In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Inspector Lynley, #10)(219)

Absurdly, childishly, he wanted to cry. Suddenly the last six terrible days since—heart brimming with love—he'd asked Nicola to marry him came crashing down like a landslide and he could not bear another thing: He was utterly defeated by this final fact that the father of the woman he'd loved might actually believe he had killed her. How strange it was: He hadn't been defeated by her refusal when he'd offered marriage; he hadn't been defeated by the revelations she'd made to him that night; he hadn't been defeated by her disappearance, his part in the search for her, or her actual death. But this simple thing—her father's suspicion—was for some reason the final straw. He felt the tears coming, and the thought of weeping in front of this stranger, in front of his cousin, in front of anyone, burned in his throat.

Samantha's arm went round his shoulders. He felt her rough kiss against his temple. “You're all right,” she told him. “You're safe. And who bloody cares what anyone thinks. I know the truth. And that's what matters.”

“What truth is this?” DI Lynley spoke from the window, where he appeared to be waiting for a sign that the police constables had completed their securing of the house. “Miss McCallin?” he said when Samantha didn't answer.

“Oh stop,” she returned acerbically. “Julian didn't kill Nicola. Neither did I. Neither did anyone else in this house, if that's what you're thinking.”

“So what truth is it that you're talking about?”

“The truth about Julie. That he's fine and good and that fine and good people don't go about murdering one another, Inspector Lynley.”

“Even,” DI Lynley said, “if one of them is less than fine and good?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“I expect Mr. Britton does.”

She dropped her arm from his shoulders. Julian could feel her searching his face. She said his name more hesitantly than she had yet done, and she waited for him to clarify the detective's remarks.

And even now he could not do so. He could see her still—so much more alive than he himself had ever once been, grasping life. He could not speak a single word against her, no matter the cause he had for doing so. In the measure and judgement of their everyday world, Nicola had betrayed him, and Julian knew that if he told the tale of her London life as she'd revealed it to him, he could call himself the deeply wronged party. And so he would be seen by everyone he and Nicola had known. There was indeed some satisfaction to be taken from that. But the truth of the matter would always be that only in the eyes of those who possessed the mere facts could he ever be seen as a man with a grievance. Those who knew Nicola as she truly was and had always been would know he'd brought his grief upon himself. Nicola had never once lied to him. He'd merely blinded himself to everything about her that he hadn't wanted to see.

She wouldn't have cared half a fig if he told the real truth about her now, Julian realised. But he wouldn't do so. Not so much to protect her memory but to protect the people who had loved her without knowing all that she was.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Julian told the London detective. “And I don't understand why you can't leave us alone to get on with our lives.”

“I won't be doing that until Nicola Maiden's killer is found.”

“Then look somewhere else,” Julian said. “You won't find him here.”

At the far end of the room the door opened and a constable escorted Julian's father into the Long Gallery. He said to Lynley, “I found this one in the parlour, sir. Emmes has gone on to the gardens.” Jeremy Britton disengaged his arm from DC Benson's hand. He looked confused by the turn of events. He looked frightened. But he didn't look drunk. He came to Julian and squatted before him.

He said, “You all right, my boy?” and although the words were ever so slightly slurred, it occurred to Julian that the enunciation was prompted by Jeremy's concern for him and not the result of his addiction to drink.

This realisation made his heart suddenly warm. Warm to his father, warm to his cousin, and warm to the connections implied by family. He said, “I'm okay, Dad,” and he made room for Jeremy on the floor by the fireplace. He did this by scooting closer to Sam.

In response, she returned her arm to his shoulders. “I'm so glad of that,” she said.





[page]CHAPTER 30


arbara chose a venue that Matthew King-Ryder would know intimately: the Agincourt Theatre, where his father's production of Hamlet was being mounted. But after Nkata passed this message on to King-Ryder from the phone box in South Kensington, he made it clear that he wasn't about to let his fellow DC meet with a killer alone.

“Are you a convert to King-Ryder-as-killer, then?” Barbara asked her colleague.

“Seems like only one reason he'd know the number of this phone box.” Nkata sounded mournful, however, and when he went on, Barbara understood why. “Can't think why he'd go after his own dad. Makes me wonder, that.”

“He wanted more lolly than his dad left for him. He saw only one way to get it.”

“But how'd he come by that music in the first place? His dad wouldn't've told him, would he?”

“Tell your own son—tell anyone, in fact—that you're plagiarising your old mate's work? I don't think so. But he was his dad's manager, Winnie. He must have come across that music somewhere.”