A Suitable Vengeance (59 page)

“Justin took it from your room, Sid.”

Such a simple statement, seven words, no more. Their effect upon his sister was immediate. Her smile faded. She tried to hold onto the edges of it, but her lips quivered with the effort. Liveliness left her. Her body seemed to shrink. The quick end to her insouciance told him how precarious a hold she had on her emotions. Her present madcap demeanour merely acted as a shield to fend off a mourning she had not begun.

“Justin?” she said. “Why?”

There was no easy way for him to tell her. He knew that the knowledge would only add to her sorrow. Yet telling her seemed to be the only way that she might start the process of burying her dead.

“To frame you for murder,” he said.

“That’s ridiculous.”

“He wanted to murder Peter Lynley. He got Sasha Nifford instead.”

“I don’t understand.” She rolled the perfume bottle over and over in her hand. She bent her head. She brushed at her cheeks.

“It was filled with a drug she mistook for heroin.” At that she looked up. St. James saw the expression on her face. The use of a drug as a means of murder did indeed make the truth so unavoidable. “I’m sorry, love.”

“But Peter. Justin told me Peter was at Cambrey’s. He said they had a row. And then Mick Cambrey died. He said that Peter
wanted
to kill him. I don’t understand. Peter must have known Justin told you and Tommy about it. He knew. He did know.”

“Peter didn’t kill Justin, Sid. He wasn’t even at Howenstow when Justin died.”

“Then why?”

“Peter heard something he wasn’t supposed to hear. He could have used it against Justin eventually, especially once Mick Cambrey was killed. Justin got nervous. He knew Peter was desperate about money and cocaine. He knew he was unstable. He couldn’t predict his behaviour, so he needed to be rid of him.”

Together, St. James and Lady Helen told her the story. Islington, oncozyme, Trenarrow, Cambrey. The clinic and cancer. The substitution of a placebo that led to Mick’s death.

“Brooke was in jeopardy,” St. James said. “He took steps to eliminate it.”

“What about me?” she asked. “It’s my bottle. Didn’t he know that people would think I was involved?” Still she clutched the bottle. Her fingers turned white round it.

“The day on the beach, Sidney,” Lady Helen said. “He’d been humiliated rather badly.”

“He wanted to punish you,” St. James said.

Sidney’s lips barely moved as she said, “He loved me. I know it. He loved me.”

St. James felt the terrible burden of her words and with it the need to reassure his sister of her intrinsic worth. He wanted to say something but couldn’t think of the words that might comfort her.

Lady Helen spoke. “What Justin Brooke was makes no statement about who you are, Sidney. You don’t take your definition of self from him. Or from what he felt. Or didn’t feel, for that matter.”

Sidney gave a choked sob. St. James went to her. “I’m sorry, love,” he said, putting his arm tightly round her. “I think I’d rather you hadn’t known. But I can’t lie to you, Sidney. I’m not sorry he’s dead.”

She coughed and looked up at him. She offered a shattered smile. “Lord, how hungry I am,” she whispered. “Shall we have lunch?”

In Eaton Terrace, Lady Helen slammed the door of her Mini. She did it more to give herself courage—as if the action might attest to the fittingness of her behaviour—than to assure herself that the car door was securely locked. She looked up at the darkened front of Lynley’s townhouse, then held up her wrist to the light of a streetlamp. It was nearly eleven, hardly the time for a social call. But the very unsuitability of the hour gave her an advantage which she wasn’t willing to relinquish. She climbed the marble-tiled steps to his door.

For the past two weeks, she had been trying to contact him. Every effort had received a rebuff. Out on a job, working a double shift, caught at a meeting, testifying in court. From a series of unquestionably polite secretaries, assistants, and junior officers, she had heard every permutation of a job-related excuse. The implicit message was always the same: He was unavailable, alone, and preferring it so.

It would not be so tonight. She rang the bell. It sounded somewhere in the back of the house, resonating oddly towards the front door as if the building were empty. For a fleeting, mad moment, she actually harboured the thought that he had moved from London—running away from everything once and for all—but then the fanlight above the door showed a sudden illumination in the lower hallway. A bolt was drawn, the door opened, and Lynley’s valet stood blinking owlishly out at her. He was wearing his bedroom slippers, Lady Helen noted, and a plaid flannel bathrobe over paisley pyjamas. Surprise and judgement played spontaneously across his face. He wiped them off quickly enough, but Lady Helen read their meaning. Well brought up daughters of peers were not supposed to go calling on gentlemen in the late of night, no matter which part of the twentieth century this was.

“Thank you, Denton,” Lady Helen said decisively. She stepped into the hall every bit as if he’d asked her in with earnest protestations of welcome. “Please tell Lord Asherton that I must see him at once.” She removed her light evening coat and placed it along with her bag on a chair in the foyer.

Still standing by the open door, Denton looked from her to the street as if trying to recall whether he had actually asked her in. He kept his hand on the doorknob and shifted from foot to foot, appearing caught between a need to protest the solecism of this visit and the fear of someone’s wrath should he do so.

“His lordship’s asked—”

“I know,” Lady Helen said. She felt a brief flicker of guilt to be bullying Denton, knowing that his determination to protect Lynley was motivated by a loyalty that spanned nearly a decade. “I understand. He’s asked not to be disturbed, not to be interrupted. He’s not returned one of my calls these last two weeks, Denton, so I quite understand he wishes not to be bothered. Now that the issue is clear between us, please tell him I wish to see him.”

“But—”

“I shall go directly up to his bedroom if I have to.”

Denton signalled his surrender by closing the door. “He’s in the library. I’ll fetch him for you.”

“No need. I know the way.”

She left Denton gaping in the hallway and went quickly up the stairs to the first floor of the house, down a thickly carpeted corridor, past an impressive collection of antique pewter, winked at by half a dozen Asherton ancestors long since dead. She heard Lynley’s valet not far behind her, murmuring, “My lady…Lady Helen…”

The library door was closed. She knocked once, heard Lynley’s voice, and entered.

He was sitting at his desk, his head resting in one hand and several folders spread out in front of him. Lady Helen’s first thought—with some considerable surprise as he looked up—was that she had no idea he’d begun wearing spectacles to read. He took them off as he got to his feet. He said nothing, merely glanced behind her to where Denton stood, looking monumentally apologetic.

“Sorry,” Denton said. “I tried.”

“Don’t blame him,” Lady Helen said. “I bullied my way in.” She saw that Denton had moved one step into the room. With another he would be close enough to put his hand on her arm and escort her back down the stairs and out into the street. She couldn’t imagine him doing so without Lynley’s direction, but just in case he was considering the idea, she headed him off. “Thank you, Denton. Leave us please. If you will.”

Denton gawked at her. He looked at Lynley, who nodded sharply once. He left the room.

“Why haven’t you returned my calls, Tommy?” Lady Helen asked the moment they were alone. “I’ve telephoned here and the Yard repeatedly. I’ve stopped by four times. I’ve been sick with worry about you.”

“Sorry, old duck,” he said easily. “There’s been a mass of work lately. I’m up to my ears in it. Will you have a drink?” He walked to a rosewood table on which were arranged several decanters and a set of glasses.

“Thank you, no.”

He poured himself a whisky but did not drink it at once. “Please sit down.”

“I think not.”

“Whatever you’d like.” He offered her a lopsided smile and tossed back a large portion of his drink. And then, perhaps unwilling to keep up the pretence any longer, he looked away from her, saying, “I’m sorry, Helen. I wanted to return your calls. But I couldn’t do it. Sheer cowardice, I suppose.”

Her anger melted immediately. “I can’t bear to see you like this. Walled up in your library. Incommunicado at work. I can’t bear it, Tommy.”

For a moment, the only response was his breathing. She could hear it, shallow and unevenly spaced. Then he said, “The only time I seem to be able to drive her from my mind is when I’m working. So that’s what I’ve been doing, that’s all I’ve been doing. And when I haven’t been on a case, I’ve spent the time telling myself that I’ll get over this eventually. A few more weeks, a few months.” Shakily, he laughed. “It’s a bit difficult to believe.”

“I know. I understand.”

“God, yes. Who on earth could know better than you?”

“Then why haven’t you phoned me?”

He moved restlessly across the room to the fireplace. No fire demanded his attention there, so he gave it instead to a collection of Meissen porcelain plates on the overmantel. He took one from its stand, turning it in his hands. Lady Helen wanted to tell him to have a care, the plate might well shatter under the strength with which he gripped it, but she said nothing. He put the plate back. She repeated her question.

“You know I’ve wanted to talk to you. Why haven’t you phoned me?”

“I haven’t been able to. It hurts too much, Helen. I can’t hide that from you.”

“Why on earth should you want to?”

“I feel like a fool. I should be stronger than this. None of it should matter. I should be able just to slough it off and go on.”

“Go on?” She felt all her anger return in a rush. Her blood heated in the presence of this stiff-upper-lip attitude which she’d always found so contemptible in the men she knew, as if schooling and breeding and generations of reserve condemned each of them to a life of feeling nothing. “Do you actually mean to tell me that you’ve no right to your sorrow because you’re a man? I don’t believe that. I
won’t
believe that.”

“It’s nothing at all to do with sorrow. I’ve just been trying to find my way back to the man I was three years ago. Before Deborah. If I can reclaim him, I’ll be fine.”

“That man was no different from the man you are now.”

“Three years ago, I’d not have taken this so hard. What were women to me then? Bed partners. Nothing more.”

“And that’s what you want to be? A man drifting through life in a sexual fugue? Only thinking about his next performance in bed? Is that what you want?”

“It’s easier that way.”

“Of course it’s easy. That kind of life is always easy. People fade out of one another’s bed with hardly a word of farewell, let alone one of commitment. And if by chance they wake up one morning with someone whose name escapes them, it’s all right, isn’t it? It’s part of the game.”

“There was no pain involved in relationships then. There was nothing involved. Never for me.”

“That may be what you’d like to remember, Tommy, but that’s not the way it was. Because if what you say is true, if life was nothing more than collecting and seducing a stable full of women, why did you never have me?”

He reflected on the question. He went back to the decanters and poured himself a second drink. “I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do. Tell me why.”

“I don’t know.”

“What a conquest I would have been. Thrown over by Simon, my life in a shambles. The last thing I wanted was an involvement with anyone. How on earth did you resist a challenge like that? What a chance it was to prove yourself to yourself. What incredible fodder for your self-esteem.”

He placed his glass on the table, turned it beneath his fingers. She watched his profile and saw how fragile a thing was his veneer of control.

“I expect you were different,” he said.

“Not at all. I had the right equipment. I was just like the others, heat and pleasure, breasts and thighs.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“A woman, after all. Easily seduced, especially by an expert. But you never tried with me. Not even once. That sort of sexual reticence doesn’t make sense in a man whose sole interest in women revolves round what they have to offer him in bed. And I had it to offer, didn’t I, Tommy? Oh, I would have resisted at first. But I would have slept with you eventually, and you knew it. But you didn’t try.”

He turned to her. “How could I have done that to you after what you’d been through with Simon?”

“Compassion?” she demanded. “From the man bent on pleasure? What difference did it make whose body provided it? Weren’t we all the same?”

He was quiet for so long that she wondered if he would answer. She could see the struggle for composure on his face. She willed him to speak, knowing only that he had to acknowledge his sorrow so that it could live and rage and then die.

“Not you,” he said finally. She could tell the phrase cost him dearly. “Not Deborah.”