A Suitable Vengeance (Inspector Lynley, #4)(49)

To his surprise, she turned to him hotly. “It isn’t all right. It isn’t and you know it. How can she make love with him after what he did to her today? I don’t understand it. Is she mad? Is he?”

That was the question and the answer all at once. For it was a true madness, white, hot, and indecent, obliterating everything that stood in its way.

“She’s in love with him, Deborah,” he finally replied. “Aren’t people all just a little bit mad when they love?”

Her response was a stare. He could see her swallow.

“The film. Let me get it,” she said.





CHAPTER 12


The Anchor and Rose benefitted from having the most propitious location in all of Nanrunnel. It not only displayed from its broad bay windows a fine, unobstructed view of the harbour guaranteed to please the most discerning seeker of Cornish atmosphere, but it also sat directly across from Nanrunnel’s single bus stop and was, as a result, the first structure a thirsty visitor’s eyes fell upon when disembarking from Penzance and regions beyond.

The interior of the pub was engaged in the gentle process of deterioration. Once creamy walls had taken their place on the evolutionary path towards grey, an effect produced by exposure to generations of smoke from fireplace, cigars, pipes, and cigarettes. An elaborate mahogany bar, pitted and stained, curved from the lounge into the public bar, with a brass foot-rail heavily distressed through years of use. Similarly worn tables and chairs spread across a well-trodden floor, and the ceiling above them was so convex that architectural disaster seemed imminent.

When St. James and Lady Helen entered, shortly after the pub’s morning opening, they found themselves alone with a large tabby cat that lounged in the bay window and a woman who stood behind the bar, drying innumerable pint and half-pint glasses. She nodded at them and went on with her work, her eyes following Lady Helen to the window where she stooped to pet the cat.

“Careful with ’um,” the woman said. “Watch he doesn’t scratch. He’s a mean ’un when he wants to be.”

As if with the intention of proving her a liar, the cat yawned, stretched, and presented a corpulent stomach for Lady Helen to attend to. Watching, the woman snorted and stacked glasses on a tray.

St. James joined her at the bar, reflecting upon the fact that if this was Mrs. Swann, she was trapped somewhere in the cygnet stage, for there was nothing the least bit swanlike about her. She was stout and solid, with minuscule eyes and a frizz of grey hair, a living contradiction to her name dressed in a dirndl skirt and a peasant blouse.

“What c’n I get you?” she asked and went on with her drying.

“It’s a bit early for me,” St. James replied. “We’ve come to talk to you, actually. If you’re Mrs. Swann.”

“Who wants to know?”

St. James introduced himself and Lady Helen, who had taken a seat next to the cat. “I’m sure you’ve heard Mick Cambrey’s been murdered.”

“Whole village knows. About that and the chop-up as well.” She smiled. “Looks like Mick got what was coming at last. Separated proper from his favourite toy, wasn’t he? No doubt there’ll be a regular piss-up here when the local husbands come round to celebrate tonight.”

“Mick was involved with some local women?”

Mrs. Swann drove her towel-covered fist into a glass and polished it vigorously. “Mick Cambrey’s involved in anyone willing to give him a poke.” That said, she turned to the empty shelves behind her and began placing glasses upside down on the mats. The implicit message was unavoidable: She had nothing more to tell them.

Lady Helen spoke. “Actually, Mrs. Swann, Nancy Cambrey’s our concern. We’ve come to see you mostly because of her.”

Mrs. Swann’s shoulders lost some of their stiffness, although she didn’t turn around when she said, “Dim girl, Nance. Married to that sod.” Her tight little curls shook with disgust.

“Indeed,” Lady Helen went on smoothly. “And she’s in the worst sort of situation at the moment, isn’t she? Not only to have her husband murdered but then to have her father questioned by the police.”

That re-engaged Mrs. Swann’s interest quickly enough. She faced them, fists on hips. Her mouth opened and shut. Then opened again. “John Penellin?”

“Quite. Nancy tried to tell the police that she talked to her father on the phone last night so he couldn’t have been in Nanrunnel killing Mick. But they—”

“And she did,” Mrs. Swann asserted. “That she did. She did. Borrowed ten pence from me to make the call. Not a coin in her bag, thanks to Mick.” She began to wax warmly to this secondary topic. “Always took her money, he did. Hers and his father’s and anyone else’s he could get his hands on. He was always after cash. He wanted to be a swell.”

“Are you sure Nancy spoke to her father?” St. James asked. “Not to someone else?”

Mrs. Swann took umbrage at St. James’ doubt. She pointed her finger for emphasis. “Course it was her father. Didn’t I get so tired of waiting for her—she must have been a good ten or fifteen minutes—that I went to the call box and yanked her out?”

“Where is this call box?”

“Outside the school yard. Right on Paul Lane.”