A Suitable Vengeance - By Elizabeth George Page 0,7

and Justin pulled him off. The woman - now this was a bit odd - began to laugh and laugh.

Of course, she must have been hysterical. But before we had a chance to see if she was fit, she ran off. We drove Peter home. Squalid little flat in White chapel, Simon, with a yellow-eyed girl in filthy blue jeans waiting for Peter on the front steps." Sidney shuddered.

"Anyway, Peter wouldn't say a word to me about Tommy or Oxford or anything.

Embarrassed, I suppose. I'm sure the last thing on earth he expected was to have a friend stumble upon him as he rolled round an alley."

"What were you doing there?" St. James asked. "Or was Soho Justin's idea?"

Sidney avoided his gaze. "D'you think Deb'll take a set of photos of me? I ought to start work on a new portfolio now my hair's cut off. You've not said a word about it, Simon, and it's shorter than yours."

St. James was not to be so easily diverted. "Haven't you had enough of Justin Brooke?"

"Helen, what do you think of my hair?"

"What about Brooke, Sid?"

Sidney directed a wordless apology towards Lady Helen before she faced her brother down. The resemblance between them was remarkable, a sharing of the same curly black hair, the same spare aquiline features, the same blue eyes. They looked like skewed mirror images: the liveliness of one was replaced by resigned repose in the other. They were before and-after pictures, the past and the present, joined by an undeniable bond of blood.

Sidney's words, however, seemed an effort to deny this.

"Don't mother-hen me, Simon," she said.

The sound of a clock chiming in the room startled St.

James out of sleep. It was three a.m. For a dazed moment - half sleeping, half waking -

he wondered where he was until a knotted muscle, cramping painfully in his neck, brought him fully awake. He stirred in his chair and got up, his movements slow, his body feeling bent. Stretching tentatively, he walked to the study window and looked out on Cheyne Row.

Moonlight lit tree leaves with silver, touching upon the restored houses opposite his own, the Carlyle Museum, and the corner church. In the past few years, a renaissance had come to the riverside neighbourhood, taking it from its Bohemian past into an unknown future. St. James loved it.

He went back to his chair. On the table next to it, a balloon glass still held a half inch of brandy. He drained it, switched off the lamp, and left the study, making his way down the narrow hallway to the stairs.

These he mounted slowly, pulling his bad leg up next to him, gripping the handrail against the strain of dead weight.

He shook his head in weary denigration at his solitary, fanciful dance of attendance upon Deborah's return.

Cotter had been back from the airport for some hours, but his daughter had stopped in only briefly, remaining for the entire time in the kitchen. From his study, St. James could hear Deborah's laughter, her father's voice, the barking of the dog. He could even imagine the household cat jumping down from the windowsill to greet her. This reunion among them had gone on for half an hour. Then, instead of Deborah coming up to bid him hello, Cotter had stepped into the study with the uneasy announcement that Deborah had left again with Lord Asherton. Thomas Lynley. St. James' oldest friend.

Cotter's embarrassment at Deborah's behaviour only promised to worsen an already uncomfortable situation.

"Said she'd only be a while," Cotter had stammered. "Said she'd be back directly. Said she'd - "

St. James wanted to stop the words but couldn't think how to do it. He resolved the situation by noting the time and declaring his intention of going to bed. Cotter left him in peace.

Knowing sleep would elude him, he remained in the study, trying to occupy himself with reading a scientific journal as the hours passed and he waited for her to return. The wiser part of him insisted there was no point to a meeting between them now. The fool longed for it, in a welter of nerves.

What idiocy, he thought, and continued climbing the stairs.

But as if his body wished to contradict what his intellect was telling him, he made his way not to his own bedroom but to Deborah's on the top floor of the house. The door stood open.

It was a small room with a jumble of furnishings. An old oak wardrobe, lovingly refinished, leaned on uneven legs against