A Suitable Vengeance (Inspector Lynley, #4)(78)

“I didn’t think to alter the menu,” Lady Asherton was saying in reference to the elaborate array of food with which they had been presented. “So much has been happening, I’ve forgotten how to think straight. There were supposed to be at least nine of us here. Ten, if Augusta had stayed. It’s a blessing she went home last night. Had she been here this morning when Jasper found the body…” She toyed with a spear of broccoli, as if suddenly aware how disjointed her comments actually sounded. Candlelight and shadows played against the turquoise dress she wore and softened the lines of worry that, with the advancing day, had grown more prominent between her eyebrows and from her nose to her chin. She hadn’t mentioned Peter since first being told he was gone.

“People ’ave to eat, Daze, and that’s all there is to it,” Cotter said, although he’d touched no more of his food than had the others.

“But we’ve not much heart for it, have we?” Lady Asherton smiled at Cotter, but her anxiety was palpable. It showed itself in her quick movements, in the fleeting glimpses she took of her older son who sat nearby. Lynley had been home only ten minutes prior to dinner. He had spent that time in the estate office making phone calls. St. James knew he had not spoken to his mother about Peter, and he did not have the look of a man who intended to speak about Peter now. As if she realised this, Lady Asherton said to St. James, “How’s Sidney?”

“Sleeping now. She wants to go back to London in the morning.”

“Is that wise, St. James?” Lynley asked.

“She doesn’t appear to be willing to have it any other way.”

“Will you go with her?”

He shook his head, fingered the stem of his wineglass, and thought about his brief conversation with his sister just an hour ago. Mostly he thought about her refusal to speak of Justin Brooke. Don’t ask me, don’t make me, she’d said, all the time looking ill, with her hair in soaked ringlets from a feverish dream. I can’t, I can’t. Don’t make me, Simon. Please.

“She says she’ll do well enough taking the train up alone,” he said.

“Perhaps she wants to speak to his family. Have the police contacted them?”

“I don’t know that he has any family. I don’t know much about him at all.” Beyond the fact, he added silently, that I’m glad he’s dead.

His conscience had demanded the admission all day, ever since the moment when he’d held his sister in his arms on the top of the cliff, gazed down on Brooke’s body, and known a moment of exultation that had its roots in his need for revenge. Here was justice, he’d thought. Here was retribution. Perhaps the hand of reprisal had been momentarily stayed after Brooke had attacked his sister on the beach. But the savagery of his assault upon her had called for an accounting. It had been made in full. He was glad of it. He was relieved that Sidney was free of Brooke at last. And the strength of his relief—so utterly foreign to what he had always believed was a civilised response to the death of another human being—disquieted him. He knew without a doubt that, given the opportunity, he himself could easily have done away with Justin Brooke.

“At any rate,” he said, “I think it’s probably wise that she get away. No one’s asked her to stay. Officially, that is.” He saw that the others understood his meaning. The police had not asked to speak with Sidney. As far as they were concerned, Brooke’s death was due to an accidental fall.

The others mulled over this piece of information as the dining room door opened and Hodge came into the room. “A telephone call for Mr. St. James, my lady.” Hodge had a way of making announcements with an intonation that suggested nothing less than impending doom: a phone call from fate, Hecate on the line. “It’s in the estate office. Lady Helen Clyde.”

St. James rose at once, grateful for an excuse to be gone. The atmosphere in the dining room was overhung with too many unspoken questions, and scores of issues asking to be discussed. But everyone seemed determined to avoid discussion, preferring the growing tension to the risk of facing a potentially painful truth.

He followed the butler to the west wing of the house, down the long corridor that led to the estate office. A single light burned upon the desk, creating a bright oval of illumination in the centre of which lay the telephone receiver. He picked it up.

“She’s disappeared,” Lady Helen said when she heard his voice. “It looks as if she’s taken herself off on a casual holiday because her ordinary clothes are gone—but none of her dressy clothes—and there’s no suitcase in the flat.”

“You got inside?”

“Sheer audacious fast talking and the key was mine.”

“You’ve missed your calling, Helen.”

“Darling, I know. Con man extraordinaire. It comes from spending my youth in finishing schools instead of university. Modern languages, decorative arts, dissembling, and prevaricating. I was certain it would all be useful someday.”

“No idea where’s she gone?”

“She’s left behind her makeup and her fingernails, so—”

“Her fingernails? Helen, what sort of business is this?”

She laughed and explained the artificial nails to him. “They’re not what one would wear to do a bit of hiking, you see. Or mucking about. Or rock climbing, sailing, fishing. That sort of thing. So we think she’s off in the country somewhere.”