A Suitable Vengeance

“Brat,” she responded.

A car door slammed in the street. He turned to the window. “Tommy’s here,” he said, and Deborah went to open the front door.

St. James could see that Lynley bore no good news. His gait was slow, without its natural grace. Deborah joined him outside, and they spoke for a moment. She touched his arm. He shook his head, reached for her hand.

St. James left the window. He went to a bookshelf. He chose a volume at random, pulling it down and opening it at random as well. “I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul,” he read. “In my degradation I have not been so degraded but that the sight of you with your father, and of this home made such a home by you, has stirred old shadows…” Good God. He snapped the book shut. A Tale of Two Cities. Great, he thought wryly.

He shoved the book back among the others and considered making another selection. Far from the Madding Crowd looked promising, a good bout of psychic suffering with Gabriel Oak.

“…spoke to Mother afterwards,” Lynley was saying as he and Deborah came into the study. “She didn’t take it well.”

St. James greeted his friend with a small whisky which Lynley accepted gratefully. He sank into the sofa. Deborah perched next to him on the sofa’s arm, her fingertips brushing his shoulder.

“Brooke appears to have been telling the truth,” Lynley began. “Peter was in Gull Cottage after John Penellin left. He and Mick had a row.” He shared the information which he’d gathered from his interview with Peter. He added the Soho story as well.

“I did think that might have been Cambrey with Peter in the alley,” St. James said when Lynley had finished. “Sidney told me about seeing them. The description seemed to fit,” he added, answering the unasked question that immediately appeared on Lynley’s face. “So if Peter recognised Cambrey, there’s a good chance Justin Brooke did as well.”

“Brooke?” Lynley queried. “How? He was there with Sidney in the alley, I know, but what difference does that make?”

“They knew each other, Tommy. Brooke worked for Islington.” St. James related his own information about Brooke’s position at Islington-London, about Cambrey’s visits to Department Twenty-Five, about oncozyme and the potential for a story.

“How does Roderick Trenarrow fit into all this, St. James?”

“He’s the prime mover. He gave Mick Cambrey some key information. Cambrey used it to pursue a story. That appears to be the extent of his involvement. He knew about oncozyme. He mentioned it to Mick.”

“And then Mick died. Trenarrow was in the vicinity that night.”

“He has no motive, Tommy. Justin Brooke did.” St. James explained. His theory—the product of those minutes brooding alone in the study—was simple enough. It involved the promise of cocaine in exchange for key background information from an unnamed source that would evolve into an important story about a potentially dangerous drug. A deal between Cambrey and Brooke that had somehow gone bad, coming to a head on the night Brooke had gone with Peter to Gull Cottage.

“But that doesn’t account for Brooke’s death.”

“Which the police have said from the first was an accident.”

Lynley took his cigarette case from his jacket pocket, staring down at it thoughtfully before he spoke. He flipped open his lighter but did not use it at once. “The pub,” he said. “Peter said Brooke wasn’t in the Anchor and Rose on Friday night, St. James.”

“After he left Gull Cottage?”

“Yes. Peter went to the pub. He was there at a quarter to ten and beyond. Brooke never showed up.”

“So it fits, doesn’t it?”

Deborah spoke. “Did Justin Brooke know Peter was taking him to see Mick Cambrey? Did Peter name Mick before they left for the village? Or did he just say it was someone in Nanrunnel?”

“He must not have known in advance,” St. James said. “He’d hardly have gone had he known Mick Cambrey was the man with the money Peter intended to borrow. He wouldn’t have wanted to run the risk of exposure.”

“It seems that Mick was in more danger of exposure than Justin Brooke,” Deborah said. “The cocaine, the cross-dressing, his second life in London. God knows what else you’ve yet to tumble up.”

Lynley lit his cigarette, spoke with a sigh that expelled a gust of smoke. “Beyond that, there’s Sasha Nifford. If Brooke killed Cambrey and then fell to his death, what happened to Sasha?”

St. James attempted to look noncommittal. He made himself ask, “What did the Met have to say about Sasha?”

“It was ergotamine and quinine.” Lynley took a white envelope from his inner breast pocket. He handed it to St. James. “She seems to have thought it was heroin.”