A Suitable Vengeance

He reached into his jacket pocket, brought out a flat silver case, and opened it. It contained a neatly arranged layer of white pills. “Dora would never forgive me if she came in one morning and found me dead of a stroke.” He popped a pill into his mouth and downed it with tea.

St. James watched him do so, feeling fixed to his chair as every piece of the jigsaw finally fell into place. How it had been done, who had done it, and most of all why. Some in remission, Lady Helen had said, but the rest of them dead.

Dr. Trenarrow lowered his cup, replaced it in the saucer. As he did so, St. James cursed himself inwardly. He cursed every sign he had overlooked, those details he had missed, and each piece of information he had disregarded because it could not be assigned a convenient place in the puzzle of the crime. Once again, he cursed the fact that his field was science, not interview and investigation. He cursed the fact that his interest lay in objects and what they could reveal about the nature of a crime. Had his interest lain in people, surely he would have seen the truth from the first.





CHAPTER 27


Out of the corner of his eye, Lynley saw St. James lean forward and put his hand on Trenarrow’s desk. It was an action that effectively broke into their conversation.

“The money,” he said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Tommy, who did you tell about the money?”

Lynley tried to catch his drift. “What money?”

“Nancy said Mick was doing the pay envelopes. She said there was money in the sitting room that evening. You and I discussed it later that night, after she told us about it at the lodge. Who else did you tell? Who else knew about the money?”

“Deborah and Helen. They were there when Nancy told us. John Penellin as well.”

“Did you tell your mother?”

“Of course not. Why on earth would I?”

“Then how did Dr. Trenarrow know?”

Lynley realized at once what the question meant. He saw the answer on Trenarrow’s face. He fought a battle for professional indifference. He lost it, saying only, “Jesus God.”

Trenarrow said nothing. Lynley couldn’t think beyond a simple no, recognising that what his friend had said earlier was coming to pass. His every foul wish of the last fifteen years was about to be granted in absolute spades.

“What are you saying, St. James?” he managed to ask, although he knew the answer without having to hear it.

“That Dr. Trenarrow killed Mick Cambrey. He didn’t intend to. They argued. He hit him. Mick fell. He began to haemorrhage. He was dead within minutes.”

“Roderick.” Lynley felt desperate for the man to exonerate himself in some way, knowing only that Trenarrow’s exoneration was tied intimately into Lynley’s own future life. But St. James went on, utterly calm. Only the facts counted. He wove them together.

“When he saw Cambrey was dead, he acted quickly. It wasn’t a search. Even if Mick had been stupid enough to keep records of the oncozyme transactions in the cottage, there was no time to look for them then. There was only time to make it look like a search, or a possible robbery, or a sexual crime. But it was none of those things. It was a fight about oncozyme.”

Dr. Trenarrow’s face looked implacable. When he spoke, his lips moved, but the rest of him was immobile. And his words seemed nothing more than a futile, if expected, effort at denial. They carried no conviction. “I was at the play Friday night. You know that very well.”

“An open air play in a school yard,” St. James said. “Hardly a difficult feat to slip out for a while, especially since you’d placed yourself in the back. I expect you went to him after the interval, during the second act. It’s not a long walk—three minutes, no more. You went to see him then. You intended only to talk to him about oncozyme, but instead you killed him and came back to the play.”

“And the weapon?” Trenarrow’s bravado was weak. “Was I supposed to be carrying it round Nanrunnel in my jacket?”

“For the fracture of the skull, there was no weapon. The castration was another matter. You took the knife from the cottage.”

“To the play?” Scorn this time, yet no more successful than the bravado had been.

“I should think you hid it somewhere en route. On Virgin Place. Perhaps on Ivy Street. In a garden or a dustbin. You returned for it later that night and got rid of it Saturday at Howenstow. Which is where, I dare say, you got rid of Brooke as well. Because once Brooke knew that Cambrey had been killed, he knew who must have done it. But he couldn’t afford to turn you in to the police without damaging himself. The oncozyme scheme bound the two of you together.”

“This is all conjecture,” Trenarrow said. “According to what you’ve said so far, I had more reason to keep Mick alive than to kill him. If he was supplying me with patients, what purpose would his death serve?”

“You didn’t intend to kill him. You struck out in anger. Your interest was in saving people’s lives, but Mick’s was in collecting their money. That attitude pushed you right over the edge.”

“There’s no evidence. You know that. Not for a murder.”

“You’ve forgotten the cameras,” St. James said.