A Suitable Vengeance - By Elizabeth George Page 0,57

the room tonight, there's going to be evidence to support it, far beyond the testimony of neighbours who saw him and other neighbours who heard a row. What will you do then? Does Boscowan know you're CID?"

"It's nothing I broadcast."

"Will he ask the Yard for assistance?" Lynley answered with obvious reluctance, putting into words St. James' own thoughts. "Not if he thinks he's got his man in John Penellin.

Why should he?" He sighed. "It's damned awkward, for all Nancy's request that I help her father.

We'll have to be careful, St. James. We can't afford to step on official toes." "And if we do?" "There'll be the devil to pay in London." He nodded a good night and left the room.

St. James went back to his notes. From the desk he took out a second sheet of paper and spent several minutes creating columns and categories into which he put what little information they had. John Penellin. Harry Cambrey. Mark Penellin. Unknown Husbands. Newspaper Employees. Potential Motives for the Crime. The Weapon. The Time of Death. He wrote and listed and read and stared. The words began to swim before him. He pressed his fingers to his closed eyes. Somewhere a casement window creaked in the breeze. At the same moment the drawing room door opened and shut. His head jerked up at the sound. Deborah stood in the shadows. She wore a dressing gown whose ivory colour and insub- I stantial material made her look like a spectre. Her hair hung I loosely round her face and shoulders. St. James shoved his chair back, pushed himself to his feet.

His weight was off balance because of the awkward position of his leg, and he could feel the accompanying stress as it pulled at the muscles of his waist. Deborah looked down the length of the drawing room and then into the alcove. "Tommy's not with you?" *'He's gone to bed."

She frowned. "I thought I'd heard - "

"He was here earlier."

Oh," she said. "Right."

St. James waited for her to leave, but instead, she came into the alcove and joined him next to the desk. A lock of her hair caught against his sleeve, and he could smell the fragrance of lilies on her skin. He fixed his eyes on his notes and felt her do likewise.

After a moment, she spoke.

Are you going to get involved in this?" He bent forward and jotted a few deliberately illegible words in the margin of the paper. A reference to notebooks on the cottage floor.

The location of the call box. A question for Mrs. Swann. Anything. It didn't matter. Til help if I can," he answered. 44Although this sort of investigating isn't in my line at all, so I don't know how much good I'll do. I was just going through what Tommy and I were talking about. Nancy. Her family. The newspaper. That sort of thing." By writing it down. Yes. I remember your lists. You always had dozens of them, didn't you?

Everywhere."

"All over the lab."

"Graphs and charts as well, I recall. I never had to feel contrite about the jumble of photographs I shed all over the house while you were in the lab, throwing darts at your own jumble in sheer frustration."

"It was a scalpel, actually," St. James said. They laughed together, but it was only an instant of shared amusement from which silence grew, first on his part then on hers. In it the sound of a clock's ticking seemed inordinately loud, as did the distant breaking of the sea. I had no idea Helen's been working with you in the lab,isn't that odd? Sidney told me this afternoon. She's so good at everything, isn't she? Even at the cottage. There I was, standing there like an idiot while Nancy fell apart and that poor baby screamed. With Helen all the time knowing just what to do."

"Yes," St. James replied. "She's very helpful."

Deborah said nothing else. He willed her to leave. He added more notations to the paper on the desk. He frowned at it, read it, pretended to study it. And then, when it could no longer be avoided, when to do so would openly declare him the craven he pretended not to be, he finally looked up.

It was the diffusion of light in the alcove that defeated him. In it, her eyes became darker and more luminescent. Her skin looked softer, her lips fuller. She was far too close to him, and he knew in an instant that his choices