A Suitable Vengeance (Inspector Lynley, #4)(71)

“I know that, Sid.” St. James led his sister towards the stairway, taking her hand when she hesitated and gazed around, clearly confused. “It’s just this way,” he urged her.

At the top of the stairs, he saw Cotter coming towards him, a small tray in his hands. At the sight of him, St. James gave a moment of thanksgiving over to Cotter’s ability to read his mind.

“Saw you comin’,” Cotter explained and nodded at the tray. “It’s brandy. Is she…” He jerked his head towards Sidney, his brow furrowing at the sight of her.

“She’ll be all right in a bit. If you’ll help me, Cotter. Her room’s this way.”

Unlike Deborah’s room, Sidney’s was neither cavelike nor sepulchral. Overlooking a small, walled garden at the rear of the house, it was painted and papered in a combination of yellow and white, with a floral carpet of pastels on the floor. St. James sat his sister on the bed and went to draw the curtains while Cotter poured brandy and held it to her lips. “A bit o’ this, Miss Sidney,” Cotter said solicitously. “It’ll warm you up nice.”

She drank cooperatively. “Does Mummy know?” she asked.

Cotter glanced warily at St. James. “Have a bit more,” he said.

St. James rooted through a drawer, looking for her nightdress. He found it under a Sidney-like pile of jerseys, jewellery, and stockings.

“You must get out of those wet things,” he told her. “Cotter, will you find a towel for her hair? And something for the cuts?”

Cotter nodded, eyeing Sidney cautiously before he left the room. Alone with his sister, St. James undressed her, tossing her wet clothes onto the floor. He drew her nightdress over her head, pulling her arms gently through the thin satin straps. She said nothing and didn’t seem to realise he was present at all. When Cotter returned with towel and plaster, St. James rubbed Sidney’s hair roughly. He saw to her arms and legs and the muddy splatters on her feet. Swinging her legs up on the bed, he pulled the blankets round her. She submitted to it all like a child, like a doll.

“Sid,” he whispered, touching her cheek. He wanted to talk about Justin Brooke. He wanted to know if they had been together in the night. He wanted to know when Brooke had gone to the cliff. Above all, he wanted to know why.

She didn’t respond. She stared at the ceiling. Whatever she knew would have to wait.



Lynley parked the Rover at the far end of the courtyard and entered the house through the northwest door between the gun room and the servants’ hall. He had seen the line of vehicles on the drive—two police cars, an unmarked saloon, and an ambulance with its windscreen wipers still running—so he was not unprepared to be accosted by Hodge as he quickly passed through the domestic wing of the house. They met outside the pantry.

“What is it?” Lynley asked the old butler. He tried to sound reasonably concerned without revealing his incipient panic. Upon seeing the cars through the wind-driven rain, his first thought had run unveeringly towards Peter.

Hodge gave the information willingly enough and in a fashion designed to reveal nothing of his own feelings in the matter. It was Mr. Brooke, he told Lynley. He’d been taken to the old schoolroom.

If the manner in which Hodge had relayed the information had been fleeting cause for hope—nothing could be terribly amiss if Brooke hadn’t been taken directly to hospital—hope dissipated when Lynley entered the schoolroom in the east wing of the house a few minutes later. The body lay shrouded by blankets on a long scarred table at the room’s centre, the very same table at which generations of young Lynleys had done their childhood lessons before being packed off to school. A group of men stood in hushed conversation round it, among them Inspector Boscowan and the plainclothes sergeant who had accompanied him to pick up John Penellin on the previous evening. Boscowan was talking to the group in general, issuing some sort of instructions to two crime-scene men whose trouser legs were muddy and whose jacket shoulders bore large wet patches from the rain. The police pathologist was with them, identifiable by the medical bag at her feet. It was unopened, and she didn’t look as if she intended to do any preliminary examining of the body. Nor did the crime-scene men seem prepared to do any work at present. Which led Lynley to the only conclusion possible: Wherever Brooke had died, it hadn’t been in the schoolroom.

He saw St. James standing in one of the window embrasures, giving his attention to what could be seen of the garden through the rain-streaked glass.

“Jasper found him in the cove.” St. James spoke quietly when Lynley joined him. He did not turn away from the window. His own clothes had had a recent wetting, Lynley saw, and his shirt bore streaks of blood which the rain had elongated like a waterwash of paint. “It looks like an accident. It seems there was slippage at the top of the cliff. He lost his footing.” He looked past Lynley’s shoulder at the group round the body, then back at Lynley once again. “At least, that’s what Boscowan’s considering for now.”

St. James didn’t ask the question that Lynley heard behind the final guarded statement. He was grateful for the respite, however long his friend intended it to be. He said, “Why was the body moved, St. James? Who moved it? Why?”

“Your mother. It had begun to rain. Sid got to him before the rest of us. I’m afraid none of us were thinking too clearly at the moment, least of all myself.” A yew branch, struck by a gust of wind, scratched against the window in front of them. Rain created a sharp tattoo. St. James moved farther into the embrasure and lifted his eyes to the upper floor of the wing opposite the schoolroom, to the corner bedroom next to Lynley’s own. “Where’s Peter?”