by Ann Cleeves
“You were talking about your husband and the company.”
Barbara drank half a glass of wine very quickly. Her face was flushed.
For a moment Anne thought she would change the subject again but she took a deep breath. “I think Neville Furness has a vested interest in the quarry being sited on Black Law. His family own the adjoining land.”
“Yes,” Anne said, “I know.”
“And now I understand his stepmother is dead.”
“She committed suicide.”
“Did you know Bella Furness?” Barbara demanded.
“Not well. I’d met her.”
“She ran that farm. It’ll pass to Neville.”
“You knew her then?” Anne wasn’t surprised. In these scattered communities the Waughs and the Furnesses were almost neighbours.
“I knew of her.”
“What do you think? That Neville would sell out to Slateburn if planning permission was granted? That’s why he’s so keen for the quarry to go ahead? There’s not much demand for hill farms otherwise.”
“I don’t think he’d sell. He’s too canny for that. The most convenient access is through the farmyard and he’d charge for that. Any other route in is going to mean building a new road. In effect he could almost hold Goff to ransom, charge well over the odds for allowing machinery down the track!”
“Godfrey must be aware of that danger.”
“You’d think so, yes.”
“But?” Anne wiped buttery onion juice from her plate with a piece of bread. Barbara seemed distracted by this. Felicity must already have acquired immaculate table manners.
“But where Neville Furness is concerned he seems to have lost all his business sense. I’d like to know why Goff s so willing to accept Neville’s advice. It’s not like my husband. He’s usually a cautious man. He comes to his own decisions in his own time.”
“What exactly are you afraid of?” Reluctantly Anne pushed the empty plate aside and sat with her elbows on the table. “Blackmail?”
Again Barbara seemed disconcerted, though whether it was by the elbows on the table or the notion of her husband being blackmailed, it was hard to say.
“No,” she said uncertainly. “Of course not.” That at least, Anne thought, was a relief.
“All I wanted to say,” Barbara went on, ‘ that if you, or one of your team, were to find something which would have an impact on the planning inquiry, if you could recommend that after all the development shouldn’t go ahead … ” She paused. “Well, it would certainly be in all our interests, wouldn’t it?”
This was said in such a gentle, unassuming way that it wasn’t until Anne was at the front door, poised to run out into the rain, that she realized that what had been going on here, if not blackmail or bribery, had certainly been some form of corruption.
Chapter Sixteen.
She was driving back through Langholme when she saw Lily Fulwell in the Holme Park Range Rover coming towards her. Lily stopped abruptly and flashed her headlights. Anne wondered for a moment if something vital had fallen off the grotty Fiat, but it seemed that Lily wanted to be friendly. Anne was surprised. They weren’t usually on those sort of terms. Of course Lily knew who she was. They’d been introduced when Anne had first arrived at the Priory and Lily, newly married, had taken over the running of the big house. Occasionally they bumped into each other. Lily would give her a wave from the Range Rover if she was feeling charitable or exchange a few words in the post office after collecting her child benefit. But intimacy had never been encouraged.
Anne was adept at picking up social signs and knew better, for example, than to invite the Fulwells for dinner.
Today, however, Lily was unusually chatty. She got out of the Range Rover, leaving the door wide open, though it was blocking the lane, and a toddler, strapped in the back, was howling blue murder. Robert and Lily had three children and Lily prided herself on being a real mother.
There was always some sort of nanny in the background but Lily had done the play group shift, taken them to buy their own shoes, organized birthday parties. Now the two older ones were away at school, but she was always there for them in the holidays. That was the impression that was given. Anne had overheard Robert talking to Jeremy at some charity do. “We’re off to Austria. Lily adores skiing, but she insists on taking the little buggers with us. I think she’s a bloody marvel!”
Lily was younger than her husband, still only in her early thirties.
Apparently she’d been a child bride of impeccable pedigree. She had the complexion of a schoolgirl now, short curly hair which looked as if she’d just come out of the shower and a wide friendly smile which made people trust her. People who knew the family well said she was ruthless, very much the brains behind the Holme Park operation.
“I’m so glad to have seen you.” Lily was wearing a hand-knitted cotton sweater over jeans and a Barbour. The rain had stopped and the Barbour was unzipped. There was a stain on the front of the sweater which looked as if a child had been sick. “I’ve been meaning for ages to say you must come round for coffee.”
Before the start of the project Anne would have been delighted to receive this invitation. Now she wondered what Rachael would say if she accepted. The Slateburn quarry would be developed on Holme Park land. It was a joint venture. Liaising with the developers was Peter’s job. Or Rachael’s. Certainly not a humble contract worker’s.
Lily gave one of her generous smiles.
“I wanted you to know how much we appreciate what you’re doing. Robert and I both admire it. I mean the Priory seems so cosy and you’ve given it all up to camp out in that cottage in the hills. I mean we feel we’re on the same side as you, really. Holme Park’s the children’s inheritance, isn’t it? If you find something important up there we’d be the last people in the world to want to destroy it.”
The cries of the toddler reached a crescendo.
“Oh God, we can’t talk now. I always knew we should have stopped after Harry. Two’s enough for anyone. Or perhaps it comes so hard because there’s such a big gap.”
But it really didn’t seem to come very hard. She scooped the infant out of its child seat and fixed it onto her hip, jiggling it gently while she continued to talk. The cries subsided.
“Can you make it tomorrow? Elevenish? Or doesn’t that fit in with your work?”
By now Anne was curious. Sod Rachael.
“No,” she said. “Eleven will be fine.”
“Great.” Lily gave another smile. This time of relief? Or of a successful mission accomplished? Then she deftly strapped in the baby and drove off, hitting the horn in farewell.
On Wednesday and Sunday afternoons Holme Park was open to the public.
Anne had paid her three quid once to have a nose at the gardens, which frankly weren’t up to much, but she’d never been inside. Approaching the house the following day she wasn’t sure where to go. Perhaps she should go round to the back. She imagined that this coffee party would be an informal affair. They’d probably be in the kitchen, with the toddler doing something constructive and messy with paint and dogs sprawled on the floor.
But Lily was at the front of the house chatting to a plump young woman and when Anne hesitated, not sure whether she should park in the field which the public used, Lily waved her on. They didn’t use the grand front door with the stone steps and the porticoes, but she wasn’t shown into the tradesman’s entrance either. There were two wings, lower, less daunting than the main house, built at right angles to it, and she was taken into the entrance hall of one of these.
“I’ve just asked Arabella to take the horror out for a walk,” Lily said, ‘ we can talk in peace.”
Today Lily was more smartly dressed, though not, Anne suspected, just for her benefit. She had heard that Lily carried out most of the business on the estate. There would be meetings. The deal with Slateburn had been her idea. Robert had worried that it might affect the shooting and hadn’t been too keen. He was considered a sof
t touch, a financial liability.
“How’s Robert?” Anne asked.
“Out on the estate. A crisis with one of the tenants. He sends his apologies. Really, he’s so sorry not to be here.”
They had coffee not in the kitchen but in a pretty little sitting room.
The sofa and the chairs were covered in a pale lemon fabric which would show every mark and Anne thought it unlikely that the children were allowed to play here. After Lily had carried in the tray there was a moment of awkward silence which she must have taken as a failure on her part, because she gave one of her smiles and said apologetically, “Crazy, isn’t it, that we’ve got so much in common and yet that we’ve hardly had a chance to meet.”
Anne didn’t reply.
“Anyway, I’m so interested in this survey of yours. How, exactly, does it work?”
“There are three of us,” Anne said. “Three women.”
“Isn’t that unusual?”
“Perhaps. I’m the botanist. Rachael Lambert’s doing the bird work and Grace is our mammal expert.”
“Grace?”
“Grace Fulwell. No relation, I presume, but quite a coincidence.”
“Oh, there are dozens of Fulwells in the Northumberland phone book.
We’re a common lot. I expect we’re all related one way or another too.
Where does she come from?”
Lily’s voice was light but she seemed genuinely interested.
“I don’t know. She’s not very communicative.” Anne realized that might sound bitchy. She didn’t want to give the impression that the project was falling apart. Not to Lily Fulwell at least. “When you live and work on top of one another like that privacy’s important.”
“Oh yes!” As if a great truth had been revealed. “I do see.”
Anne talked Lily through the process of the survey, explained the system of the poles and the quad rats Lily listened intently and encouraged Anne to expand. Anne realized how the managers of shooting syndicates, the tenants and the businessmen could be persuaded to invest in her.
And where exactly do you intend to survey?”
“I’d like to do a couple of moorland sites, the peat bogs of course and I thought one square close to the lead mine. Sometimes the spoil changes the acidity of the soil. There might be something unusual. You don’t mind?”
“God, no! Go wherever you like. Absolutely open access. I explained yesterday that I think we’re on the same side.” She paused. “I suppose it’s too early to have come up with any results yet?”
“Much too early. I haven’t started the detailed work yet.”
“Ah.” She seemed disappointed and Anne thought that at last she had found the reason for this invitation. Either Lily was too impatient to wait for the full report or she was so much of a control freak that she wanted to see the results before Peter Kemp got his hands on them.
“Well, you must come again. Perhaps when you’ve something interesting to report.”
It was because she felt she had been manipulated, because she didn’t want this confident young woman to think she’d had the conversation all her own way that Anne brought up the question of Neville Furness. She introduced the subject clumsily.
“We were talking about connections and relationships earlier. I suppose it’s inevitable in a county with a population as small as this that everyone’s connected somehow, but it does seem a coincidence.
Neville Furness working for you then moving to Slateburn. And having an interest in Black Law Farm. More than an interest now, I suppose.”
“Isn’t it dreadful!” Lily opened her eyes wide in a gesture of shock and sympathy. She ignored Anne’s point about Neville having moved from Holme Park to Slateburn. “Poor Neville. We do feel for him. When’s the funeral?”
“Tomorrow.”
“We were wondering if we should go. To support him. But we’d never met Mrs. Furness and we thought in the circumstances he might prefer just family and close friends.”
“I suppose he’ll take on responsibility for the farm,” Anne said.
“I suppose he will.”
“The estate wouldn’t be interested in buying it?” The idea had come to her quite suddenly. She wondered why she hadn’t considered it before.
“Then if you get planning permission for the quarry you would control the access.”
“I don’t know that we’ve even considered it,” Lily said easily. “That’s Robert’s territory not mine.”
Anne could sense that she was preparing to move the conversation on to something safer, back to the baby perhaps, or an enquiry after Jeremy’s health, so she got her question in quickly.
“How did you find Neville Furness?” she asked in a gossipy, all girls together voice. “He was your estate manager, wasn’t he? I’ve met him a couple of times but I’ve never been quite sure what to make of him.”
Lily was too wily to be thrown by that. “Neville?” she said. “Oh, he’s a terrific bloke. A star. We were devastated to lose him.”
Then she did move the conversation back to domestic matters. The boys had just gone back to school after the Easter holidays and she was missing them like hell. Really, if there was any sort of decent day school in the area she’d have them out of that place like a shot, no matter what Robert thought.
At twelve o’clock precisely the young woman Anne had seen earlier returned. First they heard push chair wheels on the gravel then they saw her through the long windows. The child was asleep, its arms thrown out in abandon, its mouth wide open.
“I’m sorry,” Lily said. “I’ll have to go and retrieve the brat. It’s Arabella’s half day, but don’t feel you have to rush off.”
“That’s all right,” Anne said. “I should get back to work.” She knew that Arabella had been told exactly when to return with the child. Lily had allowed Anne an hour. No more.
She was reluctant to return immediately to Baikie’s. Rachael would want to know where she’d been and she supposed she’d have to confess to fraternizing with the enemy. She decided to call in at the Priory, pick up her mail, throw a few things into the washing machine. Perhaps phone Godfrey’s office and see if he was back from the conference.
The lane which led from Holme Park to the village had once been a private avenue bordered by trees, running through parkland up to the house. Now the fields on either side were fenced and farmed. At the end of the lane was a pair of semis, built in the twenties as suitable dwellings for senior estate workers and their families. By the side of the lane Grace Fulwell stood, staring at these houses, apparently transfixed.
Anne slowed down and pulled to a stop. Still Grace stared. She seemed not to have seen or heard the car.
Anne wound down the window, forced herself to keep her voice friendly.
“What are you doing here?”
Grace turned, came to life. “I was walking the stretch of river through the village. I’d heard about Holme Park. Vanburgh, is it? I thought I’d take a detour to look.”
From where she stood, if she had turned and looked up the straight avenue, there was a perfect view of the house, but it wasn’t Variburgh’s architecture which had Grace’s interest, but these modest cottages with their tidy gardens. More specifically, it was the left-hand semi with the child’s swing and the rotary washing line. Even now her eyes strayed back to it.
“Did you walk?” Anne demanded.
Grace nodded.
“It must be twelve miles from Baikie’s even over the hill. You should have asked me to bring you. Or Rachael. I’m surprised she didn’t offer when you told her where you were coming.”
Grace turned. There was a faint flush on her face.
“I wasn’t exactly sure then, where I was going.” “Tut tut,” Anne said. “You naughty girl.”
But Grace seemed not to hear.
“Well, at least I can give you a lift back.” “No,” Grace said. “That’s all right. I’ve not finished yet.”
So Anne left her there, still staring
at the house, her eyes squinting slightly as if she were looking through a camera view finder.
Well, Anne thought. It’s her funeral.
Chapter Seventeen.
“Bloody hell!”
The woman coming into the crematorium chapel of rest might have tried to close the door quietly but a gust of wind caught it and blew it shut with a bang. Anne had been daydreaming, letting the pious words wash over her, and she started as if woken suddenly from sleep. Though she had muttered the expletive under her breath she could sense Rachael’s disapproval. With the rest of the congregation she turned to see the middle-aged woman appear in the aisle, apparently blown in like the door. Anne followed her progress to a pew with admiration. She seemed untroubled by the stares, the curious whispers. This woman certainly knew how to make an entrance.
Afterwards, waiting outside for Rachael, Anne saw the woman again. She evaded the other mourners, slipped past them with remarkably little effort although she had appeared so big and clumsy in the chapel. Then she let herself into a top of the Range Rover which had been parked close to the main gate for an early getaway. Not a tenant farmer then, Anne thought. Despite the poorly fitting clothes and the supermarket carrier bags this was a woman of substance. A relative of Bella’s perhaps. They would have been of a similar age, could have been sisters. There was a similarity too, not of looks but expression, off-putting, secretive, rather dour.
“Was that Bella’s sister?” she asked Rachael. “The show-stopper with the bags?”
“I didn’t know she had a sister.” Rachael sounded peeved as if she was the only person in the world with any right to know if Bella Furness had relatives.
“Nor do I. I was guessing. Asking.” She paused. “Look, I’m going. I can’t face a jamboree at the White Hart and it’s not even as if I knew her that well. Besides, it was her choice, wasn’t it? What she wanted.”