A Suitable Vengeance (33 page)

He followed the butler to the west wing of the house, down the long corridor that led to the estate office. A single light burned upon the desk, creating a bright oval of illumination in the centre of which lay the telephone receiver. He picked it up.

“She’s disappeared,” Lady Helen said when she heard his voice. “It looks as if she’s taken herself off on a casual holiday because her ordinary clothes are gone—but none of her dressy clothes—and there’s no suitcase in the flat.”

“You got inside?”

“Sheer audacious fast talking and the key was mine.”

“You’ve missed your calling, Helen.”

“Darling, I know. Con man extraordinaire. It comes from spending my youth in finishing schools instead of university. Modern languages, decorative arts, dissembling, and prevaricating. I was certain it would all be useful someday.”

“No idea where’s she gone?”

“She’s left behind her makeup and her fingernails, so—”

“Her fingernails? Helen, what sort of business is this?”

She laughed and explained the artificial nails to him. “They’re not what one would wear to do a bit of hiking, you see. Or mucking about. Or rock climbing, sailing, fishing. That sort of thing. So we think she’s off in the country somewhere.”

“Here in Cornwall?”

“That was our first thought as well, and we’ve come up with fairly solid evidence, we think. She has Mick Cambrey’s savings book—with some rather hefty deposits made to his account, by the way—and we’ve found two telephone numbers. One’s for a London exchange. We phoned it and got a recording for a place called Islington, Ltd., giving their business hours. I’ll check into that in the morning.”

“And the other number?”

“It’s Cornwall, Simon. We’ve tried it twice and got no answer. We thought it might be Mick Cambrey’s.”

St. James pulled an envelope from the side drawer of the desk. “Did you try directory enquiries?”

“To compare it to Cambrey’s number? He’s ex-directory, I’m afraid. Let me give you the number. Perhaps you can do something more with it.”

He jotted it down on the envelope, shoved it into his pocket. “Sid’s coming back to London tomorrow.” He told Lady Helen about Justin Brooke. She listened in silence, asking no questions and making no comment until he had completed the tale. He left nothing out, concluding with, “And now Peter’s gone missing as well.”

“Oh, no,” she said. Dimly in the background, St. James could hear music playing softly. A flute concerto. It made him wish he were sitting in her drawing room in Onslow Square, talking idly about nothing, with nothing more on his mind than blood or fibre or hair analyses associated with people he did not know and would never meet. She said, “Poor Tommy. Poor Daze. How are they holding up?”

“They’re coping.”

“And Sid?”

“She’s taken it badly. Will you see to her, Helen? Tomorrow night? When she’s back?”

“Of course. Don’t worry. Don’t give it a thought.” She hesitated momentarily. Again, the music came over the line, delicate and elusive, like a fragrance in the air. Then she said, “Simon, wishing didn’t make it happen, you know.”

How well she knew him. “When I saw him on the beach, when I knew that he was dead—”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

“I could have killed him, Helen. God knows I wanted to.”

“Which of us can say we’ve never felt the same? Towards someone at some time. It means nothing, my dear. You need some rest. We all do. It’s been a dreadful time.”

He smiled at her tone. Mother, sister, loving friend. He accepted the ephemeral absolution which she offered. “You’re right, of course.”

“So go to bed. Surely we can depend upon nothing else happening before morning.”

“Let’s hope so.” He replaced the receiver and stood for a moment watching the storm. Rain lashed the windows. Wind tore at the trees. Somewhere a door banged open and shut. He left the office.

He considered climbing the southwest stairway to spend the rest of the evening in his room. He felt drained of energy, incapable of thought, and unwilling to face the task of making polite conversation that deliberately avoided the topics foremost on everyone’s mind. Peter Lynley. Sasha Nifford. Where they were. What they had done. Still, he knew that Lynley would be waiting to hear about Lady Helen’s call. So he headed back towards the dining room.

Voices drifting down the northwest corridor arrested his attention as he approached the kitchen. Near the servants’ hall, Jasper stood conversing with a rugged-looking man who dripped water from a brimming sou’ wester onto the floor. Seeing St. James, Jasper motioned him over.

“Bob’s found ’r boat,” he said. “Broke up on Cribba Head.”

“It’s the
Daze
, all right,” the other man put in. “No mistakin’ ’er.”

“Is anyone—”

“There don’t appear to be anyone with ’er. Don’t see how ’tis possible. Not in the shape she be in.”

CHAPTER

17

S
t. James and Lynley followed the fisherman’s rusty Austin in the estate Land Rover. Their headlamps illuminated the havoc created by the continuing storm. Newly dismembered rhododendrons lined the drive, round them a thick carpet of purple flowers which the vehicles crushed beneath their tyres. A large sycamore branch, sheared from a tree, nearly bisected the road. Leaves and twigs hurtled in every direction while tremendous gusts of wind lashed pebbles from the drive and fired them like bullets against the cars. At the lodge, shutters banged angrily against the stone walls. Water streamed down eaves and gushed from rainpipes. Climbing roses, ripped from their trellis, lay in sodden heaps on the flagstones and the ground.

Lynley braked the Rover, and Mark Penellin dashed out to join them. Framed in the doorway, Nancy Cambrey watched, a shawl clutched to her throat and the wind whipping her dress round her legs. She shouted something that was lost in the gale. Lynley lowered his window a few inches as Mark climbed into the car’s rear seat.

“Any word of Peter?” Nancy caught the front door as the wind drove it against the wall. Over the sound of her voice came the baby’s thin, faint wail. “Shall I do something?”

“Stay by the phone,” he shouted back. “I may need you to go on to the house. To Mother.”

She nodded, gave a wave, and slammed the door home. Lynley shifted gears. They lurched onto the drive, through a pool of water and a bank of mud.

“She’s at Cribba Head?” Mark Penellin asked. His hair was slicked back, drenched from the rain.

“According to what we know right now,” Lynley replied. “What’s happened to you?”

Mark tentatively touched his fingers to a fresh plaster above his right eyebrow. Abrasions covered his knuckles and the back of his hand. He shook his head self-effacingly. “I was trying to fix the shutters so the baby’d stop crying. Nearly knocked myself out in the process.” He turned up the collar of his oilskin and buttoned it at the throat. “You’re sure it’s the
Daze
?”

“It seems to be.”

“And no word of Peter?”

“None.”

“Bloody fool.” Mark took out a pack of cigarettes, offering it to both Lynley and St. James. When they refused, he lit one for himself but only smoked for a minute before crushing it out.

“You’ve not seen Peter?” Lynley asked.

“Not since Friday afternoon. At the cove.”

St. James glanced at the boy over his shoulder. “Peter said he didn’t see you then.”

Mark raised a brow, winced, touched the plaster there. “He saw me,” he replied, and with a cautious look at Lynley added, “Maybe he forgot.”

Following the Austin, the Rover crawled along the narrow lane. Aside from their vehicles’ lights and the occasional glimmer from a cottage or a farmhouse window, the darkness was complete, and the gloom, in conjunction with the storm made the going slow. Water filmed the road. Hedgerows bent perilously towards the car. Their headlamps glared upon the torrential rain. Stopping twice to clear the road of debris, they took fifty minutes to make what should have been a quarter of an hour’s drive.

Outside of Treen, they jolted over the uneven track to Cribba Head, pulling the cars to a halt some twenty yards from the path that led down to Penberth Cove. From the rear seat, Mark Penellin handed Lynley a fisherman’s oilskin which he pulled on over his worn, grey guernsey.

“You’d best wait here, St. James.” Even in the closed confines of the car, Lynley had to raise his voice to be heard over the wind and the roar of surf which pounded the shore below them. The Rover rocked ominously like a lightweight toy. “It’s a rough walk.”

“I’ll come as far as I can.”

Lynley nodded, shoving open his door. The three of them climbed out into the storm. St. James found that he had to use the entire weight of his body to shut his own door once Mark Penellin hopped out.

“Jesus!” The boy shouted. “Some blow, this.” He joined Lynley in pulling ropes, life jackets, and life rings out of the car’s boot.

Ahead of them, the fisherman had left his headlamps burning, and they illuminated the distance to the cliff. Sheets of rain drove through the arc of light, angled by the bellowing wind. The fisherman began to trudge through weeds which clung to his trousers. He carried a coil of rope.

“She be down in the cove,” he shouted over his shoulder as they approached. “Some fifty yard from shore. Bow to stern, northeast on the rocks. Most o’ the mast and yards ’s gone, I fear.”

Bent into the wind which was not only fierce but icy cold, as if it took its inspiration from an Arctic storm, they struggled towards the cliff’s edge. There, made slick and dangerous by water, a narrow path led steeply down to Penberth Cove where lights glimmered from small granite cottages at the water’s edge. Torches bobbed and glittered near the surf where locals brave enough to contend with the storm were watching the broken sloop disintegrate. There was no way they could get to the boat. Even if a small skiff could have managed the surf, the reef that was destroying the
Daze
would have done as much for any other vessel. Beyond that, storm-driven waves impeded them, crashing upon a natural spur of granite, sending plumes of spray towering into the air.

“I can’t manage it, Tommy,” St. James shouted when he saw the path. “I’ll have to wait here.”

Lynley lifted a hand, nodded, and began the descent. The others followed, picking their way among the boulders, finding handholds and footholds in outcroppings of rock. St. James watched them disappear into a patch of heavy shadow before he turned, fighting the wind and the rain to get back to the car. He felt weighted down by the mud on his shoes and the snarl of weeds that tangled in the heel piece of his brace. When he reached the Rover, he was out of breath. He pulled open the door and threw himself inside.

Out of the storm, he stripped off his ill-fitting oilskin and sodden guernsey. He shook the rain out of his hair. He shivered in the cold, wished for dry clothes, and thought about what the fisherman had said. At first it seemed to St. James that he hadn’t heard him correctly. Northeast bow to stern on the rocks. There had to be a mistake. Except that a Cornish fisherman would know his directions, and the brief glimpse St. James had had of the sloop acted as confirmation of the fact. So there was no mistake. That being the case, either the boat wasn’t the
Daze
at all, or they needed to take a new look at their theories.

It was nearly thirty minutes before Lynley returned with Mark at his heels, the fisherman a short distance behind them. Hunched against the rain, they stood at the Austin talking for a moment, the fisherman gesturing with hands and arms. Lynley nodded once, squinted towards the southwest, and with a final shouted comment, he tramped through the mud and weeds to the Rover. Mark Penellin followed. They stowed their gear in the boot once again and fell rather than climbed inside the car. They were soaking.

“She’s destroyed.” Lynley was gasping like a runner. “Another hour and there’ll be nothing left.”

“It’s the
Daze
?”

“Without a doubt.”

Ahead of them, the Austin roared. It reversed, made the turn, and left them on the clifftop. Lynley stared into the darkness which the Austin left behind. Rain pelted the windscreen.

“Could they tell you anything?”

“Little enough. They saw the boat coming in towards dusk. Apparently the fool was attempting to run through the rocks into the cove to be winched out of high water, as the other boats are.”

“Someone saw it hit?”

“Five men were working round the capstan winch on the slip. When they saw what was happening, they gathered a crew and went to see what could be done. They’re fishing people, after all. They’d be unlikely to let anyone run aground without trying to help in some way. But when they finally got a clear sight of the boat, no one was on deck.”

“How is that possible?” St. James regretted the impulsive question the moment he asked it. There were two explanations, and he saw them himself before Lynley and Mark put them into words.

“People get swept overboard in this kind of weather,” Mark said. “If you’re not careful, if you don’t wear a safety line, if you don’t know what you’re doing—”