In Pursuit Of The Proper Sinner (4 page)

Nan attempted to shove a handful of hair behind her ear. Cut in a strange fashion that she called a beret—long on the top and clipped on the sides—it was too short to do anything but flop back into place. “We'll set out after her,” she decided. “One of us must start looking for her at once.”

“One of us looking for Nicola isn't going to do much good,” Julian pointed out. “There's no telling where she went.”

“But we know all her haunts. Arbor Low. Thor's Cave. Peveril Castle.” Nan mentioned half a dozen other locations, all of them inadvertently serving to underscore the point that Julian had been attempting to make: There was no correlation between Nicola's favourite spots and their locations in the Peak District. They were as far north as the outskirts of Holmfirth, as far south as Ashbourne and the lower part of the Tissington Trail. It was going to take a team to find her.

Andy pulled a bottle out of a cupboard, along with three tumblers. Into each he poured a shot of brandy. He handed round the glasses, saying, “Get that down.”

Nan's hands circled her glass, but she didn't drink. “Something's happened to her.”

“We don't know anything. That's why the police are on their way.”

The police, in the person of an ageing constable called Price, arrived not thirty minutes later. He asked the expected questions of them: When had she left? How was she equipped? Had she set off alone? What seemed to be her state of mind? Depressed? Unhappy? Worried? What had she declared as her intentions? Had she actually stated a time of her return? Who spoke to her last? Had she received any visitors? Letters? Phone calls? Had anything happened recently that might have prompted her to run off?

Julian joined Andy and Nan Maiden in their efforts to impress upon Constable Price the gravity of Nicola's failure to reappear at Maiden Hall. But Price seemed determined to go his own way, and a painstaking, hair-tearingly slow way it was. He wrote in his notebook at a ponderous pace, taking down a description of Nicola. He wanted to know about her equipment. He took them through her activities during the last two weeks. And he seemed terminally fascinated by the fact that, on the morning before she'd left for her hike, she'd received three phone calls from individuals who wouldn't give their names so that Nan could pass them along to Nicola before she came to the phone.

“One man and two women?” Price asked four times.

“I don't know, I don't know. And what does it matter?” Nan said testily. “It may have been the same woman calling twice. What difference does it make? What's that got to do with Nicola?”

“But just one man?” Constable Price said.

“God in heaven, how many times am I going to have to—”

“One man,” Andy interposed.

Nan pressed her lips into an angry line. Her eyes bored holes into Price's skull. “One man,” she repeated.

“It wasn't you who phoned?” This to Julian.

“I know Julian's voice,” Nan said. “It wasn't Julian.”

“But you have a relationship with the young lady, Mr. Britton?”

“They're engaged to be married,” Nan said.

“Not exactly engaged,” Julian quickly clarified, and he cursed in silence as the damnable heat rose from his collar-bone to suffuse his cheeks yet again.

“Had a bit of a quarrel?” Price asked, voice shrewd. “Another man involved where you didn't like it?”

Jesus, Julian thought. Why did everyone assume they'd rowed? There hadn't been a single harsh word between them. There hadn't been time for that.

They hadn't quarreled, Julian reported steadily. And he knew nothing about another man. Absolutely nothing, he asserted for good measure.

“They had a date to talk about their wedding plans,” Nan said.

“Well, actually—”

“D'you honestly know any woman who'd fail to show up for that?”

“And you are certain she intended to return by this evening?” Constable Price asked Andy He shifted his eyes over his notes, going on to say, “Her gear suggests she might have intended a longer outing.”

“I hadn't thought much about it till Julian stopped by to fetch her to Sheffield,” Andy admitted.

“Ah.” The constable eyed Julian with more suspicion than Julian felt was warranted. Then he flipped his notebook closed. The radio receiver that he wore from his shoulder buzzed with an incomprehensible stream of babble. He reached up and turned down the volume. Easing his notebook into his pocket, he said, “Well. She's done a runner before, and this's no different to that, I expect. We'll have ourselves a wait till—”

“What're you talking about?” Nan cut in. “This isn't a runaway teenager we're reporting. She's twenty-five years old, for heaven's sake.

She's a responsible adult. She has a job. A boyfriend. A family. She hasn't run off. She's disappeared.”

“At present, p'rhaps she has,” the constable agreed. “But as she's bunked off before—and our files do show that, madam—till we know she's not doing another runner, we can't send a team out after her.”

“She was seventeen years old when she last ran off,” Nan argued. “We'd just moved here from London. She was lonely, unhappy. We were caught up getting the Hall in order and we failed to give her the proper attention. All she'd needed was guidance so that—”

“Nancy.” Andy put his hand gently on the back of her neck.

“We can't just do nothing!”

“No choice in the matter,” the constable said implacably. “We've got our procedures. I'll make my report, and if she's not turned up by this time tomorrow, we'll have ourselves another look at the problem.”

Nan spun to her husband. “Do something. Phone Mountain Rescue yourself.”

Julian interposed. “Nan, Mountain Rescue can't begin a search unless they have an idea …” He gestured towards the windows and hoped she would fill in the blanks. As a member of Mountain Rescue himself, he'd been on dozens of cases. But the rescuers had always had a general idea of where to begin looking for a hiker. Since neither Julian nor Nicola's parents could even generalise about Nicola's point of departure, the only avenue left to them was to wait until first light, when the police could request a helicopter from the RAE.

Because of the hour and their lack of information, Julian knew that the only possible activity that actually could have grown from their midnight meeting with Constable Price would have been a preliminary phone call to the closest mountain rescue organization, telling them to assemble their volunteers at dawn. But clearly they had failed to impress upon the constable the gravity of the situation. Mountain Rescue responded only to the police. And the police—at least at the moment and in the person of Constable Price—weren't themselves responding.

They were wasting time talking to the man. Julian could see from Andy's expression that he'd arrived at this same conclusion. He said, “Thank you for coming, Constable,” and when his wife would have protested, Andy went on. “We'll phone you tomorrow evening if Nicola hasn't turned up.”

“Andy!”

He put his arm round her shoulders and she turned into his chest. He didn't speak until the constable had ducked out of the kitchen door, gone to his panda car, switched on the ignition, and flicked on the headlamps. And then he spoke to Julian, not Nan.

“She always likes camping in the White Peak, Julian. There're maps in Reception. Would you fetch them please? We'll each want to know where the other's searching.”

t was just after seven the next morning when Julian returned to Maiden Hall. If he hadn't explored every possible site from Consall Wood to Alport Height, he certainly felt as if he had. Torch in one hand, loud hailer in the other, he'd gone through the motions: He'd trudged the leafy woodland path from Wettonmill up the steep grade to Thor's Cave. He'd scoured along the River Manifold. He'd shone his torchlight up the slope of Thorpe Cloud. He'd followed the River Dove as far south as the old mediaeval manor at Norbury At the village of Alton, he'd hiked a distance along the Staffordshire Way He'd driven as many as he could manage of the single lane roads that Nicola favoured. And he'd paused periodically to use the loud hailer in calling her name. Deliberately marking his presence in every location, he'd awakened sheep, farmers, and campers during his eight hours’ search for her. At heart, he'd believed there was no chance that he would find her, but at least he'd been doing something instead of waiting at home by the phone. At the end of it all, he felt anxious and empty.

He was hungry as well. He could have eaten a leg of lamb had one been offered. It was odd, he thought. Just the previous night—wrought up with anticipation and nerves—he'd barely been able to touch his dinner. Indeed, Samantha had been a bit put out at the manner in which he merely picked at her fine sole amandine. She'd taken his lack of appetite personally, and while his father had leered about a man having other appetites to take care of, Sam, and wasn't their Julie about to do just that with we-all-know-who this very night, Samantha had pressed her lips together and cleared the table.

He'd have been able to do justice to one of her table-groaning breakfasts now, Julian thought. But as it was … Well, it didn't seem right to think about food—let alone to ask for it—despite the fact that the paying guests in Maiden Hall would be tucking into everything from cornflakes to kippers within the half hour.

He needn't have worried about the propriety in hoping for food under the circumstances, however. When he walked into the kitchen of Maiden Hall, a plate of scrambled eggs, mushrooms, and sausage sat untouched before Nan Maiden. She offered it to him the moment she saw him, saying, “They want me to eat, but I can't. Please take it. I expect you could do with a meal.”

They were the early kitchen staff: two women from the nearby village of Grindleford who cooked in the mornings when the sophisticated culinary efforts of Christian-Louis were as unnecessary as they would be unwanted.

“Bring it with you, Julian.” Nan put a cafeti`re on a tray with coffee mugs, milk, and sugar. She led the way into the dining room.

Only one table was occupied. Nan nodded at the couple who'd placed themselves in the bay window overlooking the garden, and after politely inquiring about their night's sleep and their day's plans, she joined Julian at the table he'd chosen some distance away by the kitchen door.

The fact that she never wore make-up put Nan at a disadvantage. Her eyes were troughed by blue-grey flesh. Her skin, which was lightly freckled from time spent on her mountain bicycle when she had a free hour in which to exercise, was otherwise completely pallid. Her lips—having long ago lost the natural blush of youth—bore fine lines that began beneath her nose and were ghostly white. She hadn't slept; that much was clear.

She had, however, changed her clothes from the night before, apparently knowing that it would hardly do for the proprietress of Maiden Hall to show up to greet her guests in the morning wearing what she'd worn as their hostess at dinner on the previous night. So her cocktail dress had been replaced by stirrup trousers and a tailored blouse.

She poured them each a cup of coffee and watched as Julian tucked into the eggs and mushrooms. She said, “Tell me about the engagement. I need something to keep from thinking the worst.” When she spoke, tears caused her eyes to look glazed, but she didn't weep.

Julian made himself mirror her control. “Have you heard from Andy?”

“Not back yet.” She circled her hands round her mug. Her grip was so tight that her fingers—their nails habitually bitten to the quick—were bleached of colour. “Tell me something about the two of you, Julian. Please.”

“It's going to be all right.” The last thing Julian wanted to force upon himself was having to concoct a scenario in which he and Nicola fell in love like ordinary human beings, realised that love, and founded upon it a life together. He couldn't face attempting that lie at the moment. “She's an experienced hiker. And she didn't go out there unprepared.”

“I know that. But I don't want to think about what it means that she hasn't come home. So tell me about the engagement. Where were you when you asked her? What did you say? What kind of wedding will it be? And when?”

Julian felt a chill at the double direction Nan's thoughts were taking. In either case, they brought up subjects he didn't want to consider. One set led him to dwell upon the unthinkable. The other did nothing but encourage more lies.

He went for something that both of them knew. “Nicola's been hiking in the Peaks since you moved from London. Even if she's hurt herself, she knows what to do till help arrives.” He forked up a portion of egg and mushroom. “It's lucky that she and I had a date. If we hadn't, God knows when we might've set out to find her.”

Nan looked away, but her eyes were still liquid. She lowered her head.

“We must be hopeful,” Julian went on. “She's well equipped. And she doesn't panic in a tough situation, when things get dicey. We all know that.”

“But if she's fallen … or got lost in one of the caves … Julian, it happens. You know that. No matter how well prepared someone is, the worst still happens sometimes.”

“There's nothing that says anything's happened. I looked only in the south part of the White Peak. There're more square miles out there than can be covered by one man in total darkness in an evening. She could be anywhere. She could even have gone to the Dark Peak without our knowing.” He didn't mention the nightmare Mountain Rescue faced whenever someone did disappear in the Dark Peak. There was, after all, no mercy in fracturing Nan's tenuous hold on her calm. She knew the reality about the Dark Peak anyway, and she didn't need him to point out to her that while roads made most of the White Peak accessible, its sister to the north could be traversed only by horseback, on foot, or by helicopter. If a hiker got lost or hurt up there, it generally took bloodhounds to find him.

“She said she'd marry you though,” Nan declared, more to herself than to Julian, it seemed. “She did say that she'd marry you, Julian?”

The poor woman seemed so eager to be lied to that Julian found himself just as eager to oblige her. “We hadn't quite got to yes or no yet. That's what last night was supposed to be about.”