A Suitable Vengeance

“Hmmm,” was her companion’s only response.

Monosyllables were typical of him when he was involved in work, but his reply was rather aggravating at the moment since it was after four o’clock and for the last quarter hour Lady Helen’s body had been longing for tea. Oblivious of this, Simon Allcourt-St. James began uncapping a collection of bottles that sat in a row before him. These contained minute fibres which he would analyse, staking his growing reputation as a forensic scientist upon his ability to weave a set of facts out of infinitesimal, blood-soaked threads.

Recognising the preliminary stages of a fabric analysis, Lady Helen sighed and walked to the laboratory window. On the top floor of St. James’ house, it was open to the late June afternoon, and it overlooked a pleasant brick-walled garden. There, a vivid tangle of flowers made a pattern of undisciplined colour. Walkways and lawn had become overgrown.

“You ought to hire someone to see to the garden,” Lady Helen said. She knew very well that it hadn’t been properly tended in the last three years.

“Yes.” St. James took out a pair of tweezers and a box of slides. Somewhere below them in the house, a door opened and shut.

At last, Lady Helen thought, and allowed herself to imagine Joseph Cotter mounting the stairs from the basement kitchen, in his hands a tray covered by fresh scones, clotted cream, strawberry tarts, and tea. Unfortunately, the sounds that began drifting upward—a thumping and bumping, accompanied by a low grunt of endeavour—did not suggest that refreshments were imminent. Lady Helen sidestepped one of St. James’ computers and peered into the panelled hall.

“What’s going on?” St. James asked as a sharp thwack resounded through the house, metal against wood, a noise boding ill for the stairway banisters. He got down awkwardly from his stool, his braced left leg landing unceremoniously on the floor with an ugly thud.

“It’s Cotter. He’s struggling with a trunk and some sort of package. Shall I help you, Cotter? What are you bringing up?”

“Managing quite well,” was Cotter’s oblique reply from three floors below.

“But what on earth—?” Next to her, Lady Helen felt St. James move sharply away from the door. He returned to his work as if the interruption had not occurred and Cotter were not in need of assistance.

And then she was given the explanation. As Cotter manoeuvred his burdens across the first landing, a shaft of light from the window illuminated a broad sticker affixed to the trunk. Even from the top floor, Lady Helen could read the black print across it: D. Cotter/U.S.A. Deborah was returning, and quite soon by the look of it. Yet as if this all were not occurring, St. James devoted himself to his fibres and slides. He bent over a microscope, adjusting its focus.

Lady Helen descended the stairs. Cotter waved her off.

“I c’n manage,” he said. “Don’t trouble yourself.”

“I want the trouble. As much as do you.”

Cotter smiled at her reply, for his labours were born of a father’s love for his returning child, and Lady Helen knew it. He handed over the broad flat package which he had been attempting to carry under his arm. His hold on the trunk he would not relinquish.

“Deborah’s coming home?” Lady Helen kept her voice low. Cotter did likewise.

“She is. Tonight.”

“Simon never said a word.”

Cotter readjusted his grip on the trunk. “Not likely to, is ’e?” he responded grimly.

They climbed the remaining flights of stairs. Cotter shouldered the trunk into his daughter’s bedroom to the left of the landing, while Lady Helen paused at the door to the lab. She leaned the package against the wall, tapping her fingers against it thoughtfully as she observed her friend. St. James did not look up from his work.

That had always been his most effective defence. Worktables and microscopes became ramparts which no one could scale, incessant labour a narcotic that dulled the pain of loss. Lady Helen surveyed the lab, seeing it for once not as the centre of St. James’ professional life, but as the refuge which it had become. It was a large room scented faintly by formaldehyde; walled by anatomy charts and graphs and shelves; floored by old, creaking hardwood; ceilinged by a skylight through which milky sun provided an impersonal warmth. Scarred tables furnished it, as did tall stools, microscopes, computers, and a variety of equipment for studying everything from blood to bullets. To one side, a door led into Deborah Cotter’s darkroom. But that door had been closed for all the years of her absence. Lady Helen wondered what St. James would do if she opened it now, flinging it back like an unavoidable invasion into the reaches of his heart.

“Deborah’s coming home tonight, Simon? Why didn’t you tell me?”