A Suitable Vengeance (Inspector Lynley, #4)(5)

“She is. Tonight.”

“Simon never said a word.”

Cotter readjusted his grip on the trunk. “Not likely to, is ’e?” he responded grimly.

They climbed the remaining flights of stairs. Cotter shouldered the trunk into his daughter’s bedroom to the left of the landing, while Lady Helen paused at the door to the lab. She leaned the package against the wall, tapping her fingers against it thoughtfully as she observed her friend. St. James did not look up from his work.

That had always been his most effective defence. Worktables and microscopes became ramparts which no one could scale, incessant labour a narcotic that dulled the pain of loss. Lady Helen surveyed the lab, seeing it for once not as the centre of St. James’ professional life, but as the refuge which it had become. It was a large room scented faintly by formaldehyde; walled by anatomy charts and graphs and shelves; floored by old, creaking hardwood; ceilinged by a skylight through which milky sun provided an impersonal warmth. Scarred tables furnished it, as did tall stools, microscopes, computers, and a variety of equipment for studying everything from blood to bullets. To one side, a door led into Deborah Cotter’s darkroom. But that door had been closed for all the years of her absence. Lady Helen wondered what St. James would do if she opened it now, flinging it back like an unavoidable invasion into the reaches of his heart.

“Deborah’s coming home tonight, Simon? Why didn’t you tell me?”

St. James removed one slide from the microscope and replaced it with another, adjusting the dials for a higher degree of magnification. After a moment of studying this new specimen, he jotted down a few notes.

Lady Helen leaned across the worktable and clicked off the microscope’s light. “She’s coming home,” she said. “You’ve not said a word about it all day. Why, Simon? Tell me.”

Instead of answering, St. James looked past her shoulder. “What is it, Cotter?”

Lady Helen swung around. Cotter was standing in the doorway, frowning, wiping his brow with a white linen handkerchief. “You’ve no need to fetch Deb from the airport tonight, Mr. St. James,” he said in a rush. “Lord Asherton’s to do it. I’m to go as well. He rang me not an hour ago. It’s all arranged.”

The ticking of the wall clock made the only immediate response to Cotter’s announcement until somewhere outside, a child’s frantic weeping—rife with outrage—rose on the air.

St. James stirred to say, “Good. That’s just as well. I’ve a mountain of work to get through here.”

Lady Helen felt the sort of confusion that requires an accompanying cry of protest. The world as she knew it was taking on a new shape. Longing to ask the obvious question, she looked from St. James to Cotter, but their reserve warned her off. Still, she could tell that Cotter was willing to say more. He appeared to be waiting for the other man to make some additional comment that would allow him to do so. But instead, St. James merely ran a hand through his unruly black hair. Cotter shifted on his feet.

“I’ll be about my business, then.” With a nod, he left the room, but his shoulders looked burdened and his steps were heavy.

“Let me understand this,” Lady Helen said. “Tommy’s fetching Deborah from the airport. Tommy. Not you?”

It was a reasonable enough question. Thomas Lynley, Lord Asherton, was an old friend to both St. James and Lady Helen, something of a colleague as well since for the past ten years he had worked in the Criminal Investigations Department of New Scotland Yard. In both capacities, he had been a frequent visitor to St. James’ Cheyne Row house. But when on earth, Lady Helen wondered, had he come to know Deborah Cotter well enough to be the one to meet her at the airport after her time away at school? To phone her father coolly with the arrangements every bit as if he were…what on earth was Tommy to Deborah?

“He’s been to America to see her,” St. James replied. “A number of times. He never told you that, Helen?”

“Good heavens.” Lady Helen was nonplussed. “How do you know that? Surely Deborah didn’t tell you. As for Tommy, he knows that you’ve always—”

“Cotter told me last year. I suppose he’d spent some time wondering about Tommy’s intentions, as any father might.”

His dry, factual tone spoke volumes more than any telling comment he might have chosen to make. Her heart went out to him.

“It’s been dreadful for you, hasn’t it, these last three years without her?”

St. James drew another microscope across the table and gave his attention to the removal of a speck of dust that seemed to be adhering stubbornly to its eyepiece.

Lady Helen watched him, seeing clearly how the passage of time, in conjunction with his wretched disability, was doing its best to make him every year less of a man in his own eyes. She wanted to tell him how untrue and unfair such an assessment was. She wanted to tell him how little difference it made. But to do so bordered too closely upon pity, and she would not hurt him by a display of compassion he did not want.

The front door slamming far below saved her from having to speak at all. Rapid footsteps followed. They flew up three flights of stairs without a pause for breath and served as harbinger of the only person with sufficient energy to make so steep a climb in so little time.

“That sounds like Sidney,” St. James said moments before his younger sister burst into the room.