A Suitable Vengeance

“I don’t know that he has any family. I don’t know much about him at all.” Beyond the fact, he added silently, that I’m glad he’s dead.

His conscience had demanded the admission all day, ever since the moment when he’d held his sister in his arms on the top of the cliff, gazed down on Brooke’s body, and known a moment of exultation that had its roots in his need for revenge. Here was justice, he’d thought. Here was retribution. Perhaps the hand of reprisal had been momentarily stayed after Brooke had attacked his sister on the beach. But the savagery of his assault upon her had called for an accounting. It had been made in full. He was glad of it. He was relieved that Sidney was free of Brooke at last. And the strength of his relief—so utterly foreign to what he had always believed was a civilised response to the death of another human being—disquieted him. He knew without a doubt that, given the opportunity, he himself could easily have done away with Justin Brooke.

“At any rate,” he said, “I think it’s probably wise that she get away. No one’s asked her to stay. Officially, that is.” He saw that the others understood his meaning. The police had not asked to speak with Sidney. As far as they were concerned, Brooke’s death was due to an accidental fall.

The others mulled over this piece of information as the dining room door opened and Hodge came into the room. “A telephone call for Mr. St. James, my lady.” Hodge had a way of making announcements with an intonation that suggested nothing less than impending doom: a phone call from fate, Hecate on the line. “It’s in the estate office. Lady Helen Clyde.”

St. James rose at once, grateful for an excuse to be gone. The atmosphere in the dining room was overhung with too many unspoken questions, and scores of issues asking to be discussed. But everyone seemed determined to avoid discussion, preferring the growing tension to the risk of facing a potentially painful truth.

He followed the butler to the west wing of the house, down the long corridor that led to the estate office. A single light burned upon the desk, creating a bright oval of illumination in the centre of which lay the telephone receiver. He picked it up.

“She’s disappeared,” Lady Helen said when she heard his voice. “It looks as if she’s taken herself off on a casual holiday because her ordinary clothes are gone—but none of her dressy clothes—and there’s no suitcase in the flat.”

“You got inside?”

“Sheer audacious fast talking and the key was mine.”

“You’ve missed your calling, Helen.”

“Darling, I know. Con man extraordinaire. It comes from spending my youth in finishing schools instead of university. Modern languages, decorative arts, dissembling, and prevaricating. I was certain it would all be useful someday.”

“No idea where’s she gone?”

“She’s left behind her makeup and her fingernails, so—”

“Her fingernails? Helen, what sort of business is this?”

She laughed and explained the artificial nails to him. “They’re not what one would wear to do a bit of hiking, you see. Or mucking about. Or rock climbing, sailing, fishing. That sort of thing. So we think she’s off in the country somewhere.”

“Here in Cornwall?”

“That was our first thought as well, and we’ve come up with fairly solid evidence, we think. She has Mick Cambrey’s savings book—with some rather hefty deposits made to his account, by the way—and we’ve found two telephone numbers. One’s for a London exchange. We phoned it and got a recording for a place called Islington, Ltd., giving their business hours. I’ll check into that in the morning.”

“And the other number?”

“It’s Cornwall, Simon. We’ve tried it twice and got no answer. We thought it might be Mick Cambrey’s.”

St. James pulled an envelope from the side drawer of the desk. “Did you try directory enquiries?”

“To compare it to Cambrey’s number? He’s ex-directory, I’m afraid. Let me give you the number. Perhaps you can do something more with it.”

He jotted it down on the envelope, shoved it into his pocket. “Sid’s coming back to London tomorrow.” He told Lady Helen about Justin Brooke. She listened in silence, asking no questions and making no comment until he had completed the tale. He left nothing out, concluding with, “And now Peter’s gone missing as well.”

“Oh, no,” she said. Dimly in the background, St. James could hear music playing softly. A flute concerto. It made him wish he were sitting in her drawing room in Onslow Square, talking idly about nothing, with nothing more on his mind than blood or fibre or hair analyses associated with people he did not know and would never meet. She said, “Poor Tommy. Poor Daze. How are they holding up?”

“They’re coping.”

“And Sid?”