A Suitable Vengeance - By Elizabeth George Page 0,66

"See for yourself. Is this the kind of man you'd say no to if he asked you to spread your legs, missy?"

Lady Helen drew in a quick breath to respond, but in an admirable demonstration of self-control, she didn't do so. Nor did she look at the picture which she handed to St. James.

In it, a shirtless young man stood on the deck of a sailboat, one hand on a spar as he adjusted the rigging. He was square jawed and nice looking, but slender like his father, not possessed of the rugged body or features that naturally come to mind when one hears the words a real man. St. James turned over the photograph. Cambrey prepares for America's Cup - the lad's on his way had been written facetiously across it. It was written in the same hand as was the note from the desk.

"He had a sense of humour," St. James noted.

"He had everything."

"May I keep the photograph? This note as well?"

"Do what you like. They're nothing to me without Mick."

Cambrey examined the office. Defeat was in the set of his shoulders, it lined a weary path across his face. "We were on our way. The Spokesman was going to be the biggest paper in South Cornwall. Not just a weekly any longer. I wanted it. Mick wanted it. We were on our way. All of us."

"Mick got on well with the staff? No troubles there?"

"They loved him. He'd made good on his own. Come back to the village. He was a hero to them, what they wanted to be." Cambrey sharpened his voice. "You can't think that someone on the staff would kill him. No one from this office would have laid a hand on my son. They had no reason. He was changing the paper. He was making improvements.

He * * was - "

"Getting ready to give someone the sack?"

"Bloody hell, who?"

St. James looked at the desk closest to the window. A framed photograph of two young children sat on it. "What was his relationship with your copy editor? Is it Julianna Ven dale?"

"Julianna?" Cambrey removed his cigarette, licked his lips.

"Was she one of his women? A former lover? Or the female half of an office seduction, about to be given the sack for not cooperating in Mick's quest to have his needs met?"

Cambrey barked a laugh, refusing to react to the manner in which St. James had used his own words about his son to arrive at a more-than-logical and less-than-savoury motive for murder. No noble journalist going to his death over information or the protection of a source, but a squalid little episode of sexual harassment ending in a very sexual crime.

"Mick didn't need Julianna Vendale," Cambrey said. "He didn't have to go begging for what was spread out before him - hot, wet, and willing - everywhere he turned."

On the street once more, they headed in the direction of the harbour car park where Lady Helen had left the Rover.

St. James glanced at her as they walked. During the final minutes in the newspaper office, she'd said nothing, although the tension in her body and the fixed expression on her face articulated her reaction to Mick Cambrey's life and his death - not to mention his father -

-better than any words. The moment they left the building, however, she gave vent to disgust.

She marched towards the car park. St. James could barely manage the pace. He only caught snatches of her diatribe.

"Some sort of sexual athlete . . . more like his scorekeeper than his father . . . time to put a newspaper out since they were so busy getting their needs met? . . . every woman in Cornwall . . . no wonder to me - absolutely no wonder at all - that somedne^cut ... I'd even consider doing it myself ..." She was quite^out of breath when she reached the car.

So was he. They leaned against it, directing their faces into a breeze that was pungent with the odours of kelp and fish. In the harbour just beneath them, hundreds of gulls circled above a small skiff, its morning catch flickering silver in the sun. "Is that what you thought of me?" Lady Helen asked abruptly. St. James couldn't have been more surprised by the question. "Helen, for God's sake - " "Is it?" she demanded. "Tell me. I want to know. Because if it is, you can walk all the way back to Howenstow." "Then how can I