Elizabeth George - A Suitable Vengeance

'Good God,' St James murmured.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'But the camera?' Deborah asked.

'I said stay there!'

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

'Tommy, is there something…?'

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

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

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

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

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

'Bring Nancy inside,' St James said.

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

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

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

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

'Can you hear me?' he asked her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Why?'

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

"Then, how?'

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

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

'Quite,' St James replied.

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

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

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

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