I hadn’t seen or spoken to Jess since the early hours of Sunday morning. There was no official ban on our communicating with each other, but, with the continuous police presence in Barton House, neither of us felt inclined to do it. The telephone line was repaired almost immediately, more for police convenience than mine, but I was given permission to operate my laptop in the back bedroom when I explained that my boss in Baghdad deserved an explanation before MacKenzie’s name appeared on the newswires.
For three days, the back bedroom and the kitchen were the only areas I was allowed to use. Even the bathroom was sealed off for forty-eight hours while the U-bend was taken apart for forensic examination. The same happened in the scullery. I asked Bagley what he was expecting to find since both drains had had bleach down them, but he said it was routine. I pointed out that it was routine for me to take regular baths and wash my clothes, and with bad grace he ordered the plumbing to be reinstated on the Monday afternoon.
On Wednesday evening, I watched Jess’s Land Rover nose up the drive less than half an hour after Bagley had taken his leave. I remember wondering how she knew he’d gone, and half-suspected she’d been squatting in her top field with binoculars. The one thing I knew about Jess was that her patience was inexhaustible. It had taken one hundred hours of filming to capture the antics of weasels on a fifteen-minute video loop.
“I hope you understand why all this was necessary, Ms. Burns,” Bagley said as he left, offering me his hand in a gesture of peace.
I shook it briefly. “Not really. Is it a job’s-worth thing? Do policemen get chopped off at the knees if they don’t go through the motions?”
“If that’s how you want to see it.”
“I do,” I assured him. “Peter tells me he’s only been questioned twice…once to give his version…and the second time to confirm or deny what Jess and I said. That doesn’t seem fair when we were all witnesses to the same crime.”
“What happened before Dr. Coleman left isn’t in dispute. It’s how MacKenzie freed himself and vanished into thin air that interests us.”
I shrugged. “Perhaps he used his SAS training.”
“I thought you believed the SAS claim was a lie.”
“I do,” I agreed, “but it doesn’t mean I’m right.”
There was a moment’s silence before he gave an abrupt laugh. “Well, that’s something I never thought I’d hear.”
“What?”
“Ms. Burns admitting she might be wrong.” He eyed me for a moment. “I hope you and Ms. Derbyshire know what you’re doing.”
I felt the familiar flutter round my heart. “In what way?”
“Staying put,” he said with mild surprise. “I’m not sure either of you is strong enough to face MacKenzie again…”
THERE WAS something immensely reassuring about Jess’s scowl as she stomped into the kitchen and put a bulging carrier bag on the table. “I hate that bastard,” she said.
“Which one?”
“Bagley. Do you know what his parting shot was? ‘You’ve been thoroughly obstructive, Ms. Derbyshire’ ”—she screwed her mouth into a Bagley sneer—“ ‘but Dr. Coleman tells me you lack communication skills so I’ve given you the benefit of the doubt.’ Bloody wanker. I told him to get stuffed.”
“Peter?”
“Bagley.” Her eyes gleamed with sudden amusement. “I’m holding Peter on ice. Christ knows what he said to them, but it sure as hell didn’t do us any favours. Bagley seems to think we’re a pair of Amazons. Did he ask you what your sexual orientation is?”
“No.”
“I suppose I have the idiots in the village to thank,” she said without animosity. “He asked me if I thought it was worse for a lesbian to have her clothes taken off by a psychopath. What kind of question’s that?”
“How did you answer?”
“Told him to fuck off.” She started unpacking the bag. “I’ve brought you some food. Have you been eating properly?”
“Mostly sandwiches. The police have been ordering them in by the cartload.”
“Champagne,” she said, producing a bottle of Heidsieck. “I don’t know if it’s any good…also, smoked salmon and quail’s eggs. It’s not the kind of thing I usually have but I thought you’d like it. The rest’s off the farm.” She handed me the bottle. “I reckon you’ve earned a little celebration.”
I couldn’t resist a nervous look over my shoulder towards the drive. What would Bagley make of this? I wondered.
Jess read my mind. “Bertie deserves a toast,” she said, taking some glasses from the cupboard, “and your parents. I don’t see why we shouldn’t remember them just because Bagley’s got bees in his bonnet. Go on, open it. We’d all be dead but for you.”
That’s not how I saw it. “It was me who put you in danger in the first place,” I reminded her. “If I’d never come here, it would never have happened.”
“Don’t go feeble on me,” she said scornfully. “You might as well blame your father for going back to the flat…or Peter for showing up when he did…or me for leaving the kitchen. You should be on cloud nine.”
“Keep talking like that and I will be,” I said more cheerfully, peeling the wire from the neck of the bottle. “It’s unnerving to have you ply me with drink and compliments, Jess.” I popped the cork and poured froth into one of the glasses. “Are you going to have some?”
She inspected it as if it was devil’s brew. “Why not? I can always walk home.”
“When did you last have champagne?” I asked, wondering how drunk it was going to make her.
“Twelve years ago…on my mother’s birthday.” She clinked her glass against mine. “To Bertie,” she said. “One of the good guys. I buried him in the top field under a little wooden cross with ‘For valour and gallantry’ on it, and that bastard Bagley got his men to dig him up again to see if MacKenzie was underneath. Can you believe that? He said it was normal procedure.”
“To Bertie,” I echoed, “and a plague on Bagley. What did you say to him?”
She took a tentative sip and seemed surprised when she didn’t drop dead. “Called him a grave robber. Peter was there when they did it, and he gave Bagley hell…kept asking him how I could have smuggled MacKenzie’s body out of Barton House without anyone noticing. I don’t think he realized until then what a bloody great hole he’d dug for us. You know he repeated our conversation about chopping MacKenzie’s dick off? I got more questions about castration than anything else.”
I watched her thoughtfully over the rim of my glass. “Mine were all about manipulation and control. Peter told them I knew what I was doing…even to the extent of giving your dogs commands.”
For the first time ever, Jess defended him. “He was trying to give praise where praise was due. It backfired spectacularly…but he meant well.”
“What did they tell him we were saying?”
She flicked me an amused glance. “Men are a waste of space.”
“Well, that didn’t come from me. I might have thought it, but I didn’t say it.”
She nodded. “It was Peter quoting Bagley quoting me. I said something like ‘Men are useless in a crisis’ but Bagley milked it for all it was worth. Did you accuse Peter of releasing MacKenzie?”
“Not exactly. I asked why he wasn’t being given the third degree when he’d had the same opportunities that you and I had.”
“It was presented as a full-on accusation. According to Bagley, you bust a gut to implicate Peter, and it was only my evidence about timing that exonerated him.”
I took a mouthful of champagne. “Is Peter upset about it?”
Jess shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s being a bit odd at the moment.” She changed the subject. “Madeleine phoned him to say she’s coming down tomorrow. She spoke to someone in the village and they told her MacKenzie targeted you because you knew him from before. Now she wants to talk to whoever’s in charge of the inquiry.”
“Why?”
Jess shrugged. “Maybe she thinks t
here’s money in it.”
“How?”
“Cheque-book journalism.” She rubbed her thumb and forefinger together. “You’re back in the news—or could be if your anonymity’s blown. She’ll sell your story like a shot if Bagley gives it to her. She was pumping Peter for all he was worth over the phone. Who was MacKenzie? Where had you met him? She said she’d read that he was wanted for abduction in Iraq…and it wasn’t difficult to put two and two together.”
“What did Peter say?”
“That he’s been warned to keep his mouth shut in case it jeopardizes a future trial.” She picked up her glass and examined it. “He says Bagley’s bound to give her the details of what happened…if only to winkle out any information she might have.”
“What kind of information?”
“Anything. Madeleine lived here for over twenty years, don’t forget. I’m sure she’ll be asked if she has any ideas where MacKenzie might have gone. That’s the only thing Bagley’s interested in.”
Maybe champagne was as potent for me after four days of alcohol-abstinence as it was for Jess after twelve years, because my first instinct was to laugh. “Do you have any idea how much it would piss me off to have Madeleine muscle in on the act? People might think we were friends.”
Jess grinned. It was the widest smile I’d ever see on her face. “She told Peter she’s coming here first to see how much damage was done. Do you want to play my trump card?”
It might have been my mother speaking. Was bridge a metaphor for life? “Which one? You hold so many. Cousinship…Lily…Peter…Nathaniel…What matters most to her?”
Jess tapped her foot on the quarry tile floor. “Barton House,” she said. “Lily rewrote her will at the same time she reassigned power of attorney to her solicitor. She gave him complete freedom to realize any of her assets to pay nursing-home fees, but if on her death Barton House still remains in her estate it’s to come to me.”
I looked at her amazement. “So what does Madeleine get?”
“Whatever money’s left after all the bills have been paid.”
“I thought you said there wasn’t any money.”
“There isn’t…but there would be if the solicitor sold the house and invested the capital. It’s worth about one point five million, and as soon as it’s converted to cash it becomes part of Madeleine’s inheritance, not mine.”
“God!” I took a swig of alcohol to oil my brain. “So why is she blocking the sale?”
“Because she doesn’t know the will’s been changed. Neither of us was supposed to know. Lily only told me because she thought I was Gran. She said Madeleine would win or lose depending on how greedy she was…and if the house ended up with me then so be it.” Jess tugged at her fringe. “I told you it was a mess,” she said ruefully. “I tried to get Lily to change her mind, but it was too late by then. She didn’t know what I was talking about five minutes later.”
“Are you sure she wasn’t inventing it? Perhaps it was a fantasy will…something she’d like to have done, but never did.”
“I don’t think so. I phoned the solicitor and said, if it was true, I didn’t want to be involved, but instead of denying it—which he could have done—he said I had to take it up with Lily.”
“Did you tell him she was gaga?”
She sighed. “No. I was afraid he’d come piling in to take charge and the will would have been set in stone. I thought if I stayed away Lily might have some lucid days, and Madeleine would get back into favour. I even wrote to the silly bitch and told her I’d fallen out with her mother…but she didn’t act on it. If anything it encouraged her to neglect the poor old thing even more. She really did want her dead, you know.”
I wondered why she thought I needed convincing. It would take a lot to make me doubt Jess’s word on anything. You don’t face danger with someone only to start mistrusting them afterwards. “Why don’t you want the house?” I asked curiously. “It’s worth a bob or two. You could sell it and buy more land.”
Another shake of her head. “I can’t manage any more. In any case, Madeleine’s bound to contest it…and what kind of hell will that be? I’m damned if I’ll have a DNA test to prove I’m related to her. I don’t even want it known.”
“Have you told Peter?”
She shook her head. “I haven’t told anyone.”
“Not even Nathaniel?”
She took another sip of champagne, but I couldn’t tell if her look of disgust was for the liquid or for Madeleine’s husband. “No, but I think he guessed. When I told him about the power of attorney, he kept asking if the will had been changed as well. I said I didn’t know—” She broke off in irritation. “He really bugged me that night…said I owed him a second chance because he’d supported me through the folks’ death. Bloody joke, eh?”
I was tempted to ask, why that night in particular? Nathaniel Harrison would have bugged me every night. Instead, I said: “Was this before or after your letter to Madeleine?”
“After.”
“Then I’ll bet she put him up to it…or, more likely, came with him. Maybe they started on Lily and couldn’t get any sense out of her, so Nathaniel tried you. You take everything he tells you on trust, Jess, but—seriously—what kind of man would leave an old lady to freeze to death just because he was annoyed with her? At the very least, he should have had a rethink the next day and phoned you or Peter to check she was all right.”
“I know,” she agreed, “and I’m not trying to defend him, but if he told Madeleine about the power of attorney why didn’t she do something about it?”
“Maybe she did. Maybe she and Nathaniel put the fear of God into Lily to make her change her mind. If you want to coerce an old woman into doing what you want, turning off her heating supply is a good place to start.” I paused. “I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the last few days, Jess, and whichever way I look at it, I’m convinced Madeleine knows there’s a relationship between you. She’s too over the top about your family. If you’re not Down syndrome, syphilitic or servants, you’re tenants with bad genes who die young.”
“She got all that from Lily.”
“And the rest,” I said slowly. “Perhaps Lily felt lonely after her husband died and wanted to reconcile with her brother…and made the mistake of thinking her daughter would feel the same. Perhaps that’s what the allowance was about…compensation for being related to plebs.”
Jess threw me a withering look.
“It’s how Madeleine sees you. Lily, too, if you’re honest.”
“I know.” She glanced back down a bleak corridor of time. “She treated my father like dirt until Robert died, then she was all over him. Do this…do that…and he did it. I remember telling him he was embarrassing us. It’s the only time he shouted at me.”
“What did he say?”
Her eyes narrowed in memory. “That he’d expect a remark like that from Madeleine, but not from me. God! Do you suppose that’s what he had to put up with—Madeleine screaming and yelling and calling him an embarrassment? Poor old Pa. He wouldn’t have known what to do. He always ran away from arguments.”
“Did he know Lily asked you to take the photograph?”
She nodded. “He put pressure on me to do it because he said it would be kind. Lily was at the farm one day and saw some of my other stuff. She asked if I’d be willing to do one of Madeleine before she left for London. She wanted a portrait shot—the sort of things studios do”—Jess injected scorn into the words—“but I said I’d only do it if I could have the sea in the background.” She lapsed into a thoughtful silence.
“And?”
Jess shrugged. “Madeleine spent most of the time scowling or simpering—all the other negatives are crap—but that one came out OK. It’s weird. I started off being halfway nice to her, but it wasn’t until I told her what I really thought of her that she turned and gave me that smile.”
“Perhaps she took it as proof that you didn’t know you were related to her. That would make h
er smile, wouldn’t it?” I raised inquiring eyebrows. “She was probably worried sick while you were being nice…particularly if it was out of character.”
Jess’s frown was ferocious. “Then she’s even more stupid than I thought she was. What makes her think I’d admit to having a talentless slapper for a cousin?”
I hid a smile. “So stop bellyaching. Move on. Let her go.”
“Is that what you’d do?”
“No.”
“What would you do?”
“Get her to retract every bit of slander she’d ever spread about me and my family, then tell her to go fuck herself.” I tipped my glass to her. “Personally, I can’t see it matters a damn whether you’re a Wright or a Derbyshire—to me you’re Jess, a unique individual—but if the Derbyshire name means something to you then fight for it.”
“How can I?” she asked. “The minute I admit I’m a Wright, the Derbyshires cease to exist.”
I don’t know if it was a good thing or a bad thing that I couldn’t identify with this view. I certainly wasn’t as sensitive towards her turmoil as I might have been, but I’ve never viewed labels as much of a guide to what’s in a package. “If you want to be pedantic, Jess, they ceased to exist when your father was born. The last surviving member was your great-grandfather, an alcoholic blackmailer who saw an opportunity to grab some land and took it. It was probably the single most effective thing a Derbyshire ever did, but I guarantee the farm would be a wasteland today if your father hadn’t come as part of the deal.”
She stared unhappily at her hands. “That’s worse than anything Madeleine’s ever said.”
“Except the Wrights are no better,” I went on. “The only one who had any get-up-and-go was the old boy who bought the house and the valley, but his successors were a useless bunch—lazy…mercenary…self-obsessed. By some fluke, probably because your grandmother’s genes were so strong, your father didn’t inherit those traits—and neither have you—but Madeleine has them in spades.”
“So? It still doesn’t make me a Derbyshire.”
The Devil`s Feather Page 28