Murder at the Mill

by M. B. Shaw

  ‘There you are! I’ve been hunting for you everywhere.’

  Jenna, looking less deathly pale than she had in the church, suddenly burst in. Perhaps she’d been fortified by the large glass of white wine she was holding.

  ‘If you’re searching for clues in here, I’d be careful if I were you,’ she told Iris, lowering herself into Dom’s favourite armchair, and apparently not registering Iris’s shock. ‘That knob-end Cant’s only a few feet down the hall. He’s already complained to Marcus about “busybodies” hampering his investigation. I assume that means you, as I’ve been well and truly put back in my box.’

  She said it with a smile, but Iris could tell that Jenna’s jokiness hid a real pain.

  ‘I’m not searching for anything,’ said Iris, perching on the desk opposite her. ‘I was just returning some mementos Ariadne gave me. I didn’t want to bother her.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Jenna said bitterly. ‘Heaven forbid my mother-in-law should be bothered. By anything. Ever.’

  And with this caustic remark, the dam burst. It all came out then: how dreadful the last couple of weeks had been with Marcus. How Jenna knew he was lying to her, knew he was keeping secrets, yet he persisted in treating her like the enemy. Finally she told Iris about her suspicions regarding Rachel Truebridge – their furtive, hostile glances in church earlier, Marcus’s overblown reaction when Rachel turned up drunk to the Christmas Eve party, his late-night disappearance before Christmas and the still-unexplained scratch on his face.

  ‘I think he’s having an affair. On Christmas Eve I assumed he was worried about Rachel upsetting his mother. I just assumed it was Dom having the affair, and Marcus didn’t want Ariadne to find out or be embarrassed or whatever. I mean, Rachel was Dom’s producer, and Dom’s type, and that was the sort of thing Dom did. And Marcus barely knew her, right?’

  ‘Right,’ said Iris.

  ‘No! Wrong!’ Jenna was getting agitated again. ‘He knew her. He knows her. I don’t know how, but I am telling you, what I saw in that church – my husband knows that woman, intimately. He’s having an affair, Iris. I know it!’

  ‘You don’t know it,’ said Iris. ‘You suspect it. And maybe you’re right, I don’t know, but there’s a big difference. You suspected Billy, remember? We both did. But we were wrong.’

  Jenna frowned. This was news to her. ‘Were we? Why? What’s happened since I left?’

  Iris gave her a potted history of the last two weeks, culminating in the fact that, unlike Billy, Harry Masters had no alibi for the afternoon in question and more than enough motive.

  ‘Harry wouldn’t have been strong enough to overpower Dom alone,’ Iris admitted. ‘But if Dom were drugged, and if he had help?’

  Jenna looked sceptical.

  ‘I’m not saying it’s likely. Just possible,’ said Iris. ‘Harry’s also very close to Ariadne, closer than people think.’ She told Jenna about seeing the two of them together, and about Harry’s insinuations that Ariadne might have experienced some childhood abuse at the hands of her father.

  Jenna’s eyes widened. ‘From Clive?! Are you sure? That sounds highly unlikely to me.’

  ‘I’m not saying it’s true,’ said Iris. ‘Only that Harry Masters thinks it is. And only one person could have put that idea into his head.’

  Jenna digested this.

  ‘I think Ariadne has Harry wrapped round her little finger,’ Iris went on. ‘In Harry’s mind, she’s a damsel in distress and he’s her knight in shining armour. Her hero. Her saviour.’

  ‘Yes, but … even if that’s true … Ariadne didn’t want Dom dead,’ said Jenna. ‘She and I have our differences, heaven knows, but I’m certain she loved Dom. More than he deserved, actually.’

  A commotion outside the study door stopped both women in their tracks.

  ‘What on earth…?’ said Iris.

  Jenna opened the door just in time to see a man in a suit roll past her, flying down the corridor like a bowling ball. Next came Billy like a fury, his shirtsleeves rolled up ready for the next punch, shouting loudly.

  ‘You shit! You bastard! You won’t get away with this.’

  The man in the suit scrambled to his feet, revealing himself to be James Smythe, Dom’s executor. A thin trickle of blood ran down to his chin from his swollen lower lip, where a purple bruise was already forming.

  ‘You’re a bloody madman,’ Smythe swore at Billy, wiping the blood on his sleeve. ‘Touch me again and I’ll call the police.’

  ‘No need for that.’ DI Cant stepped forward from the huddle of spectators who’d gathered to watch the drama. ‘Step back, please, sir.’ He glared at Billy. ‘And put your hands where I can see them.’

  Billy complied, still yelling at the lawyer. ‘I swear to God you won’t get away with it! How much is my brother paying you?’

  ‘What on earth’s going on?’ Ariadne arrived on the scene, followed swiftly by Marcus and Graham.

  Billy turned on her furiously. ‘As if you don’t know! Marcus has only gone behind my back and challenged the will. He’s trying to cut me out of the Grimshaw rights. He’s claiming I’m “mentally unfit”, and you’re helping him!’

  ‘That’s not true,’ said Ariadne, distressed. ‘I am worried about your mental state. Managing Dad’s literary estate is a huge pressure, Billy. But no one’s trying to “cut you out” of anything. You’d still maintain a life interest in the money. Marcus would simply be managing your share.’

  ‘Liar!’ snarled Billy.

  Cant rounded on him. ‘One more word out of you and I’m taking you down the station. Do you understand? Zip it.’ Turning to James Smythe, he asked, ‘Would you like to press charges, sir?’

  The lawyer looked from the still-glaring Billy to Ariadne, who appeared close to tears, to a shell-shocked Marcus. ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘That won’t be necessary. But someone needs to get him under control.’

  Graham Feeney stepped forward and took Billy by the arm, catching Iris’s eye briefly as he led him away. ‘Come on,’ Graham said kindly. ‘Let’s get some air.’

  ‘I don’t want some fucking air,’ Billy muttered, although he allowed himself to be guided by Graham. ‘My so-called brother just robbed me of two million pounds!’

  The drama over, people began to drift away. Jenna put an arm around Ariadne as they returned to the drawing room, and Marcus was about to follow them when Cant laid a restraining hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Could I have a quick word, sir?’

  ‘Of course.’ Marcus smiled tightly, clearly wanting to get back to the guests, but not wishing to antagonise the policeman any further. ‘How can I help?’

  ‘Is it true your brother’s being cut out of your father’s will?’

  ‘No.’ Marcus frowned. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘But the two of you were left the rights to his literary estate? In equal shares?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And that must be worth, what? Four million? Five?’

  ‘Something like that,’ Marcus snapped, wondering how the detective knew so much detail about Dom’s estate. ‘But everything’s been left in trust, and it’s part of the trustees’ job to ensure that all beneficiaries are in a fit mental state to be able to manage money. I appealed to the trustees to have Billy assessed by a psychiatrist. That’s all. He’s perfectly at liberty to make the same request about me.’

  ‘I see.’ Cant’s expression darkened. ‘And you didn’t think that the family questioning Billy’s sanity might be something of interest to the police? Given that your father has just been murdered, your brother has a criminal record, and we know the two of them were at odds in the days before your father died?’

  ‘No,’ Marcus replied bluntly. ‘I didn’t. Because I know for a fact that Billy had nothing whatsoever to do with Dad’s death.’

  ‘Oh really? How do you know that?’

  ‘For one thing, he wasn’t even here on Christmas Day,’ said Marcus.

  ‘But you were,’ said Cant. ‘Run me th
rough your movements that afternoon again, Mr Wetherby.’

  Marcus sighed impatiently. ‘You already know this, Detective Inspector. We finished giving out the presents. Dad and I went for a walk. I came home first to see if Mum needed any help. Dad went on by himself and that was the last time I saw him.’

  ‘At four o’clock?’

  ‘Around then. I can’t remember exactly, but I’m sure it’s all in my statement. Listen, Detective Inspector, it’s my father’s funeral. People have come a long way to be here and I’d really like to get back to our guests.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Cant. ‘One last thing. How did your father seem on that walk? Was he happy? Troubled? How were things between the two of you?’

  ‘They were good,’ said Marcus. ‘Dad was happy. Looking forward to the last Grimshaw coming out. A bit nervous about retirement, maybe. But he was fine. It was a nice walk. Now, if you’ll excuse me.’

  Iris, who’d stayed behind in Dom’s study, watched from the shadows as first Marcus and then DI Cant walked away.

  Marcus had just lied. And he’d done it so well, so smoothly, it was chilling.

  It wasn’t a ‘nice walk’. Dom hadn’t been happy, and things between the two of them weren’t ‘good’. Iris remembered vividly seeing the two of them arguing from Mill Cottage. And then how she’d seen them both at the top of the rise, Dom gesticulating wildly, before Marcus turned and stalked back to the house.

  She thought back to her conversation with Jenna earlier. If Marcus was having an affair with Rachel Truebridge, could that be what the two of them were arguing about? Was it possible that both men, father and son, were involved with Rachel? And if they were, would that constitute a motive for murder?

  Marcus Wetherby’s own wife was convinced he was hiding something. And now he was making moves to cut Billy out of the will, presumably for his own financial benefit.

  Perhaps it’s time to look more closely into Mr Perfect, thought Iris.

  Graham was very close to Marcus, so she would have to tread carefully there. But with Jenna’s help, Iris was sure they could uncover the truth.

  Marcus. Ariadne. Harry Masters.

  All three of them were pieces of the puzzle.

  All three were hiding something.

  Iris closed the study door and slipped unnoticed back into the crowd.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Ian McBride sat in the waiting room of his lawyer’s offices on Cheapside, flipping through the ‘Review’ section of the Guardian.

  Grimshaw’s Goodbye, the final instalment in Dom Wetherby’s crappy, banal, derivative ‘opus’, had aired last Sunday and been watched by a record eleven million viewers. Eleven million! That was more than the Downton finale, the highest live ratings figures for any drama in modern TV history. Ian felt a fresh rush of loathing course through his veins, and tried to take comfort from the fact that the bastard Wetherby was dead and had not lived to witness this latest undeserved success.

  Much good your ratings will do you now that you’re a rotted corpse.

  Dom Wetherby had destroyed Ian McBride’s life. That was how Ian saw things now. True, he and Iris had been struggling before she took the cottage at the Mill. But show Ian a couple who weren’t struggling after ten years of failed fertility treatments. They had problems, but it was only since Iris started hanging out with Wetherby, sucked into his web by the charade of the portrait commission, that everything had unravelled. After that, nothing Ian did was good enough. Not his writing. Not him. Iris had become a different person, and Dom Wetherby was to blame. But Dom was dead and buried now, beyond Ian’s reach. Which left only Iris to be punished.

  Ian’s divorce lawyer, Lisa Schaech, opened her office door and smiled. ‘Sorry to keep you, Mr McBride. Do come in.’

  Lisa’s office was warm and welcoming, full of floral prints and comfy armchairs and objets d’art. No family photographs, though. She’s too smart for that. Ian had consciously chosen a female divorce lawyer because he believed in fighting fire with fire. Women were more Machiavellian than men, more crafty, more spiteful. Who better to help him defeat Iris at her own game?

  ‘I’ve read all the papers you sent me, and been through the accounts,’ Lisa began, all business. ‘Before we go any further, I have to ask you: are you sure you want to do this?’

  Ian frowned. ‘Do what? Divorce?’

  ‘No,’ said Lisa. ‘That part I understand. And besides, it was your wife who filed, so to a large extent that ship has sailed.’

  ‘Fine by me.’ Ian leaned back and cracked his knuckles.

  ‘I mean your financial strategy: trying to cut her out of the flat and your savings; this whole argument about her plundering your joint accounts for IVF treatments without your consent or knowledge; requesting spousal support. That’s a very aggressive line to take, and once we go down that route, it might not be easy to turn back.’

  ‘I’ve no intention of turning back,’ snapped Ian. ‘Are you saying you don’t think you can succeed?’

  ‘No. I’m not saying that.’

  Lisa Schaech slid her glasses down her nose and looked thoughtfully at the bitter, broken, dangerously angry man sitting opposite her, wondering where it had all gone wrong.

  ‘We may succeed. We may not. What I’m asking you is if you’re sure you want to succeed in that way. You’re effectively trying to leave your wife penniless, Mr McBride, after an almost twenty-year marriage. Not all judges will like that. And you may also come to regret it, once the dust settles.’

  ‘The only thing I regret is wasting twenty years on that disloyal, ungrateful cow in the first place,’ muttered Ian. ‘She started this war, but I’m going to finish it.’

  Lisa frowned. ‘Mr McBride, as your lawyer, I can’t advise you strongly enough to try and lose the toxic rhetoric and be—’

  ‘She’s already with someone else, you know,’ Ian interrupted furiously. ‘She’s having an affair. Some rich barrister from Scotland, a friend of Dom Wetherby’s. Can we use that against her?’

  ‘How do you know Iris is having an affair?’ Lisa asked calmly.

  ‘I just do,’ snapped Ian. He was getting tired of being second-guessed by a woman he was paying hundreds of pounds an hour to be on his side. ‘People tell me things.’

  ‘So it’s rumour?’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry. I can get proof if you need it when the time comes,’ Ian asserted confidently. ‘She isn’t even trying to hide it. What you don’t seem to grasp, Ms Schaech, is that my wife does not give a shit. She’s laughing at me. Laughing at us. I want you to wipe the smug smile off her face.’

  They finished the meeting and Lisa watched her client go, apparently relieved that his instructions had been received and understood. She wondered briefly about Ian McBride’s estranged wife, the much younger celebrated portrait artist Iris Grey. Was she really the heartless monster Ian made her out to be? Lisa highly doubted it. In her experience, all divorces distorted reality to some degree. But the really bitter ones, like this, blew all objective reasoning clean out of the water.

  It was perfectly obvious to Lisa that Ian McBride still loved his wife.

  What fools love makes of us all.

  * * *

  ‘I’m up here! In the bedroom.’

  Iris hovered awkwardly in the flagstoned hallway at Mill House with the finished portrait of Dom in her arms, while Ariadne called down the stairs.

  ‘Do you want to come up? I’m sorting through some of Dom’s things.’

  Hesitantly, Iris mounted the stairs. She’d visited Mill House countless times, but had never seen the upper floors, which seemed to represent the family’s private space. It felt odd and like an intrusion somehow to be walking into Dom and Ariadne’s bedroom, although at the same time Iris was deeply curious. Today would be her first chance to probe deeper into Ariadne’s real relationship with her husband, not to mention the other men in her life: her father, her sons, Harry Masters.

  Ariadne looked up from the mountainous pile
of clothes on the bed and smiled warmly as Iris walked in, leaning the painting gently against the wall.

  ‘There you are! And there it is. How exciting. May I?’ She walked over to the painting.

  ‘Of course,’ said Iris. ‘It’s yours. I’m sorry it’s taken so long.’

  Holding the portrait at arm’s length, Ariadne stared directly into Dom’s eyes, not moving for a full twenty seconds. Then she took it back over to the bed, propping it up on the pillows and stepping back, to get a more removed perspective. Another twenty seconds passed, maybe more, and she still hadn’t uttered a word.

  For God’s sake, say something, thought Iris, her stomach churning with nerves like the water beneath the Mill’s waterwheel.

  ‘Well. That’s quite an achievement, my dear,’ Ariadne said eventually, still gazing at the portrait. ‘I think you got him. You pinned him down. And that, as we both know, was very hard to do.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Iris, relieved. ‘I’m so glad you like it.’

  ‘I do,’ said Ariadne, smiling again and turning back to Dom’s clothes, which she was folding and sorting cheerfully into piles. Something about her had changed profoundly since Iris had last seen her, at Dom’s funeral. The sadness, the heaviness, the anxiety that had gripped her since Dom’s death all seemed miraculously to have lifted, blown away like mist rolling off the ocean. It was uncanny.

  ‘You look well,’ Iris observed.

  ‘Thank you.’ Ariadne kept folding. ‘I’m feeling better, I must say. I was awfully worried when Billy moved out.’ Picking up a pile of Dom’s sweaters, she placed them neatly on the floor to her right. ‘But ever since Graham called and said he’s been in touch, I’ve been able to relax a little. Exhale. To be perfectly honest, it’s been a relief not to have him in the house for a while. I love him, but he’s so … well, you know.’

  Iris did know, although it was a surprise to hear Ariadne, the saintly, perfect mother, express such an honest opinion about her difficult second son. Especially as, according to Graham, Billy had not so much ‘moved out’ as had a complete breakdown, storming out of the house and going AWOL over the family’s challenge to the will. ‘He was a no-show at the psych eval,’ Graham told Iris, over the phone from London, where he was working this week. ‘I suspect because he’s using drugs again. He was definitely on something when I spoke to him. He feels Marcus in particular has stabbed him in the back and he’s just shattered by it.’