In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Inspector Lynley, #10)(51)

She forced herself to lower the cotton shirt from her face and went back to what she had been doing, removing from the laundry all of her daughter's unwashed clothing as if by keeping the scent of her alive, she could also forestall the inevitable acceptance of Nicola's death. She mated socks. She folded jeans and jerseys. She smoothed out creases in every shirt, and she rolled up knickers and matched them to bras. Finally, she slid the clothing into plastic carrier bags from the kitchen. Then she methodically taped these bags closed, sealing in the odour of her child. She gathered the bags to her and left the room.

Upstairs, Andy was pacing. Nan could hear his footsteps above her as she moved noiselessly down the corridor past the guest rooms. He was in his cubbyhole of a den, walking from the tiny dormer window to the electric fire, backwards and forwards, over and over again. He'd retreated there upon the departure of the police, announcing that he would start looking through his diaries immediately in an attempt to find the name of someone with a score to settle against him. But unless he was reading those diaries as he paced, in the intervening hours he'd not begun the search.

Nan knew why. The search was useless.

She wouldn't think of it, Nan told herself. Not here, not now, and possibly not ever. Nor would she think what it meant—or didn't mean—that Julian Britton claimed to be engaged to her daughter.

Nan paused at the staircase that led to the private upper floor of the house where the family's quarters were. Her hands felt slick on the carrier bags, which she held to her chest. Her heart seemed to pound in tandem with her husband's tread. Go to bed, she told him silently. Please, Andy. Turn out the lights.

He needed sleep. And the fact that he was starting to go numb again told her just how badly he needed it. The advent of a detective from Scotland Yard hadn't resulted in a mitigation of Andy's anxiety. The departure of that same detective had only increased it. The numbness in his hands had begun to travel up his arms. A prick of a pin brought no blood to the surface of his skin, as if his whole body were shutting down. He'd managed to hold himself together while the police were present, but once they'd left, he'd fallen apart. That was when he'd said he wanted to start going through the diaries. If he withdrew from his wife into his den, he could hide the worst of what he was experiencing. Or so he thought.

But a husband and wife should be able to help each other through something like this, Nan argued in the stillness. What's happening to us that we're facing it alone?

She had tried to replace conversation with concern earlier in the evening, but Andy had sloughed off her solicitous hovering, consistently refusing her offers of heating pads, brandy, cups of tea, and hot soup. He'd also avoided her attempts to massage some feeling back into his fingers. So ultimately, everything that might have been spoken between them went unsaid.

What to say now? Nan wondered. What to say when dread was among the emotions raging inside like innumerable battalions from a single army, out of control and combating one another?

She forced herself to mount the stairs, but instead of going to her husband, she went to Nicola's bedroom. There, she moved across the green carpet in the darkness and opened the clothes cupboard that was tucked under the eaves. Eyes used to the gloom, she could make out the shape of an old skateboard pushed to the back of a shelf, of an electric guitar leaning long unused against the far wall, where it was draped by trousers.

Touching these with the tips of her fingers, saying idiotically, “tweed, wool, cotton, silk” as she felt the material of each, Nan became aware of a sound in the room, a buzzing that came from the chest of drawers behind her. As she turned, puzzled, the sound stopped. She had almost convinced herself that she'd imagined it, when it occurred again.

Curious, Nan set her packages on the bed and crossed the room to the chest. There was nothing on top of it to make such a noise, just a vase of drooping bladder campion and nightshade collected on a walk through Padley Gorge. These wildflowers were accompanied by a hair brush and comb, three bottles of scent, and a small beanbag flamingo with bright pink legs and large yellow feet.

With a glance towards the open bedroom door as if she were engaged in a surreptitious search, Nan slid open the top drawer of the chest. As she did so, the buzzing sounded for a third time. Her fingers moved in the direction of the noise. She found a small plastic square vibrating beneath a stack of knickers.

Nan carried this plastic square to the bed, sat, and switched on the bedside lamp. She examined what she'd taken from the drawer. It was Nicola's pager. On the top of it were two small buttons, one grey and one black. Across the end of it a thin screen held a single brief message: one page.

The buzzer sounded again, startling Nan Maiden. She pushed down one of the two buttons in response. The thin screen shifted to another message, this a telephone number with an area code that Nan recognised from central London.

She swallowed. She stared hard at the number. She realised that whoever had paged her daughter had no idea that Nicola was dead. It was this thought that took her automatically to the telephone in order to make a reply. But it was another set of thoughts that took her to a telephone in the reception area of Maiden Hall when she could have as easily phoned the London number from the bedroom that she shared with Andy.

She drew a long breath. She wondered if she would have the words. She considered the possibility that having the words would make no difference to anyone. But she didn't want to think about that. She just wanted to phone.