Samantha rose from her position at the far end of the run. “Is that your clever way of asking if he killed her?”
“Sam,” Julian said. It sounded like a warning. “I was down, of course. I felt blue. Who wouldn't?”
“Was Nicola involved with someone else? Is that why she refused you?”
Julian didn't reply. Lynley and Hanken exchanged a glance. Samantha said, “Ah. I see where this is heading. You're thinking that Julie came home on Monday night, phoned her up the next day to arrange a meeting, discovered where she'd be that night—which he of course wouldn't admit to you—and then killed her. Well, I can tell you this: That's absurd.”
“Perhaps. But an answer to the question would be helpful,” Lynley noted.
Julian said, “No.”
“No, she wasn't involved with someone else? Or no, she didn't tell you if she was involved with someone else?”
“Nicola was honest. If she'd been involved with someone else romantically, she would have told me.”
“She wouldn't have tried to protect you from the knowledge, to spare your feelings once you'd made them clear to her?”
Julian gave a rueful laugh. “Believe me, sparing people's feelings wasn't her way.”
Despite any suspicions that he had elsewhere, the nature of Julian's response seemed to prompt Hanken to ask, “Where were you on Tuesday night, Mr. Britton?”
“With Cass,” Julian said.
“The dog? With the dog?”
“She was whelping,” Samantha said. “You don't leave a dog alone when she's whelping.”
“You were here as well, Miss McCallin?” Lynley asked. “Helping out with the delivery?”
She caught her lower lip with her teeth. “It was in the middle of the night. Julie didn't get me up. I saw the puppies in the morning.”
“I see.”
“No, you don't!” she cried. “You think Julie's involved. You've come to trick him into saying something that will implicate him. That's how you work.”
“We work at getting to the truth.”
“Oh right. Tell that to the Bridgewater Four. Only it's three now, isn't it? Because one of those poor sods died in prison. Call a solicitor, Julie. Don't say another word.”
Julian Britton in possession of a solicitor was exactly what they didn't need at the moment. Lynley said, “You appear to keep records about the dogs, Mr. Britton. Did you record the time of delivery?”
“They don't all pop out at once, Inspector,” Samantha said.
Julian said, “Cass went into labour round nine at night. She began delivering round midnight. There were six puppies—one was stillborn—so it took several hours. If you want the exact times, I have them in the records. Sam can fetch the book.”
She went to do so. When she returned, Julian said to her, “Thanks. I'm nearly finished in here. You've been a real help. I'll manage the rest.”
Obviously, he was dismissing her. She appeared to communicate something to him through eye contact only. Whatever it was, he either couldn't or didn't want to receive the message. She cast a moderately baleful look at Lynley and Hanken before she left them. The sound of the dogs barking outside rose, then fell as she opened and closed the door behind her.
“She means well,” Julian told them when she was gone. “I don't know what I'd do without her. Trying to put the whole manor back together … It's a hell of a job. Sometimes I wonder why I took it on.”
“Why did you?” Lynley asked.
“There've been Brittons here for hundreds of years. My dream is to keep them here for a few hundred more.”
“Nicola Maiden was part of that dream?”
“In my mind, yes. In her mind, no. She had her own dreams. Or plans. Or whatever they were. But that's fairly obvious, isn't it?”
“She told you about them?”
“All she told me was that she didn't share mine. She knew I couldn't offer her what she wanted. Not at the moment and probably never. She thought it was the wiser course to leave our relationship the way it was.”
“Which was what?”
“We were lovers, if that's what you're asking.”
“In the normal sense?” Hanken asked.
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“The girl was shaved. It suggests … a certain sexual whimsicality to the relationship you had with her.”
Ugly colour flared in Julian's face. “She was quirky. She waxed herself. She had some body piercings done as well. Her tongue. Her navel. Her nipples. Her nose. That's just who she was.”
She didn't sound like a woman who'd be the prospective bride of the impoverished landed gentry. Lynley wondered how Julian Britton had come to think of her as such.