A Suitable Vengeance

St. James studied the front of the house. “Does he live here alone?” he asked.

“Far’s I know,” Cotter replied. “But a woman answered the phone when I rang.”

“A woman?” St. James thought of Tina Cogin and Trenarrow’s telephone number in her flat. “Let’s see what the doctor can tell us.”

Their knock was not answered by Trenarrow. Rather, a young West Indian woman opened the door, and from the expression on Cotter’s face when she first spoke, St. James knew he could dismiss Tina Cogin as the woman who had answered the phone. The mystery of her whereabouts, it seemed, would not be solved through the expediency of her clandestine presence at Trenarrow’s house.

“Doctor see nobodies here,” the woman said, looking from Cotter to St. James. The words sounded rehearsed, perhaps frequently and not always patiently said.

“Dr. Trenarrow knows we’re coming to see him,” St. James said. “It’s not a medical call.”

“Ah.” She smiled, showing large teeth which protruded like ivory against her coffee skin. She held wide the door. “Then in with you, man. He’s looking at his flowers. Every morning in the garden before he goes off to work. Same thing. I’ll fetch him for you.”

She showed them to the study where, with a meaningful look at St. James, Cotter said, “I could do with a walk round the garden myself,” and followed the woman from the room. Cotter would, St. James knew, find out what he could about who she was and why she was there.

Alone, he turned to look at the room. It was the sort of study he particularly liked, with air faintly scented by the smell of the old leather chairs, bookcases filled to absolute capacity, a fireplace with coals newly laid and ready to be lit. A desk sat in the large bay window overlooking the harbour, but as if the view would be a distraction from work, it faced into the room, rather than outward. An open magazine lay upon it with a pen left in the center crease as if the reader had been interrupted in the middle of an article. Curious, St. James went to examine it, flipping it closed for a moment.

Cancer Research, an American journal, with a photograph of a white-coated scientist on its cover. She leaned against a working area on which sat an immense electron microscope. Scripps Clinic, La Jolla was printed beneath the photograph, along with the phrase Testing the Limits of Bio-Research.

St. James went back to the article, a technical treatise on an extracellular matrix protein called proteoglycans. Despite his own extensive background in science, it made little sense to him.

“Not quite what one would call light reading, is it?”

St. James looked up. Dr. Trenarrow stood in the doorway. He was wearing a well-tailored three-piece suit. He’d pinned a small rosebud to its lapel.

“It’s certainly beyond me,” St. James replied.

“Any word of Peter?”

“Nothing yet, I’m afraid.”

Trenarrow shut the door and gestured St. James into one of the room’s wingback chairs.

“Coffee?” he asked. “I’ve been discovering it’s one of Dora’s few specialities.”

“Thank you, no. She’s your housekeeper?”

“Using the term in the loosest possible fashion.” He smiled briefly, without humour. The remark seemed largely an effort to be light-hearted, an effort he dismissed with his very next words. “Tommy told us last night. About Peter seeing Mick Cambrey the night he died. About Brooke as well. I don’t know where you stand in all this, but I’ve known that boy since he was six years old, and he’s not a killer. He’s incapable of violence, most especially the sort that was done to Mick Cambrey.”

“Did you know Mick well?”

“Not as well as others in the village. Just as his landlord. I let him Gull Cottage.”

“How long ago was that?”

Trenarrow began an automatic answer, but then his brow furrowed, as if he’d suddenly wondered about the nature of the question. “About nine months.”

“Who lived there before him?”

“I did.” Trenarrow made a quick movement in his chair, an adjustment in position that betrayed irritation. “You can’t have come here on a social call at this time of morning, Mr. St. James. Did Tommy send you?”

“Tommy?”

“No doubt you know the facts. We’ve years of bad blood between us. You’re asking about Cambrey. You’re asking about the cottage. Are these questions his idea or yours?”

“Mine. But he knows I’ve come to see you.”

“About Mick?”

“Actually, no. Tina Cogin’s disappeared. We think she may have come to Cornwall.”

“Who?”

“Tina Cogin. Shrewsbury Court Apartments. In Paddington. Your telephone number was among her things.”

“I haven’t the slightest…Tina Cogin, you say?”

“She’s not a patient of yours? Or a former patient?”