'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.
'It'll rain,' she said. 'Simon, he'll get wet.'
St James tightened his arms. He kissed the top of her head. 'No, it's all right.' He attempted to sound more like the older brother she knew, the one who had taken care of her night-time monsters, the one who could make bad dreams go away. But not this one, Sid. 'They'll take care of him. You'll see.'
Large, heavy drops splattered noisily on the leaves. In his arms, Sidney shivered.
&nb
sp; 'How Mummy shouted at us!' she whispered.
'Shouted? When?'
'You opened all the nursery windows to see how much rain would come into the room. She shouted and shouted. She hit you as well.' Her body heaved with a sob. 'I never could bear to see Mummy hit you.'
'The carpet was ruined. No doubt I deserved it.'
'But it was my idea. And I let you take the punishment.' She brought her hand to her face. Blood had streaked between her fingers. She began to weep again. Tm sorry.'
He stroked her hair. 'It's all right, love. I'd quite forgotten. Believe me.'
'How could I do that to you, Simon? You were my favourite brother. I loved you best. Nanny told me how bad it was to love you more than Andrew or David, but I couldn't help it. I loved you best. Then I let you take a beating and it was my fault and I never said a word.' Her raised face was wet with tears that, St James knew, in reality had nothing to do with their childhood disputes.
'Let me tell you something, Sid,' he confided, 'but you must promise never to say anything to David or Andrew. You were my favourite as well. You still are, in fact.'
'Really?'
'Absolutely.'
They came to the gatehouse and entered the garden as the wind picked up, tearing at the heads of roses, sending a shower of petals into their path. Although the rain began to beat against them aggressively, they didn't hurry their pace. By the time they reached the doorway, they were both quite wet.
'Mummy will shout at us now,' Sidney said as St James closed the door behind them. 'Shall we hide?'
'We'll be safe enough for now.'
'I'll not let her beat you.'
'I know that, Sid.' St James led his sister towards the stairway, taking her hand when she hesitated and gazed around, clearly confused. 'It's just this way,' he urged her.
At the top of the stairs, he saw Cotter coming towards him, a small tray in his hands. At the sight of him, St James gave a moment of thanksgiving over to Cotter's ability to read his mind.
'Saw you comin',' Cotter explained and nodded at the tray. 'It's a brandy. Is she . . . ?' He jerked his head towards Sidney, his brow furrowing at the sight of her.
'She'll be all right in a bit. If you'll help me, Cotter. Her room's this way.'
Unlike Deborah's room, Sidney's was neither cave-like nor sepulchral. Overlooking a small walled garden at the rear of the house, it was painted and papered in a combination of yellow and white, with a floral carpet of pastels on the floor. St James sat his sister on the bed and went to draw the curtains while Cotter poured brandy and held it to her lips. 'A bit o' this, Miss Sidney,' Cotter said solicitously. 'It'll warm you up nice.'
She drank co-operatively. 'Does Mummy know?' she asked.
Cotter glanced warily at St James. 'Have a bit more,' he said.
St James rooted through a drawer, looking for her nightdress. He found it under a Sidney-like pile of jerseys, jewellery and stockings.
'You must get out of those wet things,' he told her. 'Cotter, will you find a towel for her hair? And something for the cuts?'
Cotter nodded, eyeing Sidney cautiously before he left the room. Alone with his sister, St James undressed her, tossing her wet clothes onto the floor. He drew her nightdress over her head, pulling her arms gently through the thin satin straps. She said nothing and didn't seem to realize he was present at all. When Cotter returned with towel and plaster, St James rubbed Sidney's hair roughly. He saw to her arms and legs and the muddy splatters on her feet. Swinging her legs up on the bed, he pulled the blankets around her. She submitted to it all like a child, like a doll.
'Sid,' he whispered, touching her cheek. He wanted to talk about Justin Brooke. He wanted to know if they had been together in the night. He wanted to know when Brooke had gone to the cliff. Above all, he wanted to know why.
She didn't respond. She stared at the ceiling. Whatever she knew would have to wait.
Lynley parked the Rover at the far end of the courtyard and entered the house through the north-west door between the gun room and the servants' hall. He had seen the line of vehicles on the drive - two police cars, an unmarked saloon, and an ambulance with its windscreen wipers still running - so he was not unprepared to be accosted by Hodge as he quickly passed through the domestic wing of the house. They met outside the pantry.
'What is it?' Lynley asked the old butler. He tried to sound reasonably concerned without revealing his incipient panic. Upon seeing the cars through the wind-driven rain, his first thought had run unveeringly towards Peter.
Hodge gave the information willingly enough and in a fashion designed to reveal nothing of his own feelings in the matter. It was Mr Brooke, he told Lynley. He's been taken to the old schoolroom.
If the manner in which Hodge had relayed the information had been fleeting cause for hope - nothing could be terribly amiss if Brooke hadn't been taken directly to hospital - hope dissipated when Lynley entered the schoolroom in the east wing of the house a few minutes later. The body lay shrouded by blankets on a long scarred table at the room's centre, the very same table at which generations of young Lynleys had done their childhood lessons before being packed off to school. A group of men stood in hushed conversation round it, among them Inspector Boscowan and the plain-clothes sergeant who had accompanied him to pick up John Penellin on the previous evening. Boscowan was talking to the group in general, issuing some son of instructions to two crime-scene men whose trouser legs were muddy and whose jacket shoulders bore large wet patches from the rain. The police pathologist was with them, identifiable by the medical bag at her feet. It was unopened, and she didn't look as if she intended to do any preliminary examining of the body. Nor did the crime-scene men seem prepared to do any work at present. Which led Lynley to the only conclusion possible: wherever Brooke had died, it hadn't been in the schoolroom.
He saw St James standing in one of the window embrasures, giving his attention to what could be seen of the garden through the rain-streaked glass.
'Jasper found him in the cove.' St James spoke quietly when Lynley joined him. He did not turn away from the window. His own clothes had had a recent wetting, Lynley saw, and his shirt bore streaks of blood which the rain had elongated like a waterwash of paint. 'It looks like an accident. It seems there was slippage at the top of the cliff. He lost his footing.' He looked past Lynley's shoulder at the group round the body, then back at Lynley once again. 'At least, that's what Boscowan's considering for now.'
St James didn't ask the question that Lynley heard behind the final guarded statement. Lynley was grateful for the respite, however long his friend intended it to be. He said, 'Why was the body moved, St James? Who moved it? Why?'
'Your mother. It had begun to rain. Sid got to him before the rest of us. I'm afraid none of us was thinking too clearly at that moment, least of all myself A yew branch, struck by a gust of wind, scratched against the window in front of them. Rain created a sharp tattoo. St James moved further into the embrasure and lifted his eyes to the upper floor of the wing opposite the schoolroom, to the corner bedroom next to Lynley's own. 'Where's Peter?'
The respite had been brief indeed. Lynley felt the sudden need to lie, to protect his brother in some way, but he couldn't do it. Nor could he say what drove him to the truth, whether it was priggish morality or an unspoken plea for the other man's help and understanding. 'He's gone.'
'Sasha?'
'As well.'
'Where?'
'I don't know.'
St James' reaction was a single word, sighed more than spoken. 'Great.' Then, 'How long? Was his bed slept in last night? Was hers?'
'No.' Lynley didn't add that he'd seen as much at half-past seven this morning when he'd gone to speak to his brother. He didn't tell him that he'd sent Jasper out to search for Peter at a quarter to eight. Nor did he describe the horror he'd felt, seeing the police cars and ambulance lined up in front of Howenstow, thinking Peter had been found dead, and recognizing in his reaction to that thought a small measure of r
elief behind the dread. He saw St James reflectively considering Brooke's covered body. 'Peter had nothing to do with this,' he said. 'It was an accident. You said that yourself.'
'I wonder whether Peter knew that Brooke spoke to us last night,' St James said. 'Would Brooke have told him so? And, if he did, why?'
Lynley recognized the speculation that drove the questions. It was the very same speculation he was facing himself. 'Peter's not a killer. You know that.'
'Then, you'd better find him. Killer or not, he has a bit of explaining to do, hasn't he?'
'Jasper's been out looking for him since early this morning.'
'I did wonder what he'd been doing at the cove. He thought Peter was there?'
'There. At the mill. He's been looking everywhere. Off the estate as well.'
'Are Peter's things still here?'
'I... no.' Lynley knew St James well enough to see the reasoning that came upon the heels of his answer. If Peter had run from Howenstow with no time to lose, knowing his life was in danger, he'd be likely to leave his belongings behind. If, on the other hand, he had left after committing a murder that he knew wouldn't be discovered for some hours, he'd have plenty of time to pack whatever possessions he'd brought with him to Howenstow. That done, he could steal off into the night, with no-one the wiser until Brooke's body was found. If he had killed him. If Brooke had been murdered at all. Lynley forced himself to keep in mind the fact that they were calling it an accident. And surely the crime-scene men knew what they were looking at when they made their observations at the site of an untimely death. Earlier in the morning, the thought of Peter having stolen Deborah's cameras in order to sell them and purchase cocaine had been repellent, a cause for disbelief and denial. Now it was welcome. For how likely was it that his brother had been involved in both the disappearance of the cameras and Justin Brooke's death? And, if his mind was focused on his body's need for cocaine, why pause in his pursuit of the drug to eliminate Brooke?