Fox Evil

by Minette Walters

  Mark's worries had increased a few weeks back when an answerphone had suddenly appeared on the Manor line, as if James's naturally reclusive nature now extended to a ban on all access. Letters, which had previously been dealt with by return, went unanswered for days. On the few occasions when James bothered to return Mark's calls, his voice had sounded remote and indifferent, as if the affairs of the Lockyer-Fox estate no longer interested him. He excused his lack of enthusiasm on grounds of tiredness. He wasn't sleeping well, he said. Once or twice, Mark had asked him if he was depressed, but each time the question was greeted with tetchiness. "There's nothing wrong with my mind," James had said, as if it were something he feared nevertheless.

  Certainly Mark had feared it, hence his insistence on this visit. He had described James's symptoms to a doctor friend in London, who told him they sounded like full-blown depression or post-traumatic stress disorder. These were normal reactions to unbearable situations: avoidance of social contact-withdrawal from responsibility-listlessness-insomnia-anxiety about incompetence-anxiety, full stop. Use your imagination, his friend had advised. Anyone of the Colonel's age would suffer loneliness and distress when his wife died, but to be suspected of killing her and questioned about it…? It was delayed shock. When had the poor old fellow been given a chance to grieve?

  Mark had arrived on Christmas Eve, armed with advice about bereavement counseling and the ability of mild doses of antidepressants to lift the mood and restore optimism. But he had prepared himself for sadness, and sadness was absent. Talk of Ailsa only made James angry.

  "The woman's dead," he snapped on one occasion. "Why this need to resurrect her?" On another: "She should have dealt with her estate herself instead of passing the buck to me. It was pure cowardice. Nothing was ever gained by giving Leo a second chance." An inquiry about Henry, Ailsa's elderly Great Dane, brought an equally curt response. "Died of old age. Best thing for him. He was always mooching around trying to find her."

  Mark's contribution to the holiday was a hamper from Harrods after his doctor friend told him that depression didn't eat. The truth of that was starkly obvious when he opened the fridge to store his brace of pheasant, pate de foie gras, and champagne. No wonder the old man had lost so much weight, he thought, eyeing the empty shelves. The freezer in the scullery was fairly well stocked with meat and frozen vegetables, but thick layers of frost suggested most of it had been put there by Ailsa. Announcing that he needed bread, potatoes, and dairy products, even if James didn't, he drove to the Dorchester Tesco's before it closed for the holiday and stocked up on essentials-throwing in detergents, bleach, shampoo, soap, and shaving equipment for good measure.

  He set to with a will, scrubbing and disinfecting the surfaces in the kitchen before mopping the stone-flagged hall. James pursued him like an angry wasp, locking the doors of rooms that he didn't want him entering. All questions were greeted with half-answers. Was Vera Dawson still cleaning for him? She was senile and lazy. When did he last have a decent meal? He wasn't expending much energy these days. Were his neighbors watching out for him? He preferred his own company. Why hadn't he been answering letters? It was a bore to walk to the post box. Had he thought about replacing Henry, and giving himself an excuse for a walk? Animals were too much trouble. Wasn't it lonely living in that rambling great house with no one to talk to? Silence.

  At regular intervals the phone rang in the library. James ignored it even though the drone of voices leaving messages was audible through the locked door. Mark noticed that the jack to the phone in the drawing room had come out of its socket, but when he attempted to plug it back in, the old man ordered him to stop. "I'm neither blind nor stupid, Mark," he said angrily, "and I would prefer it if you ceased treating me as if I had Alzheimer's. Do I come into your house and question your arrangements? Of course not. I wouldn't dream of being so crass. Please do not do it in mine."

  It was a flicker of the man he had known, and Mark responded to it. "I wouldn't need to if I knew what was going on," he said, jerking his thumb toward the library. "Why aren't you answering that?"

  "I don't choose to."

  "It might be important."

  James shook his head.

  "It sounds like the same person each time… and people don't keep calling unless it's urgent," Mark objected, raking ashes out of the fireplace. "At least let me check if it's for me. I gave my parents this number in case of emergencies."

  Anger flared again in the Colonel's face. "You take too many liberties, Mark. Do I need to remind you that you invited yourself?"

  The younger man relaid the fire. "I was worried about you," he said calmly. "I'm even more worried now that I'm here. You may think I'm imposing, James, but you really don't have to be rude about it. I'll happily stay in a hotel for the night, but I'm not leaving till I'm satisfied you're looking after yourself properly. What does Vera do, for Christ's sake? When did you last have a fire? Do you want to die of hypothermia like Ailsa?"

  His remarks were greeted with silence and he turned his head to assess the reaction.

  "Oh lord," he said in distress as he saw tears in the old man's eyes. He stood up and laid a sympathetic hand on James's arm. "Look, everyone suffers from depression at some time or another. It's nothing to be ashamed of. Can't I persuade you to talk to your doctor, at least? There are various ways of dealing with it… I've brought some leaflets for you to read… all the advice says the worst thing to do is suffer in silence."

  James pulled his arm away abruptly. "You're very keen to persuade me I'm mentally ill," he muttered. "Why is that? Have you been talking to Leo?"

  "No," said Mark in surprise, "I haven't spoken to him since before the funeral." He shook his head in perplexity. "What difference would it have made if I had? You won't be ruled incompetent just because you're depressed… and, even if you were, enduring power of attorney is invested in me. There's no way Leo can register with the Court of Protection unless you revoke the document I hold and issue one in his name. Is that what's been worrying you?"

  A strangled laugh caught in James's throat. "Hardly worrying me," he said bitterly before dropping into a chair and lapsing into a morose silence.

  With a resigned sigh, Mark squatted down again to light the fire. When Ailsa was alive the house had run like clockwork. Mark had spent a couple of working holidays in Dorset, "learning" the estate, and he'd thought his ship had come in. Old money-well invested; rich clients-without pretensions; people he liked-with chemistry that worked. Even after Ailsa's death the bond with James had remained strong. He'd held the old man's hand throughout his questioning, and he'd come to know him better than his own father.

  Now he felt estranged. He had no idea if a bed was made up. It seemed unlikely, and he didn't fancy poking around looking for sheets. In the past he had stayed in the "blue" room where the walls were covered in photographs from the nineteenth century, and the shelves were filled with family diaries and leather-bound legal documents relating to the lobster industry that had flourished in Shenstead Valley during James's great-grandfather's tenure. "This room was made for you," Ailsa told him the first time he came. "Your two favorite subjects-history and law. The diaries are old and dusty, my dear, but they deserve a read."

  He had felt more saddened by Ailsa's death than he'd ever been able to say because he, too, had not been given time to grieve. So much turbulent anguish had surrounded the event-some of it affecting him personally-that he had retreated into coolness in order to cope. He had loved her for a number of reasons: her kindness, her humor, her generosity, her interest in him as a person. What he had never understood was the gulf that existed between her and her children.

  Occasionally she talked of siding with James, as if the breach were not of her making, but more usually she cited Leo's sins of omission and commission. "He kept stealing from us," she said once, "things that we didn't notice… most of them quite valuable. It made James so angry when he finally found out. He accused Vera… it made for a lot of unpleasantness." Sh
e fell into a troubled silence.

  "What happened?"

  "Oh, the usual," she sighed. "Leo owned up. He thought it was very funny. 'How would an idiot like Vera know what was valuable?' he said. Poor woman-I think Bob gave her a black eye over it because he was afraid they'd lose the Lodge. It was awful… she treated us as tyrants from then on."

  "I thought Leo was fond of Vera. Didn't she look after him and Elizabeth when you were away?"

  "I don't think he had any feelings for her-he doesn't have feelings for anyone except possibly Elizabeth-but Vera adored him, of course… called him her 'blue-eyed darling' and let him wrap her round his little finger."

  "Did she never have children of her own?"

  Ailsa shook her head. "Leo was her surrogate son. She bent over backward to protect him, which wasn't a good thing in retrospect."

  "Why?"

  "Because he used her against us."

  "What did he do with the money?"

  "The usual," she repeated dryly. "Blew it on gambling."

  On another occasion: "Leo was a very clever child. His IQ was 145 when he was eleven. I've no idea where it came from-James and I are very average-but it caused terrible problems. He thought he could get away with anything, particularly when he discovered how easy it was to manipulate people. Of course, we asked ourselves where we went wrong. James blames himself for not taking a stronger line earlier. I blame the fact that we were abroad so often and had to rely on the school to control him." She shook her head. "The truth is simpler, I think. An idle brain is the devil's workshop, and Leo was never interested in hard work."

  Of Elizabeth: "She lived in Leo's shadow. It made her desperate for attention, poor child. She adored her father, and used to throw tantrums whenever he was in uniform, presumably because she knew it meant he was going away again. I remember once, when she was eight or nine, she cut the legs off his regimental trousers. He was furious with her, and she screamed and yelled and said he deserved it. When I asked her why, she said she hated him dressed up." Another shake of her head. "She had a very disturbed adolescence. James blamed Leo for introducing her to his friends… I blamed our absences. We lost her effectively by the time she turned eighteen. We set her up in a flat with some girlfriends but most of what we were told about her lifestyle was lies."

  She was ambivalent about her own feelings. "It's impossible to stop loving your children," she told him. "You always hope things will change for the better. The trouble is, somewhere along the line they abandoned the values we taught them and decided the world owed them a living. It's led to so much resentment. They think it's their father's bloody-mindedness that's caused the money to dry up instead of recognizing that they took the pail to the well once too often."

  Mark sat back on his heels as the fire roared to life. His own feelings for Leo and Elizabeth were anything but ambivalent. He disliked them intensely. Far from taking the pail to the well once too often, they had installed permanent taps that worked through emotional blackmail, family honor, and parental guilt. His own view was that Leo was a psychopath with a gambling addiction, and Elizabeth was a nymphomaniac with an alcohol problem. Nor could he see any "mitigating circumstances" for their behavior. They had been given every advantage in life, and had failed spectacularly to build on them.

  Ailsa had been putty in their hands for years, torn between maternal love and maternal guilt for her failures. To her, Leo was the same blue-eyed boy that Vera adored, and all James's attempts to contain his son's excesses had been met with pleas to give him a "second chance." It was no surprise that Elizabeth had been desperate for attention, no surprise either that she was incapable of sustaining relationships. Leo's personality dominated the family. His mood swings created strife or calm. At no point was anyone allowed to forget his existence. When he wanted, he could charm the birds from trees; when he didn't, he made life miserable for everyone. Including Mark…

  The sound of the phone intruded into his thoughts, and he glanced up to find James looking at him.

  "You'd better go and listen," the Colonel said, offering him a key. "They might stop if they see you in the library."

  "Who?"

  A tired shake of the head. "They obviously know you're here," was his only answer.

  When he first entered the room, Mark assumed the caller had hung up till he leaned toward the answerphone on the desk and heard the sound of stealthy breathing through the amplifier. He lifted the receiver. "Hello?" No response. "Hello?… hello?…" The line went dead. What on earth…?

  Out of habit, he dialed 1471 and scouted 'round for a pen to jot down the caller's number. It was an unnecessary exercise, he realized, as he listened to the computerized voice and noticed a piece of card, propped against an old-fashioned inkstand, with the same number alongside the name "Prue Weidon" already written on it. Puzzled, he replaced the receiver.

  The answerphone was an old-fashioned one with tapes rather than voicemail. A light flashed at the side, indicating messages, with the number 5 showing in the "calls" box. Miniature tape boxes were piled in stacks behind the machine, and a quick search showed that each one was dated, suggesting a permanent record rather than regular erasure. Mark pressed the "new messages" button and listened to the tape rewinding.

  After a couple of clicks, a woman's voice filled the speaker.

  "You won't be able to pretend innocence much longer… not if your solicitor listens to these messages. You think by ignoring us we'll go away… but we won't. Does Mr. Ankerton know about the child? Does he know there's living proof of what you did? Who does she take after, do you think…? You? Or her mother? It's all so easy with DNA… just one hair will prove you a liar and a murderer. Why didn't you tell the police that Ailsa went to London to talk to Elizabeth the day before she died? Why won't you admit that she called you insane because Elizabeth told her the truth…? It's why you hit her… it's why you killed her… How do you think your poor wife felt to find out that her only grandchild was your daughter…?"

  After that, Mark had little choice but to stay. In a bizarre reversal of roles, it was James who now set out to reassure. He hoped Mark understood that none of it was true. James wouldn't have kept the tapes if there was any question of guilt. It had started in the middle of November, two or three calls a day accusing him of all manner of beastliness. Recently the frequency of the disturbance had risen, with the phone ringing through the night to stop him sleeping.

  This fact was certainly true. Even though the bell was muffled by the shut library door and the phones in other rooms had been disconnected, Mark, infinitely more sensitive to the sound than his host, lay awake, his ears waiting for the distant jangle. It was a relief each time it came. He told himself he had an hour to try for sleep before the next one, and each time his brain went into overdrive. If none of it were true, why was James so frightened? Why hadn't he told Mark when it first began? And how-why?-did he endure it?

  Some time during the night the smell of burning pipe tobacco told him James was awake. He toyed with the idea of getting up and talking to him, but his thoughts were too confused to attempt a discussion in the dark hours. It was a while before he questioned how he could smell tobacco when James's room was on the other side of the house, and curiosity drew him to his window, where a pane was open. He saw with astonishment that the old man was sitting on the terrace where Ailsa had died, swathed in a heavy coat.

  On Christmas morning, James made no mention of his vigil. Instead he took the trouble to spruce himself up with a bath, a shave, and clean clothes, as if to persuade Mark that he had slept soundly in recognition that personal care, or rather the lack of it, was an indication of a disordered mind. He made no objection when Mark insisted on playing the tapes in order to understand what was going on-he said it was one of the reasons why he had made them-but reminded Mark that it was all lies.

  The difficulty for Mark was that he knew much of it wasn't. Various details were constantly repeated, and he knew for a fact they were true. Ailsa's trip to
London the day before she died… the constant references to Elizabeth's hatred of her father in uniform… James's fury that the child had been put up for adoption instead of aborted… Prue Weldon's certainty that she had heard Ailsa accuse James of destroying her daughter's life… the undeniable fact that Elizabeth was a damaged woman… the suggestion that if the grandchild were found she might resemble James…

  One of the voices on tape was disguised with an electronic distorter. It sounded like Darth Vader's. It was the most chilling and the best informed. There was no escaping the conclusion that it was Leo. There were too many historical descriptions, in particular of Elizabeth's bedroom when she was a child, for a stranger to know: her teddy bear, called Ringo after the Beatles' drummer, which she still had in her London house; the posters of Marc Bolan and T-Rex on her walls, which Ailsa had carefully stored because someone had told her they were valuable; the predominant color of her patchwork bedspread-blue-which had since been moved to the spare room…

  Mark knew that just by questioning James he was giving the impression that his mind was open to the allegations of incest. Even his assertion at the outset that the calls were clearly malicious was qualified by his admission that he didn't understand what the intention was. If it was Leo, what was he hoping to achieve? If it was blackmail, why didn't he make demands? Why involve other people? Who was the woman who seemed to know so much? Why did Prue Weldon never say anything? How could anyone unconnected with the family know so many details about it?

  Everything he said sounded halfhearted, more so when James flatly refused to involve the police because he didn't want Ailsa's death "resurrected" in the press. Indeed, resurrection seemed to be an obsession with him. He didn't want Mark resurrecting Elizabeth's "blasted teddy bear" or the row over the adoption. He didn't want Leo's thieving resurrected. It was history, over and done with, and had no relevance to this campaign of terror. And, yes, of course he knew why it was happening. Those damned women-Prue Weldon and Eleanor Bartlett-wanted him to admit he'd murdered Ailsa.