A Suitable Vengeance

10

From the moment they pulled up in front of the Howenstow lodge at a quarter past two in the morning, events began to tumble one upon the other. Not that events had not already been accumulating into an aggregate of experience too complicated to be readily assimilated. Inspector Edward Boscowan had seen to that, only moments after his arrival at Gull Cottage with the scenes-of-crime team from Penzance CID.

He'd taken one look at Constable Parker who was lounging in an armchair not four feet from Mick Cambrey's body; he'd taken a second look at St James, Trenarrow and Lynley in the small entry foyer, at Deborah in the kitchen, at Lady Helen and Nancy Cambrey upstairs, at the baby in the cot. His face went from white to crimson. Then he finally spoke, but only to the constable. With such studied control that no other demonstration of his fury was even necessary.

'A tea-party, Constable? Despite what you may think, you are not the Mad Hatter. Or has no-one yet informed you of that?' The constable grinned uneasily in response. He shoved himself to his feet and scratched one armpit, nodding as if in agreement. 'This is a murder scene,' Boscowan snapped. 'What in hell's name are all these people doing here?'

'They 'as inside when I got here,' Parker said.

'Were they?' Boscowan asked with a thin smile. When Parker returned it, momentarily relieved by what he mistakenly perceived as bonhomie in his superior, Boscowan snarled, 'Well, get them out now! Which is bloody well what you should have done in the first place!'

Lynley was aware of that fact himself. He knew that St James was aware of it as well. Yet in the confusion engendered by Nancy's hysteria, the chaos of the sitting room, and the sight of Cambrey's body both of them had disregarded or forgotten or developed an uncharacteristic indifference to that most basic tenet of police work. They had not sealed the crime scene. While they had not touched anything, they had been in the room, Trenarrow had been in the room, not to mention Helen and Deborah and Nancy in the kitchen and then upstairs. With all of them leaving fibres and hairs and fingerprints everywhere. What a nightmare for the forensic team. And he himself-a policeman – had been responsible for creating it, or at least for doing nothing productive to stop it. His behaviour had been unforgivably incompetent, and he could not excuse it by telling himself that he hadn't been thinking straight owing to his being acquainted with the principals involved in the crime itself. For he'd known the principals involved in crimes before and had always kept his head. But not this time. He'd lost his grip the moment St James involved Deborah.

Boscowan had said nothing more in condemnation of anyone. He had merely taken their fingerprints and sent them to stand in the kitchen while he and a sergeant went upstairs to talk to Nancy and the crime scene team began their work in the sitting room. He spent nearly an hour with Nancy, patiently taking her back and forth over the facts. Having gleaned from her what little he could, he sent her home with Lynley, home to her father.

Now Lynley looked up at the lodge. The front door was closed. The windows were shut, the curtains drawn. Darkness enfolded it, and the trellised red roses that walled in the porch and encircled the windows on the ground floor looked like feather-edged smudges of ink in the shadows.

'I'll come in with you,' Lynley said, 'just in case your father's not yet home.'

Nancy stirred in the rear seat where, between Lady Helen and St James, she held her sleeping baby. Dr Trenarrow had given her a mild sedative, and for the time being the drug shielded her from shock.

'Dad's only sleeping,' she murmured, resting her cheek on Molly's head. 'I spoke with him on the phone after the interval. At the play. He's gone to bed.'

'He wasn't home when I phoned at half-past twelve,' Lynley said. 'So he may not be home now. If he isn't, I'd rather you and Molly came on to the house with us and not stay here alone. We can leave him a note.'

'He's only sleeping. The phone's in the sitting room. His bedroom's upstairs. He mightn't have heard it.'

'Wouldn't Mark have heard it, then?'

'Mark?' Nancy hesitated. Obviously, she hadn't yet considered her brother. 'No. Mark sleeps heavy, doesn't he? Plays his music sometimes as well. He'd not have heard. But they're both upstairs asleep. For certain.' She moved on the seat, preparatory to getting out. St James opened the door. 'I'll just go on in. I do thank you. I can't think what would've happened if I hadn't found you in Paul Lane.'

Her words were growing progressively drowsier. Lynley got out, and with St James he helped her from the car. Despite Nancy's declaration that both father and brother were sleeping soundly in the lodge, Lynley had no intention of leaving her without making sure that this was the case.

Beneath her words he had heard the unmistakable note of urgency which generally accompanies a lie. It was not inconceivable that she had spoken to her father by telephone during the evening. But he had not been at home when Lynley had phoned from Gull Cottage just ninety minutes ago, and Nancy's protestations that he – as well as her brother – would sleep through the noise of the telephone were not only improbable but also indicative of a need to conceal.

Taking Nancy's arm, he led her up the uneven flagstone path and onto the porch where the climbing roses cast a sweet fragrance on the warm night air. Once inside the house, a quick look in the rooms affirmed his suspicions. The lodge was empty. As Nancy drifted into the sitting room and sat in a cane-backed rocking chair where she sang tonelessly to her daughter, he went back to the front door.

'No-one's here,' he said to the others. 'But I think I'd rather wait for John than take Nancy up to the house. Do you want to go on yourselves?'

St James made the decision for them all. 'We'll come in.'

They joined Nancy in the sitting room, taking places among and upon the overstuffed furniture. No-one spoke. Instead they each attended to the Penellin personal effects which crammed the walls, the table tops and the floor, attesting to the lives and personalities of the family who had occupied the lodge for twenty-five years. Spanish porcelains – the passion of Nancy's mother – collected dust upon a spinet piano. Mounted butterflies in a dozen frames hung on one wall and these, along with a quantity of ageing tennis trophies, spoke of the wide swings which Mark Penellin's interests took. A broad bay window displayed a mass of Nancy's poorly executed petit-point pillows, faded and looking in their serried line as if they'd been placed there to get them out of the way. In one corner, a television set held the room's only photograph, one taken of Nancy, Mark and their mother at Christmastime shortly before the railway disaster that ended Mrs Penellin's life.

After a few minutes of listening to the sounds of crickets and a nightingale drifting in the window which Lynley had opened, Nancy Cambrey stood. She said, 'Molly's dropped off. I'll just pop her upstairs,' and left them.

When they heard her movement on the floor above, it was Lady Helen who put into words what had been playing in the back of Lynley's mind. She spoke in her usual, forthright manner.

'Tommy, where do you suppose John Penellin is? Do you think Nancy really spoke to him during the play? Because it seems to me that there's something decidedly odd in the way she insisted that she'd talked to him.'

Lynley was sitting on the piano bench, and he pushed softly against three of the keys, producing a barely audible discordance. 'I don't know,' he replied. But even if he could ignore Helen's intuitive remark he could not forget his conversation with Nancy that afternoon or the aversion with which her father had spoken of Nancy's husband.

The clock struck the half-hour. Nancy returned to them. 'I can't think where Dad is,' she said. 'You've no need to stay. I'll be fine now.'

'We'll stay,' Lynley said.

She pushed her hair behind her ears and rubbed her hands down the sides of her dress. 'He must've just gone out a bit ago. He does that sometimes when he can't sleep. He walks in the grounds. Often he does that before he goes to bed at night. In the grounds. I'm sure that's where he's gone.'

No-one mentioned the wild improbability of John Penellin's taking a walk in the grounds at half-past two in the morning. No-one even had to, for events conspired to prove Nancy a liar. Even as she made her final declaration, a car's lights swept across the sitting-room windows. An engine coughed once. A door opened and shut.

Footsteps rang against the flagstones and, a moment later, in the porch. She hurried to the door.

Penellin's voice came to the others clearly. 'Nancy? What're you doing here? It's not Mark, is it? Nancy, where's Mark?'

She reached out a hand to him as he came in the door. He took it. 'Dad.' Nancy's voice wavered.

At this, Penellin suddenly saw the others gathered in the sitting room. Alarm shot across his face. 'What's happened?' he demanded. 'By God, you tell me what that bastard's done to you now.'

'He's dead,' Nancy said. 'Someone…' She faltered at the rest of it, as if those few words reminded her of the horror that the sedative had allowed her to escape for a short time.

Penellin stared. He brushed past his daughter and took a step towards the stairway. 'Nancy, where's your brother?'

Nancy said nothing. In the sitting room, Lynley slowly got to his feet.

Penellin spoke again. 'Tell me what happened.'

'Nancy found Mick's body in the cottage after the play,' Lynley said. 'The sitting room looked as if it had been searched. Mick may well have surprised someone in the act of going through his papers. Or in the act of robbery. Although', he added, 'that latter seems unlikely.'

Nancy grasped this idea. 'It was robbery,' she said. 'That's what it was and no mistake. Mick was doing the pay envelopes for the newspaper staff when I left him this evening.' She tossed a look back over her shoulder at Lynley. 'Was the money still there?'

'I saw only a five-pound note on the floor,' St James answered.

'But surely Mick didn't pay the staff in cash,' Lynley said.

'He did,' Nancy said. 'It was always done that way on the newspaper. More convenient. There's no bank in Nanrunnel.'

'But if it was robbery'-'

'It was,' Nancy said.

Lady Helen spoke gently, bringing up the single point that obviated robbery as a motive. 'But Nancy, his body…'

'The body?' Penellin asked.

'He'd been castrated,' Lynley said.

'Good God.'

The front doorbell rang shrilly. All of them jumped, a testimony to the state of their nerves. Still in the hallway, Penellin answered the door. Inspector Boscowan stood in the porch. Beyond him, a dusty car was parked behind the estate Rover that Lynley had earlier driven to and from Nanrunnel.

'John,' Boscowan said by way of greeting Penellin.

The use of Penellin's given name reminded Lynley all at once that not only were Boscowan and Penellin of an age, but like so many others who lived in this remote area of Cornwall they were also former schoolmates and lifelong friends.

Penellin said, 'Edward, you've heard about Mick?'

'I've come to talk to you about it.'

Nancy gripped the newel post of the stairway. 'To Dad? Why? He knows nothing about this.'

'I've a few questions, John,' Boscowan said.

'I don't understand.' But Penellin's tone was an admission that he understood only too well.

'May I come in?'

Penellin glanced into the sitting room, and Boscowan followed his gaze to see the others gathered there. 'Still here, my lord?' he asked.

'Yes. We were…' Lynley hesitated. Waiting for John to come home asked to be spoken, an inadvertent accusation he would not make.

'Dad knows nothing,' Nancy repeated. 'Dad, tell him you know nothing about Mick.'

'May I come in?' Boscowan asked once more.

'Nancy and the baby,' Penellin said. 'They're both here. May we talk in Penzance? At the station?'

Requesting a different location wasn't a suspect's right. And that John Penellin was a suspect was illustrated in Boscowan's next words.

'Have you a solicitor you'd like to ring?'

'A solicitor?' Nancy shrilled.

'Nance. Girl. Don't.'

Although Penellin reached for his daughter, she flinched away. 'Dad was here.'

Boscowan shifted his weight uneasily from one foot to the other. 'I'm sorry, Nancy. Neighbours saw him at your cottage at half-past nine. Others heard an argument as well.'

'He was here. I spoke to him after the interval. Dad, tell him I spoke to you after the interval.' She grabbed her father's arm, shaking it doggedly.

Her father loosened her fingers. 'Let me go, lass. Stay here. Take care of Molly. Nancy, wait for Mark.'

Boscowan didn't miss the exigent quality of Penellin's final direction to his daughter. 'Mark's not here?'

Penellin replied, 'I expect he's out with friends. In St Ives or St Just. You know how young men are.' He patted Nancy's hand. 'I'm ready, then, Edward. Let's be off

He nodded to the others and left the lodge. A moment later, Boscowan's car purred to life. The sound amplified briefly as he reversed down the main drive, then faded altogether as they headed towards Penzance.

Nancy spun towards the sitting room. 'Help him!' she cried to Lynley. 'He didn't kill Mick. You're a policeman. You can help. You must.' Uselessly she twisted the front of her house dress in her hands.

Even as he went to her side, Lynley reflected upon how little he could actually do to help. He had no jurisdiction in Cornwall. Boscowan seemed a highly capable man, one unlikely ever to need assistance from New Scotland Yard. Had Constable Parker been in charge of the case, the Met's ultimate involvement would not have been long in doubt. But Parker wasn't in charge. And since Penzance CID looked perfectly competent the investigation had to remain in their hands. However, he still wanted to say something, even if the only possible result was that form of purgation which comes from reliving the worst part of a nightmare.

'Tell me what happened tonight.' He led her back to the rocking-chair. Deborah rose from her place and covered Nancy's shoulders with a blanket that lay on the back of the couch.

Nancy stumbled through the story. She'd gone to do the drinks for the play, leaving the baby with Mick. Mick had been working at the sitting room desk, getting ready to do the pay envelopes for the newspaper staff. She'd placed Molly in the playpen nearby. She'd left them at seven o'clock.

'When I got back to the cottage, I could hear Molly crying. I was angry that Mick would let her go ignored. I shouted at him as I opened the door.'

'The door was unlocked?' St James asked.

It was, she told them.

'You didn't notice Mick's body?'

She shook her head and clutched the blanket closer round her thin shoulders. One elbow stuck out. It was bony and red. 'The sitting-room door was closed.'

'And, when you opened it, what did you notice at first?'

'Him. Mick. Lying…' She gulped for a breath. 'Then all round him the papers and notebooks and such.'

'As if the room had been searched,' St James said. 'Did Mick ever work on stories at home?'

Nancy rubbed her hand along the nap of the blanket and nodded a bit too eagerly. 'Often, yes. At the computer. He wouldn't want to go back to the office after dinner, so he'd work a bit at home. He kept lots of notes for his stories at the cottage. "Sort through this lot, Mickey," I'd tell him. "We must throw some things away." But he didn't like to because he never knew when he'd need to look up some little detail in a notebook or a journal or his diary. "Can't toss it out, Nance," he'd tell me. "The first thing I throw away will be exactly what I need." So there were always papers. Scraps of this and that. Notes on paper napkins and on matchbook covers. It was his way. Lots of notes. Someone must have wanted… or the money. The money. We mustn't forget that.'

It was a difficult recital to listen to. Although the facts seemed relevant – the presence of material on the floor, the evidence of a hasty search – it did not appear that their connection to Mick Cambrey's profession was foremost on his wife's mind, no matter her attempt to make it seem so. Rather, she appeared to be concerned with an entirely different matter connected to the search.

She verified this by concluding with, 'You know, I did talk to Dad after the interval. Perhaps at half-past ten. From a call box.'

No-one replied. Despite the room's warmth, Nancy's legs shook, causing the blanket that covered them to tremble. 'I telephoned. I spoke to Dad. He was here. Lots of people must've seen me make the call. Ask Mrs Swann. She knows I spoke to Dad. He was here. He said he'd not been out all evening.'

'But, Nancy,' Lynley said, 'your father was out. He wasn't here when I phoned. He only just walked in a few minutes after we did. Why are you lying? Are you afraid of something?'

'Ask Mrs Swann. She saw me. In the call box. She can tell you-'

A blast of rock-and-roll music shattered the mild night noises outside the house. Nancy leapt to her feet.

The front door opened and Mark Penellin entered. A large portable stereo rode upon his shoulder, blaring out 'My Generation', night-time nostalgia with a vengeance. Mark was singing along, but he stopped in mid-phrase when he saw the group in the sitting room. He fumbled incompetently with the knobs. Roger Daltrey roared even louder for an instant before Mark mastered the volume and switched the stereo off.

'Sorry.' He placed the unit on the floor. It had left an indentation in the soft calfskin jacket he wore and, as if he knew this without looking, he brushed his fingers against the material to rejuvenate it. 'What's going on? What're you doing here, Nance? Where's Dad?'

In conjunction with everything that had gone before, both her brother's sudden appearance at the lodge and his questions seemed to destroy the inadequate defences which Nancy had raised to avoid the reality of her father's behaviour that night. She fell back into the rocking-chair.

'It's your fault!' she cried. 'The police have come for Dad. They've taken him and he'll say nothing because of you.' She began to cry, reaching for her handbag which lay on the floor. 'What're you going to do to him next, Mark? What'll it be? Tell me.' She opened her handbag and began fumbling through it, pulling out a crumpled tissue as she sobbed, 'Mickey. Oh, Mick.'

Still at the doorway to the sitting room, Mark Penellin swallowed, looking at each of them in turn before returning his gaze to his sister. 'Has something happened to Mick?'

Nancy continued to weep.

Mark brushed back his hair. He ran his knuckles down his jawline. He brought their worst fears to light. 'Nancy, had Dad done something to Mick?'

She was out of the chair, her handbag flying, its contents spraying across the floor.

'Don't you say that! Don't you dare. You're at the bottom of this. We know it. Dad and I.'

Mark backed into the stairway. His head struck a banister. ^lMe? What're you talking about? This is crazy. You're crazy. What the hell's happened?'

'Mick's been murdered,' Lynley said.

Blood flooded Mark's face. He spun from Lynley to his sister. 'And you think I did it? Is that what you think? That I killed your husband?' He gave a wild shriek of laughter. 'Why would I bother, with Dad looking for a way to put him under for a year?'

'Don't you say that! Don't you dare! It was you!'

'Right. Believe what you want.'

'What I know. What Dad knows.'

'Dad knows everything all right. Lucky for him to be so bloody wise.'

He grabbed his stereo and flung himself up five stairs. Lynley's words stopped him. 'Mark, we need to talk.'

'No!' And then as he finished the climb, 'I'll save what I have to say for the flaming police. As soon as my sister turns me in.'

A door crashed shut.

Molly began to wail.

11

'How much do you really know about Mark Penellin?' St James asked, looking up from the paper on which he had been jotting their collective thoughts for the last quarter of an hour.

He and Lynley were alone in the small alcove that opened off the Howenstow drawing room, directly over the front entry to the house. Two lamps were lit, one on the undersized mahogany desk where St James sat and the other on a marquetry side table beneath the windows where it cast a golden glow against the darkness-backed panes. Lynley handed St James a glass of brandy and cupped his own in the palm of his hand, meditatively swirling the liquid. He sank into a wing chair next to the desk, stretched out his legs, and loosened his tie. He drank before answering.

'Not much in any detail. He's Peter's age. From what little's been said about him in the past few years, I gather he's been a disappointment to his family. To his father mostly.'

'In what way?'

'The usual way young men disappoint their fathers. John wanted Mark to go to university. Mark did one term at Reading but then dropped out.'

'Rusticated?'

'Not interested. He went from Reading to a job as a barman in Maidenhead. Then Exeter, as I recall. I think he was playing drums with a band. That didn't pan out as he would have liked – no fame, no fortune, and most particularly no lucrative contract with a recording studio – and he's been working here on the estate ever since, at least for the last eighteen months. I'm not quite sure why. Estate management never seemed to interest Mark in the past. But perhaps now he's thinking along the lines of taking o%^rer as Howenstow land manager when his father retires.'

'Is that a possibility?'

'It's possible, but not without Mark's developing some background and a great deal more expertise than would come from the sort of work he's been doing round here.'

'Does Penellin expect his son to succeed him?'

'I shouldn't think so. John's university educated himself. When he retires – which is a good time away in the future – he wouldn't expect me to give his job to someone whose sole experience at Howenstow has been mucking out the stables.'

'And that's been the extent of Mark's experience?'

'Oh, he's done some time in one or two of the dairies. Out on several of the farms as well. But there's more to managing an estate than that.'

'Is he paid well?'

Lynley twirled the stem of his brandy glass between his fingers. 'No, not particularly. But that's John's decision. I've got the impression from him in the past that Mark doesn't work well enough to be paid well. In fact the whole issue of Mark's salary has been a sore spot between them ever since Mark returned from Exeter.'

'If he keeps him short of cash, wouldn't the money in Gull Cottage be a lure for him? Could he have known his brother-in-law's habits well enough to know that tonight he'd be doing the pay for the newspaper staff? After all, it looks as if he's living a bit above his means, if his salary here is as low as you indicate.'

'Above his means? How?'

'That stereo he was carrying must have set him back a few quid. The jacket looked fairly new as well. I couldn't see his boots clearly, but they looked like snake skin.'

Lynley crossed the alcove to one of the windows and opened it. The early-morning air felt damp and cool at last, and the stillness of night amplified the distant sound of the sea.

'I can't think that Mark would kill his brother-in-law in order to steal that money, St James, although it's not hard to picture him coming upon Mick's body, seeing the money on the desk, helping himself to it. Murder doesn't sound like Mark. Opportunism does.'

St James looked at his notes for a moment and read his summary of their conversation with Nancy Cambrey at the lodge. 'So he'd go to the cottage for another reason, only to discover Mick dead? And finding him dead he'd help himself to the cash?'

'Perhaps. I don't think Mark would plan out a robbery-. Surely he knows what that would do to his sister, and despite how they acted tonight Mark and Nancy have always been close.'

'Yet he probably knew about the pay envelopes, Tommy.'

'Everyone else probably knew as well. Not only the employees of the newspaper, but also the villagers. Nanrunnel's not large. I doubt it's changed much since I was a boy. And then, believe me, there were few enough secrets that the entire population didn't know.'

'If that's the case, would others have known about the notes Mick kept in the cottage?'

'I imagine the employees of the newspaper knew. Mick's father, no doubt; and, if he knew, why not everyone else? The Spokesman doesn't employ that many people, after all.'

'Who are they?'

Lynley returned to his chair. 'Aside from Mick, I didn't know any of them, except Julianna Vendale. If she's still employed there. She was the copy and wire service editor.'

Something in his voice made St James look up. 'Julianna Vendale?'

'Right. A nice woman. Divorced. Two children. About thirty-seven.'

'Attractive to Mick?'

'Probably. But I doubt that Mick would have interested Julianna. She's not thought much of men since her husband left her for another woman some ten years ago. No-one's got very far with her since.' He looked at St James, gave a rueful smile. 'I learned that the hard way one holiday here when I was twenty-six and feeling particularly full of myself. Needless to say, Julianna wasn't impressed.'

'Ah. And Mick's father?'

Lynley took up his brandy once again. 'Harry's a bit of local colour. Hard drinker, hard smoker, hard gambler. A mouth like a docker. According to Nancy, he had heart surgery last year, however, so perhaps he's had to change his style.'

'Close to Mick?'

'At one time, yes. I couldn't say now. Mick started out working on the Spokesman before he went off as a freelance writer.'

'Did you know Mick, Tommy?'

'Nearly all my life. We were of an age. I spent a great deal of time in Nanrunnel years ago. We saw each other on half-terms and holidays.'

'Friends?'

'More or less. We drank together, sailed together, did some fishing, scouted women in Penzance. As teenagers. I didn't see much of him once I went up to Oxford.'

'What was he like?'

Lynley smiled. 'A man who liked women, controversy and practical jokes just about equally. At least, he did when he was young. I can't think he changed much.'

'Perhaps we've a motive somewhere in that.'

'Perhaps.' Lynley explained the allusions to Mick's extramarital affairs which John Penellin had made that afternoon.

'A good explanation for the condition of the body,' St James said. 'A husband getting back upon the man who cuckolded him. But that doesn't explain the mess in the sitting room, does it?' St James picked up his pen to make a note, but he put it down again without writing. Fatigue was getting the better of him. He could feel it like dust beneath his eyelids and he knew quite well that he wouldn't be good for any useful thinking for very much longer. Still, a half-formed memory plagued him, something said earlier that he knew he ought to recall. He stirred restlessly in his seat, catching sight of the piano in the drawing room and remembering Lady Asherton standing near it earlier in the evening. 'Tommy, didn't your mother say something about a story Mick was working on? Hadn't Nancy told her about it?'

'She told me as well.'

'Then…'

'It's a possibility. I got the impression that Mick felt it was a significant piece. Certainly far more significant than the usual feature in the Spokesman. In fact, I don't think he intended it for the Spokesman at all.'

'Is that something that might have irritated his father?'

'Hardly enough to kill him. And certainly not enough to castrate him, St James.'

'If,' St James pointed out, 'the killing and the castration were done by the same person. We both saw that the castration was done after death, Tommy.'

Lynley shook his head. 'That doesn't work for me. First a killer – later a butcher.'

St James had to admit that it didn't work for him all that well, either. 'Why do you suppose Nancy's lying about that phone call?' St James didn't wait for Lynley's response. He mused aloud. 'It doesn't look good for John Penellin that he was seen near the cottage.'

'John didn't kill Mick. He's not the type. He couldn't have killed him.'

'Not intentionally.'

'Not at all.'

There was a fair degree of certainty behind Lynley's words. St James met it by saying, 'Good men have been driven to violence before. You know that. Unintentional violence – that sudden blow delivered in rage. How many more deaths is a moment of madness – rather than premeditation – responsible for? And John was there, Tommy. That has to mean something.'

Lynley got to his feet. He stretched in an easy, lithe movement. 'I'll talk to John in the morning. We'll sort it out.'

St James turned to him but did not rise. 'What if the police decide they've found their man? What if the forensic evidence supports an arrest? Penellin's hair on the corpse, his fingerprints in the room, a drop of Mick's blood on the cuff of his trousers or the sleeve of his coat. If he was in the room tonight, there's going to be evidence to support it, far beyond the testimony of neighbours who saw him and other neighbours who heard a row. What will you do then? Does Boscowan know you're CID?'

'It's nothing I broadcast.'

'Will he ask the Yard for assistance?'

Lynley answered with obvious reluctance, putting into words St James' own thoughts. 'Not if he thinks he's got his man in John Penellin. Why should he?' He sighed. 'It's damned awkward, for all Nancy's request that I help her father. We'll have to be careful, St James. We can't afford to step on official toes.'

'And if we do?'

'There'll be the devil to pay in London.' He nodded a good night and left the room.

St James went back to his notes. From the desk he took out a second sheet of paper and spent several minutes creating columns and categories into which he put what little information they had. John Penellin. Harry Cambrey. Mark Penellin. Unknown Husbands. Newspaper Employees. Potential Motives for the Crime. The Weapon. The Time of Death. He wrote and listed and read and stared. The words began to swim before him. He pressed his fingers to his closed eyes. Somewhere a casement window creaked in the breeze. At the same moment the drawing room door opened and shut. His head jerked up at the sound. Deborah stood in the shadows.

She wore a dressing gown whose ivory colour and insubstantial material made her look like a spectre. Her hair hung loosely round her face and shoulders.

St James shoved his chair back, pushed himself to his feet. His weight was off-balance because of the awkward position of his leg, and he could feel the accompanying stress as it pulled at the muscles of his waist.

Deborah looked down the length of the drawing room and then into the alcove. 'Tommy's not with you?' 'He's gone to bed.' She frowned. 'I thought I'd heard-' 'He was here earlier.' 'Oh,' she said. 'Right.'

St James waited for her to leave, but instead she came into the alcove and joined him next to the desk. A lock of her hair caught against his sleeve, and he could smell the fragrance of lilies on her skin. He fixed his eyes on his notes and felt her do likewise. After a moment, she spoke.

'Are you going to get involved in this?'

He bent forward and jotted a few deliberately illegible words in the margin of the paper. A reference to notebooks on the cottage floor. The location of the call box. A question for Mrs Swann. Anything. It didn't matter.

'I'll help if I can,' he answered. 'Although this sort of investigation isn't in my line at all, so I don't know how much good I'll do. I was just going through what Tommy and I were talking about. Nancy. Her family. The newspaper. That sort of thing.'

'By writing it down. Yes. I remember your lists. You always had dozens of them, didn't you? Everywhere.'

'All over the lab.'

'Graphs and charts as well, I recall. I never had to feel contrite about the jumble of photographs I shed all over the house while you were in the lab, throwing darts at your own jumble in sheer frustration.'

'It was a scalpel, actually,' St James said.

They laughed together, but it was only an instant of shared amusement from which silence grew, first on his part then on hers. In it the sound of a clock's ticking seemed inordinately loud, as did the distant breaking of the sea.

'I'd no idea Helen's been working with you in the lab,' Deborah said. 'Dad never mentioned it in any of his letters. Isn't that odd? Sidney told me this afternoon. She's so good at everything, isn't she? Even at the cottage. There I was, standing like an idiot while Nancy fell apart and the poor baby screamed. With Helen all the time knowing just what to do.'

'Yes,' St James said. 'She's very helpful.'

Deborah said nothing else. He willed her to leave. He added more notations to the paper on the desk. He frowned at it, read it, pretended to study it. And then, when it could no longer be avoided, when to do so would openly declare him the craven he pretended not to be, he finally looked up.

It was the diffusion of light in the alcove that defeated him. In it, her eyes became darker and more luminescent. Her skin looked softer, her lips fuller. She was far too close to him, and he knew in an instant that his choices were plain: he could leave the room or take her into his arms. There was no middle ground. There never would be. And it was sheer delusion to believe a time might come when he would ever be safe from what he felt when he was with her. He gathered up his papers, murmured a conventional good night, and started to leave.

He was halfway across the drawing room when she spoke.

'Simon, I've seen that man.'

He turned, perplexed. She went on.

'That man tonight. Mick Cambrey. I've seen him. That's what I'd come to tell Tommy.'

He walked back to her, placed his papers on the desk. 'Where?'

'I'm not entirely sure if he is the same man. There's a wedding picture of him and Nancy in their bedroom. I saw it when I took the baby up, and I'm almost certain he's the same man I saw coming out of the flat next to mine this morning – I suppose yesterday morning now -in London. I didn't want to say anything earlier because of Nancy.' Deborah fingered her hair. 'Well, I waited to say something because the flat next to mine belongs to a woman. Tina Cogin. And she seems to be… Of course, I couldn't say for certain, but from the way she talks and dresses and makes allusions to her experiences with men… The impression I got…'

'She's a prostitute?'

Deborah told the story quickly: how Tina Cogin had overheard their row in London; how she had appeared with a drink for Deborah, one that she herself claimed to use after her sexual encounters with men. 'But I didn't have a chance to talk to her much because Sidney arrived and Tina left.'

'What about Cambrey?'

'It was the glass. I still had Tina's glass and I hadn't thought about returning it till this morning.'

She'd seen Cambrey as she approached Tina's door, Deborah explained. He came out of the flat, and realizing that she was actually in the presence of one of Tina's 'clients' Deborah hesitated, unsure whether to give the glass over to the man and ask him to return it to Tina, whether to walk on by and pretend she didn't notice him, whether to return to her own flat without a word. He had made the decision for her by saying good morning.

'He wasn't embarrassed at all,' Deborah said ingenuously.

St James reflected upon the fact that men are rarely embarrassed about their part in a sexual liaison, but he didn't comment. 'Did you talk to him?'

'I just asked him to give the glass to Tina and to tell her I was off to Cornwall. He asked should he fetch her, but I said no. I didn't actually want to see her with him. It did seem so awkward, Simon. I wondered whether he would put his arm round her or kiss her goodbye? Would they shake hands?' Deborah shot him a fleeting smile. 'I don't handle that sort of thing well, do I? Anyway, he went back into the flat.'

'Was the door unlocked?'

Deborah glanced away, her expression thoughtful. 'No, he had a key.'

'Had you seen him before? Or just that once?'

'Just then. And a moment later. He went into the flat and spoke to Tina.' She flushed. 'I heard him say something about red-headed competition in the hallway. So he must have thought… Well, he really couldn't have. He was probably only joking. But she must have led him to believe that I was on the game because when he came out he said that Tina wanted me to know she'd take care of my gendemen callers while I was gone. And then he laughed. And he looked me over, Simon. At first I thought he'd taken Tina seriously, but he winked and grinned and it just seemed his way.' Deborah appeared to go back through what she had said, for her face brightened as she drew a conclusion from the facts. 'Then, she's probably not a prostitute, is she? If Mick had a key to her flat… Prostitutes don't generally give out keys, do they? I mean, s'pose one man stops by while another…' She gestured futilely.

'It would create an awkward situation.'

'So perhaps she isn't a prostitute. Could he be keeping her, Simon? Or even hiding her? Protecting her from someone?'

'Are you sure it was Mick you saw?'

'I think it was. If I got another look at a photograph, I could be certain. But I remember his hair because it was dark auburn, just exactly the shade I always wished mine might be. I remember thinking how unfair that such a colour should be wasted on a man who probably didn't treasure it nearly as much as I would have done.'

St James tapped his fingers against the desk. He thought aloud. 'I'm sure we can manage to get a photograph of Mick. If not the one from the cottage, then surely another. His father would probably have one.' He considered the next logical step. 'Could you go to London and talk to Tina, Deborah? Good Lord, what am I thinking of? You can't dash off to London in the middle of your weekend here.'

'Of course I can. There's a dinner planned here for tomorrow night, but we've nothing after that. Tommy can fly me back Sunday morning. Or I can take the train.'

'You need only find out whether she recognizes his picture. If she does, don't tell her he's dead. Tommy and I will see to that.' St James folded his papers, slipped them into his jacket pocket, and continued speaking pensively. 'If Mick's linked to her sexually, she may be able to tell us something which clarifies his murder, something which Mick might have told her inadvertently. Men relax after intercourse. They feel more important. They let down their guard. They become more honest.' He suddenly became aware of the nature of his words and stopped them, shifting in another direction without looking her way. 'Helen can go with you. I'll do some questioning here. Tommy'11 want to be part of that. Then we'll join you when… Damn! The photographs! I left the film from the cottage in your camera. If we can develop it, no doubt we'll… I'm afraid I used it all up.'

She smiled. He knew why. He was starting to sound exactly like her.

'I'll get it for you, shall I? It's just in my room.'

She left him. He walked to the alcove window and looked out over the night-shrouded garden. Shapes alone defined the bushes there. Pathways were muted streaks of grey.

St James considered the disjointed pieces of Mick Cambrey's life and death that had emerged that night. He wondered how they fitted together. Mick had been gone a great deal, Lady Asherton had said. He'd been working on a story in London. A big story. St James thought about this and the possible connections a story might have to Tina Cogin.

One assumption was that she was Mick's lover, a woman being kept in London for his clandestine pleasure. Yet Deborah, nobody's fool when it came to judgement, had concluded from a first impression, a conversation, and a run-in with Mick that Tina was a prostitute. If this was the case, the resultant tie to a story was both logical and ineluctable. For Mick might be keeping the woman in London not for his pleasure but for her own protection as a source for a story that had the potential to make banner headlines and put Mick's name in the forefront of journalism. It certainly would not be the first time if a prostitute became involved in critically important news, nor would it be the first time if heads were to roll and careers were to fall because of a prostitute. And now with Mick dead and his sitting room ransacked – perhaps in the hope of finding Tina Cogin's address in London – no amalgamation of these details sounded outrageous.

'Simon!' Deborah flew back into the room. He swung round from the window to find her trembling, arms wrapped round herself tightly as if she were cold.

'What is it?'

'Sidney. Someone's with Sidney. I heard a man's voice. I heard her cry. I thought that Justin might be-'

St James didn't wait for her to finish the sentence. He hurried from the room and rushed down the main corridor towards the north-west wing. With each step his anxiety grew, as did his anger. Every image from the afternoon manifested itself before him once again. Sidney in the water. Sidney on the sand. Brooke straddling her, punching her, tearing at her clothes. But there was no cliff to separate him from Justin Brooke now. He blessed that fact.

Only years of dealing with his sister caused St James to pause at her door rather than throw himself into her room. Deborah came up next to him as he listened against the wood. He heard Sidney cry out, he heard Brooke's voice, he heard Sidney's moan. Damn and blast, he thought. He took Deborah's arm, guiding her away from the door and down the long corridor that led to her own room in the south corner of the house.

'Simon!' she whispered.

He didn't reply until they were in her room with the door shut behind them. 'It's nothing,' he said. 'Don't worry.'

'But I heard her.'

'Deborah, she's all right. Believe me.'

'But…' Sudden comprehension swept across Deborah's face. She turned away with a gulp. 'I only thought,' she said but gave up the effort and concluded with, 'Why am I such a fool?'

He wanted to reply, to assuage her embarrassment, but he knew that any comment only held the promise of making things worse. Frustrated, angry at the changes in their lives that seemed to bind him to inaction, he looked aimlessly round her room as if it could formulate an answer for him. He took in the black oak panelling upon the walls, the formal Asherton armorial display in the plaster overmantel of the fireplace, the lofty barrel ceiling that soared into the darkness. An immense four-poster bed dominated the floorspace, its headboard carved with grotesques that writhed their way through flowers and fruit. It was a horrible place to be alone. It felt just like a tomb.

'Sidney's always been a bit hard to understand,' St James settled upon saying. 'Bear with her, Deborah. You couldn't have known what that was all about. It's all right. Really.'

To his surprise, she turned to him hotly. 'It isn't all right. It isn't and you know it. How can she make love with him after what he did to her today? I don't understand it. Is she mad? Is he?'

That was the question and the answer all at once. For it was a true madness, white, hot and indecent, obliterating everything that stood in its way.

'She's in love with him, Deborah,' he finally replied. 'Aren't people all just a little bit mad when they love?'

Her response was a stare. He could see her swallow.

'The film. Let me get it,' she said.

12

The Anchor and Rose benefited from having the most propitious location in all Nanrunnel. It not only displayed from its broad bay windows a fine", unobstructed view of the harbour guaranteed to please the most discerning seeker of Cornish atmosphere, but it also sat directly across from Nanrunnel's single bus stop and was, as a result, the first structure a thirsty visitor's eyes fell upon when disembarking from Penzance and regions beyond.

The interior of the pub was engaged in the gentle process of deterioration. Once creamy walls had taken their place on the evolutionary path towards grey, an effect produced by exposure to generations of smoke from fireplace, cigars, pipes and cigarettes. An elaborate mahogany bar, pitted and stained, curved from the lounge into the public bar, with a brass foot-rail heavily distressed through years of use. Similarly worn tables and chairs spread across a well-trodden floor, and the ceiling above them was so convex that architectural disaster seemed imminent.

When St James and Lady Helen entered, shortly after the pub's morning opening, they found themselves alone with a large tabby cat that lounged in the bay window and a woman who stood behind the bar, drying innumerable pint and half-pint glasses. She nodded at them and went on with her work, her eyes following Lady Helen to the window where she stooped to pet the cat.

'Careful with 'um,' the woman said. 'Watch he doesn't scratch. He's a mean 'un when he wants to be.'

As if with the intention of proving her a liar, the cat yawned, stretched, and presented a corpulent stomach for Lady Helen to attend to. Watching, the woman snorted and stacked glasses on a tray.

St James joined her at the bar, reflecting upon the fact that if this was Mrs Swann she was trapped somewhere in the cygnet stage, for there was nothing the least bit swan-like about her. She was stout and solid, with minuscule eyes and a frizz of grey hair, a living contradiction to her name dressed in a dirndl skirt and a peasant blouse.

'What c'n I get you?' she asked and went on with her drying.

'It's a bit early for me,' St James replied. 'We've come to talk to you, actually. If you're Mrs Swann.' 'Who wants to know?'

St James introduced himself and Lady Helen, who had taken a seat next to the cat. 'I'm sure you've heard Mick Cambrey's been murdered.'

'Whole village knows. About that and the chop-up as well.' She smiled. 'Looks like Mick got what was coming at last. Separated proper from his favourite toy, wasn't he? No doubt there'll be a regular piss-up here when the local husbands come round to celebrate tonight.'

'Mick was involved with some local women?'

Mrs Swann drove her towel-covered fist into a glass and polished it vigorously. 'Mick Cambrey's involved in anyone willing to give him a poke.' That said, she turned to the empty shelves behind her and began placing glasses upside down on the mats. The implicit message was unavoidable: she had nothing more to tell.

Lady Helen spoke. 'Actually, Mrs Swann, Nancy Cambrey's our concern. We've come to see you mostly because of her.'

Mrs Swarm's shoulders lost some of their stiffness, although she didn't turn around when she said, 'Dim girl, Nance. Married to that sod.' Her tight little curls shook with disgust.

'Indeed,' Lady Helen went on smoothly. 'And she's in the worst sort of situation at the moment, isn't she? Not only to have her husband murdered but then to have her father questioned by the police.'

That re-engaged Mrs Swarm's interest quickly enough. She faced them, fists on hips. Her mouth opened and shut. Then opened again. 'John Penellin?'

'Quite. Nancy tried to tell the police that she talked to her father on the phone last night so he couldn't have been in Nanrunnel killing Mick. But they-'

'And she did,' Mrs Swann asserted. 'That she did. She did. Borrowed ten pence from me to make the call. Not a coin in her bag, thanks to Mick.' She began to wax warmly to this secondary topic. 'Always took her money, he did. Hers and his father's and anyone else's he could get his hands on. He was always after cash. He wanted to be a swell.'

'Are you sure Nancy spoke to her father?' St James asked. 'Not to someone else?'

Mrs Swann took umbrage at St James' doubts. She pointed her finger for emphasis. "Course it was her father. Didn't I get so tired of waiting for her – she must have been a good ten or fifteen minutes – that I went to the call box and yanked her out?'

'Where is this call box?'

'Outside the school yard. Right in Paul Lane.' 'Did you see her make the call? Could you see the call box itself?'

Mrs Swann put the questions together and reached a quick conclusion. 'You can't be thinking Nancy killed Mick? That she slipped off to her cottage, chopped him up, then came back nice as nice to serve up the lager?'

'Mrs Swann, can you see the call box from the school grounds?'

'No. What of it? I yanked the lass out myself. She was crying. Said her dad was dead angry that she'd borrowed some money and she was trying to set it to rights with him.' Mrs Swann pressed her lips together as if she had said all that she would. But then a bubble of anger seemed to grow and burst within her, for she went on, her voice growing fierce. 'And I don't blame Nancy's dad for that, do I? Everyone knew where any money would go that Nance gave to Mick. He'd pass it right on to his ladies, wouldn't he? So full of himself, little worm. Got too big in his head when he went to university. Bigger still with his fancy writing. Started thinking he could live by his own rules, didn't he? Right there in the newspaper office. He got what he deserved.'

'In the newspaper office?' St James queried. 'He met with women in the newspaper office?'

She flipped her head in a vicious nod towards the ceiling. 'Right above stairs, it is. Has a nice little room at the back of it. With a cot and everything. Perfect little love-nest. And he flaunted his doings. Proud of them all. He even kept trophies.'

'Trophies?'

Mrs Swann leaned forward, resting her enormous breasts on the bar. She gusted hot breath in St James' face. 'What d'you say to ladies' panties, my lad? Two different pairs right there in his desk. Harry found them. His dad. Not six months out of hospital, poor man, and he comes on those. Sitting there real as real in Mick's top drawer and they weren't even clean. Oh, the screaming and shouting that went on then.'

'Nancy found out?'

'Harry was screaming, not Nance. "You've a babe on the way," he says. "And the paper! Our family! Is it all for nothing so you can please your own fancy?" And he hits Mick so hard I thought he was dead from the sound he made when he hit the floor. Sliced his head on the edge of a cabinet as well. But in a minute or two he comes storming down the stairs with his father just raving behind him.'

'When was this?' St James asked. Mrs Swann shrugged. Her outrage seemed spent. 'Harry can tell you. He's right above stairs.'

John Penellin rolled up the Ordnance Survey map, put an elastic band round it, and placed it with half a dozen others in the old umbrella-stand in his office. The late-morning sunlight streamed in the windows, heating the room to an uncomfortable degree, and he opened the casement and adjusted the blinds as he spoke.

'So it's been a fairly good year, all way round. And if we let that north acreage lie fallow for another season the land can only benefit from it. That's my suggestion at any rate.' He resumed his seat behind the desk; and, as if he had an inflexible agenda to which he was determined to adhere, he went on immediately with: 'May we speak of Wheal Maen?'

It had not been Lynley's intention to go through the account books or to engage in a detailed discussion of Penellin's management of the estate, something he had been doing with great facility and against growing odds for a quarter of a century. Nonetheless, he cooperated, knowing that patience was more likely to encourage a confidence from Penellin than was a direct enquiry.

The entire appearance of the man suggested that an unburdening of his heart was more than in order. He looked whey-faced. He was still wearing last night's clothes, but they gave no evidence of having been slept in, thus acting as testimony to the fact that Penellin had probably never been to bed. Part of what had kept him from sleep was depicted on his body: his fingers were still lightly stained with ink from having his prints taken by Penzance CID. Evaluating all this, Lynley ignored the real purpose of his visit for a moment and followed Penellin's lead.

'Still a believer, John?' he said. 'Mining in Cornwall is well over one hundred years dead. You know that better than I.'

'It's not reopening Wheal Maen I want to speak of,' Penellin said. 'The mine needs to be sealed. The engine-house is a ruin. The main shaft's flooded. It's far too dangerous to be left as it is.' He swivelled his chair and nodded towards the large estate map on the office wall. 'The mine can be seen from the Sennen road. It's only a quick walk across a bit of moor to get to it. I think it's time we tore the engine-house down completely and sealed the shaft over before someone decides to go exploring and gets hurt. Or worse.'

'The road isn't heavily trafficked at any time of year.'

'It's true that few visitors go down that way,' Penellin said. 'But local folks use the road all the time. It's the children I worry about. You know how they are with, their playing. I don't want any of us having to face the horror of a child falling into Wheal Maen.'

Lynley left his seat to study the map. It was true that the mine was less than one hundred yards from the road, separated from it only by a drystone wall, certainly an insufficient barrier to keep the public off the land in an area where countless footpaths led across private property, through open moors and into combes, joining one village to another.

'Of course you're right,' he said and added reflectively, more to himself than to the other man, 'How Father would have hated to see a mine sealed.'

'Times change,' Penellin said. 'Your father wasn't a man to hold on to the past.' He went to the filing cabinet and removed three more folders which he carried back to his desk. Lynley rejoined him.

'How's Nancy this morning?' he asked. 'Coping.'

'What time did the police return you?' 'Half-past four. Thereabouts.' 'Is that it, then? With the police?' 'For now.'

Outside, two of the gardeners were talking to each other as they worked among the plants, the clean sharp snap of their secateurs acting as interjections between their words. Penellin watched them through the blinds for a moment.

Lynley hesitated, caught between his promise to Nancy and his knowledge that Penellin wished to say no more. He was a private man. He did not want help. That much was clear. Yet Lynley felt that beneath Penellin's natural taciturnity an undercurrent of inexplicable anxiety was flowing, and he sought to find the source of the other man's worry in order to alleviate it as best he could. After so many years of relying on Penellin's strength and loyalty, he could not turn away from offering reciprocal strength and loyalty now.

'Nancy told me she spoke to you on the phone last night,' Lynley said.

'Yes.'

'But someone saw you in the village, according to the police.'

Penellin made no response.

'Look, John, if there's some sort of trouble-'

'No trouble, my lord.' Penellin pulled the files across the desk and opened the top one. It was a gesture of dismissal, the furthest he would ever go in asking Lynley to leave the office. 'It's as Nancy said. We spoke on the phone. If someone thinks I was in the village, it can't be helped, can it? The neighbourhood is dark. It could have been anyone. It's as Nancy said. I was at the lodge.'

'Damn it all, we were standing right there when you walked in after two in the morning! You were in the village, weren't you? You saw Mick. Neither you nor Nancy is telling the truth. John, are you trying to protect her? Or is it Mark? Because he wasn't home, either. And you knew that, didn't you? Were you looking for Mark? Was he at odds with Mick?'

Penellin lifted a document from within the file. 'I've started the initial paperwork on closing Wheal Maen,' he said.

Lynley made a final effort. 'You've been here twenty-five years. I should like to think you'd come to me in a time of trouble.'

'There's no trouble,' Penellin said firmly. He picked up another sheet of paper and, although he did not look at it, the single gesture was eloquent in its plea for solitude.

Lynley terminated the interview and left the office.

With the door closed behind him, he paused in the hall, where the old tile floor made the air quite cool. At the end of the corridor, the south-west door of the house was open, and the sun beat down on the courtyard outside. There was movement on the cobblestones, the pleasant sound of running water. He walked towards it.

Outside, he found Jasper – sometime chauffeur, sometime gardener, sometime stableman and full-time gossip -washing down the Land-Rover they'd driven last night. His trousers were rolled up, his knobbly feet bare, his white shirt open on a gaunt chest of grizzled hair. He nodded at Lynley.

'Got it from 'un, did you?' he asked, directing the spray on the Rover's windscreen.

'Got what from whom?' Lynley asked.

Jasper snorted. "Ad it all this morning, we did,' he said. 'Murder 'n police 'n John getting hisself carted off by CID.' He spat on to the cobblestones and rubbed a rag against the Rover's bonnet. 'With John in Nanrunnel 'n Nance lyin' like a pig in the rain 'bout everything she can… 'oo'd think to see the like?'

'Nancy's lying?' Lynley asked. 'You know that, Jasper?'

"Course I know it,' he said. 'Weren't I down to the lodge at half-ten? Didn't I go 'bout the mill? Wasn't nobody home? 'Course she be lyin'.'

'About the mill? The mill in the woods? Has the mill something to do with Mick Cambrey's death?'

Jasper's face shuttered at this frontal approach. Too late Lynley remembered the old man's fondness for hanging a tale on the thread of innuendo. In reply to the question, Jasper whimsically chose his own conversational path.

" ‘N John never tol' you 'bout them clothes as Nance cut up, did 'e?'

'No. He said nothing about clothes,' Lynley replied, and as bait he offered, 'They can't have been important, I suppose, or he would have mentioned them.'

Jasper shook his head darkly at the folly of dismissing such a piece of information. 'Slicin' urn to shreds, she were,' he said. 'Right back of their cottage. Came 'pon her, me and John. Caught her out, and she cried like an ol' sick cow when she saw us, she did. Tha's important enough, I say.'

'But she didn't talk to you?'

'Said nothin'. All them fancy clothes and Nance cuttin' and slicin'. John went near mad 'en he saw her. Started into the cottage after Mick, 'e did. Nance stopped 'im. 'Ung on to 'is arm till John run outer steam.'

'So they were another woman's clothes,' Lynley mused. 'Jasper, does anyone know who Mick's woman was?'

'Woman?' Jasper scoffed. 'More like women. Dozens, from what Harry Cambrey do say. Comes into the Anchor and Rose, does Harry. Sits and asks everybody 'oo'd listen what's to do 'bout Mick's catting round. "She don' give 'urn near enough," Harry likes to tell it. "Wha's a man to do when 'is woman's not like to give him enough?'" Jasper laughed derisively, stepped back from the Rover and sprayed the front tyre. Water splashed on his legs, freckling them with bits of mud. 'The way Harry do tell it, Nance been keeping her arms and legs crossed since the babe were born. With Mick just suffering b'yond endurance, swelled up like to burst with nowhere to stick it. "Wha's a man to do?" Harry do ask. And Mrs Swann, she do tell him, but-' Jasper suddenly seemed to realize with whom he was having this confidential little chat. His humour faded. He straightened his back, pulled off his cap, and ran his hand through his hair. 'Anybody'd see the problem easy. Mick din't want the bother o' settling down.'

He spat again to punctuate the discussion's end.

St James and Lady Helen heard Harry Cambrey before they saw him. As they climbed the narrow stairway – ducking their heads to avoid capriciously placed beams in the ceiling – the sound of furniture being shoved on a bare wooden floor was followed by a drawer being viciously slammed home, and that was followed by a raw curse. When they knocked on the door, a hush fell inside the room. Then footsteps approached. The door jerked open. Cambrey looked them over. They did the same of him.

Seeing him, St James was reminded of the fact that he'd undergone heart surgery the previous year. He looked all the worse for the experience, thin, with a prominent Adam's apple and a skeletal collarbone meeting in two knobby points beneath it. His yellow skin suggested a dysfunctioning liver, and at the corners of his mouth red sores cracked his lips and spotted them with dried blood. His face was unshaven, and the fringe of grey hair at the crown of his head crinkled out from his scalp, as if he'd been brought hastily awake and hadn't taken the time to comb it.

When Cambrey stepped back to let them pass into the office, St James saw that it was one large room with several smaller cubicles opening along one wall and four narrow windows above the street that ran up the hill towards the upper reaches of the village. Aside from Harry Cambrey, no-one else was there – an odd circumstance for a place of business, particularly a newspaper. But at least one of the reasons for the absence of employees lay upon worktops, upon desks, upon chairs. Notebooks and files had been taken from storage and strewn here and there. Harry Cambrey was engaged in a search.

He'd obviously been working at it for some hours and with no particular method, considering the state of the room. A series of military-green filing cabinets had drawers which gaped open, half-empty; a stack of computer disks sat next to a word processor which was switched on; across a layout table the current edition of the newspaper had been shoved aside to make way for three stacks of photographs; and the drawers of each one of the five desks in the room had been removed. The air was musty with the smell of old paper, and since the overhead lights had not been switched on the room possessed a Dickensian gloom.

'What do you want?' Harry Cambrey was smoking a cigarette which he removed from his mouth only to cough or to light another. If he were concerned about the effect of his habit upon his heart, he did not show it.

'No-one's here but yourself?' St James asked as he and Lady Helen picked their way through the debris.

'I gave them the day off.' Cambrey eyed Lady Helen from head to toe as he made his reply. 'And your business?'

'We've been asked by Nancy to look into what's at the root of Mick's murder.'

'You're to help? The two of you?' He made no attempt to hide his inspection of them, taking in St James' leg-brace with the same effrontery he used to examine Lady Helen's summer frock.

'The pursuit of news is a dangerous profession, isn't it, Mr Cambrey?' Lady Helen said from the windows, which was as far as she'd got in her circuit of the room. 'If your son's been murdered because of a story, what difference does it make who brings his killer to justice, so long as it's done?'

At this, Cambrey's factitious bravado disappeared. 'It's a story,' he said. His arms hung limp and lifeless at his sides. 'I know it. I feel it. I've been here since I heard, trying to find the lad's notes.'

'You've come up with nothing?' St James asked.

'There's little enough to go on. Just trying to remember what he said and what he did. It's not a Nanrunnel story. It can't be. But that's the limit of what I know.'

'You're sure of that?'

'It doesn't fit with how he's been these last months, that he'd be working on a Nanrunnel story. He was off here and there all the time, tracking down a lead, doing research, interviewing this person, locating that one. It wasn't a village story. Couldn't have been.' He shook his head. 'It would have been the making of this paper once we got it in print. I know it.'

'Where did he go?'

'London.'

'But with no notes left behind? Isn't that curious?'

'There're notes all right. Here. What you see.' Cambrey flung his arm out to encompass the office's disarray. 'But nothing I figure would cause the lad's death. Reporters don't lose their lives over interviews with army men, with the local MP, with bedridden invalids, with dairy farmers in the north. Journalists die because they have information worth dying over. Mick's not got that here.'

'Nothing unusual among all this material?'

Cambrey dropped his cigarette to the floor and crushed it out. He massaged the muscles of his left arm and, as he did so, his eyes slid towards one of the desks. St James read his answer in the latter action.

'You've found something.'

'I don't know. You may as well have a look. I can make nothing from it.' Cambrey went to the desk. From beneath the telephone he took a piece of paper which he handed to St James. 'Tucked to the back of the drawer,' he said.

The paper was grease-splodged, originally a wrapper for a sandwich from the Talisman Cafe. The writing was faint. The dull light in the room and the points at which the pen had skipped through grease made it difficult to read, but St James could see that it consisted mostly of numbers.

1 k 9400

500 g 55ea

27500-M1 Procure/Transport

27500-M6 Finance

St James looked up. 'Is this Mick's writing?'

Cambrey nodded. 'If there's a story anywhere, that's it. But I don't know what it's about or what that lot means.'

'But there must be notes somewhere that use the same numbers and references,' Lady Helen said. 'M1 and M6. Surely he means the motorways.'

'If there're notes here using the same set of numbers, I've not found them,' Cambrey said.

'So they're missing.'

'Pinched?' Cambrey lit another cigarette, inhaled, coughed. 'I heard the cottage'd been searched.'

'Has there been any indication of a break-in here?' St James asked.

Cambrey looked from them to the room itself. He shook his head. 'Boscowan sent a man to tell me about Mick round four-fifteen this morning. I went to the cottage, but they'd already taken the body away and they wouldn't let me in. So I came here. I've been here ever since. There'd been no break-in.'

'No sign of a search? Perhaps by one of the other employees?'

'Nothing,' he said. His nostrils pinched. 'I want to find the bastard that did this to Mickey. And I won't stop the story. Nothing'll stop it. We have a free press. My boy lived for that, died for that as well. But it won't be in vain.'

'If he died for a story in the first place,' St James said quiedy.

Cambrey's face grew dark. 'What else is there?' 'Mick's women.'

Cambrey removed the cigarette from his mouth in a movement that was slow, studied, like an actor's. His head gave a tiny nod of approbation. 'They're talking like that about Mickey, are they? Well, now, why should I doubt it? Men were jealous of his easy way, and women were the same if he didn't choose them.' The cigarette went back to his mouth. It created a haze through which Cambrey squinted. 'He was a man, was Mick. A real man. And a man has his needs. That tight wife of his had ice between her legs. What she denied him, he found somewhere else. If there's faulty it's Nancy's. Turn away from a man and he'll seek another woman. There's no crime in that. He was young. He had needs.'

'Was there anyone special he saw? More than one woman? Had he taken up with anyone new?'

'Couldn't say. It wasn't Mickey's way to boast about it when he did a new woman.'

'Did married women sleep with him?' Lady Helen asked. 'Women from the village?'

'Lots of women slept with him.' Cambrey pushed aside papers on the desk-top, lifted the glass that covered it, and removed a photograph which he passed to her. 'See for yourself. Is this the kind of man you'd say no to if he asked you to spread your legs, missy?'

Lady Helen drew in a quick breath to respond, but in an admirable demonstration of self-control she didn't do so. Nor did she look at the picture which she handed to St James. In it, a shirtless young man stood on the deck of a yacht, one hand on a spar as he adjusted the rigging. He was square-jawed and nice-looking, but slender like his father, not possessed of the rugged body or features that naturally came to mind when one hears the words a real man. St James turned over the photograph. Cambrey prepares for America's Cup – the lad's on his way had been written facetiously across it. It was written in the same hand as was the note from the desk.

'He had a sense of humour,' St James noted.

'He had everything.'

'May I keep the photograph? This note as well?'

'Do what you like. They're nothing to me without Mick.' Cambrey examined the office. Defeat was in the set of his shoulders; it lined a weary path across his face. 'We were on our way. The Spokesman was going to be the biggest paper in South Cornwall. Not just a weekly any longer. I wanted it. Mick wanted it. We were on our way. All of us.'

'Mick got on well with the staff? No troubles there?'

'They loved him. He'd made good on his own. Come back to the village. He was a hero to them, what they wanted to be.' Cambrey sharpened his voice. 'You can't think that someone on the staff would kill him. No-one from this office would have laid a hand on my son. They had no reason. He was changing the paper. He was making improvements. He was-'

'Getting ready to give someone the sack?'

'Bloody hell, who?'

St James looked at the desk closest to the window. A framed photograph of two young children sat on it. 'What was his relationship with your copy-editor? Is it Julianna Vendale?'

'Julianna?' Cambrey removed his cigarette, licked his lips.

'Was she one of his women? A former lover? Or the female half of an office seduction, about to be given the sack for not co-operating in Mick's quest to have his needs met?'

Cambrey barked a laugh, refusing to react to the manner in which St James had used his own words about his son to arrive at a more-than-logical and less-than-savoury motive for murder. No noble journalist going to his death over information or the protection of a source, but a squalid little episode of sexual harassment ending in a very sexual crime.

'Mick didn't need Julianna Vendale,' Cambrey said. 'He didn't have to go begging for what was spread out before him – hot, wet, and willing – everywhere he turned.'

In the street once more, they headed in the direction of the harbour car-park where Lady Helen had left the estate Austin. St James glanced at her as they walked. During the final minutes in the newspaper office, she'd said nothing, although the tension in her body and the fixed expression on her face articulated her reaction to Mick Cambrey's life and his death – not to mention his father – better than any words. The moment they left the building, however, she gave vent to disgust. She marched towards the carpark. St James could barely manage the pace. He only caught snatches of her diatribe.

'Some sort of sexual athlete… more like his score-keeper than his father… time to put a newspaper out since they were so busy getting their needs met?… every woman in Cornwall… no wonder to me – absolutely no wonder at all – that someone cut… I'd even consider doing it myself…' She was quite out of breath when she reached the car. So was he.

They leaned against it, directing their faces into a breeze that was pungent with the odours of kelp and fish. In the harbour just beneath them, hundreds of gulls circled above a small skiff, its morning catch flickering silver in the sun.

'Is that what you thought of me?' Lady Helen asked abruptly.

St James couldn't have been more surprised by the question. 'Helen, for God's sake-'

'Is it?' she demanded. 'Tell me. I want to know. Because, if it is, you can walk all the way back to Howenstow.'

'Then, how can I answer? I'll say of course not. You'll say I'm just saying that so I don't have to walk back to Howenstow. It's a no-win situation for me, Helen. I may as well start hobbling on my way right now.'

'Oh, get in,' she sighed.

He did so before she could change her mind. She joined him but didn't start the car at once. Instead she gazed through the dirty windscreen to the crusty walls of the harbour quay. A family walked together upon it, mother guiding an infant in a faded blue pushchair, father holding a toddler by the hand. They looked inordinately young to be parents.

'I kept telling myself to consider the source,' Lady Helen finally said. 'I kept saying: He's mourning, he can't know what he's saying, he can't hear what it sounds like. But I'm afraid I lost myself entirely when he asked me if I'd have spread my legs for Mick. I always wondered what that expression seeing red meant. Now I know. I wanted to throw myself at him and tear out his hair.'

'He didn't have much.'

That broke the tension. She laughed in resignation and started the car. 'What do you make of that note?'

St James removed the paper from his shirt pocket and turned it to the formal printing stamped diagonally across the front. 'Talisman Cafe. I wonder where that is?'

'Not far from the Anchor and Rose. Just up Paul Lane a bit. Why?'

'Because he couldn't have written this in the newspaper office. It hardly makes sense to use a sandwich paper with so much blank paper lying about. So he must have written it somewhere else. In the cafe or elsewhere if he'd taken the sandwich out. Actually, I was hoping the Talisman Cafe was in Paddington.' He told her about Tina Cogin.

Lady Helen nodded her head at the note. 'Do you think this has to do with her?'

'She's involved somehow, if Deborah's correct in her assumption that it was Mick Cambrey she saw in the hall outside that flat. But, if the Talisman Cafe is here in Nanrunnel, Mick must have worked this up locally.'

'With a local source? A local killer as well?'

'Possibly. But not necessarily. He was in and out of London. Everyone agrees to that. I can't think it would be that difficult to trace him back to Cornwall, especially if he did his travelling by train.'

'If he did have a local source of information, whoever it is could be in danger as well.'

'If the story is the motive for his murder.' St James returned the paper to his jacket pocket.

'I'd say it's more likely the other: payment for seducing another man's wife.' Lady Helen pulled out on to the Lamorna Road. It rose in a gentle slope past tourist flats and cottages, veering east to display the bright sea. 'It's more workable as a motive, considering what we know about Mick. Because how would a man feel, coming upon evidence that he cannot deny, evidence that tells him the woman he loves is giving herself to another man.'

St James turned away. He looked at the water. A fishing boat was chugging towards Nanrunnel, and even at this distance he could see the lobster-baskets hanging from its sides. 'He'd feel like killing, I expect,' he replied. He felt Lady Helen look towards him and knew she realized how he had taken her words. She would want to speak in order to ease the moment. He preferred to let it go and indicated that by saying to her, 'As to the other, Helen. What you asked about us, about how I felt when you and I were lovers… Of course not. You know that. I hope you always have.'

'I've not been down here in several years,' Lynley said as he and St James went through the gate in the Howenstow wall and began their descent into the woodland. 'Who knows what condition we'll find the place in, if it's not a ruin altogether? You know how it is. A few seasons abandoned and roofs cave in, beams rot, floors disintegrate. I was surprised to hear it was still standing at all.'

He was making conversation and he knew it, in the hope that by doing so he could vanquish the legion of memories that were waiting on the plain of his consciousness, ready to assault him, memories that were intimately associated with the mill and tied to a portion of his life from which he had walked away, making an obstinate vow – never to think of it again. Even now, as they approached the building and saw the tiles of its roof-line emerge through the trees, he could feel the first tentative foray of a recollection: just an image of his mother striding through the woods. But he knew that she was merely an illusion, trying her luck against his protective armour. He fought her off by pausing on the path, taking his time and lighting a cigarette.

'We came this way yesterday,' St James was answering. He walked on ahead for a few paces, stopping when he glanced back and saw that Lynley had fallen behind. 'The wheel's overgrown. Did you know?'

'I'm not surprised. That was always a problem, as I recall.' Lynley smoked pensively, liking the concrete feel of the cigarette between his fingers. He savoured the sharp taste of the tobacco and the fact that the cigarette in his hand gave him something to which he might attend with more concentration than was necessary.

'And Jasper thinks someone's using the mill? For what? Dossing?'

'He wouldn't say.'

St James nodded, looked thoughtful, walked on. No longer able to avoid it through idle conversation or cigarette-smoking or any other form of temporizing, Lynley followed.

Oddly enough, he found that the mill wasn't very much changed since he had last been there, as if someone had been caring for it. The exterior needed paint – patches of whitewash had worn completely through to the stone -and much of its woodwork was splintered, but the roof was all of one piece, and aside from a pane of glass that was missing from the single window on the upper floor the building looked sturdy enough to stand for another hundred years.

The two men climbed the old stone steps, their feet sliding into shallow grooves which spoke of the thousands of entries and exits made during the time that the mill was in operation. Its paint long ago faded and storm-washed to nothing, the door hung partially open. Its wood was swollen from seasons of rain, so the door no longer fit neatly into position. It gave way with a shriek at Lynley's push.

They entered, paused, took stock of what they saw. The bottom floor was nearly empty, illuminated by streaky shafts of sunlight that gained access through gaps in the shuttered windows. Against a far wall, some sacking lay in a disintegrating heap next to a stack of wooden crates. Beneath one of the windows, a stone mortar and pestle were cobwebbed over, while nearby a coil of rope hung from a peg, looking as if it hadn't been touched in half a century. A small stack of old newspapers stood in one corner of the room, and Lynley watched as St James went to inspect them.

'The Spokesman,' he said, picking one up. 'With some notations in the text. Corrections. Deletions. A new design for the masthead.' He tossed the paper down. 'Did Mick Cambrey know about this place, Tommy?'

'We came here as boys. I expect he hadn't forgotten it. But those papers look old. He can't have been here recently.'

'H'm. Yes. They're from a year ago April. But someone's been here more recently than that.' St James indicated several sets of footprints on the dusty floor. They led to a wall ladder that gave access to the mill loft and the gears and shafts which drove its great grindstone. St James examined the ladder-rungs, pulled on three of them to test their safety, and began an awkward ascent.

Lynley watched him make his slow way to the top, knowing quite well that St James would expect him to follow. He could not avoid doing so. Nor could he any longer avoid the force of reminiscence that the mill – and, more so, the loft above him – provoked. For, after ages of searching, she'd found him up there, where he had hidden from her and from the knowledge that he had come upon unexpectedly.

Dashing up through the garden from the sea, he'd only had a glimpse of the man passing before a first-floor window, a glance that gave him the impression of height and stature, a glance in which he saw only his father's paisley dressing-gown, a glance in which he hadn't bothered to think how impossible it was that his father – so ill – would even be out of bed, let alone sauntering round his mother's bedroom. He didn't think of that, only felt instead a sunshot bolt of joy as the words cured cured cured sang out in his mind and he ran up the stairs – pounded up the stairs calling to them both – and burst into his mother's room. Or at least tried to. But the door was locked. And, as he called out, his father's nurse hurried up the stairs, carrying a tray, admonishing him, telling him he would awaken the invalid. And he got only as far as saying, 'But Father's…' before he understood.

And then he called out to her in such a savage rage that she opened the door and he saw it all: Trenarrow wearing his father's dressing-gown, the covers on her bed in disarray, the clothing discarded hastily on the floor. The air was heavy with the pungent odour of intercourse. And only a dressing room and bath separated them from the room in which his father lay dying.

He'd flung himself mindlessly at Trenarrow. But he was only a slender boy of seventeen, no match for a man of thirty-one. Trenarrow hit him once, a slap on the face with his open palm, the sort of blow one uses to calm a hysterical woman. His mother had cried, 'Roddy, no!' and it was over.

She had found him in the mill. From the one small window in the loft, he watched her coming through the woodland, tall and elegant, just forty-one years old. And so very beautiful.

He should have been able to maintain his poise. The eldest son of an earl, after all, he should have possessed the strength of will and the dignity to tell her that he'd have to return to school and prepare for exams. It wouldn't matter whether she believed him. The only object was to be off, at once.

But he watched her approach and thought instead of how his father loved her, how he shouted for her – 'Daze! Darling Daze!' – whenever he walked into the house. His life had revolved round making her happy, and now he lay in his bedroom and waited for the cancer to eat away the rest of his body while she and Trenarrow kissed and clung and touched and…

He broke. She climbed the ladder, calling his name. He was more than ready for her.

'Whore,' he screamed. 'Are you crazy? Or just so itchy that anyone will do? Even someone with nothing more on his mind than sucking you a good one and laughing about it with his mates in the pub when he's done. Are you proud of that, whore? Are you fucking proud?'

When she hit him, the blow came completely by surprise because she had stood there, immobile, and accepted his abuse. But with his last question she struck him so hard with the back of her hand that he staggered against the wall, his lip split open by her diamond ring. Her face never changed. It was blank, carved in stone.

'You'll be sorry!' he screamed as she climbed down the ladder. 'I'll make you sorry! I'll make both of you sorry. I will!'

And he had done so, over and over again. How he had done so. 'Tommy?'

Lynley looked up to find St James watching him over the edge of the loft.

'You might want to see what's up here.'

'Yes. Of course.'

He climbed the ladder.

It had only taken a moment for St James to evaluate what he found in the loft. The mill shaft, its tremendous gears and its grindstone took up much of the space, but what was left gave mute evidence of the use to which the mill had been put most recently.

In the centre of the room stood a rusting card-table and one folding chair. This latter held a discarded T-shirt, long ago metamorphosed from white to grey, while on the surface of the former an antique postage scale measured the weight of a tarnished spoon and two dirty razor blades. Next to this was an open carton of small plastic bags.

St James watched as Lynley joined him and inspected these items, his features becoming more settled as he reached his own inescapable conclusion.

'Mick's been here more recently than last April, Tommy,' St James said. 'And I dare say his visits had nothing to do with the Spokesman.' He touched the postage scale lightly, watched the movement of the arrow that indicated weight. 'Perhaps we have a better idea why he died.'

Lynley shook his head. His voice was dark. 'This isn't Mick,' he said.

13

At half-past seven that evening, St James knocked on Deborah's bedroom door and entered to find her stepping back from the dressing table, her forehead wrinkled as she studied her appearance.

'Well,' she said doubtfully, 'I don't know.' She touched the necklace at her throat – a double strand of pearls – and her hand fell to the neckline of her dress where she fingered the material experimentally. It appeared to be silk, and its colour was an odd combination of grey and green, like the ocean on an overcast day. Her hair and skin were a contrast to this, and the result was more striking than she appeared to realize.

'A success,' St James said.

She smiled at his reflection in the mirror. 'Lord, I'm nervous. I keep telling myself that it's only a small dinner party with Tommy's family and a few of their friends. I keep telling myself that it doesn't matter in the least. But then I have visions of fumbling round with all this silverware. Simon, why on earth does it always come down to silverware?'

'The worst nightmare of a genteel society: which fork do I use when I eat the shrimp? The rest of life's problems seem inconsequential by comparison.'

'What shall I say to these people? Tommy did tell me there'd be a dinner tonight, but at the time I didn't think much about it. If I were only like Helen, I could chat amusingly about a thousand and one different topics. I could talk to anyone. It wouldn't even matter. But I'm not like Helen. Oh, I wish I were. Just for tonight. Perhaps she can pretend to be me and I can fade into the woodwork.'

'Hardly a plan to please Tommy.'

'I've managed to convince myself that I'll trip on the stairs or spill a glass of wine down the front of my dress or get caught on the table-cloth and pull off half the dishes when I get out of my chair. Last night I had a nightmare that my face had broken out in blisters and hives and people were saying, "This is the fiancee?" in funereal tones all round me.'

St James laughed at that and joined her at the dressing table where he peered into the mirror and studied her face. 'Not a blister anywhere. Not a hive in sight. As to those freckles, however…'

She laughed as well, such a pure sound, such a pleasure. It shot him back through time to memory. He stepped away.

'I've managed…' He reached in his jacket pocket for the photograph of Mick Cambrey which he handed to her. 'If you'll have a look at him.'

She did so, carrying the picture to the light. It was a moment before she answered.

'It's the same man.'

'Are you certain?'

'Fairly. May I take this with me and show it to Tina?'

He thought about this. Last night it had seemed an innocent plan to have Deborah verify Mick Cambrey's presence in London through the simple expedient of having Tina Cogin identify his photograph. But after today's conversation with Harry Cambrey, after seeing the cryptographic paper from the Talisman Cafe, after considering the potential motives behind the crime and how Tina Cogin fitted into any or all of them, he was not so sure about the role Deborah could play – or any role he wanted her to play – in investigating the crime and contacting those most closely caught up in it. Deborah seemed to sense his hesitation and presented him with a fait accompli.

‘I’ve spoken to Tommy about it,' she said. 'To Helen as well. We thought we'd take the train up in the morning – Helen and I – and go directly to the flat. So we should know something more about Mick Cambrey by the afternoon. Surely that shall be of help.'

He couldn't deny this, and she seemed to read agreement in his face. She said, 'Right. Good,' and put the photograph in the drawer of the bedside table with a that's that movement. As she did so, the bedroom door opened and Sidney wandered in, reaching with one hand over her shoulder to fiddle with the zip on her dress while with the other she aimlessly attempted to rearrange her tousled hair.

'These blasted Howenstow maids,' she was muttering. 'They flutter through my room – God knows they mean well – and I can't find a thing. Simon, will you…? Good Lord, you look wonderful in that suit. Is it new? Here. I can't seem to manage this blasted thing on my own.' She presented her back to her brother and, as he finished what she had begun with the zip, she looked at Deborah. 'And you look stunning, Deb. Simon, doesn't she look stunning? Oh, never mind. Why on earth would I ask you when the only thing you've found stunning in years is a patch of blood through a microscope? Or perhaps a bit of skin from beneath the fingernail of a corpse.' She laughed, turned, and patted her brother's cheek before going to the dressing table where she studied herself in the mirror and picked up a bottle of Deborah's perfume.

'So the maids have straightened everything up' – she continued with her original thought – 'and, of course, I can't find a thing. My perfume is utterly gone -may I borrow a splash of yours, Deb? – and just try to find my shoes! Why, I almost had to borrow a pair from Helen until I found them tucked in the very back of my wardrobe as if I'd no intention in the world of ever wearing them again.'

'An odd place for shoes,' St James pointed out sardonically. 'In the wardrobe.'

'He's laughing at me, Deborah,' Sidney said. 'But, if he didn't have your father keeping him together, there's no doubt in my mind what the result would be. Chaos. Complete. Utter. Infinite.' She bent and brought her face closer to the glass. 'The swelling's gone, thank God, although the scratches are stunning. Not to mention the bruise beneath my eye. I look just like a street brawler. D'you think anyone will mention it? Or shall we all just concentrate on keeping our upper lips stiff and our manners impeccable? You know the sort of thing. Eyes forward and no groping at anyone's thighs beneath the tablecloth.'

'Groping at thighs?' Deborah asked. 'Simon, you never told me. And I've been worrying about the silver!'

'The silver?' Sidney looked round from the mirror. 'Oh, you mean all the forks and knives? Pooh. Unless people start throwing them, don't give it a thought.' Unbidden, she fluffed up Deborah's hair, stepped back, frowned, played with it again. 'Where's Justin, d'you know? I've not seen him for ages today. He's probably worried I shall bite him again. I can't think why he reacted the way he did yesterday. I've bitten him before, although, now I think, the circumstances were a bit different.' She laughed light-heartedly. 'Well, if the two of us get into another row tonight, let's hope it's at the dinner-table. With all those knives and forks, we'll have plenty of weapons.'

Lynley found Peter in the smoking room on the ground floor of the house. Cigarette in hand, he was standing by the fireplace, his attention fixed upon a red fox that was mounted in a glass case above it. A compassionate taxidermist had thoughtfully poised the animal in the act of flight, just inches from a burrow that would have saved him. Other vulpine trophies had not been so fortunately enshrined, however. Their heads hung from plaques fastened intermittently between photographs on the room's panelled walls. Since the only light came from an arabesque brass chandelier, these latter foxes cast long shadows, accusatory wedges of darkness like reverse spotlights that emphasized a devotion to blood sports which no-one in the family had actually felt since before the First World War.

Seeing his brother's reflection in the glass case, Peter spoke without turning around. 'Why do you suppose no-one's ever taken this awful thing down from the mantel?'

'I think it was Grandfather's first successful hunt.'

'Why blood him when you can give him the poor creature as a prize?'

'That sort of thing.'

Lynley noted that his brother had removed the swastika from his ear, replacing it with a single gold stud. He wore grey trousers, a white shirt, a loosely knotted tie – and although the clothes were overlarge, at least they were clean. And he had put on shoes, if not socks. This seemed cause enough for fleeting gratification, and Lynley briefly considered the value and the wisdom of confronting his brother – as he knew he had to be confronted eventually – at a moment when Peter's appearance suggested concession, compromise, and the promise of change.

Peter tossed his cigarette into the fireplace and opened the drinks cabinet that was a hidden feature of the mantel beneath the fox.

'This was one of my little adolescent secrets,' he chuckled as he poured himself a tumbler of whisky. 'Jasper showed it to me when I turned seventeen.'

'He showed me as well. A rite of passage, I suppose.'

'D'you think Mother knew?' 'I imagine so.'

'What a disappointment. To think one's clever and to find out just the opposite.' He turned from the fireplace for the first time and held his glass up in a rakish salute. 'The best, Tommy. Weren't you lucky to have found her.'

At that, Lynley noticed his brother's eyes. They were unnaturally bright. He felt a twinge of apprehension. Stifling it, he merely said thank you, and watched as Peter wandered to the desk that abutted the wide bay window. There, he began to play with the items arranged on the leather-edged blotter, spinning the letter opener on its ivory handle, lifting the top of an empty silver inkstand, joggling a rack of cherrywood pipes. Still sipping his whisky, he picked up a photograph of their grandparents and yawned as he idly studied their faces.

Seeing this and knowing it for what it was – an attempt to construct a barrier of indifference – Lynley realized there was no point in temporizing. 'I'd like to ask you about the mill.'

Peter replaced the photograph and picked at a worn spot on the back of the armchair that sat before the desk. 'What about the mill?'

'You've been using it, haven't you?'

'I haven't been there in ages. I've been by it, of course, to get down to the cove. But I've not been inside. Why?'

'You know the answer to that.'

Peter's face remained blank as Lynley spoke, but a muscle spasm pulled at the corner of his mouth. He made his way to a row of university photographs that decorated one of the walls. He began gliding from one to the next as if he were seeing them for the very first time.

'Every Lynley for one hundred years,' he remarked, 'crewing at Oxford. What a black sheep I've been.' He came to a blank spot on the wall and touched the palm of his hand to the panel. 'Even Father had his day, didn't he, Tommy? But of course we can't have his picture here. It wouldn't do if Father were able to look down from the walls and observe our wicked ways.'

Lynley refused to allow the honeyed words to provoke him. 'I'd like to talk about the mill.'

Peter threw back the rest of his whisky, put his glass on a lowboy, and continued his perusal. He stopped before the most recent photograph and flicked his index finger against his brother's picture. His nail snapped sharply upon the glass like a slap in miniature.

'Even you, Tommy. You've fitted the mould. A Lynley to be proud of. You're a regular swell.'

Lynley felt his chest tighten. 'I've no control over the kind of life you've chosen to lead in London,' he said, hoping to sound reasonable and knowing how poor a job he made of it. 'You've chucked Oxford? Fine. You've your own digs? Fine. You've taken up with this… with Sasha? Fine. But not here, Peter. I won't have this business at Howenstow. Is that clear?'

Peter turned from the wall, cocking his head slightly. 'You won't have it? You drop into our lives once or twice a year to announce what you will and won't have, is that it? And this is just one of those momentous occasions.'

'How often I'm here makes no difference to anything. I'm responsible for Howenstow, for every person in the grounds. And I've no intention of putting up with the sort of filth-'

'Oh, I see. Some local drug action's going on at the mill, and you've placed me at the centre in your best DI fashion. Well. Nice job. Have you dusted for prints? Found a lock of my hair? Did I leave behind spittle for you to analyse?' Peter shook his head in eloquent disgust. 'You're a fool. If I want to use, I sure as hell won't go all the way down to the mill. I've nothing to hide. From you or from anyone.'

'There's more than using going on, and you know it. You're in over your head.'

'What's that supposed to mean?'

The disingenuous question rubbed Lynley raw. 'You're bringing it onto the estate. That's what it means. You're cutting it in the mill. That's what it means. You're taking it to London. To use. To sell. Have I painted the picture well enough for you? God in heaven, Peter, if Mother knew, it would kill her.'

'And wouldn't that be convenient for you? No more worrying about whether she's going to disgrace you by running off with Roderick. No more wondering how much time he's been spending in her bed. If she'd only have the good grace to drop dead because of me, you might even celebrate by bringing Father's photographs back. But that'd be a tough one, wouldn't it, Tommy? Because you'd have to stop acting like such a bleeding little prig and how on earth could you ever manage it?'

'Don't try to avoid the issue by bringing up all that.'

'Oh no! Avoidance. What a heinous crime! Another sin I've committed. Another black mark on my soul.' Peter took the university picture from the wall, tossing it in his brother's direction. It landed with a clatter against the legs of a chair. 'You're completely unsullied, aren't you, Tommy? Why can't I just follow your faultless example?'

'I don't want a row with you, Peter.'

'It's delicious. Drugs, adultery and fornication. All in one family. Who knows what else we'd have to work with if only Judy were here as well. But, then, she's dabbled a bit in adultery herself, hasn't she, Tommy? Like mother, like daughter. That's what I say. And what about you? Too noble to have it off with some bloke's wife if she strikes your fancy? Too moral? Too ethical? I can't believe that.'

'This is getting us nowhere.'

'What a blight we must be to you. Living hand-in-glove with the seven deadly sins and enjoying every one of them. Where do we do the worse damage? To your bloody title or your precious career?'

'You'd say anything if you believed it had the power to hurt me, wouldn't you?'

Peter laughed, but he was gripping the back of the armchair tightly. 'To hurt you? Is that what you actually think? I can't believe it. As far as I know, the world still revolves round the sun, not round you. Or hadn't you noticed? There are actually people who lead their lives without the slightest worry about how their behaviour affects the eighth Earl of Asherton, and I'm one of them, Tommy. I don't dance to your tune. I never have. I never will.' His features contorted with an angry bitterness. 'What I really love about this whole sodding conversation is the implication that you care about anything beyond yourself. About Howenstow. About Mother. About me. What difference would it make to you if this place burned to the ground? What difference would it make if both of us died in the flames? You'd be free of us then. You'd never have to worry about playing the role. Dutiful son. Loving brother. You make me sick.' Peter fumbled in his pocket, bringing out a packet of cigarettes. But his hands were shaking so badly that he dropped them to the floor where they spilled out on to the carpet.

'Peter,' Lynley said. 'Peter, let me help you. You can't go on this way. You know that. You must.'

'And if I die – what of it? Then you'll only have Mother and Roderick to contend with. She's invited him tonight, you know. What an insult to the earl! I think she's actually decided to declare independence.'

'They don't matter. You know that. Let me help you. Please.'

'Help? You?' Peter bent and retrieved his cigarettes. It took him four tries with a match before he was able to light one. 'You'd sully your pretty reputation to salvage mine? What a laugh that is! What's it to you what happens to me, as long as your own name stays pure?' 'You're my brother.'

Peter drew in on his cigarette deeply before mashing it out in an ashtray. 'To hell with your brotherhood.' He started for the door.

Lynley grabbed his arm as he passed. 'That's easy for you, isn't it? To hell with brotherhood. To hell with everyone. Because a commitment to people takes you away from dope. And you can't bear that.'

'You talk to me of commitments? You filthy hypocrite. When did you ever commit to anyone besides yourself?'

'Seeing the mill was a revelation today. You ought to be proud of what you've become.'

'A smuggler! A dealer! An addict! What a nice little footnote in the family history. What a blackguard! What a fiend!' Peter's voice spiralled. He pulled himself from his brother's grasp. 'So have me arrested. Or, better yet, arrest me yourself. Haul me into the Met. Turning in your own brother should make your career. Here.' He extended his hands, wrists together. 'Shackle me up. Take me away tonight and have your promotion tomorrow.'

Lynley watched the play of emotion on his brother's face. He tried to tell himself that this confrontation had its roots in Peter's addiction. But he knew quite well that his own past behaviour, his obstinate pride, and his need to punish had led inevitably to this ugly outburst. Still, he struggled against the desire to lash out in return.

'Listen to yourself. Look at what it's doing to you. Look at what you've become.'

'I've become nothing! It's where I began. It's what I always was.'

'In your own eyes perhaps. But in no-one else's.'

'In everyone's eyes. I've spent a lifetime trying to measure up and I've chucked it. Do you hear? I've chucked it all and I'm glad of it. So leave me alone, will you? Go back to your nice little townhouse and your nice little life. Make yourself a nice little marriage with a nice little wife. Have some nice little babies to carry on your name and leave me alone! Just leave me alone!' His face was empurpled; his body shook.

'Yes. I can see that's best.' Lynley stepped past his brother only to see that their mother, white-faced, had come to the doorway. How long she had been standing there, he couldn't have said.

'My dear, my dear, It was simply divine.' Mrs Sweeney divided the final word into two, with a dramatic pause between the syllables, as if in the hope of building anticipation in her audience over how her sentence would end, be it with approbation or censure. Plorable, her tone implied, was as likely a conclusion as vine.

She was seated directly across from St James, midway down the length of the linen-covered dining table at which were gathered a party of eighteen. They constituted an interesting assortment of Lynley relations, Cornish notables, and community members who had known the family for years. The Reverend Mr Sweeney and his wife belonged to this latter group.

Mrs Sweeney leaned forward. Candlelight glimmered across the astounding wide field of her chest which was amply revealed by a remarkable decolletage. St James wondered idly what excuse Mrs Sweeney had concocted for wearing such a gown this evening. Its cut was certainly not what one generally expected from a minister's wife, and she wasn't in the role of Beatrice now. Then he noticed the damp, longing and agitated glances which Mr Sweeney – three seats away and attempting to converse politely with the wife of the Plymouth MP – was casting in his wife's direction. He put the question to rest.

Fork raised, a bit of salmon pastry caught on its tines, Mrs Sweeney continued. 'My dear, the entire cast was simply thrilled with your photographs. Dare we hope to make it a yearly event?' She was speaking to Deborah, who sat on Lynley's right at the head of the table. 'Just think of it. An annual collection of photographs with our own Lord Asherton. In a different costume every time.' She trilled a little laugh. 'The actors, I mean. Of course. Not Lord Asherton.'

'But why not Tommy in costume as well?' Lady Helen said. 'I think it's high time he joined the Nanrunnel Players and stopped hiding his talent under a bushel.'

'Oh, we could hardly dare to hope or to think…' Mr Sweeney tore his attention from his wife's cleavage long enough to take up this thought.

'I can just see it,' Sidney laughed. 'Tommy as Petruchio.'

'I've told him time and again it was a mistake to read history at Oxford,' Lady Helen said. 'He's always had a flair for the stage. Haven't you, Tommy darling?'

'Might we really …?' Mr Sweeney faltered, caught between the obvious teasing of Lynley's friends and his own unspoken hope that there might be a margin of reality behind Lady Helen's words. He said, as if it were a possible inducement to Lynley's becoming one of the local thespians, 'We have so often asked Dr Trenarrow to join us under the lights.'

'A pleasure I must avoid,' Trenarrow said.

'And those you don't avoid?'

Peter Lynley asked the question, winking round the table in a manner that suggested skeletons were about to leap out of the cupboards while the dead came springing back to life. He poured more of the white burgundy into his wineglass and did the same for Sasha. Both of them drank. Sasha smiled down at her plate as if enjoying a secret joke. Neither of them had touched their salmon.

A brief hiatus came upon the conversation. Trenarrow broke it. 'High blood pressure keeps me from many pleasures, I'm afraid. Such are the failings of middle age.'

'You don't have the look of a man who has failings,' Justin Brooke said. He and Sidney had twined their hands on the table top. St James wondered how either of them was managing to eat.

'We all have failings,' Trenarrow replied. 'Some of us are fortunate in that we manage to keep them better hidden than others. But we all of us have them. It's the way of the world.'

Hodge, assisted by two of the dailies who had been induced to stay into the evening, emerged from the warming room as Dr Trenarrow spoke. The introduction of a second course arrested attention. If Peter Lynley had sought the embarrassment of others with his sly question, food proved to be eminently more interesting to the assembled group.

'You're not sealing Wheal Maen!' The exclamation rose like a wail, emitted from Lady Augusta, Lynley's maiden aunt. His father's sister had always maintained a proprietary interest and watchful eye over Howenstow. As she spoke, she cast a look of outrage upon John Penellin on her right, who remained detached from the conversation.

St James had been surprised to see Penellin among the guests. Surely a death in the family would have been excuse enough to allow him to beg off a dinner party in which he appeared to have little interest. The estate manager had spoken less than ten words during drinks in the hall, spending most of the time standing at the window and gazing gravely in the direction of the lodge. However, from what he had seen and heard last night, St James knew that Penellin had no love for his son-in-law. So perhaps it was his indifference to Mick Cambrey which prompted him to take part in the gathering. Or perhaps it was an act of loyalty to the Lynleys. Or a behaviour he wished to be seen as such.

Lady Augusta was continuing. She was a woman well skilled in the art of dinner-table dialogue, devoting half her time to the right, the other to the left, and throwing a remark right down the centre whenever she deemed it appropriate. 'It's bad enough that Wheal Maen must be closed. But cows were actually grazing in the park when I arrived! Good heavens, I couldn't believe my eyes. My father must be spinning in his grave. I don't understand the reason, Mr Penellin.'

Penellin looked up from his wineglass. 'The mine's too close to the road. The main shaft's flooded. It's safer to seal it.'

'Piffle!' Lady Augusta proclaimed. 'Those mines are individual works of art. You know as well as I that at least two of our mines have beam-engines that are perfectly intact. People want to see that sort of thing, you know. People pay to see it.'

'Guided tours, Aunt?' Lynley asked.

'Just the thing!'

'With everyone wearing those wonderful Cyclops hats with little torches attached to their foreheads,' Lady Helen said.

'Yes, of course.' Lady Augusta rapped the table sharply with her fork. 'We don't want the Trust here, sniffing round for another Lanhydrock, putting everyone out of house and home, do we? Do we?' She gave a quick nod, accepting no response as agreement. 'Quite. We don't. But what other way do we have of avoiding those little beasts than by dealing with the tourist trade ourselves, my dears? We must make repairs, we must open the mines, we must allow tours. Children love tours. They'll be wild to go down. They'll give their parents no peace until they've had a look.'

'It's an interesting idea,' Lynley said. 'But I'll only consider it on one condition.'

'What's that, Tommy dear?'

'That you run the tea shop.' 'That I…' Her mouth closed abrupdy. 'In a white cap,' Lynley went on. 'Dressed as a milkmaid.'

Lady Augusta pressed against the back of her chair and laughed with the heartiness of a woman who knew she'd been bested, if only for the moment. 'You naughty boy,' she said and dipped into her soup.

Conversation ebbed and flowed through the remainder of the meal. St James caught only snatches here and there. Lady Asherton and Cotter talking about a large brass charger, caparisoned and prancing, that hung on the room's east wall; Lady Helen relating to Dr Trenarrow an amusing tale of mistaken identity at a long-ago house-party attended by her father; Justin Brooke and Sidney laughing together over a remark Lady Augusta made about Lynley's childhood; the Plymouth MP and Mrs Sweeney wandering in a maze of confusion in which he discussed the need for economic development and she responded with a dreamy reverie about bringing the film industry to Cornwall apparently in order to feature herself in a starring role; Mr Sweeney – when his eyes were not feasting upon his spouse – murmuring vague responses to the MP's wife who was speaking about each of her grandchildren in turn. Only Peter and Sasha kept their voices low, their heads together, their attention on each other.

Thus the company moved smoothly towards the end of the meal. This was heralded by the presentation of the pudding, a flaming concoction that looked as if its intended purpose was to conclude the dinner by means of a conflagration. When it had been duly served and devoured, Lynley got to his feet. He brushed back his hair in a boyish gesture.

'You know this already,' he said. 'But I'd like to make it official tonight by saying that Deborah and I shall marry in December.' He touched her bright hair lighdy as a murmur of congratulations rose and fell. 'What you don't know, however, because we only decided late this afternoon, is that we'll be coming home permanently to Cornwall then. To make our life here – have our children grow up here – with you.'

It was an announcement which, considering the reaction, no-one had been prepared to hear. Least of all had St James expected it. He had an impression only of a general cry of surprise and then a series of images played quickly before him: Lady Asherton saying her son's name and nothing more; Trenarrow turning abruptly to Lynley's mother; Deborah pressing her cheek to Lynley's hand in a movement so quick it might have gone unnoticed; and then Cotter studying St James with an expression whose meaning was unmistakable. He's expected this all along, St James thought.

There was no time to dwell upon what it would mean -how it would feel – to have Deborah nearly three hundred miles away from the home she'd known all her life. For champagne glasses had been distributed, and Mr Sweeney was enthusiastically seizing the moment. He got to his feet, eager to be the first to embrace such welcome news. Only the Second Coming could have given him more pleasure.

'Then, I must say…' Clumsily he reached for his glass. 'Do let me toast you both. To have you with us again, to have you home, to have you…'He relinquished the attempt to find an appropriate sentiment and merely raised his glass and burbled, 'Simply wonderful,' before he sat down.

Other congratulations followed, and with them were voiced the inevitable questions about engagement and wedding and future life. The meal could have disintegrated at that point into one large display of bonhomie, but Peter Lynley put an end to the promise of that happening.

He stood, holding his champagne glass at arm's length towards his brother. He waved it unevenly. Only the shape of the glass prevented the wine from sloshing out. 'Then, a toast,' he said, drawing out the last word. He leaned one hand on Sasha's shoulder for support. She glanced furtively at Lynley and then said something in a low voice which Peter disregarded. 'To the perfect brother,' he announced. 'Who has managed somehow after searching the world over – not to mention doing a fair degree of sampling the goods as he went. Right, Tommy? – to find the perfect woman with whom he can now have the perfect life. What a damned lucky fellow Lord Asherton is.' He gulped his drink noisily and fell back into his chair.

That cuts it, St James thought. He looked to see how Lynley would handle the matter, but his eyes came to rest upon Deborah instead. Face pinched, she ducked her head. No matter that her humiliation was both unwarranted and unnecessary considering its source, the fact of it alone provided a spur. St James pushed his own chair back and rose awkwardly.

'The issue of perfection is always open to debate,' he said. 'I'm not eloquent enough to argue it here. I drink instead to Tommy – oldest of my friends – and to Deborah – dearest companion of my exile. My own life has been richer indeed for having had both of you part of it.'

A swell of general approbation followed his words, on the heel of which the Plymouth MP lifted his glass and managed to turn his own toast into a speech cataloguing his accomplishments and his steadfast, if highly unlikely, belief in the reincarnation of the Cornish mining industry, a topic upon which Lady Augusta waxed wildly enthusiastic for several more minutes. At the end of this time, it seemed clear that, whatever damage Peter Lynley had attempted to do, the company seemed intent upon ignoring him altogether – a determination fortified by

Lady Asherton, who announced with a resolute air of good cheer that coffee, port, and all the postprandial et ceteras would be in the drawing room.

Unlike the dining room with its silver candelabra and unobtrusive wall sconces, the drawing room was brightly lit by its two chandeliers. Here, a serving table had been laid with a coffee service and another with brandy, balloon glasses, liqueurs. With his own coffee in hand, St James made his way to a Hepplewhite settee which was centrally located in the room. He sat and placed his coffee on the side-table. He didn't really want it, couldn't think why he had taken one in the first place.

'My dear' – Lady Augusta had buttonholed Deborah by the grand piano – 'I want to hear about every change you've got planned for Howenstow.'

'Change?' Deborah asked her blankly.

'The nurseries need to be updated like mad. You'll know that already.'

'Actually, I haven't had a chance to think much about it.'

'I know you have this charming little hobby of photography – Daze told me all about it last week – but I'm glad to say you don't look at all the type of woman who's going to put off having children in favour of a career.' As if seeking affirmation for her statement, she stepped back and looked Deborah over, like a breeder assessing the potential of a mare.

'I'm a professional photographer,' Deborah told her, stressing the adjective politely.

Lady Augusta waved that off like a fly. 'You won't let that get in the way of the children.'

Dr Trenarrow, passing by, came to Deborah's rescue. 'Times have changed, Augusta. We no longer live in an age where merit is determined by one's ability to reproduce. And thank God for that. Think of the limitless possibilities presented in eschewing procreation. No more thinning of familial gene pools. A future without bleeders. No Saint Vitus' dance.'

'Oh, rubbish, you scientists,' was Lady Augusta's riposte, but she was abashed enough to seek another conversational prey and headed in the direction of John Penellin who was standing by the doorway to the Elizabethan gallery, brandy in hand.

St James watched her close in on the estate manager, her fluttering scarf and ample posterior making her resemble nothing so much as the stern of a ship under sail. He heard her call out, 'Those mines, Mr Penellin,' before he turned away to find Deborah had come to join him.

'Please don't get up.' She sat beside him. She was taking neither coffee nor liqueur.

'You've survived.' He smiled. 'Even with the silver. Not a single mistake, as far as I could tell.'

'Everyone's been more than kind,' she said. 'Well, nearly everyone. Peter was…' She looked round the room as if in search of Lynley's brother, and she sighed, perhaps feeling relief that he and Sasha had left the party altogether. 'Did I look petrified when I first came downstairs? I must have. Everyone was treating me like porcelain before dinner.'

'Not at all.' St James reached for his coffee, but merely turned the cup aimlessly in its saucer. He wondered why Deborah had joined him like this. Her place was with Lynley who, along with Justin Brooke and Sidney, was steeped in conversation with the Plymouth MP. He heard their laughter, heard Brooke say, 'Too right,' heard one of them comment on the Labour Party. Sidney said something about the Prime Minister's hair. There was another burst of laughter.

Next to him, Deborah stirred, but didn't speak. It was unlikely that she had joined him for the sake of companionship or a quick post-mortem of the evening's events. Yet this reticence was out of character as well. He looked up from his contemplation of her engagement ring – a heavy emerald set off with diamonds – and found her studying him with an intensity that brought the heat to his face. This sudden loss of his habitual detachment was as disconcerting as was her unnatural diffidence. We're a fine pair, he thought.

'Why did you call me that, Simon? In the dining room?'

So much for diffidence. 'It seemed the right thing. After all, it's the truth. You were there through everything, both you and your father.'

'I see.' Her hand lay next to his. He had noticed this before but had chosen to ignore it, making a deliberate effort not to move away from her like a man afraid of the potential for contact. His fingers were relaxed. He willed them to be so. And although a single movement, wearing the guise of inadvertence, would have been sufficient to cover her hand with his own he took care to maintain between them an appropriately discreet and utterly hypocritical four inches of beautifully upholstered Hepplewhite.

The gesture, when it came, was hers. She touched his hand lightly, an innocent contact that broke through his barriers. The movement meant nothing; it promised even less. He knew that quite well. But despite this his fingers caught hers and held.

'I do want to know why you said it,' she repeated.

There was no point. It could only lead nowhere. Or, worse, it could lead to an unbridled bout of suffering he'd prefer not to face.

'Simon-'

'How can I answer you? What can I possibly say that won't make us both miserable and end up leading to another row? I don't want that. And I can't think you do.'

He told himself that he would adhere to every resolution he had made regarding Deborah. She was committed, he thought. Love and honour bound her to another. He would have to take solace in the fact that, in time, they might once again be the friends they had been in the past, taking pleasure in each other's company and wanting nothing more. A dozen different lies rose in his mind about what was right and possible in their situation, about duty, responsibility, commitment and love, about the anchors of ethics and morals that held each of them fast. And still he wanted to speak, because the reality was that anything – even anger and the risk of estrangement -was better than the void.

A sudden commotion at the drawing room door precluded the possibility of further conversation. Hodge was speaking urgently to Lady Asherton while Nancy Cambrey pulled upon his arm as if she would drag him back into the corridor. Lynley went to join them. St James did likewise. In the hush that descended upon the company, Nancy's voice rose.

'You can't. Not now.'

'What is it?' Lynley asked.

'Inspector Boscowan, my lord,' Hodge replied in a low voice. 'He's down in the hall. Wanting to speak to John Penellin.'

Only part of Hodge's statement proved true, for as he spoke Boscowan stepped into the drawing room doorway as if he expected some sort of trouble. He looked the group over, his face apologetic, and his eyes came to rest upon John Penellin. It was clear that a duty which gave him no pleasure had brought him to interrupt the party.

The room was absolutely still. John Penellin walked towards them. He handed his brandy to Dr Trenarrow.

'Edward,' he said to Boscowan with a nod. Nancy had faded into the corridor where she slumped against a mule chest and watched the encounter. 'Perhaps we can go to the estate office.'

'There's no need for that, John,' Boscowan said. 'I'm sorry.'

The implication behind the apology was obvious. Boscowan would never have come to Howenstow in this manner unless he was certain that he had his man.

'Are you arresting me?' Penellin asked the question in a manner that sounded at once both resigned and curiously without panic, as if he'd been preparing himself for this eventuality all along.

Boscowan glanced around. Every eye was fastened on the little group. He said, 'Out here, please,' and walked into the corridor. Penellin, St James and Lynley followed. Another plain-clothes policeman was waiting at the top of the stairs. He was bulky, with the physique of a boxer, and he watched them warily, arms crossed, hands balled into fists.

Boscowan faced Penellin, his back to the other officer. In speaking next, he crossed the line that divides police and civilian, breaking rules and regulations. But he didn't seem to be fazed by this, his words having their roots in friendship rather than in duty.

'You need a solicitor, John. We've the first of the forensic reports. It doesn't look good.' And then again, in a way that left no doubt as to Boscowan's sincerity, 'Truly, I'm sorry.'

'Fingerprints? Fibres? Hairs? What have you?' Lynley asked.

'The lot.'

'Dad's been inside the cottage in the past,' Nancy said.

Boscowan shook his head. St James knew what that sign of negation meant. Penellin's fingerprints in the cottage could indeed be argued away by the fact that he'd been there before. But, if Boscowan had fibres and hairs in his possession, the probability was that they'd come from one source: Mick Cambrey's corpse. If that was the case, the reality was that Penellin had indeed lied about his whereabouts the previous night.

'If you'll come now,' Boscowan said in a more normal tone of voice. This appeared to be the signal for the other policeman. He walked to Penellin's side and took his arm. In a moment it was over.

As their steps faded down the stairs, Nancy Cambrey fainted. Lynley caught her before she hit the floor.

'Get Helen,' he said to St James, and when Lady Helen was with them they took Nancy down to Lady Asherton's day room in the east wing of the house. It offered the double benefit of being both private and comfortable. A few minutes among its family memorabilia and friendly furniture would no doubt restore Nancy to herself, Lynley decided. And he allowed himself a moment of gratitude that his mother would carry on upstairs without him until such a time as she could deal with John Penellin's arrest privately and face the turmoil that would arrive in its wake.

St James had possessed the foresight to bring the whisky decanter from the drawing room. He pressed a glass upon Nancy. Lady Helen steadied her hand. She'd only taken a tiny sip when a tentative knock sounded on the door. It was followed, unaccountably, by Justin Brooke's voice.

'May I have a word?' He didn't wait for a response. Rather, he opened the door, popped his head inside, and said nothing until he fixed upon Lynley. 'May I have a word with you?'

'A word?' Lynley demanded incredulously, wondering what on earth Brooke could possibly want. 'What the devil-?'

'It's important,' Brooke said. He looked earnestly to the others as if for support and found it in the least likely quarter. Lady Helen spoke.

‘I’ll take Nancy back to the lodge, Tommy. It doesn't make sense to keep her here. She'll need to see to the baby, I'm sure.'

Lynley waited until both women were gone before he spoke to Brooke, who took a balloon-backed chair unbidden, straddled it backwards, and folded his arms along its top rail. Lynley leaned against his mother's desk. St James stood by the fireplace.

'What is it that you wanted?' Lynley said to Brooke. He was impatient with the interruption and too preoccupied to care much about hiding it.

'It's a private matter, concerning your family.' Brooke canted his head towards St James, an indication of his desire that this conference be held out of the other man's presence. St James made a move to go.

'No, it's fine,' Lynley said to him, finding himself perversely unwilling to allow Brooke the degree of control that would be implied by St James' departure. There was something about the man that he didn't like: an ease of manner contravened by a flicker of malice in his expression.

Brooke reached for the decanter of whisky and Nancy's glass that were standing on a circular table next to his chair. He poured himself some, saying, 'Very well, then. I could use a drink. You?' He held the decanter first to Lynley, then to St James. There were no other glasses in the room, so the invitation was meaningless, as Brooke no doubt knew. He drank appreciatively, said, 'Good stuff,' and poured himself more. 'Word came back to the drawing room fast enough that Penellin's been arrested. But Penellin couldn't have killed Mick Cambrey.'

It was certainly not the sort of pronouncement which Lynley had been expecting. 'If you know something about this affair, you need to tell the police. It's only indirectly my concern.'

Brooke said, 'It's more direct than you think.'

'What are you talking about?'

'Your brother.'

The clink of decanter upon glass seemed unnaturally grating and loud as Brooke took more whisky. Lynley refused to think the patently unthinkable or to draw the conclusion for which those two simple words asked.

'People in the drawing room just now were saying Penellin had an argument with Cambrey before his death. That was the main cause for suspicion, they said. Someone had heard about it in the village today.'

'I don't see what this has to do with my brother.'

'Everything, I'm afraid. Mick Cambrey didn't have an argument with Penellin. Or, if he did, it didn't compare with the row he had with Peter.'

Lynley stared at the man. He felt a sudden urge to throw him from the room and recognized how closely the desire was tied to an incipient dread and to the unwanted realization that somehow this piece of information was not a surprise to him.

'What are you talking about? How do you know?'

'I was with him,' Brooke replied. 'And it was after Penellin. Cambrey said that much.'

Lynley reached for a chair. 'The story, please,' he said with marked courtesy.

'Right.' Brooke nodded his approval. 'Sid and I had a bit of a blow-up yesterday. She didn't much want to see me last night. So I went into the village. With Peter.'

'Why?'

'For something to do, mainly. Peter was low on cash and he wanted to borrow some. He said he knew a bloke who'd be dealing with money that night, so we went to see him. It was Cambrey.'

Lynley's eyes narrowed. 'What did he need money for?'

Brooke tossed a look in St James' direction before he replied, as if he expected a reaction from that quarter. 'He wanted some coke.'

'And he took you with him? Wasn't that rather shortsighted?'

'It was safe enough. Peter knew he could trust me.' Brooke seemed to feel a more direct revelation was in order. 'Look, I'd a stash with me yesterday, and I'd given him some. It was gone. We wanted more. But I didn't have any more money than he did, so we were on the look for it. We wanted to get high.'

'I see. You've managed to get to know my brother with remarkable ease this weekend.'

'People get to know others when their interests are the same.'

'Quite. Yes.' Lynley ignored the need to clench his fist, to strike. 'Did Mick lend him money?'

'He wouldn't hear of it. That's what started the row. Peter could see it – I could see it – right there on his desk in six or ten stacks. But he wouldn't part with as much as two quid.'

'What happened then?'

Brooke grimaced. 'Hell, I didn't even know this bloke. When Mick and Peter started in, I just left the place. I would have liked the dope, yes. But I didn't want to get into a brawl.'

'What did you do when you left?'

'Wandered round a bit till I found the pub. Had a drink and hitched a ride back later.'

'Hitched a ride? With whom?'

'Farmer and his wife.' Brooke grinned and added unnecessarily, 'By the smell of them. Dairy, I'd guess.' 'And Peter?'

'I left him arguing with Cambrey.' 'Where was Sasha all this time?'

'Here. She and Peter'd gone round about a promise he'd made in London to get her some dope on his own. I think she was waiting for him to make good.'

'What time did you leave the cottage?' St James asked. His expression was stony.

Brooke looked at the room's white cornice, fixated upon its egg and dart pattern. Thinking, remembering, or playing at both. 'It was ten when I got to the pub. I remember that. I checked the time.'

'And did you see Peter again that night?'

'Didn't see him until this evening.' Again Brooke grinned. This time it was a just-between-us-boys sort of look, one that claimed camaraderie and understanding. 'I came back here, made it up with Sid, and spent the night occupied in her room. Fairly well occupied, as a matter of fact. Sid's that way.' He pushed himself to his feet and concluded by saying, 'I thought it best to tell you about your brother, rather than the police. It seemed to me that you'd know what to do. But if you think I should ring them…'

He let the statement slide. All of them knew it was meaningless. Nodding at them both, he left the room.

When the door closed behind him, Lynley felt in his pocket for his cigarette case. Once it was in his grasp, however, he looked at it curiously, saw how it winked in the light, and wondered how it had come to find its way into his hand. He didn't want to smoke.

'What shall…?' The two words emerged hoarsely. He tried again. 'What shall I do, St James?'

'Talk to Boscowan. What else can you do?'

'He's my brother. Would you have me play Cain?'

'Shall I do it for you, then?'

At that, Lynley looked at his friend. He saw how implacable St James' features had become. He knew that there was no reasonable alternative. He saw that even as he searched for one.

'Give me till the morning,' he said.

14

Deborah checked the room in a cursory fashion to make sure she hadn't forgotten anything. She locked her suitcase and pulled it from the bed, deciding, as she did so, that it was just as well they were leaving Cornwall. The weather had changed during the night, and yesterday's dazzling cobalt sky was the colour of slate this morning. Sharp gusts of wind coughed intermittently against the windows, and from one which she had left partially open came the unmistakable smell of rain-laden air. However, other than the occasional rattling of window panes and the creak of the heavy branches of a beech tree a short distance from the house, the morning brought no additional sounds, for instinctively recognizing the approach of a storm the clamorous gulls and cormorants had vanished, seeking shelter inland. 'Miss?'

At the doorway stood one of the Howenstow maids, a young woman with a cloud of dark hair that quite overwhelmed a triangular face. Her name was Caroline, Deborah recalled, and like the other daily help in the house she wore no uniform, merely a navy skirt, white blouse and flat-heeled shoes. She was snug and neat-looking, and she carried a tray which she used to gesture as she spoke.

'His lordship thought you'd want something before you leave for the train,' Caroline said, taking the food to a small tripod table that stood near the fireplace. 'He says you've just thirty minutes.'

'Does Lady Helen know that? Is she up?'

'Up, dressing, and having her breakfast as well.'

As if in affirmation of this, Lady Helen wandered into the room, simultaneously engaged in all three activities. She was in her stockinged feet, she was munching on a wedge of toast, and she was holding up two pairs of shoes at arm's length.

'I can't decide,' she said as she scrutinized them critically. 'The suede are more comfortable, but the green are rather sweet, aren't they? I've had them both on and off a dozen times this morning.'

'I should recommend the suede,' Caroline said.

'H'm.' Lady Helen dropped one suede shoe to the floor, stepped into it, dropped one of the other pair, stepped into that. 'Look closely, Caroline. Are you really quite sure?'

'Quite,' Caroline replied. 'The suede. And if you'll give me the other pair, I'll just pop them into your suitcase.'

Lady Helen waved her off for a moment. She studied her feet in the mirror that hung on the inside of the wardrobe door. 'I can see your point. But look at the green. Surely there's green in my skin as well. Or, if not, perhaps they'll provide a hint of contrast. Because I've the sweetest handbag that goes with these shoes and I've been dying to put them together somehow. One hates to admit that an impulsive purchase of shoes and bag has been wildly in vain. Deborah, what do you think?'

'The suede,' Deborah said. She pushed her suitcase towards the door and went to the dressing table.

Lady Helen sighed. 'Outvoted, I suppose.' She watched as Caroline left the room. 'I wonder if I can steal her from Tommy. Just one look at those shoes and she made up her mind. Heavens, Deborah, she'd save me hours every day. No more standing before the wardrobe, futilely trying to decide what to wear in the morning. I'd be positively liberated.'

Deborah made a vague sort of response, and stared, perplexed, at the empty spot next to the dressing table. She went to the wardrobe and peered inside, feeling neither panic nor dismay at first, but merely confusion. Lady Helen chatted on.

'I victimize myself. I hear the word sale in reference to Harrods, and I simply fall apart. Shoes, hats, pullovers, dresses. I even bought a pair of Wellingtons once, simply because they fitted. So fetching, I thought, just the thing for mucking around Mother's garden.' She inspected Deborah's breakfast tray. 'Will you be eating your grapefruit?'

'No. I'm not at all hungry.' Deborah went into the bathroom, came out again. She kneeled on the floor to look under the bed, trying to recall where she had left the case. Certainly it had been in the room all along. She'd seen it without seeing it last night as well as the night before, hadn't she? She thought about the question, admitted to herself that she couldn't remember. Yet it was inconceivable that she might have misplaced the case, even more inconceivable that it was missing altogether. Because if it was missing, and she hadn't misplaced it herself, that could only mean…

'Whatever are you doing?' Lady Helen asked, dipping happily into Deborah's grapefruit.

Dread was hitting her as she saw that nothing had been stored beneath the bed or hurriedly shoved there to get it out of the way. Deborah got to her feet. Her face felt cold.

Lady Helen's smile faded. 'What is it? What's wrong?'

In a last and utterly useless search, Deborah returned to the wardrobe and tossed the extra pillows and blankets to the floor. 'My cameras,' she said. 'Helen, my cameras. They're gone.'

'Cameras?' Lady Helen asked blankly. 'Gone? What do you mean?'

'Gone. Just what I said. Gone. They were in their case.

You've seen it. I brought it with me this weekend. It's gone.'

'But they can't be gone. They've just been misplaced. No doubt someone thought-'

'They're gone,' Deborah said. 'They were in a metal case. Cameras, lenses, filters. Everything.'

Lady Helen replaced the bowl of grapefruit on Deborah's tray. She looked round the room. 'Are you certain?'

'Of course I'm certain! Don't be so-' Deborah stopped herself and with an effort at calm said, 'They were in a case by the dressing table. Look. It's not there.'

'Let me ask Caroline,' Lady Helen said. 'Or Hodge. They may have already taken them down to the car. Or perhaps Tommy came in earlier and got them. Surely that's it. Because I can't think that anyone would actually…' Her voice refused to say the word steal. Nonetheless, the fact that it was foremost on Lady Helen's mind was obvious in the very omission.

'I haven't left the room since last night. I've only been in the bath. If Tommy came for the cameras, why wouldn't he have told me?'

'Let me ask,' Lady Helen said again. She left the room to do so.

Deborah sank on to the stool in front of the dressing table, staring at the floor. The pattern of flowers and leaves in the carpet blurred before her as she considered the loss. Three cameras, six lenses, dozens of filters, all purchased from the proceeds of her first successful show in America, state-of-the-art equipment that served as the hallmark of who she had managed to become at the end of three years on her own. A professional without ties, duties or obligations. A woman committed to the future.

Every decision she had made during those years in America had taken its legitimacy from the ultimate possession of that equipment. She could look back on every conclusion she had reached, the convictions she had developed, the deeds she had done, and feel neither guilt nor regret because she had emerged with a profession at which she was a bona fide success. That part of life -which might have been his to hold and love and nurture -had been mourned in secret made no difference. That she had filled her time with distractions to avoid acknowledging the worst of her loss – indeed, that she had revaluated all losses and defined each one as inconsequential – had no impact upon her. Everything was made acceptable and right and completely justifiable because she'd attained her goal. She was a success, possessing all the requisite signs and symbols of that achievement.

Lady Helen came back into the room. 'I spoke to both Caroline and Hodge,' she said. Regret made the statement hesitant. She had no need to say more. 'Deborah, listen. Tommy will-'

'I don't want Tommy to replace the cameras!' Deborah cried fiercely.

A quick flash of surprise passed across Lady Helen's face. It vanished in an instant, leaving in its place an expression of perfectly impartial repose.

'I was going to say that Tommy will want to know at once. I'll fetch him.'

She was gone only a few moments, returning with both Lynley and St James. The former went to Deborah. The latter remained by the door.

'Damn and blast,' Lynley muttered. 'What next?' He put his arm round Deborah's shoulders and hugged her to him briefly before he kneeled next to the stool and gazed into her face.

His own, she could see, was lined by fatigue. He looked as if he hadn't slept at all the previous night. She knew how worried he must be about John Penellin, and she felt a twinge of shame that she should be causing him additional distress.

'Deb, darling,' he said, 'I'm sorry.'

So he knew that the cameras had been stolen. Unlike Lady Helen, he didn't even offer the excuse that the equipment had somehow been misplaced.

'When did you last see them, Deborah?' St James asked.

Lynley touched her hair, smoothed it back from her face. Deborah could smell the clean, fresh scent of his skin. He hadn't smoked yet, and she liked the smell of him when he hadn't had his first cigarette. If she could concentrate on Tommy, everything else would go away.

'Did you see them last night when you went to bed?' St James persisted.

'They were here yesterday morning. I remember that because I replaced the camera I'd used at the play. Everything was here, right by the dressing table.'

'And you don't remember seeing them after that? You didn't use them during the day?'

'I didn't use them. I wasn't even in the room until it was time to dress for the party. I might have noticed them then. I ought to have. I was in here, after all. I was right by the dressing table. But I didn't notice them last night at all. Did you, Simon?'

Lynley got to his feet. His glance went from Deborah to St James in a curious look, perplexed but nothing more.

Tm sure they were here,' St James said. 'It was your old metal case, wasn't it?' When she nodded, he said, 'I saw it by the dressing table.'

'Saw it by the dressing table,' Lynley repeated the comment more to himself than to the others. He looked at the spot on the floor. He looked at St James. He looked at the bed.

'When, St James?' He asked the question easily, three simple words. But the fact of his saying them and the deliberation of their tone added a new dimension to the conversation.

Lady Helen said, 'Tommy, shouldn't we be off to the train?'

'When did you see the camera case, St James? Yesterday? The evening? Some time during the night? When? Were you alone? Or was Deborah-?'

'Tommy,' Lady Helen said.

'No. Let him answer.'

St James didn't reply. Deborah reached for Lynley's arm. She looked to Lady Helen in eloquent entreaty. 'Tommy,' Lady Helen said. 'This isn't-' 'I said let him answer.'

A moment passed, a small eternity before St James gave an emotionless recitation of the facts. 'Helen and I managed to get a picture of Mick Cambrey yesterday from his father, Tommy. I brought it to Deborah before dinner last night. I saw her camera case then.'

Lynley stared at him. A long breath left his body. 'Christ,' he said. Tm sorry. That was so bloody stupid. I can't think what made me say it.'

St James could have smiled. He could have brushed off the apology or laughed off the implied insult as an understandable error. He did nothing, said nothing. He looked only at Deborah, and even then it was a glance of a moment before he looked away.

As if seeking to relieve the situation, Lady Helen said, 'Were they terribly valuable, Deborah?'

'They're worth hundreds of pounds.' Deborah went to the window where the light would be behind her, leaving her face in shadow. She could feel the blood pounding in her chest, on her neck, on her cheeks. She wanted, absurdly, to do nothing more than cry.

'Then, someone must hope to sell them. But not in Cornwall, I dare say – at least, not locally where they could be tracked down. Perhaps in Bodmin or Exeter or even in London. And, if that's the case, they'd have been taken last night, during the party, I should guess. After

John Penellin was arrested, things did tend to fall apart, didn't they? People were coming and going from the drawing room all the rest of the evening.'

'And not everyone was in the drawing room in the first place,' Deborah said. She thought of Peter Lynley and the cruelty of his toast at dinner. What better person to want to hurt her than Peter? What better way to get at Tommy than by hurting her?

St James looked at his watch. 'You ought to get Helen and Deborah to the train,' he told Lynley. 'There's no real point to their remaining, is there? We can deal with the cameras ourselves.'

'That's best,' Lady Helen agreed. 'I suddenly find myself absolutely longing for the soot and grime of London, my dears.' She walked towards the door, briefly grasping St James' hand as she passed him.

When St James started to follow her, Lynley spoke. 'Simon. Forgive me. I have no excuse.'

'Except your brother and John Penellin. Exhaustion and worry. It doesn't matter, Tommy.'

'It does. I feel a perfect fool.'

St James shook his head, but his face was drawn. 'It's nothing. Please. Forget it.' He left the room.

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

'H'm?' She pulled part of the newspaper towards her. 'What're you reading?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Have you found them?' St James asked.

‘Found them?' Sidney repeated blankly. 'Has Deb lost her cameras on top of everything else?' She shook her head darkly and returned to the table where she took up the part of the paper which her brother had been reading.

'In the garden,' Lady Asherton said and led St James outside where a salty wind was fast delivering an angry-looking bank of grey clouds from the sea.

One of the gardeners was waiting for them at the furthest point of the house's south wing. He stood opposite a beech tree, secateurs in his hand and a worn woollen cap pulled low on his brow. He nodded when St James and Lady Asherton joined him, and he directed St James' attention to the large yew bush that abutted the house.

'Dead pity, that,' the gardener said. 'She be right damaged, poor thing.'

'Deborah's room is just above,' Lady Asherton said.

St James looked at the plant and saw that the portion of the yew nearest the house had been destroyed, its growth split, broken and torn off completely by an object which had, most likely, been dropped from above. The damage was recent, all the breakage fresh. The distinct scent of conifer rose from the mangled branches.

St James stepped back and looked up at the windows. Deborah's room was directly above, the billiard room beneath it. Both were far removed from the dining and drawing rooms where the party had gathered on the previous evening. And, as far as he knew, no-one had played billiards, so no-one would have been witness to the noise which the camera case must have made as it crashed to the ground.

Lady Asherton spoke quietly as the gardener went back to his work, clipping off the ruined branches and stowing them in a plastic rubbish sack tucked under his arm. 'There's a margin of relief in all this, Simon. At least we know no-one from the house took the cameras.'

'Why do you say that?'

'It hardly makes sense that one of us would take them and drop them outside. Far easier to hide them in one's room and slip off with them later, wouldn't you agree?'

'Easier, yes. But not as wise. Especially if someone inside the house wanted to make it look as if an outsider took the cameras in the first place. But even that's not a wise plan. Because who were the technical outsiders last night? Mr and Mrs Sweeney, Dr Trenarrow, your sister-in-law, the MP from Plymouth.'

'John Penellin,' she added. 'The daily help from the village.'

'An unlikely lot to be stealing cameras.' From her expression, he could tell that Lady Asherton had already done some considerable thinking about Deborah's cameras, about where they might be, about who had taken them. Her words, however, acted to camouflage this.

'I'm having difficulty understanding why they were stolen in the first place.'

'They're valuable. They can be sold by someone who needs money.'

Her face crumpled momentarily, then regained composure.

St James showed mercy by saying, 'The house was open during the party. Someone could have got in while we were in the dining room. It would have been no large matter to slip up to Deborah's room and take the cameras then.'

'But why take the cameras at all, Simon, if it's a matter of money? Why not take something else? Something even more valuable?'

'What?' he asked. 'Everything else is too easily associated with Howenstow. The silver's marked. The family crest is on everything. Surely you wouldn't expect someone to cart off one of the paintings and hope it wouldn't be noticed as missing until the next day.'

She turned her head to look out at the park, a movement designed merely to avert her face for a moment. 'It can't be a question of money,' she said, twisting her gardening gloves in her hands. 'It can't, Simon. You do know that.'

'Then, perhaps Mrs Sweeney objected to having her photograph taken after all,' he suggested.

She smiled bleakly at that but went along with his effort to divert her. 'Could she have slipped out to the loo some time after dinner and trundled through the house looking for Deborah's room?'

Her question brought them back to the inescapable reality. Whoever had taken the cameras had also known which room was Deborah's.

'Has Tommy spoken to Peter this morning?' St James asked.

'Peter's not up yet.'

'He vanished after dinner, Daze.'

'I know.'

'And do you know where he went? Where Sasha went?'

She shook her head. 'A walk in the grounds, down to the cove, for a drive. Perhaps to the lodge to see Mark Penellin.' She sighed. The effort seemed too much. 'I can't believe he's taken Deborah's cameras. He's sold most of his own things. I know that. I pretend not to, but

I know it. Still, I don't believe he'd actually steal things and sell them. Not Peter. I won't believe that.'

A shout rose from the park as she finished speaking. Someone was coming towards the house at a hobbling run, a man who alternately clutched his side then his thigh with one hand while with the other he waved a cap in the air. All the time he continued to shout.

'Jasper, m'lady,' the gardener said, joining them with his rubbish sack trailing behind him.

'Whatever is he up to?' As he reached the gatehouse, Lady Asherton raised her voice. 'Stop shouting like that, Jasper. You're frightening us all to death.'

Jasper dashed to her side, wheezing and gasping. He seemed unable to gather enough breath to put together a coherent sentence.

' 'Tis 'im,' he panted. 'Down the cove.'

Lady Asherton looked at St James. They shared the same thought. Lady Asherton took a step away to distance herself from information she couldn't bear to hear.

'Who?' St James asked. 'Jasper, who's at the cove?'

Jasper bent double, coughed. ' 'N the cove!'

'For heaven's sake-'

Jasper straightened, looked around and pointed an arthritic finger at the front door where Sidney stood, apparently seeking the source of the disturbance.

' 'Er man,' he gasped. 'He be dead down the cove.'

15

When St James finally caught up with her, his sister had already reached the cove, far in advance of everyone else. Somewhere in her desperate flight through the park and the woodland, she had fallen, and blood streaked in a furcate pattern down one arm and along one leg. From the cliff-top, he saw her fling herself at Brooke's body, snatching him up as if by that action she could infuse him with life. She was speaking in an incoherent fashion -inarticulate words, not sentences – as she held his body to hers. Brooke's head hung in an impossible position, testimony to the manner in which he had died.

Sidney lowered him to the ground. She opened his mouth, covering it with her own in a useless attempt at resuscitation. Even from the cliff-top, St James could hear her small, frantic cries as each breath she gave him produced no response. She pounded on his chest. She pulled open his shirt. She threw herself the length of his body and pressed against him as if to arouse him in death as she had done in life. It was a mindless, grim mimicry of seduction. St James grew cold as he watched. He said her name, then called to her, to no avail.

Finally, she looked up the face of the cliff and saw him. She stretched out one hand as if in supplication, and at last she began to cry. It was a horrible ululation, part despair and part grief, a weeping the source of which was as primordial as it was timeless. She covered Brooke's bruised face with kisses before she lowered her head and

rested it on his chest. And she wept, in sorrow, in anger, in rage. She grabbed the body by the shoulders, lifted and shook it as she shouted Brooke's name. In reply the lifeless head bobbed ghoulishly on its splintered neck in a danse macabre.

St James stood motionless, forcing himself to keep his eyes on his sister, making himself a witness to the worst part of her grief, accepting the watching as punishment, just and true, for the sin of possessing a body so ruined that it would not allow him to go to her aid. Immobilized and inwardly cursing with a rising ferocity that was fast approaching panic, he listened to Sidney's keening wail. He swung round viciously at the touch of a hand on his arm. Lady Asherton stood there, behind her the gardener and half a dozen others from the house.

'Get her away from him.' He barely managed the words. But his speaking released the rest of them into action.

With a final, worried look at his face, Lady Asherton began a nimble descent of the cliff. The others followed, carrying blankets, a makeshift stretcher, a Thermos, a coil of rope. Although they all climbed down quickly, it seemed to St James that they moved in slow motion in the manner of mimes.

Three of them reached Sidney simultaneously, and Lady Asherton pulled her away from the body which she continued to shake with a wild futility. As Sidney fought to go back to it, beginning to scream, Lady Asherton shouted something over her shoulder which St James could not distinguish. In answer, one of the men handed her an open vial. She pulled Sidney to her, grabbed her by the hair, and thrust the vial under her nose. Sidney's head flew back. Her hand went to her mouth. She spoke brokenly to Lady Asherton who in answer pointed up the cliff.

Sidney began to climb. The gardener helped her. Then the others from the house. All of them saw that she neither stumbled nor fell. And within a few moments St James was pulling her fiercely into his arms. He held her, pressing his cheek to the top of her head and fighting back an emotional reaction of his own that promised to overwhelm him if he gave it free rein. When the worst of her weeping had subsided, he began to lead her in the direction of the house, both his arms round her, somehow afraid that if he released her he would be giving her back to hysteria, back to the body of her lover on the beach.

They passed under the trees of the woodland. St James was hardly aware of the progress they made. Nor was he aware of the rushing sound of the river, the rich scent of vegetation, the springy feel of the loamy ground beneath their feet. If his clothing was caught or snagged by the bushes that encroached upon the narrow path, he took no notice.

The air had grown quite heavy with an approaching storm by the time they reached the Howenstow wall and went through the gate. The tree leaves susurrated as the swelling wind tossed them, and up the trunk of one ash a grey squirrel scampered, disappearing into its branches for shelter. Sidney raised her head from her brother's chest.

'It'll rain,' she said. 'Simon, he'll get wet.'

St James tightened his arms. He kissed the top of her head. 'No, it's all right.' He attempted to sound more like the older brother she knew, the one who had taken care of her night-time monsters, the one who could make bad dreams go away. But not this one, Sid. 'They'll take care of him. You'll see.'

Large, heavy drops splattered noisily on the leaves. In his arms, Sidney shivered.

'How Mummy shouted at us!' she whispered.

'Shouted? When?'

'You opened all the nursery windows to see how much rain would come into the room. She shouted and shouted. She hit you as well.' Her body heaved with a sob. 'I never could bear to see Mummy hit you.'

'The carpet was ruined. No doubt I deserved it.'

'But it was my idea. And I let you take the punishment.' She brought her hand to her face. Blood had streaked between her fingers. She began to weep again. Tm sorry.'

He stroked her hair. 'It's all right, love. I'd quite forgotten. Believe me.'

'How could I do that to you, Simon? You were my favourite brother. I loved you best. Nanny told me how bad it was to love you more than Andrew or David, but I couldn't help it. I loved you best. Then I let you take a beating and it was my fault and I never said a word.' Her raised face was wet with tears that, St James knew, in reality had nothing to do with their childhood disputes.

'Let me tell you something, Sid,' he confided, 'but you must promise never to say anything to David or Andrew. You were my favourite as well. You still are, in fact.'

'Really?'

'Absolutely.'

They came to the gatehouse and entered the garden as the wind picked up, tearing at the heads of roses, sending a shower of petals into their path. Although the rain began to beat against them aggressively, they didn't hurry their pace. By the time they reached the doorway, they were both quite wet.

'Mummy will shout at us now,' Sidney said as St James closed the door behind them. 'Shall we hide?'

'We'll be safe enough for now.'

'I'll not let her beat you.'

'I know that, Sid.' St James led his sister towards the stairway, taking her hand when she hesitated and gazed around, clearly confused. 'It's just this way,' he urged her.

At the top of the stairs, he saw Cotter coming towards him, a small tray in his hands. At the sight of him, St James gave a moment of thanksgiving over to Cotter's ability to read his mind.

'Saw you comin',' Cotter explained and nodded at the tray. 'It's a brandy. Is she…?' He jerked his head towards Sidney, his brow furrowing at the sight of her.

'She'll be all right in a bit. If you'll help me, Cotter. Her room's this way.'

Unlike Deborah's room, Sidney's was neither cave-like nor sepulchral. Overlooking a small walled garden at the rear of the house, it was painted and papered in a combination of yellow and white, with a floral carpet of pastels on the floor. St James sat his sister on the bed and went to draw the curtains while Cotter poured brandy and held it to her lips. 'A bit o' this, Miss Sidney,' Cotter said solicitously. 'It'll warm you up nice.'

She drank co-operatively. 'Does Mummy know?' she asked.

Cotter glanced warily at St James. 'Have a bit more,' he said.

St James rooted through a drawer, looking for her nightdress. He found it under a Sidney-like pile of jerseys, jewellery and stockings.

'You must get out of those wet things,' he told her. 'Cotter, will you find a towel for her hair? And something for the cuts?'

Cotter nodded, eyeing Sidney cautiously before he left the room. Alone with his sister, St James undressed her, tossing her wet clothes onto the floor. He drew her nightdress over her head, pulling her arms gently through the thin satin straps. She said nothing and didn't seem to realize he was present at all. When Cotter returned with towel and plaster, St James rubbed Sidney's hair roughly. He saw to her arms and legs and the muddy splatters on her feet. Swinging her legs up on the bed, he pulled the blankets around her. She submitted to it all like a child, like a doll.

'Sid,' he whispered, touching her cheek. He wanted to talk about Justin Brooke. He wanted to know if they had been together in the night. He wanted to know when Brooke had gone to the cliff. Above all, he wanted to know why.

She didn't respond. She stared at the ceiling. Whatever she knew would have to wait.

Lynley parked the Rover at the far end of the courtyard and entered the house through the north-west door between the gun room and the servants' hall. He had seen the line of vehicles on the drive – two police cars, an unmarked saloon, and an ambulance with its windscreen wipers still running – so he was not unprepared to be accosted by Hodge as he quickly passed through the domestic wing of the house. They met outside the pantry.

'What is it?' Lynley asked the old butler. He tried to sound reasonably concerned without revealing his incipient panic. Upon seeing the cars through the wind-driven rain, his first thought had run unveeringly towards Peter.

Hodge gave the information willingly enough and in a fashion designed to reveal nothing of his own feelings in the matter. It was Mr Brooke, he told Lynley. He's been taken to the old schoolroom.

If the manner in which Hodge had relayed the information had been fleeting cause for hope – nothing could be terribly amiss if Brooke hadn't been taken directly to hospital – hope dissipated when Lynley entered the schoolroom in the east wing of the house a few minutes later. The body lay shrouded by blankets on a long scarred table at the room's centre, the very same table at which generations of young Lynleys had done their childhood lessons before being packed off to school. A group of men stood in hushed conversation round it, among them Inspector Boscowan and the plain-clothes sergeant who had accompanied him to pick up John Penellin on the previous evening. Boscowan was talking to the group in general, issuing some son of instructions to two crime-scene men whose trouser legs were muddy and whose jacket shoulders bore large wet patches from the rain. The police pathologist was with them, identifiable by the medical bag at her feet. It was unopened, and she didn't look as if she intended to do any preliminary examining of the body. Nor did the crime-scene men seem prepared to do any work at present. Which led Lynley to the only conclusion possible: wherever Brooke had died, it hadn't been in the schoolroom.

He saw St James standing in one of the window embrasures, giving his attention to what could be seen of the garden through the rain-streaked glass.

'Jasper found him in the cove.' St James spoke quietly when Lynley joined him. He did not turn away from the window. His own clothes had had a recent wetting, Lynley saw, and his shirt bore streaks of blood which the rain had elongated like a waterwash of paint. 'It looks like an accident. It seems there was slippage at the top of the cliff. He lost his footing.' He looked past Lynley's shoulder at the group round the body, then back at Lynley once again. 'At least, that's what Boscowan's considering for now.'

St James didn't ask the question that Lynley heard behind the final guarded statement. Lynley was grateful for the respite, however long his friend intended it to be. He said, 'Why was the body moved, St James? Who moved it? Why?'

'Your mother. It had begun to rain. Sid got to him before the rest of us. I'm afraid none of us was thinking too clearly at that moment, least of all myself A yew branch, struck by a gust of wind, scratched against the window in front of them. Rain created a sharp tattoo. St James moved further into the embrasure and lifted his eyes to the upper floor of the wing opposite the schoolroom, to the corner bedroom next to Lynley's own. 'Where's Peter?'

The respite had been brief indeed. Lynley felt the sudden need to lie, to protect his brother in some way, but he couldn't do it. Nor could he say what drove him to the truth, whether it was priggish morality or an unspoken plea for the other man's help and understanding. 'He's gone.'

'Sasha?'

'As well.'

'Where?'

'I don't know.'

St James' reaction was a single word, sighed more than spoken. 'Great.' Then, 'How long? Was his bed slept in last night? Was hers?'

'No.' Lynley didn't add that he'd seen as much at half-past seven this morning when he'd gone to speak to his brother. He didn't tell him that he'd sent Jasper out to search for Peter at a quarter to eight. Nor did he describe the horror he'd felt, seeing the police cars and ambulance lined up in front of Howenstow, thinking Peter had been found dead, and recognizing in his reaction to that thought a small measure of relief behind the dread. He saw St James reflectively considering Brooke's covered body. 'Peter had nothing to do with this,' he said. 'It was an accident. You said that yourself.'

'I wonder whether Peter knew that Brooke spoke to us last night,' St James said. 'Would Brooke have told him so? And, if he did, why?'

Lynley recognized the speculation that drove the questions. It was the very same speculation he was facing himself. 'Peter's not a killer. You know that.'

'Then, you'd better find him. Killer or not, he has a bit of explaining to do, hasn't he?'

'Jasper's been out looking for him since early this morning.'

'I did wonder what he'd been doing at the cove. He thought Peter was there?'

'There. At the mill. He's been looking everywhere. Off the estate as well.'

'Are Peter's things still here?'

'I… no.' Lynley knew St James well enough to see the reasoning that came upon the heels of his answer. If Peter had run from Howenstow with no time to lose, knowing his life was in danger, he'd be likely to leave his belongings behind. If, on the other hand, he had left after committing a murder that he knew wouldn't be discovered for some hours, he'd have plenty of time to pack whatever possessions he'd brought with him to Howenstow. That done, he could steal off into the night, with no-one the wiser until Brooke's body was found. If he had killed him. If Brooke had been murdered at all. Lynley forced himself to keep in mind the fact that they were calling it an accident. And surely the crime-scene men knew what they were looking at when they made their observations at the site of an untimely death. Earlier in the morning, the thought of Peter having stolen Deborah's cameras in order to sell them and purchase cocaine had been repellent, a cause for disbelief and denial. Now it was welcome. For how likely was it that his brother had been involved in both the disappearance of the cameras and Justin Brooke's death? And, if his mind was focused on his body's need for cocaine, why pause in his pursuit of the drug to eliminate Brooke?

He knew the answer, of course. But that answer tied Peter to Mick Cambrey's death, a death that no-one was calling an accident.

'We'll be taking the body now.' The plain-clothes sergeant had come to join them. In spite of the rain, he smelt heavily of sweat and his forehead was oily with perspiration. 'With your permission.'

Lynley nodded sharply in acquiescence and longed for liquor to soothe his nerves. As if in answer, the schoolroom doors opened and his mother entered, pushing a drinks trolley on which she'd assembled two urns, three full decanters of spirits, and several plates of biscuits. Her blue jeans and shoes were stained with mud, her white shirt torn, her hair dishevelled. But, as if her appearance were the least of her concerns, when she spoke she took command of the situation.

'I don't pretend to know your regulations, Inspector,' she told Boscowan. 'But it does seem reasonable that you might be allowed something to take the edge off the chill. Coffee, tea, brandy, whisky. Whatever you'd like. Please help yourselves.'

Boscowan nodded his thanks and, having received this much permission, his officers occupied themselves at the trolley. Boscowan strolled over to Lynley and St James.

'Was he a drinker, my lord?'

'I didn't know him that well. But he was drinking last night. We all were.' 'Drunk?'

'He didn't appear to be. Not when I last saw him.' 'And when was that?'

'When the party broke up. Round midnight. Perhaps a bit later.' 'Where?'

'In the drawing room.'

'Drinking?'

'Yes.'

'But not drunk?'

'He could have been. I don't know. He wasn't acting drunk.' Lynley recognized the intention behind the questions. If Brooke had been drunk, he fell to his death. If he had been sober, he was pushed. But Lynley felt the need to excuse the death as an accident, whatever Brooke's condition last night. 'Drunk or sober, he'd never been here before. He wasn't familiar with the lie of the land.'

Boscowan nodded, but nothing in his manner suggested conviction. 'No doubt the post-mortem will tell the tale.'

'It was dark. The cliffs high.'

'Dark if the man went out in the night,' Boscowan said. 'He could have done so this morning.' 'How was he dressed?'

Boscowan's shoulders lifted, a partial acknowledgement of the accuracy of Lynley's question. 'In his evening clothes. But no-one's to say he wasn't up until dawn with one member of the party or another. Until we have a time of death, we can be certain of nothing. Except the fact that he's dead. And we're certain of that.' He nodded and joined his men by the trolley.

'A thousand and one questions he's not asking, St James,' Lynley said.

The other man listed them. 'Who saw him last? Has anyone else gone missing from the estate? Who was here at the party? Who else was in the grounds? Is there any reason why someone might want to harm him?'

'Why isn't he asking?'

'He's waiting for the post-mortem, I should guess. It's to his advantage that this be an accident.' 'Why?'

'Because he's got his man for Cambrey's murder. And John Penellin couldn't have killed Brooke.'

'You're implying there's a connection.'

'There is. There must be.' A blur of movement on the drive outside caught their attention. 'Jasper,' St James noted.

The old man was trudging through puddles, heading towards the west wing of the house.

'Let's see what he has to say,' Lynley said.

They found him just outside the servants' hall where he was shaking the rain off a battered sou'wester. He did the same to an antique mackintosh and hung both on a wall peg before he struggled out of dark green gumboots that were caked with mud. He nodded curdy at Lynley and St James, and when he was quite ready followed them back to the smoking room where he accepted a whisky to ward off the cold.

'Nowheres to be found,' he told Lynley. 'But 'r boat's gone from Lamorna Cove.'

'It's what?' Lynley said. 'Jasper are you certain?'

"Course I be certain. 'Tain't there.'

Lynley stared at the fox on the overmantel and tried to understand, but all that came to mind were details. They refused to coalesce. The family's thirty-five-foot sloop was docked at Lamorna. Peter had been sailing since he was five years old. The weather had been promising a storm all day. No-one with any sense or experience would have taken a boat out. 'It must have broken loose of its mooring somehow.'

Jasper made a sound of derision, but his face was blank when Lynley swung towards him again. 'Where else did you check?'

'Ever'place. 'Tween Nanrunnel and Treen.'

'Trewoofe? St Buryan? Did you go inland?'

'Aye. A bit. No need t' go far, m'lord. If the lad be on foot, someone's like to see him. But no-one makes the claim.' Jasper pulled on his jaw, rubbing his fingers through the stubble of his beard. 'Way I see, either him and the lady's in hiding round here or they got a ride direct soon's they left Howenstow. Or they took the boat.'

'He wouldn't have done it. He knows better than that. He's not entirely…' Lynley stopped. There was no need for Jasper to hear the worst of his fears. No doubt the man knew every one of them already. 'Thank you, Jasper. Make sure you get something to eat.'

The old man nodded and headed straight for the door. He paused at the threshold, however. 'John Penellin got took last night, I hear.'

'Yes. He did.'

Jasper's mouth worked, as if he wished to say more but was hesitant to do so.

'What is it?' Lynley asked.

'He oughtn't take blame for nobody, you ask me,' Jasper said and left them.

'What more does Jasper know?' St James asked when they were alone.

Lynley was staring at the carpet, lost in thought. He roused himself to say, 'Nothing, I should guess. It's just what he feels.'

'About John?'

'Yes. Peter as well. If there's guilt to be assessed, Jasper knows where it should lie.' Lynley had never felt so incapable of either action or decision. It seemed as if his life were spinning out of control and all he could do was watch the various pieces fly haphazardly into space. All he could say was, 'He wouldn't take the boat. Not in this weather. Where would he go? And why?'

He heard St James move and looked up to see the compassion on his face. 'Perhaps he's still somewhere on the estate, Tommy. Perhaps he doesn't even know what's happened and his disappearance is altogether unconnected to Justin Brooke.'

'And to the cameras?'

'To those as well.'

Lynley looked away, to the pictures on the wall, all those generations of Lynleys who fitted the mould, did their crewing at Oxford, and took their places at Howenstow without a single howl of protest.

'I don't believe that St James. Not for a moment. Do you?'

His friend sighed. 'Frankly? No.'

16

'Heavens, to what depths have we managed to slither?' Lady Helen said. She dropped her suitcase, sighed, and let her handbag dangle forlornly from her fingertips. 'Lunching at Paddington Station. Behaviour so utterly reprehensible that I can hardly believe I allowed myself to engage in it.'

'It was your suggestion after all, Helen,' Deborah set her own luggage on the floor and looked round the bed-sitting room with a smile of contentment. It felt unaccountably good to be home, even if home was only a single room in Paddington. At least it was her own.

'I plead utter guilt. But when one is in the absolute throes of starvation, when demise is the probable consequence of even a moment's epicurean snobbery, what is one to do but rush madly towards the first cafeteria that comes into sight?' She shuddered, as if stricken by the recollection of what she'd found heaped upon her luncheon plate 'Can you imagine a more despicable thing to do to a sausage?'

Deborah laughed. 'Would you like a restorative? A cup of tea? I've even got a recipe for a health drink you might like. Tina gave it to me. A pick-me-up, she called it.'

'No doubt "picked up" is just what she needed after an encounter with Mick Cambrey, if his father's to be believed,' Lady Helen said. 'But I'll forgo that pleasure for now, if I may. Shall we pop next door with his picture?'

Deborah pulled it from her shoulder bag and led the

way. The corridor was narrow, lined with doors on both sides, and the floor gave off the sharp scent of a carpet that was relatively new. It also served to muffle their footsteps, and as if this damper upon their approach encouraged other caution Deborah rapped upon Tina's door softly.

'Tina's… well, she's a night owl, I suppose,' she explained to Lady Helen. 'So she may not be up yet.'

That appeared to be the case, as Deborah's knocking brought no response. She tried a second time, a bit louder. And then a third, calling, 'Tina?'

In answer, the door opposite opened and an elderly woman peered out. She wore a large checked handkerchief over her head, tied under her chin like a babushka. It served to cover her hair, which was tightly pinned in what appeared to be an infinitesimal number of grey curls.

'She's not 'ere.' The woman clutched to her chest a thin purple dressing-gown, printed in a design of hideous orange flowers and palmate green leaves that were enough to make one eschew travelling in the tropics for ever. 'Been gone two days.'

'How distressing,' Lady Helen said. 'Do you know where she's gone?'

'I'd like to know, wouldn't I?' the woman said. 'She's borrowed my iron, and I could do with it back.'

'No doubt,' Lady Helen said with complete sympathy as if the woman's manner of dress in the middle of the afternoon – deshabillé with a vengeance – had been provoked solely by the loss of her iron. 'Shall I see if I can get it for you?' She turned to Deborah. 'Who manages the building?'

'There's a caretaker on the ground floor,' Deborah said and added in a low voice, 'But, Helen, you can't-'

'Then, I'll pop down directly, shall I?' She fluttered her fingers and walked to the lift.

The old woman watched their exchange suspiciously.

She eyed Deborah from head to toe. Nervously Deborah smiled, trying to think of a casual remark about the building, the weather, or anything else that might keep the woman from wondering why Lady Helen was so charmingly intent upon fetching an iron for a complete stranger. She gave up the effort when nothing came to mind, retreating to her own flat where Lady Helen joined her in less than ten minutes, in victorious possession of the key to Tina's door.

Deborah was astonished. 'How on earth did you manage it?'

Lady Helen laughed. 'Don't you think I look the smallest bit like Tina's only sister, come all the way from Edinburgh to spend a few days catching up on sororal chitchat?'

'You convinced him of that?'

'It was such a performance, I almost convinced myself. Shall we?'

They returned to the flat. Deborah felt a bit weak at the thought of what Lady Helen clearly proposed to do.

'This can't be legal,' she said. 'Aren't we breaking and entering?'

'Entering perhaps,' Lady Helen replied cheerfully as she inserted the key in the lock without the slightest hesitation. 'But hardly breaking. After all, we've got the key. Ah. Here we are. And not even a squeak to alert the neighbours.'

'I am the neighbours.'

Lady Helen laughed. 'How convenient.'

The flat was identical in size and shape to Deborah's, although it contained more furniture, each piece an indication of considerable expense. No chintz-covered three-piece suite for Tina Cogin; no second-hand tables; no cheap prints on the walls. Instead, gleaming hardwoods filled the room – oak and mahogany, rosewood and birch. Beneath them lay a hand-loomed rug, while above them a tapestry on the wall had the look of having been crafted by an experienced artisan. Clearly, the room's occupant had a penchant for luxury.

'Well,' Lady Helen said as she looked all this over, 'there must be something to be said for her line of work. Ah, there's the iron. Let's not forget to take that with us when we leave.'

'Helen, aren't we leaving now?'

'In a moment, darling. First, just a peep here and there to get a feeling of the woman.' 'But we can't-'

'We'll want something to tell Simon when we phone him, Deborah. As things stand now, if Tina's not back by evening we'll have nothing to report but a knock gone unanswered at her door. What a waste of everybody's energy that would be.'

'What if she walks in on us? Helen! Really.'

Every moment anticipating Tina's return and wondering what on earth they would say to her when she walked in the door and found them making fast and loose with her belongings, Deborah followed Lady Helen into the tiny kitchen and watched in an agony of nerves as she blithely opened the cupboards. There were only two, both containing the barest necessities in the smallest sizes available: coffee, salt, sugar, condiments, a packet of savoury biscuits, a tin of soup, another of grapefruit segments, another of cereal. On one shelf sat two plates, two bowls, two cups and four glasses. On the worktop beneath was a bottle of wine, previously opened and two-thirds full. Beyond a small tin coffee pot, a dented pan and an enamel kettle, the kitchen contained nothing else. And even what there was provided little enough information about Tina Cogin herself. Lady Helen summed it up.

'She doesn't seem to cook her meals here, does she? Of course, there are dozens of takeaways in Praed Street, so I suppose she could be bringing food in.'

'But if she entertains men?'

'That's the question, isn't it? Well, there's the bottle of wine. Perhaps that's all the entertainment she provides before she and her caller get down to business. Let's see what else we have.'

Lady Helen crossed to the wardrobe and pulled it open to reveal a row of evening and cocktail dresses, half a dozen wraps – one of which was fur – with an array of high-heeled pumps lined beneath them. A top shelf held a collection of hat-boxes; a middle shelf contained a stack of folded negligees. The bottom shelf was empty, but it had collected no dust, giving the impression that something had been kept there regularly.

Lady Helen tapped her cheek and gave a quick inspection to the chest of drawers. ‘]ust her underclothes,' she told Deborah after a cursory glance inside. 'They appear to be silk, but I shall draw the line at fingering my way through them.' She pushed the drawers closed and leaned against the chest, arms crossed in front of her, frowning at the wardrobe. 'Deborah, there's something… just a moment. Let me see.' She went into the bathroom and called out behind her, 'Why don't you have a go with the desk?'

The medicine cabinet opened, a drawer scraped against wood, a catch clicked, paper rustled. Lady Helen murmured to herself.

Deborah looked at her watch. Less than five minutes had passed since they'd entered the flat. It felt like an hour.

She went to the desk. Nothing was on its top save a telephone, an answering machine, and a pad of paper which Deborah, feeling ridiculously like a celluloid detective yet all the time lacking any better idea of what to do with herself, held up to the light to check for the indentations that previous writing might have made. Seeing nothing save the single pressure-point of a full stop or the dot of an i, she went on to the drawers but found two of them empty. The third held a savings passbook, a manila folder, and a solitary index card. Deborah picked this up.

'Odd,' Lady Helen said from the bathroom doorway. 'She's been gone two days, according to your neighbour, but she's left all her make-up behind. She's taken none of her evening clothes, but every ordinary garment she owns is missing. And there's a set of those dreadful fingernail tips in the bathroom. The kind one glues on. Why on earth would she take her fingernails off? They're such hell to put on in the first place.'

'Perhaps they're spares,' Deborah said. 'Perhaps she's gone to the country. She might be somewhere she won't need fancy clothes, where artificial fingernails would get in the way. The Lake District. Fishing in Scotland. To see relatives on a farm.' Deborah saw where her trail of ideas was leading. Lady Helen completed it.

'To Cornwall,' she said and nodded at the index card. 'What have you there?'

Deborah examined it. 'Two telephone numbers. Perhaps one is Mick Cambrey's. Shall I copy them?'

'Do.' Lady Helen came to look over her shoulder. 'I'm beginning to admire her. Here I am, so attached to my appearance that I wouldn't even consider venturing anywhere without at least one vanity case crammed to the brim with cosmetics. And there she is. The all-or-nothing woman. Either casual to a fault or dressed to…' Lady Helen faltered.

Deborah looked up. Her mouth felt dry. 'Helen, she couldn't have killed him.' Yet, even as she said it, her discomfort grew. What, after all, did she know about Tina? Nothing really, beyond a single conversation which had revealed little more than a weakness for men, an affinity for nightlife, and a concern about ageing. Still, one could certainly sense evil in people, no matter their attempts to disguise it. One could certainly sense the potential for rage. And none of that had been present in Tina. Yet, as she considered Mick Cambrey's death and the very fact of his presence in Tina Cogin's life, Deborah had to admit that she wasn't so sure.

She reached blindly for the folder as if it contained a verification of Tina's lack of guile. Prospects was printed across the tab. Inside, a clip held together a sheaf of papers.

'What is it?' Lady Helen asked.

'Names and addresses. Telephone numbers.'

'Her client list?'

'I shouldn't think so. Look. There are at least a hundred names. Women as well as men.' 'A mailing list?'

'I suppose it might be. There's a savings book as well.' Deborah slid this out of its plastic folder.

'Tell all,' Lady Helen said. 'Is her lifestyle profitable? Shall I change my line of work?'

Deborah read the list of deposits, flipped back to the name. She felt a rush of surprise. 'This isn't hers,' she said. 'It belongs to Mick Cambrey. And, whatever he was doing, it was wildly profitable.'

'Mr Allcourt-St James? This is a pleasure.' Dr Alice Waters rose from her chair and shooed off the lab assistant who had shown St James to her office. 'I thought I recognized you at Howenstow this morning. Hardly the time for introductions, however. What brings you to my den?'

It was an apt choice of words, for the office of Penzance CID's forensic pathologist was little more than a windowless cubicle on the verge of being overcome by bookshelves, an ancient roll-top desk, a medical-school skeleton wearing a Second World War gas mask, and several stacks of scientific journals. All that remained of the floorspace was a trail that led from the doorway to the desk. A chair sat next to this – curiously out of place and intricately carved in a design of flowers and birds that was more suggestive of a country house dining room than a department of forensic pathology – and after offering St James her hand in a cool, firm shake she waved him into it.

'Take the throne,' she said. 'Circa 1675. It was a good period for chairs if one doesn't mind a bit of excessive ornamentation.'

'You're a collector?'

'Takes one's mind off the job.' She sank into her own chair – a piece of wounded leather whose surface was cracked and wrinkled – and rooted through the papers on her desk until she found a small carton of chocolates which she presented to him. When he had made his selection, a process she watched with a good deal of interest, she took a chocolate herself, biting into it with the satisfaction of a discerning gourmet. 'Just read your piece on A-B-O secretors last week,' she said. 'I hardly thought I'd be having the pleasure of meeting you as well. Have you come about this Howenstow business?'

'The Cambrey death actually.'

Behind her large-framed spectacles, Dr Waters' eyebrows rose. She finished her chocolate, wiped her fingers on the lapel of her lab coat, and took a folder from beneath an African violet that looked as if it hadn't been watered in months.

'Not the smallest indication of activity for weeks, and suddenly I've two corpses on my hands in less than forty-eight hours.' She flipped the folder open, read for a moment, then snapped it shut. She reached for a skull which grinned at them from one of the bookshelves and dislodged a paper clip from its eye socket. It had obviously been a demonstration piece in many previous explanations, for pen marks dotted it liberally and a large red X had at one time been drawn directly upon the squamosal suture. 'Two blows to the head. He took the more severe of the two here on the parietal region. A fracture resulted.'

'Have you any idea of the weapon?'

'I wouldn't say weapon so much as source. He fell against something.'

'He couldn't have been struck?'

She took another chocolate, shaking her head and pointing to the skull. 'Look at where the fracture would be, my good man. He wasn't overly tall – between five-eight and five-nine – but he'd have to be sitting for anyone to hit him there with enough force to kill him.'

'Someone creeping up on him?'

'Couldn't have happened. The blow didn't come from above. Even if it had, to have placed a blow there the killer would have had to stand in such a way that Cambrey would have seen him in his peripheral vision. He would have made an attempt to block the blow in some way and we'd have evidence on the body. Bruising or abrasions. But we've neither.'

'The killer may have been too fast for him.'

She turned the skull. 'Possibly. But that wouldn't explain the second blow. Another fracture, less severe, in the right frontal region. For your scenario, the killer would have hit him in the back of the head, asked him kindly to turn round, then hit him in the front.'

'Are we talking about an accident then? Cambrey stumbling on his own, failing, and then later someone coming to the cottage, finding the body, and mutilating it for the sheer enjoyment of castration?'

'Hardly.' She replaced the skull and leaned back in her chair. The light from the ceiling winked against her spectacles and shone in her hair, which was short, straight and artificially blue-black. 'Here's the scenario as I've worked it out. Cambrey's standing, having a conversation with the killer. It grows into an argument. He takes a tremendous blow on the jaw – there was heavy bruising of the submaxilla and that was the only significant bruising on the body – which sends him falling back against an object perhaps four and a half feet from the floor.'

St James thought about the sitting room in Gull Cottage. He knew Dr Waters had been there herself. She would have done a preliminary examination of the body there on Friday night. And, no matter one's determination to wait for post-mortem results before formulating an opinion, she would have begun developing ideas the moment she saw the corpse. 'The mantel?'

She cocked an affirmative finger at him. 'Cambrey's weight increases the velocity of his fall. The result is our first fracture. From the mantel, then, he falls again, but slightly to the side this time. And he hits the front region of his skull on another object.'

'The hearth?'

'Most likely. This second fracture is less severe. But it makes no difference. He died within moments because of the first. Intracranial haemorrhage. He couldn't have been saved.'

'The mutilation was done after death, of course,' St James said reflectively. 'There was virtually no blood.'

'A mess nonetheless,' Dr Waters commented poetically.

St James tried to picture the events as Dr Waters had laid them out. The conversation, the escalation into argument, the evolution of anger to rage, the blow itself. 'How long would you estimate the mutilation took? If someone were in a frenzy, running to the kitchen, finding a knife, perhaps with a knife already-'

'There was no frenzy involved. Depend upon that. At least not when the mutilation occurred.' He saw that she recognized his confusion. She answered as if in anticipation of his questions. 'People in frenzies tend to hack and stab, over and over. You know the sort of thing. Sixty-five wounds. We see that all the time. But in this case it was just a couple of quick cuts. As if the killer had nothing more in mind than making a statement on Cambrey's body.'

'With what sort of weapon?'

She lingered over her box of chocolates again. Her hand hesitated before pushing them aside with a look that combined both regret and determination. 'Anything sharp. From a butcher's knife to a pair of good scissors.'

'But you've found no weapon yet?'

'Forensic are still working through the cottage. Imaginative lot, they are. Testing everything from kitchen knives to the safety pins used on the baby's nappies. They're tearing apart the village as well, looking in dustbins and flower gardens, busy earning their salaries. It's a waste of time.'

'Why?'

She flipped a thumb back and forth over her shoulder as she answered his question, quite as if they were standing in the village and not several miles away in Penzance. 'We have the hills behind us. We have the sea in front of us. We have a coastline honeycombed with thousands of caves. We have disused mines. We have a harbour filled with fishing boats. We have, in short, an infinite number of places in which one could deposit a knife with no-one's being the wiser for decades as to how it got there. Just think of the fishermen's fillet knives. How many of those must be lying about?'

'So the killer might even have gone prepared to do this bit of work.'

'Might. Might not. We've no way of telling.'

'And Cambrey hadn't been tied up.'

'According to Forensic, nothing indicates that. No fragments of hemp, nylon, or anything else. He was very fit actually. As to the other – the Howenstow business this morning – that's appearing to be quite another matter.'

'Drugs?' St James asked.

She looked immediately interested. 'I couldn't say. We've only done the preliminaries. Is there something-?' 'Cocaine.'

She made a note to herself on a pad of paper. 'Not surprising, that. What people put into their bodies in the name of excitement… silly fools.' She gave a moment over to what was apparently a dark consideration of drug use in the country. Rousing herself, she went on. 'We've done a blood-alcohol on him. He was drunk.'

'Capable of functioning?'

'Impaired, but capable. Enough to get out there and take a tumble. Four vertebrae were broken. Spinal cord was severed.' She removed her spectacles and rubbed the bridge of her nose where they rested upon skin that was red and raw. Without them she looked curiously defenceless and somehow unmasked. 'Had he lived, he'd have been a quadriplegic. So I wonder if we say he was lucky to have died.' Her glance dropped unconsciously to St James' bad leg. She pulled back fractionally into her chair. 'I'm terribly sorry. Too many hours on the job.'

Less-than-perfect life versus no life at all. It was always the question, certainly one that St James had asked himself many times in the years since his accident. He brushed off her apology by ignoring it altogether.

'Did he fall? Or was he pushed?'

'Forensic are combing both the body and the clothing to see if he may have grappled with someone. But, as far as I can tell at the moment, it's a straightforward fall. He was drunk. He was at the top of a dangerous cliff. Time of death seems to be round one in the morning. So it was dark. And there was a heavy cloud cover last night as well. I'd say an accidental fall is a safe conclusion.'

How relieved Lynley would be to hear that, St James thought. Yet even as Dr Waters gave her opinion he felt tugged by a reluctance to accept it. Appearances suggested an accident, to be sure. But, no matter the appearance of the death, Brooke's presence at the cliff-top in the middle of the night suggested a clandestine meeting that led to murder.

Outside the dining room, what had that morning been a summer storm was growing into a tempest, with gale-force winds howling round the house and rain striking the windows in angry flurries. The curtains were drawn, so the noise was somewhat muted, but an occasional blast shook the windows with enough force that they rattled ominously, impossible to ignore. When this happened, St James found his thoughts torn from the death of Mick Cambrey and Justin Brooke and refastened upon the disappearance of the Daze. He knew that Lynley had spent the remainder of the day in a futile search for his brother. But the coastline was rugged and difficult to reach by land. If Peter had put the boat into a natural harbour somewhere to escape the worst of the storm, Lynley had not found him.

'I didn't think to alter the menu,' Lady Asherton was saying in reference to the elaborate array of food with which they had been presented. 'So much has been happening, I've forgotten how to think straight. There were supposed to be at least nine of us here. Ten, if Augusta had stayed. It's a blessing she went home last night. Had she been here this morning when Jasper found the body…' She toyed with a spear of broccoli, as if suddenly aware how disjointed her comments actually sounded. Candlelight and shadows played against the turquoise dress she wore and softened the lines of worry that, with the advancing day, had grown more prominent between her eyebrows and from her nose to her chin. She hadn't mentioned Peter since first being told he was gone.

'People 'ave to eat, Daze, and that's all there is to it,' Cotter said, although he'd touched no more of his food than had the others.

'But we've not much heart for it, have we?' Lady Asherton smiled at Cotter, but her anxiety was palpable. It showed itself in her quick movements, in the fleeting glimpses she took of her older son who sat nearby. Lynley had been home only ten minutes prior to dinner. He had spent that time in the estate office making phone calls. St James knew he had not spoken to his mother about Peter, and he did not have the look of a man who intended to speak about Peter now. As if she realized this, Lady Asherton said to St James, 'How's Sidney?'

'Sleeping now. She wants to go back to London in the morning.'

'Is that wise, St James?' Lynley asked.

'She doesn't appear to be willing to have it any other way.'

'Will you go with her?'

He shook his head, fingered the stem of his wineglass and thought about his brief conversation with his sister just an hour ago. Mostly he thought about her refusal to speak of Justin Brooke. Don't ask me, don't make me, she'd said, all the time looking ill, with her hair in soaked ringlets from a feverish dream. I can't, I can't. Don't make me, Simon. Please.

'She says she'll do well enough taking the train up alone,' he said.

'Perhaps she wants to speak to his family. Have the police contacted them?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Sheer audacious fast-talking and the key was mine.'

'You've missed your calling, Helen.'

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

'No idea where she's gone?'

'She's left behind her make-up and her fingernails, so-'

'Her fingernails? Helen, what sort of business is this?'

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

'Here in Cornwall?'

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

'And the other number?'

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

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

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

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

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

'They're coping.' 'And Sid?'

'She's taken it badly. Will you see to her, Helen? Tomorrow night? When she's back?'

'Of course. Don't worry. Don't give it a thought.' She hesitated momentarily. Again the music came over the line, delicate and elusive, like a fragrance in the air. Then she said, 'Simon, wishing didn't make it happen, you know.'

How well she knew him. 'When I saw him on the beach, when I knew that he was dead-' 'Don't be so hard on yourself.'

'I could have killed him, Helen. God knows I wanted to.'

'Which of us can say we've never felt the same? Towards someone at some time. It means nothing, my dear. You need some rest. We all do. It's been a dreadful time.'

He smiled at her tone. Mother, sister, loving friend. He accepted the ephemeral absolution which she offered. 'You're right, of course.'

'So go to bed. Surely we can depend upon nothing else happening before morning.'

'Let's hope so.' He replaced the receiver and stood for a moment watching the storm. Rain lashed the windows. Wind tore at the trees. Somewhere a door banged open and shut. He left the office.

He considered climbing the south-west stairway to spend the rest of the evening in his room. He felt drained of energy, incapable of thought, and unwilling to face the task of making polite conversation that deliberately avoided the topics foremost on everyone's mind. Peter Lynley. Sasha Nifford. Where they were. What they had done. Still, he knew that Lynley would be waiting to hear about Lady Helen's call. So he headed back towards the dining room.

Voices drifting down the north-west corridor arrested his attention as he approached the kitchen. Near the servants' hall, Jasper stood conversing with a rugged-looking man who dripped water from a brimming sou'wester on to the floor. Seeing St James, Jasper motioned him over.

'Bob's found 'r boat,' he said. 'Broke up on Cribba Head.'

'It's the Daze all right,' the other man put in. 'No mistakin' 'er.' 'Is anyone-?'

'There don't appear to be anyone with 'er. Don't see how 'tis possible. Not in the shape she be in.'

17

St James and Lynley followed the fisherman's rusty Austin in the estate Land-Rover. Their headlamps illuminated the havoc created by the continuing storm. Newly dismembered rhododendrons lined the drive, round them a thick carpet of purple flowers which the vehicles crushed beneath their tyres. A large sycamore branch, sheered from a tree, nearly bisected the road. Leaves and twigs hurtled in every direction while tremendous gusts of wind lashed pebbles from the drive and fired them like bullets against the cars. At the lodge, shutters banged angrily against the stone walls. Water streamed down eaves and gushed from rainpipes. Climbing roses, ripped from their trellis, lay in sodden heaps on the flagstones and the ground.

Lynley braked the Rover, and Mark Penellin dashed out to join them. Framed in the doorway, Nancy Cambrey watched, a shawl clutched to her throat and the wind whipping her dress round her legs. She shouted something that was lost in the gale. Lynley lowered his window a few inches as Mark climbed into the car's rear seat.

'Any word of Peter?' Nancy caught the front door as the wind drove it against the wall. Over the sound of her voice came the baby's thin, faint wail. 'Shall I do something?'

'Stay by the phone,' he shouted back. 'I may need you to go on to the house. To Mother.'

She nodded, gave a wave, and slammed the door home. Lynley shifted gears. They lurched on to the drive, through a pool of water and a bank of mud.

'She's at Cribba Head?' Mark Penellin asked. His hair was slicked back, drenched from the rain.

'According to what we know right now,' Lynley replied. 'What's happened to you?'

Mark tentatively touched his fingers to a fresh plaster above his right eyebrow. Abrasions covered his knuckles and the back of his hand. He shook his head self-effacingly. 'I was trying to fix the shutters so the baby'd stop crying. Nearly knocked myself out in the process.' He turned up the collar of his oilskin and buttoned it at the throat. 'You're sure it's the Daze?

'It seems to be.'

'And no word of Peter?'

'None.'

'Bloody fool.' Mark took out a packet of cigarettes, offering it to both Lynley and St James. When they refused, he lit one for himself but only smoked for a minute before crushing it out.

'You've not seen Peter?' Lynley asked.

'Not since Friday afternoon. At the cove.'

St James glanced at the boy over his shoulder. 'Peter said he didn't see you then.'

Mark raised a brow, winced, touched the plaster there. 'He saw me,' he replied, and with a cautious look at Lynley added, 'Maybe he forgot.'

Following the Austin, the Rover crawled along the narrow lane. Aside from their vehicles' lights and the occasional glimmer from a cottage or a farmhouse window, the darkness was complete, and the gloom in conjunction with the storm made the going slow. Water filmed the road. Hedgerows bent perilously towards the car. Their headlamps glared upon the torrential rain. Stopping twice to clear the road of debris, they took fifty minutes to make what should have been a quarter of an hour's drive.

Outside Treen they jolted over the uneven track to Cribba Head, pulling the cars to a halt some twenty yards from the path that led down to Penberth Cove. From the rear seat, Mark Penellin handed Lynley a fisherman's oilskin which he pulled on over his worn grey guernsey.

'You'd best wait here, St James.' Even in the closed confines of the car, Lynley had to raise his voice to be heard over the wind and the roar of surf which pounded the shore below them. The Rover rocked ominously like a lightweight toy. 'It's a rough walk.'

‘I’ll come as far as I can.'

Lynley nodded, shoving open his door. The three of them climbed out into the storm. St James found that he had to use the entire weight of his body to shut his own door once Mark Penellin hopped out.

'Jesus!' The boy shouted. 'Some blow, this.' He joined Lynley in pulling ropes, life-jackets, and life-rings out of the car's boot.

Ahead of them, the fisherman had left his headlamps burning, and they illuminated the distance to the cliff. Sheets of rain drove through the arc of light, angled by the bellowing wind. The fisherman began to trudge through weeds which clung to his trousers. He carried a coil of rope.

'She be down in the cove,' he shouted over his shoulder as they approached. 'Some fifty yard from shore. Bow to stern, northeast on the rocks. Most o' the mast and yards 's gone, I fear.'

Bent into the wind which was not only fierce but also icy cold, as if it took its inspiration from an Arctic storm, they struggled towards the cliffs edge. There, made slick and dangerous by water, a narrow path led steeply down to Penberth Cove where lights glimmered from small granite cottages at the water's edge. Torches bobbed and glittered near the surf where locals brave enough to contend with the storm were watching the broken sloop disintegrate. There was no way they could get to the boat. Even if a small skiff could have managed the surf, the reef that was destroying the Daze would have done as much for any other vessel. Beyond that, storm-driven waves impeded them, crashing upon a natural spur of granite, sending plumes of spray towering into the air.

'I can't manage it, Tommy,' St James shouted when he saw the path. ‘I’ll have to wait here.'

Lynley lifted a hand, nodded, and began the descent. The others followed, picking their way among the boulders, finding handholds and footholds in outcroppings of rock. St James watched them disappear into a patch of heavy shadow before he turned, fighting the wind and the rain to get back to the car. He felt weighted down by the mud on his shoes and the snarl of weeds that tangled in the heel-piece of his brace. When he reached the Rover, he was out of breath. He pulled open the door and threw himself inside.

Out of the storm, he stripped off his Hl-fitting oilskin and sodden guernsey. He shook the rain out of his hair. He shivered in the cold, wished for dry clothes, and thought about what the fisherman had said. At first it seemed to St James that he hadn't heard him correctly. Northeast bow to stern on the rocks. There had to be a mistake. Except that a Cornish fisherman would know his directions, and the brief glimpse St James had had of the sloop acted as confirmation of the fact. So there was no mistake. That being the case, either the boat wasn't the Daze at all, or they needed to take a new look at their theories.

It was nearly thirty minutes before Lynley returned with Mark at his heels, the fisherman a short distance behind them. Hunched against the rain, they stood at the Austin talking for a moment, the fisherman gesturing with hands and arms. Lynley nodded once, squinted towards the southwest, and with a final shouted comment he tramped through the mud and weeds to the Rover. Mark Penellin followed. They stowed their gear in the boot once again and fell rather than climbed inside the car. They were soaking.

'She's destroyed.' Lynley was gasping like a runner. 'Another hour and there'll be nothing left.' 'It's the Daze?' 'Without a doubt.'

Ahead of them, the Austin roared. It reversed, made the turn, and left them on the cliff-top. Lynley stared into the darkness which the Austin left behind. Rain pelted the windscreen.

'Could they tell you anything?'

'Little enough. They saw the boat coming in towards dusk. Apparently the fool was attempting to run through the rocks into the cove to be winched out of high water, as the other boats are.'

'Someone saw it hit?'

'Five men were working round the capstan winch on the slip. When they saw what was happening, they gathered a crew and went to see what could be done. They're fishing people, after all. They'd be unlikely to let anyone run aground without trying to help in some way. But when they finally got a clear sight of the boat no-one was on deck.'

'How is that possible?' St James regretted the impulsive question the moment he asked it. There were two explanations, and he saw them himself before Lynley and Mark put them into words.

'People get swept overboard in this kind of weather,' Mark said. 'If you're not careful, if you don't wear a safety line, if you don't know what you're doing-'

'Peter knows what he's doing,' Lynley interrupted.

'People panic, Tommy,' St James said.

Lynley didn't respond at once, as if he were evaluating this idea. He looked across St James to the passenger's window in the direction of the sodden path that led to the cove. Water from his hair trickled crookedly down his brow. He wiped it away. 'He could have gone below. He could still be below. They both could be there.'

This wasn't an immediately untenable assumption, St James thought, and it fitted rather nicely with the position in which the Daze had gone aground. If Peter had been using when he'd made the decision to take the boat out in the first place – as was clearly indicated by the fact that he had done so in the face of a coming storm – his reasoning would have been clouded by the drug. Indeed, the effects of cocaine would probably have prompted him to see himself as invincible, superior to the elements, in full command. The storm itself would have been not so much a clear and present danger as a source of excitement, the ultimate high.

On the other hand, taking the boat might have been a final act of desperation. If Peter needed to run away in order to avoid answering questions about Mick Cambrey and Justin Brooke, he may have decided the sea was his best means of escape. On land, he would have been noticed by someone. He had no transport. He would need to thumb a lift. And, with Sasha with him, whoever picked them up would be quite likely to remember them both when, and if, the police came calling. Peter was wise enough to know that.

Yet everything about the position and the destruction of the boat suggested something other than flight.

Lynley switched on the ignition. The car rumbled to life.

'I'll get up a party tomorrow,' he said. 'We're going to have a look for any signs of them.'

His mother met them in the north-west corridor where they were hanging their dripping oilskins and guernseys on the wall pegs. She didn't speak at first. Rather, she held one hand, palm outwards, between her breasts, as if in some way this would allow her to ward off a coming blow. With the other hand, she clasped a wrap she'd thrown on, a paisley stole of red and black that did battle with her colouring and the shade of her dress. She appeared to be using it more for security than for warmth, for the material was thin and perhaps with the cold or with trepidation her body quivered beneath it. She was very pale, and Lynley thought that for the first time in his recollection his mother looked every one of her fifty-six years.

‘I’ve coffee for you in the day room,' she said.

Lynley saw St James look from him to his mother. He knew his friend well enough to recognize his decision. It was time he told his mother the worst about Peter. He had to prepare her for whatever she would have to face in the coming days. And he couldn't do that with St James present, no matter how he longed to have his friend at his side.

‘I’d like to check on Sidney,' St James said. ‘I’ll be down later.'

The north-west staircase was nearby, round the corner from the gun room, and St James disappeared in that direction. Alone with his mother, Lynley didn't know what to say. Like a co-operative guest, he settled on a polite: 'I could do with a coffee. Thank you.'

His mother led the way. He noticed how she walked, her head upright, her shoulders back. He read the underlying meaning beneath her posture. Should someone see her – Hodge, the cook, or one of the dailies – she would give them no sign of any personal turmoil. Her estate manager had been arrested for murder; one of her house guests had died in the night; her youngest child was missing and her middle child was a man with whom she hadn't spoken intimately in more than fifteen years. But, if any of this bothered her, no-one would see it. If gossip flourished behind the green baize door, its subject would not be the myriad ways in which God's punishment had fallen upon the dowager Countess of Asherton at last.

They walked along the corridor that ran the length of the body of the house. At its eastern end, the day-room door was closed, and when Lady Asherton opened it the room's sole occupant got to his feet, crushing out his cigarette in an ashtray.

'Have you found anything?' Roderick Trenarrow asked.

Lynley hesitated in the doorway. He was all at once aware of the fact that his clothes were wet. Great oblongs of damp caused the wool of his trousers to adhere scratchily to his legs. His shirt clung to both his chest and his shoulders, and its collar pressed damply to the back of his neck. Even his socks were soaked, for although he'd worn gumboots down to Penberth Cove he'd removed them in the car and he'd stepped directly into a substantial puddle of rainwater when he'd parked in the courtyard upon their return.

So he wanted to leave. He wanted to change his clothes. But instead he forced himself forward and went to the bentwood cart next to his mother's desk. A coffee pot sat on it.

'Tommy?' his mother said. She had sat upon the least comfortable chair in the room.

Lynley took his cup of coffee to the sofa. Trenarrow remained where he was by the fireplace. A coal fire burned there, but its warmth did not cut through the clammy weight of Lynley's clothes. He glanced at Trenarrow, nodding in acknowledgement of the question he'd asked, but saying nothing. He wanted the other man to depart. He couldn't imagine having a conversation about Peter in front of him. Yet he knew that any request on his part for some privacy with his mother would be misinterpreted by both of them. Clearly, as on the previous evening, Trenarrow was there at her behest. This was no social call which he had designed to lead to seduction, and the concern on Trenarrow's face, when he looked at Lady Asherton, gave evidence of that.

It appeared that he would have no choice in the matter. He rubbed his forehead, brushed back his damp hair. 'No-one was with the boat,' he said. 'At least, we couldn't see anyone. They might have been below.'

'Has anyone been called?'

'The lifeboat, you mean?' He shook his head. 'She's breaking up too fast. By the time they got there, she'd be gone.'

'Do you think he was swept overboard?'

They were speaking of her child, but they might have been discussing the replanting of the garden that would have to be done after the storm. He marvelled at her calm. She maintained it only until he replied, however.

'There's no way of knowing. Whether he was below with Sasha. Whether they were both swept overboard. We won't know anything until we find the bodies. And even then, if they've sustained enough damage, we might only be left with inferences and not a lot more.'

At that, she lowered her head and covered her eyes. Lynley waited for Trenarrow to cross the room to her. He could feel the other man's need to do so. It was like a current that snapped in the air. But he made no move.

'Don't torture yourself,' Trenarrow said. 'We don't know a thing. We don't even know yet if it was Peter who took the boat. Dorothy, please. Listen to me.'

Lynley remembered with a pain that rushed and receded. Trenarrow had always been the only person who used his mother's real name.

'You know he took the boat,' she said. 'We all know why. But I've ignored every sign, haven't I? He's been in clinics having treatment. Four clinics now and I wanted to believe that he was over it. But he's not. I knew that the moment I saw him on Friday morning. But I couldn't bear to face another round of addiction, so I simply ignored it. I've actually begun praying that he'll find his way on his own because I don't know how to help him any longer. I've never known. Oh, Roddy…'

If she hadn't said his name, Trenarrow probably would have maintained his distance. But, as it was, he went to her, touched her face, her hair, said her name again. Her arms went round him.

Lynley looked away. His muscles ached. His bones felt leaden.

'I don't understand it,' Lady Asherton was saying. 'No matter what he intended by taking the boat, he would have seen what the weather was like. He would have known the danger. He can't have been as desperate as that.' And then, gendy pushing herself away from Trenarrow, 'Tommy?'

'I don't know,' Lynley said. He kept his tone guarded.

His mother got to her feet, came to the sofa. 'There's something else, isn't there? Something you've not told me. No, Roddy' – this as Trenarrow made a move towards her

– Tm all right. Tell me what it is, Tommy. Tell me what you've not wanted me to know. You argued with him last night. I heard you. You know that. But there's more, isn't there? Tell me.'

Lynley looked up at her. Her face had become remarkably calm again, as if she had managed to find and draw upon a new source of strength. He dropped his eyes to the coffee cup that warmed the palm of his hand.

'Peter was at Mick Cambrey's cottage after John Penellin's visit on Friday night. Later, Mick died. Justin told me about that after John's arrest last night. And then'

– he looked back at her – 'Justin died.'

Her lips parted as he spoke, but otherwise her expression remained impassive. 'You can't think your own brother-'

'I don't know what to think.' His throat felt raw. 'For God's sake, tell me what to think, if you will. Mick's dead. Justin's dead. Peter's disappeared. So what would you have me think of it all?'

Trenarrow took a step as if with the intention of deflecting the strength of Lynley's words. But, as he moved, Lady Asherton did likewise. She joined her son on the sofa, put her arm round his shoulders. She pressed her cheek against his and brushed her lips against his damp hair.

'Dearest Tommy,' she murmured. 'My dear, my dear. Why on earth do you believe you must bear it all?'

It was the first time she had touched him in more than a decade.

18

The morning sky, a cerulean arc under which a froth of cumulus clouds drifted inland, acted as a contradiction to the previous day's storm. As did the seabirds, who once again filled the air with their raw, importunate cries. The ground below them, however, was a testament to foul weather, and from his bedroom window, a cup of tea in his hand, St James surveyed the consequences of those hours of rain and bluster.

Slate tiles from the roof lay shattered on the drive which entered the south courtyard over which his room looked. A twisted weathervane had fallen among them, no doubt blown there from the roof of one of the outbuildings that formed part of the courtyard wall. Crushed flowers created occasional mats of bright colour: purple Canterbury bells, pink begonias, entire spikes of larkspur, and everywhere the petals of ruined roses. Bits of broken glass made a jewel-like glitter on the cobblestones, and one small, curiously unbroken window pane covered a puddle of water like newly formed ice. Already the gardeners and groundsmen were taking steps to repair the damage, and St James could hear their voices from the park, drowned out by the intermittent roar of a power saw.

A sharp double rap on the door brought Cotter into the room. 'Got what you need,' he said. 'Bit of a surprise, that, as well.' He crossed the room and handed St James the envelope which he'd removed from the estate office

desk during his telephone conversation with Lady Helen Clyde. 'It's Dr Trenarrow's number.'

'Is it?' St James placed his tea cup on the cheveret. He took the envelope and moughtfully turned it in his hands.

'Didn't even need to ring it, Mr St James,' Cotter said. 'Hodge knew whose it was the moment I showed it to him. Seems 'e's rung it enough times over the years.'

'Did you phone the number anyway, to be certain?'

'I did. It's Dr Trenarrow's all right. And 'e knows we're coming.'

'Any word from Tommy?'

'Daze said 'e phoned from Pendeen.' Cotter shook his head. 'He's got nothing.'

St James frowned, wondering about the efficacy of Lynley's plan, one which stubbornly avoided the participation of either coastguard or police. He had headed out before dawn with six men from the surrounding farms to check the coastline from St Ives to Penzance. They were operating two launches, one setting sail from Penzance harbour and the other across the peninsula at St Ives Bay. The boats were small enough to give them fairly good visual access to the shore and fast enough to complete at least a cursory search in relatively few hours. But if that gleaned them nothing a second search would have to be conducted by land. That would take days. And, whether Lynley liked it or not, it could not be orchestrated without the inclusion of the local police.

'I feel done in by this whole flipping weekend,' Cotter commented as he replaced St James' tea cup on the tray that sat on the table next to the bed. 'I'm that glad Deb's gone back to London. Get 'er out o' this mess, is what I say.'

He sounded as if he hoped St James would make a response that would encourage furdier conversation along these lines. St James had no intention of doing so.

Cotter shook out St James' dressing gown and hung it in the wardrobe. He spent a moment straightening the neat row of his shoes. He banged a set of wooden coat hangers together and snapped the locks on the suitcase which sat on the top shelf. Then he burst out with, 'What's to become of the girl? There's no closeness 'mong them. Not a bit, an' you know it. It's not like with you, is it? It's not like your family. Oh, they're rich, bloody rich, but Deb's not drawn to money. You know that well as I do. You know what draws the girl.'

Beauty, contemplation, the colours of the sky, a sudden new idea, the sight of a swan. He knew, had always known. And he needed to forget. His bedroom door opened, promising escape. Sidney entered, but with the wardrobe door obstructing his vision Cotter didn't seem to notice that he and St James were no longer alone.

'You can't say you feel nothing,' Cotter asserted vigorously. 'I c'n see it all over you. I have done for ages, no matter what you say.'

'Am I interrupting something?' Sidney asked.

Cotter swung the wardrobe door home. He looked from St James to his sister, then back to St James.

'I'll see to the car,' he said abruptly, excused himself, and left them alone.

'What was that about?' Sidney asked.

'Nothing.'

'It didn't sound like nothing.' 'It was.' 'I see.'

She remained by the door, the knob beneath her hand. St James felt a stirring of concern at the sight of her. She looked caught somewhere between numb and ill, with blue-black crescents beneath her eyes providing the only colour on her face and her eyes themselves holding no expression, reflecting rather than absorbing the light. She wore a faded denim skirt and an oversized pullover. Her hair looked uncombed.

'I'm off,' she said. 'Daze's taking me to the station.'

What had seemed reasonable only last night seemed out of the question when he saw his sister in the light of day. 'Why don't you stay, Sid? I can take you home myself later on.'

'This is best. I really want to go. It's better this way.'

'But the station will be-'

'I'll take a cab home. I'll be all right.' She turned the knob of the door, as if experimentally. 'I understand Peter's missing,' she said.

'Yes.' St James told her what had happened since he'd taken her to her room the previous morning. She listened without looking at him. As he spoke, he could sense her increasing tension, and he knew that it took its definition from an anger growing out of her comment about Peter Lynley. After the docility which shock had produced in her yesterday, he wasn't prepared for the change even though he knew that her anger was natural, a need to strike out and wound so that someone, somehow, would feel some of her pain. The worst part of a death was always that moment of knowing beyond a doubt that no matter how many people share it – be they family, friends, or even an entire nation – no two people can ever feel it the same way. So it always seems as if one experiences it alone. How much worse for Sidney, who was experiencing it alone, who was the sole mourner for Justin Brooke.

'How convenient,' she said when he'd completed his story.

'What do you mean?' 'I mean he told me.' 'Told you?'

'Justin told me, Simon. Everything. About Peter's being at Mick Cambrey's cottage. About the row Mick and Peter had. He told me. He told me. All right? Am I being clear?' She didn't move beyond the door. Had she done so, had she flung herself into the room, had she begun to tear at curtains and bedclothes, had she dashed the single vase of flowers to the floor, St James would have felt less disturbed. All of those behaviours were decidedly Sidney. This was not. Only her voice gave testimony to the state of her spirit, and even that was only a fraction away from being perfectly controlled. 'I told him that he had to tell you or Tommy,' she went on. 'Once John Penellin was arrested, I told him he had to say something. He couldn't keep quiet. It was his duty, I said. He had to tell the truth. But he didn't want to get involved. He knew he'd be making things bad for Peter. But I insisted. I said, "If someone saw John Penellin at Gull Cottage, then someone probably saw you and Peter as well." Better come forward with the story, I told him, rather than let the police drag it out of some neighbour.' 'Sid-'

'But he was worried because he'd left Peter with Mick. He was worried because Peter was getting wild about the cocaine. He was worried because he didn't know what had happened after he left them. But I convinced him that he had to speak to Tommy. So he did. Now he's dead. And how perfectly convenient that Peter's disappeared just at a moment when we all have so many questions we'd like to put to him.'

St James crossed the room to her and shut the door. 'CID think Justin's death was an accident, Sid. They've nothing at all to suggest it was murder.'

'I don't believe that.'

'Why not?'

'I just don't.'

'Was he with you Saturday night?'

'Of course he was with me.' She flung her head back and stated it like a fine point of honour. 'We made love. He wanted to. He came to me. I didn't ask him. He came to me.'

'What excuse did he give for leaving you afterwards?'

Her nostrils flared. 'He loved me, Simon. He wanted me. We were good together. But you can't accept that, can you?'

'Sid, I don't want to argue about-'

'Can you? Can you?''

Somewhere in the corridor two women were talking, having a mild argument over who would vacuum and who would clean the baths. Their voices grew louder for a moment, then faded away as they descended the stairs.

'What time did he leave you?'

'I don't know. I didn't notice.'

'Did he say anything?'

'He was restless. He said he couldn't sleep. He's like that sometimes. He's been like that before. We make love and he gets all wound up. Sometimes he wants to do it again right away.'

'But not Saturday night?'

'He said he thought he could sleep better in his own room.'

'Did he dress?'

'Did he…? Yes, he dressed.' She drew the conclusion herself. 'So he was meeting Peter. Because why would he have dressed when his own room was right across the hail? And he did dress, Simon. His shoes and socks, his trousers and shirt. Everything but his tie.' She clenched at the material of her skirt. 'Peter's bed wasn't slept in. I heard that this morning. Justin didn't fall. You know he didn't fall.'

St James didn't argue with her. He reflected upon the possibilities suggested by the simple act of donning clothes. If Peter Lynley had wanted to have an innocent conversation with Brooke, it would have been more sensible for them to have had it somewhere in the house. If, on the other hand, he had wanted to be rid of Brooke, far wiser to do it in a location where it would look like an accident. But, if that were the case, why on earth would Justin agree to meet Peter anywhere alone?

'Sid, it doesn't make sense. Justin wasn't a fool. Why would he agree to meet Peter at the cliff? And in the middle of the night? After his conversation with Tommy, for all he knew, Peter was out for his blood.' Then he thought about Friday afternoon's scene on the beach. 'Unless, of course, Peter got him down there on false pretences. With some sort of bait.'

'What?'

'Sasha?'

'That's absurd.'

'Then, cocaine. They'd gone to Nanrunnel looking for it. Perhaps that was the carrot Peter used.'

'It wouldn't have worked. Justin wasn't going to use any longer. Not after what happened between us on the beach. He apologized for that. He said he was off it. He wouldn't use again.'

St James could not keep the scepticism from his face. He saw the hard edge of his sister's features begin to disintegrate as she read his reaction.

'He promised, Simon. You didn't know him as I did. You wouldn't understand. But if he promised when we were making love… especially when… There were certain things he liked me to do.'

'My God, Sidney.'

She began to cry. 'Of course. My God, Sidney. What else can you say? Why should you of all people even begin to understand? You've never been close to feeling anything for anyone. Why on earth should you? After all, you've got science. You don't have to feel passion. You can feel busy instead. With projects and conferences and lectures and the guidance of all those future pathologists who come to worship at your knee.'

Here was the need to wound that he'd recognized before. Still, it came out of nowhere. He hadn't expected it. And, whether the attack was accurate or not, he found that he could not summon a response.

Sidney drew a hand across her eyes. 'I'm leaving. Just tell little Peter when you find him that I have lots to discuss with him. Believe me, I can hardly wait for the opportunity.'

Trenarrow's house was easy enough to find, for it sat just off the upper reaches of Paul Lane on the outskirts of the village, the largest structure within view. By the standards of Howenstow, it was a humble enough dwelling. But in comparison to the cottages that stacked one upon the other on the hillside beneath it the villa was very grand, with broad bay windows overlooking the harbour and a stand of poplar trees acting like a backdrop against which the house's ashlar walls and white woodwork were displayed to some considerable effect.

With Cotter at the wheel of the estate Austin, St James saw the villa at once as they came over the last rise of the coastal road and began their descent into Nanrunnel. They wound past the harbour, the village shops, the tourist flats. At the Anchor and Rose, they made the turn into Paul Lane. Here debris from yesterday's storm littered the pitted asphalt: rubbish from cottage dustbins, assorted food wrappers and tins, a wrecked sign that once had advertised cream teas. The road twisted on itself and climbed above the village where it was strewn with broken foliage from hedges and shrubs. Pools of rainwater reflected the sky.

A narrow drive branching north off Paul Lane was discreedy marked The Villa. Fuchsias lined it, drooping heavily over a drystone wall. Behind this, a terraced garden covered much of the hillside where a carefully plotted, meandering path led upwards to the house, through beds of phlox and nemesia, bellflowers and cyclamen.

The drive ended in a curve round a hawthorn tree, and Cotter parked beneath it, a few yards from the front door. A Doric-columned portico sheltered this, with two urns of vermilion pelargoniums standing on either side.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'It's certainly beyond me,' St James replied.

'Any word of Peter?'

'Nothing yet, I'm afraid.'

Trenarrow shut the door and gestured St James into one of the room's wing-back chairs.

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

'Thank you, no. She's your housekeeper?'

'Using the term in the loosest possible fashion.' He smiled briefly, without humour. The remark seemed largely an effort to be light-hearted, an effort he dismissed with his very next words. 'Tommy told us last night. About Peter seeing Mick Cambrey the night he died.

About Brooke as well. I don't know where you stand in all this, but I've known that boy since he was six years old, and he's not a killer. He's incapable of violence, most especially the sort that was done to Mick Cambrey.' 'Did you know Mick well?'

'Not as well as others in the village. Just as his landlord. I let him Gull Cottage.' 'How long ago was that?'

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

'Who lived there before him?'

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

'Tommy?'

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

'Mine. But he knows I've come to see you.' 'About Mick?'

'Actually no. Tina Cogin's disappeared. We think she may have come to Cornwall.' 'Who?'

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

'I haven't the slightest… Tina Cogin, you say?'

'She's not a patient of yours? Or a former patient?'

'I don't see patients. Oh, perhaps the occasional terminal case who volunteers for an experimental drug. But if Tina Cogin was one of them and she's disappeared… Excuse me for the levity, but there's only one place she'd be disappearing to and it wouldn't be Cornwall.'

'Then, you may well have seen her in a different light.' Trenarrow looked perplexed. 'Sony?' 'She may be a prostitute.'

The doctor's gold-rimmed spectacles slid fractionally down his nose. He knuckled them back into place and said, 'And she had my name?'

'No. Just your number.'

'My address?'

'Not even that.'

Trenarrow pushed himself out of his chair. He walked over to the window behind the desk. He spent a long moment studying the view before he turned back to St James. 'I've not set foot in London in a year. Perhaps more. But I suppose that makes little enough difference if she's come to Cornwall. Perhaps she's making house calls.' He smiled wryly. 'You don't really know me, Mr St James, so you have no way of knowing if I'm telling you the truth. But let me say that it's not been my habit to pay a woman for sex. Some men do it without flinching, I realize. But I've always preferred love-making to grow out of a passion other than avarice. This other – the negotiating first, the exchange of cash later – that's not my style.'

'Was it Mick's?'

'Mick's?'

'He was seen leaving her flat on Friday morning in London. He may well have given her your number in fact. Perhaps for some sort of consultation.'

Trenarrow's fingers went to the rosebud on his lapel, touching its tightly furled petals. 'That's a possibility,' he said thoughtfully. 'Although referrals generally come from physicians, it is a possibility if she's seriously ill. Mick knew cancer research is my line of work. He'd done an interview with me shortly after he took over the Spokesman. It's not inconceivable that he might have given her my name. But Cambrey and a prostitute? That's going to put a wrench in his reputation. His father's been fanning the fires of Mick's sexual profligacy for the last year at least. And, believe me, nothing he's said has ever alluded to Mick having to pay for a woman's favours. According to Harry, so many women were throwing themselves at the poor lad that he barely had time to pull his trousers up before someone was moaning to have them back down. If involvement with a prostitute led to Mick's murder, it'll be sad times for Harry. He seems to be hoping it was from a row with a dozen or two jealous husbands.' 'Or one jealous wife?'

'Nancy?' Trenarrow said incredulously. 'I can't see her hurting anyone, can you? And even if she had somehow been driven beyond endurance – it was no secret, after all, that Mick saw other women – when could she have done it? She couldn't have been in two places at once.'

'She was gone from the refreshment booth for a good ten minutes or more.'

'Time to run home, murder her husband, and reappear as if everything were well? The thought's a bit absurd, considering the girl. Someone else might have managed it with aplomb, but Nancy's no actress. If she'd killed her husband during the evening, I doubt she could have hidden it from a soul.'

There was certainly a weight of evidence to support Trenarrow's declaration. From start to finish, Nancy's reactions had borne the unmistakable stamp of authenticity. Her shock, her numb grief, her rising anxiety. None of them had seemed in the least bit factitious. It hardly seemed likely that she'd run home, killed her husband, and feigned horror later. That being the case, St James considered the problem of suspects. John Penellin had been in the area that night, as had Peter Lynley and Justin Brooke. Perhaps Harry Cambrey had paid a visit to the cottage as well. And Mark Penellin's whereabouts were still unaccounted for. Yet a motive for the crime was not clearly emerging. Each one they considered was nebulous at best. And, more than anything, a motive needed clear definition if anyone was to understand the full circumstances of Mick Cambrey's death.

St James noticed Harry Cambrey almost immediately as Cotter pulled the car back into Paul Lane. He was climbing towards them. He waved energetically as they approached. The cigarette between his fingers left a tiny plume of smoke in the air.

'Who's this?' Cotter slowed the car.

'Mick Cambrey's father. Let's see what he wants.'

Cotter pulled to the side of the road, and Harry Cambrey came to St James' window. He leaned into the car, bringing with him the mixed odours of tobacco smoke and beer. His appearance had undergone some improvement since St James and Lady Helen had seen him on Saturday morning. His clothes were fresh, his hair was combed, and although a few overlooked whiskers sprouted here and there like grey bristles on his cheeks, his face was largely shaven as well.

He was panting, and he winced as if the words hurt him when he spoke. 'Howenstow folks said you'd be here. Come down to the office. Something to show you.'

'You've found notes?' St James asked.

Cambrey shook his head. 'Worked it all out, though.' When St James opened the car door, Cambrey clambered inside. He nodded at the introduction to Cotter. 'It's those numbers I found. The ones from his desk. I've been playing with them since Saturday. I know what they mean.'

Cotter remained in the pub with Mrs Swann, chatting amiably over a pint of ale. He was saying, 'I wouldn't say no to one o' them Scotch eggs,' as St James followed Harry Cambrey up to the newspaper office.

Unlike his former visit to the Spokesman, on this morning the staff was at work. All the lights were on – creating an entirely different atmosphere from the previous gloom – and in three of the four cubicles newspaper employees either pecked at typewriters or talked on the phone. A long-haired boy examined a set of photographs on a display board while next to him a compositor engaged in the process of laying out another edition of the newspaper on an angled green table. He held an unlit pipe between his teeth and tapped a pencil in staccato against a plastic holder of paper clips. At the word processor on the table next to Mick Cambrey's desk, a woman sat typing. She had soft, dark hair drawn back from her face and – when she looked up – intelligent eyes. She was very attractive. Julianna Vendale, St James decided. He wondered how and if her responsibilities at the newspaper had altered with Mick Cambrey's death.

Harry Cambrey led the way to one of the cubicles. It was sparsely furnished, hung with wall decorations which suggested that not only was the office his own, but also nothing had been done to change it during his convalescence after heart surgery. Everything spoke of the fact that, no matter Harry Cambrey's desire, his son had not intended to assume either his office or his job. Framed newspaper clippings, gone yellow with age, appeared to represent the older man's proudest stories: a piece on a disastrous sea rescue attempt in which twenty of the would-be rescuers had drowned; an accident which dismembered a local fisherman; the rescue of a child from a mine shaft; a brawl during a fete in Penzance. These were accompanied by newspaper photographs as well, the originals of those which had been printed with the stories.

On the top of an ancient desk the most recent edition of the Spokesman lay open to the editorial page. Mick's contribution had been heavily circled in red. On the wall opposite, a map of Great Britain hung. Cambrey directed St James to this.

'I kept thinking about those numbers,' he said. 'Mick was systematic about things like that. He wouldn't have kept that paper if it wasn't important.' He felt in the breast pocket of his shirt for a packet of cigarettes. He shook one out and lit it before going on. 'I'm still working on part of it, but I'm on my way.'

St James saw that next to the map Cambrey had taped a small piece of paper. On it he had printed part of the cryptic message which he'd found beneath his son's desk. 27500-M1 Procure/Transport and, beneath that, 27500-M6 Finance. On the map itself, two motorways had been traced in red marking-pen, the Ml heading north from London and the M6 heading northwest below Leicester towards the Irish Sea.

'Look at it,' Cambrey said. 'Ml and M6 run together south of Leicester. The Ml only goes as far as Leeds, but the M6 continues. It ends in Carlisle. At Solway Firth.'

St James considered this. He made no reply. Cambrey sounded agitated when he continued.

'Look at the map, man. Just look at it square. M6 gives access to Liverpool, doesn't it? It takes you to Preston, to Morecambe Bay. And they every bloody one of them-'

'- give access to Ireland,' St James concluded, thinking of the editorial he'd read only the morning before.

Cambrey went for the paper. He folded it back. His cigarette bobbed between his lips as he talked. 'He knew someone was running guns for the IRA.'

'How could he have stumbled on to a story like that?'

'Stumbled?' Cambrey removed his cigarette, picked tobacco from his tongue and shook the newspaper to make his point. 'My lad didn't stumble. He was a journalist, not a fool. He listened. He talked. He learned to follow leads.' Cambrey returned to the map and used the folded newspaper as a pointer. 'Guns must be coming into Cornwall in the first place, or if not into Cornwall, then through a south harbour. Shipped from sympathizers, maybe in North Africa or Spain or even France. They come in anywhere along the south coast -Plymouth, Bournemouth, Southampton, Portsmouth. They're shipped disassembled. Trucked to London and put together. Then from there, up the Ml to the M6, and then to Liverpool or Preston or Morecambe Bay.'

'Why not ship them directly to Ireland in the first place?' St James asked, but he knew the answer even as he asked it. A foreign ship docking at Belfast would be more likely to arouse suspicion than would an English ship. It would undergo a thorough Customs check. But an English ship would be largely accepted. For why would the English be sending arms to assist an uprising against themselves?

'There was more on the paper than Ml and M6,' St James pointed out. 'Those additional numbers have to mean something.'

Cambrey nodded. 'Likely to be some sort of registration numbers, I think. References to the ship they'd be using. Numbers on the type of weapons they'd be supplying. It's some sort of code. But make no mistake about it. Mick was on his way to breaking it.'

'Yet you've found no other notes?'

'What I've found's enough. I know my lad. I know what he was about.'

St James reflected upon the map. He thought about the numbers Mick had jotted on the paper. He noted the fact that the editorial about Northern Ireland had appeared on Sunday, more than thirty hours after Mick's death. If the two were connected somehow, then the killer had known about the editorial in advance of the paper's appearance on Sunday morning. He wondered how likely a possibility that was.

'Do you keep your back issues of the newspaper here?' he asked.

'This isn't a back-issue problem,' Cambrey said. 'Nonetheless, do you have them?' 'Some. Out here.'

Cambrey led him from his office to a storage cabinet that sat to the left of the casement windows. He pulled open the doors to reveal stacks of newspapers upon the shelves. St James glanced at them, pulled the first set off the shelf, and looked at Cambrey.

'Can you get me Mick's keys?' he asked.

Cambrey looked puzzled. 'I've a spare cottage key here.'

'No. I mean all his keys. He has a set, doesn't he? Car, cottage, office? Can you get them? I expect Boscowan has them now, so you'll need to come up with an excuse. And I'll want them for a few days.'

'Why?'

'Does the name Tina Cogin mean anything to you?' St James asked in answer. 'Cogin?'

'Yes. A woman from London. Mick knew her apparently. I think he may have had the key to her flat.'

'Mick had the key to half a dozen flats, if I know him.' Cambrey pulled out a cigarette and left him to his papers.

An hour's search through the past six months gleaned him nothing save hands that were stained with newsprint. As far as he could tell, Harry Cambrey's conjecture about gun-running was as likely a motive for his son's death as was anything else the paper had to offer. He shut the cupboard doors. When he turned, it was to find Julianna Vendale watching him, a coffee cup raised to her lips. She'd left the word processor, coming to stand near a coffee maker that was bubbling noisily in the corner of the room.

'Nothing?' She put her cup down on the table and pushed a lock of long hair back from her shoulder.

'Everyone seems to think he was working on a story,' St James said.

'Mick was always working on something.'

'Did most of his projects get into print?'

She drew her eyebrows together. A faint crease appeared between them. Otherwise, her face was completely unlined. St James knew from his previous conversation with Lynley that Julianna Vendale was in her middle thirties, perhaps a bit older. But her face denied her age.

'I don't know,' she answered. 'I wasn't always aware of what his projects were. But it wouldn't surprise me to find out he'd begun something and then let it die. He'd shoot out of here often enough, convinced he was hot on the trail of a feature he could sell in London. Then he'd never complete it.'

St James had seen that himself in his perusal of the newspapers. Dr Trenarrow had said Mick interviewed him for a story. But nowhere in the back issues of the paper was there a feature that in any way related to a conversation the two of them might have had. St James related this to Julianna Vendale.

She poured herself another cup of coffee and spoke over her shoulder. 'That doesn't surprise me. Mick probably thought he was going to get a Mother Teresa piece out of it – Cornish Scientist Dedicates his Life to Saving Others – only to discover that Dr Trenarrow's no more on the path to heaven than the rest of us are.'

Or, St James thought, the potential story was a ploy to get an interview with Trenairow in the first place in order to gather information and pass it along with Trenarrow's phone number to a needy friend.

Julianna was continuing. 'That was largely his way, ever since he came back to the Spokesman. I think he was looking for a story as a means of escape.'

'He didn't want to be here?'

'It was a step backwards for him. He'd been a freelance journalist. He'd been doing quite well. Then his father fell ill and he had to chuck it all and come back to hold the family business together.'

'You couldn't have done that?'

'I could have done, of course. But Harry wanted Mick to take over the paper. More than that, I should guess, he wanted him back in Nanrunnel permanently.'

St James thought he saw the direction Harry Cambrey had intended things to move once Mick returned to Nanrunnel. Nonetheless, he asked, 'How did you fit into the plans?'

'Harry made certain we worked together as much as possible. Then, I suppose, he just hoped for the best. He had great faith in Mick's charm.'

'And you?'

She was holding her coffee cup between her hands, as if to keep them warm. Her fingers were long; she wore no rings. 'He didn't appeal to me. When Harry saw that, he started having Nancy Penellin come to do the books during our regular office hours instead of at weekends.'

'And as to developing the newspaper's stature?'

She indicated the word processor. 'Mick made the attempt at first. He started with new equipment. He wanted to update. But then he seemed to lose interest.'

'When?'

'Just about the time he made Nancy pregnant.' She lifted her shoulders in a graceful shrug. 'After they married, he was gone a great deal.'

'Pursuing a story?'

She smiled. 'Pursuing.'

They strolled across the narrow street to the harbour. The tide was out. Five sunbathers lay on the narrow strand. Near them, a group of small children dabbled their hands

and feet in the water, shrieking with excitement as it lapped at their legs.

'Get what you need?' Cotter asked.

'Pieces, that's all. Nothing seems to fit together. I can't make a connection between Mick and Tina Cogin, between Tina Cogin and Trenarrow. It's nothing more than conjecture.'

'P'raps Deb was wrong. P'raps she didn't see Mick in London.'

'No. She saw him. Everything indicates that. He knew Tina Cogin. But as to how and why, I don't know.'

'Seems 'ow and why's the easiest part, 'cording to Missus Swann.'

'She's not an admirer of Mick's, is she?'

'She hated 'im, and there's the truth.' Cotter watched the children playing for a moment. He smiled as one of them – a little girl of three or four – fell on to her bottom, splashing water on the others. 'But if there's truth to her talk about Mick Cambrey and women, then far's I can see, looks to me that John Penellin did it.'

'Why?'

'It's 'is daughter involved, Mr St James. A man's not likely to let another man hurt 'is daughter. Not if it can be stopped in some way. A man does what 'e can.'

St James recognized the bait and acknowledged the fact that their morning's discussion was not yet concluded in Cotter's eyes. But he had no need to ask the question which Cotter's comment called for: And what would you do? He knew the answer. Instead he said, 'Did you learn anything from the housekeeper?'

'Dora? A bit.' Cotter leaned against the harbour railing, resting his elbows on the top metal bar. 'Great admirer of the doctor, is Dora. Works 'is fingers to the bone. Gives 'is life to research. And when 'e's not doing that, 'e's visiting folks at a convalescent 'ome outside St Just.'

'That's the extent of it?' 'Seems to be.'

St James sighed. Not for the first time did he admit to the fact that his field was science, crime-scene investigation, the analysis of evidence, the interpretation of data, the preparation of reports. He had no expertise in an arena that demanded insightful communication and intuitive deduction. More, he didn't have the taste or the talent for either. And the further he waded into the growing mire of conjecture, the more frustrated he felt.

From his jacket pocket, he pulled out the piece of paper which Harry Cambrey had given him on Saturday morning. It seemed as reasonable a direction to head in as any. When you're lost, he thought mordantly, you may as well head somewhere.

Cotter joined him in studying it. 'MP,' he said. Then, 'Member of Parliament?'

St James looked up. 'What did you say?'

'Them letters. MP.'

'MP? No-' As he spoke, St James held the paper to the sunlight. And he saw what the gloom of the newspaper office and his own preconceived notions had prevented him from realizing before. The pen, which had skipped in the grease on other spots on the paper, had done as much again next to the words procure and transport. The result was an imperfectly formed loop for the letter P, not the number 1 at all. And the 6, if the thought followed logically, had to be instead a hastily scrawled C.

'Good God.' He frowned, examining the accompanying numbers. Dismissing gun-running and Ireland and every other side issue from his mind, it wasn't long before he saw the obvious. 500. 55. 27500. The last was the multiple of the previous two.

And then he recognized the first connection of the circumstances surrounding Mick Cambrey's death. The position of the Daze had told him, bow to stern northeast on the rocks. He should have clung to that thought. It had been pointing to the truth.

He thought about the coastline of Cornwall. He knew without a doubt that Lynley's party of men could scour every cove from St Ives to Penzance, but it would be as limitedly useful an activity for them as it had been for the Excise officers who had patrolled the same area for two hundred years. The coast was honeycombed with caves. It was scalloped by coves. St James knew that. He did not need to clamber among the rocks and slither down the faces of cliffs to see what he knew quite well was already there: a haven for smugglers. If they knew how to pilot a boat among the reefs.

It could have come from anywhere, he thought. From Porthgwarra to Sennen Cove. Even from the Scillies. But there was only one way to know for sure.

'What next?' Cotter asked.

St James folded the paper. 'We need to find Tommy.' 'Why?'

'To call off the search.'

19

After nearly two hours, they found him on the quay at Lamorna Cove. He was squatting on the edge, talking to a fisherman who had just docked his boat and was trudging up the harbour steps, three coils of greasy-looking rope dangling from his shoulder. He paused halfway, listening to Lynley above him. He shook his head, covered his eyes to examine the other boats in the harbour, and with a wave towards the scattering of buildings set back from the quay he continued his climb.

Up above, on the road that dipped into the cove, St James got out of the car. 'Go back to Howenstow,' he told Cotter. 'I'll ride with Tommy.'

'Any message for Daze?'

St James considered the question. Any message for Lynley's mother seemed a toss-up between relieving her mind about one set of circumstances only to fire her worries about another. 'Nothing yet.'

He waited as Cotter turned the car around and headed back the way they had come. Then he began the descent into Lamorna, with the wind whipping round him and the sun warming his face. Below him, the crystalline water reflected the colour of the sky, and the small beach glistened with newly washed sand. The houses on the hillside, built by Cornish craftsmen who had been testing the strength of the south-western weather for generations, had sustained no damage from the storm. Here, that which had been the ruin of the Daze might not even have occurred.

St James watched as Lynley walked along the quay, his head bent forward, his hands deep in trouser pockets. The posture said everything about the condition of his spirit, and the fact that he was alone suggested either that he had disbanded the search altogether or that the others had gone on without him. Because they'd been at it for hours already, St James guessed the former. He called Lynley's name.

His friend looked up, raised a hand in greeting, but said nothing until he and St James met at the land end of the quay. His expression was bleak.

'Nothing.' He lifted his head, and the wind tossed his hair. 'We've completed the circuit. I've been talking to everyone here as a last-ditch effort. I thought someone might have seen them getting the boat ready to sail, or walking on the quay, or stocking supplies. But no-one in any of the houses saw a blasted thing. Only the woman who runs the cafe even noticed the Daze yesterday.'

'When was that?'

'Just after six in the morning. She was getting ready to open the cafe – adjusting the front blinds – so she can't have been mistaken. She saw them sailing out of the harbour.'

'And it was yesterday? Not the day before.'

'She remembers it was yesterday because she couldn't understand why someone was taking the boat out when rain had been forecast.'

'But it was in the morning that she saw them?'

Lynley glanced his way, flashed a tired but grateful smile. 'I know what you're thinking. Peter left Howenstow the night before, and because of that it's less likely he's the one who took the boat. That's good of you, St James. Don't think I haven't considered it myself. But the reality is that he and Sasha could have come to Lamorna during

the night, slept on the boat, then taken her out at dawn.' 'Did this woman see anyone on deck?' 'Just a figure at the helm.' 'Only one?'

'I can't think Sasha knows how to sail, St James. She was probably below. She was probably still asleep.' Lynley looked back at the cove. 'We've done the whole coastline. But so far nothing. Not a sighting, not a garment, not a sign of them.' He took out his cigarette case and flipped it open. 'I'm going to have to come up with something to tell Mother. But God only knows what it'll be.'

St James had been placing most of the facts together as Lynley spoke. His thoughts elsewhere, he'd heard not so much the words as the desolation behind them. He sought to bring that to an immediate end.

'Peter didn't take the Daze,' he said. 'I'm sure of it.'

Lynley's head turned to him slowly. It looked like the sort of movement one makes in a dream. 'What are you saying?'

'We need to go to Penzance.'

Detective Inspector Boscowan took them to the officers' canteen. 'The yellow submarine,' he'd called it, and the name was very apt: yellow walls, yellow linoleum, yellow Formica-topped tables, yellow plastic chairs. Only the crockery was a different colour, but as this colour was carmine the overall effect was one which did not encourage the thought of lingering over a meal with one's mates. Nor did it suggest the possibility of consuming one's food without developing a ferocious headache in the process. They took a pot of tea to a table overlooking a small courtyard in which a dispirited ash tree attempted to flourish in a circle of dirt the colour of granite.

'Designed and decorated by madmen,' was Boscowan's only comment as he hooked his foot round the leg of an extra chair and dragged it to their table. 'Supposed to take one's mind off one's work.'

'It does that,' St James remarked.

Boscowan poured the tea while Lynley ripped open three packages of digestive biscuits and shook them on to an extra plate. They fell upon it with a sound like small artillery fire.

'Baked fresh daily.' Boscowan smiled sardonically, took a biscuit, dunked it in his tea and held it there. 'John's spoken to a solicitor this morning. I had a devil of a time getting him to do it. I've always known the man's stubborn, but he's never been like this.'

'Are you going to charge him?' Lynley asked.

Boscowan examined his biscuit, dunked it again. 'I've no choice in the matter. He was there. He admits it. The evidence supports it. Witnesses saw him. Witnesses heard the row.' Boscowan took a bite of his biscuit, after which he appreciatively held it at eye level and nodded his head. He wiped his fingers on a paper napkin and urged the plate upon the other two men. 'Not half bad. Just put your faith in the tea.' He waited until they had each taken one before he went on. 'Had John only been there it would be a different matter. Had there not also been that flaming row which half the neighbourhood appear to have heard…'

St James looked at Lynley. He was adding a second cube of sugar to his tea. His index finger played along the handle of the cup. But he said nothing.

St James said, 'As to Penellin's motive?'

'An argument over Nancy, I dare say. Cambrey was trapped into the marriage, and he made no bones about hating every minute of it. There's not one person I've talked to who hasn't said that.'

'Then, why marry her in the first place? Why not simply refuse? Why not insist on an abortion?'

'According to John, the girl wouldn't hear of abortion.

And Harry Cambrey wouldn't hear of Mick's refusing to marry her.'

'But Mick was a grown man after all.'

'With a dad sick and likely to die after his surgery.' Boscowan drained his cup of tea. 'Harry Cambrey recognized a string when he saw one. Don't think he didn't pull it to keep Mick in Nanrunnel. So the lad got trapped here. He started stepping out on his wife. Everyone knows it, including John Penellin.'

Lynley said, 'But you can't truly believe that John-'

Boscowan raised a hand quickly. 'I know the facts. They're all we have to work with. Nothing else can matter, and you damn well know it. What difference does it make that John Penellin's my friend? His son-in-law's dead, and that has to be seen to, whether it's convenient in my life or not.' Having said this, Boscowan looked abashed, as if his brief outburst had come as a surprise to him. He went on more quietly. 'I've offered to let him go home pending arraignment, but he's refused. It's as if he wants to be here, as if he wants to be tried.' He reached for another biscuit but, rather than eat it, he broke it in his hands. 'It's as if he did it.'

'May we see him?' Lynley asked.

Boscowan hesitated. He looked from Lynley to St James, then out the window. 'It's irregular. You know that.'

Lynley pulled out his warrant card. Boscowan waved it off. 'I know you're Scotland Yard. But this isn't a Yard case, and I've my own Chief Constable's sensibilities to consider. No visitors save family and solicitor when it's a homicide. That's standard procedure in Penzance, regardless of what you allow at the Met.'

'A woman friend of Mick Cambrey's has gone missing from London,' Lynley said. 'Perhaps John Penellin can help us with that.'

'A case you're working on?'

Lynley didn't reply. At the next table a girl in a stained white uniform began stacking plates onto a metal tray. Crockery crashed and scraped. A mound of mashed potatoes fell to the floor. Boscowan watched her work. He tapped a hard biscuit on the table top.

'Oh hell,' he murmured. 'Come on with you both. I'll arrange it somehow.'

He left them in an interrogation room in another wing of the building. A single table and five chairs were the only furnishings besides a mirror on one wall and a ceiling light-fixture from which a spider was industriously constructing a web.

'Do you think he'll admit to it?' Lynley asked as they waited.

'He doesn't really have a choice.'

'And you're sure, St James?'

'It's the only reasonable explanation.'

A uniformed constable escorted John Penellin into the room. When he saw who his visitors were, he took a single step backwards as if he would leave. The door was already closed behind him, however. It had a small window set at eye level, and although Penellin glanced at this as if considering whether to signal the constable to take him back to his cell he made no move to do so. Instead, he joined them. The table wobbled on uneven legs as he leaned against it when he sat.

'What's happened?' he asked warily.

'Justin Brooke took a fall at Howenstow early Sunday morning,' Lynley said. 'The police think it was an accident. It may well have been. But, if it wasn't, there's either a second killer on the loose locally or you yourself are innocent and there's only one killer. Which do you think is more likely, John?'

Penellin twisted a button on the cuff of his shirt. His expression did not change, although a muscle contracted as quickly as a reflex beneath his right eye.

St James spoke. 'The Daze was taken from Lamoma early yesterday morning. She was wrecked at Penberth Cove last night.'

The button Penellin was twisting fell onto the table. He picked it up, used his thumb to flip it onto its other side. St James went on.

'I think it's a three-tiered operation, with a main supplier and perhaps half a dozen dealers. They seem to be running the cocaine in two possible ways: either the dealers pick it up from the supplier – perhaps on the Scillies – and then sail back to the mainland, or the supplier arranges to meet the dealers in any number of coves along the coast. Porthgwarra comes to mind at once. The shore's accessible, the village is too far off for anyone to notice clandestine comings and goings in the cove. The cliff is riddled with caves and caches in which an exchange could take place if it seems too risky to try it on the open sea. But, no matter how he gets it from his supplier, once the dealer has it – either from the Scillies or from one of the coves – he sails back to Lamorna in the Daze and then takes the cocaine to the mill at Howenstow where he packages it. With no-one the wiser.'

Penellin said, only, 'You know then.'

'Who is it that you've been trying to protect?' St James asked. 'Mark or the Lynleys?'

Penellin reached into his pocket and brought out a packet of Dunhills. Lynley reached across the table with the lighter. Penellin looked at him over the flame.

'It's a bit of both, I should guess,' Lynley said. 'The longer you keep silent, the longer you protect Mark from arrest. But keeping him from arrest makes him available to Peter unless you do what you can to keep them apart.'

'Mark's dragging Peter down,' Penellin said. 'He'll kill him eventually if I don't stop him.'

'Justin Brooke told us that Peter intended to make a buy here in Cornwall,' St James said. 'Mark was his source, wasn't he? That was why you were trying to keep them from seeing each other on Friday at Howenstow.'

'I thought Mark might try to sell to Peter and the girl. I've suspected him of dealing in drugs for some time, and I thought if I could just find where he was bringing the stuff in, where he was packaging it…' Penellin rolled his cigarette restlessly between his fingers. There was no ashtray on the table, so he knocked the growing cylinder of ash onto the floor and smashed it with his foot. 'I thought I could stop him. I've been watching him for weeks, following him when I could. I'd no idea he was doing it right on the estate.'

'It was a solid plan,' St James said, 'both parts of it. Using the Daze as a means of getting the cocaine. Using the mill to cut and package it. Everything was associated with Howenstow in some way. And since Peter was – and is – the known Howenstow user he stood to take the fall if things didn't work out. He'd protest his innocence wildly, of course. He'd blame Mark when it came down to it. But who'd believe him? Even yesterday, we immediately assumed he'd taken the boat. No-one even gave a thought to Mark. It was clever of them.'

Penellin's head lifted slowly at St James' final word. 'You know that part as well.'

'Mark didn't have the capital to orchestrate this alone,' St James said. 'He needed an investor, and I should guess it was Mick. Nancy knew that, didn't she? You both knew it.'

'Suspected. Suspected, is all.'

'Is that why you went to see him on Friday night?'

Penellin gave his attention back to the cigarette. 'I was looking for answers.'

'And Nancy must have known you'd be going there. So when Mick was killed she feared the worst.'

'Cambrey'd taken out a bank loan to update the newspaper,' Penellin said, 'but little enough got spent on that.

Then he started going all the time to London. And he started talking money to Nance. How there wasn't enough. How they were close to bankrupt. Rent money. Baby money. They were going to sink, according to Mick. But none of it made sense. He had money. He'd managed to get the loan.'

'Which he was investing rather copiously in cocaine.'

'She didn't want to believe he was involved. She said he didn't take drugs, and she wouldn't see that one doesn't have to take them in order to sell them. She wanted proof.'

'That's what you were after Friday night when you went to the cottage.'

'I'd forgotten that it was one of the Fridays when he did the pay envelopes. I'd thought he'd not be home and I'd be able to have a thorough search. But he was there. We had a row.'

St James took the Talisman sandwich wrapper from his pocket. 'I think this is what you wanted,' he said and handed it to Penellin. 'It was in the newspaper office. Harry found it in Mick's desk.'

Penellin looked the paper over, handed it back. 'I don't know what I wanted,' he said and gave a low, self-derisive laugh. 'I think I was looking for a typed confession.'

'This is more design than confession,' St James admitted.

'What does it mean?'

'Only Mark could verify it, but I think it represents the original deal the two of them struck together. 1 K 9400 would signify the cost of the original purchase of cocaine. A kilo for £9400. They'd split that between them to sell, which is what the second line tells us: 500 grams for each of them at £55 per gram. Their profit: £27,500 each. And, next to their profit, the particular talent each of them would bring to the plan. MP – Mark – would provide the transport in order to procure the drug. He'd take the Daze and meet the dealer. MC - Mick – would provide the initial financing from the bank loan he'd secured in order to purchase new equipment for the newspaper. And Mick covered himself by beginning those initial equipment purchases so no-one's suspicions would be aroused.' "Then it fell apart,' Penellin said.

'Perhaps. It could be that the cocaine didn't sell as well as they thought it would and he lost money on the deal. Perhaps things didn't work out between the partners. Or there may have been a double-cross somewhere down the line.'

'Or the other,' Penellin said. 'Go ahead with the other.'

'That's why you're in here, John, isn't it?' Lynley asked. 'That's why you're saying nothing. That's why you're taking the blame.'

'He must have discovered how easy it was,' Penellin said. 'He didn't need Mick once he'd made the initial purchase, did he? Why bother with an added person who'd expect part of the profits?'

'John, you can't take the blame for Cambrey's death.'

'Mark's only twenty-two.'

'That doesn't matter. You didn't-'

Penellin cut Lynley short by speaking to St James. 'How did you know it was Mark?'

'The Daze. We thought Peter had taken her to get away from Howenstow. But the boat was northeast on the rocks at Penberth Cove. So she had to be returning to Howenstow, not leaving. And she'd been there for several hours when we arrived, so there was plenty of time for Mark to abandon her, to make his way back to Howenstow, and be ready – somewhat banged up admittedly – to help us search for Peter.'

'He'd have needed to abandon her,' Penellin said numbly.

'The cocaine gave him good enough reason to do so. If anyone at Penberth phoned the coastguard, he'd be in serious trouble. Better risk his life by jumping ship near the shore than risk a gaol sentence by getting caught with a kilogram of cocaine on the boat.'

'John,' Lynley said insistently, 'you've got to tell Boscowan the truth. About all of this. About Friday night.'

Levelly, Penellin looked at him. 'And what of Mark?' he asked. Lynley didn't reply. Penellin's features became a wash of anguish. 'I can't do what you ask of me. He's my son.'

Nancy was working in front of the lodge while Molly cooed in a pram nearby, gurgling over a string of bright plastic ducks which her mother had suspended above her. When Lynley pulled the car to a halt on the drive, Nancy looked up. She was raking up the foliage, flowers, loose pebbles and debris that the wind had blown up against the house.

'No word of Peter?' she asked, walking towards them as they got out of the car. 'Is Mark here, Nancy?'

She faltered. The fact that Lynley had not answered her question seemed to disconcert her at the same time as it acted as presage of an unpleasantness to come. She drew the rake to her side, holding it upright.

'Did Mark fix the shutters for you last night?' Lynley asked.

'The shutters?'

Her two simple words were verification enough. 'Is he in the house?' St James asked.

'I think he's just gone out. He said he was planning to-'

A sudden blast of rock-and-roll music negated her words. She brought a fist to her lips.

'We've spoken to your father,' Lynley told her. 'You've no need to protect Mark any longer. It's time he told the truth.'

Leaving her in the garden, they went into the house, following the sound of drums and guitars in the direction of the kitchen where Mark sat at the table, making adjustments to his portable stereo. As he had done in the early hours of Saturday morning following Mick Cambrey's death, St James noted the details about the boy. Then, they had suggested the possibility of his taking money from Gull Cottage upon discovering his brother-in-law's death. Now they acted in concert to corroborate his part in the cocaine partnership: a heavy gold chain round his right wrist, a new watch round his left, designer blue jeans and shirt, snakeskin boots, the stereo itself. Not one of them was the sort of possession one would purchase on the salary his father paid him to work round the estate.

On the table sat a half-eaten ham sandwich, a bottle of beer, a bag of vinegar crisps. This latter provided the air with a pungent smell. Mark dipped into it for a handful, looked up, and saw the other two men in the doorway. He turned down the volume on the stereo and got to his feet, dropping the crisps onto his plate.

'What's wrong?' he asked. 'Is it Peter? Is he all right?' He ran the heel of his hand against his temple as if to straighten his hair. It was neatly combed as usual.

'We've not come about my brother,' said Lynley.

Mark frowned. 'I haven't heard a thing. Nance phoned your mother. She said there was no word. Have you…? Is there something…?' He held out a hand, a gesture of camaraderie.

St James wondered how Lynley would get past the boy's posturing. He had his answer when his friend swept the stereo from the table so forcefully that it crashed against the kitchen cupboards and gouged the wood.

'Hey!'

As Mark began to move, Lynley came round the table. He pushed the boy into his chair. Mark's head snapped back against the wall.

'What the hell-'

'You can talk to me or Penzance CID. Make up your mind.'

Quick comprehension darted across the boy's face. He rubbed his collarbone. Nevertheless, he merely said, 'You're daft.'

Lynley tossed the Talisman sandwich wrapper onto the table. 'What's it to be? Make up your mind.'

Mark's expression was unchanging as he glanced at the paper, at the numbers, the notations, at his own initials. He snorted a laugh. 'You're in heavy shit over Brooke's death, aren't you? You'd do anything to keep the police from looking into that. You're trying to keep the coppers off Peter.'

'We're not here about Peter.'

'No. I dare say. Let's not talk about Peter or you might hear the truth. Well, you can't have me arrested for anything. You don't have a shred of evidence.'

'You took the Daze from Lamorna. You abandoned her off Penberth. My guess is that the reason why is sitting right here in this house. Or perhaps in the mill. How does felony theft sound? What about smuggling? Possession of narcotics? We can start with any one of them. I'll put my money on Boscowan's willingness to listen to just about anything to get your father out of the nick. I rather doubt he's as sentimental about you. So shall I give him a ring? Or shall we talk?'

Mark looked away. On the floor his stereo was giving off bursts of static.

'What do you want to know?' The question was sullen.

'Who's dealing the cocaine?'

'Me. Mick.'

'You've been using the mill?'

'It was Mick's idea. He'd spent most of last spring boffing Nancy in the loft. He knew no-one ever went there.'

'And the Daze?'

'Free transport. No overheads. Nothing to cut into the profits.'

'What profits? Nancy claims they have no money.'

'We turned the take around from the first go last March and reinvested in another buy. A bigger one this time.' A smile pulled at his mouth. He didn't bother to conceal it. 'Thank God the stuff was wrapped in oilskins. Otherwise, it'd be sitting in Penberth Cove at the moment, making the fish as happy as hell to be there. As it is' – he dumped more crisps on his plate – 'Mick'll miss out on the profits.'

'Convenient for you that he's dead.'

Mark was unimpressed. 'Am I supposed to blanch with fear at the implication? Oops, the poor berk's just given himself a motive for murder?' He took a bite from his sandwich, chewed it deliberately, and washed it down with a swallow of beer. 'Let's avoid the drama. I was in St Ives Friday night.'

'No doubt with someone who'd be only too happy to step forward and confirm that fact?'

Mark maintained his bravado. 'Sure. No problem.'

'Honour among drug-dealers?'

'A man needs to know his friends.'

'Peter was one once.'

Mark studied his fingernails. The stereo squawked. St James switched it off.

'Did you sell to my brother?' 'When he had the money.' 'When did you last see him?'

'I've told you before. There's no change in the story. Friday afternoon at the cove. He phoned the lodge earlier and said he wanted to see me. I had to hunt the bloody ass down as it was. Jesus, I don't even know why I bothered.'

'What did he want?'

'What he always wanted. Dope on credit.' 'Did he know how you were using the mill?' Lynley asked.

Mark gave a sardonic laugh in response. 'D'you think I'd tell him that and have him slobbering down my neck for free samples every time I was working there? We may be old mates, but I like to think I know where to draw the line.'

'Where is he?' Lynley asked. Mark was silent.

Lynley crashed his fist on to the table top. 'Where is he? Where's my brother?'

Mark pushed his arm away. 'I don't know, all right? I bloody don't know. Dead with a needle in his arm, most likely.'

'Tommy.'

St James' admonition came too late. Lynley dragged the boy to his feet. He threw him against the wall, pressed his arm against his larynx and held him there.

'You piece of filth,' he said. 'God damn you, I'll be back.' He dropped him abruptly and left the room.

Mark stood for a moment, rubbing his throat. He brushed at the collar of his shirt as if to remove any trace of Lynley's quick assault. Stooping, he picked up his stereo, put it back on the table, and began to play with its knobs. St James left him.

He found Lynley in the car, his hands gripping the wheel. Nancy and her baby were gone.

'We're their victims.' Lynley stared at the drive that wound towards the great house. Shadows dappled it. A breeze danced sycamore leaves across the lane. 'We're all of us their victims. I as much as anyone, St James. No. More than anyone, because I'm supposed to be a professional.'

St James saw the conflicts that confronted his friend.

The ties of blood, the call of duty. Responsibility to family, betrayal of self. He waited for Lynley, always at heart an honest man, to put his struggle into words.

'I should have told Boscowan that Peter was at Gull Cottage on Friday night. I should have told him that Mick was alive after John left him. I should have told him about the row. About Brooke. About everything. But, God help me, I couldn't, St James. What's happening to me?'

'You're trying to deal with Peter, with Nancy, with John, with Mark. With everyone, Tommy.'

'The walls are crashing in.'

'We'll sort it out.'

Lynley looked at him then. His dark eyes seemed filmed over by a mist. 'Do you believe that?' he asked. 'I've got to believe something.'

'Actually, Islington-London is its formal name,' Lady Helen said. 'Islington-London Ltd. It's a pharmaceutical company.'

St James' attention was on the section of the garden that he could still see in the growing darkness. He stood in the small alcove of the drawing room while behind him Lady Asherton, Lynley and Cotter drank their evening coffee.

'Deborah and I went there this morning,' Lady Helen continued. In the background, St James heard Deborah's voice, followed by her laughter, light and engaging. 'Yes, all right, darling,' Lady Helen said to her. And then to St James, 'Deborah's most unforgiving about the fact that I wore my fox fur. Well, perhaps I was just a bit overdressed for the occasion, but the ensemble did make a statement, I think. And, besides, as far as I'm concerned, if one's going to do anything incognita, one ought to do it well. Don't you agree?'

'Decidedly.'

'And it was a success. The receptionist even asked me if I'd come about a job. Senior Director of Project Testing. Sounds absolutely divine. Have I a future in it?'

St James smiled into the telephone. 'I suppose it depends upon what project's being tested. What about Tina? What's the connection?'

'There doesn't seem to be one at all. We described her to the receptionist – and what a blessing to have Deborah there because her eye for detail, not to mention her memory, is quite remarkable. But the girl hadn't a clue. She didn't recognize the description at all.' Lady Helen paused as Deborah interjected a comment in the background. She went on to say, 'Considering what Tina apparently looks like, it's hard to believe anyone would forget her. Although the girl did ask if she might be a biochemist.'

'That seems a bit far-fetched.'

'H'm. It does. Except that Deborah did tell me about a drink she's developed. A health drink. Perhaps Tina hoped to sell it to the pharmaceutical company?'

'Unlikely, Helen.'

'I suppose so. She'd go to a beverage company with it, wouldn't she?'

'That's more probable. Has anyone heard from her? Has she returned?'

'Not yet. I spent part of the afternoon going to each flat in the building to see if anyone knew anything about where she might be.'

'No luck, I take it.'

'None at all. No-one seems to know her very well. In fact Deborah appears to be the only person who's had any close contact with her, aside from a peculiar woman across the hall who loaned her an iron. Several people have seen her about, of course – she's lived here since September – but no-one's spent any time talking to her. Besides Deborah.'

St James jotted the word September into his notes. He underlined it, drew a circle round it. He topped the circle with a cross. The symbol of woman. He scribbled over it all.

'What next?' Lady Helen was asking.

'See if the building manager has a Cornish address for her,' St James said. 'You might try to find out what she pays for the flat.'

'Quite. I should have thought to ask that earlier. Although heaven knows why. Are we getting anywhere?'

St James sighed. 'I don't know. Have you spoken to Sidney?'

'That's a problem, Simon. I've been phoning her flat, but there's no answer. I tried her agency, but they've not heard from her either. Did she talk about going to see friends?'

'No. She talked about going home.'

'I'll keep trying, then. Don't worry. She may have gone to Cheyne Row.'

St James thought this unlikely. 'We need to find her, Helen.'

TU pop round to her flat. She may not be answering the phone.'

Having secured this assurance, St James rang off. He remained in the alcove, staring down at the scribbled mess he'd made of the word September. He wanted it to mean something. He knew that it probably did. But what that something was he could not have said.

He turned as Lynley came into the alcove. 'Anything?'

St James related the bits of information which Lady Helen had managed to gather that day. He saw the change in Lynley's expression after he'd heard the very first fact.

'Islington-London?' he asked. 'Are you sure of that, St James?'

'Helen went there. Why? Does it mean something to you?'

Warily Lynley glanced back into the drawing room. His mother and Cotter were chatting together quietly as they looked through a family album which lay between them. 'Tommy? What is it?'

'Roderick Trenarrow. He works for Islington-Penzance.'