A Suitable Vengeance

4

Nancy Cambrey scuffed her feet along the gravel drive that wound from the Howenstow lodge to the great house. She sent up delicate puffs of dust like miniature brown rain-clouds. It had been an unusually dry summer thus far, so a greyish patina of grime dressed the leaves of the rhododendrons that lined the roadway, and the trees arching overhead seemed not so much there to provide shade as to trap the heavy, dry air beneath their boughs. Out from under the trees the wind whipped round from Gwennap Head on its way into Mount's Bay from the Adantic. But where Nancy walked the air was still as death, and it smelt of foliage burned to cinders by the sun.

Perhaps, she thought, the heaviness pressing so uneasily upon her lungs was not really born of the air at all, but was instead a child of her dread. For she had promised herself that she would speak to Lord Asherton the first time he came on one of his rare visits to Cornwall. Now he was coming.

She ran her fingers through her hair. It felt limp, its ends brittle. In the last few months she had taken to wearing it pulled back with a piece of plain elastic at the nape of her neck, but today she had given herself a shampoo and left her hair to dry, hanging straight and simple, bluntly cut round her face and shoulders. It didn't feel right. She knew it didn't look right, unattractive and unflattering when once it had been a source of bashful pride.

How your hair shines, Nance. Yes. How it had.

The sound of voices up ahead made her pause and squint myopically through the trees. Vague figures moved near a table set out on the lawn where an old oak provided a substantial area of shade. Two of the Howenstow dailies were at work there.

Nancy recognized their voices. They were girls she had known from childhood, acquaintances who had never quite become her friends. They belonged to that collection of humanity who lived behind the barrier which she had erected between herself and others on the estate, barring her from intimacy with the Lynley children as effectively as with the children of the tenants, the farmers, the day workers, and the servants.

Nowhere Nancy, she had labelled herself, and her life had been an effort to carve out a singular place where she might belong. She had that place now, nominal at best, but decidedly her own, a world circumscribed by a five-month-old baby daughter, Gull Cottage, and Mick.

Mick. Michael Cambrey. University graduate. Journalist. World traveller. Man of ideas. And husband of Nancy.

She had wanted him from the first, eager to bask in his charm, to relish his looks, to hear his conversation and his easy laughter, to feel his eyes upon her and hope to be the cause of their animation. So when she went on her weekly visit to his father's newspaper to check over the bookkeeping as she'd done for two years, when she found Mick there in place of his father, his invitation to linger and chat for a bit had been welcome.

How he loved to talk. How she loved to listen. With little to contribute save her admiration, however, how simple it had been to arrive at the belief that she needed somehow to contribute more to their relationship. And she had done so – on the mattress in the old Howenstow mill where they'd spent an entire April making love, starting January's baby.

She'd given little thought to how her life might change. She'd given less thought to how Mick himself might change. Only the moment existed, only sensation mattered. His hands and mouth, his hard male body insistent and eager, the faint salt on his skin, his groan of pleasure as he took her. The knowledge that he wanted her superseded any reflection upon the possible consequences. They were insubstantial.

How different it was now.

'Can we talk about it, Roderick?' she'd heard Mick say. 'With our money situation being what it is, I hate to see you make a decision like this. Let's talk about it when I get back from London.'

He'd listened, laughed once, replaced the telephone receiver, and turned to find her shrinking back from the doorway, a flame-faced eavesdropper. But he wasn't concerned by her presence. He merely ignored her and returned to his work while above them in the bedroom little Molly wailed.

Nancy had watched as he tapped on the keys of his new word processor. She heard him mutter and saw him pick up the manual to read a few pages. She didn't cross the room to speak to him. Instead, she wrung her hands.

With our money situation being what it is… They didn't own Gull Cottage. It was merely a rental, let to them on a monthly basis. But money was tight. Mick spent it too freely. The last two rental payments hadn't been made. If Dr Trenarrow intended an increase now, if that increase were added to what they already owed, they would sink. And, if that happened, where on earth could they go? Certainly not to Howenstow where they would have to live in the lodge on her father's angry charity.

'Linen's gotter 'ole in it, Mary. Brought another?'

'Not with. Set a plate down on't.'

"Oo the 'ell's gonna sit squat in the middle of the table, Mar?'

Laughter drifted Nancy's way as the dailies shook out a crisp white tablecloth. It billowed from their hands, caught in a sudden gust of wind that managed to find its way through the armour of the trees. Nancy raised her own face to it, but it captured a patch of dead leaves and dust and flung them up at her so that she tasted fine grit.

She lifted a hand to brush at her face, but the effort drained her of strength. Sighing, she trudged on towards the house.

It was one thing, of course, to talk of love and marriage in London. It was another to feel the full range of implications behind those easy words when she saw them spread out before her in Cornwall. By the time she got out of the limousine that had met them at the Land's End airstrip, Deborah Cotter was feeling decidedly light-headed. Her stomach was churning as well.

Because she had never known Lynley in any way other than in her own environment and upon her own terms, she hadn't thought about what it would mean to marry into his family. She knew he was an earl, of course. She'd ridden in his Bentley, been to his London house, even met his valet. She'd eaten off his china, drunk from his crystal, and watched him dress himself in his hand-tailored clothes. But all of that had somehow fallen into a category of behaviour which she had conveniently labelled How Tommy Lives. None of it had ever affected her own life in any way. However, seeing Howenstow from the air, as Lynley circled the plane twice over the estate, had served as the first indication to Deborah that life as she had known it for twenty-one years faced potential – and radical – alteration.

The house was an enormous Jacobean structure built in the shape of a variegated E with its central leg missing. A large secondary wing grew in reverse direction from the building's west leg and to the north-east, just beyond its spine, stood a church. Beyond the house clustered a scattering of outbuildings and stables, and beyond these the Howenstow park spread out in the direction of the sea. Cows grazed on this parkland amid towering sycamore trees that grew in abundance, protected from the sometimes inclement south-western weather by a fortuitous natural slope of land. At the perimeter of all this, a skilfully crafted Cornish wall marked the boundary of the estate proper, but not the end of the Asherton property which was, Deborah knew, divided among dairy farms, agriculture, and abandoned mines that had once provided the district with tin.

Faced with the concrete, undeniable reality that was Tommy's home – no longer an illusory setting for the weekend house-parties she had overheard discussed by St James and Lady Helen for so many years – Deborah's mind became taken up with the risible notion of herself -Deborah Cotter, the child of a servant – moving blithely into the life of this estate as if it were Manderley with Max de Winter brooding somewhere within its walls, waiting to be rejuvenated by the love of a simple woman. Hardly an act in her line, she thought.

What on earth am I doing here? The entire situation felt like a dream, with chimerical elements stacking one upon the other. The flight down in the plane, the first viewing of Howenstow, the limousine and uniformed chauffeur waiting on the airstrip. Even Lady Helen's light-hearted greeting of this man – 'Jasper, my God! So sartorially splendid! The last time I was here, you hadn't even bothered to shave' – did little to allay Deborah's qualms.

At least nothing was expected of her on the drive to Howenstow other than to admire Cornwall, and she had. It was a wild part of the country, comprising desolate moors, stony hillsides, sandy coves whose hidden caves had long been used as smugglers' caches, sudden lush woodlands where the countryside dipped into a combe, and everywhere tangles of celandine, poppy and periwinkle that dominated the narrow lanes.

The main drive to Howenstow shot off from one of these, canopied by sycamores and edged by rhododendrons. It passed a lodge, skirted the park, dipped beneath an ornate Tudor gatehouse, circled a rose garden, and ended before a massive front door above which a hound and a lion battled resplendently in the Asherton coat of arms.

They got out of the car with the usual jumble that accompanies an arrival. Deborah favoured the building with a single fleeting look. It appeared to be deserted. She wished that were the case.

'Ah. Here's Mother,' Lynley said.

Turning, Deborah found him looking not towards the front door, where she had expected to see an excessively well-dressed Countess of Asherton standing with one white hand extended limply in welcome, but towards the south-east corner of the house where a tall, slender woman was striding towards them through the shrubbery.

Deborah could not have been more surprised at the sight of Lady Asherton. She was wearing old tennis clothes, with a faded blue towel flung round her shoulders. This she used vigorously to wipe perspiration from her face, arms and neck. Three large wolfhounds and a gangling young retriever bounded at her heels, and she paused, wrested a ball from one of them and threw it with the skill of a bowler to the far side of the garden. She laughed as they disappeared in frantic chase after it, watching them for a moment before joining the party by the front door.

'Tommy.' She spoke pleasantly. 'You've had your hair cut a bit differently, haven't you? I like it. Very much.' She didn't touch him. Instead, she gave embraces to Lady Helen and St James before turning to Deborah and continuing to speak with a rueful gesture at her tennis clothes. 'Forgive my appearance, Deborah. I don't always greet guests so decidedly un-turned out, but frankly I'm lazy, and if I don't take my exercise at the same hour every day I manage to find a thousand excuses for not taking it at all. Tell me you're not one of those dreadful health fiends who jog every morning at dawn.'

It was certainly not a welcome-to-our-family salutation. But, on the other hand, it wasn't the sort of clever greeting that managed to mix requisite courtesy with unmistakable disapproval. Deborah wasn't sure what to make of it.

As if she understood and wanted to get them through the first moments as smoothly as possible, Lady Asherton merely smiled, squeezed Deborah's hand, and turned to her father. Throughout the exchange Cotter had been standing to one side. In the heat, sweat sheened his face. He was managing to make his clothes look as if they'd been made for a man several inches taller and much heavier than he.

'Mr Cotter,' Lady Asherton said. 'May I call you Joseph? I'm only too delighted that you and Deborah shall be part of our family.'

So here was the standard welcome. Wisely, Lynley's mother had saved it for the person she had intuitively known would most need to hear it.

'Thank you, m'lady.' Cotter clasped his hands behind him as if in the fear that one might jump out and begin pumping Lady Asherton's arm of its own volition.

Lady Asherton smiled. It was a duplicate of Tommy's crooked smile. 'It's Dorothy, actually, although for some reason that I've never quite understood, my family and friends have always called me Daze. Which is better than Diz, I suppose, since that suggests dizzy, and I'm afraid I should have to draw the line at something that comes so perilously close to describing my personality.'

Cotter looked rather dumbfounded at what was clearly an invitation to address the widow of an earl by her Christian name. Nonetheless, after a moment for thought, he nodded sharply and replied, 'Daze it is.'

'Good,' Lady Asherton responded. 'Lovely. We've a beautiful weekend for a visit, haven't we? It's been a bit hot, of course – today's quite warm, isn't it? – but I expect we'll have a breeze this afternoon. Sidney's already arrived, by the way. And she's brought the most interesting young man with her. Rather dark and melancholy.'

'Brooke?' St James asked sharply.

'Yes. Justin Brooke. Do you know him, Simon?'

'Rather better than he'd like, if the truth be told,' Lady Helen said. 'But he promises to behave himself, don't you, Simon darling? No poison in the porridge. No duelling at dawn. No brawls on the drawing-room floor. Just utter civility for seventy-two hours. What perfect teeth-gritting bliss.'

‘I’ll treasure each moment,' St James replied.

Lady Asherton laughed. 'Of course you will. What house-party could possibly be complete without skeletons swinging out of every cupboard and tempers on the boil? It makes me feel quite a young girl again.' She took Cotter's arm and led the way into the house. 'Let me show you something I'm absurdly proud of, Joseph,' they could hear her saying as she pointed to the elaborate tessellated entry. 'This was put in just after our great fire of 1849 by some local workmen. Now, don't you believe this for an instant, but legend has it the fire…' Her voice drifted out of their hearing. In a moment, Cotter's laughter rang out in response.

At that, the churning in Deborah's stomach lessened. Relief shot through her muscles like a spring releasing tension and told her how nervous she had really been about this first meeting of their parents. It could have been disastrous. It would have been disastrous, had

Tommy's mother been any other sort of woman save the kind who swept away the diffidence of strangers with a few amiable words.

She's wonderful. Deborah felt the need to say it aloud to someone, and without thinking she turned to St James.

All the signs of approval were on his face. The lines round his eyes crinkled more deeply. Briefly, he smiled.

'Welcome to Howenstow, Deb darling.' Lynley put his arm round her shoulders and led her into the house where a high ceiling and a mosaic floor made the air cool and moist, a refreshing change from the heat outside.

They found Lady Asherton and Cotter in the great hall to the right of the entry. It was an elongated room, dominated by a fireplace whose chimneypiece of unadorned granite was surmounted by the head of a wild gazelle. Pendant plasterwork decorated the ceiling, and drop-moulded panelling covered the walls. Upon these hung life-sized portraits of the lords and ladies of Asherton, representatives from each generation, who gazed upon their descendants in every kind of pose and every kind of dress.

Deborah paused before an eighteenth-century portrait of a man in cream breeches and red coat, leaning against a half-broken urn with a riding crop in his hand and a spaniel at his feet. 'Tommy, good heavens. He looks exactly like you.'

'He's certainly what Tommy would look like if we could only talk him into wearing those delicious trousers,' Lady Helen remarked.

Deborah felt Lynley's arm tighten round her shoulders. She thought at first it was in response to the laughter that greeted Lady Helen's comment. But she saw that a door had opened at the north end of the hall and a tall young man wearing threadbare blue jeans was padding in his bare feet across the parquet floor. A hollow-cheeked girl followed him. She, too, was shoeless.

This would be Peter, Deborah decided. Aside from his emaciated appearance, he possessed the same blond hair, the same brown eyes, and the same fine cheekbones, nose and jaw of many of the portraits that lined the walls. Unlike his ancestors on canvas, however, Peter Lynley wore an earring through one pierced ear. It was a swastika dangling from a slender gold chain and it grazed the top of his shoulder.

'Peter. You're not in Oxford?' Lynley asked the question smoothly enough – a demonstration of good breeding before the weekend guests – but Deborah felt the tension in his body.

Peter flashed a smile, shrugged his shoulders and said, 'We came down for some sun only to discover you had the same idea. All we need is Judy here for a sibling reunion, right?'

Fingering the clasp that held earring to earlobe, he nodded at St James and Lady Helen and drew his companion forward. In a gesture that duplicated Lynley's own, he put his arm round her shoulders.

'This is Sasha.' Her arm encircled his waist. Her fingers slid beneath his grimy T-shirt and into his blue jeans. 'Sasha Nifford.' Without waiting for his brother to make a similar introduction, Peter nodded at Deborah. 'And this is your bride-to-be, I take it. You've always had excellent taste in women. But we've seen that demonstrated well enough through the years.'

Lady Asherton came forward. She looked from one son to the other and extended her hand as if she would join them together in some way. 'I was so surprised when Hodge told me Peter and Sasha had arrived. And then I thought what a lovely idea it was to have Peter here for your engagement weekend.'

Lynley replied evenly. 'My thought exactly. Will you show our guests to their rooms, Mother? I'd like a few minutes with Peter. To catch up.'

'We've lunch planned in just an hour. The day's so fine that we thought we'd have it outdoors.'

'Good. In an hour. If you'll see to everyone…' It was far more an order than a request.

Hearing his cool tone, Deborah looked at the others to gauge their reactions, but saw in their faces only a determination to ignore the unmistakable current of hostility that crackled through the air. Lady Helen was examining a silver-framed photograph of the Prince of Wales. St James was admiring the lid of an oriental tea-case. Cotter was standing in a bay window gazing out at the garden.

'Darling,' Lynley was saying to her. 'If you'll excuse me for a bit…'

'Tommy-'

'If you'll excuse me, Deb.'

'It's just this way, my dear.' Lady Asherton touched her lightly.

Deborah didn't want to move.

Lady Helen spoke. 'Tell me you've given me that darling green room overlooking the west courtyard, Daze. You know the one. Above the gun room. I've been longing to spend a night there for years. Sleeping with that thrilling fear that someone might accidentally blast away at the ceiling below with a shotgun.'

She took Lady Asherton's arm. They headed for the door. There was nothing left to do but to follow. Deborah did so. But as she reached the inner hall she looked back at Lynley and his brother. They faced each other warily, squaring off, poised to fight.

And whatever warmth the weekend had earlier promised iced over into nothing at the sight of them and at the sudden recognition of the great gaps in her knowledge of Tommy's relationship with his family.

Lynley closed the music room door and watched Peter walk – with a step that was much too careful and precise – to the window. He sat down on the window-seat, curving his lengthy frame into a comfortable position on the green brocade cushion. The walls in the room were papered in a print of yellow chrysanthemums on a field of green, and that combination of colours in conjunction with the high sunlight of noon served to make Peter look even more haggard than he had in the great hall. Tracing a pattern against a distortion in the glass, he was doing his best to ignore Lynley altogether.

'What are you doing in Cornwall? You're supposed to be in Oxford. We'd made arrangements for a tutor for the summer. We'd agreed you'd stay there.' Lynley knew that his voice was both cold and unfriendly, but he could do nothing to modulate it. The sight of his brother had shaken him. Peter was skeletally thin. His eyes looked yellow. The skin round his nostrils was excoriated and scabbed.

Peter shrugged, looking sullen. 'It's just a visit, for God's sake. I'm not here to stay. I'm going back. All right?'

'What are you doing here? And don't give me that business about the weekend sun because I'm not going to buy it.'

'I don't care what you buy. But just think how fortuitous my arrival is, Tommy. If I hadn't shown up unexpectedly this morning, I'd have missed the festivities altogether. Or was that your intention? Did you want to keep me away? Another nasty family secret kept under wraps so that your little redhead doesn't learn too many of them all at once?'

Lynley strode across the room and whipped his brother out of the window-seat.

'I'll ask you again what you're doing here, Peter.'

Peter shook him off. 'I've chucked it, all right? Is that what you want to hear? I've dropped out. OK?'

'Have you gone completely mad? Where are you living?'

‘I’ve digs of my own in London. And don't worry. I've no intention of asking you for money. I've plenty of my own.' He shouldered his way past Lynley and went to the old Broadwood piano. He fingered its keys in a light, staccato tapping, dissonant and irritating.

'This is nonsense.' Lynley tried to speak reasonably, but he felt disheartened as he read the meaning behind Peter's words. 'And who is that girl? Where did she come from? How did you meet her? Peter, she's not even clean. She looks like-'

Peter spun around. 'Shut up about her. She's the best thing that's ever happened in my life and don't you forget it. She's the only decent thing that's happened to me in years.'

That strained credibility. It also revealed the worst. Lynley crossed the room. 'You're on drugs again. I thought you were clean. I thought we'd straightened you out in that programme last January. But you're back to it. You haven't chucked Oxford at all, have you? They've chucked you. That's it, isn't it? Isn't it, Peter?'

Peter didn't answer. Lynley grasped his brother's chin with thumb and index finger and turned Peter's head so that it was inches away from his own.

'What is it now? Are we trying heroin yet? Or are we still wrapped up in our devotion to cocaine? Have you tried mixing them? What about smoking them? Or that religious experience of mainlining the whole mess?'

Peter said nothing. Lynley pushed him for an answer.

'You're still after that ultimate high, aren't you? After all, drugs are what life's all about. And what about Sasha? Are you two developing a fine, meaningful relationship? Cocaine must be a great foundation for love. You can really bond to an addict, can't you?'

Still Peter refused to respond. Lynley pulled his brother to a mirror that hung on a wall behind the harp and shoved him towards it so that he would have to look at his unshaven face. It was pasty. His lips were cracked. His nose was running onto his upper lip.

'Pretty sight, aren't you?' Lynley demanded. 'What are you telling Mother? That you're not using any longer? That you just have a cold?'

Released, Peter rubbed his face where his brother's fingers had dug in and bruised the unhealthy flesh. 'You can even talk about Mother,' he whispered. 'You can even talk. God, Tommy, I wish you'd just die.'

5

Neither Peter nor Sasha showed up for lunch and, as if an appropriate response to this had been agreed upon in advance, no-one mentioned the fact. Instead, everyone concentrated on passing round platters of prawn salad, cold chicken, asparagus, and artichokes gribiche while completely overlooking the two empty chairs that faced one another at the far end of the table.

Lynley welcomed his brother's absence. He wanted distractions.

One presented itself less than five minutes into the meal when Lynley's estate manager came round the south wing of the house and strode directly towards the oak tree. His attention, however, did not seem given to the party gathered beneath it. Instead, his gaze was fixed on the distant stables where a young man jumped nimbly over the drystone wall and came across the park at a jog. The sun wove streaks of colour against him as he passed in and out of the shade of the trees.

From the table, Sidney St James called out happily, 'What a fine horseman your son is, Air Penellin. He took us out for a ride this morning, but Justin and I could hardly keep him in sight.'

John Penellin flicked her a cursory nod of acknowledgement, but his dark Celtic features were rigid. Lynley had known Penellin long enough to recognize when he was hard put keeping a tight rein on fury.

'And Justin generally rides quite well – don't you, darling? But Mark dazzled us both.'

Brooke said only, 'He's good, all right,' and went back to his chicken. Faint beads of perspiration stood out on his swarthy skin.

Mark Penellin came under the oak in time to hear the last two comments. 'I've just had lots of practice,' he said generously. 'You both did great.' He ran the back of his hand across his damp forehead. A smudge of dirt discoloured his cheek. He was a softer, lighter version of his father. Penellin's grey-streaked black hair was brown in Mark, his craggy features unscored in Mark's youth. The father was sapped by age and anxiety. The boy looked energetic, healthy, alive. 'Peter's not here?' he asked, looking the length of the table. 'That's odd. He phoned me at the lodge just a bit ago, said I was to come up.'

'To join us for lunch, no doubt,' Lady Asherton said. 'How very good of Peter. We were in such a rush this morning that I didn't think to phone you myself. I'm so sorry, Mark. Sometimes I think my mind is splintering away altogether. Do join us. Mark. John. Please.' She indicated the places that had been intended for Sasha and Peter.

It was obvious that John Penellin did not intend to brush off what was bothering him by sitting down to lunch with his employers and their weekend guests. This was a workday for him, like any other. And he had not come out of the house in order to signal his displeasure at being excluded from a luncheon to which he had no desire to be invited in the first place. Plainly, he had come to intercept his son.

Fast childhood friends, Mark and Peter were of an age. They had spent long years in each other's company, sharing games and toys and adventures along the Cornish coast. They had played together, swum together, sailed together, grown up together. Only their schooling had been different, with Peter attending Eton as had every male in the family before him and Mark attending a day school in Nanrunnel and from there a secondary school in Penzance. But the separation of their schooldays had not been enough to divide them. They had maintained their old friendship over time and distance.

But obviously not any longer, if Penellin could prevent it. Lynley felt the regret of a loss even before John Penellin spoke. Yet it was only reasonable to expect the man to protect his only son, seeking any way possible to keep him from becoming influenced by the changes that had come over Peter.

'Nancy's wanting you at the lodge,' Penellin said to Mark. 'You've no need of Peter at the moment.' 'But he phoned and-'

'I've no interest in who phoned. Get back to the lodge.'

'Surely a quick lunch, John-' Lady Asherton began.

'Thank you, my lady. We've no need of it.' He looked at his son, black eyes unreadable in an inflexible mask. But his arms – bared because he wore the sleeves of his work-shirt rolled up – showed veins like cords. 'Come with me, boy.' And then to Lynley, with a nod to the other, 'Sorry.'

John Penellin turned on his heel and walked back towards the house. After casting a look round the table -part supplication and part apology – his son followed him. They left behind that sort of uneasy reserve in which members of a party must decide whether to discuss what has just occurred or to ignore it altogether. They held true to their previously unspoken agreement to overlook anything which held the promise of blighting a weekend of bliss. Lady Helen led the way.

'Have you any idea,' she said as she speared a fat prawn, 'what a compliment it is to be enthroned – there's simply no other word for it, Deborah – in Great-Grandmamma Asherton's bedroom for your engagement weekend? Considering the manner in which everyone's tiptoed reverentially by it when I've been here in the past, I've always got the distinct impression they've been saving that room for the Queen, should she ever pop in for a visit.'

'That's the room with the terrifying bed,' Sidney put in. 'Draperies and gewgaws. Ghoulies and banshees carved right into the headboard like a Grinling Gibbons nightmare. This must be the test of true love, Deb.'

'Like the princess and the pea,' Lady Helen said. 'Did you ever have to sleep there, Daze?'

'Great-Grandmamma was alive when I first came here for a visit. So instead of sleeping in the bed one had to spend several hours sitting next to it, reading from the Bible. She was quite a devotee of some of the more lurid passages in the Old Testament, as I recall. Extensive explorations into Sodom and Gomorrah. Sexual misbehaviour. Lust and salacity. She wasn't very interested in how God punished the sinners, however. "Leave 'em to the Lord," she'd say and wave a hand at me. "Get on with it, girl.'"

'Did you get on with it?' Sidney asked.

'Of course. I was only sixteen. I don't think I'd ever read anything so delicious in my life.' She laughed engagingly. 'I count the Bible as largely responsible for the sinful life-' Her eyes suddenly dropped. Her quick smile faded, then reappeared in a determined fashion. 'Do you remember your great-grandmother, Tommy?'

Lynley was concentrating on his wineglass, on his inability to define colour in a liquid that existed somewhere between green and amber. He made no reply.

Deborah's hand touched his, a contact so fleeting it might not have happened at all. 'When I saw that bed, I wondered how gauche it would be if I slept on the floor,' she said.

'One does somehow expect the entire affair to come creeping to life directly after nightfall,' Lady Helen said. 'But I long to sleep there anyway. I always have. Why have I never been allowed to spend the night in that terrifying bed?'

'It wouldn't be too horrible if one didn't have to sleep there alone.' Sidney raised an eyebrow at Justin Brooke. 'A second body to comfort one. A warm body, that is. Even more preferably a live one. If Great-Grandmamma Asherton's taken to wandering the halls, I'd prefer she not drop in to keep me warm, thank you. But as for any of the rest of you – just knock twice.'

'Some more welcome than others, I hope,' Justin Brooke said.

'Only if they behave themselves,' Sidney replied.

St James looked from his sister to her lover, saying nothing. He reached for a roll, broke it neatly in half.

'This is obviously what comes of discussing the Old Testament over lunch,' Lady Helen said. 'A mere mention of Genesis and we become a group of reprobates.'

The company's answering laughter got them through the moment.

Lynley watched them walk off in separate directions. Sidney and Deborah went towards the house where the former, learning that Deborah had brought her cameras, had announced she would change into something seductive to inspire Deborah to new photographic heights; St James and Lady Helen sauntered towards the gatehouse and the open park beyond it; Lady Asherton and Cotter headed off together towards the north-east side of the house where, sheltered by a grove of beech and lime trees, the little chapel of St Petroc housed Lynley's father and the rest of the Asherton dead; and Justin Brooke murmured vaguely about finding a tree under which to doze, a statement that Sidney pooh-poohed with a wave of her hand.

Within moments, Lynley was alone. A fresh breeze caught the edge of the tablecloth. He fingered the linen, moved a plate to one side, and regarded the ruins of the meal.

He had an obligation to see John Penellin after such a long absence. The estate manager would expect it of him. He would no doubt be waiting for him in the office, ready to go over the books and examine the accounts. Lynley dreaded their meeting. The dread had nothing to do with the possibility that Penellin might bring up Peter's condition and Lynley's own responsibility to do something about it. Nor did the dread reflect a lack of interest in the life of the estate. The true difficulty lay in what both concern and interest implied: a return, however brief, to Howenstow.

Lynley's absence this time had been inordinately long, nearly six months. He was honest enough with himself to know what it was that he was avoiding by coming to Howenstow so seldom. It was exacdy what he had been avoiding for so many years either by not coming at all or by bringing with him a troop of friends, as if life in Cornwall were a 1930s garden-party with himself at the centre, laughing and talking and pouring champagne. This engagement weekend was no different in design from any trip he had made to Cornwall in the last fifteen years. He had merely used the excuse of surrounding Deborah and her father with familiar faces so that he himself would not have to meet alone the one face in his own life that he couldn't bear to see. He hated that thought at the very same time as he knew that his stormy relationship with his mother somehow had to be laid to rest during this weekend.

He didn't know how to do it. Every word she said – no matter how innocuous she intended it to be – merely served as a dredge, uprooting emotions he did not want to feel, producing memories he wanted to avoid, demanding actions he did not possess the humility or the courage to take. Pride was at issue between them, along with anger and guilt and the need to blame. Intellectually, he knew that his father would have died anyway. But he had never been able to accept that simple maxim. Far easier to believe that a person and not a disease had killed him. For one could blame a person. And he needed to blame.

Sighing, he pushed himself to his feet. From where he was on the lawn, he could see that the blinds in the estate office had been drawn against the afternoon sun. But he had no doubt John Penellin was waiting behind them, expecting him to act out the role of eighth Asherton earl, no matter how little it was to his liking. He walked towards the house.

The estate office had been placed with an eye to its purpose. Situated on the ground floor across from the smoking-room and abutting the billiard room, its location made it accessible to members of the household as well as to tenants come to pay their rent.

In no way did the room suggest ostentation. Green-edged hemp matting, rather than carpet, did duty as surface upon the floor. Paint, not panelling or paper, covered the walls upon which hung old estate photographs and maps. From a plain ceiling, iron chains supported two white-shaded light-fixtures. Beneath them, simple pine shelves held decades of record-books, a few atlases, half a dozen journals. The filing cabinets in the corner were oak, battered from generations of use, as were the desk and the swivel chair behind it. In this chair at the moment, however, sat not John Penellin who conducted much of his business from the estate office. Instead a thin figure occupied his accustomed place, huddling as if cold, her cheek resting upon her palm.

As Lynley reached the open door, he saw that it was Nancy Cambrey in her father's chair. She was playing restlessly with a container of pencils, and although her presence instead of her father's gave Lynley the excuse he needed to be on his way and to put off his meeting with Penellin indefinitely he found that he hesitated at the sight of the man's daughter.

Nancy was very much changed. Her hair, once a brown streaked with gold that shimmered in the light, had lost most of its shine and all of its beauty. It hung drearily round her face without style, grazing the tops of her shoulders. Her skin, once blushing and smooth with a cast of freckles making an endearing bandit's mask across nose and on cheeks, had become quite pallid. It looked thicker somehow, the way skin in a portrait looks if an artist adds an unnecessary layer of varnish and in doing so destroys the effect of youth and beauty he was trying to create. Everything about Nancy Cambrey suggested just that sort of destruction. She looked faded, used up, overwashed, overworn.

This extended to her clothes. A shapeless house-dress replaced the trendy skirts, jerseys and boots she once had worn. But even the dress was several sizes too large and it hung upon her loosely, much like a smock but without a smock's style. It was too old to be a piece of modern fashion and, together with Nancy's appearance, the dress made Lynley hesitate, made him frown. Although he was seven years her senior, he'd known Nancy Cambrey all of her life, liked her as well. The change was troubling.

She'd been pregnant. He knew that. There had been a forced marriage with Mick Cambrey from Nanrunnel. But that was the end of it, or so his mother's letter had informed him. And then a few months later he received the birth announcement from Nancy herself. He responded with a duty gift and thought nothing more about her. Until now, when he wondered if having a baby could have brought about such a change.

Another wish granted, he thought wryly, another distraction. He entered die office.

She was looking th rough a crack in the blinds that covered the bank of office windows. As she did so, she chewed on the knuckles of her right hand – something she obviously did habitually, for they were red and raw, too raw to have arrived at that condition through housework.

Lynley said her name. She jumped to her feet, hands thrust behind her back. 'You've come to see Dad,' she said. 'I thought you might. After lunch. I thought – hoped – to catch you ahead of him. My lord.'

Lynley felt his customary rush of embarrassment at her final two words. It sometimes seemed that he had spent most of the last ten years of his life avoiding every situation in which he might have to hear someone say them.

'You've been waiting to see me? Not your father?'

'I have. Yes.' She moved from behind the desk and went to a ladder-back chair that stood beneath a wallmap of the estate. Here she sat, her hands curled into tight balls in her lap.

At the end of the corridor, the outer door banged against the wall as someone shoved it open too recklessly. Footsteps sounded against the tiled floor. Nancy braced herself against the back of the chair, as if in the hope of hiding from whoever had come into the house. Instead of approaching the estate office, however, the footsteps turned left at the stillroom and faded on their way. Nancy exhaled in a nearly imperceptible sigh.

Lynley went to sit in her father's chair. 'It's good to see you. I'm glad you came by.'

She moved her large grey eyes to the windows, speaking to them rather than to him. 'I need to ask you something. It's difficult for me. How to begin.'

'Have you been ill? You've got awfully thin, Nancy. The baby. Has it-?' He was mortified to realize that he had no idea of the baby's sex.

'No. Molly's fine.' Still she would not look at him. 'But I'm eaten by worry.'

'What is it?'

'It's why I've come. But…' Tears rose to her eyes without spilling over. Humiliation mottled her skin. 'Dad mustn't know. He can't.'

'Then, it's between us, whatever we say.' Lynley fished out his handkerchief and passed it across the desk. She pressed it between her hands but did not use it, controlling the tears instead. 'Are you at odds with your father?'

'Not I. Mick. Things've never been right between them. Because of the baby. And me. And how we married. But it's worse now than before.'

'Is there some way I can help? Because, if you don't want me to intercede with your father, I'm not sure what else…' He let his voice drift off, waiting for her to complete the sentence. He saw her draw her body in, as if she were garnering courage before a wild leap into the abyss.

'You can help. Yes. With money.' She flinched involuntarily as she said the words but then went bravely on with the rest. 'I'm still doing my book-keeping in Penzance. And Nanrunnel. And I'm working nights at the Anchor and Rose. But it's not been enough. The costs…'

'What sort of costs?'

'The newspaper, you see. Mick's dad had heart surgery a year ago last winter – did you know? – and Mick's been running the paper for him ever since. But he wants to update. He wants equipment. He couldn't see how he'd be spending the rest of his life in Nanrunnel on a weekly paper with broken-down presses and manual typewriters. He has plans. Good plans. But it's money. He spends it. There's never enough.'

'I'd no idea Mick was running the Spokesman* 'It's not what he wanted. He only meant to be here a few months last winter. Just till his dad got back on his feet. But his dad didn't recover as quick as they thought. And then I…'

Lynley could see the picture well enough. What had probably begun as a diversion for Mick Cambrey – a way to make the time at his father's newspaper in Nanrunnel less boring and onerous – had evolved into a lifelong commitment to a wife and child in whom he no doubt had little more than a passing interest.

'We're in the worst possible state,' Nancy was continuing. 'He's bought word processors. Two different printers. Equipment for home. Equipment for work. All sorts of things. But there's not enough money. We've taken Gull Cottage and now the rent's been raised. We can't pay it. We've missed the last two months as it is, and if we lose the cottage' – she faltered but again drew herself together – 'I don't know what we'll do.'

'Gull Cottage?' It was the last thing he had expected her to say. 'Are you talking about Roderick Trenarrow's old place in Nanrunnel?'

She smoothed the handkerchief out along the length of her leg, plucking at a loose thread on the A embroidered at one corner. 'Mick and Dad never got on, did they? And we needed to move once the baby came. So Mick made arrangements with Dr Trenarrow for us to take Gull Cottage.'

'And you find yourselves overextended?'

'We're to pay each month. But these last two months Mick hasn't paid. Dr Trenarrow's phoned him, but Mick isn't bothered a bit. He says money's tight and they'll talk about it when he gets back from London.'

'London?'

'A story he's been working on there. The one he's been waiting for, he says. To set him up as a journalist. The kind he wants to be. He thinks he can sell it as a freelance piece the way he used to. Maybe even get a television documentary made. And then there'll be money. But for now there's nothing. I'm so afraid we'll end up on the streets. Or living in the newspaper office. That tiny room in the back with a single cot. We can't come back here. Dad wouldn't have it.'

'I take it your father knows nothing about all this?'

'Oh no! If he knew…' She raised a hand to her mouth.

'Money's not a problem, Nancy,' Lynley said. He was relieved, in fact, that it was only money she wanted from him and not an understanding little chat with her landlord. 'I'll lend you what you want. Take whatever time you need to pay me back. But I don't understand why your father mustn't know. Mick's expenditures seem reasonable if he's trying to modernize the paper. Any bank would-'

'She'll not tell you everything,' John Penellin said grimly from the doorway. 'Shame alone will stop her from telling it all. Shame, pure and simple. The best she's got from Mick Cambrey.'

With a cry, Nancy jumped to her feet, body arched for flight. Lynley rose to intervene.

'Dad.' She reached out towards him. Voice and gesture both offered placation.

'Tell him the rest,' her father said. He advanced into the room, but he shut the door behind him to prevent Nancy's escape. 'Since you've aired half your dirty linen for his Lordship, tell him the rest. You've asked for money, haven't you? Then tell him the rest so he understands what kind of man's on the receiving end of his investment.'

'It's not what you think.'

'Isn't it?' Penellin looked at Lynley. 'Mick Cambrey spends money on that newspaper, all right. There's truth in that. But the rest he spends on his lady friends. And it's Nancy's own money, isn't it, girl? Earned at her jobs. How many jobs, Nance? All the book-keeping jobs in Penzance and Nanrunnel. And then every night at the Anchor and Rose. With little Molly in a basket on the floor of the pub kitchen because her father can't be bothered away from his writing to see to her while Nancy works to support them all. Only it's not his writing he's taken up with, is it? It's his women. How many are there now, Nance?'

'It isn't true,' Nancy said. 'That's all in the past. It's the newspaper costs, Dad. Nothing else.'

'Don't make your shame worse by colouring it with a lie. Mick Cambrey's no good. Never was. Never will be. Oh, perhaps good enough to get the clothes off an inexperienced girl and plant his baby inside her. But not good enough to do a thing about it without being forced. And look at yourself, Nance, a shining example of the man's affection for you. Look at your clothes. Look at your face.'

'It's not his fault.'

'See what he's helped you become.'

'He doesn't know I'm here. He'd never let me ask-'

'But he'll take the money, won't he? And never question how you came by it. Just as long as it meets his needs. And what are his needs this time, Nancy? Has he another lady? Perhaps two or three?'

'No!' Nancy looked desperately at Lynley. 'I just… I…' She shook her head, her face dissolving into misery.

Penellin moved heavily to the wallmap of the estate. His skin was grey. 'Look at what he's done to you,' he said dully. And then to Lynley, 'See what Mick Cambrey's done to my girl.'

6

'Simon and Helen shall come with us as well,' Sidney announced. Only moments before, she had pulled a coral-coloured dress from the jumble of clothing scattered across her room. The colour should have been all wrong on her, but in this case fashion triumphed over hue. She was swirls of crepe from shoulder to mid-calf, like a cloud at sunset.

She and Deborah were heading through the garden towards the park where St James and Lady Helen walked together beneath the trees. Sidney shouted at them.

'Come and watch Deb snap away at me. At the cove. Half in and half out of a ruined dinghy. A seductive mermaid. Will you come?'

Neither responded until Deborah and Sidney reached them. Then St James said, 'Considering the volume of your invitation, no doubt you can expect quite a crowd, with everyone ready to see just the sort of mermaid you have in mind.'

Sidney laughed. 'That's right. Mermaids don't wear clothes, do they? Oh well. Pooh. You're just jealous that I'm to be Deb's subject for once and not you. However,' she admitted, twirling in the breeze, 'I did have to make her swear she'd take no snaps of you. Not that she needs any more, if you ask me. She must have a thousand in her collection already. A veritable history of Simon-on-the-stairs, Simon-in-the-garden, Simon-in-the-lab.'

'I don't recall being given much choice about posing.'

Sidney tossed her head and set off across the park with the others in her wake. 'Poor excuse, that. You've had your chance for immortality, Simon. So don't you dare step in front of the camera today and take away mine.'

'I think I can restrain myself,' St James replied drily.

Tm afraid I can't promise the same thing, darlings,' Lady Helen said. 'I plan to compete ruthlessly with Sidney to be in the foreground of every picture Deborah takes. Surely I've a future as a mannequin just waiting to be discovered on the Howenstow lawn.'

Ahead of them, Sidney laughed and marched southeast, in the direction of the sea. Under the enormous park trees, where the air was rich with the fertile smell of humus, she found myriad sources of inspiration. Perched on a massive branch struck down by the winter storm, she was an impish Ariel, freed from captivity. Holding a cluster of larkspur, she became Persephone, newly delivered from Hades. Against the trunk of a tree with a crown of leaves in her hair, she was Rosalind, dreaming of Orlando's love.

After she had explored all the permutations of antic posturing for Deborah's camera, Sidney ran on, reaching the edge of the park and disappearing through an old gate in the rough stone wall. In a moment, the breeze brought her cry of pleasure back to the others.

'She's reached the mill,' Lady Helen said. 'I'll see that she doesn't fall into the water.'

Without waiting for a response, without giving the other two a passing glance, she hurried off. In a moment, she, too, was through the gate and out of the park.

Deborah welcomed the opportunity to be alone with Simon. There was much to say. She hadn't seen him since the day of their quarrel, and once Tommy had informed her that he would be part of their weekend party she had known she would have to say or do something to serve as apology and to make amends.

But now that a chance for conversation had presented itself Deborah found that anything other than the most impersonal comment was unthinkable. She knew quite well that she had severed the final ties to Simon in Paddington, and there was no way she could unsay the words that had effected the surgical cut between them.

They continued in the direction that Lady Helen had taken, their slow pace dictated by St James' gait. In the silence that grew, broken only by the ceaseless calling of the gulls, the sound of his footsteps seemed an amplified deformity. Deborah finally spoke in the need to drive that sound from her ears, reaching aimlessly back into the past for a memory they shared.

'When my mother died, you opened the house in Chelsea.'

St James looked at her curiously. 'That was a long time ago.'

'You didn't have to do it. I didn't know that then. It all seemed so reasonable to my seven-year-old mind. But you didn't have to do it. I don't know why I never realized till today.'

He brushed a tangle of Dutch clover from his trouser leg. 'There's no real easing a loss like that, is there? I did what I could. Your father needed a place to forget. Or, if not forget, at least to go on.'

'But you didn't have to do it. We could have gone to one of your brothers. They were both in Southampton. They were so much older. It would have been reasonable. You were… were you really only eighteen? What on earth were you thinking about, saddling yourself with a household when you were just eighteen? Why did you do it? Why on earth did your parents agree to let you do it?' She felt each question increase in intensity.

'It was right.'

'Why?'

'Your father needed something to take the place of the loss. He needed to heal. Your mother had only been dead two months. He was devastated. We were afraid for him, Deborah. None of us had ever seen him like that. If he did something to harm himself… You'd already lost your mother. We none of us wanted you to lose your father as well. Of course, you'd have had us to take care of you. There's no question of that. But it's not the same as a real parent, is it?'

'But your brothers. Southampton.'

'If he'd gone to Southampton, he'd just have been a spare wheel in an established household, at a loose end and feeling everyone's pity. But in Chelsea the old house gave him something to do.' St James shot her a smile. 'You've forgotten what a condition the house was in haven’ t you? It took all his energy – mine as well – to make the place habitable. He didn't have time to keep agonizing over your mother the way he had been. He had to start letting the worst part of the sorrow go. He had to get on with his life. With yours and mine as well.'

Deborah played with the shoulder-strap of her camera. It was stiff and new, not like the comfortably frayed strap on the old, dented Nikon she had used for so many years before she had gone to America.

'That's why you came this weekend, isn't it?' she said. 'For Dad.'

St James didn't reply. A gull swept across the park, so close to them that Deborah could feel the wild rush of its wings beat the air. She went on.

'I saw that this morning. How thoughtful you are, Simon. I've been wanting to tell you that ever since we arrived.'

St James thrust his hands into his trouser pockets, a gesture that momentarily emphasized the distortion which his brace brought to his left leg. 'It has nothing to do with thoughtfulness, Deborah.'

'Why not?'

'It just doesn't.'

They walked on, passing through the heavy birch gate, and entering the woodland of a combe that fell down to the sea. Sidney shouted unintelligibly up ahead, her words bubbling with laughter.

Deborah spoke again. 'You've always hated the thought that someone might see you as a fine man, haven't you? As if sensitivity were a sort of leprosy. If it isn't thoughtfulness that brought you with Dad, what is it, then?'

'Loyalty.'

She gaped at him. 'To a servant?'

His eyes became dark. How funny that she had completely forgotten the sudden changes their colour could take on when an emotion struck him. 'To a cripple?' he replied.

His words defeated her, bringing them full circle to a beginning and an end that would never alter.

From her perch on a rock above the river, Lady Helen saw St James coming slowly through the trees. She'd been watching for him since Deborah had come hurrying down the path a few minutes before. As he walked, he flung to one side a heavy-leafed stalk that he'd broken from one of the tropical plants that grew in profusion in the woodland.

Below her, Sidney gambolled in the water, her shoes hanging from one hand and the hem of her dress dangling, disregarded, in the river. Nearby with camera poised, Deborah examined the disused mill-wheel that stood motionless beneath a growth of ivy and lilies. She clambered among the rocks on the river-bank, camera in one hand, the other outstretched to maintain her balance.

Although the photographic qualities of the old stone structure were apparent even to Lady Helen's untutored eye, there was an unnecessary intensity to Deborah's study of the building, as if she had made a deliberate decision to devote all her energy to the task of determining appropriate camera angles and depth of field. She was obviously angry.

When St James joined her on the rock, Lady Helen observed him curiously. Shadowed by the trees, his face betrayed nothing, but his eyes followed Deborah along the bank of the river and every movement he made was abrupt. Of course, Lady Helen thought, and not for the first time she wondered what inner resources of fine breeding they would have to call upon to get them through the interminable weekend.

Their walk finally ended at an irregularly shaped clearing which rose to a promontory. Perhaps fifty feet below, gained by a steep path that wound through scrub foliage and boulders, the Howenstow cove glittered in the steamy sun, the perfect destination on a summer afternoon. Fine sand cast up visible waves of heat on the narrow beach. Limestone and granite at the water's edge held tide-pools animated by tiny crustaceans. The water itself was so perfectly crystalline that, had not the waves declared it otherwise, a sheet of glass might have been placed on its surface. It was a place not safe enough for boating – with its rocky bottom and its distant, reef-guarded outlet to the sea – but it was a fine location for sunbathing. Three people below them were using it for this purpose.

Sasha Nifford, Peter Lynley and Justin Brooke sat on a crescent band of rocks at the water's edge. Brooke was shirtless. The other two were nude. Peter was skin stretched over a ribcage with neither sinews nor fat as buffer between them. Sasha consisted of a bit more mass, but it hung upon her with neither tone nor definition, particularly her breasts which dangled pendulously when she moved.

'Of course, it's a lovely day for a lie in the sun,' Lady Helen said hesitantly.

St James looked at his sister. 'Perhaps we'd-' 'Wait,' Sidney said.

As they watched, Brooke handed Peter Lynley a small container from which Peter tapped powder on to the flat of his hand. He bent to it, hovered over it with such a passion to possess that even from the cliff-top the others could see his chest heave with the effort to ingest every particle. He licked his hand, sucked it, and at the last raised his face to the sky as if in thanksgiving to an unseen god. He handed the container back to Brooke.

At that, Sidney exploded. 'You promised! Damn you to hell. You promised!'

'Sid!' St James grabbed his sister's arm. He felt the tensility of her insubstantial muscles as adrenalin shot through her body. 'Sidney, don't!'

'No!' Sidney tore herself away from him. She kicked off her shoes and began to descend the cliff, sliding in the dust, catching her frock against a rock, and all the time cursing Brooke foully with one imprecation after another.

'Oh God,' Deborah murmured. 'Sidney!'

At the cliff-bottom, Sidney hurtled across the narrow strip of sand to the rock where the three sunbathers were watching her in dazed surprise. She threw herself on Brooke. Her momentum dragged him down off the rocks and onto the sand. She fell upon him, punching his face.

'You told me you wouldn't! You liar! You bleeding, rotten, filthy little liar! Give it to me, Justin. Give it to me. Now!'

She grappled with him, her fingers gouging at his eyes. Brooke put up his arms to fend her off and thus exposed the cocaine. She bit his wrist and ripped the container from his hand.

Brooke shouted as she rose to her feet. He grabbed her legs and toppled her to the ground. But not before she had staggered to the water, uncapped the container, and thrown it – with a tomboy's sure strength – into the sea.

'There's your drug,' she shrieked. 'Go after it. Kill yourself. Drown.'

Above them on the rock, Peter and Sasha laughed idly as Justin surged to his feet, pulled Sidney to hers and began to drag her into the water. She clawed at his face and neck. Her nails drew a vicious four-pronged trail of blood on his skin.

'I'll tell them,' she screamed.

Brooke struggled to hold on to her. He caught her arms and pinned them savagely behind her. She cried out. He smiled and forced her to her knees. He shoved her forward. Putting one foot on her shoulder, he plunged her head beneath the water. When she fought for air, he shoved her back down.

St James felt rather than saw Lady Helen turn to him. His entire body had gone icy.

'Simon!' Never had his own name sounded so dreadful.

Below them, Brooke dragged Sidney to her feet. But, her arms now released, she fell upon him, undaunted.

'Kill… you…' She was sobbing for breath. She aimed an ineffective blow at his face, attempted to smash her knee into his groin.

He filled his hand with her short, wet hair, hauled her head back sharply, and punched her. The blow and those that followed it resounded hollowly against the cliff. In defence, she lashed out at him, succeeded in getting her hands round his throat. Her fingers dug into his knotted veins and twisted. He ripped her hands away, catching her arms once again. But she was too quick for him this time. She turned her head and sank her teeth into the side of his neck.

'Jesus!' Brooke released her, stumbled back up on to the beach and sank into the sand. He held his hand to the spot where Sidney had bitten him. When he brought his hand away, it showed red with blood.

Freed, Sidney struggled out of the water. Her dress hung on her body like a sodden second skin. She was coughing, wiping at her cheeks and her eyes. Her strength was spent.

It was then that Brooke moved. With a ragged curse, he leaped to his feet, grabbed her, and threw her to the ground. He straddled her body. He filled his fist with sand and ground it into her hair and across her face. On the rock above, Peter and Sasha watched curiously.

Sidney squirmed beneath him, coughing, crying, trying ineffectually to push him away.

'You want physical,' he grunted, pressing one arm down against her neck. 'You really want physical. Let's have it, h'm?'

He fumbled with his trousers. He began to tear at her clothes.

'Simon!' Deborah cried. She turned to St James. She said nothing else.

St James understood why. He was incapable of movement. Enraged. Unafraid. But most of all crippled.

'It's the cliff,' he said. 'Helen. For the love of God. I can't manage the cliff.'

7

Lady Helen cast only one look at St James before she reached for Deborah's arm. 'Hurry!'

Deborah didn't move. She stood with her eyes fixed powerlessly on St James' face. When he began to turn from them both, she put out her hand as if she would touch him.

'Deborah!' Lady Helen grabbed Deborah's camera, dropped it to the ground. 'There's no time. Hurry!' 'But-' 'Now!'

The panicked words sprung Deborah to action. She ran with Lady Helen for the path. They began the steep descent to the cove, mindless of the dirt and the dust that rose round them like smoke.

Beneath them on the sand, Sidney fought off Justin Brooke with the kind of renewed strength that is born of terror. But he was getting the better of her, and his previous fury was fast developing into sexual arousal and sadistic pleasure. Clearly, in his mind, Sidney was about to get what she had wanted all along.

Lady Helen and Deborah reached him simultaneously. He was a good-sized man but no match for the two of them. Especially since Lady Helen was driven by a fair amount of rage herself. They threw themselves upon him, and their confrontation was over in less than a minute, leaving Brooke splayed out on the ground, panting for breath and groaning from several furious kicks to his kidneys. Sidney, weeping, dragged herself away from him. She cursed and pulled at her shredded dress.

'Whoa. Oh, wow,' Peter Lynley murmured. He took a new position with his head pillowed on Sasha's stomach. 'Some rescue. Huh, Sash? Just when things were getting good.'

Lady Helen flung her head up. She was out of breath. She was streaked with dirt. Her entire body was trembling so badly she wasn't sure if she would be able to walk.

'What's the matter with you, Peter?' she whispered hoarsely. 'What's happened to you? This is Sidney. Sidney!’

Peter laughed. Sasha smiled. They settled themselves more comfortably to enjoy the sun.

Lady Helen listened at the heavy panels of St James' bedroom door, hearing nothing. She wasn't quite certain what she had expected from him. Anything beyond brooding solitude would have been out of character, and St James was not a man who generally acted out of character. He wasn't doing so now. The stillness behind the door was so complete that, had she not seen him to this very room two hours before, Lady Helen would have sworn it was unoccupied. But she knew he was in there, damning himself to isolation.

Well, she thought, he's had enough time to flagellate himself. Time to rout him out.

She raised her hand to knock, but before she could do so Cotter opened the door, saw her, and stepped into the corridor. He gave a quick backward glance into the room – Lady Helen could see that the curtains had been drawn – and shut the door behind him. He folded his arms across his chest.

Had she been given to mythological allusions, Lady Helen would have dubbed Cotter Cerberus then and there. Since this was not her bent, she merely squared her shoulders and promised herself that St James would not avoid her by posting Cotter to guard the gates.

'He's up by now, isn't he?' She spoke casually, an enquiry from a friend, deliberately overlooking the fact that the room's darkness indicated St James was not up at all and had no intention of getting up any time soon. 'Tommy has a Nanrunnel adventure planned for us tonight. Simon won't want to miss it.'

Cotter tightened his arms. 'He asked me to make 'is excuses. Bit of pain this afternoon. The 'eadaches. You know what it's like.'

'No!'

Cotter blinked. Taking his arm, Lady Helen pulled him away from the door, across the corridor to a line of quarry windows which overlooked the pantry court. 'Cotter, please. Don't let him do this.'

'Lady Helen, we got to…' Cotter paused. His patient manner of address indicated that he wished to reason with her. Lady Helen wanted none of that.

'You know what happened, don't you?'

Cotter avoided answering by taking a handkerchief from his pocket, blowing his nose, and then studying the cobblestones and fountain in the courtyard below.

'Cotter,' Lady Helen insisted. 'You do know what happened?'

'I do. From Deb.'

'Then, you know he can't be allowed to brood any longer.'

'But 'is orders were-'

'Damn his orders to hell. A thousand and one times you've ignored them and done exactly as you please, if it's for his own good. And you know this is for his own good now.' Lady Helen paused to consider a plan he'd accept. 'So. You're wanted in the drawing room. Everyone's meeting there for sherry. You haven't seen me the entire afternoon, so you weren't here to stop me from barging in on Air St James and taking charge of him after my own fashion. All right?'

Although no smile touched Cotter's lips, his nod signalled approval. 'Right.'

Lady Helen watched him walk off in the direction of the main body of the house before she returned to the door and entered the room. She could see St James' form on the bed, but he stirred when she closed the door so she knew he wasn't asleep.

'Simon, darling,' she announced, 'if you'll pardon the ghastly use of alliteration, we're to have our collective cultural consciousness raised with a Nanrunnel adventure tonight. God knows we'll have to fortify ourselves with seven or eight stiff sherries – can a sherry be stiff? – if we're going to survive. I think Tommy and Deborah are well ahead of us in their drinking, so you'll have to be quick if we're even to catch up. What will you wear?'

She walked across the room as she was speaking, going to the windows to pull back the curtains. She arranged them neatly – more to stall for time than to see to their proper hanging – and when she could find no reason to continue fussing with them she turned to the bed to find St James observing her. He looked amused.

'You're so obvious, Helen.'

She sighed in relief. Pitying himself had never really been the question, of course. Hating himself was more likely. But she saw even that may have spent itself after their moments alone on the cliff when Deborah had taken Sidney back to the house.

Would Brooke have killed her or just raped her, St James had demanded, while I watched from up here like a useless voyeur? Quite safe, uninvolved. No risk incurred, right? It sounds like my whole life.

There had been no anger contained in his words, only humiliation, which was infinitely worse.

She had shouted at him. No-one cares about it! No-one ever has but you!

She spoke only the truth, but that truth did nothing to mitigate the fact that his own caring about it so unforgivingly was a permanent scar on the fragile surface of his self-esteem.

'What is it?' he was asking her now. 'A darts tournament at the Anchor and Rose?'

'No. Something better. A sure-to-be-dreadful performance of Much Ado About Nothing, put on by the village players in the grounds of the primary school. In fact it's a special performance tonight in honour of Tommy's engagement. Or so, according to Daze, the rector said when he came to call today, complimentary tickets in hand.'

'Isn't that the same group-?'

'Who did The Importance of Being Earnest two summers ago? Darling Simon, yes. The very same.'

'Lord. How could this current production match Nanrunnel's gallant bow to Oscar Wilde? The Reverend Mr Sweeney waxing eloquent as Algernon with cucumber sandwiches sticking to the roof of his mouth. Not to mention the muffins.'

'Then, what do you say to Mr Sweeney as Benedick?'

'Only a fool would pass that up.' St James reached for his crutches, swung himself to his feet, balanced, and adjusted his long dressing-gown.

Lady Helen averted her eyes as he did so, using as an excuse the need to pick up three rose petals which had fallen from an arrangement that sat on the shelf of a cheveret to one side of the window. They felt like small pieces of down-covered satin against her palm. She looked for a rubbish-basket and thus circumvented an open acknowledgement of St James' primary vanity, a need to hide his bad leg in an attempt to appear as normal as possible.

'Has anyone seen Tommy?'

Lady Helen read the meaning underlying St James' question. 'He doesn't know what happened. We've managed to avoid him.'

'Deborah's managed as well?'

'She's been with Sidney. She saw to her bath, got her to lie down, took her some tea.' She gave a brief, humourless laugh. 'The tea was my profound contribution. I'm not sure what effect it was supposed to have.'

'What about Brooke?'

'Can we be so lucky as to hope he's taken himself back to London?'

'I doubt it. Don't you?' 'Rather. Yes.'

St James was standing next to the bed. Lady Helen knew she should leave the room to give him privacy to dress, but something in his manner – a meticulous control too brittle to be believed – compelled her to stay. Too much remained unsaid.

She knew St James well, better than she had known any other man. She had spent the last decade becoming acquainted with his blind devotion to forensic science and his determination to stoke out ground upon which he could build a reputation as an expert. She had come to terms with his relentless introspection as well as with his desire for perfection and his self-castigation if he fell short of a goal. They talked about all of this, over lunch and dinner, in his study while the rain beat against the windows, on their way to the Old Bailey, on the stairs, in the lab. But what they did not talk about was his disability. It had always represented a polar region of his psyche that brooked no-one's intrusion. Until today on the cliff-top. Even then, when he had finally given her the opening she had long awaited, her words had been inadequate.

What, then, could she say to him now? She didn't know. Not for the first time did she wonder what sort of bond might have developed between them had she not left his hospital room eight years ago simply because he asked her to do so. And to obey him then had been so much easier than taking the chance of walking into the unknown.

Still, she couldn't leave him now without attempting to say something that gave him – even in small measure -back to himself.

'Simon.'

'My medication is on the counter above the washbasin, Helen,' St James said. 'Will you fetch me two tablets?'

'Medication?' Lady Helen felt a quick surge of concern. She didn't think she had misread his reasons for locking himself away in his room for the afternoon. He hadn't been acting as if he was having any pain at all, despite Cotter's admonition to her earlier.

'It's just a precaution. Above the washbasin.' He smiled, a flicker that passed across his face and was gone in an instant. 'I take it that way sometimes. Before instead of during. It works just as well. And if I'm to put up with Mr Sweeney as a thespian for an evening I ought to be prepared.'

She laughed and went to get it for him, calling back into the bedroom. 'Actually, this isn't a bad idea. If tonight's production is anything like the other we saw, we'll all be popping painkillers before the evening's through. Perhaps we should take the bottle along with us.'

She brought the tablets back into the bedroom. He had gone to the window where he was leaning forward on his crutches, looking out at the southern view of the grounds. But she could tell from his profile that his eyes registered nothing.

The sight of him like this negated his words, his polite co-operation, and the lightness of his tone. She realized that even his smile had been a device to cut her off completely, while all along he existed, as he always had done, alone.

She would not accept it. 'You might have fallen,' she said. 'Please. Simon darling, the path was too steep. You might have been killed.'

'Indeed,' he answered.

The cavernous Howenstow drawing room did not possess the sort of qualities that made one feel at home wandering through it. The size of an overlarge tennis court, its furniture – an aggregation of antiques positioned in conversational groupings – was scattered across a fine chenille carpet. Walled with Constables and Turners and displaying an array of fine porcelains, it was the sort of room that made one afraid of moving precipitately in any direction. Alone, Deborah carefully picked her way down its length to the grand piano, intent upon examining the photographs that stood on top of it.

They comprised a pictorial history of the Lynleys' tenure as the Earls of Asherton. The stiff-backed fifth Countess stared at her with that unfriendly expression so predominant in the photographs of the nineteenth century; the sixth Earl sat astride a large bay and looked down at an unruly pack of hounds; the present Lady was robed and gowned for the Queen's coronation; Tommy and his siblings frolicked through a youth of wealth and privilege.

Only Tommy's father, the seventh Earl, was missing. As she noticed this, Deborah realized that she had seen his likeness nowhere in the house, in either photograph or portrait, a circumstance she found decidedly odd, for she had seen several pictures of the man in the townhouse Tommy occupied in London.

'When you're photographed to join them, you must promise me you'll smile.' Lady Asherton came to meet her, a glass of sherry in her hand. She looked cool and lovely in a cloudy white dress. 'I wanted to smile, but Tommy's father insisted that it wasn't done and I'm afraid I caved in quite spinelessly. I was like that in my youth. Most appallingly malleable.' She smiled at Deborah, sipping her sherry and moving from the piano to sit in the embrasure of a window behind it.

'I've so enjoyed my afternoon with your father, Deborah. I talked incessantly, but he was quite gracious about it, acting as if everything I said was the height of wit and sense.' She turned her glass upon her palm and seemed to be watching how the light struck the design cut into the crystal. 'You're very close to your father.'

'Yes,' she answered.

'That's sometimes the way when a child loses one parent, isn't it? It's the mixed blessing of a death.'

'Of course, I was very young when my mother died,' Deborah said in an attempt to explain away the distance she had not been able to ignore between Tommy and his mother. 'So I suppose it was natural that I would develop a deeper relationship with Dad. He was doing double duty, after all. Father and mother to a seven-year-old. And I had no brothers or sisters. Well, Simon was there, but he was more like… I'm not sure. An uncle? A cousin? Most of my upbringing fell to Dad.'

'And you became a unit as a result, the two of you. How lucky you are.'

Deborah wouldn't have called her relationship with her father the product of luck. Rather it was the outcome of time, paternal patience and willing communication. Saddled with a child whose impetuous personality was nothing like his own, Cotter had managed to adjust his own thinking in a constant attempt to understand hers. If devotion existed between them now, it was only due to years in which the seeds of a future relationship had been planted and cultivated.

'You're estranged from Tommy, aren't you?' Deborah said impulsively.

Lady Asherton smiled, but she looked very tired. For a moment Deborah thought that exhaustion might wear at her guard and prompt her to say something about what was at the root of the trouble between herself and her son. But instead she said, 'Has Tommy mentioned the play tonight? Shakespeare under the stars. In Nanrunnel.' Voices drifted to them from the corridor. 'I'll let him tell you about it, shall I?' That said, she gave her attention to the window behind her where a light breeze carried into the room the salty fragrance of the Cornish sea.

'If we fortify ourselves enough, we should be able to survive this with some semblance of sanity,' Lynley was saying as he entered the room. He went directly to a cabinet and began pouring three sherries from one of the decanters that stood in a semicircle upon it. He gave one to Lady Helen, another to St James, and tossed back his own drink before catching sight of Deborah and his mother at the far end of the room. He said, 'Have you told Deborah about our Theseus and Hippolyta roles this evening?'

Lady Asherton raised her hand fractionally from her lap. Like her smile, the movement seemed weighted by fatigue. 'I thought that was best left to you.'

Lynley poured himself a second drink. 'Right. Yes. Well' – this to Deborah with a smile – 'we've a duty play, darling. I'd like to tell you that we'll go late and bow out at the interval, but the Reverend Mr Sweeney is an old family friend. He'd be crushed if we weren't there for the entire production.'

'Dreadful though the production will certainly be,' Lady Helen added.

'Shall I take photographs while we're there?' Deborah offered. 'After the play, I mean. If Mr Sweeney's an especial friend, perhaps he'd like that.'

'Tommy with the cast,' Lady Helen said. 'Mr Sweeney will burst. What a wonderful idea! I've always said you belong on the stage, haven't I, Tommy?'

Lynley laughed, made a response. Lady Helen chatted on. As she did so, St James took his drink and wandered towards two large Chinese vases that stood at either side of the doorway into the long Elizabethan gallery that opened off the east end of the drawing room. He ran his fingers over the smooth porcelain surface of one of them, tracing a particularly intricate pattern made by the glaze. Deborah noted that, although twice he lifted his glass of sherry to his lips, he drank neither time. He seemed intent upon looking at no-one.

Deborah hardly expected anything else after the afternoon. In fact, if not acknowledging anyone's presence helped him to forget about it all, she felt quite as if she would like to indulge in the same behaviour even though she knew that, for herself, forgetting would not occur any time soon.

It was bad enough tearing Brooke away from Sidney, knowing his behaviour was the product of neither love nor lust but violence and a need to hammer her into submission. It was even worse helping Sidney climb the cliff, hearing her hysterical weeping, catching hold of her so that she wouldn't fall. Her face was bleeding and beginning to swell. The words she sobbed out were incoherent. Three times she stopped, wouldn't move, merely wept. All that had been a living nightmare. But then at the top there was Simon, standing against a tree, watching for them. His face was half-hidden. His right hand dug into the tree's bark so hard that the bones stood out.

Deborah had wanted to go to him. For what reason, to what possible end, she could not have said. Her only rational thought at the moment was that she couldn't leave him alone. But Helen stopped her when she took a step in his direction, pushing her with Sidney towards the path to the house.

That stumbling trip back had been the second nightmare. Each part stood out vividly in her mind. Coming upon Mark Penellin in the woods; making inarticulate excuses for Sidney's appearance and her distraught condition; approaching the house with an ever rising sense of trepidation that someone might see them; slipping by the gun room and the old servants' hall to look for the north-west stairway that Helen had insisted was near the pantry; taking a wrong turn at the top of those stairs and ending up in the disused west wing of the house; and all the time terrified that Tommy would come upon them and begin asking questions. Through it all, Sidney had gone from hysteria to rage to despair and finally to silence. But this last was dazed, and it frightened Deborah more than Sidney's earlier unrestrained agitation.

The entire experience had far exceeded dreadful, and when Justin Brooke walked into the drawing room, dressed casually for the evening as if he had not tried to rape a woman in front of five witnesses that afternoon, it was all Deborah could do to look at the man without screaming and flying into the attack.

8

'Good God, what happened to you?' Lynley sounded so surprised that St James turned from his perusal of the Kang H'si porcelain to see Justin Brooke taking the proffered glass of sherry with complete nonchalance.

Christ, St James thought. Brooke was actually going to join them, smugly confident that they were all too self-servingly well bred to say anything about the afternoon while Lynley and his mother were in the room.

'Took a fall in the woods.' Brooke looked around as he spoke, making eye contact with each of them, challenging one person after another to expose him as a liar.

At this, St James felt his jaw clench automatically to bite back what he wanted to say. With an atavistic satisfaction which he did not deny himself, he noted the considerable damage that his sister had managed to do to Brooke's face. Claw marks scored his cheeks. A bruise rose on his jaw. His lower lip was swollen.

'A fall?' Lynley's attention was on the inflamed teeth-marks on Brooke's neck, barely obscured by the collar of his shirt. He looked at the others sharply. 'Where's Sidney?' he asked.

No-one replied. A glass clinked against the top of a table. Someone coughed. Outside, at some distance from the house, an engine roared to life. Footsteps sounded in the hall and Cotter entered the drawing room. He stopped barely two feet inside the door, as if he'd taken a quick reading of the ambience and was having second thoughts about exposing himself to it. He looked at St James, a reflex reaction that sought direction and found it in the other man's detachment from the scene. He made no other move.

'Where's Sidney?' Lynley repeated.

At her end of the room, Lady Asherton rose to her feet. 'Has something-?'

Deborah spoke quickly. 'I saw her half an hour ago, Tommy.' Her face flushed. Its colour did battle with the fire of her hair. 'She spent too much time in the sun this afternoon and thought… well, she's asked for… a rest. Yes. She said she needed a bit of a rest. She did send her apologies and… you know Sidney. She goes at such a pace, doesn't she? She wears herself out as if nothing at all… It's no wonder to me she's exhausted.' Her fingers wandered to her throat as she spoke, as if her hand wanted to cover her mouth to prevent the lie from becoming even more obvious.

In spite of himself, St James smiled. He looked at Deborah's father, who shook his head weakly in affectionate recognition of a fact they both knew only too well. Helen might have been able to carry it off. Casual prevarication to smooth over troubled waters was more in her line. But Deborah was hopeless at this particular form of conversational legerdemain.

The rest of the party was saved from having to embellish upon Deborah's story by the entrance of Peter Lynley. His feet bare and a clean gauze shirt his only bow to dressing for dinner, he was trailed by Sasha whose glaucous-hued dress made her complexion seem more sallow than ever. As if she would speak to them or attempt to intercede in what she saw as a coming conflict, Lady Asherton started to walk in their direction.

Peter gave no indication that he saw his mother or anyone else. He merely wiped his nose on the back of his hand and went to the drinks tray. He poured himself a whisky, which he gulped down quickly, then poured himself another and Sasha some of the same.

They stood, an isolated little unit apart from the others, with the spirit decanters within easy reach. As she took a sip of her drink, Sasha slipped her hand under Peter's loose shirt and pulled him towards her.

'Nice stuff, Sash,' Peter murmured and kissed her.

Lynley set his glass down. Lady Asherton spoke quickly. 'I saw Nancy Cambrey in the grounds this afternoon, Tommy. I'm rather concerned about her. She's lost a great deal of weight. Did you happen to see her?'

'I saw her.' Lynley watched his brother and Sasha. His face was unreadable.

'She seems terribly worried about something. I think it's to do with Mick. He's working on a story that's taken him away from home so much these last few months. Did she talk to you about it?'

'We talked.'

'And did she mention a story, Tommy? Because-' 'She mentioned it. Yes.'

Lady Helen attacked the issue of diversion from a new angle. 'What a lovely dress that is, Sasha. I envy your ability to wear those wonderful Indian prints. I look like a cross between Jemima Puddleduck and a charwoman whenever I try them. Did Mark Penellin find the two of you? Simon and I saw him in the woods seeking you out.'

'Mark Penellin?' Peter reached out to caress a length of Sasha's thin hair. 'No, we never saw him.'

In some confusion, Lady Helen looked towards St James. 'But we saw him. He didn't find you in the cove? This afternoon?'

Peter smiled a lazy, satisfied smile. 'We weren't in the cove this afternoon.'

'You weren't…'

'I mean, I suppose we were, but we weren't. So if he wanted to find us he would have seen us but not seen us.

Or maybe it was after we went in the water. And then he wouldn't have seen us at all. Not where we were. And I don't think I'd have wanted him to. What about you, Sasha?'

He chuckled and traced the bridge of Sasha's nose. He ran his fingers across her mouth. Cat-like, she licked them.

Wonderful, St James thought. It's only Friday.

Nanrunnel was a successful combination of two disparate environments: a centuries-old fishing village and a modern tourist haunt. Built in a semicircular fashion round a natural harbour, its structures twisted up a hillside dotted with cedar, cypress and pine, their exteriors hewn from rocks quarried in the district, some whitewashed and others left a natural, weather-streaked mixture of grey and brown. Streets were narrow – wide enough to allow only the passage of a single car – and they followed a strangely convoluted pattern which met the demands of the hills rather than the requirements of automobiles.

Fishing boats filled the harbour itself, bobbing rhythmically on the incoming tide and protected by two long crescent-shaped quays. Curiously shaped buildings perched on the harbour's edge – cottages, shops, inns and restaurants – and an uneven cobbled walkway running along the embankment gave their inhabitants access to the water below. Above, hundreds of seabirds cried from chimneys and slate roofs while hundreds more took to the air, circled the harbour, and flew from there into the bay where, in the distance, St Michael's Mount rose in the failing evening light.

A considerable crowd had gathered in the primary school grounds in the lower part of Paul Lane. There, a humble open-air theatre had been created by the Reverend Mr Sweeney and his wife. It consisted of only three elements. A sturdily crafted platform served as stage. Accommodation for the audience comprised folding wooden chairs of prewar vintage. And at the far side of the grounds, next to the street, a refreshment booth was already doing a respectable business with libations supplied by the village's largest pub, the Anchor and Rose. Nancy Cambrey, Lynley saw, was working the taps.

The rector himself met Lynley's party at the entrance to the school grounds, his portly face beaming with a rapturous smile of welcome. He wore a heavy layer of theatrical make-up through which he was perspiring heavily. In costume already, he was an incongruous sight in doublet and stockings, his bald head aglow under the strands of lights which criss-crossed the school yard.

'I shall wear a wig for Benedick, of course,' Mr Sweeney mocked himself gently. He greeted St James and Lady Helen with the fondness of an old friend and then presented himself eagerly to be introduced to Deborah, a social nicety which he brushed aside almost as soon as he adopted it by bursting out with, 'My dear, we are so pleased to have you here tonight. Both of you. It's grand,' before Lynley could say a word. He might well have gone on to bow with a flourish had not the precarious position of his codpiece precluded any sudden movement. 'We've put you right in front so you won't miss a thing. Come, it's just this way.'

Missing a thing, missing several things, missing the entire play would have been too much blessing to hope for since the Nanrunnel Players had long been known for the stentorian nature of their performances rather than for their histrionic flare. However, led by Mr Sweeney – with his wife as a short, plump Beatrice who managed to display a remarkably heaving bosom during speeches far more impassioned than required by the role – the drama proceeded with fiery enthusiasm to the interval. At this point, the audience rose to its feet as one and headed towards the refreshment booth to make the most of a respite filled with lager and ale.

The sole advantage to being the guests of honour showed itself in the quick progress Lynley and his party made to the booth. The crowd, which moments before had been surging forward towards the blessed salvation of Watney's and Bass, parted in a co-operative fashion, giving Lynley and the others quick access to relief.

The only other person to take advantage of this break in the mass of pushing and shoving humanity was a tall, middle-aged man who had managed to reach the refreshment booth first. He turned with a tray of glasses in his hands and presented it to Lynley.

'Have these, Tommy,' he said.

Incredulously, Lynley stared at Roderick Trenarrow and at the tray of glasses he held. His intention was both unmistakable and unavoidable, a public meeting, a display of good cheer. As always, Trenarrow had chosen his moment like a master.

'Roderick,' Lynley said. 'How very good of you.'

Trenarrow smiled. 'I have the advantage of a seat near the booth.'

'Strange. I hardly thought Shakespeare would be in your line.'

'Other than Hamlet, you mean?' Trenarrow asked pleasantly. He directed his attention to Lynley's party, clearly expecting to be introduced. Lynley did so, mustering the good grace to appear unaffected by this unexpected encounter.

Trenarrow pushed his gold-rimmed spectacles up the bridge of his nose and directed his words to Lynley's friends. 'I'm afraid Mrs Sweeney caught me on the bus from Penzance, and before I knew it I'd purchased a ticket to tonight's performance and sworn I'd attend. But there's mercy involved. Since I'm near the drinks booth, if the production gets any more appalling I can swozzle down six or seven more lagers and pickle myself properly.'

'Our very thought,' Lady Helen said.

'One gets more experienced with the Nanrunnel productions every summer,' Trenarrow went on. 'I expect the rest of the audience will try sitting with me at the back next year. Eventually no-one will be willing to fill up the front seats and Mrs Sweeney will be forced to put on her play from inside the refreshment booth just to hold our attention.'

The others laughed. Lynley did not. Instead he found himself annoyed at their willingness to succumb to Trenarrow, and he scrutinized the other man, as if an analysis of his physical properties would somehow reveal the source of his charm. As always, Lynley noticed not the whole but the details. Rich brown hair finally showing the signs of his age, weaving fine strands of silver back from his brow; a linen suit that was old but well tailored, spotlessly clean and fined to his figure; a jawline sharp and hard, carrying no spare flesh in spite of the fact that he was nearing fifty; warm laughter bursting out of him unrestrained; the webbing of flesh at his eyes; and the eyes themselves which were dark and quick to assess and understand.

Lynley catalogued all this with no system for observation, just a series of fleeting impressions. There was no way to avoid them, not with Trenarrow so close, standing – as he always had – so much larger than life.

'I see Nancy Cambrey's gone to work at the Anchor and Rose in addition to her other jobs,' Lynley said to Trenarrow.

The other man looked over his shoulder to the refreshment booth. 'It looks that way. I'm surprised she'd take it on with the baby and all. It can't be easy for her.'

'It'll do something to ease their money troubles, though, won't it?' Lynley took a gulp of his lager. It was too warm for his liking, and he would have preferred to dump it out on to the base of a palm nearby. But Trenarrow would have read animosity in that action, so he continued sipping the drink. 'Look, Roderick,' he said brusquely, 'I'm going to make good whatever money they owe you.'

Both the statement and the manner of saying it put an end to conversation among the others. Lynley became aware of Lady Helen's hand coming to rest on St James' arm, of Deborah's uneasy stirring at his own side, of Trenarrow's look of perplexity as if he hadn't an idea in the world what Lynley was referring to.

'Make good the money?' Trenarrow repeated.

'I'm not about to let Nancy go begging. They can't afford a rise in rent at the moment and-'

'Rent?'

Lynley found his gentle repetitions aggravating. Trenarrow was manoeuvring him into the bully's role. 'She's afraid of losing Gull Cottage. I told her I'd make good the money. Now I'm telling you.'

'The cottage. I see.' Trenarrow lifted his drink slowly and observed Lynley over the rim of the glass. He gazed reflectively at the drinks booth. 'Nancy doesn't need to worry about the cottage. Mick and I shall work it out. She needn't have bothered you for the money.'

How absolutely like the man, Lynley thought. How insufferably noble he was. How far-sighted as well. He knew what he was doing. The entire conversation was the sort of parry and thrust that they had engaged in innumerable times over the years, filled with double-edged words and hidden meanings.

'I said I'd take care of it and I will.' Lynley attempted to alter the tone if not the intention behind his words. 'There's absolutely no need for you to-'

'Suffer?' Trenarrow regarded Lynley evenly for a moment before he offered a cool smile. He finished the rest of his drink. 'How very kind of you. If you'll excuse me now, I seem to have been dominating your time long enough. There appear to be others here who'd like to be introduced.' He nodded and left them.

Lynley watched him go, recognizing as always Trenarrow's skill at seizing the moment. He'd done it again, leaving Lynley feeling like nothing more than a rough-edged lout. He was seventeen again. Over and over in Trenarrow's presence he would always be seventeen.

Lady Helen's animated words filled the void created by Trenarrow's departure. 'Good heavens, what a gorgeous man he is, Tommy. Did you say he's a doctor? Every woman in the village must line up at his surgery on a daily basis.'

'He's not that kind of doctor,' Lynley replied automatically. He poured out the rest of his lager along the trunk of a palm and watched the liquid pool onto the dry, unyielding earth. 'He does medical research in Penzance.'

Which is why he'd come to Howenstow in the first place, a man only thirty years old, called upon as an act of desperation to see to the dying earl. It was hopeless. He'd explained in that earnest fashion of his that there was nothing more to be done besides adhering to the current chemotherapy. There was no cure in spite of what they read and wanted to believe in the tabloids, he said; there were dozens of different kinds of cancer; it was a catch-all term. The body was dying of its own inability to call a halt to the production of cells, and scientists didn't know enough; they were working and striving, but it would be years, decades… He spoke with quiet apologies. With profound understanding and compassion.

And so the earl had lingered and dwindled and suffered and died. The family had mourned him. The region had mourned him. Everyone save Roderick Trenarrow.

9

Nancy Cambrey packed the last of the pint glasses into a carton for the short trip down the hill to the Anchor and Rose. She was extremely weary. In order to be at the school in time to do the setting-up that evening, she'd gone without her dinner, so she was feeling light-headed as well. She criss-crossed the carton flaps and secured the package, relieved that the evening's labour was done.

Nearby, her employer – the formidable Mrs Swarm -fingered through the night's taking with her usual passion for things pecuniary. Her lips moved soundlessly as she counted the coins and notes, jotting figures into her dogeared red ledger. She nodded in satisfaction. The booth had done well.

'I'm off then,' Nancy said with some hesitation. She never knew exactly what kind of reaction to expect from Mrs Swann, who was notorious for her mood-swings. No barmaid had ever lasted more than seven months in her employ. Nancy was determined to be the first. Money's the point, she whispered inwardly whenever she found herself on the receiving end of one of Mrs Swarm's violent outbursts. You can bear anything, so long as you're paid.

'Fine, Nancy,' Mrs Swann muttered with a wave of her hand. 'Off with you, then.'

'Sorry about the call box.'

The woman snorted and poked at her scalp with the stub of a pencil. 'From now on, phone your dad in your own time, girl. Not in the pub's time. And not in mine.'

'Yes. I will. I'll remember.' Placation was paramount. Nancy held tightly to the booth in order to manage un-ruffling Mrs Swann's feathers while betraying nothing of the aversion she actually felt for her employer. 'I learn quick, Mrs Swann. You'll see. People never do have to tell me anything twice.'

Mrs Swann looked up sharply. Her rat's eyes glittered in evaluation. 'Learning things quick enough from that man of yours, girl? All sorts of new things, I expect. That right?'

Nancy rubbed at a smudge on her faded pink blouse. ‘I’m off,' she said in answer and ducked under the booth.

Although the lights were still on, the yard was empty of everyone save Lynley's party and the Nanrunnel Players. Nancy watched them at the front of the theatre. While St James and Lady Helen waited among the empty seats, Lynley posed with the cast as his fiancee took their picture. Each flash lit one delighted face after another, catching their antic posturing on film. Lynley bore it all with his usual good grace, chatting away with the rector and his wife, laughing at cheerful remarks made by Lady Helen Clyde.

Life comes so easily to him, Nancy thought.

'It's no different, my dear, being one of them. It only looks that way.'

Nancy started at the words, at their stabbing acuity. She whirled to see Dr Trenarrow sitting in the shadows, against a wall of the school yard.

Nancy had avoided him for the entire evening, always keeping out of his reach or his line of vision when he came to the booth for a drink. Now, however, she could not avoid the contact, for he got to his feet and walked into the light.

'You're worried about the cottage,' he said. 'Don't. I shan't be putting you on the street. We'll work things out, Mick and I.'

She felt sweat break out on the back of her neck in spite of his gentle declaration. It was the nightmare she feared, coming face to face with him, having to discuss the situation, having to create excuses. Worse, just ten feet away, Mrs Swann had raised her head from the money-box, her interest no doubt piqued by the mention of Mick's name.

‘I’ll have the money,' she stammered. ‘I’ll get it. I will.'

'You're not to worry, Nancy,' Trenarrow said, more insistently. 'And you've no need at all to go begging Lord Asherton for help. You should have spoken to me.'

'No. You see…' She couldn't explain without giving offence. He would not understand why she could go hat in hand to Lynley but not to him. He wouldn't realize that a loan from Lynley carried no burden of unwelcome charity because he gave without judgement, in friendship and concern. And nowhere else in Nancy's life could she expect that sort of help without a companion assessment of the failure of her marriage. Even now she could feel the manner in which Dr Trenarrow was evaluating her situation. Even now she could sense his pity.

'Because a rise in the rent isn't-'

'Please.' With a small cry, she brushed past him, hurrying out of the school yard and into the street. She heard Dr Trenarrow call her name once, but she kept going.

Rubbing arms that were sore from heaving pint glasses and working the taps all night, she scurried down Paul Lane towards the mouth of Ivy Street which led into the twisting collection of alleys and passageways that comprised the heart of the village. These were narrow inclines, cobbled and tortuous little streets too cramped for cars. During the day, summer holiday makers came here to photograph the picturesque old buildings with their colourful front gardens and crooked slate roofs. At night, however, the entire area was illuminated only by oblongs of light from cottage windows. Darkly shadowed and inhabited by generations of cats who bred in the hillside above the village and fed by night in rubbish-bins, it was not a place for lingering.

Gull Cottage was some distance into the maze of streets. It sat on the corner of Virgin Place, looking like a whitewashed matchbox, with bright blue trim on its windows and a lavishly blooming fuchsia growing next to its front door. Blood-red flowers blown from this plant covered the ground nearby.

As Nancy approached the cottage, her steps faltered. She could hear the noise from three houses away. Molly was crying, screaming in fact.

She looked at her watch. It was nearly midnight. Molly should have been fed, should have been fast asleep by now. Why on earth was Mick not seeing to the child?

Exasperated that her husband could be so selfishly deaf to his own daughter's cries, Nancy ran the remaining distance to the cottage, threw open the garden gate, and hurried to the door.

'Mick!' she called. Above her, in the only bedroom, she could hear Molly's screaming. She felt an edge of panic, picturing the baby's face red with rage, feeling her small body tense with fright. She shoved open the door.

'Molly!'

Inside, she ran for the stairs, took them two at a time. It was insufferably hot.

'Molly-girl! Pet!' She flew to the baby's cot and picked her daughter up to find that she was wet to the skin, reeking of urine. Her body was feverish. Tendrils of auburn hair curled limply on her skull. 'Love, lovely girl. What's happened to you?' she murmured as she sponged her off and changed her and then cried out, 'Michael! Mick!'

With Molly against her shoulder, Nancy went back down the stairs, her feet striking the bare wood noisily as she headed for the kitchen at the rear of the cottage.

Feeding the baby was foremost on her mind. Still, she allowed herself to give vent to a small eruption of anger.

'I want to speak with you,' she snapped at the closed sitting room door. 'Michael! D'you hear? I want a word. Now!'

As she spoke, she saw that the door was neither latched nor locked. She pushed it open with her foot.

'Michael, you can damn well answer me when-'

She felt the hairs bristling along the length of her arms. He was lying on the floor. Or someone was lying there, for she could just see a leg. Only one. Not two. Which was curious unless he was sleeping with one leg drawn up and the other splayed out in complete abandon. Except how could he be asleep? It was hot. So hot. And the noise which Molly had been making…

'Mick, are you playing some pawky joke on me?'

There was no reply. Molly's crying had faded to an exhausted whimper, so Nancy took a step into the room.

'That's you, isn't it, Mick?'

Nothing. But she could see it was Mick. She recognized his shoe, a frivolous high-topped red plimsoll with a strip of metallic silver round the ankle. It was a new purchase of his, something that he didn't need. It costs too much money, she'd say to him. It bleeds off the chequebook. It takes away from the baby… Yes, it was Mick on the floor. And she knew what he was up to at the moment, pretending to be asleep so that she couldn't rant at him for ignoring the baby.

Still, it didn't seem like him not to hop to his feet, laughing at his ability to frighten her with another one of his practical jokes. And she was frightened. Because something wasn't right. Papers blanketed the floor, far more than represented Mick's usual mess. The desk drawers were open. The curtains were drawn. A cat yowled outside, but in the cottage there was no sound, and the heavy, hot air was foul with the smell of faeces and sweat.

'Mickey?'

Her hands, her armpits, the back of her knees, the inside of her elbows. She was sticky and wet. Molly stirred in her arms. Nancy forced herself forward. An inch. Then another. Then an entire foot. Six inches after that. And then she saw why her husband had not heard Molly's cries.

Although he lay motionless on the floor, he was not pretending to be asleep at all. His eyes were open. But they were glazed and fixed, and as Nancy watched a fly walked across the surface of one blue iris.

Before her, his image seemed to swim in the heat, animated by a force external to his body. He should move, she thought. How can he be that still? Is it some sort of trick? Can't he feel that fly?

Then she saw the other flies. Six or eight. No more. They usually kept residence in the kitchen and pestered her while she cooked their meals. But now they buzzed and circled round her husband's hips where Mick's trousers were torn, where they were open at the waist, where they were jerked down brutally to give someone access… to allow someone to carve…

She was running with no sense of direction and no clear purpose. Her only thought was to get away.

She flung herself out of the cottage, through the gate and into Virgin Place, the baby once again wailing in her arms. Her foot caught on a cobblestone and she nearly fell, but she staggered three steps, crashed against a rubbish-bin, and righted herself by grabbing on to a cottage rain-spout.

The darkness was complete. Moonlight struck the roofs and the sides of buildings, but these cast long shadows into the street, creating yawning ebony pools into which she dashed, heedless of the uneven pavement, of the small scurrying rodents who foraged in the night. The mouth of Ivy Street was up ahead, and she lunged for it and for the safety of Paul Lane which lay just beyond it.

'Please.' Her mouth formed the word. She couldn't hear herself say it. And then, breaking through the rasping noise of her lungs, came voices and laughter, joking on Paul Lane.

'All right, I believe you. So find Cassiopeia,' a man's pleasant voice said. Then he added, 'Oh, for God's sake, at least you can manage the Big Dipper, Helen.'

'Really, Tommy, I'm only trying to get my bearings. You've all the patience of a two-year-old. I can-'

Blessing. She reached them, crashed into them, fell to her knees.

'Nancy!' Someone took her arm, helped her back to her feet. Molly was howling. 'What is it? What's wrong?'

It was Lynley's voice, Lynley's arm round her shoulders. He seemed like salvation.

'Mick!' she cried and pulled violently on the front of Lynley's jacket. Having said at last what needed to be said, she began to scream. 'It's Mick! It's Mick!'

Lights went on in the cottages round them.

St James and Lynley entered together, leaving the three women standing just inside the garden gate. Mick Cambrey's body was on the sitting room floor, not more than twenty feet from the front door. The two men went to it and stood staring down, frozen momentarily into inaction by horror.

'Good God,' St James murmured.

He had seen many grisly sights during his time on the scenes-of-crime team at New Scodand Yard, but the mutilation of Cambrey's body struck him forcefully, the sort of maiming that lay at the heart of every man's fear. Averting his eyes, he saw that someone had thoroughly searched the sitting room, for all the drawers had been pulled from the desk, correspondence and envelopes and stationery and countless other papers had been tossed round the room, broken picture frames had their backings torn off, and near a worn blue sofa a tattered five-pound note lay on the floor.

It was an automatic reaction, born of his brief career with the police, fostered by his devotion to forensic science. Later, he would wonder why he even gave it sway, considering the disunity it provoked among them. 'We're going to need Deborah,' he said.

Lynley was squatting by the body. He jumped to his feet and intercepted St James at the front door. 'Are you out of your mind? You can't be thinking of asking her… That's madness. We need the police. You know that as well as I do.'

St James pulled open the door. 'Deborah, would you-?'

'Stay where you are, Deborah,' Lynley interposed. He turned back to his friend. 'I won't have it. I mean that, St James.'

'What is it, Tommy?' Deborah took a single step. 'Nothing.'

St James regarded the other man curiously, trying and failing to understand the nature of his admonition to Deborah. 'It'll take only a moment, Tommy,' he explained. 'I think it's best. Who knows what the local CID are like? They may ask for your help anyway. So let's get some pictures in advance. Then you can phone.' He called over his shoulder. 'Will you bring your camera, Deborah?'

She began to come forward. 'Of course. Here-' 'Deborah, stay there.'

His explanation had seemed rational enough to St James' own ears. But, rife with urgency, Lynley's response to it did not.

'But the camera?' Deborah asked.

'I said stay there!'

They were at an impasse. Deborah raised a querying hand, looked from Lynley to St James.

'Tommy, is there something…?'

Touching her arm lightly, Lady Helen stopped her and came to join the two men. 'What's happened?' she asked.

St James replied. 'Helen, get me Deborah's camera. Mick Cambrey's been murdered and I want to photograph the room before we telephone the police.'

He said nothing more until he held the camera in his hands. Even then, he looked it over thoroughly, studying its mechanism in a silence that he knew was growing more tense with every moment he allowed it to continue. He told himself that Lynley's main concern was that Deborah not be allowed to see the body or do the photographing herself. Indeed, he was sure that had been his friend's original intention when he insisted that she stay outside. He had misunderstood St James' asking for Deborah. He had thought St James wanted her to take the pictures herself. But that misunderstanding had dissolved into dispute. And no matter that much of the dispute remained unspoken, the fact that it had occurred at all charged the atmosphere with elements bleak and nasty.

'Perhaps you might wait out here until I'm done,' St James said to his friend. He walked back into the house.

St James took the photographs from every angle, working his way carefully round the body, stopping only when he had run out of film. Then he left the sitting room, pulled the door partially closed behind him, and returned to the others outside. They had been joined by a small crowd of neighbours who stood in a hushed group a short distance from the garden gate, heads bent together, voices murmuring in speculation.

'Bring Nancy inside,' St James said.

Lady Helen led her across the front garden and into the cottage where she hesitated only a moment before directing Nancy towards the kitchen, an oblong room with an odd, sloping ceiling and a grey linoleum floor sporting great black patches of wear. She sat her down on a chair that stood at one side of a stained pine table. Kneeling by her side, she looked closely at her face, reached for her arm and held her thin wrist between her own fingers. She frowned, touching the back of her hand to Nancy's cheek.

'Tommy,' Lady Helen said with a remarkable degree of calm, 'ring Dr Trenarrow. I think she's going into shock. He can deal with that, can't he?' She prised the baby from Nancy's grasp and handed her to Deborah. 'There must be baby milk in the refrigerator. Will you see to warming some?'

'Molly…' Nancy whispered. 'Hungry. I… feed.' 'Yes,' Lady Helen said gently. 'We're seeing to her, dear.'

In the other room, Lynley was speaking into the telephone. He placed a second call and spoke even more briefly, but the altered formal sound of his voice was enough to tell the others that he was speaking to the Penzance police. After a few minutes, he returned to the kitchen with a blanket which he wrapped round Nancy in spite of the heat.

'Can you hear me?' he asked her.

Nancy's eyelids fluttered, showing nothing but white. 'Molly… feed.'

'I've got her right here,' Deborah said. She was crooning to the baby in a far corner of the kitchen. 'The milk's warming. I expect she likes it warm, doesn't she? She's a pretty baby, Nancy. I can't imagine a prettier one.'

It was the right thing to say. Nancy relaxed in her chair. St James nodded gratefully to Deborah and went back to the sitting room door. He pushed it open and stood on the threshold. He spent several minutes studying, thinking, evaluating what he saw. Lady Helen finally joined him.

Even from the doorway, they could see the nature of the material that lay in disorder across the floor, upon the desk, against the legs of furniture. Notebooks, documents, pages of manuscript, photographs. At the back of his mind, St James heard Lady Asherton's words about Mick Cambrey. But the nature of the crime did not support the conclusion he otherwise might have naturally drawn from a consideration of those words.

'What do you think?' Lady Helen asked him.

'He was a journalist. He's dead. Somehow those two facts ought to hang together. But the body says no a thousand times.'

'Why?'

'He's been castrated, Helen.' 'Heavens. Is that how he died?' 'No.'

"Then, how?'

A knock at the door precluded reply. Lynley came from the kitchen to admit Roderick Trenarrow. The doctor entered wordlessly. He looked from Lynley to St James and Lady Helen, and then beyond them to the sitting-room floor where, even from where he stood, Mick Cambrey's body was partially visible. For a moment, it appeared that he might step forward and attempt to save a man who was beyond all rescue.

He said to the others, 'Are you certain?'

'Quite,' St James replied.

'Where's Nancy?' Without waiting for an answer, he went on to the kitchen where the lights shone brightly and Deborah chatted about babies as if in the hope that doing so would keep Nancy anchored in the here and now. Trenarrow tilted Nancy's head and looked at her eyes. He said, 'Help me get her upstairs. Quickly. Has anyone telephoned her father?'

Lynley moved to do so. Lady Helen helped Nancy to her feet and urged her out of the kitchen as Dr Trenarrow led the way. Still carrying the baby, Deborah followed them. In a moment, Trenarrow's voice began asking gentle questions in the bedroom upstairs. These were followed by Nancy's querulous replies. Bedsprings creaked. A window was opened. The dry wood of the sash grated and shrieked.

'There's no answer at the lodge,' Lynley said from the telephone. 'I'll ring on to Howenstow. Perhaps he's gone there.' But, after a conversation with Lady Asherton, John Penellin was still unaccounted for. Lynley frowned at his watch. 'It's half-past twelve. Where can he possibly be at this time of night?'

'He wasn't at the play, was he?'

'John? No. I can't say the Nanrunnel Players hold any charms for him.'

Above them, Nancy cried out. As if in response to this single demonstration of anguish, another knock thudded against the front door. Lynley opened it to admit the local police, represented in the person of a plump, curly-haired constable in a uniform that took its distinction from large crescents of sweat beneath the arms and a coffee stain on the trousers. He looked about twenty-three years old. He didn't bother with any immediate introductions or with any of the formalities inherent to a murder investigation. It was obvious within seconds that, in the presence of a corpse, he was in over his head and delighted to be there.

'Gotcherself a murder?' he asked conversationally, as if murders were a daily affair in Nanrunnel. Perhaps to give credence to nonchalance, he unwrapped a piece of chewing gum and folded it into his mouth. 'Where's the victim?'

'Who are you?' Lynley demanded. 'You aren't CID.'

The constable grinned. 'T.J. Parker,' he announced. 'Thomas Jefferson. Mum liked the Yanks.' He elbowed his way into the sitting room.

'Are you CID?' Lynley asked as the constable kicked a notebook to one side. 'Christ almighty, man. Leave the scene alone.'

'Don't getcher knickers in a twist,' the constable replied. 'Inspector Boscowan sent me ahead to secure the scene. He'll be along soon's he's dressed. Not to worry. Now. What d'we have?' He took his first look at the corpse and chewed more rapidly upon his gum. 'Someone had it in for this bloke all right.'

That said, he began to saunter round the room. Gloveless, he fingered several items on Cambrey's desk.

'For God's sake,' Lynley said hody. 'Don't touch anything. Leave it for your crime team.'

'Robbery,' Parker announced as if Lynley had not spoken. 'Caught in the act, I'd say. A fight. Some fun afterwards with the secateurs.'

'Listen, damn you. You can't-'

Parker cocked a finger at him. 'This is police work, mister. I'll thank you to step back into the hall.'

'Have you your warrant card?' St James asked Lynley quietly. 'He's liable to make a mess of that room if you don't do something to stop him.'

'I can't, St James. I have no jurisdiction.'

As they were speaking, Dr Trenarrow came back down the stairs. Inside the sitting room, Parker turned to the door, caught a glimpse of Trenarrow's medical bag, and smiled.

'We got quite a mess here, Doc,' he announced. 'Ever seen anything like it? Have a look, if you like.'

'Constable.' Lynley's voice attempted reason and patience.

Trenarrow seemed to realize how inappropriate the constable's suggestion was. He said softly to Lynley, 'Perhaps I can do something to fend off disaster,' and walked to the body. Kneeling, he examined it quickly, feeling for pulse, gauging for temperature, moving an arm to check the extent of rigor. He changed his position to the other side and bent to study the extensive wounds.

'Butchered,' he muttered, looked up, and asked, 'Have you found any weapon?' He looked round the room, feeling among the papers and debris that were nearest to the body.

St James shuddered at the disruption of the crime scene. Lynley cursed. The constable did nothing.

Trenarrow nodded towards a poker that lay on its side by the fireplace. 'Could that be your weapon?' he asked.

Constable Parker grinned. His chewing gum popped. He chuckled as Trenarrow got to his feet. 'To do that business?' he asked. 'I don't think it's near sharp enough, do you?'

Trenarrow didn't look amused. 'I meant as a murder weapon,' he said. 'Cambrey didn't die from the castration, Constable. Any fool can see that.'

Parker seemed unoffended by Trenarrow's implied rebuke. 'Didn't kill him. Right. Just put an end to things, wouldn't you say?'

Trenarrow looked as if he were biting off an angry retort.

'How long's he been gone, in your opinion?' the constable asked genially.

'Two or three hours, I'd guess. But surely you've someone coming to tell you that.'

'Oh, aye. When she gets here,' the constable said. 'With the rest of CID.' He rocked back on his heels, popped his gum once more, and studied his watch. 'Two or three hours, you say? That takes us to… half-nine or half-ten. Well' – he sighed and rubbed his hands together with obvious pleasure – 'it's a starting place, i'n' it? And you've got to start somewhere in police work.'