Elizabeth George - A Suitable Vengeance

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.'