A Suitable Vengeance

“Tommy’s at the villa,” she said. “Mr. Sweeney, please.”


The cleric frowned. He squinted up the drive. “Oh, dear.” His right hand flexed open and closed upon the handle of his umbrella as he appeared to consider his options. “Oh, dear. Yes. I see.” This final statement seemed to indicate that an action had been decided upon. Mr. Sweeney drew himself up to his fullest height of not quite five and a half feet and spoke to the constable who still held Deborah in a determined grip. “You know Lord Asherton, of course,” he said authoritatively. It was a tone that would have surprised any of his parishioners who had never seen him in blackface among the Nanrunnel players, ordering Cassio and Montano to put up their swords. “This is his fiancée. Let her by.”

The constable eyed Deborah’s bedraggled appearance. His expression made it perfectly clear that he could hardly give credence to a relationship between her and any one of the Lynleys.

“Let her by,” Mr. Sweeney repeated. “I’ll accompany her myself. Perhaps you ought to be more concerned with the newspaperman than with this young lady.”

The constable gave Deborah another sceptical look. She waited in torment while he made his decision. “All right. Go on. Stay out of the way.”

Deborah’s lips formed the words thank you, but nothing came out. She took a few stumbling steps.

“It’s all right, my dear,” Mr. Sweeney said. “Let’s go up. Take my arm. The drive’s a bit slippery, isn’t it?”

She did as he said, although only a part of her brain registered his words. The rest was caught up in speculation and fear. “Please not Tommy,” she whispered. “Not like this. Please. I could bear anything else.”

“Now, it will be all right,” Mr. Sweeney murmured in a distracted fashion. “Indeed. You shall see.”

They slipped and slid among the crushed corollas of fuchsias as they wound their way up the narrow drive towards the front of the villa. The rain was beginning to fall less heavily, but Deborah was already soaked, so the protection of Mr. Sweeney’s umbrella meant very little. She shivered as she clung to his arm.

“It’s a dreadful business, this,” Mr. Sweeney said as if in response to her shudder. “But it shall be all right. You’ll see in a moment.”

Deborah heard the words but knew enough to dismiss them. There was no chance for all right any longer. A mocking form of justice always swept through life when one was least prepared to see justice meted out. Her time had come.

In spite of the number of men who were on the grounds, it was unnaturally quiet as they approached the villa. The crackle of a police radio was the only noise, a female dispatcher giving direction to police not far from the scene. On the circular drive beneath the hawthorn tree, three police cars sat at odd, hurried angles, as if their drivers had flung themselves out without bothering to worry about where or how they parked. In the rear seat of one of them, Harry Cambrey was engaged in a muffled shouting match with an angry constable who appeared to have handcuffed him to the interior of the car. When he saw Deborah, Cambrey forced his face to the officer’s window.

“Dead!” he shouted before the constable pushed him back inside the car.

The worst was realised. Deborah saw the ambulance pulled near the front door, not as close as the police cars for there was no need of that. Wordlessly, she clutched at Mr. Sweeney’s arm, but as if he read her fears, he pointed to the portico.

“Look,” he urged her.

Deborah forced herself to look towards the front door. She saw him. Her eyes flew wildly over every part of his body, looking for wounds. But other than the fact that his jacket was wet, he was quite intact—although terribly pale—talking gravely to Inspector Boscowan.

“Thank God,” she whispered.

The front door opened even as she spoke. Lynley and Boscowan stepped to one side to allow two men to carry a stretcher into the rain, a body upon it. Sheeting covered it from head to toe, strapped down as if to shield it from the rain and to protect it from the stares of the curious. Only when she saw it, only when she heard the front door close with a sound of hollow finality, did Deborah understand. Still, she looked frantically at the grounds of the villa, at the brightly lit windows, at the cars, at the door. Again and again—as if the action could change an immutable reality—she sought him.

Mr. Sweeney said something, but she didn’t hear it. She only heard her own bargain: I could bear anything else.

Her childhood, her life, flashed before her in an instant, leaving behind for the very first time neither anger nor pain, but instead understanding, complete and too late. She bit her lip so hard that she could taste the blood, but it was not enough to quell her cry of anguish.

“Simon!” She threw herself towards the ambulance where already the body had been loaded inside.