Deborah had wanted to go to him. For what reason, to what possible end, she could not have said. Her only rational thought at the moment was that she couldn't leave him alone. But Helen stopped her when she took a step in his direction, pushing her with Sidney towards the path to the house.
That stumbling trip back had been the second nightmare. Each part stood out vividly in her mind. Coming upon Mark Penellin in the woods; making inarticulate excuses for Sidney's appearance and her distraught condition; approaching the house with an ever rising sense of trepidation that someone might see them; slipping by the gun room and the old servants' hall to look for the north-west stairway that Helen had insisted was near the pantry; taking a wrong turn at the top of those stairs and ending up in the disused west wing of the house; and all the time terrified that Tommy would come upon them and begin asking questions. Through it all, Sidney had gone from hysteria to rage to despair and finally to silence. But this last was dazed, and it frightened Deborah more than Sidney's earlier unrestrained agitation.
The entire experience had far exceeded dreadful, and when Justin Brooke walked into the drawing room, dressed casually for the evening as if he had not tried to rape a woman in front of five witnesses that afternoon, it was all Deborah could do to look at the man without screaming and flying into the attack.
8
'Good God, what happened to you?' Lynley sounded so surprised that St James turned from his perusal of the Kang H'si porcelain to see Justin Brooke taking the proffered glass of sherry with complete nonchalance.
Christ, St James thought. Brooke was actually going to join them, smugly confident that they were all too self-servingly well bred to say anything about the afternoon while Lynley and his mother were in the room.
'Took a fall in the woods.' Brooke looked around as he spoke, making eye contact with each of them, challenging one person after another to expose him as a liar.
At this, St James felt his jaw clench automatically to bite back what he wanted to say. With an atavistic satisfaction which he did not deny himself, he noted the considerable damage that his sister had managed to do to Brooke's face. Claw marks scored his cheeks. A bruise rose on his jaw. His lower lip was swollen.
'A fall?' Lynley's attention was on the inflamed teeth-marks on Brooke's neck, barely obscured by the collar of his shirt. He looked at the others sharply. 'Where's Sidney?' he asked.
No-one replied. A glass clinked against the top of a table. Someone coughed. Outside, at some distance from the house, an engine roared to life. Footsteps sounded in the hall and Cotter entered the drawing room. He stopped barely two feet inside the door, as if he'd taken a quick reading of the ambience and was having second thoughts about exposing himself to it. He looked at St James, a reflex reaction that sought direction and found it in the other man's detachment from the scene. He made no other move.
'Where's Sidney?' Lynley repeated.
At her end of the room, Lady Asherton rose to her feet. 'Has something-?'
Deborah spoke quickly. 'I saw her half an hour ago, Tommy.' Her face flushed. Its colour did battle with the fire of her hair. 'She spent too much time in the sun this afternoon and thought… well, she's asked for… a rest. Yes. She said she needed a bit of a rest. She did send her apologies and… you know Sidney. She goes at such a pace, doesn't she? She wears herself out as if nothing at all… It's no wonder to me she's exhausted.' Her fingers wandered to her throat as she spoke, as if her hand wanted to cover her mouth to prevent the lie from becoming even more obvious.
In spite of himself, St James smiled. He looked at Deborah's father, who shook his head weakly in affectionate recognition of a fact they both knew only too well. Helen might have been able to carry it off. Casual prevarication to smooth over troubled waters was more in her line. But Deborah was hopeless at this particular form of conversational legerdemain.
The rest of the party was saved from having to embellish upon Deborah's story by the entrance of Peter Lynley. His feet bare and a clean gauze shirt his only bow to dressing for dinner, he was trailed by Sasha whose glaucous-hued dress made her complexion seem more sallow than ever. As if she would speak to them or attempt to intercede in what she saw as a coming conflict, Lady Asherton started to walk in their direction.
Peter gave no indication that he saw his mother or anyone else. He merely wiped his nose on the back of his hand and went to the drinks tray. He poured himself a whisky, which he gulped down quickly, then poured himself another and Sasha some of the same.
They stood, an isolated little unit apart from the others, with the spirit decanters within easy reach. As she took a sip of her drink, Sasha slipped her hand under Peter's loose shirt and pulled him towards her.
'Nice stuff, Sash,' Peter murmured and kissed her.
Lynley set his glass down. Lady Asherton spoke quickly. 'I saw Nancy Cambrey in the grounds this afternoon, Tommy. I'm rather concerned about her. She's lost a great deal of weight. Did you happen to see her?'
'I saw her.' Lynley watched his brother and Sasha. His face was unreadable.
'She seems terribly worried about something. I think it's to do with Mick. He's working on a story that's taken him away from home so much these last few months. Did she talk to you about it?'
'We talked.'
'And did she mention a story, Tommy? Because-' 'She mentioned it. Yes.'
Lady Helen attacked the issue of diversion from a new angle. 'What a lovely dress that is, Sasha. I envy your ability to wear those wonderful Indian prints. I look like a cross between Jemima Puddleduck and a charwoman whenever I try them. Did Mark Penellin find the two of you? Simon and I saw him in the woods seeking you out.'
'Mark Penellin?' Peter reached out to caress a length of Sasha's thin hair. 'No, we never saw him.'
In some confusion, Lady Helen looked towards St James. 'But we saw him. He didn't find you in the cove? This afternoon?'
Peter smiled a lazy, satisfied smile. 'We weren't in the cove this afternoon.'
'You weren't…'
'I mean, I suppose we were, but we weren't. So if he wanted to find us he would have seen us but not seen us.
Or maybe it was after we went in the water. And then he wouldn't have seen us at all. Not where we were. And I don't think I'd have wanted him to. What about you, Sasha?'
He chuckled and traced the bridge of Sasha's nose. He ran his fingers across her mouth. Cat-like, she licked them.
Wonderful, St James thought. It's only Friday.
Nanrunnel was a successful combination of two disparate environments: a centuries-old fishing village and a modern tourist haunt. Built in a semicircular fashion round a natural harbour, its structures twisted up a hillside dotted with cedar, cypress and pine, their exteriors hewn from rocks quarried in the district, some whitewashed and others left a natural, weather-streaked mixture of grey and brown. Streets were narrow – wide enough to allow only the passage of a single car – and they followed a strangely convoluted pattern which met the demands of the hills rather than the requirements of automobiles.
Fishing boats filled the harbour itself, bobbing rhythmically on the incoming tide and protected by two long crescent-shaped quays. Curiously shaped buildings perched on the harbour's edge – cottages, shops, inns and restaurants – and an uneven cobbled walkway running along the embankment gave their inhabitants access to the water below. Above, hundreds of seabirds cried from chimneys and slate roofs while hundreds more took to the air, circled the harbour, and flew from there into the bay where, in the distance, St Michael's Mount rose in the failing evening light.
A considerable crowd had gathered in the primary school grounds in the lower part of Paul Lane. There, a humble open-air theatre had been created by the Reverend Mr Sweeney and his wife. It consisted of only three elements. A sturdily crafted platform served as stage. Accommodation for the audience comprised folding wooden chairs of prewar vintage. And at the far side of the grounds, next to the street, a refreshment booth was already doing a respectable business with libations supplied by the village's largest pub, the Anchor and Rose. Nancy Cambrey, Lynley saw, was working the taps.