A Suitable Vengeance

25

The day's fair weather had begun to change by the time Lynley touched the plane down on to the tarmac at Land's End. Heavy grey clouds were scuttling in from the southwest, and what had been a mild breeze back in London was here gathering force as a rain-laden wind. This transformation in the weather was, Lynley thought bleakly, a particularly apt metaphor for the alteration that his mood and his circumstances had undergone. For he had begun the morning with a spirit uplifted by hope, but within mere hours of his having decided that the future held the promise of peace in every corner of his life, that hope had been swiftly overshadowed by a sick apprehension which he believed he had put behind him.

Unlike the anxiety of the past few days, this current uneasiness had nothing to do with his brother. Instead, from his meetings with Peter throughout the night had grown a sense of both renewal and rebirth. And, although during his lengthy visit to New Scotland Yard, the family's solicitor had depicted Peter's danger with transparent simplicity unless the death of Mick Cambrey could be unassailably pinned upon Justin Brooke, Lynley and his brother had moved from a discussion of the legal ramifications of his position to a fragile communion in which each of them took the first tentative steps towards understanding the other's past behaviour, a necessary prelude to forgiving past sins. From the hours Lynley had spent talking to his brother had come the realization that understanding and forgiveness go hand-in-hand. To call upon one is to experience the other. And if understanding and forgiveness were to be seen as virtues – strengths of character, not illustrations of personal weakness – surely it was time he accepted the fact that they could bring harmony to the single relationship in his life where harmony was most needed. He wasn't certain what he would say to her, but he knew he was ready to speak to his mother.

This intention – a resolution which lightened his steps and lifted his shoulders – began to disintegrate upon his arrival in Chelsea. Lynley dashed up the front steps, rapped on the door, and came face to face with his most irrational fear.

St James answered the door. He was pleasant enough with his offer of a coffee before they left, and confident enough with his presentation of his theory about Justin Brooke's culpability in Sasha Nifford's death. Under any other circumstances the information about Brooke would have filled Lynley with the surge of excitement that always came with the knowledge that he was heading towards the conclusion of a case. Under these circumstances, however, he barely heard St James' words, let alone understood how far they went to explain everything that had happened in Cornwall and London over the past five days. Instead, he noted that his friend's face was etiolated as if from an illness; he saw the deepening of the lines on his brow; he heard the tension beneath St James' exposition of motive, means and opportunity; and he felt a chill settle in every vital organ of his body. His confidence and his will – both flagships of the day – lost a quick battle with his growing dismay.

He knew there could be only one source of the change that had come over St James, and she walked down the stairs not three minutes after his arrival, adjusting the leather strap of a shoulder bag. When she reached the hallway and Lynley saw her face, he read the truth and was sick at heart. He wanted to give sway to the anger and jealousy that he felt in that instant. But, instead, generations of good breeding rose to commandeer his behaviour. The demand for an explanation became meaningless social chitchat designed to get them through the moment without so much as a hair of feeling out of place.

'Working hard on your photos, darling?' he asked her and added, because even good breeding had its limits, 'You look as if you haven't had a moment's rest. Were you up all night? Are you finished with them?'

Deborah didn't look at St James, who went into the study where he began rooting in his desk. 'Nearly.' She came to Lynley's side, slipped her arms round him, lifted her mouth to kiss him, and said in a whisper against his lips, 'Good morning, darling Tommy. I missed you last night.'

He kissed her, feeling the immediacy of her response to him and wondering if everything else he had seen was merely the product of pathetic insecurity. He told himself that this was the case. Nonetheless he still said, 'If you've more work to do, you don't need to go with us.'

'I want to go. The photographs can wait.' And, with a smile, she kissed him again.

All the time with Deborah in his arms, Lynley was acutely aware of St James. During the journey to Cornwall, he was aware of them both. He studied every nuance in their behaviour towards him, in their behaviour towards each other. He examined each word, gesture and remark under the unforgiving microscope of his own suspicion. If Deborah said St James' name, it became in his mind a veiled avowal of her love. If St James looked in Deborah's direction, it was an open declaration of commitment and desire. By the time Lynley taxied the plane to a halt on the Land's End airstrip, he felt tension coiling like a spring in the back of his neck. The resulting pain was only a secondary consideration, however. It was nothing compared to his self-disgust.

His roiling emotions had prevented him from engaging in anything other than the most superficial of conversations during the drive to Surrey and the flight that followed it. And since not one of them was gifted with Lady Helen's capacity for smoothing over difficult moments with amusing chatter, their talk had ground itself down to nothing in very short order so that when they finally arrived in Cornwall the atmosphere among them was thick with unspoken words. Lynley knew he was not the only one to sigh with relief when they stepped out of the plane and saw Jasper waiting with the car next to the tarmac.

The silence during their ride to Howenstow was broken only by Jasper telling him that Lady Asherton had arranged to have two of the farm lads waiting at the cove 'at half-one like you said 'at you wanted'. John Penellin was still being held in Penzance, he confided, but the happy word had gone out to everyone that 'Mister Peter be found'.

'Her Ladyship's looking ten yers younger this morning for knowing the lad's safe,' Jasper concluded. 'She was whacking her tennis balls at five past eight.'

They said nothing more. St James riffled through the papers in his briefcase, Deborah watched the scenery, Lynley tried to clear his mind. They met neither vehicle nor animal on the narrow lanes, and it wasn't until they made the turn into the estate drive that they saw anyone at all. Nancy Cambrey was sitting on the front steps of the lodge. In her arms, Molly sucked eagerly at her bottle.

'Stop the car,' Lynley said to Jasper, and then to the others, 'Nancy knew about Mick's newspaper story from the first. Perhaps she can fill in the details if we tell her what we know.'

St James looked doubtful. A glance at his watch told Lynley that he was concerned about getting to the cove and from there to the newspaper office before much more time elapsed. But he didn't protest. Nor did Deborah. They got out of the car.

Nancy stood when she saw who it was. She led them into the house and faced them in the entry hall. Above her right shoulder, an old, faded sampler hung on the wall, a needlepoint scene of a family picnic, with two children, their parents, a dog, and an empty swing hanging from a tree. The wording was nearly obscure, but it probably had spoken, with well-meaning inaccuracy, of the constant rewards of family life.

'Mark's not here?' Lynley asked.

'He's gone to St Ives.'

'So your father's still said nothing to Inspector Boscowan about him? About Mick? About the cocaine?'

Nancy didn't pretend to misunderstand. She merely said, 'I don't know. I've heard nothing,' and walked into the sitting room where she placed Molly's bottle on top of the television and the baby herself in her pram. 'There's a good girl,' she said and patted her back. 'There's a good little Molly. You sleep for a bit.'

They joined her. It would have been natural to sit, but none of them did so at first. Instead, they took positions like uneasy actors who do not yet know how their play will be blocked: Nancy with one hand curled round the push bar of the pram; St James with his back to the bay window; Deborah near the piano; Lynley opposite her by the sitting-room door.

Nancy looked as if she anticipated the worst from this unexpected visit. Her glance went among them skittishly.

'You've news of Mick,' she said.

Together, Lynley and St James laid out both facts and conjectures. She listened to them without question or comment. Occasionally, she seemed struck by fleeting sorrow, but for the most part she seemed deadened to everything. It was as if, far in advance of their arrival, she had anaesthetized herself against the possibility of feeling anything more, not only about her husband's death, but also about some of the less-than-creditable aspects of his life.

'So he never mentioned Islington to you?' Lynley asked when they had concluded their story. 'Or oncozyme? Or a biochemist, Justin Brooke?'

'Never. Not once.'

'Was that typical of him to be so secretive about a story?'

'Before we married, no. He talked of everything then. When we were lovers. Before the baby.' 'And after the baby?'

'He went away more and more. Always about some story.'

'To London?' 'Yes.'

'Did you know he kept a flat there?' St James asked.

When she shook her head, Lynley said, 'But when your father spoke about Mick keeping other women, did you never think he might be keeping one in London? That would be a reasonable enough assumption, wouldn't it, considering how often he was travelling up there?'

'No. There were…' The decision she faced evidenced itself in her hesitation. It was a choice between loyalty or truth. And a question of whether truth in this case really constituted a betrayal. She appeared resolved. She lifted her head. 'There were no other women. Dad only thought that. I let him believe Mickey was having other women. It was easier that way.'

'Easier than letting your father discover that his son-in-law liked to wear women's clothes?'

Lynley's question appeared to release the young woman from months of secrecy. If anything, she looked monumentally relieved. 'No-one knew,' Nancy murmured. 'For ever so long, no-one knew but me.' She sank into the armchair next to the pram. 'Mickey,' she said. 'Oh God, poor Mickey.' 'How did you find out?'

She pulled a crumpled tissue from the pocket of her house dress. 'Right before Molly was born. There were things in his chest of drawers. I thought he was having an affair at first and I didn't say anything because I was eight months gone and Mick and me couldn't… so I thought

How reasonable it all was as she haltingly explained it. Pregnant, she couldn't accommodate her husband, so if he sought another woman she would have to accept it. She had, after all, entrapped him into marriage. She had only herself to blame if he hurt her as a result. So she wouldn't confront him with the evidence of betrayal. She would put up with it and hope to win him back in the end.

'Then I came home one night, not long after I'd started serving behind bar at the Anchor and Rose. I found him. He was all dressed in my clothes. He'd put on make-up. He'd even got himself a wig. I thought it was my fault. See, I liked to buy things, new clothes. I wanted to be trendy. I wanted to look nice for him. I thought it would get him back. I thought at first he was making a scene to punish me for spending money. But I saw soon enough that… he got really… it made him excited.'

'What did you do after you found him?'

'Threw away my make-up. Every bit of it. Shredded my clothes. Went after them with a butcher knife in the back garden.'

Lynley remembered Jasper's account of the scene. 'Your father saw you doing it, didn't he?'

'He thought I'd found things that someone left behind. So he believed Mick was having other women on the side.

I let him believe it. How could I tell him the truth? Besides, Mick promised me that he'd never do it again. And I thought he could do it. I'd got rid of all my good clothes so he wouldn't be tempted. And he tried to be good. He did try. But he couldn't stop. He started bringing things home. I'd find them. I'd try to talk. We'd try to talk together. But nothing worked. He got worse. It was like he needed the dressing more and more. He even did it once at night in the newspaper office, and his father caught him. Harry went mad.' 'So his father knew?'

'He beat him silly. Mick came home. He was bleeding and cursing. Crying as well. I thought then he'd stop.'

'But instead he took up a second life in London.'

'I thought he was better.' She wiped her eyes and blew her nose. 'I thought he was cured. I thought we had a chance to be happy. Like when we were lovers. We were happy then.'

'And no-one else knew about Mick's cross-dressing? Not Mark? Not someone from the village? Or from the newspaper office?'

'Just me and Harry. That's all,' she said. 'Jesus God, wasn't that enough?'

'What do you think? Was it enough, St James?'

Jasper had gone on ahead. They were on the drive, walking the final distance to the house. Above them, the sky had given up its last vestiges of blue, turning to the colour of ageing pewter. Deborah walked between them, her hand through Lynley's arm. He looked over the top of her head to St James.

'The killing itself has looked like a crime of passion all along,' St James said. 'A blow to his jaw that sent him crashing against the overmantel. No-one premeditates a death like that. We've always agreed that some sort of argument took place.'

'But we've been trying to tie it into Mick's profession. And who sent us in that direction in the first place?'

St James nodded in rueful acceptance. 'Harry Cambrey.'

'He had opportunity. He had motive.'

'Rage over his son's cross-dressing?'

'They'd come to violence over it before.'

'And Harry Cambrey had other grievances,' Deborah said. 'Wasn't Mick supposed to be making improvements on the newspaper? Hadn't he taken out a bank loan? Perhaps Harry wanted a full accounting of how the money was being spent. And when he found out it was being spent on what he hated most – Mick's cross-dressing – he went over the edge.'

'Then, how do you explain the condition of the sitting room?'

'A blind,' Lynley said. 'Something he could use to support his contention that Mick was murdered because of a story.'

'But that leaves the other two deaths unaccounted for,' St James said. 'It also puts Peter into jeopardy again. If Brooke didn't fall to his death, someone pushed him, Tommy.'

'It always comes back to Brooke.'

'Which should tell us how likely it is that he's responsible, no matter what other wrinkles we find in Mick's relationships with anyone else.'

'The cove and the newspaper office, then.'

'I expect that's where we'll dig up the truth.'

They walked through the Tudor gatehouse and crossed the drive. In the garden they paused to greet Lady Asherton's retriever who came running to meet them, a tennis ball between his jaws. Lynley wrested it from him, hurled it in the direction of the west courtyard, and watched as the dog went yelping joyfully on his way. As if in response to her retriever's barking, the front door was pulled open, and Lady Asherton came out of the house.

'I've lunch waiting,' she said by way of greeting and continued to speak, this time only to Lynley. 'Peter phoned. The Yard's released him for now, but they want him to stay in London. He asked to go to Eaton Terrace. Was it all right to say that would be fine with you, Tommy? I wasn't quite sure if you'd want him at your house.'

'It's fine.'

'He sounded quite different from the way he's talked in the past. I wondered if this time he's prepared for a change. For good.'

'He is. Yes, I think so. And I am as well.' Lynley felt a moment's trepidation. He looked at St James and Deborah. 'If you'll give us a few minutes,' he said and was grateful for their immediate understanding. They went into the house.

'What is it, Tommy?' Lady Asherton asked. 'Is there something you've not told me? Is there more about Peter?'

‘I’m going to tell Penzance CID about him today,' Lynley said. His mother's face blanched. 'He didn't kill Mick. You and I know that. But he was in the cottage after John's visit there on Friday. And Mick was still alive. That's the truth of the matter. The police need to know it.'

'Does Peter know…?' She didn't appear to be willing to complete the thought. He did it for her.

'That I intend to tell the police? Yes, he knows. But St James and I think we'll be able to clear his name today. He trusts us to do that.'

Lady Asherton forced a smile. 'Then, I shall trust you to do that as well.' She turned and began to go into the house.

'Mother.' Even now he didn't know how much it might cost him to speak. Nearly sixteen years of his bitterness had created a minefield between them. To attempt to cross it called upon resources of character he wasn't sure he possessed.

She had hesitated, her hand flat on the door to push it open. She was waiting for him to speak.

'I've made a mess out of Peter. Out of everything else as well.'

Her head cocked. A quizzical smile touched her lips. 'You've made a mess of him?' she said. 'Peter's my son, Tommy. He's my responsibility. Don't take the blame when there isn't any need.'

'He didn't have a father. I could have been more to him. I chose not to be. I would have had to come home to spend time with Peter, but I couldn't bear that, so I left him to himself.'

He saw that she understood the intention behind his words. She dropped her hand from the door and came back to the drive where he was standing. He looked above her to the Asherton coat of arms that was mounted high on the front wall of the house. He had never considered the heraldic device anything more than an amusing anachronism, but now he saw it as a declaration of strength. The hound and the lion facing off in combat, the hound overpowered but showing no fear.

'I knew you loved Roderick,' he said. 'I saw that you loved him. I wanted to punish you.'

'But I loved you as well. What I felt for Roddy had nothing to do with you.'

'It wasn't a question of thinking you didn't love me. It was more an unwillingness to see you and forgive you for being what you were.'

'For wanting someone besides your father?'

'For giving in to the wanting while Father was alive. I couldn't deal with that. I couldn't stand what it meant.'

She looked beyond him, towards the Tudor gatehouse. 'I gave in,' she said. 'Yes. I did that. I wish I'd had the nobility or the courage or whatever it would have taken to send Roddy away when I first realized how much I did love him. But I didn't possess whatever strength it would have taken to do that, Tommy. Other women probably do. But I was weak. I was needy. I asked myself how evil it could be if Roddy and I truly loved each other. How great a wrong were we committing if we turned a blind eye to social condemnation and acted on that love? I wanted him. To have him and still live with myself, I made neat compartments out of my life – children in one, your father in another, Roddy in a third – and I was a different person for each part. What I didn't expect was that you would burst out of the section I'd reserved for you and see the person who wanted Roddy. I didn't think you'd ever see me for what I was.'

'What were you really, Mother? Nothing more or less than a human being. I couldn't accept that.'

'It's all right. I understand.'

'I had to make you suffer. I knew Roderick wanted to marry you. I swore it would never happen. Your primary loyalty was to the family and to Howenstow. I knew he wouldn't marry you unless you'd promise to leave the estate. So I kept you here like a prisoner, all these years.'

'You don't have that power. I chose to stay.'

He shook his head. 'You would have left Howenstow the moment I married.' He saw in her face that this was the truth. She dropped her eyes. 'I knew that, Mother. I used that knowledge as a weapon. If I married, you were free. So I didn't marry.'

'You never met the right woman.'

'Why on earth won't you let me take the blame I deserve?'

She looked up at that. 'I don't want you in pain, darling. I didn't want it then. I don't want it now.'

Nothing could have stirred him to greater remorse. No rebuke, no recrimination. He felt like a swine.

'You seem to think the burden is all on your shoulders,' his mother said. 'Don't you know a hundred thousand times I've wished that you hadn't found us together, that I hadn't struck out at you, that I had done something -said something, anything – to help you with your grief. Because it was grief you were feeling, Tommy. Your father was dying right here in the house, and I'd just destroyed your mother as well. But I was too proud to reach out to you. What a supercilious little monster, I thought. How dare he try to condemn me for something he can't even understand? Let him simmer in his anger. Let him weep. Let him rage. What a prig he is. He'll come round in the end. But you never did.' She touched his cheek lightly with the back of her hand, a tentative pressure that he barely felt. 'There was no greater punishment than the distance between us. Marriage to Roddy would have done nothing to change that.'

'It would have given you something.'

'Yes. It still can.'

A lightening of her voice – an underlying gentleness -told him what she had not yet said. 'He's asked you again? Good. I'm glad of it. It's more forgiveness than I deserve.'

She took his arm. 'That time is finished, Tommy.' Which was so much her way at the heart of the matter, offering a forgiveness that swept away the anger of half a lifetime.

'That simply?' he asked.

'Darling Tommy, that simply.'

St James walked some paces behind Lynley and Deborah. He watched their progress, making a study of their proximity to each other. He memorized the details of Lynley's arm round Deborah's shoulders, hers round his waist, the angle of their heads as they talked, the contrast in the colour of their hair. He saw how they walked in perfect rhythm, their strides the same length, fluid and smooth. He watched them and tried not to think about the previous night, about his realization that he could no longer run from her and continue to live with himself, about the moment when his stunned awareness had finally absorbed the fact that he would have to do so.

Any man who had known her less well would have labelled her actions on the previous night as a clever manipulation whose end-product gleaned her the witnessing of a measure of suffering to pay for the suffering he'd inflicted upon her. A confession of her adolescent love for him; an admission of that love's attendant desire; an encounter that blended the strongest elements of emotion and arousal; an abrupt conclusion when she was certain that he intended no further flight. But, even if he wanted to evaluate her behaviour as a manipulative woman's act of spite, he could not do it. For she had not known he would leave his bedroom and join her in the study, nor could she have anticipated that after years of separation and rejection he would finally let go of the worst of his fears. She had not asked him to join her, she had not asked him to drop onto the ottoman next to her, she had not asked him to take her into his arms. He had only himself to blame for having crossed the boundary into betrayal and for having assumed in the white heat of the moment that she would be willing to cross it as well.

He had forced her hand, he had called for a decision. She had made it. If he was to survive from this time on, he knew he would have to do it alone. Unbearable now, he tried to believe that the thought would become more endurable in time.

Propitiable gods held back the rain although the sky was growing rapidly more tenebrous when they reached the cove. Far out to sea, the sun burst through a ragged tear in the clouds, casting beams like a golden spotlight on the water below. But it was only a momentary break in the weather. No sailor or fisherman would have been deceived by its transitory beauty.

Below them on the beach, two teenaged boys were idly smoking near the rocks. One was tall and big-boned with a shock of bright orange hair, the other small and whip-thin with great knobs on his knees. Despite the weather, they were dressed for swimming. On the ground at their feet lay a stack of towels, two face masks, two snorkels. Looking up, the orange-haired boy saw Lynley and waved. The other glanced over his shoulder and tossed his cigarette aside.

'Where do you suppose Brooke threw the cameras in?' Lynley asked St James.

'He was on the rocks Friday afternoon. My guess is that he'd have edged out as far as he could go and heaved the case into the water. What's the bottom like?'

'Mostly granite.'

'And the water's clear. If the camera case is there, they'll be able to see it.'

Lynley nodded and made the descent, leaving St James with Deborah on the cliff. They watched as he crossed the narrow strand and shook both boys' hands. They grinned, one driving his fingers into his hair and scratching his scalp, the other shifting from foot to foot. They both looked cold.

'Not exactly the best weather for a swim,' Deborah remarked.

St James said nothing.

The boys pulled on face masks, adjusted their snorkels and headed for the water, one on either side of the rocks. Alongside them, Lynley climbed the granite outcropping and picked his way out to its furthest point.

The surface of the water was extraordinarily calm since a natural reef protected the cove. Even from the cliff, St James could see the anemones that grew on the outcropping beneath the water, their stamen swaying in the gentle current. Above and around them, broad-leafed kelp undulated. Beneath them, crabs hid. The cove was a combination of reef and tide pools, sea-life and sand. It was not the best location for a swim, but it had no match as a site for the disposing of an object one wished to go unrecovered for years. Within weeks, the camera case would be shrouded by barnacles, sea urchins and anemones. Within months, it would lose both shape and definition, ultimately coming to resemble the rocks themselves.

If the case was there, however, the two boys were having difficulty finding it. Again and again, they bobbed to the surface on either side of Lynley. Each time, they carried nothing with them. Each time, they shook their heads.

'Tell them to go farther out,' St James shouted when. the boys made their sixth return empty-handed.

Lynley looked up, nodded, and waved. He squatted on the rocks and talked to the boys. They dived under the water again. Both were good swimmers. They clearly understood what they were looking for. But neither found a thing.

'It looks hopeless.' Deborah seemed to be speaking more to herself than to St James. Nonetheless, he replied.

'You're right. I'm sorry, Deborah. I thought to have recovered at least something for you.' He glanced her way, saw by her expression of misery that she'd read the meaning behind his words.

'Oh, Simon, please. I couldn't. When it came down to it, I couldn't do it to him. Can you try to understand?'

'The salt water would have ruined them anyway. But at least you'd have had something to remind you of your success in America. Besides Tommy, of course.' She stiffened. He knew he had hurt her and felt a whisper of triumph at his power to do so. It was replaced almost immediately by a roar of shame. 'That was unforgivable. I'm sorry,' he said.

'I deserve it.'

'No. You don't deserve it.' He walked away from her, giving his attention back to the cove. 'Tell them to finish, Tommy,' he shouted. 'The cameras aren't there.'

Below, the two boys were surfacing once more. This time, however, one of them clutched an object in his hand. Long and narrow, it glinted in the dull light as he handed it to Lynley. Wooden handle, metal blade. Both bearing no sign of having been in the water more than a few days.

'What's he got?' Deborah asked.

Lynley held it up so that they both could see it from the top of the cliff. St James drew a quick breath. 'A kitchen knife,' he said.

26

A lazy rain had begun to fall by the time they reached the harbour car park in Nanrunnel. It was no precursor of a Cornish south-wester, but rather the herald of a brief summer shower. Thousands of gulls accompanied it, screaming in from the sea to seek havens on chimney-tops, along the quay, and upon the decks of boats secured to the harbour walls.

On the path that skirted the circumference of the harbour, they passed overturned skiffs, lopsided piles of fishing nets redolent with the odours of the sea, and waterside buildings whose windows reflected the unchanging grey mask of the weather. Not until they reached the point at which the path inclined between two buildings as it led into the village proper did any of them speak. It was then that Lynley noticed that the cobbled pavement was already slick with rain. He glanced uneasily at St James.

The other man answered his look. 'I can manage it, Tommy.'

They'd talked little about the knife. Just that it was obviously a kitchen utensil, so if it had been used on Mick Cambrey and if Nancy could identify it as having come from the cottage, it served as further evidence that the crime against her husband had not been planned. Its presence in the cove did nothing to absolve Justin Brooke from blame. Rather, the knife merely changed his reason for having gone there in the first place. Not to rid himself

of Deborah's cameras but to rid himself of something far more damaging.

Thus the cameras remained a piece still not tucked into position in the jigsaw of the crime. They all agreed that it was reasonable to continue to conclude Brooke had taken them from Deborah's room. But where he had disposed of them was once again as elusive a location as it had been two days ago.

Rounding the corner of an antique silver shop on the Lamorna Road, they found the streets of the village deserted. This was an unsurprising summer-time phenomenon in an area where the vicissitudes of the weather often forced holidaymakers to be flexible in matters concerning how they spent their time. Where sun would see them strolling the village streets, exploring the harbour, and taking pictures on the quay, rain usually provoked a sudden need to try their luck in a game of chance, a sudden hunger for tucking into a fresh crab salad, a sudden thirst for real ale. An inclement afternoon was a welcome boon to the proprietors of bingo parlours, restaurants and pubs.

This proved to be the case at the Anchor and Rose. The pub teemed with fishermen forced to shore by the weather as well as day visitors seeking shelter from the rain. Most of them were packed into the public bar. The formal lounge beyond it was largely empty.

In any other circumstances, two such diverse groups, inhabiting the same watering-hole, would hardly be likely to blend into a cohesive unit. But the presence of a teenaged mandolin-player, a fisherman conversant with the Irish whistle, and a pale-legged man wearing running-shorts and playing the spoons had broken the barrier of class and experience, blending what should have been motley into montage.

In the wide bay window overlooking the harbour, a leather-skinned fisherman – backlit by the dull light outside – engaged a fashionably clad tot in a game of cat's cradle. His weathered hands held out the string to the child; his broken teeth flashed in a grin.

'Go on, Dickie. Take it. You know how to play,' Mummy coaxed the little boy.

Dickie co-operated. Approving laughter ensued. The fisherman rested his hand on the child's head.

'It's a photograph, isn't it?' Lynley said to Deborah in the doorway where they stood watching.

She smiled. 'What a wonderful face he has, Tommy. And look how the light just barely strikes the side of it.'

St James was on the stairs, climbing up to the newspaper office. Deborah followed, Lynley behind her.

'You know,' she went on, pausing briefly on the landing, 'I was worried for a time about the scope for my photographs in Cornwall. Don't ask me why. I'm a creature of habit, I suppose, and my habit has been to do most of my work in London. But I love it here, Tommy. There's a photograph everywhere. It's grand. Truly. I've thought that from the first.'

At her words, Lynley felt shamed by his earlier doubts. He paused on the steps. 'I love you, Deb.'

Her expression softened. 'And I you, Tommy.'

St James had already opened the door of the newspaper office. Inside, two telephones were ringing, Julianna Vendale was typing at a word processor, a young photographer was cleaning half a dozen camera lenses lined up on a desk, and in one of the cubicles three men and a woman leaned into a circle of conversation. Harry Cambrey was among them. Advertising and Circulation was painted in faded black letters on the upper half of the wood and glass door.

Cambrey saw them and left his meeting. He was wearing suit trousers, a white shirt, a black tie. As if in the need to explain this, he said, 'Buried him this morning. Half-past eight.'

Odd, Lynley thought, that Nancy hadn't mentioned it. But it explained the acceptance with which she had greeted their presence. There was a degree of finality to burial. It didn't end sorrow, but it did make easier the acknowledgement of loss.

'Half a dozen coppers hanging about in the graveyard,' Cambrey continued. 'First thing they've done besides trying to stick the killing on John Penellin. And isn't that a thought? John killing Mick.'

'Perhaps he had a motive after all,' St James said. He handed Mick Cambrey's set of keys to his father. 'Mick's dressing. Would a man be driven to kill another man over that?'

Cambrey's fist closed over the keys. He turned his back on his employees and lowered his voice. 'So. Who knows about it?'

'You covered up well. Nearly everyone sees Mick exacdy as you painted him. A real man's man, an insatiable womanizer.'

'What the hell else could I do?' Cambrey asked. 'God damn, he was my son. He was a man.'

'Whose main source of arousal was dressing like a woman.'

'I never could break him. I did try.'

'So this wasn't something recent?'

Shoving the keys into his pocket, Cambrey shook his head. 'He'd been doing it all his life, off and on. I'd catch him at it. Whip his arse. Push him stark naked into the street. Tie him to a chair and paint his face and make like I'd plan to cut off his cock. But nothing made a difference.'

'Save his death,' Lynley said.

Cambrey didn't seem to care about the implication behind Lynley's words. He merely said, 'I protected the lad as best I could. I didn't kill him.'

'The protection worked,' St James said. 'People saw him as you wished him to be seen. But in the end he didn't need your protection because of the cross-dressing, but because of a story, just as you thought.'

'It was the guns, wasn't it?' Cambrey asked. 'Like I said.'

St James looked at Lynley as if wanting direction or perhaps permission to add to the man's mourning. An explanation of the 'notes' Cambrey had found in Mick's desk would do it. Through their real meaning, nearly everything could be revealed. Not only cross-dressing, but drug-dealing as well. Not only spending money frivolously instead of using it to upgrade the newspaper, but filtering much of it off in order to support a double life.

Every delusion, Lynley thought, deserved destruction. Building anything on the foundation of a lie – be it a single relationship or an entire way of life – was to rely upon sand to remain unshifting. While the illusion of solidity might exist for a while, whatever was built would ultimately crumble. The only question seemed to be at what point Harry Cambrey's inaccurate vision of his son ought to be laid to rest.

Lynley looked at the old man, studying the face that was creased with age and failure, jaundiced by ill health. He saw the stark bones of his chest pressing against his shirt, the ugly nicotine stains on his fingers, the arthritic curl of those fingers as he reached for a bottle of beer on a desk. Let someone else do the telling, he decided.

'We know he was working on a story about a drug called oncozyme,' Lynley said.

St James followed his lead. 'He was spending time in London visiting a company called Islington and a biochemist there called Justin Brooke. Did Mick ever speak of Brooke? Of Islington?'

Cambrey shook his head. 'A drug, you say?' He still seemed to be adjusting to the fact that his previous idea about gun-running had led nowhere.

'We need access to his files – here and in the cottage -if we're to prove anything,' St James said. 'The man who killed Mick is dead himself. Only Mick's notes can give us his motive and some sort of foundation to build a case against him.'

'And if the killer found the notes and destroyed them? If they were in the cottage and he pinched them that night?'

'Too many other things have occurred that needn't have happened had the killer found the notes.' Lynley thought about St James' explanation once more: how Brooke tried to eliminate Peter because of something Peter must have seen or heard that evening in Gull Cottage; how he'd taken Deborah's cameras to get at the film. This second circumstance alone spoke more loudly than anything else in support of the existence of a piece of hard evidence. It had to be somewhere, however disguised. Brooke had known that.

Cambrey spoke. 'He kept files in those cabinets' – he nodded in their direction – 'and more at the cottage. The police're done with it and I've the key when you're ready to go there. Let's get to work.'

There were three cabinets of four drawers apiece. While the business of putting out a newspaper went on round them, Lynley, St James, Deborah and Cambrey began going through the drawers one by one. Look for anything, St James told them, that bore any resemblance to a report on oncozyme. The name of the drug itself, a mention of cancer, a study of treatments, interviews with doctors, researchers, or patients.

The search began through folders, notebooks and simple scraps of paper. They saw immediately that it would be no easy task. There was no logical manner in which Mick Cambrey had done his filing. It bore signs of neither organization nor unity. It would take hours, perhaps days, to go through it all, for each piece had to be read separately for the slightest allusion to oncozyme, to cancer, to biochemical research.

They had been at it for over an hour when Julianna Vendale said, 'If you're looking for notes, don't forget his computer,' and opened a drawer in his desk to reveal at least two dozen floppy disks.

No-one groaned, although Deborah looked dismayed and Harry Cambrey cursed. They continued to wade through the detritus of the dead man's career, interrupted by the telephone just after four o'clock. Someone answered it in one of the cubicles, then stuck his head out the door and said, 'Is Mr St James here?'

'Salvation,' Deborah sighed, rubbing the back of her neck. 'Perhaps someone's phoning to confess.'

Lynley stood to stretch. He walked to the window. Outside, a gentle rain was continuing to fall. It was hours before dark, but in two of the buildings across Paul Lane lamps had been lit. In one of the cottages, a family sat round a table drinking afternoon tea and eating biscuits from a tin. In another, a young woman cut a man's hair. She was concentrating on the sides, standing in front of him to examine her work. He sat patiently for a moment, then pulled her between his legs and kissed her soundly. She cuffed his ears, laughed, gave herself to his embrace. Lynley smiled, turning back to the office.

He saw St James watching him from the cubicle in which he spoke on the phone. His face looked troubled. Contemplatively, he was pulling at his lip. Whoever he was speaking to was doing much of the talking. Only at long intervals did St James say a few words. When at last he hung up, he spent what seemed like two or three minutes looking down at the phone. He picked it up once as if to make a call, but then replaced the receiver without having done so. At last he came out to rejoin the others.

'Deborah, can you manage for a bit on your own? Tommy and I need to see to something.'

She looked from him to Lynley. 'Of course. Shall we go on to the cottage when we've finished here?' 'If you will.'

Without another word, he headed for the door. Lynley followed. He said nothing on the way down the stairs. Near the bottom, they skirted two children who were running a collection of small metal lorries along the banister. They stepped past the crowded doorway of the Anchor and Rose, stepped into the street. They turned up the collars of their coats against the rain.

'What is it?' Lynley asked. 'Who was on the phone?'

'Helen.'

'Helen? Why on earth-?'

'She's found out about the list of Cambrey's prospects, Tommy, and about the telephone messages on the machine in his flat.'

'And?'

'It seems they all have one thing in common.' 'From the expression on your face, it's not cocaine, I take it.'

'Not cocaine. Cancer.' St James walked towards Paul Lane, his head bent into the rain.

Lynley's eyes went to the harbour, to the huddled seabirds in a mass on the quay, protected from harm by their very numbers. He turned from them and looked at the rain-misted hills above the village. 'Where are we going?' he called to his friend.

St James paused, saying over his shoulder, 'We need to talk to Dr Trenarrow.'

It hadn't been easy for Lady Helen to uncover the truth that lay behind the list of prospects, St James explained. The first dozen names she tried gave her nothing to go on, and more importantly no piece of leading information upon which she could hang any inquiry at all. The recipient of each one of her phone calls was tight-lipped to begin with, becoming even more so the moment she mentioned the name Michael Cambrey. Considering their reactions, that they had heard of Mick in some fashion or another was a fact beyond doubt. As was their determination to reveal nothing substantial about what their connection to Cambrey was. Had he interviewed them for a story? she would ask. Had he been seeking testimony of some sort? Had he visited their homes? Had he written them letters? No matter which tack she tried, the persona she adopted to try it, or the subject matter she attempted to pursue, they were always one step ahead of her, as if the first person on the list had telephoned the rest and warned them of an impending call. Not even the mention of Cambrey's murder was enough to jar an admission from anyone. Indeed, the few times she tried that as an opening gambit – posing as a reporter seeking information for a feature story on another journalist's death – the result had been an even stonier reticence than her previous fabrications had inspired.

It was not until she reached the fifteenth name that the direction of these fruitless conversations changed. For the fifteenth name belonged to Richard Graham. And he was dead. As was the sixteenth name, Catherine Henderford. And the seventeenth, Donald Highcroft. As well as the eighteenth, the nineteenth and the twentieth. All of them dead of cancer. Lung, ovarian, liver, intestinal. And all of them dead within the last two months.

'I went directly back to the first name on the list,' Lady Helen had said. 'Of course, I couldn't phone him myself, so I went to Chelsea and had Cotter do it for me. We invented the name of an organization – Cancer Co-operative, something like that. Checking in to see how the patient was doing, Cotter said. Right down the list. They'd all had cancer. And those that were alive were all in remission, Simon.'

The two callers who had left their messages on the answering machine in Mick Cambrey's flat had placed their calls about cancer as well. The exception being that they were willing, even eager, to talk to Lady Helen. They had phoned Mick's number in answer to an advertisement that had run for months in The Sunday Times – 'You CAN beat cancer!' – followed by a telephone number.

'It's my wife,' one of the callers had said when Lady Helen phoned him. 'One gets so desperate. We've tried diets, meditation, prayer, group therapy. Mind over matter. Every kind of drug. When I saw the advert, I thought: What the hell. But no-one returned my call.'

Because Mick never received it. Because Mick was dead.

'What was Mick doing, Simon?' Lady Helen had asked at the end of her story.

The answer was simple. He'd changed from journalist to a merchant of dreams. He was selling hope. He was selling the possibility of life. He was selling oncozyme.

'He'd learned about oncozyme in his interview with Trenarrow,' St James said to Lynley as they passed the Methodist church on their way up Paul Lane. The wind had picked up. The rain was beading his hair. 'He followed the story to Islington-London where Brooke gave him more details. I should imagine the two of them hatched the scheme between them. It was simple enough – noble, if one disregards the fact that they were probably making a fortune from the effort. They were providing cancer patients with a miracle drug, years before the drug would be legally approved and available for use. Look at the countless terminally ill people with nothing more to hang on to but the hope that something might work. Think of what people get involved with in an attempt to put themselves into remission: macrobiotic diets, laetrile, psychic healers. Mick was taking no risk that there'd be a lack of interest. Nor did he have to worry that people might not be willing to pay whatever price he was asking for the chance of a cure. He had only two problems. The first would be getting his hands on a steady supply of the drug.'

'Justin Brooke,' Lynley said.

St James nodded. 'For payments in cash initially. In cocaine later on, I expect. But once Mick had the oncozyme he had to find someone who would administer it. Monitor the dosage. Assess the results. For part of the profits, of course. No-one would take such a risk without some sort of payoff.'

'Good God. Roderick.'

'Trenarrow's housekeeper told Cotter that he spends a great deal of time visiting a convalescent home in St Just. I didn't think much of it at the time except Trenarrow himself told me that experimental drugs are often used on terminal patients. Look at how those two pieces of information fit together to explain what's been going on. A small clinic in St Just where Trenarrow sees a select group of patients, filtered his way by Mick Cambrey. An illegal clinic – posing as a very private convalescent home -where people pay a hefty fee to be injected with oncozyme. And then the profits get divided three ways: Cambrey, Brooke and Trenarrow.'

'Mick's bank book in London?'

'His share of the pickings.'

'Then, who killed him? Why?'

'Brooke. Something must have gone wrong with the deal. Perhaps Mick got greedy. Or perhaps he made a slip of the tongue in Peter's presence that put them all in jeopardy. Perhaps that's the reason Brooke was after Peter.'

Lynley paused momentarily, gripped St James' arm. 'Peter told me that Mick made a remark. Blast, I can't remember it exactly. Peter threatened to blackmail him about his cross-dressing and about cocaine. But Mick didn't care. He advised Peter to look for another source.

He said something about people being willing to pay a hell of a lot more to stay alive than to have a secret kept.'

'And Justin heard that, didn't he? He must have known that Mick was inches away from telling the tale to Peter.'

'He wanted to leave the cottage. He wanted Peter to leave.'

'You can see why. Brooke stood to lose everything if Mick started playing fast and loose with their secret. His career, his reputation as a scientist, his job at Islington. He stood to go to gaol if it all came out. He must have returned to the cottage after Peter left. He and Mick must have got into it. Things escalated between them – God knows they were both breaking enough laws to be as tightly strung as the devil – and Justin took a swing at him. That did it.'

'And Trenarrow?' Lynley paused once again opposite the primary school grounds.

St James looked past him. The stage of the open-air theatre was still set up. Performances of one sort or another would continue through the summer. Now, however, the grounds were sodden by rain. 'Trenarrow knows about everything. I'd wager he's known since the moment he was introduced to Brooke at Howenstow on Saturday night. I should guess he'd never actually seen Brooke before then. Why should he have when Mick was playing the middleman? But the moment he was introduced he must have put together the rest. Mick's death, everything.'

'But why hold his tongue?'

St James looked not at Lynley but at the school grounds as he replied. 'You know the answer to that.'

Lynley gazed up the hill. From where they stood, just the roof of the villa and part of its white cornice showed against the grey sky. 'He faced gaol as well. The clinic, the drug, the payments people made. His career. His research.'

'And most importantly?' 'He stood to lose my mother.'

'I expect the payments people made for oncozyme allowed him to buy the villa in the first place.' 'A home he could be proud to offer to her.' 'So he said nothing.'

They continued their climb. 'What do you suppose he intends now, with Brooke and Cambrey dead?'

'With Brooke dead, the source of oncozyme is dried up. He'll have to close the clinic in St Just and make do with what he's managed to save from the profits.'

'And our part in all of this, St James? Do we turn him over to the police? Do we phone his superiors? Do we take the opportunity to ruin him?'

St James examined his friend. Broad shoulders wet, hair beginning to drip, mouth set in a line. 'That's the hell of this, isn't it, Tommy? That's the irony: to have the foulest wish you've ever possessed granted in spades. Just at the moment when, I expect, you no longer wish it.'

'Are you leaving it up to me?'

'We've got Brooke and Cambrey tied together well enough. We've got Mick's visits to Islington, we've got Peter and Justin together at Gull Cottage, we've got Justin's lie about being in the Anchor and Rose afterwards, we've got Justin's use of cocaine. As far as the police need to know, Mick was his supplier, a deal went bad, and Justin killed him. Sasha as well. So, yes. The rest is yours. You're the policeman.'

'Even if it means letting part of the truth go, letting Roderick go?'

‘I’ll not stand in judgement. At the bottom of it, Trenarrow was trying to help people. The fact that they paid him for the help makes it ugly, but at least he was trying to do something good.'

They made the rest of the climb in silence. As they turned up the drive to the villa, lights went on on the ground floor as if they were expected visitors. Below them, village lights began to shine through the gloom as well, making an occasional nimbus glitter behind glass.

Dora answered the door. She was dressed for cooking, wrapped round by an enormous red apron that bore smudges of flour on both breasts and along the thighs. More flour powdered the creases of her blue turban, and an additional dusting had greyed one eyebrow.

'Doctor's in his study,' she said when they asked for him. 'Come in with you. Rain don't do a bit good for bodies out in it.' She led them to the study, rapped on the door, and opened it when Trenarrow answered. 'I bring tea for these good mans,' she said, nodded sharply, and left them.

Dr Trenarrow got to his feet. He'd been seated behind his desk, in the act of polishing his spectacles. He put them back on his nose. 'Everything's all right?' he asked Lynley.

'Peter's at the house in London.'

'Thank God. Your mother?'

'I think she'd probably like to see you tonight.'

Behind his spectacles, Trenarrow blinked once. He obviously didn't know what to make of Lynley's remark. He said, 'You're both soaked.' He went to the fireplace and lit the fire, doing it the old-fashioned way by placing a stubby candle beneath the coals.

St James waited for Lynley to speak. He wondered if this final interview between them would better be held without his presence. Although he'd given lip-service to Lynley's opportunity to make a free decision, he really had no doubt what that decision would be. Still, he knew it would not be easy for his friend to turn a blind eye to Trenarrow's part in the illegal sale of oncozyme, no matter how noble the doctor's motives had been. It would be easier for Lynley to do it alone, but St James' own need to put every detail to rest kept him where he was, listening and noting and prepared to say nothing.

The burning coal hissed. Dr Trenarrow returned to his desk. St James and Lynley sat in the wing chairs in front of it. Rain made a sound like delicate waves against the windows.

Dora returned with the tea which she poured, leaving with a gende admonition to 'Mind that you take your med'cine when the time come', which Trenarrow accepted with a dutiful nod.

When they were alone once again with the fire, the tea and the rain, Lynley spoke. 'We know about oncozyme, Roderick, and the clinic in St Just. About the newspaper advertisement that brought you the patients. About Mick and Justin and the parts they played, Mick filtering the applicants to get those best able to pay for the treatment. Justin supplying the drug from London.'

Trenarrow pushed fractionally back from the desk. 'Is this an official visit, Tommy?'

'No.'

'Then, what-?'

'Had you met Brooke before Saturday night at Howenstow?'

'I'd only spoken to him on the phone. But he came here Friday night.' 'When?'

'He was here when I got back from Gull Cottage.' 'Why?'

'The obvious reasons. He wanted to talk about Mick.' 'But you didn't report him to the police?' Trenarrow's brow furrowed. He answered simply, 'No.'

'Yet you knew he'd killed him. Did he tell you why?'

Trenarrow's eyes moved between the other two men. He licked his lips, gripped the handle of his teacup, and studied its contents. 'Mick wanted to raise the cost of treatment. I'd already opposed him. Evidently, that evening, Justin had as well. They argued about it. Justin lost his temper.'

'And when you joined us at the cottage did you know Justin Brooke had killed Mick?'

'I'd not seen Brooke yet. I'd no more idea than you who had done it.'

'What about the condition of the room and the missing money?'

'I didn't put it together until I saw Brooke. He was looking for anything that could connect him to Cambrey.' 'And the money?'

'I don't know. He may have taken it, but he didn't admit to it.'

'To the killing, however?'

'Yes. To that.'

'And the mutilation?'

'To misdirect the police.'

'His cocaine use. Did you know about that?'

'No.'

'And that Mick dealt in cocaine on the side?' 'Good God, no.'

St James listened, feeling the vague discomfort of uncertainty. A tantalizing fact danced on the edge of his consciousness, something not quite right that was asking to be noticed.

The other two men continued talking. Their voices were low, barely much more than a murmur with nothing more at stake than an exchange of information, a straightening-out of details, and a plan for going on. Into the conversation, a sudden noise was interjected, a dim bleeping that came from Trenarrow's wrist. He pressed a tiny button on the side of his watch.

'Medicine,' he said. 'Blood pressure.'

He reached into his jacket pocket, brought out a flat silver case, and opened it. It contained a neatly arranged layer of white pills. 'Dora would never forgive me if she came in one morning and found me dead of a stroke.' He popped a pill into his mouth and downed it with tea.

St James watched him do so, feeling fixed to his chair as every piece of the jigsaw finally fell into place. How it had been done, who had done it, and most of all why. Some in remission, Lady Helen had said, but the rest of them dead.

Dr Trenarrow lowered his cup, replaced it in the saucer. As he did so, St James cursed himself inwardly. He cursed every sign he had overlooked, those details he had missed, and each piece of information he had disregarded because it could not be assigned a convenient place in the puzzle of the crime. Once again, he cursed the fact that his field was science, not interview and investigation. He cursed the fact that his interest lay in objects and what they could reveal about the nature of a crime. Had his interest lain in people, surely he would have seen the truth from the first.

27

Out of the corner of his eye, Lynley saw St James lean forward and put his hand on Trenarrow's desk. It was an action that effectively broke into their conversation.

'The money,' he said.

'I beg your pardon?'

'Tommy, who did you tell about the money?'

Lynley tried to catch his drift. 'What money?'

'Nancy said Mick was doing the pay envelopes. She said there was money in the sitting room that evening. You and I discussed it later that night, after she told us about it at the lodge. Who else did you tell? Who else knew about the money?'

'Deborah and Helen. They were there when Nancy told us. John Penellin as well.'

'Did you tell your mother?'

'Of course not. Why on earth would I?'

'Then, how did Dr Trenarrow know?'

Lynley realized at once what the question meant. He saw the answer on Trenarrow's face. He fought a battle for professional indifference. He lost it, saying only, 'Jesus God.'

Trenarrow said nothing. Lynley couldn't think beyond a simple no, recognizing that what his friend had said earlier was coming to pass. His every foul wish of the last fifteen years was about to be granted in absolute spades.

'What are you saying, St James?' he managed to ask, although he knew the answer without having to hear it.

'That Dr Trenarrow killed Mick Cambrey. He didn't intend to. They argued. He hit him. Mick fell. He began to haemorrhage. He was dead within minutes.'

'Roderick.' Lynley felt desperate for the man to exonerate himself in some way, knowing only that Trenarrow's exoneration was tied intimately into Lynley's own future life. But St James went on, utterly calm. Only the facts counted. He wove them together.

'When he saw Cambrey was dead, he acted quickly. It wasn't a search. Even if Mick had been stupid enough to keep records of the oncozyme transactions in the cottage, there was no time to look for them then. There was only time to make it look like a search, or a possible robbery, or a sexual crime. But it was none of those things. It was a fight about oncozyme.'

Dr Trenarrow's face looked implacable. When he spoke, his lips moved, but the rest of him was immobile. And his words seemed nothing more than a futile, if expected, effort at denial. They carried no conviction. 'I was at the play on Friday night. You know that very well.'

'An open-air play in a school yard,' St James said. 'Hardly a difficult feat to slip out for a while, especially since you'd placed yourself at the back. I expect you went to him after the interval, during the second act. It's not a long walk – three minutes, no more. You went to see him then. You intended only to talk to him about oncozyme, but instead you killed him and came back to the play.'

'And the weapon?' Trenarrow's bravado was weak. 'Was I supposed to be carrying it round Nanrunnel in my jacket?'

'For the fracture of the skull, there was no weapon. The castration was another matter. You took the knife from the cottage.'

'To the play?' Scorn this time, yet no more successful than the bravado had been.

'I should think you hid it somewhere en route. In Virgin Place. Perhaps in Ivy Street. In a garden or a dustbin. You returned for it later that night and got rid of it on Saturday at Howenstow. Which is where, I dare say, you got rid of Brooke as well. Because once Brooke knew that Cambrey had been killed he knew who must have done it. But he couldn't afford to turn you in to the police without damaging himself. The oncozyme scheme bound the two of you together.'

'This is all conjecture,' Trenarrow said. 'According to what you've said so far, I had more reason to keep Mick alive than to kill him. If he was supplying me with patients, what purpose would his death serve?'

'You didn't intend to kill him. You struck out in anger. Your interest was in saving people's lives, but Mick's was in collecting their money. That attitude pushed you right over the edge.'

'There's no evidence. You know that. Not for a murder.'

'You've forgotten the cameras,' St James said. Trenarrow looked at him steadily, his expression unchanging.

'You saw the camera at the cottage. You assumed I'd taken pictures of the body. During the chaos on Saturday when John Penellin was arrested, you dropped the cameras from Deborah's room.'

'But, if that's so,' Lynley said, feeling himself Trenarrow's advocate for the moment, 'why didn't he take the cameras to the cove? If he disposed of the knife there, why not the cameras as well?'

'And risk being seen hiking across the grounds with the case in his possession? I don't know why I didn't realize the stupidity of that idea before. He could conceal the knife on his person, Tommy. If someone saw him in the grounds, he could have claimed to be taking a walk to clear his head of drink. It would have been a believable story. People were used to seeing him at Howenstow. But the cameras, no. I imagine he took them somewhere else – in his car perhaps – later that night. To a place where he could be relatively certain they'd never be found.'

Lynley listened, coming to terms with the truth. They'd all been at the dinner to hear the conversation. They'd all laughed at the absurdity of tourists in the mines. He said the name, two words that acted as final acceptance of what his heart told him was an incontrovertible fact. 'Wheal Maen.' St James looked at him. 'At dinner on Saturday night, Aunt Augusta was up in arms about sealing Wheal Maen.'

'This is supposition,' Trenarrow broke in sharply. 'Supposition and madness. Beyond our oncozyme connection, you've nothing else to go on besides what you're inventing right here in this room. And once our mutual history is out in public, Tommy, who's going to believe this story? If, indeed, you actually want our mutual history to be known.'

'It comes down to that in the long run, doesn't it?' Lynley asked. 'It always begins and ends with my mother.'

For an instant, he allowed himself to see past the call for justice to its attendant scandal. He could have ignored Trenarrow's use of oncozyme, his illegal clinic, and the exorbitant price that patients no doubt paid for treatment there. He could have overlooked all this and allowed his mother to remain in ignorance for the rest of her life. But murder was different. It demanded retribution. He could not ignore that.

Lynley saw how the next few months would play out. A court of law, his accusations, Trenarrow's denial, the sort of case the defence would build with his mother caught in the middle and ultimately named as the reason behind Lynley's public denunciation of her long-time lover.

'He's right, St James,' Lynley said hollowly. 'This is conjecture. Even if we got the cameras from the mine, the main shaft's been flooded for years. The film's ruined by now, no matter what was on it.'

St James shook his head. 'That's the only thing Dr Trenarrow didn't know. The film's not in the camera. Deborah gave it to me.'

Lynley heard the swift breath hiss between Trenarrow's teeth. St James went on.

'And the evidence is there, isn't it?' St James asked. 'Your silver pillbox under Mick Cambrey's thigh. You may be able to explain away everything else, you may be able to accuse Tommy of attempting to fabricate evidence in order to separate you from his mother. But you'll never be able to deal with the fact that in the photograph of the body the pillbox is there. The very same one you took from your pocket only minutes ago.'

Trenarrow looked at the misty view of the harbour. 'It proves nothing.'

'When it's in our photographs but missing from the police photographs? That's hardly the case, and you know it.'

Rain pattered on windows. Wind sounded in the chimney. A distant foghorn moaned. Trenarrow moved in his chair, turning back towards the room. He grasped its arms and said nothing.

'What happened?' Lynley asked him. 'Roderick, for the love of God, what happened?'

For a long time, Trenarrow didn't answer. His dull eyes were fixed upon the space between Lynley and St James. He reached for the pull of the top drawer of the desk and aimlessly played it between his fingers.

'Oncozyme,' he said. 'Brooke couldn't get enough of it. He was juggling the London inventory books as it was.

But we needed more. If you could only know how many people phoned – still phone – how frantic they are for help. We couldn't get enough. But Mick kept funnelling patients my way.'

'Brooke eventually substituted something for the oncozyme, didn't he?' St James said. 'Your first patients went into remission just as Islington's research indicated they would. But after a while things started to go wrong.'

'He'd been sending the drug down from London with Mick. When it became impossible to get, and they saw the clinic would have to close, they made a substitution. People who should have gone into remission began to die. Not all at once, of course. But a pattern emerged. I became suspicious. I tested the drug. It was a saline solution.'

'And that was the fight.'

'I went to see him on Friday night. I wanted to close the clinic' He stared across the room at the fire. Its glow was reflected in his spectacles like two points of heat. 'Mick wasn't at all concerned. These weren't people to him. They were a source of income. "Look, just keep the clinic running until we get more of the stuff," he said. "So we lose a few? So what? Others'll come. People pay anything for the chance of a cure. What are you so hot about? You're bringing the money in hand over fist and don't pretend you aren't happy as hell about it."' Trenarrow looked at Lynley. 'I tried to talk to him, Tommy. I couldn't make him see. I couldn't get him to understand. I kept talking. He kept brushing it off. I finally… I just snapped.'

'When you saw he was dead, you decided to paint it as a sexual crime,' St James said.

'I thought he was after the village women. I thought it would look like someone's husband finally got to him.'

'And the money in the cottage?'

'I took it as well. And then made it look like the room had been searched. I took my handkerchief from my pocket so I wouldn't leave prints. I must have lost the pillbox then. I saw it the moment I kneeled by his body later.'

Lynley leaned forward. 'As black as it is, Mick's death started out as an accident, Roderick. An assault, an accident. But what about Brooke? You were tied together. What did you have to fear from him? Even if he assumed you'd killed Mick, he'd have kept quiet about it. Bringing you down would only have brought himself down as well.'

'I had nothing to fear from Brooke,' Trenarrow said.

'Then, why-?'

'I knew he wanted Peter.'

'Wanted-?'

'To be rid of him. He was here on Friday night when I got home from the play. We'd never actually met, of course, but he had no trouble finding the villa. He said Mick had been talking in front of Peter. He was worried. He wanted me to do something to tighten Mick's tongue.'

'Which you'd already done,' St James noted.

Trenarrow accepted the grim statement without reaction. 'When he heard about the killing the next morning, he panicked. He came to see me. He thought it was only a matter of time before Peter put together some remarks Mick had made and either went to the police or started sniffing round for someone to blackmail. Peter had a habit to support, he didn't have money, he'd already threatened Mick. Brooke wanted him dead. I wasn't about to let that happen.'

'God. Oh God.' Lynley felt the sharp blade of regret pierce through him.

'He said there was no risk involved, that he could make it look like an overdose of some sort. I didn't know what he intended, but I thought I could stall him. I told him I had a better plan and asked him to meet me on the cliff after the party on Saturday night.'

'And then you killed him?'

'I'd taken the knife, but he was drunk. It was easy enough to shove him over the edge and hope it would look like an accident.' For a moment Trenarrow fell silent. He studied a few folders, a magazine, three photographs, a pen that were arranged on his desk. 'I didn't regret that. Not for a moment. I still don't.'

'But he'd already passed the drug on to Sasha. It was ergotamine and quinine. He told her to give it to Peter.'

'I've been too late every way I've turned. What a mess. What a blasted horror.' Trenarrow began uselessly to gather a few papers, arranging them in a pile, tapping them together. He fondly looked round the room. He said, 'I wanted this for her. I couldn't offer her Gull Cottage. What a ludicrous thought. But she would have come here. And oncozyme made it possible, so it seemed a double good. Can you understand that? People, who otherwise faced death, would live and be cured, while your mother and I would finally be together. I wanted this for her.' He held the papers in one hand and with the other slid open the middle drawer of his desk. 'Had oncozyme existed then, I would have saved him, Tommy. Without hesitation. Without a second thought. No matter what I felt for your mother. I hope you believe me.' He placed the papers in the drawer, rested his hand on top of them. 'Does she know about this?'

Lynley thought of his father, wasting away. He thought of his mother, trying to make the best of her life. He thought of his brother, growing up at Howenstow alone. He thought of Trenarrow. It was an effort to speak. 'She doesn't know.'

'Thank God.' Trenarrow's hand slithered in and then out of the drawer. A dull glint upon metal. He held a revolver. 'Thank God,' he said again and levelled it at St James.

'Roderick.' Lynley stared at the gun. Wild thoughts disconnected – darted through his brain. A black-market purchase, a wartime antique, the gun room at Howenstow. Of course he'd have prepared for this moment. They'd been signalling to him that it was coming for days. Their questions, their interviews, their telephone calls. 'Roderick, for God's sake.'

'Yes,' Trenarrow said. 'I suppose that's right.'

Lynley quickly shifted his eyes. St James' face hadn't changed; it didn't show even a shadow of emotion. A movement at the edge of his vision and Lynley looked back to the gun. Trenarrow's finger was easing towards the trigger.

And suddenly before him was the possibility again, a thematic repetition he could not avoid. It was every foul wish in absolute spades.

There was only a split second to make a decision. Choose, he told himself fiercely. And he did so.

'Roderick, you can't hope-'

Lynley's words were cut off by the bellow of the gun.

Deborah pressed her fists against the small of her back to ease her tired muscles. The room was warm, and in spite of the window that was cracked open against the rain, the smoke from Harry Cambrey's cigarettes made the air malodorous, eye-stinging and stuffy.

In the office, everyone had continued with his work. Telephones rang intermittendy, word processor keys tapped, drawers opened and shut, footsteps creaked across the floor. Deborah had explored the contents of one entire filing cabinet, achieving nothing more than three paper cuts between her fingers and print stains across the palms of her hands. From the sounds Harry Cambrey was making – a groan, a sigh, a muttered oath -it didn't seem that he was having any better luck.

She stifled a yawn, feeling completely drained. She'd slept only an hour or two after dawn, and even then the fractured dreams she'd experienced had left her physically depleted and emotionally worn. The effort not to think about last night had taken its toll. Now she only wanted sleep, partly as succour but mostly as escape. Even as she thought about it, her eyelids grew heavy. The rain on the roof was wonderfully soporific, the room was warm, the murmur of voices so soothing…

A howl of sirens in the street below slapped her fully awake. First one, then a second. A moment later, a third. Julianna Vendale left her desk and went to the window. Deborah joined her as Harry Cambrey pushed himself to his feet.

An ambulance was just making the turn from the Penzance Road into Paul Lane. Some distance ahead of it, where Paul Lane began the ascent into the hills, two police cars sped through the rain. Simultaneously, a telephone began to ring in the newsroom. Julianna took the call. The conversation was mostly one-sided. Her comments were terse, consisting only of 'When?… Where?… Fatal?… All right. Yes. Thanks.'

She hung up and said to Cambrey, 'There's been a shooting at Trenarrow's.'

Deborah had time to feel only a frisson of danger, saying only, 'Trenarrow?' before Harry Cambrey moved.

He bolted for the door, grabbing two cameras and a mackintosh on his way. He threw open the door and shouted over his shoulder to Julianna Vendale, 'Stay by the phones!'

As he clattered down the stairs into the street, another police car shot past. Oblivious of the rain, patrons of the Anchor and Rose as well as some of the inhabitants of Paul Lane began to stream out of buildings and take up the chase. Harry Cambrey was caught up in their midst, cameras banging against his thighs, struggling to make his way through the crush. From the window Deborah watched. She looked for them vainly, a blond head and a black one. Surely, they would be among the crowd. Having heard the name Trenarrow, they would be heading towards the villa.

A voice barked out from the street. 'Don't know. Dead, we think.'

The words were electrifying. Hearing them, Deborah saw Simon's face. She remembered the way he'd looked at Tommy – grim with decision – before he'd taken him from the office. With a rush of horror she thought: They went to see Trenarrow.

She dashed from the room and flew down the stairs. She shoved her way through the throng of people still gathered in the doorway of the pub and stumbled outside. Rain pelted her. A passing car honked its horn. Its tyres hit a puddle which sent up a spume of spray. But none of this existed. She knew only the need to find Trenarrow's home. She felt only the terror of a shooting.

In the past three years, Lynley had only alluded to the discord in his life. And, even then, the allusion was made in actions, not in words. A preference for spending Christmas with her rather than with his family; a letter from his mother gone unopened for weeks; a telephone message never returned. But as they'd walked together to the cove this afternoon, he'd told her that he'd put all of it to rest – the enmity, the discord, the bitterness, the anger. To have something happen now was obscene. Not dead. No.

The words carried her towards the hillside. Rainwater shooting from an unguttered roof top struck her cheeks and blinded her momentarily as she headed up the incline. She paused and cleared her vision, with the crowd surging round her, dashing towards the flash of blue lights in the distance. The air was alive with speculations on death. If there was a body to be seen, or blood to be smelt, here existed the populace that would do the honours.

At the first intersection, she was pushed into the steamy windows of the Talisman Cafe by an angry matron who pulled a yowling little boy by the arm. 'Watcher goin!' the woman shouted furiously at Deborah. She stood in odd Roman sandals that were laced to her knees. She tugged the child to her side. 'Bleeding trippers. Think you own the village?'

Deborah didn't bother to answer. She elbowed past her.

Later, she would remember her headlong flight through the village and up the hill as an ever-changing collage: on the door of a shop, a rain-streaked sign on which the words clotted cream and chocolate gateau oozed into one another; a single sunflower, its enormous head bent; palm fronds lying in a pool of rainwater; Munch-like open mouths shouting words at her which she did not hear; a bicycle wheel spinning in endless revolutions while the dazed rider sprawled in the street. But at the moment she saw nothing but Tommy, in countiess images, each one more vivid than the last, each one accusing her of betrayal. This would be her punishment for that moment of selfish weakness with Simon.

Please, she thought. If there were bargains and promises, she would make them. Without a second thought. Without a single regret.

As she reached the incline above the village proper, a final police car tore by her, sending up pebbles as well as spray from the street. There was no need for the horn to clear the road. Daunted by the downpour, the less hardy thrill-seekers had already started becoming discouraged by the climb. They had begun to seek refuge, some in shops, some in doorways, others flocking into the Methodist church. Not even the diversion of blood and a corpse seemed worth the potential ruin of fine summer clothes.

Only the most resolutely curious had completed the climb. Shaking her wet hair back from her face, Deborah saw them gathered in front of a drive where a police line was set up to keep them at a distance. There, the group had fallen into a speculative silence, one broken by the hot voice of Harry Cambrey who was arguing with an implacable constable, insisting upon entrance.

Behind them on the hill, rain assailed Trenarrow's villa. Its every window was lit. Uniformed men swarmed about it. Lights flashed from the police cars parked on its circular drive.

'Shot, I heard,' someone muttered.

'Brought anyone out yet?'

'Nope.'

Deborah scanned the front of the villa, working through the men, looking for a sign. He was all right, he was fine, he had to be among them. She couldn't find him. She pushed her way through the onlookers to the police line. Childhood prayers rose to her lips and died unsaid. She made bargains with God. She asked to be punished in any other way. She asked for understanding. She admitted her faults.

She ducked under the line.

'No, you don't, miss!' The constable who had been arguing with Cambrey barked out the command from ten feet away.

'But it's-'

'Stay back!' he shouted. 'This isn't a bloody sideshow.'

Unmindful, Deborah started forward. The need to know and to be there overshadowed everything else.

'Here, you!' The constable moved towards her, readying himself to thrust her back into the crowd. As he did so, Harry Cambrey darted past him, scrambling up the drive. 'Damn!' the constable shouted. 'You! Cambrey!'

Having lost the one, he was not about to lose the other, and he gripped Deborah's arm, waving to a panda car that had pulled onto the verge. 'Take this one,' he called to the officers inside. 'The other got past me.'

'No!' Deborah struggled to free herself, feeling a rising sense of outrage at her own complete impotence. She couldn't even break the constable's grip. The more she fought him, the stronger he became.

'Miss Cotter?'

She swung around. No angel could have been more blessed a sight than the Reverend Mr Sweeney. Garbed in black, he stood beneath a tent-like umbrella, blinking solemnly at her through the rain.

'Tommy's at the villa,' she said. 'Mr Sweeney, please.''

The cleric frowned. He squinted up the drive. 'Oh dear.' His right hand flexed open and closed upon the handle of his umbrella as he appeared to consider his options. 'Oh dear. Yes. I see.' This final statement seemed to indicate that an action had been decided upon. Mr Sweeney drew himself up to his fullest height of not quite five and a half feet and spoke to the constable who still held Deborah in a determined grip. 'You know Lord Asherton, of course,' he said authoritatively. It was a tone that would have surprised any of his parishioners who had never seen him in blackface among the Nanrunnel Players, ordering Cassio and Montano to put up their swords. 'This is his fiancee. Let her by.'

The constable eyed Deborah's bedraggled appearance. His expression made it perfecdy clear that he could hardly give credence to a relationship between her and any one of the Lynleys.

'Let her by,' Mr Sweeney repeated. ‘I’ll accompany her myself. Perhaps you ought to be more concerned with the newspaperman than with this young lady.'

The constable gave Deborah another sceptical look. She waited in torment while he made his decision. 'All right. Go on. Stay out of the way.'

Deborah's lips formed the words 'Thank you', but nothing came out. She took a few stumbling steps.

'It's all right, my dear,' Mr Sweeney said. 'Let's go up.

Take my arm. The drive's a bit slippery, isn't it?'

She did as he said, although only a part of her brain registered his words. The rest was caught up in speculation and fear. 'Please, not Tommy,' she whispered. 'Not like this. Please. I could bear anything else.'

'Now, it will be all right,' Mr Sweeney murmured in a distracted fashion. 'Indeed. You shall see.'

They slipped and slid among the crushed corollas of fuchsias as they wound their way up the narrow drive towards the front of the villa. The rain was beginning to fall less heavily, but Deborah was already soaked, so the protection of Mr Sweeney's umbrella meant very little. She shivered as she clung to his arm.

'It's a dreadful business, this,' Mr Sweeney said as if in response to her shudder. 'But it shall be all right. You'll see in a moment.'

Deborah heard the words but knew enough to dismiss them. There was no chance for all right any longer. A mocking form of justice always swept through life when one was least prepared to see justice meted out. Her time had come.

In spite of the number of men who were on the grounds, it was unnaturally quiet as they approached the villa. The crackle of a police radio was the only noise, a female dispatcher giving direction to police not far from the scene. On the circular drive beneath the hawthorn tree, three police cars sat at odd, hurried angles, as if their drivers had flung themselves out without bothering to worry about where or how they parked. In the rear seat of one of them, Harry Cambrey was engaged in a muffled shouting match with an angry constable who appeared to have handcuffed him to the interior of the car. When he saw Deborah, Cambrey forced his face to the officer's window.

'Dead!' he shouted before the constable pushed him back inside the car.

The worst was realized. Deborah saw the ambulance pulled near the front door – not as close as the police cars, for there was no need of that. Wordlessly, she clutched at Mr Sweeney's arm, but as if he read her fears he pointed to the portico.

'Look,' he urged her.

Deborah forced herself to look towards the front door. She saw him. Her eyes flew wildly over every part of his body, looking for wounds. But, other than the fact that his jacket was wet, he was quite intact – although terribly pale – talking gravely to Inspector Boscowan.

'Thank God,' she whispered.

The front door opened even as she spoke. Lynley and Boscowan stepped to one side to allow two men to carry a stretcher into the rain, a body upon it. Sheeting covered it from head to toe, strapped down as if to shield it from the rain and to protect it from the stares of the curious. Only when she saw it, only when she heard the front door close with a sound of hollow finality, did Deborah understand. Still she looked frantically at the grounds of the villa, at the brightly lit windows, at the cars, at the door. Again and again – as if the action could change an immutable reality – she sought him.

Mr Sweeney said something, but she didn't hear it. She only heard her own bargain: / could bear anything else.

Her childhood, her life, flashed before her in an instant, leaving behind for the very first time neither anger nor pain, but instead understanding, complete and too late. She bit her lip so hard that she could taste the blood, but it was not enough to quell her cry of anguish.

'Simon!' She threw herself towards the ambulance where already the body had been loaded inside.

Lynley spun around. He saw her plunging blindly through the cars. She slipped once on the slick pavement but pulled herself to her feet, screaming his name.

She threw herself on the ambulance, pulling on the handle that would open its rear door. A policeman tried to restrain her, a second did likewise. But she fought them off. She kicked, she scratched. And all the time, she kept screaming his name. High and shrieking, it was a two-syllable monody that Lynley knew he would hear – when he least wanted to hear it – for the rest of his life. A third policeman joined the attempt to subdue her, but she writhed away.

Sick at heart, Lynley turned from the sight. He felt for the villa door. 'St James,' he said.

The other man was in the hall with Trenarrow's housekeeper who was sobbing into the turban she'd taken from her head. He looked Lynley's way and began to speak but hesitated, face clouded, as Deborah's cries grew more profound. He touched Dora's shoulder gently and joined Lynley at the door, stopping short at the sight of Deborah being dragged away from the ambulance and fighting every step that distanced her from it. He looked at Lynley.

Lynley looked away. 'For Christ's sake, go to her. She thinks it's you.' He couldn't face his friend. He didn't want to see him. He only hoped St James would take matters into his own hands without another word being spoken between them. It was not to be.

'No. She's only-'

'Just go, damn you. Go.'

Seconds ticked by before St James moved, but when he finally walked into the drive Lynley found the expiation he had searched for so long. He forced himself to watch.

St James skirted the police cars and approached the group. He walked quite slowly. He couldn't move fast. His gait wouldn't allow it, crippled and ugly, and halted by pain.

St James reached the ambulance. He shouted Deborah's name. He grabbed her, pulled her towards him. She fought back violently, weeping and shrieking, but only for a moment until she saw who it was. Then she was caught up in his arms, her body shaking with terrible sobs, his head bent to hers, his hands in her hair.

'It's all right, Deborah,' Lynley heard St James say. 'I'm sorry you were frightened. I'm all right, my love.' Then he murmured needlessly, 'My love. My love.'

The rain fell against them, the police began to move round them. But neither seemed cognizant of anything more than being held in the other's arms.

Lynley turned and went into the house.

A stirring awakened her. She opened her eyes. They focused on the distant barrel ceiling. She gazed up at it, confused. Turning her head, she saw the lace-covered dressing table, its silver hairbrushes, its old cheval mirror. Great-grandmamma Asherton's bedroom, she thought. Recognition of the room brought almost everything back. Images of the cove, the newspaper office, the flight up the hill, the sight of the shrouded body all merged in her mind. At their centre was Tommy.

Another movement came from the other side of the room. The curtains were drawn, but a cord of daylight struck a chair by the fireplace. Lynley was sitting there, his legs stretched out in front of him. On the table next to him sat a tray of food. Breakfast, by the look of it. She could see the dim shape of a toast rack.

At first she didn't speak, trying instead to remember the events that followed those horrifying moments at Trenarrow's villa. She remembered a brandy being pressed upon her, the sound of voices, a telephone ringing, then a car. Somehow she'd got from Nanrunnel back to Howenstow where she'd made her way to a bed.

She wore a blue satin nightdress that she didn't recognize. A matching dressing gown lay at the foot of the bed. She pushed herself into a sitting position.

'Tommy?'

'You're awake.' He went to the windows and pushed the curtains back a bit so that the room had more light. The casements were already open a few inches, but he opened them further so that the crying of the gulls and cormorants made a background of sound.

'What time is it?'

'Just after ten.'

'Ten?

'You've slept since yesterday afternoon. You don't remember?'

'Just bits. Have you been waiting long?' 'A while.'

She saw then that he wore the same clothes he'd had on in Nanrunnel. His face was unshaven, and beneath his eyes his skin was dark and puckered. 'You've been with me all night.'

He didn't reply. He remained at the window, far from the bed. Beyond his shoulder, she could see the sky. Against it, his hair was made gold by the sun.

'I thought I'd fly you back to London this morning. Whenever you're ready.' He indicated the tray. 'This has been sitting here since half past eight. Shall I see about getting you something else?'

'Tommy,' she said. 'Would you…? Is there…?' She tried to search his face, but he kept it averted and it showed no response, so she let her words die.

He put his hands in his pockets and looked out of the window again. 'They've brought John Penellin home.'

She followed his head. 'What about Mark?'

'Boscowan knows he took the Daze. As to the cocaine…' He sighed. 'That's John's decision as far as I'm concerned. I won't make it for him. I don't know what he'll do. He may not be ready to draw the line on Mark yet. I just don't know.'

'You could report him.'

'I could.'

'But you won't.'

'I think it best that it come from John.' He continued gazing out of the window, his head lifted to the sky. 'It's a beautiful day. A good day for flying.'

'What about Peter?' she asked. 'Is he cleared now? Is Sidney?'

'St James thinks Brooke must have got the ergotamine from a chemist in Penzance. It's a prescription drug, but it wouldn't be the first time a chemist slipped something to a customer on the sly. It would have seemed harmless enough. A complaint about a migraine. Aspirin not working. No doctor's surgery open on Saturday.'

'He doesn't think Justin took some of his own pills?'

'He can't think of a reason Brooke would have known he had them. I told him it doesn't really matter at this point, but he wants to clear Sidney thoroughly, Peter as well. He's gone to Penzance.' His voice died off. His recitation was finished.

Deborah felt her throat aching. There was so much tension in his posture. 'Tommy,' she said, 'I saw you on the porch. I knew you were safe. But when I saw the body-'

'The worst part was Mother,' he cut in, 'having to tell Mother. Watching her face and knowing every word I said was destroying her. But she wouldn't cry. Not in front of me. Because both of us know I'm at fault at the heart of this.'

'No!'

'If they'd married years ago, if I'd allowed them to marry-'

'Tommy, no.'

'So she won't grieve in front of me. She won't let me help.'

'Tommy, darling-'

'It was horrible.' He ran his fingers along the window's transom. 'For a moment, I thought he might actually shoot St James. But he put the gun in his mouth.' He cleared his throat. 'Why is it that nothing ever prepares one for a sight like that?'

'Tommy, I've known him all my life. He's like my family. When I thought he was dead-'

'The blood. The brain tissue splattered back against the windows. I think I'll see it for the rest of my life. That and everything else. Like a blasted motion picture, playing into eternity against the back of my eyelids whenever I close my eyes.'

'Oh, Tommy, please,' she said brokenly. 'Please. Come here.'

At that, his brown eyes met hers directly. 'It's not enough, Deb.'

He made the statement so carefully. She heard it, frightened. 'What's not enough?'

'That I love you. That I want you. I used to think that St James was thirty different ways a fool for not having married Helen in all these years. I could never understand it. I suppose I really knew why all along, but I didn't want to face it.'

She ignored his words. 'Shall we use the church in the village, Tommy? Or is London better? What do you think?'

'The church?'

'For the wedding, darling. What do you think?'

He shook his head. 'Not on sufferance, Deborah. I won't have you that way.'

'But I want you,' she whispered. 'I love you, Tommy.'

'I know you want to believe that. God knows I want to believe it myself. Had you stayed in America, had you never come home, had I joined you there, we might have had a fighting chance. But as it is…'

Still he stayed across the room. She couldn't bear the distance. She held out her hand. 'Tommy. Tommy. Please.'

'Your whole life's with Simon. You know it. We both do.'

'No, I…' She couldn't finish the sentence. She wanted to rail and fight against what he had said, but he had pierced through to a truth she had long avoided.

He watched her face for a moment before speaking again. 'Shall I give you an hour until we leave?'

She opened her mouth to pledge, to deny, but at this final moment she could not do so. 'Yes. An hour,' she said.