Elizabeth George - A Suitable Vengeance

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.'