A Suitable Vengeance (Inspector Lynley, #4)(8)

She’s chosen, he thought, and tried to convince himself in the face of this knowledge that he felt nothing, that he could accept it, that he could be the loser, that he could go on.

He crossed the landing and entered his laboratory where he turned on a high intensity lamp that cast a circle of light upon a toxicology report. He spent the next few minutes attempting to read the document—a pitiful endeavour to put his house in order—before he heard the car’s engine start, a sound that was shortly followed by Deborah’s footsteps in the lower hall.

He put on another light in the room and walked to the door, feeling a rush of trepidation, a need to find something to say, an excuse for being up and about, fully dressed, at three in the morning. But there was no time to think, for Deborah came up the stairs nearly as quickly as Sidney had done, bringing their separation to an end.

She stepped onto the final landing and started when she saw him. “Simon!”

Acceptance be damned. He held out a hand and she came into his arms. It was natural. She belonged there. Both of them knew it. Without another thought, St. James bent his head, seeking her mouth but finding instead her mane of hair. The unmistakable smell of Lynley’s cigarettes clung to it, a bitter reminder of who she had been and who she had become.

The odour brought him to his senses, and he released her. He saw that time and distance had caused him to magnify her beauty, attributing physical qualities to her that she didn’t possess. He admitted to himself what he had always known. Deborah was not beautiful in any conventional way. She didn’t have Helen’s sleek, aristocratic lines. Nor had she Sidney’s provocative features. Instead, she was a compilation of warmth and affection, perception and wit, qualities whose definition rose from her liveliness of expression, from the chaos of her coppery hair, from the freckles that dashed across the bridge of her nose.

But there were changes in her. She was too thin, and inexplicable, illusory veins of regret seemed to lie just beneath the surface of her composure. Nonetheless, she spoke to him much as she always had done.

“Have you been working late? You’ve not waited up for me, have you?”

“It was the only way I could get your father to go to bed. He thought Tommy might spirit you away this very night.”

Deborah laughed. “How like Dad. Did you think that as well?”

“Tommy was a fool not to.”

St. James marvelled at the rank duplicity behind their words. With one quick embrace they had neatly sidestepped Deborah’s reasons for having left England in the first place, as if they had agreed to play at their old relationship, one to which they could never return. For the moment, however, even spurious friendship was better than disjunction.

“I have something for you.”

He led her through the laboratory and opened the door of her darkroom. Her hand went out for the light, and St. James heard her gasp of surprise as she saw the new colour enlarger standing in place of her old black and white one.

“Simon!” She was biting the inside of her lip. “This is…How very kind of you. Truly…it’s not as if you had to…and you’ve even waited up for me.” Colour smudged across her face like unattractive thumbprints, a reminder that Deborah had never possessed any skills of artifice to fall back upon when she was distressed.

In his grasp, the doorknob felt inordinately cold. In spite of the past, St. James had assumed she would be pleased by the gift. She was not. Somehow, his purchase of it represented the inadvertent crossing of an unspoken boundary between them.

“I wanted to welcome you home somehow,” he said. She didn’t respond. “We’ve missed you.”

Deborah ran her hand over the enlarger’s surface. “I had a showing of my work in Santa Barbara before I left. Did you know that? Did Tommy tell you about it? I phoned him because, well, it’s the sort of thing that one dreams of happening, isn’t it? People coming, liking what they see. Even buying…I was so excited. I’d used one of the enlargers at school to do all the prints and I remember wondering how I’d ever afford the new cameras I wanted as well as…And now you’ve done it for me.” She inspected the darkroom, the bottles of chemicals, the boxes of supplies, the new pans for the stop bath and the fixer. She raised her fingers to her lips. “You’ve stocked it as well. Oh, Simon, this is more than…Really, I didn’t expect this. Everything is…it’s exactly what I need. Thank you. So much. I promise I’ll come back every day to use it.”

“Come back?” Abruptly, St. James stopped himself, realising that he should have had the common sense to know what was coming when he saw them in the car together.

“Don’t you know?” Deborah switched off the light and returned to the lab. “I’ve a flat in Paddington. Tommy found it for me in April. He didn’t tell you? Dad didn’t? I’m moving there tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? You mean already? Today?”

“I suppose I do mean today, don’t I? And we’ll be in poor shape, the both of us, if we don’t get some sleep. So I’ll say good night, then. And thank you, Simon. Thank you.” She briefly pressed her cheek to his, squeezed his hand, and left.

So that’s that, St. James thought, staring woodenly after her.

He headed for the stairs.



In her room, she heard him go. No more than two steps from the closed door, Deborah listened to his progress. It was a sound etched into her memory, one that would follow her right to her grave. The light drop of healthy leg, the heavy thump of dead one. The movement of his hand on the handrail, clenched into a tight, white grip. The catch of his breath as precarious balance was maintained. And all of it done with a face that betrayed nothing.