Elizabeth George: A Suitable Vengeance

'What are you talking about, Sidney?' St James asked as she hopped off the stool and began to prowl around the lab like a puppy.

She switched on Lady Helen's microscope and had a look through it. 'Crikey! What is this?'

'Blood,' Lady Helen said. 'And Peter Lynley?'

Sidney adjusted the focus. 'It was… let me see. Friday night. Yes, that's right because I'd a grim little drinks-party to attend in the West End on Friday and that was the night I saw Peter. On the ground in an alley. Scuffling with a prostitute! Wouldn't Tommy be pleased if he heard about that?'

'Tommy's not been happy with Peter all year,' Lady Helen said.

'Doesn't Peter know it!' Sidney looked at her brother plaintively. 'What about tea? Is there hope?' 'Always. Finish your saga.'

Sidney grimaced. 'There's not much else to tell. Justin and I came upon Peter grappling with this woman in the dark. He was punching her in the face, as a matter of fact, and Justin pulled him off. The woman – now, this was a bit odd – began to laugh and laugh. Of course, she must have been hysterical. But before we had a chance to see if she was fit she ran off. We drove Peter home. Squalid little flat in Whitechapel, Simon, with a yellow-eyed girl in filthy blue jeans waiting for Peter on the front steps.' Sidney shuddered. 'Anyway, Peter wouldn't say a word to me about Tommy or Oxford or anything. Embarrassed, I suppose. I'm sure the last thing on earth he expected was to have a friend stumble upon him as he rolled round an alley.'

'What were you doing there?' St James asked. 'Or was Soho Justin's idea?'

Sidney avoided his gaze. 'D'you think Deb'll take a set of photos of me? I ought to start work on a new portfolio now my hair's cut off. You've not said a word about it, Simon, and it's shorter than yours.'

St James was not to be so easily diverted. 'Haven't you had enough of Justin Brooke?'

'Helen, what do you think of my hair?'

'What about Brooke, Sid?'

Sidney directed a wordless apology towards Lady Helen before she faced her brother down. The resemblance between them was remarkable, a sharing of the same curly black hair, the same spare aquiline features, the same blue eyes. They looked like skewed mirror images: the liveliness of one was replaced by resigned repose in the other. They were before-and-after pictures, the past and the present, joined by an undeniable bond of blood.

Sidney's words, however, seemed an effort to deny this. 'Don't mother-hen me, Simon,' she said.

The sound of a clock chiming in the room startled St James out of sleep. It was 3 a.m. For a dazed moment -half-sleeping, half-waking – he wondered where he was until a knotted muscle, cramping painfully in his neck, brought him fully awake. He stirred in his chair and got up, his movements slow, his body feeling bent. Stretching tentatively, he walked to the study window and looked out on Cheyne Row.

Moonlight lit tree-leaves with silver, touching upon the restored houses opposite his own, the Carlyle Museum and the corner church. In the past few years, a renaissance had come to the riverside neighbourhood, taking it from its Bohemian past into an unknown future. St James loved it.

He went back to his chair. On the table next to it, a balloon glass still held a half-inch of brandy. He drained it, switched off the lamp, and left the study, making his way down the narrow hallway to the stairs.

These he mounted slowly, pulling his bad leg up next to him, gripping the handrail against the strain of dead weight. He shook his head in weary denigration at his solitary, fanciful dance of attendance upon Deborah's return.

Cotter had been back from the airport for some hours, but his daughter had stopped in only briefly, remaining for the entire time in the kitchen. From his study, St James could hear Deborah's laughter, her father's voice, the barking of the dog. He could even imagine the household cat jumping down from the window-sill to greet her. This reunion among them had gone on for half an hour. Then, instead of Deborah coming up to bid him hello, Cotter had stepped into the study with the uneasy announcement that Deborah had left again with Lord Asherton. Thomas Lynley. St James' oldest friend.

Cotter's embarrassment at Deborah's behaviour only promised to worsen an already uncomfortable situation.

'Said she'd only be a while,' Cotter had stammered. 'Said she'd be back directly. Said she'd-'

St James wanted to stop the words but couldn't think how to do it. He resolved the situation by noting the time and declaring his intention of going to bed. Cotter left him in peace.

Knowing sleep would elude him, he remained in the study, trying to occupy himself with reading a scientific journal as the hours passed and he waited for her to return. The wiser part of him insisted there was no point to a meeting between them now. The fool longed for it, in a welter of nerves.

What idiocy, he thought, and continued climbing the stairs. But, as if his body wished to contradict what his intellect was telling him, he made his way not to his own bedroom but to Deborah's on the top floor of the house. The door stood open.

It was a small room with a jumble of furnishings. An old oak wardrobe, lovingly refinished, leaned on uneven legs against the wall. A similar dressing table held a solitary, pink-edged Belleek vase. A once colourful rug, hand-made by Deborah's mother just ten months before her death, formed an oval on the floor. The narrow brass bed that had been hers from childhood stood near the window.

St James had not entered this room for the three years of Deborah's absence. He did so now reluctantly, crossing to the open window where a soft breeze rustled white curtains. Even at this height, he could catch the perfume of the flowers planted in the garden below. It was faint, like an unobtrusive background on the canvas of night.

As he enjoyed the subtle fragrance, a silver car glided round the corner from Cheyne Row into Lordship Place and halted next to the old garden gate. St James recognized the Bentley and its driver, who turned to the young woman next to him and took her into his arms.

The moonlight that earlier had served to illumine the street did as much for the interior of the car. As St James watched, unable to move from the window even if he had wanted to – which he did not – Lynley's blond head bent to Deborah. She raised her arm, fingers seeking first his hair, then his face before drawing him nearer to her neck, to her breast.

St James forced his gaze from the car to the garden. Hyacinth, larkspur, alyssum, he thought. Kaffir lilies that wanted clearing out. There was work to be done. He needed to see to it. But he couldn't use the garden to avoid his heart.

He had known Deborah from the day of her birth. She had grown up, a member of his small Chelsea household, the child of a man who was to St James part nurse, part servant, part valet, part friend. During the darkest time of his life, she'd been a constant companion whose presence had saved him from the worst of his despair. But now…

She's chosen, he thought, and tried to convince himself in the face of this knowledge that he felt nothing, that he could accept it, that he could be the loser, that he could go on.

He crossed the landing and entered his laboratory where he turned on a high-intensity lamp that cast a circle of light upon a toxicology report. He spent the next few minutes attempting to read the document – a pitiful endeavour to put his house in order – before he heard the car's engine start, a sound that was shortly followed by Deborah's footsteps in the lower hall.

He put on another light in the room and walked to the door, feeling a rush of trepidation, a need to find something to say, an excuse for being up and about, fully dressed, at three in the morning. But there was no time to think, for Deborah came up the stairs nearly as quickly as Sidney had done, bringing their separation to an end.