Murder at the Mill

by M. B. Shaw

  ‘Of course, my dear, of course!’ Rising up out of his chair slowly, his knee joints creaking audibly as he moved, the old man shuffled over to the kettle. ‘May I offer you a cup of tea?’

  Iris nodded.

  ‘Builder’s all right?’

  ‘Fine, thank you,’ said Iris. ‘You remember him, then?’

  ‘Wetherby? Hard to forget him, I’d say.’ Professor Nevers gave a dry, deep-throated cackle. ‘Even if you wanted to, if you know what I mean. I remember all my students, Miss Grey. But Wetherby never tired of telling people how brilliant he was and how he was going to change the world. I suppose, in his own small way, he did.’

  Shuffling back across the room with two mugs of tea, he handed one to Iris and creaked down into his chair, like a leaky galleon easing itself unsteadily into the water. ‘He was never the star of that tutorial group, though. I think perhaps the hubris was a bit of an act. Overcompensating, you know.’

  Iris wasn’t sure she did. ‘Dom didn’t stand out among his peers?’

  ‘Not as a writer, no.’ The professor sipped his tea contemplatively. ‘No, it was his friend who was the bright light. Marcus Feeney. Quite brilliant, that chap was. Meeker than Dominic, but by God, he had talent. As a poet, an essayist. He was a remarkable young man. So very sad what happened to him. It was here, you know, in Oxford, that he died.’

  Iris looked perplexed. The old boy must have got his dates wrong.

  ‘Actually, I think Marcus committed suicide the year after he and Dom went down. Or possibly even two years after. Marcus’s younger brother, Graham, is a close friend of mine, so I know some of the story.’

  ‘Some but not all, it would appear.’ The professor raised an eyebrow knowingly. ‘It was two years after Wetherby went down. The same year that that dreadful potboiler of his came out and caused such a sensation, if memory serves. But Feeney stayed on to do his PhD. He jumped from a seventh-floor flat in one of those horrible blocks on Cowley Road. Leaped off his balcony. No warning. No signs of depression. No reason. I’ll never forget it.’

  It would be easy enough to check the details, but Iris had no reason to believe Professor Nevers wasn’t correct. As the undergraduate had told her, the old man was still sharp as a tack. What troubled her was why Graham hadn’t told her that his brother had died in Oxford. No wonder he had bad memories of the place and hadn’t wanted her to come. But why wouldn’t he just say so?

  ‘Did Dom ever come back here?’ Iris asked. ‘For gaudies or to give talks or whatever?’

  ‘No.’ Professor Nevers rubbed his rheumy eyes with gnarled fingers. ‘I daresay the place held bad memories for him after that awful business with Feeney. They were very close as young men.’

  Iris nodded, thinking.

  ‘His wife, I believe, has visited. I introduced the two of them, you know. Ariadne Hinchley, as she was then. I knew her father, Clive. Nasty piece of work, in my opinion, but the daughter always seemed charming.’

  He was rambling, but Iris let him go on. She was curious to hear that Professor Nevers had disliked Ariadne’s father, given the dark past that Harry Masters had hinted at. Perhaps old Harry had been on to something after all?

  ‘In any case, Ariadne Wetherby has visited and she’s also donated money to the college on at least two occasions. Once shortly after Feeney died and again just recently.’

  ‘Really?’ Iris was surprised. She’d have imagined Ariadne’s causes of choice to be something to do with animals or the arts, and she knew the family donated to Down syndrome charities. But Dom’s old college must have one of the biggest endowments of any educational establishment in the world. Why Christ Church? And if she was going to donate to Oxford at all, why not her own college, St Anne’s?

  ‘The papers say that Wetherby was murdered.’ Professor Nevers looked questioningly at Iris.

  ‘He was,’ she said. ‘Somebody drugged him unconscious, then tied a weight round his feet and drowned him in the river, just yards from his house.’

  ‘I see.’ The old man seemed unfazed by these details, no doubt having read them before. ‘And how did you know him?’

  Iris recounted the details. Her work as a portrait artist seemed to fascinate Professor Nevers considerably more than Dom Wetherby’s murder.

  ‘I’ve always considered there was an alchemy to good portraiture. Don’t you agree? There’s a certain magic to it, because of the layers.’

  ‘The layers?’

  ‘Yes. The picture you paint on the surface – the recording of the subject’s features and expression and whatnot – and then the picture that emerges underneath.’

  ‘You mean the sides of people’s character that they don’t want you to see?’ asked Iris, curious.

  ‘Partly that,’ said the professor, ‘but also the background. The little details. Where a person chooses to be painted, for example. What room they’re in, what chair, what position. What are the objects behind them? The shadows? The clues? I always feel that the best portraits are the ones in which every brush stroke has meaning. Yes, you’re trying to capture a person, but none of us exists in a vacuum, do we?’

  Iris cocked her head to one side and looked at him differently. This was an incredibly perceptive comment, and a true one. Dom hadn’t existed in a vacuum. He’d chosen to be painted in his study, at home at the Mill. That place, that background, had meant something to him.

  And what about Iris? What had she chosen to pick up on in that room? What elements of Dom’s background had spoken to her strongly enough to warrant a brush stroke, to be committed for ever to canvas and posterity, to be preserved as ‘shadows’ or ‘clues’?

  And that was when she remembered.

  She closed her eyes. In her mind, the dominoes fell, one by one.

  The portrait.

  The study.

  The background.

  Her stomach lurched.

  ‘Are you all right, my dear?’ The old man leaned forward, concerned. ‘Can I get you something? A glass of water?’

  ‘No. Thank you.’ Iris stood up, dazed. She wanted to be wrong. Please, please let me be wrong. ‘I have to go. I’ve an exhibition just starting in London and I … I need to speak to my agent. Thank you for talking to me, Professor. Goodbye.’

  She shook his hand and hurried out of the room, out into the cold, misty air of Christ Church Meadows. Her fingers shook as she dialled Greta’s number.

  ‘Do you have a photograph of Dom’s portrait on your computer? A high-res one?’

  ‘Hello, Iris!’ her agent answered happily. ‘Funnily enough, I just got off the line with David Bone. They’ve had record attendance for the New Faces exhibition, all thanks to you, Iris. He even asked me whether—’

  ‘Greta, I’m sorry, but this is urgent. I need a photo of the painting.’

  ‘But surely you have one? On your phone or somewhere? You must do.’ Iris’s agent sounded baffled.

  ‘I don’t. I’m sorry. Do you?’

  Greta gave the sigh of a woman used to dealing with artists and their panic attacks but still irritated by them. ‘Of course. I’ll send it to you in a minute. But, Iris, you do realise it’s too late to make changes now? The painting doesn’t even belong to us.’

  ‘I know that,’ Iris snapped. ‘I don’t want to change it, Greta. I just need to see it again. As soon as possible.’

  Sixty seconds later a ‘ding’ on her phone indicated the image had arrived. Iris opened it, her heart in her mouth. She thought she remembered, was pretty certain, in fact, but she needed to see it to be sure.

  There it was.

  A tiny, insignificant detail. Just a few brush strokes. But it was enough.

  It was everything.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Lorcan Wetherby held his mother’s hand as they walked up the kitchen stairs together, along the flagstoned hallway to the front door. Lorcan had learned to fear the ring of the doorbell. It meant that the Mill, his home and long his sanctuary, was under threat. It meant that out
side things wanted to come in. Outside things should not come in. Outside things, Lorcan had learned, could hurt you. But as long as his mother was with him, he could manage his fears. Her hand was a talisman. Her long, cool fingers entwined in his were like a force field of love and safety.

  His mother would save him.

  Ariadne opened the door, smiling serenely. ‘Oh! It’s you. I thought you were away.’

  Iris stood against a backdrop of a bright blue March sky, the first properly sunny day of the spring. In the front garden at the Mill, a few brave crocuses were beginning to poke their heads above ground, while the snowdrops hung theirs, acknowledging the end of a long winter. Iris herself still looked wintery in black corduroy skinnies and a deep maroon sweater, teamed with a thick, puffy black coat. A geometric-print pink-and-green scarf was the only pop of real colour, but it wasn’t enough to lift her pale, make-up-free complexion or to distract from her tired, swollen eyes.

  ‘I was,’ she said. ‘In Oxford. Is it all right if I come in?’

  ‘Of course.’ Ariadne threw her arms wide and stepped back in a gesture of welcome. Lorcan, who’d always liked Iris, smiled shyly from his position of safety, pressed against his mother’s side. Unthinking, Ariadne kissed the top of his head as she closed the door behind them.

  Whatever happened between her and Billy, whatever her failings as a mother, she adores that kid, thought Iris. And he her.

  As so often with Ariadne, Iris felt her emotions swing from distrust back to warmth, and from admiration to condemnation, like a pendulum. She believed what Billy had told her that night in her cottage. That sort of misery and desperation couldn’t be faked. And yet Billy’s version of his mother wasn’t any more true than the love Iris saw in Lorcan’s eyes right now, or the overprotective adoration Marcus constantly displayed towards his mother. Was it possible for someone to be both a really good mother and a really bad one at the same time?

  Perhaps it was. And really, who was Iris to say otherwise? She would never be a mother.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ Ariadne asked, holding out a hand for Iris’s coat.

  ‘Biscuit!’ Lorcan shouted excitedly, relieved that today’s ‘outside person’ had turned out only to be Iris.

  ‘Lorcan and I just made a batch of shortbread,’ Ariadne explained, adding, sotto voce, ‘He’s doing sooo much better.’

  ‘I’d love one,’ said Iris, returning Lorcan’s smile. ‘But I actually came by…’ She swallowed nervously, suddenly not sure how to bring it up. In the end, she opted for the direct approach, not because she felt confident in it but because she couldn’t think of anything cleverer to say. ‘I wondered if I could see Dom’s study again. The sofa where he sat for our portrait sittings.’

  ‘Certainly.’ Ariadne turned left and led the way. If she considered Iris’s request a strange one, she didn’t show it. Iris followed, with Lorcan trotting along at Ariadne’s side like a sweetly affectionate puppy. ‘Here we are.’

  Iris took a moment to reconnect to the room. The smell, Dom’s smell, was still there, but it had grown fainter. Someone had dusted, and opened the windows. The desk had been lightly tidied, but otherwise everything was the same.

  Almost everything.

  Iris looked again at the shelves behind Dom’s Chesterfield, which had formed the backdrop to his portrait. And then she looked again, up and down, left to right, as if looking might make the missing object reappear.

  ‘Is something troubling you, Iris?’ Ariadne asked.

  ‘No,’ Iris lied, hoping her smile didn’t look as fake as it felt. ‘I was just trying to visualise something, about the portrait. Do you know, has anything been moved in here since D—’ Clocking Lorcan’s curious face, she checked herself. ‘Since Christmas?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Ariadne said breezily. ‘I mean, there were unopened bills and things that Marcus dealt with. He went through Dom’s post that first week, before he went back to London.’

  ‘Other than that,’ said Iris. ‘Has anyone else used the room?’

  ‘Well, after the coroner’s report, the police were in here,’ said Ariadne. ‘But I must say they were very respectful and put everything back where they found it. Is it something specific you’re looking for, my dear?’

  Ariadne seemed unruffled, but Lorcan was looking up at Iris with big, worried eyes.

  ‘Oh no. Nothing specific.’ She smiled at him reassuringly, adding with a wink, ‘Does the offer of a biscuit still stand?’

  As soon as they left the study, Lorcan seemed happier, and was positively delighted in the kitchen, laying the shortbread out on his favourite Scooby-Doo plate.

  ‘So how are things with you and Graham?’ Ariadne asked, delicately pouring milk into her cup of Earl Grey.

  ‘Fine.’ Iris smiled noncommittally. ‘We haven’t seen each other for a few days. I’ve been away, and he’s working.’

  ‘I know,’ said Ariadne. ‘He called me yesterday, bless his heart, to tell me he’d heard from Billy. He’s in London, apparently, at some sort of rehab, halfway-house place. Graham said he sounded better. I must say it was a huge relief.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ said Iris. An image of Billy, shaking and rocking in her bedroom closet, leaped unbidden into her mind. Then another, of him rolling back his sleeve to reveal the row of cigarette burns. No one’s ever believed me … She hurt me. Bullied me.

  ‘Having a child like that, who self-harms … there’s never an end to it,’ said Ariadne. ‘The worry, I mean.’

  She sounds so believable, thought Iris. But then so did Billy. Talking to the Wetherby family was like trying to find one’s way through a hall of mirrors. Everything was distorted somehow. Nothing was certain.

  ‘He won’t let me see him.’ Ariadne stared down into the tea leaves at the bottom of her cup. ‘But Graham said he’d pop in and visit at the end of the week. He really has been a saint through all this. I’m so glad the two of you have found one another.’

  ‘Well, it’s early days,’ Iris said awkwardly. She finished her tea and took her leave, promising to come back and play Jenga with Lorcan soon.

  Ariadne walked her to the door. As they passed the study, she casually observed, ‘Of course, there is one person who’s used Dom’s room regularly.’

  Iris stopped and turned to face her. ‘Oh?’

  ‘Graham.’ Ariadne smiled, pleased to have remembered.

  ‘Graham?’ Iris’s brow furrowed.

  ‘Yes. After Marcus and Jenna went back to London. You remember when he came and stayed in the village and helped me organise everything with the police and the funeral and Dom’s will?’

  Iris remembered. Graham had taken a room at the pub in Hazelford. But he had spent huge amounts of time at Mill House.

  ‘Dom’s study was his little command centre,’ Ariadne continued. ‘Or perhaps it was his escape from all of us – I’m not sure which.’ She laughed softly. ‘But you should ask Graham if he can help you. He’d know if anything had been moved around since you painted in there.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Iris said stiffly, feeling the knot in her stomach tighten. ‘I will.’

  Outside, she took three deep, calming breaths and checked her watch: 1.15 p.m.

  If she hurried, she could still catch the two o’clock train to Paddington.

  * * *

  Ian met Iris at a swanky bar on Piccadilly. Despite the jacket and tie – he’d attempted to make an effort – he looked drawn and haggard. Clearly he hadn’t slept properly in days.

  ‘You don’t look well,’ Iris said, ordering a much-needed double gin and tonic for herself and a Virgin Mary for Ian, who wanted her to know he was still on the wagon.

  ‘I’ve been better.’ He tapped his fingers nervously on the bar. ‘Yesterday I had a bunch of deranged Grimshaw fans hanging around outside the flat yelling, “Murderer!” up at the bedroom windows.’

  ‘That’s harassment,’ said Iris angrily. ‘Did you call the police?’

  ‘The police?�
� Ian scoffed. ‘Who do you think leaked my address on the bloody Internet? That bastard Cant’s determined to ruin me, by hook or by crook, and the truth be damned.’

  Iris put a comforting hand on his shoulder, then withdrew it quickly. After the whole debacle with Billy, she didn’t want to be accused of giving out any more ‘mixed messages’.

  ‘How was Oxford?’ Ian asked gloomily. ‘Did you meet with the Russian developer?’

  ‘Gardievski. I did,’ said Iris. ‘Dom wasn’t top of his Christmas-card list, that’s for sure. From what he said, Dom royally screwed him over the Hazelford development project. But I don’t think he had anything to do with Dom’s murder.’

  ‘Why not?’ Ian sounded almost petulant. ‘He’s a nasty guy, you know. I looked into his last two businesses before Spire and he’s been accused of all sorts: intimidation, threats. Back in Moscow, he allegedly sent his goons to rough up a supplier who owed him money. The guy was beaten so badly he lost the sight in one eye.’

  ‘I’m not saying he’s Mother Teresa.’ Iris sipped her drink. ‘Just that there’s no evidence tying him to Dom’s drowning.’

  ‘I’m not saying he drove down to Hampshire and did it himself.’ Ian was becoming exasperated. ‘He’ll have had people, paid hitmen…’

  Iris shook her head. It wasn’t beyond the imagination that Igor Gardievski might do such a thing. But the plain truth was, he hadn’t done it, much as both Ian and Iris might wish he had.

  ‘I need to talk to you about Rachel Truebridge.’ Iris cut to the chase.

  ‘Rachel?’ Ian was not yet ready to drop the Russian thread. ‘I don’t think Rachel’s the one we need to focus on. The police have already eliminated her from their inquiries. Unlike me.’

  ‘Did the two of you ever meet?’ asked Iris, beginning to tire of his self-pity. ‘Back when you were sneaking around Hampshire, following me and trying to make trouble for Dom?’

  ‘And what about the trouble the bastard made for me?’ Ian whined. ‘And Rachel! Dear God, Iris, the way he treated that poor woman. I don’t know why you insist on defending him.’