Murder at the Mill

by M. B. Shaw

  Nothing. Angry more than scared this time, Iris walked round the perimeter of the cottage garden. Beyond it lay open fields and the river on one side, and the slope up to Mill House on the other. There were no obvious hiding places, and the garden itself was clearly empty.

  I must have imagined it. It could have been anything. An animal or a bird moving in the hedgerow. She was about to head back inside when she noticed that Dom and Marcus had stopped. Their two silhouetted figures against the skyline were clearly arguing, heatedly if the body language was anything to go by. Marcus was gesticulating wildly, sticking his head out and making jabbing motions at his father with his fingers. Dom started with his arms out wide, in a gesture of innocence, but as Marcus got closer, he, too, became aggressive. A few seconds later Iris was astonished to see Dom push his son, hard, in the chest. After staggering backwards, Marcus regained his footing and glowered at his father, before the two of them stormed off in opposite directions, out of Iris’s view.

  Bloody hell, she thought, hurrying back inside. What was all that about?

  Oh well. The Wetherbys could sort out their own problems. Iris had enough of her own. Steeling herself for the high possibility of the phone being answered by a drunken Ian, she called home and was so relieved to get the answerphone that at first she couldn’t think of what to say.

  In the end she blurted, ‘I got your message. I’ve been asleep most of the day. Sorry. Anyway, I wanted to at least say hello and merry Christmas. I’m not sure when I’ll be back. The portrait’s coming along…’ She stalled, painfully aware that she was rambling. ‘Look, Ian, I know we need to talk. I’ll call you in the week, OK?’

  She hung up, not satisfied exactly, but glad that an unpleasant task had been accomplished. Just a few minutes later she was rewarded by a new message on her mobile that wasn’t a drunk, angry husband but a kind and thoughtful new friend.

  ‘Hope your hangover wasn’t too awful this morning,’ the text read, followed by a sad face. ‘Just wanted to wish you a happy Christmas from rainy London. Love, Graham. P.S. Can I see you again?’

  A new friend? Iris laughed at herself. Who was she kidding? She was horrified by how happy she felt suddenly. It wasn’t so much Graham himself, lovely as he was. It was more the realisation that life after her miserable marriage might actually be out there. Happiness. Romance. New experiences. Hope. These things didn’t have to be fantasies, not if Iris didn’t want them to be. Last night at the Wetherby party, and right now, reading Graham Feeney’s message, they all felt not just real but tantalisingly close.

  ‘I want to see him again,’ Iris said aloud, trying the words out to see how they sounded.

  ‘I will see him again.’ The new, assertive Iris tried harder.

  After all, as of today Graham Feeney was a friend, nothing more. After the year she’d just been through with Ian, Iris Grey needed all the friends she could get.

  Chapter Ten

  At first Iris thought the sound came from the television.

  It was around six, and she should have been painting, working on the wood-panelled background in Dom’s portrait that for some reason she couldn’t seem to get quite right. Having slept through most of Christmas Day, she’d been determined to do something constructive (and also not to text Graham Feeney back until tomorrow morning at the earliest. Her life might be pathetic and lonely, but that didn’t mean she had to act pathetic and lonely. Desperation was never a good look). But before she could reach for her brushes, she saw in the ‘Culture’ section that Alibi was showing back-to-back reruns of Lewis all evening, and the lure of the aptly named Laurence Fox proved too strong.

  The episode had only just started, and Iris had nipped into the kitchen to grab a fortifying handful of Quality Streets when she heard it.

  A scream, distant but utterly blood-curdling.

  Hurrying back to the TV, she was annoyed to find the adverts were already on. Typical of her to miss the bloody murder! But then she heard it again, louder and longer and more distressed, and she realised with a lurching stomach that it was coming from outside. From the river. Someone must have fallen in!

  It was pitch-dark outside and below freezing, but without thinking, Iris grabbed a torch and opened the door, racing towards the sound. She wasn’t the only one. Tearing down the hill from Mill House came Marcus’s wife, Jenna, followed by Marcus and a ghostly-white Ariadne, who appeared to be in some sort of nightgown.

  ‘Lorcan!’ Ariadne shrieked, her own voice raw with terror. ‘Lorcan, what’s happened? Where are you?’

  The screams were louder now and more continuous, mingling with the constant rush of the river. Then suddenly their source became apparent – Lorcan, wild with panic, erupted over the top of the riverbank, sprinting for his life like a hunted animal. His head was thrown back, and his mouth was wide as the awful, anguished cries poured out of him. Iris reached him first and was almost mown over as he careened into her arms, still wailing.

  ‘Lorcan! It’s all right. It’s all right.’

  ‘No!’ the boy bellowed. His eyes were white with terror, and his clothes were wet. Had he fallen in and panicked? It must be freezing in that water, and terrifying in the dark, all alone.

  Before Iris could say or do anything else, Jenna, Marcus and Ariadne arrived. Bolting from Iris to his mother, Lorcan calmed slightly, but was still in a hysterical state.

  ‘Thank God you’re all right,’ said Ariadne, hugging him tightly and rocking him back and forth in a soothing motion, as one might a baby. ‘What happened, my darling?’

  Suddenly, out of the blue, Lorcan screamed again, a deafening, keening, awful sound.

  ‘Lorcan.’ Marcus took charge. ‘Calm down. Tell us what happened. Did you fall into the water?’

  ‘He’s dead!’ Looking from Marcus to his mother, Lorcan burst into uncontrollable tears.

  ‘Who’s dead, Lorc?’ Marcus asked calmly.

  ‘Oh my God, it’s Billy!’ Ariadne gasped under her breath. ‘He’s found Billy!’

  Her legs began to buckle underneath her. Instinctively, Iris and Jenna moved in, supporting her under each arm.

  ‘We don’t know that,’ Jenna whispered.

  ‘Who’s dead, Lorcan?’ Marcus asked again.

  ‘He’s in the river!’ the terrified boy babbled. ‘It’s my fault!’

  ‘Who?’ Gripping his little brother’s shoulders, Marcus tried to jolt him into coherence. ‘Who’s in the river, Lorcan?’

  Iris would never forget the wide-eyed horror etched on poor Lorcan’s face as he uttered the single, fateful word.

  ‘Dad.’

  PART

  TWO

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘So?’

  Detective Inspector Roger Cant looked at the medical examiner impatiently. Dr Linda Drew was a decade his senior, a tall, angular woman with a razor-sharp intellect and elbows to match, who made no effort to hide her disdain for over-promoted, wet-behind-the-ears detectives like Cant. She resented answering his questions, but she had to.

  ‘Suicide,’ she said curtly.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Quite sure.’ Dr Drew turned to go, but DI Cant stopped her.

  ‘How?’

  ‘How?’ The older woman looked down her long nose at him like a racehorse spotting an unwelcome fly. ‘He drowned, Detective Inspector. Tied a bloody great stone round his legs and jumped into the river.’

  ‘I know that,’ Cant shot back, irritated. ‘I mean, how can you be sure it was suicide? There was no note. No obvious reason for him to top himself.’

  The doctor winced at his crass turn of phrase, but DI Cant ignored her. He couldn’t have given a frog’s fart for her opinions, other than the medical ones.

  ‘Couldn’t somebody else have chucked him in?’

  ‘No.’ Linda Drew looked at him witheringly. ‘They couldn’t. I mean, theoretically it’s possible. But there were no signs of struggle. No bruising anywhere, no ligature marks, no scratches, nothing under the nails.
The physical evidence is clear. This was a calm and intentional act. I’d say Mr Wetherby had a peaceful death,’ she added, unusually for a woman who rarely offered any sort of non-scientific opinion.

  ‘Blood tests?’ asked Cant.

  ‘The lab’s closed today,’ said Dr Drew, looking at her watch impatiently. ‘We’ll have to wait for the more detailed stuff. But I did the basics here, drugs and alcohol.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He’d had a few Christmas drinks. Not enough to incapacitate him. The coroner will make a final ruling, of course, but all signs point to suicide.’

  ‘OK,’ said Cant. ‘Thanks.’

  Dr Drew disappeared down the corridor, her shoes clack-clacking imperiously as she went. Like Rosa Klebb, thought the inspector. Uptight bloody feminist. Pressing his snub nose against the glass in front of him, Roger Cant looked again at Dominic Wetherby’s uncovered face on the examination table. The ME was right. The famous author did look peaceful. Peaceful but white and waxen and very definitely dead.

  Why would a guy like that, a rich, famous writer with a lovely house and family and life, want to kill himself? It seemed so wrong. Not morally wrong but incongruous. Jarring. It was simply hard to imagine that Dominic Wetherby’s problems, whatever they were, could have been that bad.

  But then Roger Cant thought about other suicides he’d worked on and realised what nonsense that was. What about Lisa Kenny, the pretty fifteen-year-old straight-A student who’d hung herself in Deerham Woods because her boyfriend dumped her? Or James McPhee, a thirty-year-old surgeon, popular and newly married with no history of depression, who’d walked into the sea one morning, leaving a note for his family that simply read, ‘Life is not for me.’

  Life is not for me? What did that even mean? Such terrible, senseless waste was hard to contemplate, but the awful truth was, it happened all the time.

  Yes, Roger Cant was young to be in this job – not much older than poor James McPhee, in fact – but he was experienced enough to know that when it came to the human psyche, anything was possible. Dom Wetherby may have had the perfect life on paper, and his problems may have seemed inconsequential to others, but that told you precisely nothing about the man’s inner life. Every suicide was a mystery. An unnatural act. It was supposed to feel jarring.

  Outside the medical examiner’s office, on the outskirts of Winchester, the car park was empty. It was two o’clock in the afternoon on Boxing Day, and the rest of Hampshire’s finest were at home with their families, eating turkey curry and sleeping off their hangovers. Lucky sods. Only Roger and his well-meaning but useless sergeant, Pete Trotter, were working. (Roger Cant liked his sergeant, despite knowing exactly what Pete Trotter referred to him as, just like the others, whenever his back was turned. He didn’t take it personally. You couldn’t go through thirty-four years on earth with the surname Cant and have a thin skin about it. Not if you wanted a career in the police force, anyway.)

  Retrieving his keys from his pocket, Cant climbed into his Range Rover and turned the heating on full blast. Short and pudgy, rather than flat-out fat, with a snub nose and freckles that lent him an unhelpfully boyish air, the detective inspector was neither ugly nor handsome. If he had to describe himself, physically, in one word, Roger would probably have gone for ‘unobtrusive’. Which could be helpful, particularly if one’s business was either committing crimes or solving them. Don’t remember me! Roger’s reflection seemed to demand. I wasn’t here.

  As a look, it was less of an advantage when it came to women, although happily Roger had lucked out and married Dolly, his girlfriend from school, ten years ago, punching (as his friends frequently reminded him) well above his weight. They’d never had kids – Dolly couldn’t – but apart from that, their life together had been happy and solid and mercifully drama-free. DI Cant’s job provided all the drama and conflict he needed.

  The drive back to Hazelford would take about thirty minutes, maybe less on today’s quiet roads. Thinking time.

  It was only twenty hours since poor old Dom Wetherby had been hauled out of the water. The youngest son had found him. Some awful story about the child’s boat getting caught in the corpse’s hair, like something out of a horror film. But it was Marcus, the eldest, who’d managed to pull his father out, stone and all. His wife had helped, apparently, dragging the body up onto the banks of the Itchen. Both were wet and exhausted by the time Cant met them.

  He himself hadn’t arrived on the scene till eight fifteen, a full two hours later, having been rudely ripped away from a night on the sofa with Dolly by a call from the dispatch office at eight. But everybody had confirmed the sequence of events surrounding the finding of the body. The wife (widow now) and the lawyer son and the lodger, Iris Grey, who’d heard the youngest boy screaming at around six o’clock on Christmas night and rushed out to try and help.

  Only now did Roger realise that he’d forgotten to ask Dr Drew to confirm a time of death. Bugger. He considered turning the car round, but then thought better of it. After all, it didn’t really matter anymore. Dom Wetherby’s death was suicide, not murder. Dr Drew had been quite sure about that. She might be lacking in charm, but Linda Drew was a damn good ME who never rushed to judgement. A couple more days of paperwork, a rubber stamp from the coroner and the case would be closed.

  And yet Roger’s mind still turned things over as he sped through the frosty Hampshire countryside. Dom Wetherby was a writer, a man of words, and yet he’d left no note. Was that odd? Perhaps not. But it felt odd.

  With hindsight, the family’s reactions felt odd, too. Of course, they’d all been in shock last night, when DI Cant had turned up at the Mill and his guys had cordoned off the scene and removed the body. And yet, apart from the lad with Down’s, who’d actually found him, nobody had cried. Not the oldest son, or the wife. There’d been no hysterics, no obvious emotion of any kind, in fact. Just an eerie calm.

  Cant found himself wondering how the Wetherbys would take today’s news.

  He’d know soon enough.

  * * *

  ‘It was you, wasn’t it? It was bloody well you!’

  Marcus grabbed Billy by the shoulders and shook him forcefully, his usually controlled expression contorted with anger and strain. As if the last twenty-four hours hadn’t been terrible enough, now scores of news reporters had begun gathering outside the Mill, their vans and camera crews and microphones already clogging up Mill Lane and starting to draw a small crowd of curious onlookers.

  ‘What was me?’ Billy asked coolly. ‘What are you accusing me of, big brother? Go on, spell it out. I dare you!’

  ‘You called the press,’ Marcus raged on, still clutching his younger brother’s lapels. ‘It had to be you. How could you?’

  Billy had returned home early this morning, remorseless as ever and offering no explanation for his absence, to be greeted with the awful news about Dom. Ariadne had told him in the kitchen, still white and numb with shock herself. ‘We’re not sure exactly…’ Her voice trailed off. ‘The police are still down there. But poor Lorcan. I thought it was you in the river!’ she blurted, when Billy turned to leave the room.

  Billy had paused then, bitten his lip and said, ‘OK.’ That was it. OK. After that he’d gone upstairs to find Lorcan, who everyone was worried about because he hadn’t said a word since he woke up this morning and was refusing to move from Dom’s favourite armchair, where he’d spent the last four hours watching back-to-back Scooby-Doo cartoons.

  ‘Get off me!’ Stirring himself belatedly, Billy broke free of Marcus’s grip. ‘I didn’t call anyone, you prat. Why would I?’

  ‘W-well, who else?’ Marcus stammered.

  ‘How should I know?’ snapped Billy. ‘There’s a dozen police techs down at the riverbank, not to mention half a mile of orange tape. Any passing dog walker could have rung the papers. Or had you forgotten Dad’s the local celebrity?’

  ‘Stop arguing! Both of you.’ Ariadne’s voice was high and tight with strain. The reality hadn’
t sunk in yet, not fully. Dom, her Dom. Dead. That last, ghastly image of his drowned face, eyes rolled back, lips slightly parted, his skin slick and cold and grey as ashes. That would stay with her for ever. And Marcus, frantically tugging, dragging his father up out of the reeds and silt only to find that stone tied fast round his legs. Oh God, that stone! The stone that meant Dom’s death was no accident, a dead weight of guilt that must surely now drown Ariadne just as surely as it had drowned Dom.

  She couldn’t bear it. Or at least, she couldn’t bear it without Marcus.

  Ariadne needed Marcus now, more than ever. He couldn’t fall apart, couldn’t lose it, with Billy or with anyone else. He was the last solid, wholly good thing she had left.

  He and Jenna had both been troupers this morning, getting the children up and making breakfast for Ariadne’s father and trying to create some semblance of normality and routine in the surreal nightmare their lives had suddenly become.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you all.’

  It was the policeman, the detective inspector with a face like a naughty schoolboy, all freckles and chubby cheeks, and his gangly sergeant. When did they arrive? Ariadne thought. Jenna, who was hovering behind him in the doorway, must have let them in.

  ‘We’ve had some preliminary results back from the medical examiner,’ the detective inspector said.

  Cant. That was his name.

  ‘I thought you’d want to know right away.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Marcus, smoothing down his ruffled hair and taking charge once more, his loss of temper with Billy forgotten. ‘Do sit down, Detective Inspector.’

  ‘That’s all right.’ Cant waved away the offer politely. ‘I won’t intrude for long. But I thought you’d want to know we found no sign of foul play. No bruising, no struggle of any kind.’

  For a moment no one said anything.

  Billy was the first to break the silence. ‘So it was suicide?’ he asked bluntly.

  ‘The coroner will have to make an official ruling,’ said Cant, ‘but we found nothing that suggests otherwise.’