A Suitable Vengeance

by Elizabeth George

  Although he lay motionless on the floor, he was not pretending to be asleep at all. His eyes were open. But they were glazed and fixed, and as Nancy watched a fly walked across the surface of one blue iris.

  Before her, his image seemed to swim in the heat, animated by a force external to his body. He should move, she thought. How can he be that still? Is it some sort of trick? Can't he feel that fly?

  Then she saw the other flies. Six or eight. No more. They usually kept residence in the kitchen and pestered her while she cooked their meals. But now they buzzed and circled round her husband's hips where Mick's trousers were torn, where they were open at the waist, where they were jerked down brutally to give someone access ... to allow someone to carve . . .

  She was running with no sense of direction and no clear purpose. Her only thought was to get away.

  She flung herself out of the cottage, through the gate and into Virgin Place, the baby once again wailing in her arms. Her foot caught on a cobblestone and she nearly fell, but she staggered three steps, crashed against a rubbish-bin, and righted herself by grabbing on to a cottage rain-spout.

  The darkness was complete. Moonlight struck the roofs and the sides of buildings, but these cast long shadows into the street, creating yawning ebony pools into which she dashed, heedless of the uneven pavement, of the small scurrying rodents who foraged in the night. The mouth of Ivy Street was up ahead, and she lunged for it and for the safety of Paul Lane which lay just beyond it.

  'Please.' Her mouth formed the word. She couldn't hear herself say it. And then, breaking through the rasping noise of her lungs, came voices and laughter, joking on Paul Lane.

  'All right, I believe you. So find Cassiopeia,' a man's pleasant voice said. Then he added, 'Oh, for God's sake, at least you can manage the Big Dipper, Helen.'

  'Really, Tommy, I'm only trying to get my bearings. You've all the patience of a two-year-old. I can—'

  Blessing. She reached them, crashed into them, fell to her knees.

  'Nancy!' Someone took her arm, helped her back to her feet. Molly was howling. 'What is it? What's wrong?'

  It was Lynley's voice, Lynley's arm round her shoulders. He seemed like salvation.

  'Mick!' she cried and pulled violently on the front of Lynley's jacket. Having said at last what needed to be said, she began to scream. 'It's Mick! It's Mick!'

  Lights went on in the cottages round them.

  St James and Lynley entered together, leaving the three women standing just inside the garden gate. Mick Cambrey's body was on the sitting room floor, not more than twenty feet from the front door. The two men went to it and stood staring down, frozen momentarily into inaction by horror.

  'Good God,' St James murmured.

  He had seen many grisly sights during his time on the scenes-of-crime team at New Scodand Yard, but the mutilation of Cambrey's body struck him forcefully, the sort of maiming that lay at the heart of every man's fear. Averting his eyes, he saw that someone had thoroughly searched the sitting room, for all the drawers had been pulled from the desk, correspondence and envelopes and stationery and countless other papers had been tossed round the room, broken picture frames had their backings torn off, and near a worn blue sofa a tattered five-pound note lay on the floor.

  It was an automatic reaction, born of his brief career with the police, fostered by his devotion to forensic science. Later, he would wonder why he even gave it sway, considering the disunity it provoked among them. 'We're going to need Deborah,' he said.

  Lynley was squatting by the body. He jumped to his feet and intercepted St James at the front door. 'Are you out of your mind? You can't be thinking of asking her . . . That's madness. We need the police. You know that as well as I do.'

  St James pulled open the door. 'Deborah, would you—?'

  'Stay where you are, Deborah,' Lynley interposed. He turned back to his friend. 'I won't have it. I mean that, St James.'

  'What is it, Tommy?' Deborah took a single step. 'Nothing.'

  St James regarded the other man curiously, trying and failing to understand the nature of his admonition to Deborah. 'It'll take only a moment, Tommy,' he explained. 'I think it's best. Who knows what the local CID are like? They may ask for your help anyway. So let's get some pictures in advance. Then you can phone.' He called over his shoulder. 'Will you bring your camera, Deborah?'

  She began to come forward. 'Of course. Here—' 'Deborah, stay there.'

  His explanation had seemed rational enough to St James' own ears. But, rife with urgency, Lynley's response to it did not.

  'But the camera?' Deborah asked.

  'I said stay there!'

  They were at an impasse. Deborah raised a querying hand, looked from Lynley to St James.

  'Tommy, is there something . . . ?'

  Touching her arm lightly, Lady Helen stopped her and came to join the two men. 'What's happened?' she asked.

  St James replied. 'Helen, get me Deborah's camera. Mick Cambrey's been murdered and I want to photograph the room before we telephone the police.'

  He said nothing more until he held the camera in his hands. Even then, he looked it over thoroughly, studying its mechanism in a silence that he knew was growing more tense with every moment he allowed it to continue. He told himself that Lynley's main concern was that Deborah not be allowed to see the body or do the photographing herself. Indeed, he was sure that had been his friend's original intention when he insisted that she stay outside. He had misunderstood St James' asking for Deborah. He had thought St James wanted her to take the pictures herself. But that misunderstanding had dissolved into dispute. And no matter that much of the dispute remained unspoken, the fact that it had occurred at all charged the atmosphere with elements bleak and nasty.

  'Perhaps you might wait out here until I'm done,' St James said to his friend. He walked back into the house.

  St James took the photographs from every angle, working his way carefully round the body, stopping only when he had run out of film. Then he left the sitting room, pulled the door partially closed behind him, and returned to the others outside. They had been joined by a small crowd of neighbours who stood in a hushed group a short distance from the garden gate, heads bent together, voices murmuring in speculation.

  'Bring Nancy inside,' St James said.

  Lady Helen led her across the front garden and into the cottage where she hesitated only a moment before directing Nancy towards the kitchen, an oblong room with an odd, sloping ceiling and a grey linoleum floor sporting great black patches of wear. She sat her down on a chair that stood at one side of a stained pine table. Kneeling by her side, she looked closely at her face, reached for her arm and held her thin wrist between her own fingers. She frowned, touching the back of her hand to Nancy's cheek.

  'Tommy,' Lady Helen said with a remarkable degree of calm, 'ring Dr Trenarrow. I think she's going into shock. He can deal with that, can't he?' She prised the baby from Nancy's grasp and handed her to Deborah. 'There must be baby milk in the refrigerator. Will you see to warming some?'

  'Molly . . .' Nancy whispered. 'Hungry. I. . . feed.' 'Yes,' Lady Helen said gently. 'We're seeing to her, dear.'

  In the other room, Lynley was speaking into the telephone. He placed a second call and spoke even more briefly, but the altered formal sound of his voice was enough to tell the others that he was speaking to the Penzance police. After a few minutes, he returned to the kitchen with a blanket which he wrapped round Nancy in spite of the heat.

  'Can you hear me?' he asked her.

  Nancy's eyelids fluttered, showing nothing but white. 'Molly . . . feed.'

  'I've got her right here,' Deborah said. She was crooning to the baby in a far corner of the kitchen. 'The milk's warming. I expect she likes it warm, doesn't she? She's a pretty baby, Nancy. I can't imagine a prettier one.'

  It was the right thing to say. Nancy relaxed in her chair. St James nodded gratefully to Deborah and went back to the sitting room door. He pushed it open and stood on
the threshold. He spent several minutes studying, thinking, evaluating what he saw. Lady Helen finally joined him.

  Even from the doorway, they could see the nature of the material that lay in disorder across the floor, upon the desk, against the legs of furniture. Notebooks, documents, pages of manuscript, photographs. At the back of his mind, St James heard Lady Asherton's words about Mick Cambrey. But the nature of the crime did not support the conclusion he otherwise might have naturally drawn from a consideration of those words.

  'What do you think?' Lady Helen asked him.

  'He was a journalist. He's dead. Somehow those two facts ought to hang together. But the body says no a thousand times.'

  'Why?'

  'He's been castrated, Helen.' 'Heavens. Is that how he died?' 'No.'

  "Then, how?'

  A knock at the door precluded reply. Lynley came from the kitchen to admit Roderick Trenarrow. The doctor entered wordlessly. He looked from Lynley to St James and Lady Helen, and then beyond them to the sitting-room floor where, even from where he stood, Mick Cambrey's body was partially visible. For a moment, it appeared that he might step forward and attempt to save a man who was beyond all rescue.

  He said to the others, 'Are you certain?'

  'Quite,' St James replied.

  'Where's Nancy?' Without waiting for an answer, he went on to the kitchen where the lights shone brightly and Deborah chatted about babies as if in the hope that doing so would keep Nancy anchored in the here and now. Trenarrow tilted Nancy's head and looked at her eyes. He said, 'Help me get her upstairs. Quickly. Has anyone telephoned her father?'

  Lynley moved to do so. Lady Helen helped Nancy to her feet and urged her out of the kitchen as Dr Trenarrow led the way. Still carrying the baby, Deborah followed them. In a moment, Trenarrow's voice began asking gentle questions in the bedroom upstairs. These were followed by Nancy's querulous replies. Bedsprings creaked. A window was opened. The dry wood of the sash grated and shrieked.

  'There's no answer at the lodge,' Lynley said from the telephone. 'I'll ring on to Howenstow. Perhaps he's gone there.' But, after a conversation with Lady Asherton, John Penellin was still unaccounted for. Lynley frowned at his watch. 'It's half-past twelve. Where can he possibly be at this time of night?'

  'He wasn't at the play, was he?'

  'John? No. I can't say the Nanrunnel Players hold any charms for him.'

  Above them, Nancy cried out. As if in response to this single demonstration of anguish, another knock thudded against the front door. Lynley opened it to admit the local police, represented in the person of a plump, curly-haired constable in a uniform that took its distinction from large crescents of sweat beneath the arms and a coffee stain on the trousers. He looked about twenty-three years old. He didn't bother with any immediate introductions or with any of the formalities inherent to a murder investigation. It was obvious within seconds that, in the presence of a corpse, he was in over his head and delighted to be there.

  'Gotcherself a murder?' he asked conversationally, as if murders were a daily affair in Nanrunnel. Perhaps to give credence to nonchalance, he unwrapped a piece of chewing gum and folded it into his mouth. 'Where's the victim?'

  'Who are you?' Lynley demanded. 'You aren't CID.'

  The constable grinned. 'T.J. Parker,' he announced. 'Thomas Jefferson. Mum liked the Yanks.' He elbowed his way into the sitting room.

  'Are you CID?' Lynley asked as the constable kicked a notebook to one side. 'Christ almighty, man. Leave the scene alone.'

  'Don't getcher knickers in a twist,' the constable replied. 'Inspector Boscowan sent me ahead to secure the scene. He'll be along soon's he's dressed. Not to worry. Now. What d'we have?' He took his first look at the corpse and chewed more rapidly upon his gum. 'Someone had it in for this bloke all right.'

  That said, he began to saunter round the room. Gloveless, he fingered several items on Cambrey's desk.

  'For God's sake,' Lynley said hody. 'Don't touch anything. Leave it for your crime team.'

  'Robbery,' Parker announced as if Lynley had not spoken. 'Caught in the act, I'd say. A fight. Some fun afterwards with the secateurs.'

  'Listen, damn you. You can't—'

  Parker cocked a finger at him. 'This is police work, mister. I'll thank you to step back into the hall.'

  'Have you your warrant card?' St James asked Lynley quietly. 'He's liable to make a mess of that room if you don't do something to stop him.'

  'I can't, St James. I have no jurisdiction.'

  As they were speaking, Dr Trenarrow came back down the stairs. Inside the sitting room, Parker turned to the door, caught a glimpse of Trenarrow's medical bag, and smiled.

  'We got quite a mess here, Doc,' he announced. 'Ever seen anything like it? Have a look, if you like.'

  'Constable.' Lynley's voice attempted reason and patience.

  Trenarrow seemed to realize how inappropriate the constable's suggestion was. He said softly to Lynley, 'Perhaps I can do something to fend off disaster,' and walked to the body. Kneeling, he examined it quickly, feeling for pulse, gauging for temperature, moving an arm to check the extent of rigor. He changed his position to the other side and bent to study the extensive wounds.

  'Butchered,' he muttered, looked up, and asked, 'Have you found any weapon?' He looked round the room, feeling among the papers and debris that were nearest to the body.

  St James shuddered at the disruption of the crime scene. Lynley cursed. The constable did nothing.

  Trenarrow nodded towards a poker that lay on its side by the fireplace. 'Could that be your weapon?' he asked.

  Constable Parker grinned. His chewing gum popped. He chuckled as Trenarrow got to his feet. 'To do that business?' he asked. 'I don't think it's near sharp enough, do you?'

  Trenarrow didn't look amused. 'I meant as a murder weapon,' he said. 'Cambrey didn't die from the castration, Constable. Any fool can see that.'

  Parker seemed unoffended by Trenarrow's implied rebuke. 'Didn't kill him. Right. Just put an end to things, wouldn't you say?'

  Trenarrow looked as if he were biting off an angry retort.

  'How long's he been gone, in your opinion?' the constable asked genially.

  'Two or three hours, I'd guess. But surely you've someone coming to tell you that.'

  'Oh, aye. When she gets here,' the constable said. 'With the rest of CID.' He rocked back on his heels, popped his gum once more, and studied his watch. 'Two or three hours, you say? That takes us to . . . half-nine or half-ten. Well' - he sighed and rubbed his hands together with obvious pleasure - 'it's a starting place, i'n' it? And you've got to start somewhere in police work.'

  Part Four

  INVESTIGATION

  10

  From the moment they pulled up in front of the Howenstow lodge at a quarter past two in the morning, events began to tumble one upon the other. Not that events had not already been accumulating into an aggregate of experience too complicated to be readily assimilated. Inspector Edward Boscowan had seen to that, only moments after his arrival at Gull Cottage with the scenes-of-crime team from Penzance CID.

  He'd taken one look at Constable Parker who was lounging in an armchair not four feet from Mick Cambrey's body; he'd taken a second look at St James, Trenarrow and Lynley in the small entry foyer, at Deborah in the kitchen, at Lady Helen and Nancy Cambrey upstairs, at the baby in the cot. His face went from white to crimson. Then he finally spoke, but only to the constable. With such studied control that no other demonstration of his fury was even necessary.

  'A tea-party, Constable? Despite what you may think, you are not the Mad Hatter. Or has no-one yet informed you of that?' The constable grinned uneasily in response. He shoved himself to his feet and scratched one armpit, nodding as if in agreement. 'This is a murder scene,' Boscowan snapped. 'What in hell's name are all these people doing here?'

  'They 'as inside when I got here,' Parker said.

  'Were they?' Boscowan asked with a thin smile. When Parker returned it, mo
mentarily relieved by what he mistakenly perceived as bonhomie in his superior, Boscowan snarled, 'Well, get them out now! Which is bloody well what you should have done in the first place!'

  Lynley was aware of that fact himself. He knew that St James was aware of it as well. Yet in the confusion engendered by Nancy's hysteria, the chaos of the sitting room, and the sight of Cambrey's body both of them had disregarded or forgotten or developed an uncharacteristic indifference to that most basic tenet of police work. They had not sealed the crime scene. While they had not touched anything, they had been in the room, Trenarrow had been in the room, not to mention Helen and Deborah and Nancy in the kitchen and then upstairs. With all of them leaving fibres and hairs and fingerprints everywhere. What a nightmare for the forensic team. And he himself-a policeman - had been responsible for creating it, or at least for doing nothing productive to stop it. His behaviour had been unforgivably incompetent, and he could not excuse it by telling himself that he hadn't been thinking straight owing to his being acquainted with the principals involved in the crime itself. For he'd known the principals involved in crimes before and had always kept his head. But not this time. He'd lost his grip the moment St James involved Deborah.

  Boscowan had said nothing more in condemnation of anyone. He had merely taken their fingerprints and sent them to stand in the kitchen while he and a sergeant went upstairs to talk to Nancy and the crime scene team began their work in the sitting room. He spent nearly an hour with Nancy, patiently taking her back and forth over the facts. Having gleaned from her what little he could, he sent her home with Lynley, home to her father.

  Now Lynley looked up at the lodge. The front door was closed. The windows were shut, the curtains drawn. Darkness enfolded it, and the trellised red roses that walled in the porch and encircled the windows on the ground floor looked like feather-edged smudges of ink in the shadows.