In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

fact I've got none, or at least not enough to suit your tastes.”

“Julian, it isn't. Not exactly.” She'd turned from him briefly, giving a long sigh. “Let me explain.”

He'd listened for what had seemed like an hour, although she'd likely spoken ten minutes or less. At the end, after everything had been said between them and she'd climbed out of the Rover and disappeared into the dark gabled porch of Maiden Hall, he'd driven home numbly, shell-shocked with grief, confusion, and surprise, thinking No, she couldn't… she can't mean… No. After Sleepless Night Number One, he'd come to realise-past his own pain-how great was the need for him to take action. He'd phoned, and she'd agreed to see him. She would always, she said, be willing to see him.

He gave a final glance in the mirror before he left the room, and he treated himself to a last affirmation: “You were always good together. Keep that in mind.”

He slipped along the dim upstairs passage of the manor house and looked into the small room that his father used as a parlour. His family's increasingly straitened financial circumstances had effected a general retreat from all the larger rooms downstairs that had slowly been made uninhabitable as their various antiques, paintings, and objets d'art were sold to make ends meet. Now the Brittons lived entirely on the house's upper floor. There were abundant rooms for them, but they were cramped and dark.

Jeremy Britton was in the parlour. As it was half past ten, he was thoroughly blotto, head on his chest and a cigarette burning down between his fingers. Julian crossed the room and removed the fag from his father's hand. Jeremy didn't stir.

Julian cursed quietly, looking at him: at the promise of intelligence, vigour, and pride completely eradicated by the addiction. His father was going to burn the place down someday, and there were times-like now-when Julian thought that complete conflagration might be all for the best. He crushed out Jeremy's cigarette and reached into his shirt pocket for the packet of Dunhills. He removed it and did the same with his father's lighter. He grabbed up the gin bottle and left the room.

He was dumping the gin, cigarettes, and lighter into the dustbins at the back of the manor house when he heard her speak.

“Caught him at it again, Julie?”

He started, looked about, but failed to see her in the gloom. Then she rose from where she'd been sitting: on the edge of the dry-stone wall that divided the back entrance of the manor from the first of its overgrown gardens. An untrimmed wisteria-beginning to lose its leaves with the approach of autumn-had sheltered her. She dusted off the seat of her khaki shorts and sauntered over to join him.

“I'm beginning to think he wants to kill himself,” Samantha said in the practical manner that was her nature. “I just haven't come up with the reason why.”

“He doesn't need a reason,” Julian said shortly. “Just the means.”

“I try to keep him off the sauce, but he's got bottles everywhere.” She glanced at the dark manor house that rose before them like a fortress in the landscape. “I do try, Julian. I know it's important.” She looked back at him and regarded his clothes. “You're looking very smart. I didn't think to dress up. Was I supposed to?”

Julian returned her look blankly, his hands moving to his chest to pat his shirt, searching for something that he knew wasn't there.

“You've forgotten, haven't you?” Samantha said. She was very good at making intuitive leaps.

Julian waited for elucidation.

“The eclipse,” she said.

“The eclipse?” He thought about it. He clapped a hand to his forehead. “God. The eclipse. Sam. Hell. I'd forgotten. Is the eclipse tonight? Are you going somewhere to see it better?”

She said with a nod to the spot from which she'd just emerged, “I've got us some provisions. Cheese and fruit, some bread, a bit of sausage. Wine. I thought we might want it if we have to wait longer than you'd thought.”

“To wait…? Oh hell, Samantha…” He wasn't sure how to put it. He hadn't intended her to think he meant to watch the eclipse with her. He hadn't intended her to think he meant to watch the eclipse at all.

“Have I got the date wrong?” The tone of her voice spoke her disappointment. She already knew that she had the date right and that if she wanted to see the eclipse from Eyam Moor, she was going to have to hike out there alone.

His mention of the lunar eclipse had been a casual remark. At least, that's how he'd intended it to be taken. He'd said conversationally, “One can see it quite well from Eyam Moor. It's supposed to happen round half past eleven. Are you interested in astronomy, Sam?”

Samantha had obviously interpreted this as an invitation, and Julian felt a momentary annoyance with his cousin's presumption. But he did his best to hide it because he owed her so much. It was in the cause of reconciling her mother with her uncle-Julian's father-that she'd been making her lengthy visits to Broughton Manor from Winchester for the past eight months. Each stay had become progressively longer as she found more employment round the estate, either in the renovation of the manor house proper or in the smooth running of the tournaments, fetes, and reenactments that Julian organised in the grounds as yet another source of Britton income. Her helpful presence had been a real godsend since Julian's siblings had long fled the family nest and Jeremy hadn't lifted a finger since he'd inherited the property-and proceeded to populate it with his fellow flower-children and run it into the ground-shortly after his twenty-fifth birthday.

Still, grateful as Julian was for Sam's help, he wished his cousin hadn't assumed so much. He'd felt guilty about the amount of work she was doing purely from the goodness of her heart, and he'd been casting about aimlessly for some form of repayment. He had no available money to offer her, not that she would have needed or accepted it had he done so, but he did have his dogs as well as his knowledge of and enthusiasm for Derbyshire. And wanting to make her feel welcome for as long as possible at Broughton Manor, he'd offered her the only thing he had: occasional activities with the harriers as well as conversation. And it was a conversation about the eclipse that she had misunderstood.

“I hadn't thought…” He kicked at a bare patch in the gravel where a dandelion was shooting up a furry stalk. “I'm sorry, I'm heading over to Maiden Hall.”

“Oh.”

Funny, Julian thought, how a single syllable could carry the weight of everything from condemnation to delight.

“Stupid me,” she said. “I can't think how I got the impression that you wanted to… Well, anyway…”

“I'll make it up to you.” He hoped he sounded earnest. “If I hadn't already planned… You know how it is.”

“Oh yes,” she said. “Mustn't disappoint your Nicola, Julian.”

She offered him a brief, cool smile and ducked into the hollow of the wisteria vine. She hooked a basket over her arm.

“Another time?” Julian said.

“Whatever.” She didn't look at him as she walked past, slipped through the gateway, and disappeared into the inner courtyard of Broughton Manor.

He felt the breath leave him in a gusty sigh. He hadn't realised he'd been holding it back. “Sorry,” he said quietly to her absence. “But this is important. If you knew how important, you'd understand.”

He made the drive to Padley Gorge swiftly, heading northwest towards Bakewell, where he spun across the old mediaeval bridge that spanned the River Wye. He used the journey for a final rehearsal of his remarks, and by the time he'd reached the sloping drive to Maiden Hall, he was fairly assured that before the evening was out, his plans would bear the fruit he wanted.

Maiden Hall sat midway up a slope of woodland. Here the land was thick with sessile oaks, and the incline leading up to the Hall was canopied with chestnuts and limes. Julian cruised up this drive, negotiated the serpentine turns with the skill of long practise, and chugged to a stop next to a Mercedes sports car in the graveled enclosure that was reserved for guests.

He skirted the main entrance and went in through the kitchen, where Andy Maiden was watching his chef put the flame to a tray of creme brulee. The chef-one Christian-Louis Ferrer-had been brought on board from France some five years previously to enhance the solid if not inspired reputation of Maiden Hall's food. At the moment, however, with culinary blow lamp in hand, Ferrer looked more like an arsonist than un grand artiste de la cuisine. The expression on Andy's face suggested that he was sharing Julian's thoughts. Only when