A Suitable Vengeance (18 page)

Her words were growing progressively drowsier. Lynley got out, and with St. James he helped her from the car. Despite Nancy’s declaration that both father and brother were sleeping soundly in the lodge, Lynley had no intention of leaving her without making sure that this was the case.

Beneath her words he had heard the unmistakable note of urgency which generally accompanies a lie. It was not inconceivable that she had spoken to her father by telephone during the evening. But he had not been home when Lynley had phoned from Gull Cottage just ninety minutes ago, and Nancy’s protestations that he—as well as her brother—would sleep through the noise of the telephone were not only improbable but also indicative of a need to conceal.

Taking Nancy’s arm, he led her up the uneven flagstone path and onto the porch where the climbing roses cast a sweet fragrance on the warm night air. Once inside the house, a quick look in the rooms affirmed his suspicions. The lodge was empty. As Nancy drifted into the sitting room and sat in a cane-backed rocking chair where she sang tonelessly to her daughter, he went back to the front door.

“No one’s here,” he said to the others. “But I think I’d rather wait for John than take Nancy up to the house. Do you want to go on yourselves?”

St. James made the decision for them all. “We’ll come in.”

They joined Nancy in the sitting room, taking places among and upon the overstuffed furniture. No one spoke. Instead they each attended to the Penellin personal effects which crammed the walls, the table tops, and the floor, attesting to the lives and personalities of the family who had occupied the lodge for twenty-five years. Spanish porcelains—the passion of Nancy’s mother—collected dust upon a spinet piano. Mounted butterflies in a dozen frames hung on one wall and these, along with a quantity of aging tennis trophies, spoke of the wide swings which Mark Penellin’s interests took. A broad bay window displayed a mass of Nancy’s poorly executed petit point pillows, faded and looking in their serried line as if they’d been placed there to get them out of the way. In one corner, a television set held the room’s only photograph, one taken of Nancy, Mark, and their mother at Christmastime shortly before the railway disaster that ended Mrs. Penellin’s life.

After a few minutes of listening to the sounds of crickets and a nightingale drifting in the window which Lynley had opened, Nancy Cambrey stood. She said, “Molly’s dropped off. I’ll just pop her upstairs,” and left them.

When they heard her movement on the floor above, it was Lady Helen who put into words what had been playing in the back of Lynley’s mind. She spoke in her usual, forthright manner.

“Tommy, where do you suppose John Penellin is? Do you think Nancy really spoke to him during the play? Because it seems to me that there’s something decidedly odd in the way she insisted that she’d talked to him.”

Lynley was sitting on the piano bench, and he pushed softly against three of the keys, producing a barely audible discordance. “I don’t know,” he replied. But even if he could ignore Helen’s intuitive remark, he could not forget his conversation with Nancy that afternoon or the aversion with which her father had spoken of Nancy’s husband.

The clock struck the half hour. Nancy returned to them. “I can’t think where Dad is,” she said. “You’ve no need to stay. I’ll be fine now.”

“We’ll stay,” Lynley said.

She pushed her hair behind her ears and rubbed her hands down the sides of her dress. “He must’ve just gone out a bit ago. He does that sometimes when he can’t sleep. He walks on the grounds. Often he does that before he goes to bed at night. On the grounds. I’m sure that’s where he’s gone.”

No one mentioned the wild improbability of John Penellin’s taking a walk on the grounds at half past two in the morning. No one even had to, for events conspired to prove Nancy a liar. Even as she made her final declaration, a car’s lights swept across the sitting room windows. An engine coughed once. A door opened and shut. Footsteps rang against the flagstones and, a moment later, on the porch. She hurried to the door.

Penellin’s voice came to the others clearly. It sounded sharp. “Nancy? What’re you doing here? It’s not Mark, is it? Nancy, where’s Mark?”

She reached out a hand to him as he came in the door. He took it. “Dad.” Nancy’s voice wavered.

At this, Penellin suddenly saw the others gathered in the sitting room. Alarm shot across his face. “What’s happened?” he demanded. “By God, you tell me what that bastard’s done to you now.”

“He’s dead,” Nancy said. “Someone…” She faltered at the rest of it, as if those few words reminded her of the horror that the sedative had allowed her to escape for a short time.

Penellin stared. He brushed past his daughter and took a step towards the stairway. “Nancy, where’s your brother?”

Nancy said nothing. In the sitting room, Lynley slowly got to his feet.

Penellin spoke again. “Tell me what happened.”

“Nancy found Mick’s body in the cottage after the play,” Lynley said. “The sitting room looked as if it had been searched. Mick may well have surprised someone in the act of going through his papers. Or in the act of robbery. Although,” he added, “that latter seems unlikely.”

Nancy grasped this idea. “It
was
robbery,” she said. “That’s what it was and no mistake. Mick was doing the pay envelopes for the newspaper staff when I left him this evening.” She tossed a look back over her shoulder at Lynley. “Was the money still there?”

“I saw only a five-pound note on the floor,” St. James answered.

“But surely Mick didn’t pay the staff in cash,” Lynley said.

“He did,” Nancy said. “It was always done that way on the newspaper. More convenient. There’s no bank in Nanrunnel.”

“But if it was robbery—”

“It
was
,” Nancy said.

Lady Helen spoke gently, bringing up the single point that obviated robbery as a motive. “But Nancy, his body…”

“The body?” Penellin asked.

“He’d been castrated,” Lynley said.

“Good God.”

The front doorbell rang shrilly. All of them jumped, a testimony to the state of their nerves. Still in the hallway, Penellin answered the door. Inspector Boscowan stood on the porch. Beyond him, a dusty car was parked behind the estate Rover that Lynley had earlier driven to and from Nanrunnel.

“John,” Boscowan said by way of greeting Penellin.

The use of Penellin’s given name reminded Lynley all at once that not only were Boscowan and Penellin of an age, but like so many others who lived in this remote area of Cornwall, they were also former schoolmates and lifelong friends.

Penellin said, “Edward, you’ve heard about Mick?”

“I’ve come to talk to you about it.”

Nancy gripped the newel post of the stairway. “To Dad? Why? He knows nothing about this.”

“I’ve a few questions, John,” Boscowan said.

“I don’t understand.” But Penellin’s tone was an admission that he understood only too well.

“May I come in?”

Penellin glanced into the sitting room, and Boscowan followed his gaze to see the others gathered there.

“Still here, my lord?” he asked.

“Yes. We were…” Lynley hesitated.
Waiting for John to come home
asked to be spoken, an inadvertent accusation he would not make.

“Dad knows nothing,” Nancy repeated. “Dad, tell him you know nothing about Mick.”

“May I come in?” Boscowan asked once more.

“Nancy and the baby,” Penellin said. “They’re both here. May we talk in Penzance? At the station house?”

Requesting a different location wasn’t a suspect’s right. And that John Penellin was a suspect was illustrated in Boscowan’s next words.

“Have you a solicitor you’d like to ring?”

“A solicitor?” Nancy shrilled.

“Nance. Girl. Don’t.”

Although Penellin reached for his daughter, she flinched away. “Dad was
here
.”

Boscowan shifted his weight uneasily from one foot to the other. “I’m sorry, Nancy. Neighbours saw him at your cottage at half past nine. Others heard an argument as well.”

“He was here. I spoke to him after the interval. Dad, tell him I spoke to you after the interval.” She grabbed her father’s arm, shaking it doggedly.

Her father loosened her fingers. “Let me go, lass. Stay here. Take care of Molly. Nancy, wait for Mark.”

Boscowan didn’t miss the exigent quality of Penellin’s final direction to his daughter. “Mark’s not here?”

Penellin replied, “I expect he’s out with friends. In St. Ives or St. Just. You know how young men are.” He patted Nancy’s hand. “I’m ready then, Edward. Let’s be off.”

He nodded to the others and left the lodge. A moment later, Boscowan’s car purred to life. The sound amplified briefly as he reversed down the main drive, then faded altogether as they headed towards Penzance.

Nancy spun towards the sitting room. “Help him!” she cried to Lynley. “He didn’t kill Mick. You’re a policeman. You can help. You must.” Uselessly she twisted the front of her housedress in her hands.

Even as he went to her side, Lynley reflected upon how little he could actually do to help. He had no jurisdiction in Cornwall. Boscowan seemed a highly capable man, one unlikely ever to need assistance from New Scotland Yard. Had Constable Parker been in charge of the case, the Met’s ultimate involvement would not have been long in doubt. But Parker wasn’t in charge. And since Penzance CID looked perfectly competent, the investigation had to remain in their hands. However, he still wanted to say something, even if the only possible result was that form of purgation which comes from reliving the worst part of a nightmare.

“Tell me what happened tonight.” He led her back to the rocking chair. Deborah rose from her place and covered Nancy’s shoulders with a blanket that lay on the back of the couch.

Nancy stumbled through the story. She’d gone to do the drinks for the play, leaving the baby with Mick. Mick had been working at the sitting room desk, getting ready to do the pay envelopes for the newspaper staff. She’d placed Molly in a playpen nearby. She’d left them at seven o’clock.

“When I got back to the cottage, I could hear Molly crying. I was angry that Mick would let her go ignored. I shouted at him as I opened the door.”

“The door was unlocked?” St. James asked.

It was, she told them.

“You didn’t notice Mick’s body?”

She shook her head and clutched the blanket closer round her thin shoulders. One elbow stuck out. It was bony and red. “The sitting room door was closed.”

“And when you opened it, what did you notice at first?”

“Him. Mick. Lying…” She gulped for a breath. “Then all round him, the papers and notebooks and such.”

“As if the room had been searched,” St. James said. “Did Mick ever work on stories at home?”

Nancy rubbed her hand along the nap of the blanket and nodded a bit too eagerly. “Often, yes. At the computer. He wouldn’t want to go back to the office after dinner, so he’d work a bit at home. He kept lots of notes for his stories at the cottage. Sort through this lot, Mickey, I’d tell him. We must throw some things away. But he didn’t like to because he never knew when he’d need to look up some little detail in a notebook or a journal or his diary. Can’t toss it out, Nance, he’d tell me. The first thing I throw away will be exactly what I need. So there were always papers. Scraps of this and that. Notes on paper napkins and on matchbook covers. It was his way. Lots of notes. Someone must have wanted…or the money. The money. We mustn’t forget that.”

It was a difficult recital to listen to. Although the facts seemed relevant—the presence of material on the floor, the evidence of a hasty search—it did not appear that their connection to Mick Cambrey’s profession was foremost on his wife’s mind, no matter her attempt to make it seem so. Rather, she appeared to be concerned with an entirely different matter connected to the search.

She verified this by concluding with, “You know, I did talk to Dad after the interval. Perhaps at half past ten. From a call box.”

No one replied. Despite the room’s warmth, Nancy’s legs shook, causing the blanket that covered them to tremble. “I telephoned. I spoke to Dad. He was here. Lots of people must’ve seen me make the call. Ask Mrs. Swann. She knows I spoke to Dad. He was here. He said he’d not been out all evening.”

“But Nancy,” Lynley said, “your father was out. He wasn’t here when I phoned. He only just walked in a few minutes after we did. Why are you lying? Are you afraid of something?”

“Ask Mrs. Swann. She saw me. In the call box. She can tell you—”

A blast of rock and roll music shattered the mild night noises outside the house. Nancy leaped to her feet.

The front door opened and Mark Penellin entered. A large portable stereo rode upon his shoulder, blaring out “My Generation,” nighttime nostalgia with a vengeance. Mark was singing along, but he stopped in midphrase when he saw the group in the sitting room. He fumbled incompetently with the knobs. Roger Daltrey roared even louder for an instant before Mark mastered the volume and switched the stereo off.

“Sorry.” He placed the unit on the floor. It had left an indentation in the soft calfskin jacket he wore, and as if he knew this without looking, he brushed his fingers against the material to rejuvenate it. “What’s going on? What’re you doing here, Nance? Where’s Dad?”