A Suitable Vengeance

St. James heard, rather than saw, his sister yawning in the dining room doorway. “What an evening,” she said as she padded into the room and joined him at the table. She rested her head in one hand, reached for his pot of coffee, and poured herself a cup which she sugared with an air that combined liberality with general indifference. As if she hadn’t bothered to look out the window prior to dressing for the day, she wore bright blue shorts, profusely decorated with coruscating silver stars, and a halter top. “Offensive after-dinner toasts, visits from the police, an arrest on the spot. It’s a wonder we lived to tell the tale.” She eyed the line of covered serving dishes on the sideboard, shrugged them off as possibly too troublesome a venture, and instead took a slice of bacon from her brother’s plate. This she placed on a piece of his toast.

“Sid…”

“Hmmm?” She pulled part of the newspaper towards her. “What’re you reading?”

St. James didn’t reply. He’d been going through the Spokesman, and he wanted a moment to evaluate what he’d read.

It was a village paper, its contents comprising mostly village news. And no matter the intensity or importance of Mick Cambrey’s association with the Spokesman, St. James found that he couldn’t reasonably attribute the man’s murder to what he was reading in this local journal. The news items ran the gamut from a recent wedding held on the quay at Lamorna Cove, to the conviction of a purse snatcher from Penzance, to the innovations developed on a dairy farm not far from St. Buryan. There was coverage of the Nanrunnel production of Much Ado About Nothing, including a profile of the girl who played Hero. Sports news consisted of an article on a local tennis match, and whoever covered the crime beat had managed to unearth only a traffic accident involving a right-of-way dispute between a lorry driver and a cow. Just the editorial page held promise, and even here that promise was directed more towards the future of the paper than to a motive for Mick Cambrey’s murder.

The page held two opinion columns and seven letters. The first column had been written by Cambrey, an articulate piece on stemming the tide of weapons being run into Northern Ireland. Julianna Vendale had composed the second column on national child care. The letters, which came from both Nanrunnel and Penzance residents, dealt with previous columns on village expansion and on the local secondary school’s declining O-level results. All of this reflected Mick Cambrey’s efforts to make the newspaper something more than a village gossip sheet. But none of it seemed to have content likely to provoke a murder.

St. James reflected upon the fact that Harry Cambrey believed his son had been working on a story that would have been the making of the Spokesman. Ostensibly without confiding his intentions to his father, Mick had planned that this story would reach a wider audience than was available in this remote area of Cornwall. Thus, St. James wondered if Cambrey could have discovered that his son was spending time, money, and effort away from the Spokesman, all for something that wouldn’t benefit the newspaper at all. And if Cambrey had discovered that, how would he have reacted to the news? Would he have struck out in anger as he had done once before in the newspaper office?

Every question concerning the murder revolved round a decision between premeditation and passion. The fact that there had been an argument suggested passion, as did the mutilation of the body. But other details—the condition of the sitting room, the missing money—suggested premeditation. And even an autopsy would probably not generate a definitive distinction between the two.

“Where is everyone this morning?” Sidney got up from the table and took her coffee to one of the windows where she curled onto a velvet-covered bench. “What a dreary day. It’s going to rain.”

“Tommy’s taken Deborah and Helen to catch the train for London. I’ve not seen anyone else.”

“Justin and I ought to be off as well, I suppose. He’s got work tomorrow. Have you seen him?”

“Not this morning.” St. James was no mourner for that fact. He was finding that the less he saw of Brooke, the better he liked it. He could only hope that his sister would come to her senses soon and clear her life of the man.

“Perhaps I’ll rout him from his room,” Sidney said, but she made no move to do so and she was still sipping coffee and gazing out the window when Lady Asherton joined them. The fact that she had not come in for breakfast was evident in her choice of clothing: She wore blue jeans rolled above her ankles, a man’s white cotton shirt, and a baseball cap. She was carrying a pair of heavy gardening gloves which she slapped into her palm emphatically.

“Here you are, Simon. Good,” she said. “Will you come with me a moment? It’s about Deborah’s cameras.”