A Suitable Vengeance

Trenarrow looked at him steadily, his expression unchanging.

“You saw the camera at the cottage. You assumed I’d taken pictures of the body. During the chaos Saturday when John Penellin was arrested, you dropped the cameras from Deborah’s room.”

“But if that’s so,” Lynley said, feeling himself Trenarrow’s advocate for the moment, “why didn’t he take the cameras to the cove? If he disposed of the knife there, why not the cameras as well?”

“And risk being seen hiking across the grounds with the case in his possession? I don’t know why I didn’t realise the stupidity of that idea before. He could conceal the knife on his person, Tommy. If someone saw him on the grounds, he could have claimed to be taking a walk to clear his head of drink. It would have been a believable story. People were used to seeing him at Howenstow. But the cameras, no. I imagine he took them somewhere else—in his car, perhaps—later that night. To a place where he could be relatively certain they’d never be found.”

Lynley listened, coming to terms with the truth. They’d all been at the dinner to hear the conversation. They’d all laughed at the absurdity of tourists in the mines. He said the name, two words that acted as final acceptance of what his heart told him was an incontrovertible fact. “Wheal Maen.” St. James looked at him. “At dinner Saturday night. Aunt Augusta was up in arms about sealing Wheal Maen.”

“This is supposition,” Trenarrow broke in sharply. “Supposition and madness. Beyond our oncozyme connection, you’ve nothing else to go on besides what you’re inventing right here in this room. And once our mutual history is out in public, Tommy, who’s going to believe this story? If, indeed, you actually want our mutual history to be known.”

“It comes down to that in the long run, doesn’t it?” Lynley asked. “It always begins and ends with my mother.”

For an instant, he allowed himself to see past the call for justice to its attendant scandal. He could have ignored Trenarrow’s use of oncozyme, his illegal clinic, and the exorbitant price that patients no doubt paid for treatment there. He could have overlooked all this and allowed his mother to remain in ignorance for the rest of her life. But murder was different. It demanded retribution. He could not ignore that.

Lynley saw how the next few months would play out. A court of law, his accusations, Trenarrow’s denial, the sort of case the defence would build with his mother caught in the middle and ultimately named as the reason behind Lynley’s public denunciation of her long-time lover.

“He’s right, St. James,” Lynley said hollowly. “This is conjecture. Even if we got the cameras from the mine, the main shaft’s been flooded for years. The film’s ruined by now, no matter what was on it.”

St. James shook his head. “That’s the only thing Dr. Trenarrow didn’t know. The film’s not in the camera. Deborah gave it to me.”

Lynley heard the swift breath hiss between Trenarrow’s teeth. St. James went on.

“And the evidence is there, isn’t it?” St. James asked. “Your silver pillbox under Mick Cambrey’s thigh. You may be able to explain away everything else, you may be able to accuse Tommy of attempting to fabricate evidence in order to separate you from his mother. But you’ll never be able to deal with the fact that in the photograph of the body, the pillbox is there. The very same one you took from your pocket only minutes ago.”

Trenarrow looked at the misty view of the harbour. “It proves nothing.”

“When it’s in our photographs but missing from the police photographs? That’s hardly the case and you know it.”

Rain pattered on windows. Wind sounded in the chimney. A distant foghorn moaned. Trenarrow moved in his chair, turning back towards the room. He grasped its arms and said nothing.

“What happened?” Lynley asked him. “Roderick, for the love of God, what happened?”

For a long time, Trenarrow didn’t answer. His dull eyes were fixed upon the space between Lynley and St. James. He reached for the pull of the top drawer of the desk and aimlessly played it between his fingers.

“Oncozyme,” he said. “Brooke couldn’t get enough of it. He was juggling the London inventory books as it was. But we needed more. If you could only know how many people phoned—still phone—how frantic they are for help. We couldn’t get enough. But Mick kept funnelling patients my way.”

“Brooke eventually substituted something for the oncozyme, didn’t he?” St. James said. “Your first patients went into remission just as Islington’s research indicated they would. But after a while, things started to go wrong.”

“He’d been sending the drug down from London with Mick. When it became impossible to get and they saw the clinic would have to close, they made a substitution. People who should have gone into remission began to die. Not all at once, of course. But a pattern emerged. I became suspicious. I tested the drug. It was a saline solution.”