Samantha said, “Julian? In danger?”
Julian blanched. “In danger from what? What's going on?”
Lynley said that he'd explain everything once the constables had ascertained that the house was safe. Inside, the three of them retired to the Long Gallery, which was, Lynley said when he saw it, an environment that could be well controlled.
“Controlled?” Julian asked. “From what? And why?”
So Lynley explained. His information was limited and direct, but Julian found that he couldn't begin to absorb it. The police believed that Andy Maiden had taken matters into his own hands, Lynley told him, which was always a risk if a member of a police officer's family became the victim of a violent crime.
“I don't understand,” Julian said. “Because if Andy's coming here … here to Broughton Manor …” He tried to come to terms with the implication behind what the inspector had told him. “Are you saying that Andy's coming after me?”
“We're not certain whom he's after,” Lynley replied. “Inspector Hanken's seeing to the safety of the other gentleman.”
“The other … ?”
“Oh my God.” Samantha was standing next to Julian, and immediately she dragged him away from the Long Gallery's diamond-paned windows. “Let's sit down. Here. The fireplace. It's out of sight from the grounds, and even if someone barges into the room, we'll be too far from the doors … Julie … Julie. Please.”
Julian allowed himself to be led, but he felt dazed. He said, “What are you saying, exactly?” to Lynley. “Does Andy think I might have … Andy?”
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.”