Murder at the Mill

by M. B. Shaw

  ‘What are the kids like?’ Ian asked, genuinely curious. ‘Can’t have been much fun being raised by a narcissist like Dom Wetherby.’

  ‘Dom didn’t raise them. Ariadne did,’ said Iris, biting back comments about narcissism, pots and kettles. ‘She is a bit weird, you’re right, but she’s a devoted mother. And the kids are all different. Marcus is quite serious and stiff, but I think he’s a nice guy overall. Billy’s very dark. And Lorcan has Down’s, as you know, and he’s such a sweetheart.’

  Her eyes lit up when she spoke about Lorcan in a way that Ian found he didn’t like. Or perhaps he just didn’t like that Iris was still avoiding having a real conversation with him. He tried again. Reaching across the table, he took her hand.

  ‘Why are you still there, Iris? Why won’t you come home?’

  Because I’m afraid to go back to the way things were.

  Because I’m afraid of us.

  Afraid of you.

  Ian was being so sweet tonight, so kind. But how long would it be before the cruelty came back? The professional jealousy, the resentment of her career, her life, her friends? Iris knew she was using Dom Wetherby’s death as an excuse. But it was a good excuse, and she wasn’t ready to let it go. Not yet.

  ‘I can’t come home. Not till I know more. There are things going on in that house, Ian. In that family. Secrets. I’m not convinced Dom Wetherby killed himself.’

  Ian pushed a piece of artichoke around his plate in a detached, angry way.

  ‘Because?’

  ‘Because he had no reason to.’

  ‘I disagree.’ Ian took a big slug of wine and grinned. ‘He probably read one of his own novels.’

  Despite herself, Iris laughed.

  ‘I’m serious.’

  ‘So am I. Why do you care, Iris?’ Ian pushed her. ‘If something sinister happened to Dom Wetherby, surely that’s the police’s job.’

  ‘Well, yes, but that’s the whole point. They’re not doing it.’

  The wine had loosened Iris’s tongue as well, and she found herself telling Ian about her bizarre car ride with Jenna Wetherby, and their shared suspicions about Billy.

  ‘I tried to talk to him, to get him to confide in me. Jenna thinks he fancies me and I think she’s right. He is so creepy.’ She prattled on, apparently unaware of Ian’s darkening expression. ‘Anyway, he gave me an alibi of sorts, although the friend he said he stayed with…’

  ‘Iris.’

  Ian’s voice was so quiet she didn’t hear, and continued explaining about Billy’s drinking problem and his supposed Christmas Day visit to A&E.

  ‘Iris!’

  This time there was no mistaking it. Diners from around the room broke off their conversations to turn and stare. Lowering his voice, Ian said, ‘Do you realise that all you’ve talked about for the last twenty minutes is Dom Wetherby and his damn family?’

  ‘You asked,’ Iris said defensively, sobering up at a rate of knots.

  ‘I asked when you were coming home.’

  Iris stared down at her empty plate. ‘I don’t know, Ian. I just don’t know.’

  ‘Have you met someone else?’

  Iris looked up and met Ian’s embittered gaze. She hadn’t expected that question. The first question had been hanging over them like a raincloud from the moment they sat down, but this took the conversation to a whole other level.

  She hesitated. Had she met someone else? Did Graham Feeney constitute ‘someone else’? Surely not. Nothing had happened, after all. Well, almost nothing.

  ‘You bitch!’ Iris’s pregnant pause was the last straw for Ian. ‘Here you are spinning me all this Nancy Drew, “I must find the truth” rubbish and all the while you’re having a bloody affair.’

  ‘I am not!’ protested Iris, her voice rising to match his.

  ‘You let me book tonight. You let me hope!’ he lashed out. ‘Thank God we never had a child, that’s all I can say.’

  Iris flushed an ugly deep purple with an emotion she couldn’t name.

  Downing the last of the wine, Ian added spitefully, ‘At your age, it would probably have come out duff, anyway, like Lorcan Wetherby. Nothing wrong with that boy that an abortion wouldn’t have fixed.’

  Iris didn’t remember leaving the table. She didn’t remember grabbing her coat and taking a cab straight back to Waterloo. The first thing she was fully aware of was sitting in an empty carriage as the last Winchester train hurtled through the darkness, the rhythmic rattle of the tracks echoing her own thoughts as she pressed her face to the cool, dark glass.

  Over and done, over and done, over and done.

  ‘I’m getting a divorce,’ she whispered aloud to the empty carriage, trying the words on for size.

  It was terrifying how comfortably they fitted.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Graham Feeney tossed his Italian leather overnight bag onto the four-poster bed and looked around the room admiringly. It struck him that the humble British pub had changed beyond recognition since his student days, when rooms over the bar would have been spartan, linoleum-floored affairs and the menu downstairs would have run to fish and chips and steak-and-kidney pudding if you were lucky.

  On the other hand, the Black Swan at Hazelford, aka the Mucky Duck, had probably never been your run-of-the mill boozer. For as long as Graham could remember, Dom Wetherby’s adopted home village had always suffered from delusions of grandeur. Not unlike the man himself, Graham thought wryly. His room at the Swan was lovely, beautifully appointed yet unassuming, like the best sort of boutique hotel. He was gladder than ever that he’d taken Marcus Wetherby’s advice and decided not to stay at Mill House.

  ‘Believe me, you’ll need some space by the end of the day,’ Marcus warned him. ‘The emotional pitch in that house right now is at a level only bats can hear.’

  It was only thanks to Marcus’s phone call that Graham was in Hazelford in the first place. The police still hadn’t released Dom’s body, ‘Which worries me,’ Marcus told Graham. As a fellow lawyer, it worried Graham, too. Something was up there. ‘But Jenna and I need to get back to London. I have work, and Lottie’s due back at school on Monday. We need to get back to some sort of normality. Try to, anyway.’

  The strain in his voice was evident. Graham surmised that all was not well between Marcus and Jenna, and he felt bad if this were the case. The two were well suited, in Graham’s opinion. Of all the Wetherby children, he’d always felt closest to Marcus, perhaps because he’d been named after Graham’s beloved older brother.

  ‘I’m desperately worried about Mum,’ Marcus went on, ‘alone there with Billy and Lorcan, dealing with it all.’ He briefly described Lorcan’s ongoing nightmares about finding Dom’s body and his obsession with ‘bad ghosts’, whom he thought were responsible or had harmed Dom in some way. ‘And Billy doesn’t help, always banging on about money and the will, as if he doesn’t care that Dad’s dead, which of course he does. As usual he blames poor Mum for everything. But he still stays on at the Mill. By the way, did you know Dad left him half the royalty rights to Grimshaw?’

  Graham hadn’t known that. He’d just assumed that Dom’s literary estate would pass to Ariadne. Those rights must be worth a not-so-small fortune.

  ‘Who got the other half?’ he asked.

  ‘Me,’ said Marcus, adding awkwardly, ‘Mum hasn’t said anything about it, but I don’t think she knew.’

  Graham had agreed that he would ‘stop by’ and stay for a few days on his way back up to Edinburgh. He would check in on everyone, report back to Marcus, and see if he could get any information whatsoever out of the stunningly useless Hampshire Constabulary, and hopefully help Ariadne begin the work of planning Dom’s funeral.

  Truth be told, Graham Feeney also had another, less altruistic motive for returning to the Mill. According to Marcus, who’d heard it from Jenna, Iris Grey and her horrid-sounding husband, Ian McBride, were heading for divorce. Graham knew one shouldn’t look on somebody else’s marital misery as a goo
d thing. He also knew that the early, painful stages of a divorce were generally not considered the most auspicious time to begin a new relationship. But he couldn’t entirely extinguish the small flicker of hope that Iris’s divorce had ignited within him.

  As terrible as it was to say it, under the circumstances, this was already shaping up to be a happy New Year for Graham Feeney.

  After a shower and a quick change of clothes, Graham headed downstairs to the Swan’s cosy residents’ lounge and ordered a fortifying pot of lapsang and a toasted teacake before plucking up the courage to call Iris and invite her to have dinner with him tonight.

  ‘I expect things will be tricky up at the Mill this afternoon. According to Marcus, his mother is in pieces. I could use a glass of wine afterwards, and some non-Wetherby company. What do you say?’

  To his surprise and delight, Iris had agreed without hesitation.

  Graham had had a few ‘serious’ relationships over the years, but none that had ever felt right enough to propel him to marriage. He’d been accused of being a commitment-phobe, and perhaps he was. Although truthfully, he didn’t feel afraid of marriage so much as uninspired by it. He’d never wanted children, and never felt that lightning bolt of lust and passion that seemed to bring such turmoil into the lives of other men.

  And yet with Iris Grey there’d been something. Not full-on lightning perhaps, but definitely something. A real spark. Perhaps it was only now, in this moment, that Graham had become ready for true love. A bit late in the day, some might say. But better late than never.

  He hung up the phone feeling profoundly happy.

  Graham Feeney’s luck was on the change.

  * * *

  Ariadne was in the kitchen, drying the same cup for at least the fifth time, when Graham walked in. In a wood-green polo neck and corduroy trousers, and with his newly washed hair smelling of old-fashioned Floris shampoo, he looked like a creature from another world. A world not haunted by death. A world where life continued.

  ‘Graham!’ Dropping the tea towel, she hugged him warmly. ‘What are you doing here? And how did you get in?’

  ‘The front door was open,’ he said, hugging her back. ‘You should be careful about that, you know.’

  Ariadne gave him a look that implied Hazelford wasn’t the sort of place where one needed to lock one’s front door and offered him a seat. He explained that Marcus had been worried about her, about everyone, and that he’d offered to spend a few days in the village on his way back up north, ‘Just to see if I can help.’

  ‘How sweet of you.’ Reaching across the table, Ariadne squeezed his hand. She looked thin and ill and old. No wonder Marcus was worried.

  ‘I saw a woman driving off in a red Polo just as I arrived,’ said Graham, unsure for a moment where to begin. ‘I wondered if she was from the police, or the coroner’s office. Has there been any news?’

  ‘Eugh. No.’ Ariadne sighed heavily. ‘The woman you saw was Dana, Lorcan’s therapist. They just finished another session together.’

  ‘How was that?’ asked Graham.

  Ariadne’s lower lip began to wobble. She bit down on it to stop herself from crying. ‘I don’t know, honestly. I feel like it’s one step forwards, two steps back. He’s still so anxious. And this obsession with ghosts … It started before Dom died, but since then it’s got out of control. He used to open up to Jenna a bit about it, but he won’t talk to me at all.’

  ‘That must be hard,’ Graham said soothingly.

  ‘It is. It’s awful. I mean, Billy never talks to me, and now Marcus has gone. To lose Lorcan, too. And Dom, of course…’

  The tears came then, silent but unstoppable, a steady salt river of grief. Graham handed her a handkerchief, which she took gratefully.

  ‘Since Jenna and Marcus left, Lorcan’s taken to pestering poor Iris down at the cottage,’ she sniffed, dabbing her eyes. ‘He knocks on her door at all hours of the night. Sometimes he’s screaming. I think he’s still half asleep.’

  ‘Night terrors,’ said Graham. He’d suffered from them himself after his brother, Marcus, killed himself. But he’d been twenty years old and of sound mind. How much worse, how much harder to process must this be for Lorcan, a traumatised child. ‘What does Iris do when he turns up?’

  ‘Oh, she’s been wonderful,’ said Ariadne, sincerely. ‘She calms him down and brings him back home. Sometimes she gives him a cup of warm milk and a ginger snap. She’s a sweetheart.’

  ‘And what does the therapist say? About Lorcan?’ said Graham, who suddenly found he didn’t want to talk about Iris, not in front of Ariadne.

  ‘That he’s feeling guilty.’ Closing her eyes, Ariadne leaned back and pinched the top of her nose, clearly emotionally exhausted. ‘That he blames himself for Dom’s death in some way, probably because he found the body, and that these “ghosts” are a projection of that.’

  ‘So creating these imaginary friends, so to speak, gives him someone to blame, you mean?’ asked Graham.

  ‘Exactly. Except in this case he’s blaming them for something he hasn’t done.’

  ‘But he thinks he has?’

  She nodded wearily. ‘That’s the theory.’

  ‘You don’t agree with it?’

  ‘Oh God, Graham!’ Ariadne exhaled loudly, frustration and anger pouring out of her now like pus from a lanced boil. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what to think anymore. All I want is to have the funeral and put this to bed and try to rebuild our lives. Meanwhile Billy’s wandering around the house with a pen and paper like a bloody debt collector, itemising everything: Dom’s watches, the Lowry he bought for his fiftieth. Anyone would think he wanted his father dead,’ she blurted, the tears threatening to come again as soon as she realised what she’d said.

  ‘Did he want Dom dead?’ Graham asked. He had the barrister’s ability to say the unsayable, but in such a softly spoken, matter-of-fact manner that it didn’t seem shocking at all.

  ‘No,’ Ariadne responded in kind. ‘Me, perhaps. But never Dom. He loved his father. No, he’s just doing his level best to hurt me.’

  ‘And succeeding, by the sounds of it,’ said Graham. ‘Look, I’m happy to talk to him if you think it would help. Or Lorcan. But I think in all honesty the most use I can be to you is in trying to get the police to pull their finger out and issue a death certificate, so you can have a funeral.’

  ‘Oh, Graham!’ Ariadne looked across at him gratefully. ‘I can’t tell you how much that would mean. I’m sure it would help Lorcan, too, to have some sort of closure. I know it’s a terrible cliché to talk about “laying someone to rest”, but that’s what it feels like. Dom can’t rest until there’s a funeral. None of us can.’

  * * *

  Iris walked into the pub and scanned the room looking for Graham. She wondered whether it was scientifically possible for other people to actually hear your heart beating through a crowded bar, with Robbie Williams’ ‘Angels’ playing loudly in the background. Hopefully not. On the other hand, Iris had failed GCSE biology twice, so what did she know?

  She still remembered how disappointed her dad had been when she got those grades. ‘I know you’re clever, Iris. You’re just not trying.’

  Robbie Grey was right: Iris hadn’t been trying. After a deeply chequered school career in her early teens, an unhappy period that had been heavily overshadowed by her older sister Thea’s bipolar disorder, no one had been more surprised than Iris’s teachers when she went on to achieve ‘A’s in A-level English, art and history of art and won a place to read English at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. Her mother, Helen, had burst into tears of joy the day Iris got her acceptance letter, which Iris still kept in a drawer at Mill Cottage.

  Dear Miss Grey, We are delighted to inform you …

  Less than five years later, both Iris’s parents were dead, her mother from heart complications and her dad from lung cancer. Iris knew it was irrational, but she couldn’t help blaming her sister for the stress she’d put their mother under, a
nd the misery she’d made of everybody’s lives for so many years. There was something else Iris blamed Thea for, too – something that only the two of them knew about, or ever would know about. Something too painful for Iris to recount, even now.

  The last time the sisters had seen each other in person was at their dad’s funeral. Iris rarely thought about the estrangement these days. Thea lived in Holland with her doctor husband, apparently stable, and Iris had made a life with Ian. Only now that that life had unravelled had she begun to think about her sister again. Getting to know Billy Wetherby had also brought back memories of the painful depths of Thea’s illness, although it all felt like lifetimes ago now.

  The pub smelled of spilt beer and sawdust, and Iris felt her stomach start to churn in accompaniment to her thudding heart.

  Get a grip, she told herself sternly.

  Ever since Graham’s call inviting her to dinner, Iris had been plunged into a flat-spin panic. Two solid hours spent rearranging her doll’s-house furniture had failed miserably to produce its usual calming effect, as had the single shot of tequila she’d poured herself at six o’clock, which instead had left her feeling dizzy and sick and with an uncomfortable burning sensation in her windpipe that refused to go away. Throwing every item of clothing she possessed down onto the bed, she’d tried each one on in turn, every dress, every sexy skirt, every sparkly top, only to end up back in the jeans and Zara Breton sweater she’d been wearing all day and racing out of the cottage in a panic she’d be late.

  And now here she was, not late – not very late – and no sign of Graham Feeney.

  ‘Boo.’

  Graham stole up behind her, his long arms snaking down around her tiny, doll-like waist. Iris let out a little yelp of shock.

  ‘Oh my God, don’t do that!’

  Graham smiled, then laughed. ‘Sorry. I didn’t know you were so easily spooked. It’s great to see you, Iris.’

  The smile reached all the way to his eyes, just as it had on Christmas Eve, the night they met.