A Suitable Vengeance

He couldn’t deny this and she seemed to read agreement in his face. She said, “Right. Good,” and put the photograph in the drawer of the bedside table with a that’s that movement. As she did so, the bedroom door opened and Sidney wandered in, reaching with one hand over her shoulder to fiddle with the zip on her dress while with the other she aimlessly attempted to rearrange her tousled hair.

“These blasted Howenstow maids,” she was muttering. “They flutter through my room—God knows they mean well—and I can’t find a thing. Simon, will you…good Lord, you look wonderful in that suit. Is it new? Here. I can’t seem to manage this blasted thing on my own.” She presented her back to her brother and, as he finished what she had begun with the zip, she looked at Deborah. “And you look stunning, Deb. Simon, doesn’t she look stunning? Oh, never mind. Why on earth would I ask you when the only thing you’ve found stunning in years is a patch of blood through a microscope. Or perhaps a bit of skin from beneath the fingernail of a corpse.” She laughed, turned, and patted her brother’s cheek before going to the dressing table, where she studied herself in the mirror and picked up a bottle of Deborah’s perfume.

“So the maids have straightened everything up”—she continued with her original thought—“and, of course, I can’t find a thing. My perfume is utterly gone—may I borrow a splash of yours, Deb?—and just try to find my shoes! Why, I almost had to borrow a pair from Helen until I found them tucked in the very back of my wardrobe as if I’d no intention in the world of ever wearing them again.”

“An odd place for shoes,” St. James pointed out sardonically. “In the wardrobe.”

“He’s laughing at me, Deborah,” Sidney said. “But if he didn’t have your father keeping him together, there’s no doubt in my mind what the result would be. Chaos. Complete. Utter. Infinite.” She bent and brought her face closer to the glass. “The swelling’s gone, thank God, although the scratches are stunning. Not to mention the bruise beneath my eye. I look just like a street brawler. D’you think anyone will mention it? Or shall we all just concentrate on keeping our upper lips stiff and our manners impeccable? You know the sort of thing. Eyes forward and no groping at anyone’s thighs beneath the tablecloth.”

“Groping at thighs?” Deborah asked. “Simon, you never told me. And I’ve been worrying about the silver!”

“The silver?” Sidney looked round from the mirror. “Oh, you mean all the forks and knives? Pooh. Unless people start throwing them, don’t give it a thought.” Unbidden, she fluffed up Deborah’s hair, stepped back, frowned, played with it again. “Where’s Justin, d’you know? I’ve not seen him for ages today. He’s probably worried I shall bite him again. I can’t think why he reacted the way he did yesterday. I’ve bitten him before although, now I think, the circumstances were a bit different.” She laughed light-heartedly. “Well, if the two of us get into another row tonight, let’s hope it’s at the dinner table. With all those knives and forks, we’ll have plenty of weapons.”



Lynley found Peter in the smoking room on the ground floor of the house. Cigarette in hand, he was standing by the fireplace, his attention fixed upon a red fox that was mounted in a glass case above it. A compassionate taxidermist had thoughtfully poised the animal in the act of flight, just inches from a burrow that would have saved him. Other vulpine trophies had not been so fortunately enshrined, however. Their heads hung from plaques fastened intermittently between photographs on the room’s panelled walls. Since the only light came from an arabesque brass chandelier, these latter foxes cast long shadows, accusatory wedges of darkness like reverse spotlights that emphasised a devotion to blood sports which no one in the family had actually felt since before the First War.

Seeing his brother’s reflection in the glass case, Peter spoke without turning around. “Why do you suppose no one’s ever taken this awful thing down from the mantel?”

“I think it was Grandfather’s first successful hunt.”

“Why blood him when you can give him the poor creature as a prize?”

“That sort of thing.”

Lynley noted that his brother had removed the swastika from his ear, replacing it with a single gold stud. He wore grey trousers, a white shirt, a loosely knotted tie—and although the clothes were overly large, at least they were clean. And he had put on shoes if not socks. This seemed cause enough for fleeting gratification, and Lynley briefly considered the value and the wisdom of confronting his brother—as he knew he had to be confronted eventually—at a moment when Peter’s appearance suggested concession, compromise, and the promise of change.

Peter tossed his cigarette into the fireplace and opened the liquor cabinet that was a hidden feature of the mantel beneath the fox.

“This was one of my little adolescent secrets,” he chuckled as he poured himself a tumbler of whisky. “Jasper showed it to me when I turned seventeen.”

“He showed me as well. A rite of passage, I suppose.”

“D’you think Mother knew?”