A Suitable Vengeance

“Two or three hours, I’d guess. But surely you’ve someone coming to tell you that.”


“Oh, aye. When she gets here,” the constable said. “With the rest of CID.” He rocked back on his heels, popped his gum once more, and studied his watch. “Two or three hours, you say? That takes us to…half nine or half ten. Well”—he sighed and rubbed his hands together with obvious pleasure—“it’s a starting place, i’n’ it? And you’ve got to start somewhere in police work.”





* * *



INVESTIGATION





CHAPTER 10


From the moment they pulled up in front of the Howenstow lodge at a quarter past two in the morning, events began to tumble one upon the other. Not that events had not already been accumulating into an aggregate of experience too complicated to be readily assimilated. Inspector Edward Boscowan had seen to that, only moments after his arrival at Gull Cottage with the scenes-of-crime team from Penzance CID.

He’d taken one look at Constable Parker, who was lounging in an armchair not four feet from Mick Cambrey’s body; he’d taken a second look at St. James, Trenarrow, and Lynley in the small entry foyer, at Deborah in the kitchen, at Lady Helen and Nancy Cambrey upstairs, at the baby in the cot. His face went from white to crimson. Then he finally spoke, but only to the constable. With such studied control that no other demonstration of his fury was even necessary.

“A tea party, Constable? Despite what you may think, you are not the Mad Hatter. Or has no one yet informed you of that?” The constable grinned uneasily in response. He shoved himself to his feet and scratched one armpit, nodding as if in agreement. “This is a murder scene,” Boscowan snapped. “What in hell’s name are all these people doing here?”

“They ’as inside when I got here,” Parker said.

“Were they?” Boscowan asked with a thin smile. When Parker returned it, momentarily relieved by what he mistakenly perceived as bonhomie in his superior, Boscowan snarled, “Well, get them out now! Which is bloody well what you should have done in the first place!”

Lynley was aware of that fact himself. He knew that St. James was aware of it as well. Yet in the confusion engendered by Nancy’s hysteria, the chaos of the sitting room, and the sight of Cambrey’s body, both of them had disregarded or forgotten or developed an uncharacteristic indifference to that most basic tenet of police work. They had not sealed the crime scene. While they had not touched anything, they had been in the room, Trenarrow had been in the room, not to mention Helen and Deborah and Nancy in the kitchen and then upstairs. With all of them leaving fibres and hairs and fingerprints everywhere. What a nightmare for the forensic team. And he himself—a policeman—had been responsible for creating it, or at least for doing nothing productive to stop it. His behaviour had been unforgivably incompetent, and he could not excuse it by telling himself that he hadn’t been thinking straight due to his being acquainted with the principals involved in the crime itself. For he’d known the principals involved in crimes before and had always kept his head. But not this time. He’d lost his grip the moment St. James involved Deborah.

Boscowan had said nothing more in condemnation of anyone. He had merely taken their fingerprints and sent them to stand in the kitchen while he and a sergeant went upstairs to talk to Nancy and the crime scene team began their work in the sitting room. He spent nearly an hour with Nancy, patiently taking her back and forth over the facts. Having gleaned from her what little he could, he sent her home with Lynley, home to her father.

Now, Lynley looked up at the lodge. The front door was closed. The windows were shut, the curtains drawn. Darkness enfolded it, and the trellised red roses that walled in the porch and encircled the windows on the ground floor looked like feather-edged smudges of ink in the shadows.

“I’ll come in with you,” Lynley said, “just in case your father’s not yet home.”

Nancy stirred in the rear seat where, between Lady Helen and St. James, she held her sleeping baby. Dr. Trenarrow had given her a mild sedative, and for the time being the drug shielded her from shock.

“Dad’s only sleeping,” she murmured, resting her cheek on Molly’s head. “I spoke with him on the phone after the interval. At the play. He’s gone to bed.”

“He wasn’t home when I phoned at half past twelve,” Lynley said. “So he may not be home now. If he isn’t, I’d rather you and Molly came on to the house with us and not stay here alone. We can leave him a note.”

“He’s only sleeping. The phone’s in the sitting room. His bedroom’s upstairs. He mightn’t have heard it.”