She hadn't been able to eat much of the lunch she'd prepared them. Neither, she had noted, had he. So she knew that she was due for some sustenance. She just wasn't sure she could manage it in his presence.
They went to the windows, where Julian set the tray on the top of an old dole cupboard. Leaning their bums against the dusty sill, they each held a mug of Darjeeling and waited for the other to speak.
“It's coming along” was Julians offering as he looked the length of the gallery to the door through which he'd entered. For an over-long time he seemed to study the grimy, ornate carving of the Britton falcon that surmounted it. “I couldn't manage any of this without you, Sam. You're a brick.”
“Just what a woman longs to hear,” Samantha replied. “Thanks very much.”
“Damn. I didn't mean-”
“Never mind.” Samantha took a sip of tea. She kept her eyes on its milky surface. “Why didn't you tell me, Julie? I thought we were close.”
Next to her, he slurped his tea. Samantha subdued her moue of distaste. “Tell you what? And we are close. At least, I hope we are. I mean, I want us to be. Without you here, I would have packed it all in a long time ago. You're practically the best friend I have.”
“Practically,” she said. “That limbo place.”
“You know what I'm saying.”
And the trouble was, she did know. She knew what he was saying, what he meant, and how he felt. She wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake him into an understanding of what it meant that such an unspoken communication should exist between them. But she couldn't do so, so she settled on trying to ferret out some of the real story of what had occurred between her cousin and Nicola, not really knowing what she'd do with the facts when and if she got them.
“I'd no idea you'd even thought about asking Nicola to marry you, Julie. When the police brought it up, I didn't know what to think.”
“About what?”
“About why you hadn't told me. First, that you'd asked her. Then, that she'd said no.”
“Frankly, I hoped she'd reconsider.”
“I wish you had told me.”
“Why?”
“It would have made things… easier, I suppose.”
At that, he turned. She could feel his gaze on her, and she grew restive under it. “Easier? How could knowing I'd asked Nicola to marry me and been turned down have made anything easier? And for whom?”
His words were guarded, careful for the first time, which made her speak guardedly in reply. “Easier for you, of course. I had the feeling something was wrong all day Tuesday If you'd told me, I could have given you some support. It can't have been easy, waiting through Tuesday night and Wednesday. I expect you didn't get a minute's sleep.”
Silence for a terribly long moment. Then quietly, “Yes. That's true enough.”
“Well, we could have talked about it. It helps to talk, don't you think?”
“Talking would have… I don't know, Sam. We'd been terribly close, the two of us, in the last few weeks. It felt so good. And I-”
Samantha warmed to the words.
“-suppose I didn't want to do anything that might kill the closeness and drive her off. Not that talking to you would have done that, because I know you wouldn't have told her we'd spoken.”
“Naturally,” Samantha said with quiet bleakness.
“I knew she'd be unlikely to reconsider. But I still hoped she would. And it seemed to me that if I said something about what was going on, it would be like bursting a bubble. Idiotic, I know. But there you have it.”
“Putting your hopes into words. Yes. I understand.”
“I suppose the truth is that I couldn't face reality. I couldn't look squarely at the fact that she didn't want me the way I wanted her. I would have done as a friend. As a lover even, when she was in the Peaks. But nothing more than that.” He picked at his wedge of cake with the fork tines. He was, she noted, eating as little as she.
Finally, he set his plate on the window sill. He said, “Did you see the eclipse?”
She frowned, then remembered. It seemed so long ago. “It didn't seem like much fun to wait for it alone. I didn't go after all.”
“That's just as well. We wouldn't want you lost on the moors.”
“Oh, that's unlikely, isn't it? It was only Eyam Moor. And even if it had been one of the others, I've been out there enough by myself that I always know where I'm-” She stopped herself. She looked at her cousin. He wasn't watching her, but his ruddy natural colouring gave him away. “Ah. I see. Is that what you think?”
“I'm sorry.” His voice was wretched. “I can't stop thinking about it. Having the police turn up made everything worse. All I can think about is what happened to her. I can't get it out of my mind.”
“Try doing what I do,” she said past a pounding heartbeat that she heard in her ears. “There are so many ways to keep one's mind occupied. Try considering, for example, the fact that dogs have been giving birth on their own for a few hundred thousand years. It's remarkable, that. One can think about it for hours. That thought alone can fill up one's head so there's no room left for anything else.”
Julian was immobile. She'd made her point. “Where were you on Tuesday night, Sam?” he whispered. “Tell me.”
“I was killing Nicola Maiden,” Samantha said, getting to her feet and walking back to the fireplace. “I always like to end my day with a spot of murder.”
MKR Financial Management was housed in what looked like a pale pink confection on the corner of Lansdowne Road and St. John's Gardens. The decorative icing consisted of woodwork so clean that Barbara Havers imagined a duster-wielding lackey getting up at five in the morning each day to scrub his way from the faux columns on either side of the door to the plaster medallions above the porch.
“Good thing we've still got the guv's motor,” Nkata murmured as he pulled up to the pavement across the street from the building.
“Why?” Barbara asked.
“We look like we fit in.” He nodded to a car whose back end was sloping up the drive at one side of the pink confection. It was a Jaguar XJS, silver in colour. It could have been the Bentley's first cousin. A black Mercedes sat in front of the building, locked between an Aston-Martin and an antique Bristol.
“We're definitely out of our financial depth,” Barbara said, heaving herself from the car. “But that's just as well. We wouldn't like to be rich. People with dibs are always dead choked.”
“You believe that, Barb?”
“No. But it keeps me happier to pretend it. Come on. I need some serious financial managing, and something tells me we've come to a place where it can happen.”
They had to ring to get in. No voice enquired as to who'd come calling, but none was necessary since a high- tech security system on the building included a video camera placed strategically above the front door. Just in case someone was watching, Barbara took out her warrant card and held it up to the camera. Perhaps in response, the door buzzed open.
An oak-floored entry became a hushed corridor of closed doors with a width of Persian carpet running down it. Off this, Reception consisted of a small room that was heavy on antiques and heavier still on silver-framed photographs. There was no one present, just a sophisticated telephone system that appeared to answer calls automatically and send them on their way. This sat on a kidney-shaped desk across whose top were fanned out a dozen brochures with the logo MKR stamped in gold upon them. It was all very reassuring in appearance, just the sort of place one wouldn't mind coming to in order to discuss the delicate matter of one's monetary situation.
Barbara went to investigate the photographs. She saw that the same man and woman were common to them all. He was short, wiry, and angelic in appearance, with a wispy corona of hair round his head, which added to his celestial aura. His companion was taller than he, blonde and as thin as a walking eating disorder. She was beautiful in the fashion of a catwalk model: vacant-looking and all cheekbones and lips. The photographs themselves were vintage
A door opened and closed somewhere in the corridor. The floor boards creaked as someone walked along the
