The Devil`s Feather

by Minette Walters

  As you know, I act on behalf of Mrs. Lily Wright and I have taken the view that it is not in my client’s interests to pursue charges relating to alleged events between November 2003 and January 2004. Because of her frail health, Mrs. Wright would be unable to testify, and I believe this would result in a failed prosecution. Your case is different since you have a film of Madeleine Harrison-Wright’s apparent assault on you, and an independent witness in Ms. Derbyshire.

  I cannot, of course, advise you on what action to take as you are not my client, however I hope you will forgive my presumption in pointing out some likely consequences of proceeding. Madeleine Harrison-Wright will argue that nothing she said can be relied on as there is clear evidence of provocation and coercion. Your own credibility will be questioned because you failed to report your suspicions to the police. The same is true of your witness. In addition, the very existence of the film may result in you and Ms. Derbyshire being charged with conspiracy to blackmail.

  As my primary concern is Mrs. Lily Wright’s welfare, I have introduced various measures to ensure her continued welfare and safety. Please feel confident that she is being looked after with kindness, and is as happy as her condition allows. Before her health failed, she gave me certain instructions regarding herself, her family and her estate. Despite, or perhaps because of, the information you and Ms. Derbyshire obtained from Mrs. Madeleine Harrison-Wright, I see no reason to move away from those instructions.

  1. For the foreseeable future, Barton House will remain in Mrs. Lily Wright’s estate.

  2. Mrs. Wright’s nursing-home care will continue to be covered by income from its rental and income from her investments.

  3. Should the sale of Barton House become necessary, the money will be placed in trust for the benefit of Mrs. Wright during her lifetime.

  4. Upon her death, the benefit will pass to her grandson, Hugo Harrison-Wright, with all disbursement of money at the discretion of trustees.

  5. In the event that Barton House remains unsold at the time of Mrs. Lily Wright’s death, it will pass to her niece to keep or dispose of as she pleases.

  Ms. Derbyshire tells me you fully understand the implications of these decisions, but should you require further clarification please feel free to contact me. As per Mrs. Lily Wright’s instructions, Nathaniel and Madeleine Harrison-Wright remain in ignorance of her wishes.

  While I accept that you have a genuine grievance against Madeleine Harrison-Wright, I worry that an attempted prosecution will exonerate her and allow her access to confidential information. For this reason, may I urge you to consider all of the above and let me know if you intend to proceed? You will, of course, be aware that any such action will lead to disclosures about Ms. Derbyshire’s connection with the family.

  Finally, on behalf of Mrs. Lily Wright, I would like to thank you and Ms. Derbyshire for bringing these matters to my attention. I am distressed that my client was unable to inform me of what was happening to her at the time, but I am advised that her long-term condition would not have been unduly affected by her daughter’s mistreatment. Sadly, the progress of the disease was always irreversible.

  Yours sincerely,

  Thomas Balldock

  24

  SEVERAL RUMORS SURFACED at the same time, although it wasn’t clear where they started. Everyone knew about the injunction preventing Madeleine from visiting Lily, and it was generally assumed that she’d made an attempt on her mother’s life in the nursing-home. From that developed the Chinese whispers. I was told variously that Madeleine had been diagnosed with a personality disorder; that she was under compulsory psychiatric care; that she’d been forced to leave the London flat after assaulting her son; that Nathaniel had filed for divorce; and that a restraining order had been imposed to stop her coming within a mile of Winterbourne Barton.

  The only whisper I knew to be true (apart from the nursing-home injunction) was the restraining order which Thomas Balldock had applied for on behalf of Jess and myself. I don’t know what evidence he presented, but we were told to notify the police if Madeleine or Nathaniel tried to contact us or enter our properties. However, it wasn’t until Peter bumped into an acquaintance of Nathaniel’s in London that the separation was confirmed. According to the acquaintance, it was Nathaniel and Hugo who’d moved out of the flat, and Madeleine who remained in possession. Father and son were living in Wales with Nathaniel’s parents, and Madeleine was struggling to pay the bills.

  The residents of Winterbourne Barton were surprisingly honest in their reactions. Most claimed to be shocked by the rumours, but a few said they’d always found Madeleine’s charm superficial. I was the recipient of several indirect apologies to Jess for some of the things that had been said and thought about her, but no one was brave enough to make them in person. If they tried, they were met with a ferocious scowl.

  I stayed out of it, but I know my mother urged her to be generous since people were “only trying to be nice.” Jess replied that it was she who was being nice, by letting them “gawp” at her, because the only thing that had changed was their perception of Madeleine. Jess was the same as she’d always been and Winterbourne Barton remained a retirement village for rich, ignorant pensioners who knew nothing about the countryside. Under my mother’s emollient balm, she was persuaded to produce the odd smile in place of a scowl, but small talk remained beyond her.

  I suggested to Mum that as soon as she and Dad went back to London Jess’s brief renaissance would be over. “I don’t want to schmooze the locals any more than she does,” I pointed out, “and my tenancy ends in December.”

  “Jess has a kind heart,” she said. “If she hears of someone in trouble, she’ll help them. She helped you, didn’t she?”

  “But I didn’t impose on the friendship.”

  My mother laughed. “And neither will anyone else. People aren’t stupid, Connie. As long as she keeps making social calls, everything will work out fine. It’s hard to dislike someone with as much warmth as Jess has.”

  Warmth…? Were we talking about the same person? Jess Derbyshire? Dysfunction on legs? “Jess doesn’t make social calls.”

  “Of course she does, darling. How many times has she dropped in on you since you arrived here?”

  “That’s different.”

  “I don’t think so. When Peter tells her one of his patients needs some eggs, she’ll be round like a shot. It’s her nature to look after others. She’ll make an excellent doctor’s wife.”

  It was my turn to laugh. “Do you think that’s likely? I don’t think she’s the marrying type.”

  “Perhaps not, but she could do with a baby or two,” said my mother matter-of-factly. “Otherwise her farm will go to strangers when she dies.”

  I eyed her with amusement. “Have you told her that? How did she respond?”

  “Rather more positively than you’ve ever done.”

  I didn’t believe her for a moment. Jess’s most likely retort was that giving birth to me hadn’t stopped strangers taking my parents’ farm in Zimbabwe—it was the answer she’d given when I’d strayed on to the subject of inheritance—but I decided not to argue the point. My mother was too well practised at turning other people’s babies into a lecture on my lack of commitment in the same department. In any case, I rather liked the idea of Jess producing little Derbyshire-Colemans. I thought they’d grow up to be as affectionate, competent and well balanced as her mastiffs.

  I SPENT a couple of days in Manchester at the end of September, giving Alan Collins a full statement of the events in Baghdad. By then he’d built up quite a file against MacKenzie, which was available to other national and international police forces in the event of an arrest. I asked him if he was optimistic, and he shook his head.

  “I think he died the night he came to your house, Connie.”

  “How?”

  “Probably the way you suggested to Nick Bagley…he lost his bearings in the dark and fell.”

  “Off the cliff?”

  “
Unlikely.”

  I watched him for a moment. “Why not?”

  Alan shrugged. “His body would have been found. Nick tells me there’s a rocky shoreline along that part of the Dorset coast.”

  “Perhaps he went in farther down. Some of the cliffs to the east are sheer.”

  “Perhaps,” he agreed.

  “You don’t sound very convinced.”

  He smiled slightly. “Did I ever tell you I took the family on holiday to Dorset once? We rented a cottage near Wool, about ten miles from where you are. The children loved it. There was a well in the garden with a thatched roof and a bucket painted red. They were convinced there were fairies living at the bottom of it, and they used to climb on the stone surround to look down. My wife was terrified they were going to fall in.”

  I folded my hands in my lap. “I’m not surprised.”

  “It was quite safe. It was capped below the parapet to prevent accidents. I asked the old boy next door what he’d done with his well, and he told me he’d filled it in and put a patio over the top. He said he’d had to wait until the late sixties for mains water, and he didn’t want any reminders of the back-breaking days. According to him, every old house in rural Dorset has a redundant well somewhere. The big houses usually have two…one outside and one inside.”

  I squeezed my hands between my knees. “Well, if there are any at Barton House they were covered over long ago. You could look forever and never find one.”

  Alan watched me while he shuffled his papers together and tapped them on the desk to square them up. “Nick tells me the woman who owns Barton House asked for an interview but never turned up. Do you know why not?”

  “Lily Wright?” I said in surprise. “She can’t have done. She has advanced Alzheimer’s. Her solicitor put her in a nursing home eight months ago.”

  “I believe he said the name was Madeleine Wright.”

  “Oh, her!” I said scathingly, wondering how many conversations he’d had with Bagley, and how much he’d said to him about wells. “You mean Madeleine Harrison-Wright, the double-barrelled daughter.”

  He looked amused. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Not my type,” I told him. “Not yours either, I wouldn’t think, unless you like spoilt forty-somethings who expect to be kept all their lives. She doesn’t work—far too grand—but she’s not above selling a story. She tried to pump Peter Coleman for the gory details on MacKenzie, and when he refused she said she’d ask Bagley.”

  “So why didn’t she?”

  “I don’t know for certain. I was told Lily’s solicitor became involved, and he read her the riot act on behalf of Jess and me.” I pulled a wry face. “Madeleine lives in London and never lifted a finger to help her mother…which makes her very unpopular in Winterbourne Barton. They’re all over sixty-five and imagine their children love them.”

  Alan gave a snort of laughter. “Meaning what? That you and Jess won the grey vote, and the wrinklies ran her out of town so that she couldn’t make money out of you?”

  I smiled in return. “Something like that. They’ve been very protective of us.”

  “And the fact that Madeleine’s the only person who knows the ins and outs of Barton House has nothing to do with it?”

  “Hardly. If Bagley wants to talk to her, he can always ask Lily’s solicitor for her phone number.”

  “He’s done that already.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing. She said she didn’t keep the appointment because her car broke down, and the only thing she wanted to ask was whether she could go ahead with having the flagstones cleaned.”

  I shrugged. “That’s probably right. She told me it all had to be done before I left so that the next tenant wouldn’t complain about Bertie’s blood all over the place.”

  Alan tucked the papers back into MacKenzie’s file. “Will anyone ever ask me for this, Connie?”

  “I don’t know,” I said lightly. “Maybe a body will wash up on the Dorset coast one day, and put us all out of our misery.”

  “Then let’s hope there’s salt water in its lungs,” he said, standing up and helping me into my jacket.

  FROM MANCHESTER I drove down to Holyhead in North Wales to meet the ferry from Dublin. I saw Dan before he saw me. He looked no different from the day we’d parted at Baghdad airport—big, weatherbeaten, slightly crumpled—but the sight of his well-remembered face gave me such a jolt of recognition that I had to retreat behind a pillar until my schoolgirl blush faded.

  Back in Dorset, Jess and he tolerated each other for my sake but neither understood what I saw in the other. It was like introducing a boisterous grizzly bear to a cautious feral cat. There were no such problems with Peter. In no time at all, he and Dan were playing rounds of golf together, and stopping off for a jar at the local hostelry. Each told me the other was a “good chap,” and I wondered why men found it easier than women to strike up a casual bond and move on without regret.

  I wouldn’t be able to do that with Jess. The ties we had ran too deep.

  EPILOGUE

  THERE’S LITTLE ELSE to tell. A few days after Dan returned to Iraq, part of an arm washed up on rocks about fifteen miles down the coast. It was spotted by a group of fishermen on their way home from catching mackerel. Enough of a fingerprint was retrieved to link the remains to MacKenzie, and a DNA test, using saliva from a glass in my parents’ flat, confirmed the indentification.

  There was some debate about how the arm had become detached from the rest of the body, and why it had survived relatively intact after a long immersion in water. It appeared to have been wrenched apart at the elbow but there were no obvious marks on the skin to show how that could have happened, although it was noted that three of the fingerbones were broken. There was talk of shark attacks but they weren’t taken seriously. The benign coastal waters of the west country were occasionally home to plankton-eating basking sharks, but not to man-eaters.

  Police divers explored the sea bed for several hundred metres around the rocks, also a couple of areas to the west where experts on tidal-drift suggested MacKenzie might have gone in, but nothing else was found. Jess, Peter and I were asked to attend a rather bizarre inquest, where the arm was pronounced dead from misadventure—along with a presumption that the remainder of the body had died similarly—and both Alan and Bagley closed their files.

  There were several column inches in the press, detailing what was known of MacKenzie, but the full story was never revealed. Bagley was satisfied with a verdict of misadventure—any man who was watching his back for a police pursuit could easily lose his footing on the cliffs in the dark—but Alan wouldn’t commit himself. As he said, there was nothing to be learnt from a forearm except the name of the owner and the fact that he was probably dead.

  “Isn’t that what you wanted?” I asked. “Confirmation.” He, too, had attended the inquest, and I’d abandoned Jess and Peter to take him to a tea shop near the Coroner’s Court in Blandford Forum.

  Alan nodded. “But I’ll always be curious, Connie. It may be coincidence that he died of drowning after fending off a dog and machete attack…but there’s an interesting symmetry to it.” He stirred his tea. “Even his arm was detached in the same place that the prostitute’s was broken in Freetown.”

  “It wasn’t a machete,” I corrected amiably. “It was an axe.”

  “Near enough.”

  We were sitting opposite each other and I examined his face to see how serious he was. “I don’t believe in an eye for an eye, Alan. It’s a crazy form of justice. In any case, if I’d wanted the perfect revenge, I’d have kept MacKenzie in a crate for three days.”

  His eyes creased attractively. “It crossed my mind.”

  I laughed. “Bagley would have found him. There wasn’t an inch of Barton House that wasn’t searched at least twice.”

  “Mmm.”

  “You don’t really think I’d do something like that, do you?”

  “Why not? He was a killer. A sadist. He liked hur
ting people. He boasted about what he’d done to your father…humiliated your friend and killed her dog. You’re good at hiding your feelings, Connie. You have a brain…and you have courage. Why wouldn’t you kill him if you had the chance?”

  “It would make me no better than MacKenzie.”

  Alan took a sip from his teacup and eyed me over the rim. “Do you know Friedrich Nietzsche’s quote about being corrupted by evil? I have it pinned to a board above my desk. Simplified, it says: ‘When you fight with monsters take care not to become one yourself.’ It’s a warning to all policemen.”

  I nodded. “It goes on: ‘If you stare too long into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you.’ How would you simplify that?”

  “You tell me.”

  “When you’re teetering on the brink, step back.”

  “And did you?”

  “Of course,” I said, offering him a biscuit. “But MacKenzie didn’t. He fell in.”

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  MINETTE WALTERS’S best-selling novels have been published in more than thirty countries. She has won the John Creasey and Golden Dagger Awards from the Crime Writers Association of Great Britain, and the Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America, as well as the Grand Prix des Lectrices d’Elle in France. She lives in Dorset with her husband and two children.

  ALSO BY MINETTE WALTERS

  The Tinder Box

  Disordered Minds

  Fox Evil

  Acid Row

  The Shape of Snakes

  The Breaker

  The Echo

  The Dark Room

  The Scold’s Bride

  The Sculptress

  The Ice House

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF