A Suitable Vengeance

“The room had been searched. The computer was on. There were notebooks and photographs all over the floor. Peter must have seen something when he was there with Brooke, something Brooke knew he might remember once Cambrey was dead.”


“Then why give the drugs to Sasha? When Peter died, she would have told the police at once where she’d gotten them.”

“Not at all. She’d have been dead as well. Brooke was betting on that. He knew she was a user. So he gave her the drugs, hoping she and Peter would use them together and die at Howenstow, I imagine. When it became apparent that the plan wasn’t working, he tried to be rid of Peter in a different way: by telling us about their visit to Cambrey so that Peter would be arrested and out of the way. What he couldn’t have known is that Sasha and Peter would leave before Peter could be arrested in Cornwall and that Sasha’s addiction was worse than Peter’s. He especially had no way of knowing that she would hoard the drugs and use them alone. Nor did he know that Peter would go to the Anchor and Rose and get himself seen by a dozen or more people who could provide him with an alibi for the time of Cambrey’s death.”

“So it was Justin,” Deborah said. “Everything was Justin.”

“I’ve been blinded by the fact that he died before Sasha. I never considered that he might have given her the drugs first.”

“But his own death, Simon?”

“An accident all along.”

“Why? How? What was he doing on the cliff in the middle of the night?”

St. James glanced over her shoulder. She’d left the warning light on above the darkroom door. It cast an eery glow of blood red on the ceiling. It also gave him the answer. “Your cameras,” he said. “That’s where he got rid of them.”

“Why?”

“He was wiping out every trace of his connection to Cambrey. First Cambrey himself. Then Peter. Then—”

“My film,” she said. “The pictures you took in the cottage. Whatever Peter saw, you must have photographed as well.”

“Which means the state of the sitting room was merely a blind. He hadn’t searched for anything. He hadn’t taken anything. Whatever he wanted was too big to be removed.”

“The computer?” Deborah asked. “Even so, how could he have known you even took any pictures in the first place?”

“He knew we had your camera with us Friday night. Mrs. Sweeney made certain of that at dinner on Saturday. He knew my line of work. Sidney would have told him. He had to have known Tommy is with Scotland Yard. He might have risked our coming upon a murder scene and doing nothing save calling the police. But why take the risk if there was something in that room—something on the film—that could tie him to Cambrey?”

“But the police would have found it eventually, wouldn’t they?”

“They’d made their arrest. Penellin was as good as confessing to the crime. The only thing Justin had to fear was that someone other than the local police wouldn’t accept the idea of Penellin as a killer. Which is exactly what happened less than twenty-four hours after Cambrey’s death. We were nosing about. We were asking questions. He had to take steps to protect himself.”

She asked a final question. “But why all my equipment? Why not just the film?”

“He didn’t have time. It was easier to take the entire case, drop it from your window, and then trot down to see Tommy and me in the day room where he told us all about Peter. Then later on he took the cameras to the cove. He went out on the rocks and disposed of them in the water. He climbed back up the cliff. And that’s when he fell.”

She smiled, feeling the release that comes with relief. He looked as if he’d shaken off a terrible burden. “I wonder if we can prove any of it.”

“Indeed we can. In Cornwall. First at the cove to find the cameras, then at the newspaper office to find whatever Mick Cambrey was writing about oncozyme. Tomorrow.”

“And the film? The pictures?”

“Icing on the cake.”

“Shall I develop them for you?”

“Would you?”

“Of course.”

“Then let’s be about it at once, little bird. It’s time to put Justin Brooke in his place.”





CHAPTER 24