In Pursuit Of The Proper Sinner (52 page)

“I've something to see to in the Hall,” she said. She began to climb the slope beneath the lime trees. She felt the cool air of the shadows as if the tree leaves were spilling it like a soft fall of rain. It touched her cheeks first, then slid to her shoulders, and the movement of the coolness against her skin was what prompted her to turn back to her husband for a final question.

“Andy,” she said. The volume of her voice was normal. “Can you hear me from here?”

He didn't respond. He didn't look up. He didn't do anything save place the first floodlight in position on the ground beneath the pole that would hold the new sign for Maiden Hall. “Oh God,” Nan whispered. She turned and continued her climb.

After the conversation she'd had with her uncle Jeremy on the previous evening, Samantha had done what she could to stay out of his way. She'd had to see him at both breakfast and lunch, but she'd avoided eye contact and conversation with him, and as soon as she'd finished eating, she'd cleared her plates from the table and cleared herself from the room.

She was out in the older courtyard, preparing to wash what looked like a good fifty years of grime from those windows that were still glazed, when she noticed her cousin. He was sitting at the desk in his office, just across the cobbles from where she was unreeling a lengthy hose pipe. She paused to observe him, admiring how the autumn light fell in the open window of the office and struck the top of his bent head so that his hair was burnished to a rusty gold. As she watched, she saw him rub the worry lines on his forehead, and that told her instantly what he was doing, although it didn't tell her why.

He was very good with figures, so he was going over the accounts, as he did every week, making an evaluation of what went for the income, assets, and investments of his family's estate. He'd be looking at everything: what came in from the sale of the harrier puppies and what went out to keep the kennel running; what amassed from the rents accrued across the estate and what bled from the profits to keep all of the farm buildings in usable condition; what income was provided by the tournaments and fetes held at Broughton Manor and what costs were accrued from the normal wear and tear that occurred when one's property was used by others; what interest came in from invested capital and how much of that capital leeched away when a month's expenditures exceeded its profits.

When he was done with that, he would go on to examine the books in which he meticulously recorded every pound that was spent on the renovation of Broughton Manor itself, and then he would refresh his memory about the debts that also comprised part of the Brit-ton Family Financial Picture. When he was finished, he would have a fair idea of how things stood, and he could lay any plans that needed to be laid for the coming week.

So Samantha wasn't surprised to see him looking over the books.

She was, however, surprised to see him at them for the second time in four days.

As she watched, she saw him plunge one hand back through his hair. He entered some figures into an antique adding machine, and from across the courtyard Samantha could hear the whir and click of the old calculator as it lumbered through its sums. When the answer was produced, Julian ripped the tape from the back of the machine and studied it for a moment. Then he crumpled the tape into a ball and threw it over his shoulder. He went back to the books again.

Seeing this, Samantha felt her heart tugged. She wondered if there had ever been a man as responsible as Julian. A child less mindful of his family's history and his personal duty would have decamped from this nightmare of an ancestral home long ago. A child less loving would have left his father to swill his way to delirium tremens, cirrhosis of the liver, and an early grave. But her cousin Julian wasn't that sort of child. He felt the ties of blood and the obligations of heritage. Both were burdens. But he bore them with dignity. Had he approached them any other way, Samantha wouldn't have come to care for him so deeply. In his struggle, she'd learned to see a strength of purpose which was closely attuned to her own way of living.

They were right for each other, she and her cousin. No matter that the blood relationship was a close one, cousins had formed alliances before and in the process had enriched the family from which they both sprang.

Formed an alliance. What a way to label it, Samantha thought wryly. And yet hadn't things been so much more sensible during that period when marriages came about for just that reason? There was no talk of true love in the days of political and financial matchmaking, no aching, longing, and pining until one's true love happened to come along. What there was, instead, was a steadiness and devotion that grew from an understanding of what was expected of one. No illusions, no fantasy. Just an agreement to bind one's life to another in a situation in which both parties had much to gain: money, position, property, authority, protection, and authentication. Perhaps that last, most of all. One wasn't complete until one married; one wasn't married until the match was consolidated through coition and legitimised through reproduction. Simple, it was. There were no expectations of romance, passion, and exquisite surrender. There was just the steady lifelong assurance that one's mate was actually that which the agreeing parties had earlier defined him to be.

Sensible, Samantha decided. And in a world in which men and women were partnered to each other in that fashion, she knew that agents of herself and Julian would long ago have reached an understanding.

But they didn't live in that world. And the world they did live in was one suggesting that a permanent soul mate was one little strip of celluloid away: boy meets girl, they fall in love, they have their troubles which are resolved by Act III, fade to black, and the credits roll. That world was maddening because Samantha knew if her cousin adhered to a belief in that sort of love, she was doomed to failure. I'm here, she found herself wanting to shout, hose pipe in hand. I have what you need. Look at me. Look at me.

As if he'd heard her silent cry, Julian glanced up at just that moment and caught her watching him. He leaned forward and swung the casement window fully open. Samantha crossed the courtyard to join him.

“You're looking grim. I couldn't help noticing. You caught me trying to design a cure for what ails you.”

“D'you think I have a future in counterfeiting?” he asked. The sun was shining directly on his face and he squinted into it. “That may be the only answer.”

“Do you think so?” she asked lightly. “No rich young thing waiting for seduction on your horizon?”

“It doesn't look like it.” He saw her observing the mass of documents and account books that were spread on his desk, certainly a far greater number than he usually went through when doing his sums for the coming week. “Trying to see where we stand,” he explained. “I was hoping to wring about ten thousand pounds out of … well, out of nothing, I'm afraid.”

“Why?” She noted the downhearted cast of his face and hastened to add, “Julie, is there an emergency of some sort? Is something wrong?”

“That's just the hell of it. Something's right. Or something could be made right. But there's not enough liquid cash to do much more than see us through to the end of the month.”

“I hope you know that you can always ask me—” She hesitated, not wanting to offend him, knowing that he was as proud a man as he was responsible. She put it another way. “We're family, Julie. If something's come up and you'd like some money … it wouldn't even be a loan. You're my cousin. You can have it.”

He looked horrified. “I didn't mean you to think—”

“Stop it. I'm not thinking anything.”

“Good. Because I couldn't. Not ever.”

“Fine. We won't discuss it. But please tell me what's happened. You look really cut up.”

He blew out a breath. He said, “Oh bugger it,” and in a quick movement he climbed onto the desk and out of the window to join her in the courtyard. “What're you up to? Ah. Windows. I see. Have you any idea how long it's been since they've had a wash, Sam?”

“When Edward chucked it all in for Wallis? Fool that he was.”

“That's a fair bet.”

“Which part of it? The guess itself? Or chucking it all in for her?”

He smiled resignedly. “I'm not sure at this point.”

Samantha didn't say what came first to her mind: that he wouldn't have answered in such a way a week ago. She merely gave a few moments’ consideration to what such an answer implied.

Companionably, they went at the windows. The old glazing was set into lead in far too fragile a fashion to blast away at it with the hose pipe, so they were reduced to a painstaking process of soaking away the grime with rags, one single pane at a time.

“This'll take till our dotage,” Julian noted grimly after ten minutes of silent cleaning.

“I dare say,” Samantha replied. She wanted to ask him if he was prepared for her to stay round that long, but she let the thought go. Something serious was on his mind, and she had to get to it, if only to prove to him her abiding concern for all aspects of his life. She sought a way in, saying quietly, “Julie, I'm sorry about your worries. On top of everything else. I can't do anything about … well …” She found that she couldn't even say Nicola Maiden's name. Not here and now. Not to Julian. “About what's happened in the last few days” was what she settled on. “But if there's ever anything else that I can do …”

“I'm sorry,” he replied.

“Of course you are. How could you be anything else but sorry?”

“I mean I'm sorry for what I said … how I acted … when I questioned you, Sam. About that night. You know.”

She gave particular attention to a window pane that was crusted with guano, which had dripped from a hundred years of birds’ nests tucked into a crevice above them. “You were upset.”

“I didn't need to accuse you though. Of … of whatever.”

“Of murdering the woman you loved, you mean.” She looked his way. The ruddy colour in his face had heightened.

“Sometimes I can't get a rein on the voices inside my head. I start talking and whatever the voices have been shouting pops out. It's nothing to do with what I believe. I'm sorry.”

She wanted to say, But she wasn't good for you anyway, Julie. Why did you never see that she wasn't good for you? And when will you see what her death can mean? To you. To me. To us, Julie. But she didn't say it because to say it would be to reveal what she couldn't afford—or even bear—to reveal to him. “Accepted,” she said instead.

“Thanks, Sam. You're a brick,” he said.

“Again.”

“I mean—”

She flashed him a smile. “It's okay. I understand. Hand me the hose pipe. These need dousing now.”

A burble of water was all they could risk against the old windows. Sometime in the future it would be necessary to have all the lead replaced or what was left of the ancient glass would definitely be destroyed. But that was a conversation for another time. With his present money worries, Julian didn't need to hear Samantha's prescription for saving another part of the family home.

He said, “It's Dad.”

She said, “What?”

“What's on my mind. Why I've been going through the books. It's Dad.” And then he explained, ending ruefully with, “I've been waiting for years for him to choose sobriety—”

“All of us have waited.”

“—and now he's done that, I got all caught up in trying to come up with a way to seize the moment before it passes. I know the truth of the matter. I've read enough about it to understand he has to do it for himself. He has to want it. But if you could have seen him, heard how he was talking … I don't think he's had a drink all day.”

“Hasn't he? No, I suppose he hasn't.” And she thought of her uncle as he'd been the previous night: slurring not a word and coaxing from her an admission that she didn't want to make. She felt a stillness come over her, one in which she knew that she too could seize the moment—could use it and mould it—or let it pass. She said carefully, “Perhaps he does want it this time, Julie. He's getting older. Facing his … well, his mortality.” His mortality, she thought, not his death. She wouldn't use that word, because in this instant it was crucial to maintain a delicate balance in the conversation. “I expect everyone comes face-to-face with … well, with the knowledge that nothing goes on forever. Perhaps he's feeling older all at once and he wants to sort himself out while he still has the chance.”

“But that's just it,” Julian said. “Does he have a chance? How can he do it without help when he's never been able to do it before? And now that he's finally asked for help how can I fail to give it? Because I want to give it. I want him to succeed.”

“We all do, Julie. The family. We want that.”

“So I went through the books. Because of the health insurance we have. I don't even need to read the small print to know there's no way …” He examined the pane he was working on, scraping his fingernail against the glass.

Nails on a chalkboard. Samantha shuddered. She turned her head from the sound.

Which was when she saw him, where he always was. He stood at the window in the parlour. He watched her talking to his son. And as she watched him watching her, Samantha saw her uncle raise his hand. One finger touched his temple and then his hand dropped. He might have been smoothing his hair from his face. But the reality was that the gesture looked very much like a mock salute.

e got in straightaway yesterday,” Nkata said when no entry buzzer answered their ringing of the bell next to the white front door. “Could be they got word 'bout us from the Platt bird and did a runner. What d'you think?” “I didn't get the impression that Shelly Platt had any sympathy for the Reeves, did you?” Lynley rang the bell at MKR Financial Management another time. “She seemed happy enough to put a spanner in their works so long as no trail led back to her. Do the Reeves not live here as well as run their business from here, Winnie? It looks like a residence to me.” Lynley moved back from the door, then descended the stairs to the pavement. While the candy-floss building appeared uninhabited, he had the distinct sensation of being watched from within. It could have been his impatience to get Martin Reeve under his thumb for a thorough grilling, but something suggested to him a form just out of sight behind the sheer curtains of a second floor window. Even as he stood gazing up at it, the curtain twitched. He called up, “Police. It's in your interests to let us in, Mr. Reeve. I'd rather not have to phone Ladbroke Grove police station for their assistance.”