Elizabeth George - A Suitable Vengeance

'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.