In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

CHAPTER 4

Julian Britton could picture exactly what his cousin was doing on the other end of the telephone line. He could hear a steady thwack thwack thwack punctuating her sentences, and that sound told him that she was in the old, ill-lit kitchen of Broughton Manor, chopping up some of the vegetables that she grew at the bottom of one of the gardens. “I didn't say that I was unwilling to help you out, Julian.” Samantha's comment was accompanied by a thwack that sounded more decisive than the earlier ones. “I merely asked what's going on. There's nothing wrong with that, is there?”

He didn't want to reply. He didn't want to tell her what was going on: Samantha, after all, had never made a secret of her aversion for Nicola Maiden.

So what could he say? Little enough. By the time the police in Buxton had made the assessment that it might behoove them to phone the force headquarters in Ripley, by the time Ripley had sent two panda cars to examine the location in which Nicola's Saab and an old Triumph motorcycle were parked, and by the time Ripley and Buxton in conjunction reached the obvious conclusion that Mountain Rescue was needed, an old woman on a morning stroll with her dog had stumbled into the hamlet of Peak Forest, pounded on a door, and told a tale about a body she'd come across in the ring of Nine Sisters Henge. The police had gone there at once, leaving Mountain Rescue waiting at their meeting point for further directions. When those directions came, they were ominous enough: Mountain Rescue would not be needed.

Julian knew all this because as a member of Mountain Rescue, he'd gone to his team's rendezvous site once the call had come through-passed along that morning by Samantha, who intercepted it in his absence at Broughton Manor. So he was standing among the members of his team, checking his equipment as the leader read from a dog-eared checklist, when the mobile rang and the equipment check was first interrupted and then canceled altogether. The team leader passed on the information he was given-the old woman, her dog, their morning walk, the body, Nine Sisters Henge.

Julian had returned immediately to Maiden Hall, wanting to be the one to break the news to Andy and Nan before they heard it from the police. He intended to say that it was only a body after all. There was nothing to indicate that the body was Nicola's.

But when he arrived, there was a panda car drawn up to the front of the hunting lodge. And when he dashed inside, it was to find Andy and Nan in a corner of the lounge where the diamond panes of a large bay window cast miniature rainbows against the wall. They were in the company of a uniformed constable. Their faces were ashen. Nan was holding on to Andy's arm, her fingers creating deep indentations in the sleeve of his plaid flannel shirt. Andy was staring down at the coffee table between them and the constable.

All three of them looked up when Julian entered. The constable spoke. “Excuse me, sir. But if you could give Mr. and Mrs. Maiden a few minutes…”

Julian realised that the constable assumed he was one of the guests at Maiden Hall. Nan clarified his relationship to the family, identifying him as “my daughter's fiancé They've only just become engaged. Come, Julian,” and she extended a hand to him and drew him down onto the sofa so that the three of them sat together as the family they were not and could never be.

The constable had just got to the unsettling part. A female body had been found on the moor. It might be the Maidens’ missing daughter. He was sorry, but one of them was going to have to accompany him to Buxton to make an identification.

“Let me go,” Julian had said impulsively. It felt inconceivable that either of Nicolas parents would have to be subjected to the grisly task. Indeed, it felt inconceivable that the identification of Nicola's body should fall to anyone but himself: the man who loved her, wanted her, and tried to make a difference in her life.

The constable said regretfully that it had to be a member of the family. When Julian offered to go along with Andy, Andy demurred. Someone needed to stay with Nan, he said. And to his wife, “I'll phone from Buxton, if… if.”

He'd been as good as his word. It had taken several hours for the call to come through, owing to the time involved in getting the body from the moor to the hospital where the post-mortems would be performed. But when he'd seen the young woman's corpse, he'd phoned.

Nan hadn't collapsed as Julian thought she might do. She'd said, “Oh no,” shoved the phone at Julian, and run from the lodge.

Julian had spoken to Andy only long enough to hear from his own mouth what Julian already knew to be the fact. Then he'd gone after Nicola's mother. He found her on her knees in Christian-Louis's herb garden behind the Maiden Hall kitchen. She was scraping up handfuls of the freshly watered earth, mounding them round her as if she wished to bury herself. She was saying, “No. No,” but she wasn't weeping.

She fought to break loose when Julian put his hands on her shoulders and began to lift her to her feet. He'd never suspected how strong such a small woman could be and he'd had to shout for help from the kitchen. Both of the Grindleford women had come running. Together with Julian, they'd managed to get Nan back into the lodge and up the staff stairs. With their help, Julian got her to drink two shots of brandy. And it was at this point that she began to weep.

“I must do…” she cried. “Give me something to do.” That last word rose on a chilling wail.

Julian was aware of being out of his depth. She needed a doctor. He went to phone one. He could have left it to the Grindleford duo. But making the decision to call in a doctor got him out of Nan and Andy's bedroom, a space suddenly so close and confined that Julian felt in another minute he would be unable to breathe.

So he'd descended the stairs and commandeered the telephone. He rang for a doctor. And then, finally, he rang Broughton Manor and spoke to his cousin.

Whether they were appropriate or not, Samantha's questions were logical. He'd failed to come home on the previous night, as his unusual absence at breakfast had no doubt telegraphed to his cousin. It was now midday. He was asking her to take on one of his responsibilities. Naturally, she would want to know what had occurred to spur him to behaviour as uncharacteristic as it was mysterious.

Still, he didn't want to tell her. Talking to her about Nicola's death was something he couldn't do at the moment. So he said, “There's been an emergency at Maiden Hall, Sam. I need to hang about. So will you see to the puppies?”

“What sort of emergency?”

“Sam… Come on. Will you do me this favour?” His prize harrier Cass had recently whelped, and the puppies as well as their dam needed to be monitored.

Sam knew the routine. She'd watched him perform it often enough. She'd even helped him on occasion. So it wasn't as if he were asking her to perform the impossible or even, for that fact, the unusual or the unknown. But it was becoming clear that she wasn't going to accommodate him without being told why she was being asked to do so.

He settled on saying, “Nicola's gone missing. Her mum and dad are in a state. I need to be here.”

“What d'you mean‘gone missing?’” Thwack served as punctuation. She would be standing at the wooden work top beneath the kitchen's ceiling-high single window, where generations of knives cutting up vegetables had worn a shallow trough into the oak.

“She's disappeared. She went hiking on Tuesday. She didn't turn up last night when she was supposed to.”

“More likely that she met up with someone,” Samantha announced in that practical way of hers. “Summer's not over yet. There're thousands of people still hiking in the Peaks. How could she have gone missing anyway? Didn't the two of you have a date?”

“That's just the point,” Julian said. “We did have a date, and she wasn't here when I came to fetch her.”

“Hardly out of character,” Samantha pointed out.

Which made him wish she were standing in front of him so that he could punch in her freckled face. “Damn it, Sam.”

She must have heard how close he was to breaking. She said, “I'm sorry. I'll do it. I'll do it. Which dog?”

“The only one with new puppies at the moment. Cass.”

“All right.” Another thwack. “What shall I tell your father?”

“There's no need to tell him anything,” Julian said. The last thing he wanted was Jeremy Britton's thoughts on the topic.

“Well, I take it you won't be back for lunch, will you?” The question was tinged with that particular tone that bordered on accusation: a blend of impatience, disappointment, and anger. “Your dad is bound to ask why, Julie.”

“Tell him I was called out on a rescue.”

“In the middle of the night? A mountain rescue hardly explains your absence at the breakfast table.”

“If Dad was hung over-which, as you've noticed, is usually the case-then I doubt my absence at breakfast was noted. If he's in any condition to realise I'm not there at lunch, tell him Mountain Rescue called me out mid-morning.”

“How? If you weren't here to take the call-”

“Jesus, Samantha, would you stop the bloody hair splitting? I don't care what you tell him. Just see to the harriers, all right?”

The thwacking ceased. Samantha's voice altered. Its sharpness dissipated, and left in its place were apology, hollowness, and hurt. “I'm just trying to do what's best for the family.”

“I know. I'm sorry. You're a brick and we wouldn't be able to cope without you. I wouldn't be able to cope.”

“I'm always glad to do what I can.”

So do this without making it a case for one of the bloody Crown Courts, he thought. But all he said was “The record book for the dogs is in the top drawer of my desk. That's the desk in the office, not in the library.”

“The library desk's been sold at auction,” she reminded him. He received the underlying message this time: The Britton family's financial condition was a perilous one; did Julian truly wish to jeopardise it further by committing his time and his energy to anything other than the rehabilitation of Broughton Manor?

“Yes. Of course. Whatever,” Julian said. “Go easy with Cass. She's going to be protective of the litter.”

“I expect she knows me well enough by now.”

Do we ever know anyone? Julian wondered. He rang off. Shortly thereafter, the doctor arrived. He wanted to give Nan Maiden a sedative, but she wouldn't allow it. Not if it meant leaving Andy to face the first terrible hours of loss alone. So the doctor wrote out a prescription instead, which one of the Grindleford women set off to have filled in Hathersage, where the nearest chemist was. Julian and the second Grindleford woman remained to hold the fort at Maiden Hall.

It was, at best, an effort patched together with Sellotape. There were residents wanting lunch as well as non-residents who'd seen the restaurant sign on the gorge road and had innocently followed the winding drive upwards in the hope of having a decent meal. The serving girls had no experience in the kitchen and the housekeeping staff had the rooms to attend to. So it was left to Julian and his companion from Grindleford to see to what Andy and Nan Maiden usually did themselves: sandwiches, soup, fresh fruit, smoked salmon, pâté, salads… Julian knew within five minutes that he was out of his depth, and it was only when a suggestion that Christian-Louis might be called in supervened upon Julian's dropping a plate of smoked salmon that he realised there was an alternative to trying to captain the ship alone.

Christian-Louis arrived in a flurry of incomprehensible French. He unceremoniously threw everyone out of his kitchen. A quarter of an hour later, Andy Maiden returned. His pallor was marked, worse than before.

“Nan?” he asked Julian.

“Upstairs.” Julian tried to read the answer before he asked the question. He asked it anyway. “What can you tell me?”

Andy's answer was to turn, to begin heavily climbing the stairs. Julian followed.

The older man didn't go to the bedroom he shared with his wife. Instead, he went to the cubicle next to it, a part of the attic that had been fashioned into a small study. There, he sat at an old mahogany kneehole. It was fitted with a secretaire drawer, which he pulled out and lowered into a writing surface. He was taking a scroll from one of its three cubicles when Nan joined them.

No one had been able to prevail on her to wash or to change, so her hands were filthy and the knees of her trousers were caked with earth. Her hair was tangled as if she'd been pulling at it by the fistful.

“What?” she said. “Tell me, Andy. What happened?”

Andy smoothed the scroll against the secretaire drawer's unfolded writing surface. He weighed down the top end with a Bible. The bottom end he held in place with his left arm.

“Andy?” Nan said again. “Tell me. Say something.”

He reached for a rubber. It was stubby and marked with the blackened remains of hundreds of erasures. He bent to work. And when he moved, Julian was able to see the contents of the scroll.

It was a family tree. At the top were printed the names Maiden and Llewelyn and the date 1722. At the bottom were the names Andrew, Josephine, Mark, and Philip. With them were the names of their spouses and below that their issue. There was only a single name beneath those of Andrew and Nancy Maiden, although space for Nicola's spouse had been provided and three small lines branching beneath Nicola's name indicated Andy's hopes for the future of his immediate family.

Andy cleared his throat. He appeared to be regarding the genealogy in front of him. Or perhaps he was only garnering courage. For in the next moment he erased those oversanguine marks reserved for a future generation. And once he'd done that, he picked up a calligraphy pen, dipped it into a bottle of ink, and began to write beneath his daughters name. He formed two neat parentheses. Inside them, he penned the letter d. He followed that with the year.

Nan began to weep.

Julian found that he couldn't breathe.

“A fractured skull” was all that Andy said.

Detective Inspector Peter Hanken was less than chuffed when his CC at the Buxton nick informed him that New Scotland Yard was sending up a team to assist in the investigation into the Calder Moor deaths. A native of the Peak District, he possessed an inherent distrust of anyone who hailed from south of the Pennines or north of Deer Hill Reservoir. The oldest son of a Wirksworth quarryman, he also possessed an inherent dislike of anyone whom their class-weighted society told him he was supposed to consider his social better. The two officers of the Scotland Yard team thus garnered his double animosity. One was a DI called Lynley, a bloke tanned and fit and with hair so gold that it had to be courtesy of the nearest bleach bottle. He had an oarsman's shoulders and a posh public school voice. He wore Savile

Row, Jermyn Street, and the scent of old money like a second skin. What the hell was he doing in the police force? Hanken wondered.

The other was a black, a detective constable called Winston Nkata. He was as tall as his superior officer, but with a tensile rather than a muscular strength. He had a long facial scar that put Hanken in mind of the manhood ceremonies undertaken by African youths. In fact, aside from his voice, which sounded like a curious mixture of African, Caribbean, and South-Bank-of-the-Thames, he reminded Hanken of a tribal warrior. His air of confidence suggested he'd been through trials by fire and had not been found wanting.

Aside from his own feelings in the matter, Hanken didn't particularly like the message it sent to the rest of his team, having New Scotland Yard involved on their patch. If there was a question about his competence or the competence of his officers, then he would have vastly preferred to be told so to his face. And no matter that having two more officers in on the action meant he could end up with time to put together Bella's surprise swing set in advance of her fourth birthday next week. He hadn't asked his CC for help, and he was more than just a little annoyed to have help thrust upon him.

DI Lynley appeared to take the measure of Hanken's irritation within thirty seconds of meeting him, which somewhat elevated Hanken's opinion of the man despite his upper-ten voice. He said, “Andy Maiden's asked for our help. That's why we're here, Inspector Hanken. Your CC told you the dead girls father retired from the Met, didn't he?”

The chief constable had done, but what anyone's working for the Met in his salad days had to do with Hanken's ability to get to the bottom of a crime without assistance was an issue that hadn't yet been clarified. He said, “I know. Smoke?” And he offered his packet of Marlboros to the other two. Both demurred. The black looked as if he'd been offered strychnine. “My blokes aren't going to like it much, having London breathing and peeing for them.”

“I expect they'll adjust,” Lynley said.

“Not bloody likely.” Hanken lit his fag. He took a deep drag and observed the other two officers over the cigarette.

“They'll follow your lead.”

“Yeah. Like I said.”

Lynley and the black exchanged a look. It said kid-glove treatment was called for. What they didn't know was that kid gloves, silk gloves, or chain mail gauntlets wouldn't make a difference to their reception in Hanken's office.

Lynley said, “Andy Maiden was an SO 10 officer. Did your CC tell you that?”

This was news. And the mild animosity Hanken had felt towards the London officers was immediately redirected towards his superiors, who'd apparently and deliberately kept the information from him.

“You didn't know, did you?” Lynley said. He dryly directed his next comment to Nkata. “Politics as usual, I expect.”

The DC nodded-his expression disgusted-and crossed his arms. Although Hanken had offered both men chairs when they'd entered his office, the black officer had chosen to stand. He was lounging at the window from which he had a bleak view of the football grounds across Silverlands Street. It was a stadium structure topped by barbed wire. It couldn't have offered a less pleasing prospect.

Lynley said to Hanken, “Sorry. I can't explain why they hold back information from the officer in charge. I expect it's some sort of power game. I've had it played on me once too often to like it.” He went on to fill in the missing information. Andy Maiden had worked undercover. He'd been highly respected and exemplarily successful during a thirty-year career. “So the Yard feels an obligation to one of its own,” Lynley finished. “We're here to fulfill that obligation. We'd like to work as part of a team with you, but Winston and I will stay out of your way as much as possible if that's how you prefer it. It's your case and your patch. We're well aware that we're the interlopers here.”

Each of the statements was graciously made, and Hanken felt a slight de-icing of his attitude towards the other DI. He didn't particularly want to like him, but two deaths and one unidentified body were unusual in this part of the world, and Hanken knew that only a fool would object to having two more minds sorting through the facts in the investigation, especially if both minds in question were absolutely clear about who was giving the orders and making the assignments in the case. Besides, the SO 10 detail was an intriguing one that Hanken was grateful to have passed his way. He needed to ponder it when he had a moment.

He twisted his cigarette down into a spotless ashtray, which he then emptied and cleaned thoroughly with a tissue, as was his custom. He said, “Come with me, then,” and took the ondoners to the incident room, where two of his uniformed WPCs were at computer terminals-apparently doing nothing save chatting to each other-and a third male constable was making an entry on the china board where Hanken had neatly penned assignments earlier in the day. This last constable nodded and left the room as Hanken walked the Scotland Yard officers over to the china board. Next to it, a large diagram of the murder site was hanging alongside two pictures of the Maiden girl-in life and in death-as well as several pictures of the second-and hitherto unidentified-body, and a line of photos of the murder scene.

Lynley put on a pair of reading spectacles to have a look at these as Hanken introduced him and Nkata to the others in the room. Hanken said to one of the WPCs, “The computer still down?”

“What else?” was her laconic response.

“Bloody invention,” Hanken muttered. He directed the Londoners' attention specifically to the diagram of Nine Sisters Henge. He pointed out the spot where the boy's body had been found within the circle. He indicated a second area some distance away from the henge, to the northwest. “The girl was here,” he said. “One hundred and fifty-seven yards from the birch copse where the standing stones are. She'd had her head bashed in with a chunk of limestone.”

“What about the boy?” Lynley asked.

“Multiple stab wounds. No weapon left behind. We've done a fingertip search for it but come up cold. I've constables out scouring the moor right now.”

“Were they camping together?”

“They weren't,” Hanken told them. The girl had gone to Calder Moor alone according to her parents, and the facts at the crime scene backed them up. It was apparently her belongings-and here he indicated the photograph that would document his words-that were strewn round the inside of the stone circle. For his part, the boy seemed to have nothing with him aside from the clothes on his back. So it appeared that, setting out from wherever he'd set out, he hadn't intended to join her for his own night under the stars.

“There was no identification on the boy?” Lynley asked. “My super told me no one can place him.”

“We're running the plates of a motorcycle through the DVLA, a Triumph found near the girl's car behind a wall on the road outside Sparrowpit.” He pointed out this location, using an Ordnance Survey map that was unfolded on a desk that abutted the wall holding the china board. “We've had the bike staked out since the bodies were discovered, but no one's come to claim it. It looks like it probably belongs to the kid. Once our computers are up and running again-”

“They're saying any minute,” one of the WPCs called out.

“Right,” Hanken scoffed, and went on with “We'll have the registration information from the DVLA.”

“Bike could be stolen,” Nkata murmured.

“Then that'll be on the computer as well.” Hanken fished out his fags and lit another.

One of the women officers said, “Have a heart, Pete. We're in here all day,” an entreaty which Hanken chose to ignore.

“What are your thoughts so far?” Lynley asked, his inspection of each of the photographs complete.

Hanken rustled under the Ordnance Survey map for a large manila envelope. Inside were photocopies of the anonymous letters found at the feet of the dead boy. He kept one back, said, “Have a look at these,” and handed the envelope over to Lynley. Nkata joined his superior officer as Lynley began to flip through the letters.

There were eight communications in all, each fashioned from large letters and words that had been clipped from newspapers and magazines and taped to sheets of plain white paper. The message on each was similar, beginning with YOUR GOING TO DIE SOONER THEN YOU THINK; continuing with HOW DOES IT FEEL TO KNOW

YOUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED?; and concluding with WATCH YOUR BACK BECAUSE WHEN YOUR NOT READY FOR IT, I WILL BE THERE AND YOU WILL DIE. THERES NOPLACE TO RUN AND NOPLACE TO HIDE.

Lynley read every one of the eight letters before he finally raised his head, removed his glasses, and said, “Were these found on either of the bodies?”

“Inside the stone circle. Near to the boy, but not on him.”

“They could have been directed to anyone, couldn't they? They may not even be related to the case.”

Hanken nodded. “My first thought as well. Except they appear to have come from an oversize envelope that was on the scene. With the name Nikki printed straight across it in pencil. And they had blood on them. That's what those dark smears are, by the way: places where our copy machine couldn't register red.”

“Prints?”

Hanken shrugged. “Lab's going through the exercise.”

Lynley nodded and reconsidered the letters. “They're threatening enough. But sent to the girl? Why?”

“The why's our motive for murder.”

“Do you see the boy involved?”

“I see some thick yobbo in the wrong place at the worst possible time. He complicated matters, but that's all he did.”

Lynley returned the letters to the envelope and handed the envelope over to Hanken. He said, “Complicated matters? How?”

“By making it necessary for reinforcements.” Hanken had had the day to evaluate the crime scene, to look over the photographs, to view the evidence, and to develop an idea of the events from what he'd seen. He explained his theory. “We've got a killer who knows the moors well and who knew exactly where to find the girl. But when he got there, he saw what he hadn't expected to find: She'd got someone with her. He had only one weapon-”

“The missing knife,” Nkata noted.

“Right. So he had one of two choices. Either separate the boy from the girl somehow and knife them one at a time…”

“Or bring in a second killer,” Lynley finished. “Is that what you're thinking?”

It was, Hanken told him. Perhaps the other killer was waiting in the car. Perhaps he-or she-set out to Nine Sisters Henge in the company of the other. In any case, when it became clear that there were two able-bodied victims to dispose of instead of just one and only a single knife with which to do the job, the second killer was called into action. And the second weapon-a chunk of limestone-was used.

Lynley went back for another look at the pictures and the site plan. He said, “But why are you marking the girl as the main victim? Why not the boy?”

“Because of this.” Hanken handed over the single sheet of paper that he'd held back from the anonymous letters in anticipation of Lynley's question. Again it was a photocopy. Again it was taken from another note. This one, however, had been scrawled by hand. THIS BITCH HAS HAD IT snaked across the page, the penultimate word underlined three times.

“Was this found with the others?” Lynley asked.

“It was on her body,” Hanken said. “Tucked into one of her pockets nice and neat.”

“But why leave the letters after the murders were done? And why leave the note?”

“To send someone a message. That's the usual purpose of notes.”

“I'll accept that for a note on her body. But what about the cut-and-paste letters? Why would someone have left them behind?”

“Consider the condition of the crime scene. There was rubbish everywhere. And I dare say it was dark when the killers struck.” Hanken paused to crush out his cigarette. “They wouldn't even have known the letters were there in all the mess. They made a mistake.”

At the other end of the room, the computer finally came to life. One of the WPCs said, “About time, that,” and began inputting data and waiting for responses. The other constable did likewise, working with the activity sheets and reports that the investigative team had already turned in.

Hanken continued. “Think about the killer's state of mind, the principal killer, that is. He tracks our girl to the stone circle, all set to do the job, only to find her with a companion. He's got to bring in help, which throws him off his stride. The girl manages to run off, which throws him off further. Then the boy puts up a hell of a fight, and the camping site is turned into a shambles. All he's worried about-this is the killer, not our boy-is dispatching the two victims. When the plan doesn't go smoothly, the last thing on his mind is whether the Maiden girl brought his letters with her.”

“Why did she?” Like his superior, Nkata had gone back to look at the crime scene photos. He turned from them now as he spoke. “To show the boy?”

“There's nothing to indicate that she knew the boy before they died together,” Hanken said. “The girl's dad saw the boy's body, but he couldn't put a name to him. Had never seen him, he said. And he knows her friends.”

“Could the boy have killed her?” Lynley asked. “And then inadvertently become a victim himself afterwards?”

“Not unless my pathologist had the times of death wrong. He puts them dying within an hour of each other. How likely is it that two completely unrelated killings would occur in a single location on a Tuesday night in September?”

“Yet that's what appears to have happened, isn't it?” Lynley said. He went on to ask where Nicola Maiden's car had been in relation to the stone circle. Had plaster impressions of tyre prints been taken from that location? What about footprints in the circle itself? And the boy's face… What did Hanken make of the burns?

Hanken fielded the questions, using the map and the reports that his men had compiled thus far in the case. From the other end of the room, WPC Peggy Hammer-whose countenance had always reminded Hanken of a shovel with freckles-called out, “Pete, we've got it. Here's the DVLA.” She copied something from her terminal's monitor at the far end of the room.

“The Triumph?” Hanken said.

“Right. Got it.” She handed over a slip of paper.

Hanken read the name and the address of the motorcycle's owner, and when he did so, he realised that the London detectives were going to turn out to be a godsend. For the address he was looking at was in London, and using either Lynley or Nkata to handle the London end of things would save him manpower. In these times of budget cuts, belt tightening, and the sort of fiscal responsibility that made him shout about “not being a bloody accountant, for God's sake,” sending someone out on the road was a manoeuvre that had to be defended practically all the way to the House of Lords. Hanken had no time for such nonsense. The Londoners made such nonsense unnecessary.

“The bike,” he told them, “is registered to someone called Terence Cole.” According to the DVLA in Swansea, this Terence Cole lived in Chart Street in Shoreditch. And if one of the Scotland Yard detectives didn't mind taking on that end of things, he'd send him back to London straightaway to find someone at that address who could make an i.d. of the second body from Nine Sisters Henge.

Lynley looked at Nkata. “You'll need to head back at once,” he said. “I'll stay. I want a word with Andy Maiden.”

Nkata seemed surprised. “You don't want London yourself? You'd have to pay me a bundle to stay up here if I was you.”

Hanken glanced from one man to the other. Lynley, he saw, was colouring slightly. This surprised him. Until that moment, the man had seemed utterly unflappable.

“Helen can cope for a few days without me, I expect,” Lynley said.

“No new bride ought to have to do that” was Nkata's rejoinder. He explained to Hanken that “the'spector got himself married three months ago. He's practically fresh from the honeymoon.”

“That'll do, Winston,” Lynley said.

“Newlywed,” Hanken acknowledged with a nod. “Cheers.”

“I'm afraid that's quite a moot sentiment,” Lynley replied obscurely.

He wouldn't have said so twenty-four hours earlier. Then, he had been blissful. While there were numerous rough edges of adjustment that had to be smoothed as he and Helen established their life together, nothing they had come across so far had seemed so scabrous that it couldn't be leveled through discussion, negotiation, and compromise. Until the Havers situation had come along, that is.

In the months since their return from the honeymoon, Helen had maintained a discreet distance from Lynley's professional life, and she'd merely said, “Tommy, there must be an explanation,” when he'd returned from his only visit to Barbara Havers and reported the facts behind her suspension. After that moment, Helen had kept her own counsel, relaying telephone messages from Havers and others interested in the situation but always remaining an objective presence whose loyalty to her husband was beyond question. Or so Lynley had assumed the case to be.

His wife had disabused him of the notion when she'd returned from the St. James house earlier that day. He'd been packing for the journey to Derbyshire, tossing some shirts into a suitcase and rooting out an old waxed jacket and hiking boots for using on the moors, when Helen had joined him. In a departure from her usual more oblique manner of addressing herself to a delicate subject, she'd taken the bull directly by the horns, saying, “Tommy, why've you chosen Winston Nkata rather than Barbara Havers to work this case with you?”

He said, “Ah. You've spoken to Barbara, I see,” to which she replied, “And she practically defended you, although the poor woman's heart was clearly breaking.”

“Do you want me to defend myself as well?” he'd asked mildly. “Barbara needs to keep her head down at the Yard for a while. Taking her along to Derbyshire wouldn't have accomplished that. Winston's the logical choice if Barbara's unavailable.”

“But, Tommy, she adores you. Oh, don't look at me that way. You know what I mean. You can do no wrong in Barbara's eyes.”

He'd placed his last shirt into the suitcase, stuffed his shaving gear in among his socks, closed the case, and draped his jacket on top of it. He'd faced his wife. “Are you here as her intermediary, then?”

“Please don't patronise me, Tommy. I hate that.”

He'd sighed. He didn't want to be at odds with his wife and he thought fleetingly of the compromises one made in attaching another life to one's own. We meet, he told himself, we want, we pursue, and we obtain. But he wondered if the man existed who, caught up in the heat of desire, still managed to consider whether he could possibly live with the object of his passion before he was actually doing so. He doubted it.

He said, “Helen, it's a miracle that Barbara still has her job, considering the charges she was facing. Webberly went to the wall for her, and God only knows what he had to promise, give up, or compromise on in order to keep her in CID. At the moment, she ought to be thanking her lucky stars that she wasn't sacked. What she shouldn't be doing is looking for support in a grievance against me. And, frankly, the last person on earth she should be trying to set against me is my own wife.”

“That's not what she's doing!”

“No?”

“She came to see Simon, not me. She didn't even know I was there. When she saw me, she wanted to turn tail and run. And she would have done had I not stopped her. She needed someone to talk to. She felt terrible, and she needed a friend, which is what you always used to be in her life. What I want to know is why you're not being a friend to her now.”

“Helen, this isn't about friendship. There's no place for friendship in a situation in which everything depends on an officer obeying an order. Barbara didn't do that. And what's worse, she nearly killed someone in the process.”

“But you know what happened. How can you not see-”

“What I see is that there's a purpose to a chain of command.”

“She saved a life.”

“And it wasn't her place to determine that life was in danger.”

His wife had moved towards him then, coming to grasp one of the posts at the end of their bed. She said, “I don't understand this. How can you be so unforgiving? She'd be the first person to forgive you anything.”

“In the same circumstances, I wouldn't expect it. She shouldn't have expected as much of me.”

“You've bent the rules before. You've told me so.”

“You can't think attempted murder is bending the rules, Helen. It's a criminal act. For which, by the way, most people go to prison.”

“And for which, in this case, you've decided to be the judge, the jury, and the executioner. I see.”

“Do you?” He was beginning to get angry and he should have held his tongue. Why was it, he wondered, that Helen could push his buttons in ways no one else ever could? “Then I'll ask you to see this as well. Barbara Havers doesn't concern you. Her behaviour in Essex, the subsequent investigation, and whatever medicine she's asked to swallow as a result of that behaviour and investigation are none of your business. If you're finding your life so circumscribed these days that you need to champion a cause to keep yourself busy, you might consider aligning yourself with me. To be honest, I'd appreciate coming home to support and not to subversion.”

She was as quick to anger as was he and just as capable of expressing it. “I'm not that sort of woman. I'm not that sort of wife. If you wanted an obsequious sycophant to marry-”

“That's tautology,” he said.

And that terse statement finished their argument. Helen had snapped, “You swine,” and left him to gather the rest of his belongings. When he had done so and had gone in search of her to say goodbye, she was nowhere to be found. He'd cursed: her, himself, and Barbara Havers for being the source of a disagreement with Helen. But the drive to Derbyshire had given him time to cool off as well as time to reflect upon how often he hit below the belt. This contretemps with Helen was one of those times, and he had to admit it.

Now, standing on the pavement in front of Buxton police station with Winston Nkata, Lynley saw that there was a way to make amends to his wife. Nkata would be waiting for him to assign another officer to accompany him on any rounds he might have to make in London, and both of them knew who the logical selection was. Yet Lynley found himself temporising by turning the Bentley over to his subordinate officer. He couldn't commandeer a car from the Buxton police for his DC to drive all the way to London, he explained to Nkata, and the only alternative to having him take the Bentley was directing him to return to London by plane from Manchester or by train. But by the time he got himself to the airport and caught a flight or waited for a train and changed from one line to another in God only knew how many towns between Buxton and London, he could have driven the distance.

Lynley hoped Nkata had more finesse behind the wheel than Barbara Havers had employed the last time she happily ran over an old milestone and threw out the car's front suspension. He informed the younger man that he was to drive the Bentley as if he had a litre of ni-troglycerin in the boot.

Nkata grinned. “Don't think I know how to treat a motor this fine?”

“I'd just prefer it to survive its adventure with you unscathed.” Lynley disarmed the car's security system and handed over his keys.

Nkata cocked his head at the front of the station. “Think he'll play our game? Or're we playing his?”

“It's too soon to tell. He's unhappy about our begin here, but I would be as well, in his position. We'll need to tread softly.” Lynley glanced at his watch. It was nearly five. The post-mortems had been scheduled for early that afternoon. With any luck, they would be completed by now and the pathologist would be available to share his preliminary findings.

“What d'you think of his thinking?” Nkata reached into his jacket pocket and brought out two Opal Fruits, his vice of choice. He examined their wrappers, made his flavour selection, and passed the other over to Lynley.

“How Hanken sees the case?” Lynley unwrapped the sweet. “He's willing to talk. That's a good sign. He seems able to shift gears. That's good too.”

“Something edgy about him though,” Nkata said. “Makes me wonder what's eating at him.”

“We all have private concerns, Winnie. It's our job not to let them get in the way.”

Nkata adroitly tagged a final question onto Lynley's thought. “D'you want me working with someone back in town?”

Still, Lynley avoided. “You can call in help if you think you need it.”

“Sh'll I make the choice, or d'you want to do it yourself?”

Lynley regarded the other man. Nkata had made the queries so casually that it was impossible to read into them anything other than a request for direction. And the request was perfectly reasonable considering the fact that Nkata might well have to return to Derbyshire shortly after his arrival in London, bringing someone North with the purpose of identifying the second body. If that happened, someone else in London would be needed to look into Terence Cole's background and business in town.

Here was the moment, then. In front of Lynley was the opportunity to take the decision that Helen would approve of. But he didn't take it. Instead, he said, “I'm not up to date on who's available. I'll leave it up to you.”

Samantha McCallin had learned early into her extended stay at Broughton Manor that her uncle Jeremy didn't discriminate when it came to drink. He imbibed anything with the potential to obliterate his sensibilities quickly. He seemed to like Bombay gin the best, but at a pinch, when the nearest off-licence was closed, he wasn't finicky.

As far as Samantha knew, her uncle had been drinking steadily since adolescence, having taken a brief few years away from booze during his twenties to do drugs instead. Jeremy Britton had been-according to family legend-the once shining star of the Britton clan. But his marriage to a fellow flower-child, who had what Samantha's mother euphemistically and archaically called A Past, had caused him to fall into disfavour with his father. Nonetheless, the laws of primogeniture couldn't prevent Jeremy's inheriting Broughton Manor and all its contents upon his father's death, and the realisation that she'd lived her life as the “good child” for naught-while Jeremy had the time of his life among fellow ingesters of hallucinogenic substances-had planted in the breast of Samantha's mother more seeds of disharmony between her and her brother. That disharmony had only grown throughout the years as Jeremy and his wife produced three children in rapid succession and drank and drugged Broughton Manor into the ground, while in Winchester Jeremy's only sister, Sophie, hired investigators to provide her with periodic reports on her brother's dissolute life and wept, wailed, and gnashed her teeth when she received them.

“Someone's got to do something about him,” she cried, “before he destroys our family's entire history. The way he's carrying on, there'll be nothing left to pass on to anyone.”

Not that Sophie Britton McCallin needed her brother Jeremy's money, which he'd long ago run through anyway. She herself was rolling in it, since her own husband was working himself into an early grave to keep her supply line running.

During that period when Samantha's father had been healthy enough to adhere to a schedule at the family factory that would have felled an ordinary mortal, Samantha herself had ignored her mother's soliloquies on the topic of her brother Jeremy. Those soliloquies changed in both tone and content, however, when Douglas McCallin was felled by prostate cancer. Faced with the grim reality of earthly mortality, his wife had been reborn to a fervent belief in the importance of family ties.

“I want my brother here,” she'd wept in her widow's weeds at the wake. “My only living blood relative. My brother. I want him.”

It was so like Sophie to forget that she had two children herself-not to mention those belonging to her brother-who served as blood relatives. Instead, she seized on a rapprochment with Jeremy as the only solace in her present grief.

Indeed, her grief became so present that it soon was apparent that Sophie had set herself up to outdo Victoria's mourning for Albert. And when she finally saw this, Samantha decided that the only road to peace in Winchester was decisive action. So she'd come to Derbyshire to collect her uncle once she deduced from incoherent phone conversations with the man that he was in no condition to get himself south unaided. And once she'd arrived and had seen his condition for herself, Samantha knew that carting him down to his sister in his present state would probably send Sophie to her grave.

Besides that, Samantha found it a relief to be away from Sophie for a time. The drama of her husband's death had provided her with more fodder than she usually had, and she'd been using it with a gusto that had long left Samantha too exhausted to deal with her.

Not that Samantha didn't mourn her father's passing herself. She did. But she'd long ago seen that Douglas McCallin's first love was the family biscuit factory-not the family itself-and consequently his death seemed more like an extension of his normal working hours than a permanent parting. His life had always been his work. And he'd given it the dedication of a man who'd had the luck to meet his one true love at the age of twenty.

Jeremy, on the other hand, had chosen drink as his bride. On this particular day, he'd started with dry sherry at ten in the morning. During lunch, he'd worked his way through a bottle of something called the Blood of Jupiter, which Samantha assumed from its colour was red wine. And throughout the afternoon, he'd plied himself with one gin and tonic after another. The fact that he was still ambulatory was, to Samantha, remarkable.

He usually spent his days in the parlour, where he shut the curtains and used the ancient eight-millimeter projector to entertain himself with endless meanderings down memory lane. In the months that Samantha had been at Broughton Manor, he'd gone through the Brit-ton family's entire cinematic history at least three times. He always did it the same way: beginning with the earliest films that one Britton or another had shot in 1924 and watching them in chronological order to the point at which there was no Britton with sufficient interest in the family to record their doings. So the pictorial record of fox hunts, fishing expeditions, holidays, pheasant shoots, birthdays, and weddings ended round the time of Julian's fifteenth birthday. Which, according to Samantha's calculations, would have been just the time that Jeremy Britton had fallen from his horse and compressed three vertebrae, for which long-ago injury he religiously plied himself with pain-killers as well as intoxicants.

“He's going to kill himself mixing pills with booze if we don't watch him,” Julian had told her soon after her arrival. “Sam, will you help me? With you here to keep an eye on him, I can get more work done on the estate. I might even be able to put some plans in motion… if you'll help me, that is.”

And within days of meeting him, Samantha had known that she would do anything to help her cousin Julian. Anything at all.

Which was something that Jeremy Britton obviously knew as well. Because hearing her return from the vegetable garden in the late afternoon and clomp across the courtyard ridding her boots of soil, he'd actually emerged from the parlour and sought her out in the kitchen, where she was beginning to prepare their dinner.

“Ah. Here you are, my flower.” He leaned forward in that gravity-defying posture that seemed second nature to drunks. He had a tumbler in his hand: Two small pieces of ice and a slice of lemon were all that remained of his latest gin and tonic. As usual, he was dressed up to the nines, every inch of him the country squire. Despite the late summer weather, he was wearing a tweed jacket, a tie, and heavy wool plus fours that he must have resurrected from a predecessor's wardrobe. He might have passed for an eccentric albeit well-to-do landowner in his cups.

He placed himself at the old wooden work top, precisely where Samantha wished to be. He jiggled the ice in his tumbler and drained what little liquid he was able to coax from the melting cubes. That done, he set the glass next to the large chef's knife that she'd removed from its stand. He looked from her to the knife to her once again. And he smiled a slow, happy inebriate's smile.

“Where's our boy?” he inquired pleasantly, although it came out as whairshare boy? His eyes were so light a grey that their irises might not even have existed, and the whites of them had long since gone yellow, a colour that was beginning to suffuse most of his skin. “Haven't noticed Julie skulking about today, don't you know. Fac’ tis, I don't believe he was home last night at all, our little Julie, because I don't recall seeing his mug at breakfast.” Except it was hishmug-gabrekkest, and having said this much, Jeremy waited for her reaction to his remarks.

Samantha began emptying the vegetable trug of its contents. She placed lettuce, a cucumber, two green peppers, and a cauliflower into the nearby sink. She began to wash them free of soil. To the lettuce she gave particular attention, bending over it like a mother examining her infant child.

“Well,” Jeremy went on with a sigh, “I s'pose we know what Julie was up to, don't we, Sam?” Doe-we-Sham? “That boy won't see what's before his face. I don't know what we're going to do with him.”

“You haven't taken any of your pills, have you, Uncle Jeremy?” Samantha asked. “If you mix them with spirits, you could be in trouble.”

“I was born for trouble,” Jeremy said-I-sh born f'trouble-and Samantha tried to discern if his slurring was any worse than usual, an indication of an assault on his consciousness. It was just past five o'clock, so he'd be slurring anyway, but the last thing Julian needed to contend with was his father's usual drunken slumber working its way into a coma. Jeremy sidled along the work top till he was standing next to Samantha at the sink. “You're a good-looking woman, Sammy,” he said. His breath was a study in mixing his beverages. “Don't you think I'm ever so many sheets to the storm that I don't notice what a looker you are. Thing is, we've got to make our little Julie see that. No point showing off those legs of yours if the only one looking is this old sod. Not that I don't appreciate the sight, mind you. Having a nice young thing like you running about the house in those tight little shorts is just the very thing that-”

“These are hiking shorts,” Samantha interrupted. “I wear them because it's been warm, Uncle Jeremy. Which you'd know if you ever left the house during the day. And they aren't tight.”

“Jus’ a compliment, girl,” Jeremy protested. “Got to learn to accept a compliment. And who better to learn from than your own blood uncle? Christ, it's good to know you, girl. 'Ve I mentioned that?” He didn't bother to wait for a response. He leaned even closer for a confidential whisper-“Now let's figure what to do about Julie.” Less figger whatta do bow Julie.

“What about Julian?” Samantha asked.

“We know what we're dealing with, don't we? He's been mounting the Maiden girl like a randy donkey since he was twenty years old-”

“Please, Uncle Jeremy.” Samantha could feel her neck getting prickly.

“Please Uncle Jeremy what? We got to look at the facts so we know what to do with them. And fact number one is that Julie's been tupping the Padley Gorge ewe every chance he's had. Or, better said, every chance she's given him.”

For a drunk, he was remarkably observant, Samantha thought. But she said, rather more primly than she intended, “I really don't want to talk about Julian's sex life, Uncle Jeremy. It's his business, not ours.”

“Ah,” her uncle said. “Too nasty a topic for Sammy McCallin? Why's it I don't think that's the case, Sam?” ThassacaseSam.

“I didn't say it was nasty,” she replied. “I said it wasn't our business. And it isn't. So I won't discuss it.” It wasn't that she felt odd about sex-embarrassed, shy, or anything like that. Far from it. She'd had sex when it was available to her ever since getting past the awkward inconvenience of virginity by pressing one of her brother's friends into service when she was a teenager. But this… talking about her cousin's sex life… She couldn't afford to discuss it and run the risk of giving herself away.

“Girly girl, listen,” Jeremy said. “I see how you look at him, and I know what you want. I'm on your side. Hell, keep the family for the family in the family's my motto. You think I want him chained to the Maiden tart when there's a woman like you hanging round, waiting for the day when her man'll wise up?”

“You're mistaken,” she said, although the pounding just beneath her skin told her how her blood was giving the lie to her words. “I'm fond of Julian. Who wouldn't be? He's a wonderful man-”

“Right. He is. And d'you actually”-ackshully-“think the Maiden sees that in our Julie? Not on your life. She sees a bit of fun when she's hereabouts, a bit of tumble-in-the-heather-and-poke-me-if-you-can.”

“But,” Samantha went on firmly as if he hadn't spoken, “I'm not in love with him and I can't imagine ever being in love with him. Good grief, Uncle Jeremy. We're first cousins. I think of Julian the way I think of my brother.”

Jeremy was silent for a moment. Samantha took the opportunity to move past him, cauliflower and peppers in hand. She placed them into the cutting trough, where four hundred years of vegetables had been chopped. She began breaking the cauliflower into florets.

“Ah,” Jeremy said slowly, but his tone was sly, which told Samantha for the first time that he wasn't as drunk as he seemed. “Your brother. I see. Yes. I do see. So he wouldn't interest you in the other way. Wonder how I got the idea…? But no matter. Give your uncle Jer a touch of advice, then.”

“About what?” She fetched a colander and scooped the cauliflower into it. She turned her attention to the green peppers.

“About how to cure him.”

“Of what?”

“Of her. The cat. The mare. The sow. What you will.” Whachewill.

“Julian,” Samantha said in a last-ditch effort to divert her uncle from his course, “doesn't need to be cured of anything. He's his own man, Uncle Jeremy.”

“Bollocks, that. He's a man on a string, and we both know where it's tied. She's got him so he can't see up for down.”

“Hardly.”

“Hard's the word, all right. He's been hard so long that his brain's made a permanent journey into his dick.”

“Uncle Jeremy-”

“All he thinks about is having a suck on those pretty pink teats of hers. And once he gets his prong inside and has her moaning like a-”

“All right.” Samantha drove the chef's knife through the green pepper like a cleaver. “You've made your point thoroughly, Uncle Jeremy. I'd like to get on with making dinner now.”

Jeremy smiled slowly, that inebriate's smile. “You're meant for him, Sammy. You know that as well as I.” Swellseye, he said. “So what're we going to do to make it happen?”

He was suddenly looking at her steadily, quite as if he were not drunk at all. What was the mythological creature that could fix you in its stare and kill you? Cockatrice, she thought. Her uncle was a cockatrice.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” she said, but she sounded, even to herself, much less assured and far more afraid.

“Don't you.” He smiled, and when he left the room, he didn't walk the walk of a man who was remotely tipsy.

Samantha kept determinedly chopping the peppers until she heard his footsteps on the stairs, until she heard the kitchen door latch shut behind him. Then, with a careful control that she was proud to be able to muster in the circumstances, she set the knife to one side. She put her hands on the edge of the work top. She bent forward over the vegetables, inhaled their scent, directed her thoughts into a self-created mantra-“Love fills me, embraces me. Love makes me whole”-and tried to regain a sense of serenity. Not that she'd had any serenity since the previous night when she'd realised what a mistake she'd made in conjunction with the lunar eclipse. Not that she'd had serenity at all once she'd realised what Nicola Maiden was to her cousin. But forcing herself to whisper the mantra was habit, so she used it now, despite the fact that love was the very last feeling of which she pictured herself capable at the moment.

She was still attempting the meditation when she heard the harriers barking from their kennels in the converted block of stables just to the west of the manor house. The sound of their sharp, excited yelping told her that Julian was with them.

Samantha looked at her watch. It was feeding time for the adult harriers, observation time for the newly born pups, and rearranging time for the play runs in which the older puppies were beginning the socialisation process. Julian would be out there for at least another hour. Samantha had time to prepare herself.

She wondered what to say to her cousin. She wondered what he'd say to her. And she wondered what it mattered anyway, with Nicola Maiden to consider.

From the moment she'd met her, Samantha hadn't liked Nicola. Her dislike wasn't grounded in what the younger woman represented to her though-primary competition for Julian's affections. It was grounded in what Nicola so patently was. Her easiness of manner was an irritant, suggesting a self-confidence that was entirely at odds with the girl's appalling roots. The daughter of a little more than a publican, graduate of a London comprehensive and a third-rate university that was no better than an ordinary polytechnic college, who was she to move so easily through the rooms of Broughton Manor? Decrepit as they were, they still represented four hundred years of unbroken possession by the Britton family. And that was the kind of lineage that Nicola Maiden could hardly claim for herself.

But this knowledge didn't seem to faze her in the least. Indeed, she never acted as if she was in possession of the knowledge at all. And there was a single good reason for this: the power that went with her English-rose looks. The Guinevere hair-unnatural in colour though it doubtless was-the perfect skin, the dark-lashed eyes, the delicate frame, the seashell ears… She'd been given every physical advantage a woman could be given. And five minutes in her presence had been enough to tell Samantha that she bloody well knew it.

“It's brilliant to meet one of Jules’ relatives at last,” she'd confided to Samantha on their first meeting seven months earlier. “I hope we'll become the best of friends.” Half term for Nicola, she'd come to spend her holiday with her parents. She'd rung Julian on the morning of her arrival, and the moment he pressed the telephone receiver to his ear, Samantha had seen which way the wind was blowing and for whom. But she hadn't known how strong that wind was till she met Nicola herself.

The sunny smile, the frank gaze, the shout of pleased laughter, the artless conversation… Although she'd rather more than mildly disliked her, it had taken several meetings with Nicola for Samantha to make a full evaluation of her cousin's beloved. And when she did, the realisation she reached did nothing but add to Samantha's discomfort whenever they met. For she saw in Nicola Maiden a young woman completely content with who she was, offering herself to the world at large without the slightest care as to whether the offering would be accepted. Not for her were the doubts, the fears, the insecurities, and the crises of confidence of the female in search of a male to define her. Which was probably why, Samantha thought, she had Julian Brit-ton so hot and bothered to do just that.

More than once in the time she'd been at Broughton Manor, Samantha had come upon Julian engaged in an act that was testimony to the thrall into which Nicola Maiden drew a man. Hunched over a letter he was writing to her, sheltering the telephone receiver from unwanted eavesdroppers as he talked to her, staring sightlessly over the garden wall at the footbridge that spanned the River Wye as he thought of her, sitting in his office with his head in his hands as he brooded about her, Samantha's cousin was little more than the prey of a huntress he couldn't begin to understand.

There was no way that Samantha could make him see his beloved as she truly was, however. There was only the option of allowing his passion to play itself out, to culminate in the marriage he was so desperate to attain, or to lead to a permanent break between him and the woman he desired.

Having to accept this as her only course had brought Samantha face-to-face with her own impatience, and it accosted her at her every turn at Broughton Manor. She fought her longing to beat the truth into her cousin's head. Time and again she deliberately turned from the appetite for derogation that rose in her whenever the subject of Nicola came up. But these virtuous efforts at self-control were taxing. And the price she was beginning to pay was anxiety, resentment, insomnia, and outright rage.

Uncle Jeremy didn't help matters. By him, Samantha was daily regaled with lubricious innuendoes and direct assaults, all circling or landing upon the subject of Julian's love life. Had she not quickly seen upon her arrival how necessary was her presence at Broughton Manor, had she not needed a respite from her mother's incessant displays of lugubrious mourning, Samantha knew that she would have decamped months before. But she maintained her position and held her peace-most of the time-because she'd been able to see the bigger picture: Jeremy's sobriety, the blessed distraction that a reunion with him would provide her mother, and Julian's gradual awakening to the contribution Samantha was making to his well-being, his future, and his hope of transforming the derelict manor house and the estate into a thriving business.

“Sam?”

She raised her head. So deeply had she been into her attempt to release the tension of having a conversation with her uncle, she'd failed to hear his son come into the kitchen. Stupidly, she said, “Aren't you with the dogs, Julian?”

“Short shrift,” he said in explanation. “They need more but I can't give it to them now.”

“I did see to Cass. Do you want me to-”

“She's dead.”

“My God. Julian, she can't be,” Samantha cried. “I went out as soon as I spoke with you. She was fine. She'd eaten, the puppies were all asleep. I made notes of everything and left them on the clipboard. Didn't you see it? I hung it on the peg.”

“Nicola,” he said tonelessly. “Sam, she's dead. Out on Calder Moor, where she'd gone camping. Nicola's dead.”

Samantha stared at him as the word dead seemed to echo round the room. He isn't crying, she thought. What does it mean that he isn't crying? “Dead,” she repeated, careful with the word, certain that saying it the wrong way would give an impression that she didn't want to give.

He kept his eyes on her and she wished he wouldn't. She wished he'd talk. Or scream or cry or do something to indicate what was going on inside so that she would know how to behave with him. When he finally moved, it was to walk to the work top where Samantha had been chopping the peppers. He stood examining them as if they were a curiosity. Then he lifted the chef's knife and inspected it closely. Finally, he pressed his thumb firmly against the sharp blade.

“Julian!” Samantha cried. “You'll hurt yourself!”

A thin line of crimson appeared on his skin. “I don't know what to call how I feel,” he said.

Samantha, on the other hand, didn't have that problem.