A Suitable Vengeance

Lynley closed the music room door and watched Peter walk—with a step that was much too careful and precise—to the window. He sat down on the window seat, curving his lengthy frame into a comfortable position on the green brocade cushion. The walls in the room were papered in a print of yellow chrysanthemums on a field of green, and that combination of colours in conjunction with the high sunlight of noon served to make Peter look even more haggard than he had in the great hall. Tracing a pattern against a distortion in the glass, he was doing his best to ignore Lynley altogether.

“What are you doing in Cornwall? You’re supposed to be in Oxford. We’d made arrangements for a tutor for the summer. We’d agreed you’d stay there.” Lynley knew that his voice was both cold and unfriendly, but he could do nothing to modulate it. The sight of his brother had shaken him. Peter was skeletally thin. His eyes looked yellow. The skin round his nostrils was excoriated and scabbed.

Peter shrugged, looking sullen. “It’s just a visit, for God’s sake. I’m not here to stay. I’m going back. All right?”

“What are you doing here? And don’t give me that business about the weekend sun because I’m not going to buy it.”

“I don’t care what you buy. But just think how fortuitous my arrival is, Tommy. If I hadn’t shown up unexpectedly this morning, I’d have missed the festivities altogether. Or was that your intention? Did you want to keep me away? Another nasty family secret kept under wraps so that your little redhead doesn’t learn too many of them all at once?”

Lynley strode across the room and whipped his brother out of the window seat.

“I’ll ask you again what you’re doing here, Peter.”

Peter shook him off. “I’ve chucked it, all right? Is that what you want to hear? I’ve dropped out. Okay?”

“Have you gone completely mad? Where are you living?”

“I’ve digs of my own in London. And don’t worry. I’ve no intention of asking you for money. I’ve plenty of my own.” He shouldered his way past Lynley and went to the old Broadwood piano. He fingered its keys in a light, staccato tapping, dissonant and irritating.

“This is nonsense.” Lynley tried to speak reasonably, but he felt disheartened as he read the meaning behind Peter’s words. “And who is that girl? Where did she come from? How did you meet her? Peter, she’s not even clean. She looks like—”

Peter spun around. “Shut up about her. She’s the best thing that’s ever happened in my life and don’t you forget it. She’s the only decent thing that’s happened to me in years.”

That strained credibility. It also revealed the worst. Lynley crossed the room. “You’re on drugs again. I thought you were clean. I thought we’d straightened you out in that programme last January. But you’re back to it. You haven’t chucked Oxford at all, have you? They’ve chucked you. That’s it, isn’t it? Isn’t it, Peter?”

Peter didn’t answer. Lynley grasped his brother’s chin with thumb and index finger and turned Peter’s head so that it was inches away from his own.

“What is it now? Are we trying heroin yet? Or are we still wrapped up in our devotion to cocaine? Have you tried mixing them? What about smoking them? Or that religious experience of mainlining the whole mess?”

Peter said nothing. Lynley pushed him for an answer.

“You’re still after that ultimate high, aren’t you? After all, drugs are what life’s all about. And what about Sasha? Are you two developing a fine, meaningful relationship? Cocaine must be a great foundation for love. You can really bond to an addict, can’t you?”

Still, Peter refused to respond. Lynley pulled his brother to a mirror that hung on a wall behind the harp and shoved him towards it so that he would have to look at his unshaven face. It was pasty. His lips were cracked. His nose was running onto his upper lip.

“Pretty sight, aren’t you?” Lynley demanded. “What are you telling Mother? That you’re not using any longer? That you just have a cold?”

Released, Peter rubbed his face where his brother’s fingers had dug in and bruised the unhealthy flesh. “You can even talk about Mother,” he whispered. “You can even talk. God, Tommy, I wish you’d just die.”





CHAPTER 5


Neither Peter nor Sasha showed up for lunch, and as if an appropriate response to this had been agreed upon in advance, no one mentioned the fact. Instead, everyone concentrated on passing round platters of prawn salad, cold chicken, asparagus, and artichokes gribiche while completely overlooking the two empty chairs that faced one another at the far end of the table.