Elizabeth George - In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

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.