A Suitable Vengeance - By Elizabeth George Page 0,147

even find her. It's pathetic. Obscene. I'm perfectly useless and this entire day has been nothing more than an illustration of that fact." "I don't believe it," Deborah said slowly. "Sidney wouldn't . . . she didn't . . .

Simon, I can't think you believe it yourself." "Helen's looked everywhere, phoned everywhere. So have I. Nothing's any good. And they'll trace that container within twenty-four hours." "How could they? Even if her fingerprints are on it - " "It has nothing to do with fingerprints. She's used her perfume bottle. It's from Jermyn Street.

That's not going to give the police any difficulty. They'll be here by four o'clock tomorrow afternoon. You can bet on that." "Her perfume . . . Simon, it's not Sidney!"

Quickly, Deborah pushed off the lab stool, going round to join him. "It's not Sidney. It can't be. Don't you remember? She came to my room the night of the dinner. She used my perfume.

Hers was missing, she said. Someone had straightened her room. She couldn't find anything. Don't you remember?" For an instant, he looked momentarily stunned. His vision was fixed upon her although he didn't appear to be seeing her at all. "What?" he whispered and then went on in a voice that was stronger. "That was Saturday evening.

That was before Brooke died. Someone was planning to kill Peter even then." "Or Sasha," Deborah said. "Someone's trying to frame Sidney." He pushed himself off the lab stool, walked to the end of the worktable, swung round, walked back. He did it a second time, more quickly and with growing agitation. "Someone got into her room. It could have been anyone. Peter - if Sasha was the intended victim - or Trenarrow or any one of the Penellins. Good God, even Daze." The truth was all of a piece in a moment. "No,"

Deborah said. "It was Justin." "Justin?" "It never made sense to me that he went to her bedroom Friday night. Not after what happened between them on the beach that afternoon. He had a grievance against Sidney. The cocaine, their fight, Peter and Sasha laughing at them both.

Laughing at him," "So he went to her room," St. James said slowly, "made love to her, and took the bottle then. He must have done.

Damn him to hell." "And Saturday when Sid couldn't find him for most of the day -

remember, she told us that? - he must have got the ergotamine and quinine then. He made the mixture and passed it on to Sasha." "A chemist," St. James said thoughtfully. "A biochemist.

Who would know drugs better?" "So who was he after? Peter or Sasha?" "It was always Peter." "Because of the visit to Mick Cambrey?" "The room had been searched. The computer was on. There were notebooks and photographs all over me floor. Peter must have seen something when he was there with Brooke, something Brooke knew he might remember onceiCambrey was dead." \ "Then why give the drugs to Sasha? When Peter died, she would have told the police at once where she'd gotten them." "Not at all. She'd have been dead as well. Brooke was betting on that. He knew she was a user. So he gave her the drugs, hoping she and Peter would use them together and die at Howenstow, I imagine. When it became apparent that the plan wasn't working, he tried to be rid of Peter in a different way: by telling us about their visit to Cambrey so that Peter would be arrested and out of the way. What he couldn't have known is that Sasha and Peter would leave before Peter could be arrested in Cornwall and that Sasha's addiction was worse than Peter's. He especially had no way of knowing that she would hoard the drugs and use them alone. Nor did he know that Peter would go to the Anchor and Rose and get himself seen by a dozen or more people who could provide him with an alibi for the time of Cambrey's death." "So it was Justin," Deborah said. "Everything was Justin." "I've been blinded by the fact that he died before Sasha.

I never considered that he might have given her the drugs first." "But his own death, Simon?" "An accident all along." "Why? How? What was he doing on the cliff in the middle of the night?" St. James glanced over her shoulder. She'd left the warning light on above the darkroom door. It cast an eery glow of blood red on