Murder at the Mill

by M. B. Shaw

  ‘OK,’ said Graham. ‘And you’re telling me this because…?’

  ‘She’s a lovely girl.’ Dom shrugged. ‘Great-looking, a bit hippy-dippy, but clever, and her marriage is in the shitter.’

  ‘I see,’ said Graham. He’d forgotten Dom’s legendary tactlessness. Or perhaps just blocked it out.

  ‘You should have a crack at her,’ said Dom.

  ‘You make her sound like a nut,’ Graham replied dryly.

  ‘Well, if she is, she’s not a tough one,’ said Dom, either ignoring or simply not hearing the disapproval in Graham’s tone. ‘All she needs is a bit of love and attention and she’ll be putty in your hands, believe me. I know women.’

  Graham wasn’t sure if he was joking or if he really meant it. Dom could certainly be breathtakingly arrogant when he tried. But this was a bit OTT even for him.

  ‘I’m not sure I’m looking for putty in my hands,’ Graham replied calmly. ‘Especially not married putty.’

  He meant it at the time. But then Iris had walked in wearing those fantastic kinky boots and all Graham’s sensible thoughts had deserted him like rats from a sinking ship.

  Of course, he couldn’t act on it. Not with things the way they were.

  But still …

  Iris disappeared from view and Graham turned his attention to a conversation going on behind him. Two middle-aged men and an exquisite-looking young girl were sitting together on one of the sofas. The men were speaking Russian, and although the girl didn’t contribute, she seemed to understand them. In an alternate, better universe, Graham would have taken the girl to be the daughter of one of the men. In reality, however, she was probably a high-class hooker.

  Graham’s Russian wasn’t brilliant these days, but it was good enough.

  ‘He’s acting like it’s over with,’ the taller, uglier man was saying, bitterly picking at a dried spot on his face. ‘He doesn’t care.’

  ‘Oh, he cares. It’s an act. He knows what he owes.’

  ‘You think so? Did you see his new car?’ The first man snorted. ‘He hasn’t paid up, but he thinks he’s entitled to drop two hundred grand on a Bentley?’

  The shorter man shook his head. ‘You’re wrong. It’s all part of the act. Keeping up appearances. Playing the rich, successful author.’

  His friend grunted. ‘I hope you’re right. For his sake.’

  At this point Iris emerged from the loo and started weaving her way through the heaving mass of partygoers towards Graham. She’d reapplied her make-up, which had to be a good sign, and was smiling at him warmly.

  Pushing the Russians’ disconcerting conversation out of his mind for now, Graham turned his attention back to Iris Grey.

  ‘Is that for me?’ Iris asked, swiping the champagne flute out of his hands.

  ‘It is now.’ Graham beamed down at her, stepping out of the darkness and back into the light.

  * * *

  Ariadne touched Dom lightly on the elbow as he finished regaling a group of journalists with a very risqué story about the last BBC director general.

  ‘Can I borrow him for a sec?’ she interrupted softly, steering him away. Guiding Dom into the corridor, she waited till they were alone before letting her emotions show, the anxiety etched on her white face revealing itself like an ancient carving chiselled into chalk.

  ‘He hasn’t come back yet.’ She twisted the fabric of her sleeves in anguish. ‘Where is he, Dom?’

  ‘He’s just letting off steam somewhere,’ Dom tried to reassure her. ‘You know Billy.’

  ‘I don’t!’ It was almost a shout. ‘That’s the whole point. I don’t know him anymore. Neither of us do. I never know what he’s going to do next.’

  ‘He’ll be back when he needs us, darling.’ Dom’s voice was soothing and rich, like warm molasses. ‘How’s Marcus doing?’ He tried to change the subject. ‘Is he enjoying himself?’

  ‘He would be,’ Ariadne said crossly, ‘if Jenna would stop giving him such a hard time. Have you seen them tonight, squabbling?’

  ‘I’d stay out of it if I were you, love,’ said Dom.

  ‘Poor Marcus. He works so hard, but that woman’s never happy.’

  ‘Not like you, my angel,’ Dom purred, pulling her close, enveloping her in the strength and warmth of his embrace, his smell and the slow, regular beat of his heart lulling her into a deep, calm trance. ‘You’re always happy.’

  ‘No one’s always happy, Dom.’ Ariadne sighed. But she let herself be held and comforted. She’d seen that the Russians were here, but she didn’t have the heart to bring them up, not now. ‘I do love you, though.’

  ‘I know you do,’ he told her. ‘And I know you’re worried about Billy. But I promise you, everything’s going to work out all right.’

  ‘But…?’

  ‘Nobody knows,’ Dom whispered softly in her ear. ‘That’s the bottom line, darling. Nobody knows.’

  ‘Do you really believe that?’ Ariadne looked up at him pleadingly. She so desperately wanted this to be true.

  ‘I do,’ said Dom. ‘I really do. You must try to relax.’

  * * *

  ‘Isn’t it uplifting?’ The vicar, a nice but ineffectual young man from Sutton Coldfield, helped himself to another mince pie as he watched the Wetherbys embrace. ‘Especially at Christmastime, to see a long-married couple so deeply in love? So committed to each other, and to their family and their community. It warms one’s heart, don’t you agree?’

  Reverend Brian Glazier had only recently arrived in Hazelford and wasn’t yet fully up to speed on the rivalries and jealousies that ran through his parish like mould through cheese. As a result, he’d made the mistake of addressing this remark to Harry Masters. Harry occasionally obliged the vicar by playing the organ at church, so the Reverend Glazier considered him an ally at least, if not quite a friend.

  The piano teacher grunted something noncommittal as he watched the hateful Wetherby disengage from his wife and return to his cronies, grabbing a canapé from a passing silver tray and stuffing it greedily into his open, wet, rapacious mouth.

  I hate you, Harry thought. I hate you more than I’ve ever hated anyone in my life. I hope you die in a fucking fire.

  A waitress shimmied past. Declining the offer of a glass of mulled wine or champagne, Harry helped himself to another elderflower fizz instead and took a long, cooling gulp, as if the flavoured Perrier stood a chance of cooling the roiling volcano of rage that boiled within. Harry wasn’t about to risk getting tipsy and letting that bastard Wetherby and his fancy, too-clever-by-half London friends make him look foolish. Only last week at the reconvened council meeting, Dom had tried to patronise him, talking down to Harry as if he were a child, or one of Dom’s underlings at the publishing house that printed his Grimshaw rubbish. Of course, Harry had stood up for himself, giving as good as he got. At least, that’s what he’d thought at the time. Afterwards he’d worried that he might have overreacted. Allowed Wetherby to goad him into saying more than he should, or adopting positions more extreme than his own, real views. The idea that he had been manipulated, that Dom Wetherby had outsmarted him, burned in Harry Masters’ throat like battery acid.

  I know things about your wife that you’ll never know, Harry reminded himself gleefully. Dom Wetherby wasn’t the only one with secrets.

  ‘Is everything all right, Harry?’ Reverend Glazier asked.

  ‘I’m fine, thank you, Vicar.’ Harry’s gaze followed Ariadne, who’d moved back into the drawing room now to join her oldest son, Marcus. Ariadne’s father, Clive Hinchley, a slight, stooped, wizened little man with a face like a pickled walnut and the conversational skills to match, was also part of the group, leaning heavily on his wicker walking frame. On Ariadne’s other side, Lorcan hovered with a silver tray of caviar blinis, adorably proud as one of the ‘waiting staff’ in his church suit and tie.

  Harry tried to catch Ariadne’s eye, but to no avail. Once she was in ‘mother mode’, she had eyes for no one else. It was one of t
he things Harry most admired about her.

  ‘My goodness.’ Reverent Glazier tapped Harry on the shoulder again, determined to get his attention. This time, however, it was for something interesting. ‘Who is that?’

  Harry turned round. A very attractive, and apparently very drunk blonde had just walked in. In killer heels and a skintight gold dress that made the most of her figure, she staggered towards the bar, ricocheting off people and furniture like a glamorous gold bullet.

  ‘Merry Chrishmash to all, and to all a good night!’ the girl slurred loudly, before dissolving into fits of giggles. ‘Ishn’t anyone going to offer me a drink? Johnny, darling, how about you? Or you, Dom – there you are! The man of the hour!’

  She clattered noisily over to join Dom Wetherby and his cronies. Dom greeted her arrival with a smile so stiff it looked like the onset of rigor mortis.

  From their cosy window seat, Iris and Graham Feeney were also glued to the unfolding drama. It wasn’t just Dom who seemed upset by the young lady’s arrival. Marcus Wetherby looked like he’d seen a ghost. On the far side of the bar, Marcus’s wife, Jenna, put down her drink and stared at her husband intently, the frown she’d been wearing all night deepening as the woman in gold made more and more of a spectacle of herself.

  ‘Aye aye. That looks like trouble,’ observed Graham. ‘Who’s she?’

  ‘No idea,’ said Iris. ‘A colleague of Dom’s, I assume.’

  They both watched as Dom’s agent, Chris Wheeler, extracted himself from his conversation with Raymond Beatty and marched up to the drunken blonde.

  ‘Come along, Rachel. Why don’t the two of us get some air?’

  ‘I do know her,’ Graham suddenly blurted to Iris. ‘It’s Rachel Truebridge. She’s the ITV producer who works on the Grimshaw series. Or she used to, anyway. Christ, I didn’t even recognise her.’

  ‘Do you know her well?’ Iris heard herself asking, a preposterous feeling of jealousy sweeping over her.

  ‘No,’ said Graham. ‘I met her once or twice at things of Dom’s in London. She was very professional, very together. Nothing like this.’

  They both winced as Rachel staggered backwards, moving away from Dom’s fat agent, and lost her footing, almost landing flat on her back before one of the waiters stepped in to catch her.

  ‘Fuck off, Chris!’ Rachel snarled, loudly enough to bring conversations around the room to a shuddering halt. Everyone was watching now. ‘I don’t need babysitting. I need a damn drink.’

  ‘Who is that?’ Ariadne’s father, Clive, asked Marcus loudly, cupping his hearing aid.

  ‘She’s nobody,’ said Marcus. He started walking towards her, but Dom stepped in and put a hand on his arm. ‘I’ll do it.’

  Marcus began to protest, but Dom insisted. ‘Go to Jenna. I’ll handle this.’

  Gliding smoothly forwards, Dom placed a warm hand on the small of Rachel’s back and steered her gently but firmly towards the smaller champagne bar, near the garden doors. ‘Let me get us both a drink. Then we can get some air together, hmm? Walk and talk.’

  Looking confused, Rachel eventually acquiesced, and the party chatter naturally resumed as Dom helped her outside.

  ‘The poor thing’s had a few too many,’ Ariadne observed, smiling indulgently, as she drifted past Iris and Graham. ‘There’s always one, isn’t there? How are you two doing?’

  ‘Fine, thanks.’ Graham grinned. ‘Couldn’t be happier.’

  Iris smiled thinly. There was something jarring about Ariadne’s reaction. Something false. Worse than false. Something sinister.

  ‘Are you OK, Iris?’ Graham leaned forward, concerned.

  ‘Sorry. Yes.’ She pulled herself together. ‘I felt a bit woozy suddenly.’

  ‘I’ll get us some food,’ said Graham. ‘Don’t move.’

  * * *

  Outside, a figure watched through the sash window as a tall man appeared with a plate of bread and canapés, and began chatting to Iris.

  Her face through the glass looked like one of her own portraits, a picture in a frame. In profile, her head thrown back, she was laughing at the tall man’s jokes, like a giddy schoolgirl.

  Bitch. Heartless bitch. A little attention and she’s anybody’s.

  The figure shifted his weight from one foot to the other in the undergrowth, cold and uncomfortable in his hiding place. Raised voices made him turn. They were coming from the kitchen garden, or just beyond. Dom Wetherby and a woman, arguing.

  Emerging from the shrubbery, creeping along the shadow of the high wall to the very end, where the kitchen garden met the edge of Mill Woods, the figure saw them head into the trees together. Thinking quickly, he slipped into the wooden shed Ariadne Wetherby used for sculpting and bolted the door behind him, crouching below the window. It was the perfect vantage point, sheltered and silent, deep in the wooded gloom.

  ‘You think you’re God!’ the woman hissed at Dom. ‘But you’re not. And you won’t get away with it.’

  ‘I’m not getting away with anything,’ Dom snapped back. ‘For God’s sake, Rachel. You always knew this was going to end.’

  ‘Oh, it’s ended all right! It. Haszh. Ended. But on my terms, not yours, you bastard.’

  The woman was blind drunk. Staggering around like a newborn fawn at the edge of the wood, she could hardly stand.

  ‘I know your secrets, Dominic,’ she slurred.

  ‘Stop being so melodramatic. This isn’t a television show, Rachel.’

  ‘I can bring you down.’ Jabbing a finger wildly in the air, she lost her balance, falling to the hard ground with an audible thud.

  The figure waited for Dom to help her, to pick her up or at least see if she were hurt. Instead he just stood there, his voice dripping with derision.

  ‘Look what you’ve sunk to, Rachel. You’re an embarrassment.’ He started to walk away.

  ‘I know ’bout the Russians!’ she sobbed.

  Dom stopped in his tracks, but didn’t turn to look at her.

  ‘Go home,’ he told her sternly. ‘Before you say something you’ll regret.’

  ‘Is that a threat?’ She tried to sound defiant, but all the fight had gone out of her like air from a popped balloon.

  ‘Goodbye, Rachel,’ said Dom.

  The figure watched from the shed as the famous author strode away, back to his party, to the bright lights and noise of his beautiful house with all his beautiful friends inside, while the girl lay alone in the darkness, sobbing quietly. Eventually she heaved herself up off the frozen ground and slunk away, fumbling with her mobile phone.

  He’d seen enough.

  Tracing a line round Ariadne’s cold potter’s wheel with one finger, he began to whistle.

  We wish you a merry Christmas.

  We wish you a merry Christmas.

  He formed an imaginary gun with his fingers and with each ‘wish’ fired a pretend shot towards the house.

  We wish you a merry Christmas

  And a happy New Year.

  * * *

  By the time Dom returned from his walk outside, minus the drunken producer, whom he’d presumably managed to usher into a cab, Iris was feeling less sick, but still far from sober. She found her attention swinging, pendulum-like, between Graham, who was still being charming and funny and whose hand seemed to have taken up permanent position just above her knee, and Dom, who seemed oddly rejuvenated after his walk outside and could be heard throughout the party boasting loudly and animatedly to his daughter-in-law, and the vicar, and anyone else who would listen about how proud he was of the Grimshaw finale, to be aired on ITV 1 on New Year’s Day.

  ‘You’ll all be in shock, believe me,’ he announced, self-importantly and sounding more than a little drunk himself by this point. ‘There’s gonna be quite a twist.’

  Everyone clamoured at him for hints and spoilers, apparently quite willing to forget the embarrassing incident with the drunk woman. Only Clive, Dom’s elderly father-in-law, refused to let the Rachel incident go so easily, cont
inuing to demand noisily why the producer had been allowed in in the first place, if she wasn’t invited, and ‘what her problem was’ with Dom.

  ‘I don’t understand. Where is she now?’ Clive yelled, to no one in particular.

  ‘Grandpa, let it go,’ Marcus Wetherby snapped. ‘Perhaps you should go to bed? It’s getting late.’

  ‘I’m not tired.’

  ‘Even so,’ Marcus insisted, taking the frail old man by the shoulders with a firmness that unsettled Iris. Meanwhile, Dom raised his own voice to drown out the old man’s protests.

  ‘We wanted to give the TV finale a different ending to the book,’ he explained to his enraptured audience. ‘If we’ve done our jobs right, and I think we have, people’s jaws should hit the floor. Don’t you agree, darling?’

  He turned to Ariadne, who nodded dutifully. Something had changed since Dom’s little trip outside with Rachel. When he left, Ariadne had been acting as if nothing was the matter. As if Rachel Truebridge’s embarrassing behaviour hadn’t offended or affected her in any way. Now she looked as if she might be about to burst into tears at any minute.

  It couldn’t have been Dom who’d upset her. He wasn’t even in the room.

  Was it the sinister-looking Russian men Iris had seen hovering around Ariadne earlier? Or Harry Masters, who’d cornered her briefly after Dom went out and been shooed off? Or her father, Clive, with his loud, unwanted questions? Iris had been too focused on Graham Feeney to know what had happened. But something clearly had.

  ‘Look at Ariadne’s face,’ Iris whispered to Graham. ‘She looks fit to explode.’

  Graham laughed. ‘She’s just a bit tired, I expect. You’re always watching people, aren’t you? Always thinking.’

  ‘Not always,’ said Iris, embarrassed. She didn’t want him to think she was some sort of weird stalker type.

  ‘What are you thinking about me?’

  His voice had thickened and his face, suddenly, was just inches from hers. There could be no mistaking his intent. Iris felt a wave of desire, quickly followed by a second, bigger wave of panic. But before she could get the words ‘I can’t’ or ‘I’m married’ out of her mouth, Graham’s lips were already on it, kissing her just once, unbearably quickly, on the lips. It was all over in a second, and all so chaste! She wanted more! Much more. Or less. Or nothing, because she was still married, and very drunk, and the whole thing was ridiculous and—