'John Penellin,' she added. 'The daily help from the village.'
'An unlikely lot to be stealing cameras.' From her expression, he could tell that Lady Asherton had already done some considerable thinking about Deborah's cameras, about where they might be, about who had taken them. Her words, however, acted to camouflage this.
'I'm having difficulty understanding why they were stolen in the first place.'
'They're valuable. They can be sold by someone who needs money.'
Her face crumpled momentarily, then regained composure.
St James showed mercy by saying, 'The house was open during the party. Someone could have got in while we were in the dining room. It would have been no large matter to slip up to Deborah's room and take the cameras then.'
'But why take the cameras at all, Simon, if it's a matter of money? Why not take something else? Something even more valuable?'
'What?' he asked. 'Everything else is too easily associated with Howenstow. The silver's marked. The family crest is on everything. Surely you wouldn't expect someone to cart off one of the paintings and hope it wouldn't be noticed as missing until the next day.'
She turned her head to look out at the park, a movement designed merely to avert her face for a moment. 'It can't be a question of money,' she said, twisting her gardening gloves in her hands. 'It can't, Simon. You do know that.'
'Then, perhaps Mrs Sweeney objected to having her photograph taken after all,' he suggested.
She smiled bleakly at that but went along with his effort to divert her. 'Could she have slipped out to the loo some time after dinner and trundled through the house looking for Deborah's room?'
Her question brought them back to the inescapable reality. Whoever had taken the cameras had also known which room was Deborah's.
'Has Tommy spoken to Peter this morning?' St James asked.
'Peter's not up yet.'
'He vanished after dinner, Daze.'
'I know.'
'And do you know where he went? Where Sasha went?'
She shook her head. 'A walk in the grounds, down to the cove, for a drive. Perhaps to the lodge to see Mark Penellin.' She sighed. The effort seemed too much. 'I can't believe he's taken Deborah's cameras. He's sold most of his own things. I know that. I pretend not to, but
I know it. Still, I don't believe he'd actually steal things and sell them. Not Peter. I won't believe that.'
A shout rose from the park as she finished speaking. Someone was coming towards the house at a hobbling run, a man who alternately clutched his side then his thigh with one hand while with the other he waved a cap in the air. All the time he continued to shout.
'Jasper, m'lady,' the gardener said, joining them with his rubbish sack trailing behind him.
'Whatever is he up to?' As he reached the gatehouse, Lady Asherton raised her voice. 'Stop shouting like that, Jasper. You're frightening us all to death.'
Jasper dashed to her side, wheezing and gasping. He seemed unable to gather enough breath to put together a coherent sentence.
' 'Tis 'im,' he panted. 'Down the cove.'
Lady Asherton looked at St James. They shared the same thought. Lady Asherton took a step away to distance herself from information she couldn't bear to hear.
'Who?' St James asked. 'Jasper, who's at the cove?'
Jasper bent double, coughed. ' 'N the cove!'
'For heaven's sake-'
Jasper straightened, looked around and pointed an arthritic finger at the front door where Sidney stood, apparently seeking the source of the disturbance.
' 'Er man,' he gasped. 'He be dead down the cove.'
15
When St James finally caught up with her, his sister had already reached the cove, far in advance of everyone else. Somewhere in her desperate flight through the park and the woodland, she had fallen, and blood streaked in a furcate pattern down one arm and along one leg. From the cliff-top, he saw her fling herself at Brooke's body, snatching him up as if by that action she could infuse him with life. She was speaking in an incoherent fashion -inarticulate words, not sentences – as she held his body to hers. Brooke's head hung in an impossible position, testimony to the manner in which he had died.
Sidney lowered him to the ground. She opened his mouth, covering it with her own in a useless attempt at resuscitation. Even from the cliff-top, St James could hear her small, frantic cries as each breath she gave him produced no response. She pounded on his chest. She pulled open his shirt. She threw herself the length of his body and pressed against him as if to arouse him in death as she had done in life. It was a mindless, grim mimicry of seduction. St James grew cold as he watched. He said her name, then called to her, to no avail.
Finally, she looked up the face of the cliff and saw him. She stretched out one hand as if in supplication, and at last she began to cry. It was a horrible ululation, part despair and part grief, a weeping the source of which was as primordial as it was timeless. She covered Brooke's bruised face with kisses before she lowered her head and
rested it on his chest. And she wept, in sorrow, in anger, in rage. She grabbed the body by the shoulders, lifted and shook it as she shouted Brooke's name. In reply the lifeless head bobbed ghoulishly on its splintered neck in a danse macabre.
St James stood motionless, forcing himself to keep his eyes on his sister, making himself a witness to the worst part of her grief, accepting the watching as punishment, just and true, for the sin of possessing a body so ruined that it would not allow him to go to her aid. Immobilized and inwardly cursing with a rising ferocity that was fast approaching panic, he listened to Sidney's keening wail. He swung round viciously at the touch of a hand on his arm. Lady Asherton stood there, behind her the gardener and half a dozen others from the house.
'Get her away from him.' He barely managed the words. But his speaking released the rest of them into action.
With a final, worried look at his face, Lady Asherton began a nimble descent of the cliff. The others followed, carrying blankets, a makeshift stretcher, a Thermos, a coil of rope. Although they all climbed down quickly, it seemed to St James that they moved in slow motion in the manner of mimes.
Three of them reached Sidney simultaneously, and Lady Asherton pulled her away from the body which she continued to shake with a wild futility. As Sidney fought to go back to it, beginning to scream, Lady Asherton shouted something over her shoulder which St James could not distinguish. In answer, one of the men handed her an open vial. She pulled Sidney to her, grabbed her by the hair, and thrust the vial under her nose. Sidney's head flew back. Her hand went to her mouth. She spoke brokenly to Lady Asherton who in answer pointed up the cliff.
Sidney began to climb. The gardener helped her. Then the others from the house. All of them saw that she neither stumbled nor fell. And within a few moments St James was pulling her fiercely into his arms. He held her, pressing his cheek to the top of her head and fighting back an emotional reaction of his own that promised to overwhelm him if he gave it free rein. When the worst of her weeping had subsided, he began to lead her in the direction of the house, both his arms round her, somehow afraid that if he released her he would be giving her back to hysteria, back to the body of her lover on the beach.
They passed under the trees of the woodland. St James was hardly aware of the progress they made. Nor was he aware of the rushing sound of the river, the rich scent of vegetation, the springy feel of the loamy ground beneath their feet. If his clothing was caught or snagged by the bushes that encroached upon the narrow path, he took no notice.
The air had grown quite heavy with an approaching storm by the time they reached the Howenstow wall and went through the gate. The tree leaves susurrated as the swelling wind tossed them, and up the trunk of one ash a grey squirrel scampered, disappearing into its branches for shelter. Sidney raised her head from her brother's chest.