The Devil`s Feather

by Minette Walters

  I was at a loss what to say because I couldn’t tell which she thought was worse—to be a Wright or not to be a Derbyshire. “You don’t have to believe it. If it’s the word of a confused woman against what your grandmother said twelve years ago, then I’d put my faith in your grandmother. Why would she lie? Wasn’t that the one time to tell you you weren’t alone—that you still had family?”

  “I think Lily asked her not to. She said a couple of times, ‘Don’t tell the girl, I’ll do it, she’s too depressed at the moment.’ ”

  “But Lily never did…or not while she was still thinking straight.”

  “No.”

  “Then either there was nothing to tell,” I pointed out, “or she never intended to do it.”

  “I think she changed her mind after Gran died. That’s when I did this.” Self-consciously, she turned her left wrist towards me. “I came up here to tell her Gran was dead and she kept saying the wrong things…like, it was a good way to go…Gran had had a good innings…it wasn’t the end of the world. And I started shouting at her, which brought on a panic attack.” She shook her head. “I was so mad with Lily…I was so mad with my family…and I thought…what’s the point? It is the end of the fucking world.”

  “Were you serious?”

  “About killing myself? Not really. I remember thinking how much pain I was in because everyone had died…and hoping that other people would suffer a bit…but the act itself”—she shrugged—“it was more of a scream than anything.”

  “Have you ever tried again?”

  “No. Once bitten, twice shy. I hated the fuss more than anything.”

  I identified with that sentiment more than she knew. “What was Lily’s reaction?”

  “Called Peter to try and keep the whole thing under wraps. She wanted him to stitch the wounds himself, but he wouldn’t do it—said he’d lose his licence if he didn’t have me properly assessed—so I ended up in hospital with psychiatrists and bereavement counsellors.” She rubbed her eyes again. “It was awful. The only person who remained halfway sensible was Lily. She got me discharged by promising that she’d take responsibility for me, then never spoke about it again.”

  “Did you stay with her?”

  “No.”

  “Then how could she take responsibility for you?”

  “She didn’t try, just asked for my word that I wouldn’t do anything stupid if she left me alone at the farm, then gave me a mastiff puppy.” Her eyes sparkled at the memory. “Much better medicine than anything the doctors had to offer.”

  “But why should any of that make her change her mind, Jess? It seems so odd. The natural thing would have been to open her arms and say, you’re not alone, I’m your aunt.”

  “Except she wasn’t a demonstrative woman, and then the whole thing with Nathaniel happened.” She shrugged. “I suppose she felt there was never a good time to do it.”

  Personally, I doubted that Lily had ever planned to acknowledge Jess as a relative, although she certainly seemed to have had a soft spot for her. Perhaps she discovered she had more in common with her niece than her daughter, preferring Jess’s quiet, introverted nature to Madeleine’s more extroverted one. Rightly or wrongly, I’d formed an impression of Lily as a self-contained woman with limited friendships, whose only real loves were her garden and her dogs, and in that she was no different from Jess. She may well have been able to put on a “show” for visitors, but I wondered if it was just that—a show—and in her head she was mentally counting the seconds to their departure.

  “So what was the ammunition you gave Nathaniel if it wasn’t to do with your family?” I asked curiously.

  “I told him Lily had given enduring power of attorney to her solicitor.”

  “I thought you said it was ammunition against Madeleine. Wouldn’t that have helped her…given her a chance to come down here and persuade Lily to overturn it?”

  Jess pulled her mouth into a wry twist. “I half-hoped she would, as a matter of fact. Money was about the only thing that might have persuaded her to pull out her finger for the first time in her life…but I didn’t think Nathaniel would tell her. I was only trying to give him a head start before the shit hit the fan. Madeleine kept up a pretence of harmony as long as she thought this place was within her grasp…but she’s probably throwing saucepans at him by now.”

  “I don’t understand. A head start on what?”

  “Divorce…ownership of their flat…custody of the kid. If he’d moved quickly enough, he might have been able to persuade Madeleine to sign everything over—including her son—before she found out she’d been bypassed. She’d already agreed in principle as long as Nathaniel made no claims on Barton House or Lily’s money.” She smiled at my expression of disgust for the child. “She uses Hugo as a bargaining chip because she knows Nathaniel won’t leave without him. I wasn’t joking about the saucepans, you know.”

  “But—” I couldn’t get my head round it. “Are you saying he wants a divorce and she doesn’t?”

  “Not exactly. She’ll divorce him like a shot when she gets her hands on this place, but not before. Otherwise they’ll have to sell the flat and split the proceeds, and she won’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because she’ll end up in somewhere like Neasden with her half. At the moment they’re in Pimlico. She’d rather live with people she hates than move down the social ladder. It’s not as if she’s got Lily’s allowance anymore. At least Nathaniel’s salary—” Jess came to an abrupt halt as five throaty barks split the silence outside. “OK,” she said calmly, seizing the axe in both hands. “We have a visitor. What do you want to do? Find out who it is, or sit tight and phone the police?”

  I stared at her in horror. Was there a choice?

  “It’s up to you,” she said, her eyes glittering dangerously as the dogs kept up their continuous barking. “Do you want to beat the shit out of the fucker…or let him go on thinking women are easy meat?”

  I wanted to say we could do both—call the police and beat the shit out of the fucker. I wanted to say it might not be MacKenzie. I wanted to say I was completely terrified. But she was halfway across the room while I was still weighing options, and I could hardly leave her to face whoever was out there alone. So I picked up the walking-stick and went along with her. What else could I have done?

  IT’S EASY to be wise after the event, but that’s to ignore the froth of adrenaline that spurs you on at the time. I had so much confidence in Jess and her mastiffs that I didn’t think we were behaving in a particularly reckless fashion. Despite everything she’d told me—about her panic attacks and the wrist-slitting episode—and my experience of her obvious alarm on the day I phoned her from the kitchen, I never thought of her as someone who was easily frightened. That was my role. It was Connie Burns who cowered in corners, not Jess Derbyshire.

  The idiocy was, there was nothing to be afraid of. It was Peter surrounded by mastiffs, not MacKenzie, and predictably Jess gave him hell for scaring us. She called off the dogs and lambasted him for not phoning first to say he was coming. “I could have brought this down on your head,” she said furiously, brandishing the axe in front of him.

  He looked equally furious in the light spilling out from the open back door and the kitchen window. “I would have done if I’d realized you were planning to set those blasted animals on me,” he said. “What’s got into them? They’ve never barked at me before. It’s bloody terrifying.”

  “It’s supposed to be,” she retorted scathingly, “and you’ve never come sneaking up on them before. What do you want, anyway? It’s nearly eleven o’clock.”

  He took several breaths to calm himself. “I was on my way home from a medical do in Weymouth, had no luck at the farm, saw Connie’s lights were still on and thought you were probably here.”

  “You’d have frightened the wits out of her if I hadn’t been,” Jess snapped.

  “Your Land Rover’s in the driveway. Where else would you be?” He tur
ned to me. “I’m sorry about this, Connie. Would you rather I left?”

  I shook my head.

  He relaxed enough to smile. “To be honest, I could do with a double whisky after being savaged by that pack of brutes.”

  I put a hand on Jess’s arm to forestall another tirade. “Let’s go back inside. I don’t have any whisky, I’m afraid, but I do have beer and wine. Have you had anything to eat?”

  If I’d stopped to think about it, I’d have remembered how easy it was to be lulled into a sense of false security. Fear has such strange effects on the human body. It keeps you at a pitch of concentration while danger’s in front of you, then sends you into carefree mode afterwards. I think I was the first to laugh because Jess looked so disapproving when I offered her a glass of wine, but within a few minutes even she’d lightened up enough to smile. Hysteria was very close to the surface in all of us.

  Tears came into Peter’s eyes when I tried to explain what the plan had been. “So let me get this straight. You were going to break my kneecaps while Jess sank an axe in my head? Or was it the other way round? I’m confused. Where do my goolies come into it?”

  I snorted wine up my nose. “They get chopped off along with your dick.”

  Laughter ripped out of him. “What with? The axe?” He turned a twinkling gaze on Jess. “What do you think I’ve got between my legs? An oak tree?”

  The spark between them was unmistakable. It fizzed like an electric charge. Jess came as close to giggling as I’d ever seen her. “More like a Christmas tree,” she retorted. “The balls are for decoration only.”

  Peter grinned at her. “You can’t chop men’s dicks off, Jess. It’s not the done thing at all.”

  I tittered into my drink, happily playing gooseberry. I couldn’t tell how successful Peter’s courtship had been—they might never have got beyond the teasing stage, or they might have been rogering each other stupid every night—but they were comfortable to be around because I didn’t feel excluded. It reminded me of the relationship I’d had with Dan—easy, affectionate and all-embracing—and I wondered if he and I would ever be able to rekindle that closeness, or if I’d killed it through lack of trust.

  “Penny for them, Connie,” said Peter.

  I looked up, conscious suddenly that the banter had stopped. “I was thinking about a friend of mine. You remind me of him…same kind of humour.” I should have stopped there, but I didn’t. For some reason, I felt I had to give Jess a push in the right direction. “You’re mad, Jess. If Peter makes you laugh, you should nail him to your floorboards immediately.”

  There was a brief silence.

  “So now we’re into hammers,” said Peter lightly. “Is there any abuse you’re not prepared to inflict on me?”

  Jess pushed her chair back. “I need to check on the dogs,” she said gruffly. “I’ll go out the front door. There’s some food for them in the Land Rover.”

  I pulled a wry face at Peter as she disappeared at speed down the corridor. “Sorry. I’ve obviously put my foot in it big time. What did I say that was so awful?”

  “Don’t worry about it. Relationships terrify her. As far as she’s concerned, they’re all doomed to death or failure.” He refilled his glass. “It’s not surprising if you consider her history. Even Lily’s effectively dead to her now.”

  “I should have been more sensitive.”

  “It wouldn’t have made any difference. She sees herself as a jinx. Anyone who grows too fond of her dies…simple as that.”

  “Nathaniel didn’t.”

  Peter flicked me a mocking glance. “But he wasn’t fond of her. If he had been he wouldn’t have left her for Madeleine.”

  I held his gaze. “Presumably that’s Jess speaking, and not you?”

  He nodded. “Nathaniel would have her back in the blink of an eye if she showed the remotest interest—he’s been down here to promote his cause more times than you’ve had hot dinners—but either she can’t see it or she’s genuinely uninterested.”

  “She’s comfortable with indifference,” I murmured. “She’s also the most determined walker-away that I’ve ever met. It makes sense if she has a fear of relationships. I thought she was trying to control me, but maybe she’s afraid of being sucked in. Is that why she does nothing to correct her image? Because it’s safer being disliked than having to give anything of herself?”

  Peter looked amused. “Possibly, but it’s also her character. She’s hard work…always has been. Lily was the same. You have to chip away at the armour plating if you want to reach the person underneath, and not many people are prepared to do that.”

  I wondered if he knew about Lily’s claim to be her aunt. “It must be a gene then,” I said.

  His amusement turned to surprise, but he didn’t try to feign ignorance. “My God! You’re either a damn good journalist or you’ve convinced her you won’t repeat it. Is there anything she hasn’t told you?”

  “A great deal, I should think, but if you give me a list of what there is to know, I’ll tell you if I know it.”

  He laughed. “No chance. Hippocratic oath, remember.”

  I thought I’d challenge him on that, but I didn’t want Jess to hear me do it. I cocked an ear for her footsteps returning. There was only silence. “Except you seem to use that oath at your own convenience,” I said. “There’s a message on my answerphone from Madeleine telling me you took her to task for talking out of turn about Jess’s wrist-cutting episode. You can listen to it, if you like. It’s still there.”

  He shook his head. “No thanks. I get enough of them on my own damn machine.” He toyed with his glass. “She’s telling the truth. I did repeat what you told me. I’m sorry if that upsets you but I wanted her to know how angry I was.”

  “I’m not upset,” I told him. “I’m curious. The implication in the message is that it was you who told Madeleine about Jess…and I remember how uncomfortable you were when I first mentioned it in your kitchen. You tried to convince me it was Lily who’d spoken out of turn, but I don’t think that’s true, is it?”

  “No.” He took a mouthful of wine. “It was me. I thought if Madeleine knew how desperate Jess felt about the loss of her whole family, she’d give the poor kid breathing space and back off the affair with Nathaniel.” He paused. “I should have known better.”

  I didn’t answer. Instead, I listened for footsteps. At the back of my mind I must have been wondering why there was no sound from outside, because I recall being incredibly conscious of an oppressive silence. At the very least, we should have heard the crunch of gravel and the Land Rover door opening.

  “The first thing she did was tell Nathaniel,” Peter went on. “He was in London when it happened, so Madeleine had free rein with her interpretation of events…which was a souped-up version of what she told you, with Jess as a paranoid schizophrenic. It scared Nathaniel off completely.”

  I was more interested in the continuing silence. “Shouldn’t we have heard something by now?” I asked, turning towards the window. “What do you think Jess is doing?”

  “Looking for the dogs, I expect.”

  “Then why isn’t she calling for them? You don’t suppose—” I broke off, unwilling to put the thought into words.

  Perhaps Peter, too, was uneasy. “I’ll go and check,” he said, standing up, “but for Christ’s sake stop looking so bloody worried. You’d have to walk on water to get past those animals of hers.” He smiled. “Trust me. I’ve still got the bruises.”

  17

  HOW LONG DO you wait in such circumstances? In my case, a very long time. I told myself Peter and Jess were having a heart-to-heart, and the best thing I could do was leave them to it, but I remained glued to the window, watching Jess’s dogs patrol the garden. At one point a couple of them spotted me through the glass and ambled over, tails wagging eagerly, in the hope of food. Could someone have got past them? Logic said no, but instinct had every hair on my body standing to attention. If MacKenzie knew about anything, he knew abou
t dogs.

  I remember trying to light a cigarette, but my hands were trembling so much that I couldn’t bring the flame anywhere near the tip. Knowing how easily panicked I was, would Peter really abandon me for Jess without calling out that everything was fine? And why couldn’t I hear them? His wooing technique was based on gentle teasing, and he was incapable of speaking to Jess for more than a few minutes without laughing.

  In the end I decided to call the police. The chances were they’d arrive to find Jess and Peter in flagrante delicto on the sofa but I couldn’t have cared less. I was happy to pay any fine they liked for wasting official time, as long as I didn’t have to walk down that corridor on my own.

  WOODY ALLEN ONCE SAID, “My only regret in life is that I’m not someone else.” It’s funny if you don’t mean it, and desperate if you do. I’d rather have been anyone but Connie Burns when I tried for a dial tone on the kitchen phone and discovered it was dead. I knew immediately what it meant. The line had been cut some time after I emailed my parents. In the vain hope of a miracle, I tugged my mobile from my pocket and held it above my head, but unsurprisingly the signal icon refused to appear.

  Panic came back in waves, and my first instinct was to do exactly what I’d done before, lock myself in the kitchen, turn off the lights and crouch out of sight of the window. I couldn’t face MacKenzie on my own. The fight had been knocked out of me when he’d rammed himself into my mouth and told me to smile for the camera. I couldn’t go through that again. His smell and taste still had me bursting out of nightmares every night. What did it matter if he killed other people, as long as he didn’t kill me?

  I can’t pretend it was courage, or a sudden flush of heroism, that took me outside. Rather, the memory of my email to Alan Collins re elderly Chinamen, death-rays, and the difficulties of coping with the guilt. Any problems I had now would be magnified tenfold if I had to live with Jess’s and Peter’s blood on my hands. My plan was to run as fast as possible for the nearest hillside and dial 999. But when I opened the back door, I was met by the dogs, and I had a strong sense that taking to my heels would be the wrong thing to do. Either they’d bark and alert MacKenzie, or they’d bowl me over.