A Suitable Vengeance (Inspector Lynley, #4)(135)

“Deborah and Helen. They were there when Nancy told us. John Penellin as well.”

“Did you tell your mother?”

“Of course not. Why on earth would I?”

“Then how did Dr. Trenarrow know?”

Lynley realized at once what the question meant. He saw the answer on Trenarrow’s face. He fought a battle for professional indifference. He lost it, saying only, “Jesus God.”

Trenarrow said nothing. Lynley couldn’t think beyond a simple no, recognising that what his friend had said earlier was coming to pass. His every foul wish of the last fifteen years was about to be granted in absolute spades.

“What are you saying, St. James?” he managed to ask, although he knew the answer without having to hear it.

“That Dr. Trenarrow killed Mick Cambrey. He didn’t intend to. They argued. He hit him. Mick fell. He began to haemorrhage. He was dead within minutes.”

“Roderick.” Lynley felt desperate for the man to exonerate himself in some way, knowing only that Trenarrow’s exoneration was tied intimately into Lynley’s own future life. But St. James went on, utterly calm. Only the facts counted. He wove them together.

“When he saw Cambrey was dead, he acted quickly. It wasn’t a search. Even if Mick had been stupid enough to keep records of the oncozyme transactions in the cottage, there was no time to look for them then. There was only time to make it look like a search, or a possible robbery, or a sexual crime. But it was none of those things. It was a fight about oncozyme.”

Dr. Trenarrow’s face looked implacable. When he spoke, his lips moved, but the rest of him was immobile. And his words seemed nothing more than a futile, if expected, effort at denial. They carried no conviction. “I was at the play Friday night. You know that very well.”

“An open air play in a school yard,” St. James said. “Hardly a difficult feat to slip out for a while, especially since you’d placed yourself in the back. I expect you went to him after the interval, during the second act. It’s not a long walk—three minutes, no more. You went to see him then. You intended only to talk to him about oncozyme, but instead you killed him and came back to the play.”

“And the weapon?” Trenarrow’s bravado was weak. “Was I supposed to be carrying it round Nanrunnel in my jacket?”

“For the fracture of the skull, there was no weapon. The castration was another matter. You took the knife from the cottage.”

“To the play?” Scorn this time, yet no more successful than the bravado had been.

“I should think you hid it somewhere en route. On Virgin Place. Perhaps on Ivy Street. In a garden or a dustbin. You returned for it later that night and got rid of it Saturday at Howenstow. Which is where, I dare say, you got rid of Brooke as well. Because once Brooke knew that Cambrey had been killed, he knew who must have done it. But he couldn’t afford to turn you in to the police without damaging himself. The oncozyme scheme bound the two of you together.”

“This is all conjecture,” Trenarrow said. “According to what you’ve said so far, I had more reason to keep Mick alive than to kill him. If he was supplying me with patients, what purpose would his death serve?”

“You didn’t intend to kill him. You struck out in anger. Your interest was in saving people’s lives, but Mick’s was in collecting their money. That attitude pushed you right over the edge.”

“There’s no evidence. You know that. Not for a murder.”

“You’ve forgotten the cameras,” St. James said.

Trenarrow looked at him steadily, his expression unchanging.

“You saw the camera at the cottage. You assumed I’d taken pictures of the body. During the chaos Saturday when John Penellin was arrested, you dropped the cameras from Deborah’s room.”

“But if that’s so,” Lynley said, feeling himself Trenarrow’s advocate for the moment, “why didn’t he take the cameras to the cove? If he disposed of the knife there, why not the cameras as well?”

“And risk being seen hiking across the grounds with the case in his possession? I don’t know why I didn’t realise the stupidity of that idea before. He could conceal the knife on his person, Tommy. If someone saw him on the grounds, he could have claimed to be taking a walk to clear his head of drink. It would have been a believable story. People were used to seeing him at Howenstow. But the cameras, no. I imagine he took them somewhere else—in his car, perhaps—later that night. To a place where he could be relatively certain they’d never be found.”

Lynley listened, coming to terms with the truth. They’d all been at the dinner to hear the conversation. They’d all laughed at the absurdity of tourists in the mines. He said the name, two words that acted as final acceptance of what his heart told him was an incontrovertible fact. “Wheal Maen.” St. James looked at him. “At dinner Saturday night. Aunt Augusta was up in arms about sealing Wheal Maen.”

“This is supposition,” Trenarrow broke in sharply. “Supposition and madness. Beyond our oncozyme connection, you’ve nothing else to go on besides what you’re inventing right here in this room. And once our mutual history is out in public, Tommy, who’s going to believe this story? If, indeed, you actually want our mutual history to be known.”

“It comes down to that in the long run, doesn’t it?” Lynley asked. “It always begins and ends with my mother.”