A Suitable Vengeance (Inspector Lynley, #4)(27)
“It’s not his fault.”
“See what he’s helped you become.”
“He doesn’t know I’m here. He’d never let me ask—”
“But he’ll take the money, won’t he? And never question how you came by it. Just as long as it meets his needs. And what are his needs this time, Nancy? Has he another lady? Perhaps two or three?”
“No!” Nancy looked desperately at Lynley. “I just…I…” She shook her head, her face dissolving into misery.
Penellin moved heavily to the wall map of the estate. His skin was grey. “Look at what he’s done to you,” he said dully. And then to Lynley, “See what Mick Cambrey’s done to my girl.”
CHAPTER 6
Simon and Helen shall come with us as well,” Sidney announced. Only moments before, she had pulled a coral-coloured dress from the jumble of clothing scattered across her room. The colour should have been all wrong on her, but in this case fashion triumphed over hue. She was swirls of crepe from shoulder to midcalf, like a cloud at sunset.
She and Deborah were heading through the garden towards the park where St. James and Lady Helen walked together beneath the trees. Sidney shouted at them.
“Come and watch Deb snap away at me. At the cove. Half in and half out of a ruined dinghy. A seductive mermaid. Will you come?”
Neither responded until Deborah and Sidney reached them. Then St. James said, “Considering the volume of your invitation, no doubt you can expect quite a crowd, with everyone ready to see just the sort of mermaid you have in mind.”
Sidney laughed. “That’s right. Mermaids don’t wear clothes, do they? Oh well. Pooh. You’re just jealous that I’m to be Deb’s subject for once and not you. However,” she admitted, twirling in the breeze, “I did have to make her swear she’d take no snaps of you. Not that she needs any more, if you ask me. She must have a thousand in her collection already. A veritable history of Simon-on-the-stairs, Simon-in-the-garden, Simon-in-the-lab.”
“I don’t recall being given much choice about posing.”
Sidney tossed her head and set off across the park with the others in her wake. “Poor excuse, that. You’ve had your chance for immortality, Simon. So don’t you dare step in front of the camera today and take away mine.”
“I think I can restrain myself,” St. James replied drily.
“I’m afraid I can’t promise the same thing, darlings,” Lady Helen said. “I plan to compete ruthlessly with Sidney to be in the foreground of every picture Deborah takes. Surely I’ve a future as a mannequin just waiting to be discovered on the Howenstow lawn.”
Ahead of them, Sidney laughed and marched southeast, in the direction of the sea. Under the enormous park trees, where the air was rich with the fertile smell of humus, she found myriad sources of inspiration. Perched on a massive branch struck down by the winter storm, she was an impish Ariel, freed from captivity. Holding a cluster of larkspur, she became Persephone, newly delivered from Hades. Against the trunk of a tree with a crown of leaves in her hair, she was Rosalind, dreaming of Orlando’s love.
After she had explored all the permutations of antic posturing for Deborah’s camera, Sidney ran on, reaching the edge of the park and disappearing through an old gate in the rough stone wall. In a moment, the breeze brought her cry of pleasure back to the others.
“She’s reached the mill,” Lady Helen said. “I’ll see that she doesn’t fall into the water.”
Without waiting for a response, without giving the other two a passing glance, she hurried off. In a moment, she too was through the gate and out of the park.
Deborah welcomed the opportunity to be alone with Simon. There was much to say. She hadn’t seen him since the day of their quarrel, and once Tommy had informed her that he would be part of their weekend party, she had known she would have to say or do something to serve as apology and to make amends.
But now that a chance for conversation had presented itself, Deborah found that anything other than the most impersonal comment was unthinkable. She knew quite well that she had severed the final ties to Simon in Paddington, and there was no way she could unsay the words that had effected the surgical cut between them.
They continued in the direction that Lady Helen had taken, their slow pace dictated by St. James’ gait. In the silence that grew, broken only by the ceaseless calling of the gulls, the sound of his footsteps seemed an amplified deformity. Deborah finally spoke in the need to drive that sound from her ears, reaching aimlessly back into the past for a memory they shared.
“When my mother died, you opened the house in Chelsea.”
St. James looked at her curiously. “That was a long time ago.”
“You didn’t have to do it. I didn’t know that then. It all seemed so reasonable to my seven-year-old mind. But you didn’t have to do it. I don’t know why I never realised till today.”
He brushed a tangle of Dutch clover from his trouser leg. “There’s no real easing a loss like that, is there? I did what I could. Your father needed a place to forget. Or if not to forget, at least to go on.”
“But you didn’t have to do it. We could have gone to one of your brothers. They were both in Southampton. They were so much older. It would have been reasonable. You were…were you really only eighteen? What on earth were you thinking about, saddling yourself with a household when you were just eighteen? Why did you do it? Why on earth did your parents agreè to let you do it?” She felt each question increase in intensity.