A Suitable Vengeance (57 page)

At the first intersection, she was pushed into the steamy windows of the Talisman Cafe by an angry matron who pulled a yowling little boy by the arm. “Watcher goin!” the woman shouted furiously at Deborah. She stood in odd Roman sandals that were laced to her knees. She tugged the child to her side. “Bleeding trippers. Think you own the village?”

Deborah didn’t bother to answer. She elbowed past her.

Later, she would remember her headlong flight through the village and up the hill as an ever-changing collage: on the door of a shop, a rain-streaked sign on which the words
clotted cream
and
chocolate gateau
oozed into one another; a single sunflower, its enormous head bent; palm fronds lying in a pool of rainwater; munchlike open mouths shouting words at her which she did not hear; a bicycle wheel spinning in endless revolutions while the dazed rider sprawled in the street. But at the moment, she saw nothing but Tommy, in countless images, each one more vivid than the last, each one accusing her of betrayal. This would be her punishment for that moment of selfish weakness with Simon.

Please
, she thought. If there were bargains and promises, she would make them. Without a second thought. Without a single regret.

As she reached the incline above the village proper, a final police car tore by her, sending up pebbles as well as spray from the street. There was no need for the horn to clear the road. Daunted by the downpour, the less hardy thrill-seekers had already started becoming discouraged by the climb. They had begun to seek refuge, some in shops, some in doorways, others flocking into the Methodist church. Not even the diversion of blood and a corpse seemed worth the potential ruin of fine summer clothes.

Only the most resolutely curious had completed the climb. Shaking her wet hair back from her face, Deborah saw them gathered in front of a drive where a police line was set up to keep them at a distance. There, the group had fallen into a speculative silence, one broken by the hot voice of Harry Cambrey who was arguing with an implacable constable, insisting upon entrance.

Behind them on the hill, rain assailed Trenarrow’s villa. Its every window was lit. Uniformed men swarmed about it. Lights flashed from the police cars parked on its circular drive.

“Shot, I heard,” someone muttered.

“Brought anyone out yet?”

“Nope.”

Deborah scanned the front of the villa, working through the men, looking for a sign. He was all right, he was fine, he had to be among them. She couldn’t find him. She pushed her way through the onlookers to the police line. Childhood prayers rose to her lips and died unsaid. She made bargains with God. She asked to be punished in any other way. She asked for understanding. She admitted her faults.

She ducked under the line.

“No you don’t, miss!” The constable who had been arguing with Cambrey barked out the command from ten feet away.

“But it’s—”

“Stay back!” he shouted. “This isn’t a bloody sideshow.”

Unmindful, Deborah started forward. The need to know and to be there overshadowed everything else.

“Here, you!” The constable moved towards her, readying himself to thrust her back into the crowd. As he did so, Harry Cambrey darted past him, scrambling up the drive. “Damn!” the constable shouted. “You! Cambrey!”

Having lost the one, he was not about to lose the other, and he gripped Deborah’s arm, waving to a panda car that had pulled onto the verge. “Take this one,” he called to the officers inside. “The other got past me.”

“No!” Deborah struggled to free herself, feeling a rising sense of outrage at her own complete impotence. She couldn’t even break the constable’s grip. The more she fought him, the stronger he became.

“Miss Cotter?”

She swung around. No angel could have been more blessed a sight than the Reverend Mr. Sweeney. Garbed in black, he stood beneath a tentlike umbrella, blinking solemnly at her through the rain.

“Tommy’s at the villa,” she said. “Mr. Sweeney,
please
.”

The cleric frowned. He squinted up the drive. “Oh, dear.” His right hand flexed open and closed upon the handle of his umbrella as he appeared to consider his options. “Oh, dear. Yes. I see.” This final statement seemed to indicate that an action had been decided upon. Mr. Sweeney drew himself up to his fullest height of not quite five and a half feet and spoke to the constable who still held Deborah in a determined grip. “You know Lord Asherton, of course,” he said authoritatively. It was a tone that would have surprised any of his parishioners who had never seen him in blackface among the Nanrunnel players, ordering Cassio and Montano to put up their swords. “This is his fiancée. Let her by.”

The constable eyed Deborah’s bedraggled appearance. His expression made it perfectly clear that he could hardly give credence to a relationship between her and any one of the Lynleys.

“Let her by,” Mr. Sweeney repeated. “I’ll accompany her myself. Perhaps you ought to be more concerned with the newspaperman than with this young lady.”

The constable gave Deborah another sceptical look. She waited in torment while he made his decision. “All right. Go on. Stay out of the way.”

Deborah’s lips formed the words thank you, but nothing came out. She took a few stumbling steps.

“It’s all right, my dear,” Mr. Sweeney said. “Let’s go up. Take my arm. The drive’s a bit slippery, isn’t it?”

She did as he said, although only a part of her brain registered his words. The rest was caught up in speculation and fear. “Please not Tommy,” she whispered. “Not like this. Please. I could bear anything else.”

“Now, it will be all right,” Mr. Sweeney murmured in a distracted fashion. “Indeed. You shall see.”

They slipped and slid among the crushed corollas of fuchsias as they wound their way up the narrow drive towards the front of the villa. The rain was beginning to fall less heavily, but Deborah was already soaked, so the protection of Mr. Sweeney’s umbrella meant very little. She shivered as she clung to his arm.

“It’s a dreadful business, this,” Mr. Sweeney said as if in response to her shudder. “But it shall be all right. You’ll see in a moment.”

Deborah heard the words but knew enough to dismiss them. There was no chance for all right any longer. A mocking form of justice always swept through life when one was least prepared to see justice meted out. Her time had come.

In spite of the number of men who were on the grounds, it was unnaturally quiet as they approached the villa. The crackle of a police radio was the only noise, a female dispatcher giving direction to police not far from the scene. On the circular drive beneath the hawthorn tree, three police cars sat at odd, hurried angles, as if their drivers had flung themselves out without bothering to worry about where or how they parked. In the rear seat of one of them, Harry Cambrey was engaged in a muffled shouting match with an angry constable who appeared to have handcuffed him to the interior of the car. When he saw Deborah, Cambrey forced his face to the officer’s window.

“Dead!” he shouted before the constable pushed him back inside the car.

The worst was realised. Deborah saw the ambulance pulled near the front door, not as close as the police cars for there was no need of that. Wordlessly, she clutched at Mr. Sweeney’s arm, but as if he read her fears, he pointed to the portico.

“Look,” he urged her.

Deborah forced herself to look towards the front door. She saw him. Her eyes flew wildly over every part of his body, looking for wounds. But other than the fact that his jacket was wet, he was quite intact—although terribly pale—talking gravely to Inspector Boscowan.

“Thank God,” she whispered.

The front door opened even as she spoke. Lynley and Boscowan stepped to one side to allow two men to carry a stretcher into the rain, a body upon it. Sheeting covered it from head to toe, strapped down as if to shield it from the rain and to protect it from the stares of the curious. Only when she saw it, only when she heard the front door close with a sound of hollow finality, did Deborah understand. Still, she looked frantically at the grounds of the villa, at the brightly lit windows, at the cars, at the door. Again and again—as if the action could change an immutable reality—she sought him.

Mr. Sweeney said something, but she didn’t hear it. She only heard her own bargain:
I could bear anything else
.

Her childhood, her life, flashed before her in an instant, leaving behind for the very first time neither anger nor pain, but instead understanding, complete and too late. She bit her lip so hard that she could taste the blood, but it was not enough to quell her cry of anguish.

“Simon!” She threw herself towards the ambulance where already the body had been loaded inside.

Lynley spun around. He saw her plunging blindly through the cars. She slipped once on the slick pavement but pulled herself to her feet, screaming his name.

She threw herself on the ambulance, pulling on the handle that would open its rear door. A policeman tried to restrain her, a second did likewise. But she fought them off. She kicked, she scratched. And all the time, she kept screaming his name. High and shrieking, it was a two-syllable monody that Lynley knew he would hear—when he least wanted to hear it—for the rest of his life. A third policeman joined the attempt to subdue her, but she writhed away.

Sick at heart, Lynley turned from the sight. He felt for the villa door. “St. James,” he said.

The other man was in the hall with Trenarrow’s housekeeper who was sobbing into the turban she’d taken from her head. He looked Lynley’s way and began to speak but hesitated, face clouded, as Deborah’s cries grew more profound. He touched Dora’s shoulder gently and joined Lynley at the door, stopping short at the sight of Deborah being dragged away from the ambulance and fighting every step that distanced her from it. He looked at Lynley.

Lynley looked away. “For Christ’s sake, go to her. She thinks it’s you.” He couldn’t face his friend. He didn’t want to see him. He only hoped St. James would take matters into his own hands without another word being spoken between them. It was not to be.

“No. She’s only—”

“Just go, damn you. Go.”

Seconds ticked by before St. James moved, but when he finally walked into the drive, Lynley found the expiation he had searched for so long. He forced himself to watch.

St. James skirted the police cars and approached the group. He walked quite slowly. He couldn’t move fast. His gait wouldn’t allow it, crippled and ugly, and halted by pain. The gait that Lynley himself had given him.

St. James reached the ambulance. He shouted Deborah’s name. He grabbed her, pulled her towards him. She fought back violently, weeping and shrieking, but only for a moment until she saw who it was. Then she was caught up in his arms, her body shaking with terrible sobs, his head bent to hers, his hands in her hair.

“It’s all right, Deborah,” Lynley heard St. James say. “I’m sorry you were frightened. I’m all right, my love.” Then be murmured needlessly, “My love. My love.”

The rain fell against them, the police began to move round them. But neither seemed cognizant of anything more than being held in the other’s arms.

Lynley turned and went into the house.

A stirring awakened her. She opened her eyes. They focussed on the distant, barrel ceiling. She gazed up at it, confused. Turning her head, she saw the lace-covered dressing table, its silver hair brushes, its old cheval mirror. Great-Grandmama Asherton’s bedroom, she thought. Recognition of the room brought almost everything back. Images of the cove, the newspaper office, the flight up the hill, the sight of the shrouded body all merged in her mind. At their centre was Tommy.

Another movement came from the other side of the room. The curtains were drawn, but a cord of daylight struck a chair by the fireplace. Lynley was sitting there, his legs stretched out in front of him. On the table next to him sat a tray of food. Breakfast, by the look of it. She could see the dim shape of a toast rack.

At first she didn’t speak, trying instead to remember the events that followed those horrifying moments at Trenarrow’s villa. She remembered a brandy being pressed upon her, the sound of voices, a telephone ringing, then a car. Somehow she’d got from Nanrunnel back to Howenstow where she’d made her way to a bed.