, an effect produced by exposure to generations of smoke from fireplace, cigars, pipes and cigarettes. An elaborate mahogany bar, pitted and stained, curved from the lounge into the public bar, with a brass foot-rail heavily distressed through years of use. Similarly worn tables and chairs spread across a well-trodden floor, and the ceiling above them was so convex that architectural disaster seemed imminent.

  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 swan-like 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.

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

  Mrs Swarm'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 Swarm'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' doubts. 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 in Paul Lane.' 'Did you see her make 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 Na
ncy'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 at 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 odds 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.'

  'The 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 drystone 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 on to 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.'

  'Damn 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 south-west 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 knobbly 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 on to 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 everything 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? Didn'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 question, Jasper whimsically chose his own conversational path.

  " ‘N John never tol' you 'bout them clothes as Nance cut up, did 'e?'

  'No. He said nothing about clothes,' Lynley replied, and as bait he offered, 'They can't have been important, I suppose, or he would have mentioned them.'

  Jasper shook his head darkly at the folly of dismissing such a piece of information. 'Slicin' urn to shreds, she were,' he said. 'Right back of their cottage. Came 'pon her, me and John. Caught her out, and she cried like an ol' sick cow when she saw us, she did. Tha's important enough, I say.'

  'But she didn't talk to you?'

  'Said nothin'. All them fancy clothes and Nance cuttin' and slicin'. John went near mad 'en he saw her. Started into the cottage after Mick, 'e did. Nance stopped 'im. 'Ung on to 'is arm till John run outer steam.'

  'So they were another woman's clothes,' Lynley mused. 'Jasper, does anyone know who Mick's woman was?'

  'Woman?' Jasper scoffed. 'More like women. Dozens, from what Harry Cambrey do say. Comes into the Anchor and Rose, does Harry. Sits and asks everybody 'oo'd listen what's to do 'bout Mick's catting round. "She don' give 'urn near enough," Harry likes to tell it. "Wha's a man to do when 'is woman's not like to give him enough?'" Jasper laughed derisively, stepped back from the Rover and sprayed the front tyre. Water splashed on his legs, freckling them with bits of mud. 'The way Harry do tell it, Nance been keeping her arms and legs crossed since the babe were born. With Mick just suffering b'yond endurance, swelled up like to burst with nowhere to stick it. "Wha's a man to do?" Harry do ask. And Mrs Swann, she do tell him, but—' Jasper suddenly seemed to realize with whom he was having this confidential little chat. His humour faded. He straightened his back, pulled off his cap, and ran his hand through his hair. 'Anybody'd see the problem easy. Mick din't want the bother o' settling down.'