She smiled. He knew why. He was starting to sound exactly like her.
'I'll get it for you, shall I? It's just in my room.'
She left him. He walked to the alcove window and looked out over the night-shrouded garden. Shapes alone defined the bushes there. Pathways were muted streaks of grey.
St James considered the disjointed pieces of Mick Cambrey's life and death that had emerged that night. He wondered how they fitted together. Mick had been gone a great deal, Lady Asherton had said. He'd been working on a story in London. A big story. St James thought about this and the possible connections a story might have to Tina Cogin.
One assumption was that she was Mick's lover, a woman being kept in London for his clandestine pleasure. Yet Deborah, nobody's fool when it came to judgement, had concluded from a first impression, a conversation, and a run-in with Mick that Tina was a prostitute. If this was the case, the resultant tie to a story was both logical and ineluctable. For Mick might be keeping the woman in London not for his pleasure but for her own protection as a source for a story that had the potential to make banner headlines and put Mick's name in the forefront of journalism. It certainly would not be the first time if a prostitute became involved in critically important news, nor would it be the first time if heads were to roll and careers were to fall because of a prostitute. And now with Mick dead and his sitting room ransacked – perhaps in the hope of finding Tina Cogin's address in London – no amalgamation of these details sounded outrageous.
'Simon!' Deborah flew back into the room. He swung round from the window to find her trembling, arms wrapped round herself tightly as if she were cold.
'What is it?'
'Sidney. Someone's with Sidney. I heard a man's voice. I heard her cry. I thought that Justin might be-'
St James didn't wait for her to finish the sentence. He hurried from the room and rushed down the main corridor towards the north-west wing. With each step his anxiety grew, as did his anger. Every image from the afternoon manifested itself before him once again. Sidney in the water. Sidney on the sand. Brooke straddling her, punching her, tearing at her clothes. But there was no cliff to separate him from Justin Brooke now. He blessed that fact.
Only years of dealing with his sister caused St James to pause at her door rather than throw himself into her room. Deborah came up next to him as he listened against the wood. He heard Sidney cry out, he heard Brooke's voice, he heard Sidney's moan. Damn and blast, he thought. He took Deborah's arm, guiding her away from the door and down the long corridor that led to her own room in the south corner of the house.
'Simon!' she whispered.
He didn't reply until they were in her room with the door shut behind them. 'It's nothing,' he said. 'Don't worry.'
'But I heard her.'
'Deborah, she's all right. Believe me.'
'But…' Sudden comprehension swept across Deborah's face. She turned away with a gulp. 'I only thought,' she said but gave up the effort and concluded with, 'Why am I such a fool?'
He wanted to reply, to assuage her embarrassment, but he knew that any comment only held the promise of making things worse. Frustrated, angry at the changes in their lives that seemed to bind him to inaction, he looked aimlessly round her room as if it could formulate an answer for him. He took in the black oak panelling upon the walls, the formal Asherton armorial display in the plaster overmantel of the fireplace, the lofty barrel ceiling that soared into the darkness. An immense four-poster bed dominated the floorspace, its headboard carved with grotesques that writhed their way through flowers and fruit. It was a horrible place to be alone. It felt just like a tomb.
'Sidney's always been a bit hard to understand,' St James settled upon saying. 'Bear with her, Deborah. You couldn't have known what that was all about. It's all right. Really.'
To his surprise, she turned to him hotly. 'It isn't all right. It isn't and you know it. How can she make love with him after what he did to her today? I don't understand it. Is she mad? Is he?'
That was the question and the answer all at once. For it was a true madness, white, hot and indecent, obliterating everything that stood in its way.
'She's in love with him, Deborah,' he finally replied. 'Aren't people all just a little bit mad when they love?'
Her response was a stare. He could see her swallow.
'The film. Let me get it,' she said.
12
The Anchor and Rose benefited from having the most propitious location in all Nanrunnel. It not only displayed from its broad bay windows a fine", unobstructed view of the harbour guaranteed to please the most discerning seeker of Cornish atmosphere, but it also sat directly across from Nanrunnel's single bus stop and was, as a result, the first structure a thirsty visitor's eyes fell upon when disembarking from Penzance and regions beyond.
The interior of the pub was engaged in the gentle process of deterioration. Once creamy walls had taken their place on the evolutionary path towards grey, an effect produced by exposure to generations of smoke from fireplace, cigars, pipes and cigarettes. An elaborate mahogany bar, pitted and stained, curved from the lounge into the public bar, with a brass foot-rail heavily distressed through years of use. Similarly worn tables and chairs spread across a well-trodden floor, and the ceiling above them was so convex that architectural disaster seemed imminent.
When St James and Lady Helen entered, shortly after the pub's morning opening, they found themselves alone with a large tabby cat that lounged in the bay window and a woman who stood behind the bar, drying innumerable pint and half-pint glasses. She nodded at them and went on with her work, her eyes following Lady Helen to the window where she stooped to pet the cat.
'Careful with 'um,' the woman said. 'Watch he doesn't scratch. He's a mean 'un when he wants to be.'
As if with the intention of proving her a liar, the cat yawned, stretched, and presented a corpulent stomach for Lady Helen to attend to. Watching, the woman snorted and stacked glasses on a tray.
St James joined her at the bar, reflecting upon the fact that if this was Mrs Swann she was trapped somewhere in the cygnet stage, for there was nothing the least bit swan-like about her. She was stout and solid, with minuscule eyes and a frizz of grey hair, a living contradiction to her name dressed in a dirndl skirt and a peasant blouse.
'What c'n I get you?' she asked and went on with her drying.
'It's a bit early for me,' St James replied. 'We've come to talk to you, actually. If you're Mrs Swann.' 'Who wants to know?'
St James introduced himself and Lady Helen, who had taken a seat next to the cat. 'I'm sure you've heard Mick Cambrey's been murdered.'
'Whole village knows. About that and the chop-up as well.' She smiled. 'Looks like Mick got what was coming at last. Separated proper from his favourite toy, wasn't he? No doubt there'll be a regular piss-up here when the local husbands come round to celebrate tonight.'
'Mick was involved with some local women?'
Mrs Swann drove her towel-covered fist into a glass and polished it vigorously. 'Mick Cambrey's involved in anyone willing to give him a poke.' That said, she turned to the empty shelves behind her and began placing glasses upside down on the mats. The implicit message was unavoidable: she had nothing more to tell.
Lady Helen spoke. 'Actually, Mrs Swann, Nancy Cambrey's our concern. We've come to see you mostly because of her.'
Mrs Swarm's shoulders lost some of their stiffness, although she didn't turn around when she said, 'Dim girl, Nance. Married to that sod.' Her tight little curls shook with disgust.
'Indeed,' Lady Helen went on smoothly. 'And she's in the worst sort of situation at the moment, isn't she? Not only to have her husband murdered but then to have her father questioned by the police.'
That re-engaged Mrs Swarm's interest quickly enough. She faced them, fists on hips. Her mouth opened and shut. Then opened again. 'John Penellin?'