A Suitable Vengeance

She reached out a hand to him as he came in the door. He took it. “Dad.” Nancy’s voice wavered.

At this, Penellin suddenly saw the others gathered in the sitting room. Alarm shot across his face. “What’s happened?” he demanded. “By God, you tell me what that bastard’s done to you now.”

“He’s dead,” Nancy said. “Someone…” She faltered at the rest of it, as if those few words reminded her of the horror that the sedative had allowed her to escape for a short time.

Penellin stared. He brushed past his daughter and took a step towards the stairway. “Nancy, where’s your brother?”

Nancy said nothing. In the sitting room, Lynley slowly got to his feet.

Penellin spoke again. “Tell me what happened.”

“Nancy found Mick’s body in the cottage after the play,” Lynley said. “The sitting room looked as if it had been searched. Mick may well have surprised someone in the act of going through his papers. Or in the act of robbery. Although,” he added, “that latter seems unlikely.”

Nancy grasped this idea. “It was robbery,” she said. “That’s what it was and no mistake. Mick was doing the pay envelopes for the newspaper staff when I left him this evening.” She tossed a look back over her shoulder at Lynley. “Was the money still there?”

“I saw only a five-pound note on the floor,” St. James answered.

“But surely Mick didn’t pay the staff in cash,” Lynley said.

“He did,” Nancy said. “It was always done that way on the newspaper. More convenient. There’s no bank in Nanrunnel.”

“But if it was robbery—”

“It was,” Nancy said.

Lady Helen spoke gently, bringing up the single point that obviated robbery as a motive. “But Nancy, his body…”

“The body?” Penellin asked.

“He’d been castrated,” Lynley said.

“Good God.”

The front doorbell rang shrilly. All of them jumped, a testimony to the state of their nerves. Still in the hallway, Penellin answered the door. Inspector Boscowan stood on the porch. Beyond him, a dusty car was parked behind the estate Rover that Lynley had earlier driven to and from Nanrunnel.

“John,” Boscowan said by way of greeting Penellin.

The use of Penellin’s given name reminded Lynley all at once that not only were Boscowan and Penellin of an age, but like so many others who lived in this remote area of Cornwall, they were also former schoolmates and lifelong friends.

Penellin said, “Edward, you’ve heard about Mick?”

“I’ve come to talk to you about it.”

Nancy gripped the newel post of the stairway. “To Dad? Why? He knows nothing about this.”

“I’ve a few questions, John,” Boscowan said.

“I don’t understand.” But Penellin’s tone was an admission that he understood only too well.

“May I come in?”

Penellin glanced into the sitting room, and Boscowan followed his gaze to see the others gathered there.

“Still here, my lord?” he asked.

“Yes. We were…” Lynley hesitated. Waiting for John to come home asked to be spoken, an inadvertent accusation he would not make.

“Dad knows nothing,” Nancy repeated. “Dad, tell him you know nothing about Mick.”

“May I come in?” Boscowan asked once more.

“Nancy and the baby,” Penellin said. “They’re both here. May we talk in Penzance? At the station house?”

Requesting a different location wasn’t a suspect’s right. And that John Penellin was a suspect was illustrated in Boscowan’s next words.

“Have you a solicitor you’d like to ring?”

“A solicitor?” Nancy shrilled.

“Nance. Girl. Don’t.”

Although Penellin reached for his daughter, she flinched away. “Dad was here.”

Boscowan shifted his weight uneasily from one foot to the other. “I’m sorry, Nancy. Neighbours saw him at your cottage at half past nine. Others heard an argument as well.”

“He was here. I spoke to him after the interval. Dad, tell him I spoke to you after the interval.” She grabbed her father’s arm, shaking it doggedly.

Her father loosened her fingers. “Let me go, lass. Stay here. Take care of Molly. Nancy, wait for Mark.”

Boscowan didn’t miss the exigent quality of Penellin’s final direction to his daughter. “Mark’s not here?”

Penellin replied, “I expect he’s out with friends. In St. Ives or St. Just. You know how young men are.” He patted Nancy’s hand. “I’m ready then, Edward. Let’s be off.”

He nodded to the others and left the lodge. A moment later, Boscowan’s car purred to life. The sound amplified briefly as he reversed down the main drive, then faded altogether as they headed towards Penzance.