A Suitable Vengeance

by Elizabeth George

  '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 lighdy. '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 Tommy's 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.'

  'I don't believe it,' Deborah said slowly. 'Sidney wouldn't . . . she didn't . . . Simon, I can't think you believe it yourself.'

  'Helen's looked everywhere, phoned everywhere. So have I. Nothing's any good. And they'll trace that container within twenty-four hours.'

  'How could they? Even if her fingerprints are on it—'

  'It has nothing to do with fingerprints. She's used her perfume bottle. It's from Jermyn Street. That's not going to give the police any difficulty. They'll be here by four o'clock tomorrow afternoon. You can bet on that.'

  'Her perfume . . . Simon, it's not Sidney!' Quickly, Deborah pushed off the lab stool, going round to join him. 'It's not Sidney. It can't be. Don't you remember? She came to my room the night of the dinner. She used my perfume. Hers was missing, she said. Someone had straightened her room. She couldn't find anything. Don't you remember?'

  For a moment, he looked stunned. His vision was fixed upon her although he didn't appear to be seeing her at all. 'What?' he whispered and then went on in a voice that was stronger. 'That was Saturday evening. That was before Brooke died. Someone was planning to kill Peter even then.'

  'Or Sasha,' Deborah said.

  'Someone's trying to frame Sidney.' He pushed himself off the lab stool, walked to the end of the work table, swung round, walked back. He did it a second time, more quickly and with growing agitation. 'Someone got into her room. It could have been anyone. Peter - if Sasha was the intended victim - or Trenarrow or any one of the Penellins. Good God, even Daze.'

  The truth was all of a piece in a moment. 'No,' Deborah said. 'It was Justin.'

  'Justin?'

  'It never made sense to me that he went to her bedroom on Friday night. Not after what happened between them on the beach that afternoon. He had a grievance against Sidney. The cocaine, their fight, Peter and Sasha laughing at them both. Laughing at him.'

  'So he went to her room,' St James said slowly, 'made love to her, and took the bottle then. He must have done. Damn him to hell.'

  'And Saturday when Sid couldn't find him for most of the day - remember, she told us that? - he must have got the ergotamine and quinine then. He made the mixture and passed it on to Sasha.'

  'A chemist,' St James said thoughtfully. 'A biochemist. Who would know drugs better?'

  'So who was he after? Peter or Sasha?'

  'It was always Peter.'

  'Because of the visit to Mick Cambrey?'

  'The room had been searched. The computer was on. There were notebooks and photographs all over the floor. Peter must have seen something when he was there with Brooke, something Brooke knew he might remember once Cambrey was dead.'

  'Then, why give the drugs to Sasha? When Peter died, she would have told the police at once where she'd got them.'

  'Not at all. She'd have been dead as well. Brooke was betting on that. He knew she was a user. So he gave her the drugs, hoping she and Peter would use them together and die at Howenstow, I imagine. When it became apparent that the plan wasn't working, he tried to be rid of Peter in a different way: by telling us about their visit to Cambrey so that Peter would be arrested and out of the way. What he couldn't have known is that Sasha and Peter would leave before Peter could be arrested in Cornwall and that Sasha's addiction was worse than Peter's. He especially had no way of knowing that she would hoard the drugs and use them alone. Nor did he know that Peter would go to the Anchor and Rose and get himself seen by a dozen or more people who could provide him with an alibi for the time of Cambrey's death.'

  'So it was Justin,' Deborah said. 'Everything was Justin.'

  'I've been blinded by the fact that he died before Sasha. I never considered that he might have given her the drugs first.'

  'But his own death, Simon?' 'An accident all along.'

  'Why? How? What was he doing on the cliff in the middle of the night?'

  St James glanced over her shoulder. She'd left the warning light on above the darkroom door. It cast an eerie glow of blood red on the ceiling. It also gave him the answer. 'Your cameras,' he said. 'That's where he got rid of them.'

  'Why?'

  'He was wiping out every trace of his connection to Cambrey. First Cambrey himself. Then Peter. Then—'

  'My film,' she said. 'The pictures you took in the cottage. Whatever Peter saw, you must have photographed as well.'

  'Which means the state of the sitting room was merely a blind. He hadn't searched for anything. He hadn't taken anything. Whatever he wanted was too big to be removed.'

  'The computer?' Deborah asked. 'Even so, how could he have known you even took any pictures in the first place?'

  'He knew we had your camera with us on Friday night. Mrs Sweeney made certain of that at dinner on Saturday. He knew my line of work. Sidney would have told him. He
had to have known Tommy is with Scotland Yard. He might have risked our coming upon a murder scene and doing nothing save calling the police. But why take the risk if there was something in that room - something on the film - that could tie him to Cambrey?'

  'But the police would have found it eventually, wouldn't they?'

  'They'd made their arrest. Penellin was as good as confessing to the crime. The only thing Justin had to fear was that someone other than the local police wouldn't accept the idea of Penellin as a killer. Which is exactly what happened less than twenty-four hours after Cambrey's death. We were nosing about. We were asking questions. He had to take steps to protect himself.'

  She asked a final question. 'But why all my equipment? Why not just the film?'

  'He didn't have time. It was easier to take the entire case, drop it from your window, and then trot down to see Tommy and me in the day room where he told us all about Peter. Then, later on, he took the cameras to the cove. He went out on the rocks and disposed of them in the water. He climbed back up the cliff. And that's when he fell.'

  She smiled, feeling the release that comes with relief. He looked as if he'd shaken off a terrible burden. 'I wonder if we can prove any of it.'

  'Indeed we can. In Cornwall. First at the cove to find the cameras, then at the newspaper office to find whatever Mick Cambrey was writing about oncozyme. Tomorrow.'

  'And the film? The pictures?'

  'Icing on the cake.'

  'Shall I develop them for you?' 'Would you?' 'Of course.'

  'Then, let's be about it at once, little bird. It's time to put Justin Brooke in his place.'

  24

  Deborah worked with a lightness of both heart and spirit that she would have thought impossible a mere two hours before. She found herself humming, occasionally singing a line or two from old songs that popped into her head out of nowhere: the Beatles, Buddy Holly, an ancient Cliff Richard that she didn't even know she knew. In the darkroom, she clipped the leader from the roll of exposed film, spooling it into the developing-tank in an automatic process that was second nature to her. She didn't pause to reflect upon the work itself or upon the carefree manner in which she did it. Nor did she pause to think about how and why time and circumstances had somehow reversed themselves, allowing her former childhood affection for St James to blossom, renewed, while they talked together in the lab. She was merely grateful that it had somehow happened, she was merely grateful for the promise it held that rancour could at last be put to rest between them.

  How right she had been to follow her instincts and come to Chelsea to be with Simon tonight. How happy she had felt to see his face alter the moment he realized that no blame could be laid at his sister's feet. How comfortable she had been to follow him to his bedroom, to stand chatting and laughing while he rooted out the roll of film. They were comrades again, sharing their thoughts, listening to each other, debating, and reflecting.

  Joy in communicating had been the hallmark of their relationship prior to her three-year stay in America. And those minutes in the lab, in his bedroom afterwards, had brought back to her the vivid memory of that joy, if not the full intensity of the joy itself. She saw what he had once been to her as a series of images, playing in the field of her mind. These whirled her back through childhood and adolescence, vast periods of time that she shared with him.

  He was her history in a thousand different ways: listening to her woes, softening the blow of disappointments, reading to her, talking to her. watching her grow. He had seen the very worst that she was - her temper tantrums, her stubborn pride, her inability to accept defeat, the demands for perfection which she placed upon herself, the difficulty she faced in forgiving weakness in others. He had seen this and more, and never had he been anything less than completely accepting. He might advise or instruct, he might warn or admonish. But he always accepted. And she had known he always would from the moment when, as an eighteen-year-old boy, he had squatted before her at the side of her mother's grave where she was trying to be brave, striving for indifference, making a show of the fact that at seven years old she could stand the terror of a devastating loss that she barely understood. He had drawn her into his arms with five simple words which effectively freed her to be who and what she really was for the rest of her life: 'It's all right to cry.'

  He had helped her grow up, encouraged her in every way, and let her go when it was time for her to leave. But it was that final action - his obvious willingness to release her into her own adulthood without a word to stop her from leaving him - which had undermined their relationship, creating a rankling that had gnawed within her. And, because the very worst she could be was the part of her that rose to the surface when she was first confronted with his intention to subject them both to three years of separation heightened by silence, she had let joy wither, she had let warmth die, she had given herself over to a need to hurt him. And she had done so, achieving a revenge that was at once initially satisfying, pure and simple. But now she saw that the attainment of such a goal was at best a Pyrrhic victory, and any vengeance she had wrought upon Simon had merely ricocheted, wounding herself.

  Only in speaking the truth did there exist any hope to rebuild a friendship with him. Only in confession, expiation and forgiveness did there lie the possibility of retrieving joy. And she wanted joy. Nothing meant more than being comfortable with him again, talking to him as she had in her childhood, as his little sister, his comrade, and his friend. She wanted nothing more. For what had long been at the festering core of her painful separation from Simon was the thwarted desire to be taken to his bed so that she might know that he truly wanted her, so that she might finally be assured that she hadn't just imagined those long-ago moments when he had allowed her to see what she had convinced herself was honest desire.

  But the need for that satisfaction and knowledge had long since been consumed by the flames of her love for Tommy. And it was Tommy now who would give her the courage to speak the truth. For as she held the film's negatives to the light, searching for the pictures of the Cambrey cottage, she saw the pictures of Lynley as well, co-operatively posing with the Nanrunnel Players. She felt a rush of gratitude and devotion just studying him -the way he threw back his head in a burst of laughter, the way his hair shone, the shape of his mouth. She knew that Tommy was where the loyalty of her adulthood lay. He was the future towards which she was moving. But she couldn't reach him with an unfettered heart without laying rest to the past.

  She worked through the process of enlarging the photographs which St James had taken in the Cambrey cottage. From enlarger, to developer, to stop bath, to fixer. All the time her mind was taken up with what she would say to him, how she would say it, and whether her explanation and apology could possibly suffice to end their estrangement.

  It was nearly midnight when she'd completed her work in the darkroom: the developing, the washing, the drying, the cleaning-up. She switched off the lights, gathered up the photographs, and went in search of St James.

  He heard her movement on the stairs before he saw her. Across his bed he'd spread out every document that pertained to the case, and he was studying them all, deciding which of them could be used to exonerate not only his sister but Peter Lynley and John Penellin as well. A flash at his doorway stirred him from his contemplation of these items. It was Deborah's white shirt against the shadows in the hall. She was holding the photographs.

  He smiled. 'Have them finished?'

  'Yes. It took a bit longer than I thought. I wasn't used to the enlarger. Because it's new and . . . well, you know that, don't you? How silly.'

  He thought she might give the photographs to him, but she didn't do so. Instead, she came to stand at the foot of his bed. One hand held the photographs pressed against her side, the other curved round the bed's tall, fluted post.

  'I need to talk to you, Simon.'

  Something in her face reminded him instantly of a bottle of ink spilled on a dining room chair and a scuffy-shoed ten-year-old's qu
avering confession. Something in her voice, however, told him that, for Deborah, a moment of accounting had arrived, and as a result he felt that sudden draining of strength that comes with an onslaught of dread.

  'What is it? What's wrong?'

  'The photograph. I knew that you'd see it one day or another, and I wanted you to see it. It was my dearest wish. I wanted you to know that I sleep with Tommy. I wanted you to know because then I might hurt you. And I wanted to hurt you, Simon. I was desperate to punish you. I wanted you to think of us making love together. I wanted you to be jealous. I wanted you to care. And I. . . Simon, I despise myself for having done that to you.'

  Her words were so unexpected that the very surprise of them buffeted him into a form of shock. For one ridiculous moment, he talked himself into misunderstanding the direction she was heading in, allowing himself to assume that she was speaking of the Cambrey pictures and making references to them that he simply couldn't comprehend. In that instantaneous way that minds have of working, he made a quick decision to direct the conversation along those lines. What are you talking about? Jealous of Tommy? What photograph, Deborah? I don't understand. Or, better yet, laughing it off, indifferent. Just a practical joke that didn't work out. But even as he gathered the resources to respond she continued, making her meaning quite clear.

  'I wanted you so much when I left for America. I loved you so much, and I was sure you loved me. Not as a brother or an uncle or a sort of second father. But as a man, an equal. You know what I mean.' Her words were so gentle, her voice so quiet. He felt compelled to keep watching her face. He stood immobilized, unable to go to her even as every sinew in his body insisted he do so. 'I don't know if I can even explain what it was like for me, Simon. So confident when I left, so sure of what you and I had together. And then waiting for you to answer my letters. At first not understanding, even believing something had happened to the post. Phoning you after two months and hearing how distant you were. Your career was making such demands on you, you said. Responsibilities were piling up. Conferences and seminars and papers to write. You'd answer my letters when you could. And how is school, Deborah? Are you getting on? Are you making friends? I'm sure you'll do well. You've the talent. You've the gift. You've nothing but a brilliant future ahead of you.'