Not that Samantha didn't mourn her father's passing herself. She did. But she'd long ago seen that Douglas McCallin's first love was the family biscuit factory—not the family itself—and consequently his death seemed more like an extension of his normal working hours than a permanent parting. His life had always been his work. And he'd given it the dedication of a man who'd had the luck to meet his one true love at the age of twenty.
Jeremy, on the other hand, had chosen drink as his bride. On this particular day, he'd started with dry sherry at ten in the morning. During lunch, he'd worked his way through a bottle of something called the Blood of Jupiter, which Samantha assumed from its colour was red wine. And throughout the afternoon, he'd plied himself with one gin and tonic after another. The fact that he was still ambulatory was, to Samantha, remarkable.
He usually spent his days in the parlour, where he shut the curtains and used the ancient eight-millimeter projector to entertain himself with endless meanderings down memory lane. In the months that Samantha had been at Broughton Manor, he'd gone through the Britton family's entire cinematic history at least three times. He always did it the same way: beginning with the earliest films that one Britton or another had shot in 1924 and watching them in chronological order to the point at which there was no Britton with sufficient interest in the family to record their doings. So the pictorial record of fox hunts, fishing expeditions, holidays, pheasant shoots, birthdays, and weddings ended round the time of Julian's fifteenth birthday. Which, according to Samantha's calculations, would have been just the time that Jeremy Britton had fallen from his horse and compressed three vertebrae, for which long-ago injury he religiously plied himself with pain-killers as well as intoxicants.
“He's going to kill himself mixing pills with booze if we don't watch him,” Julian had told her soon after her arrival. “Sam, will you help me? With you here to keep an eye on him, I can get more work done on the estate. I might even be able to put some plans in motion … if you'll help me, that is.”
And within days of meeting him, Samantha had known that she would do anything to help her cousin Julian. Anything at all.
Which was something that Jeremy Britton obviously knew as well. Because hearing her return from the vegetable garden in the late afternoon and clomp across the courtyard ridding her boots of soil, he'd actually emerged from the parlour and sought her out in the kitchen, where she was beginning to prepare their dinner.
“Ah. Here you are, my flower.” He leaned forward in that gravity-defying posture that seemed second nature to drunks. He had a tumbler in his hand: Two small pieces of ice and a slice of lemon were all that remained of his latest gin and tonic. As usual, he was dressed up to the nines, every inch of him the country squire. Despite the late summer weather, he was wearing a tweed jacket, a tie, and heavy wool plus fours that he must have resurrected from a predecessor's wardrobe. He might have passed for an eccentric albeit well-to-do landowner in his cups.
He placed himself at the old wooden work top, precisely where Samantha wished to be. He jiggled the ice in his tumbler and drained what little liquid he was able to coax from the melting cubes. That done, he set the glass next to the large chef's knife that she'd removed from its stand. He looked from her to the knife to her once again. And he smiled a slow, happy inebriate's smile.
“Where's our boy?” he inquired pleasantly, although it came out as whairshare boy? His eyes were so light a grey that their irises might not even have existed, and the whites of them had long since gone yellow, a colour that was beginning to suffuse most of his skin. “Haven't noticed Julie skulking about today, don't you know. Fac’ tis, I don't believe he was home last night at all, our little Julie, because I don't recall seeing his mug at breakfast.” Except it was hishmug-gabrekkest, and having said this much, Jeremy waited for her reaction to his remarks.
Samantha began emptying the vegetable trug of its contents. She placed lettuce, a cucumber, two green peppers, and a cauliflower into the nearby sink. She began to wash them free of soil. To the lettuce she gave particular attention, bending over it like a mother examining her infant child.
“Well,” Jeremy went on with a sigh, “I s'pose we know what Julie was up to, don't we, Sam?” Doe-we-Sham? “That boy won't see what's before his face. I don't know what we're going to do with him.”