‘What did you do?’ Monica asked.
‘I killed her, it was me. I killed Amanda. That’s all I have to say.’
He had composed himself on the grey office chair, long legs crossed at the knee, his hands loosely folded, his hair brushing across the slight frown of determination on his forehead. To Monica, observing him, he seemed to be representative of a type of Englishman at a certain age. She thought unexpectedly of the war poetry she had once used to love to read. Perhaps some of those memorialised would have turned out like Nicholas, had they survived. Isobel Berry’s brother Freddie, killed in Burma aged twenty-one. Would those dead fair-haired boys have become fair-haired middle-aged boys, duller and heavier, wiser and disappointed? She saw that Martin Bee was also closely observing Nicholas Haig-Mercer.
‘Are you trying to protect someone?’ Monica asked.
He turned sideways to look at her.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Exactly that. I think that you are trying to protect someone.’
‘I wish you would just accept what I have told you and take me away,’ he replied.
‘You know that we can’t do that, Mr Haig-Mercer. You have already given us an account of your movements on Tuesday 19th June. That account has been corroborated by two independent witnesses.’
‘Who?’
‘Barnabas Toms and Mr Laven, the porter at your aunt’s mansion block.’
‘They could have lied.’
‘They could have lied, yes, but I think we all know that they did not.’
He put his head into his hands. Monica stood up and nodded to Lydia Lyons. The secretary stepped forward and put her hand on his shoulder as Nicholas Haig-Mercer mumbled words which were not quite coherent but were in tone a lament. It might have been that he said ‘What else is there?’
Monica asked, ‘Felicity Haig-Mercer – is she in the house?’
Felicity Haig-Mercer was sitting at the end of the long kitchen table. In front of her on the table there was a Hornsea pottery teapot and a mug and a glass ashtray and a packet of Rothmans cigarettes. She did not look up or acknowledge their entrance. Monica nodded to the sergeant and they each pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. Monica took out her notepad. The sergeant looked around the room, on the top shelves of the built-in dresser oval meat platters were ranged, graduated in order of size. The platters were banded by a stripe of deep dark blue. Assorted items hung from some of the cup hooks on the dresser – a crocheted pot holder, a car key fob, a woven straw dolly, a brown felt egg cosy in the form of a cottage. Still Felicity Haig-Mercer did not move. Monica said
‘Mrs Haig-Mercer, we need to talk to you about the death of Amanda Shute.’
She looked up, dully, ‘Of course you do,’ she said and took a cigarette from the Rothmans packet and lit it.
‘Would you prefer to have your solicitor present?’
She shook her head and then she asked, ‘Do you know how I knew?’
‘Knew what?’
‘How I knew about the affair.’
‘No, why don’t you tell us,’
‘I knew because Nicholas started to stand up to his bloody mother,’ she laughed shortly. ‘The first time he did it was at one of those grim estate meetings we have to have once a quarter, with the land agent, Dorothy queening it at the head of the table and giving me the nod when it’s time for Esther to bring in the sherry and water biscuits. This particular day, the last item on the agenda was an application from Joe Hicks, one of our tenant farmers. He wanted to do some alterations to his house so that Mrs Hicks could take in bed and breakfast guests. Dorothy always refuses any change on principle and she never expects her opinion to be challenged. We were about to move on when Nicholas spoke up, ‘Why not?’ he asked, and his mother gave him one of her turn you to stone looks. But he persisted - why shouldn’t Joe Hicks be allowed to make his alterations, he asked. He and Mrs Hicks were showing great initiative and we ought to support them. The agent actually agreed with him and so we duly voted three to one for Mrs Hicks to be allowed to realise her b and b ambitions. Dorothy was absolutely spitting feathers. Then Nicholas started behaving out of character with her in other ways …’
‘How?’
She ground out the cigarette. ‘The parish council – his mother is on it, naturally, and he always drove her down to St Mawgan village for the meeting, on the second Wednesday of every month. It was a ritual; Dorothy would go to the meeting and he would go and nurse a pint in the Falcon and talk about tractors and pretend to be a man of the people. Then, suddenly, he started not being at home in time. He’d make up some lame excuse about how he’d been playing squash and hadn’t noticed how late it was or that he’d had a call to something out on the estate. He began missing dinner too, Dorothy and I would be on our own in that vast freezing dining room, pushing one of Esther’s warmed up offerings round our plates with absolutely nothing to say to each other …’
‘Did you speak to your husband about the change in his behaviour?’
‘And say what, precisely? There is such a thing as self-respect.’
‘Did your mother-in-law speak to him?’
‘Possibly, she would hardly have told me if she had. It’s funny, we got on rather well at first, I think Dorothy respected my ambition, even if she didn’t like me very much. She said I had drive, just what Nicholas needed. Then, after six months, when there was no sign of an heir on the way, she decided that I wouldn’t do after all and she began to drop her clumsy hints. Nicholas came in for blame too – she could never be sure which one of us was faulty. I could be sure though, I went to see all the specialists.’
‘How long have you been married?’
‘Seven years.’
‘And where did you meet?’
‘I was working for Laurence Pollinger’s, the literary agents. One of our clients was a translator, she did all the Russian heavyweights, her publisher gave a party for her, Nick was one of their editors.’
‘Did your relationship begin then?’
‘Yes, straightaway. I had to take some stuff back to the office in Maddox Street, Nick said he’d come with me. We ended up sitting on the stairs all night, just talking. I remember at one point looking up at the skylight and seeing that it was almost day. After that, he used to come and pick me up at lunchtime, with sandwiches, we used to sit in Hanover Square, or sometimes we would go to a viewing at Sotheby’s.’
‘When did you first come to Trenant?’
‘Quite early on, in the first few weeks. We came down for the Whitsun Bank Holiday weekend. We’d just arrived and I was in my room, unpacking, when Dorothy knocked on the door. She didn’t waste any time on formalities, she asked me about my family, my background, and then she said I can see that you intend to marry my son, you ought to know that my husband is rather unwell, the marriage should be arranged as soon as possible. And so it was.’
She he took another cigarette from the packet.
‘I’ve got time for this, have I?’ she asked and smiled with irony.
‘Take as long as you like, Mrs Haig-Mercer.’
‘Thank you. So, where had I got to in my tawdry tale of country folk …’
‘You realised that your husband was having an affair.’
‘Oh yes, that. Well, once I had worked out what he was up to I started to watch him, to see how he was managing it. God it was pathetic, do you know how they were communicating with each other to arrange their assignations? They were using that stupid code thing that his father taught him when he was a child. Leaving little piles of sticks by the road, chalking marks on the milestone …’
‘It’s called vagabond language.’
‘I know. It’s mentioned in Brideshead. Anyway, I was out on the terrace one morning and I heard him go off down the drive, the trees were still bare, so I could see his car turn onto the road, then he stopped a couple of hundred yards further on and got out, I reckoned it was about at the milestone mark. I waited until he had driven off again and then
I went over with the dogs. There were a couple of pebbles and this little symbol chalked on the milestone, I could see that there had been other marks, but that they had been rubbed out. I decided to go and watch from one of the holiday cottages, to see what happened next. There’s a good view up and down the road from the bedroom window. I told Lydia, his faithful retainer, that I was going to measure up for new curtains. I had to wait half the afternoon but then, hey presto, along came this Renault 4 with these big flower stickers on the tailgate. It stopped just short of the milestone and out she got, all long blonde hair and tight jeans. Christ, I couldn’t even credit him with any originality…’
She extinguished the cigarette in the ashtray with vigorous stabbing movements.
‘What did you do then?’
‘What straight afterwards, or later on?’
‘Both.’
‘Straight afterwards, I waited until she’d got back into her car and driven away and then I took the keys back to Lydia. She asked me was everything all right, in that infuriating sing songy way she has – that woman really ought to have been a nanny – and I said yes of course, that I’d taken my time because I’d seen the perfect material at Roberts in Truro and so I’d measured up for loose covers as well, oh how lovely, she said, we’ll be all nice and smart for the new season …’ As she caricatured the secretary’s tone her voice waivered and she might have been about to cry. Instead she shook her head fiercely, ‘Anyway, after that I kept watch on the milestone so that I could work out what exactly what the symbols meant. I sought out her car too, I knew I’d seen it out and about. I found out who she was, where she lived … she was quite famous hereabouts, was Miss Shute. It was of course somewhat galling for me to discover that she was actually here in our grounds last year, at the fête …’
‘Do you think it likely that was when the affair began?’
‘I think it highly likely, Chief Inspector. Let’s be honest, Nick probably wouldn’t have had the gumption to go out and look for a girlfriend, but if one appeared and offered herself up on his own doorstep – well …’
‘Did you know that they used to meet in the woods?’
‘I guessed that was what they were up to, at first I presumed they must be rolling around in the back seat of a car together, like a couple of teenagers.’
‘And then you found out that they had arranged a more permanent meeting place?’
‘Oh yes, didn’t I just. You see, I check all the beats we’ve devised for the shoot regularly, and there was no sign of anyone else going there. But there’s another part of the woods, a supposedly closed off section … there was an accident, years ago, a fatality. After this accident Nick’s father stipulated that the area around it – which included the old surveyor’s lodge - should be made out of bounds to everybody, out of respect. The estate workers always kept away. When we began work for our shoots, that whole swathe of land had to be excluded from the plans.’
‘The accident, did it involve Robin Harvey’s father?’
‘Yes, it did, they were felling, something went amiss … Anyway, one morning in January I was at home and there was a call from Nick, he said he’d just bumped into an old friend from his publishing days and that they were going to have lunch together in Wadebridge so he wouldn’t be back.’
‘Did he say who the old friend was?’
‘He said it was Barney - Barnabas - Toms. Toms as in his family’s bookshop, the one they run more like a three-ring circus than a bookseller’s. Frankly, I didn’t believe Nick, I couldn’t think what on earth Barney Toms would be doing in Cornwall in the middle of winter. I presumed it was a cover up for one of his assignations so when he’d rung off I phoned the Molesworth Arms - where he was supposed to be - and asked if he was there. They said that he’d just gone into the dining room with another gentleman and did I want him fetched him to the phone. I said no, no, that I would pop in while I was shopping and surprise him instead. As I put the phone down it struck me as rather ironic, you know, that my husband was the deceiver, but that there was I discovering what a resourceful liar I could be. Anyway, knowing he was out of the way for a few hours, I decided to take the dogs over the woods again, across to the other side, the supposedly forbidden acres.’
‘And what did you find?’
‘The first thing I came across was idiot boy, skulking around. I told him to go away, that I was bringing the men through with more dogs and that their dogs didn’t like people who hang about. He started to go in that funny sideways run he does but then he stopped and said that I couldn’t go in the way I was heading. I told him to mind his own business and pointed out that as these were my woods I rather thought that I could go any way I pleased. He mumbled something and then he went away. He actually shouldn’t be left to roam about you know, I’m sure it’s not safe for him - and for the rest of us. Anyway, I carried on walking and eventually I came upon it, the charming little love nest that my husband had created in the lodge.’
She took out another cigarette. ‘You’ve been inside, have you?’
‘Yes, we have.’
‘Sweet, isn’t it – with the wood fire and the furry hearth rug. And I wonder if you happened to notice the painting on the wall? The Levitan?’
‘We saw a painting, yes,’ said Monica.
‘Well, that painting, the Levitan, is actually mine. Nick made a huge fuss about making a present of it to me when we married. It came to his father from the White Russian aunt, she was a sort cult figure among the men of this family. Nick adored the bloody thing, he told me some guff about how when he was a boy he used to dream of being able to climb through the frame into the canvas and hitch a ride on the haycart. It’s always hung on the landing outside our bedroom, then one day last winter I noticed that it had disappeared, and he told me he was taking it to London to be cleaned. Of course, what he was actually doing was making a present of it all over again, to her. Although one can’t help wondering how the voluptuous Miss Shute would have fared for example in a discussion of the merits of the harvest scene in Anna Karenina – Anna Karenin, as Nick insists it should be called.’
She paused and looked around the room. The dog Titus, lolling over the arm of the sofa, became momentarily alert, anticipating a command that she would not give.
‘When did you find out that Amanda Shute was pregnant?’ asked Monica.
She held her half-finished cigarette out in front of her, studying the up curl of the smoke.
‘About three weeks ago.’
‘How did you find out?’
‘Does that really matter?’
‘Yes, we need you to tell us.’ Monica’s voice was quiet and patient.
‘I have a friend, she’s a GP – look, I don’t want anyone else embroiled in this bloody mess …’
‘Mrs Haig-Mercer, Dr Murray has already spoken to us.’
‘Has she? Hey ho, nothing to lose then, good old Heather!’
‘What did you do, when you found out about the pregnancy?’
‘What did I do …’ She was looking past them, remembering. A long minute passed, they heard the claws of the Labrador on the tiles in the hall. The dog paused and looked in at the open doorway and then walked away again.
‘I went into a kind of over drive, I suppose. We were out, when she told me, a pub supper, it’s our once a month treat … God, when I think of the life I used to lead … anyway, I came back here and I sat up all night, thinking…’ she laughed shortly, ‘reviewing my situation. I have to say it didn’t look good. I could see how bloody infatuated Nick already was with the little tart – and now that he’d actually managed to father a child … I reckoned that the prospect of an heir could outweigh any temporary scandal for Dorothy. I also knew that there’d be no chance of a settlement for me – the estate is absolutely pot-less. At dawn I went out with the dogs, and suddenly my head was quite clear. I knew absolutely what I had to do. It’s funny, there’s times in life when something huge happens and, everything, everyone, goes on as normal but the
appearance of the world is changed somehow, as if before it was all just a kind of backdrop and then suddenly everything is 3D. Do you know what I mean?’
‘I think so, yes.’
Sergeant Bee, watching, saw that the dialogue between the women was no longer an interview, it had become a conversation or, in the truest sense, a confession.
‘Objects stand out, you know, and sounds – when I came back I heard a car passing on the road … I supposed it was someone going to work early … I remember I wondered what the driver did for a living, what their home was like, family, you know… I walked in here and John Timpson was talking on the radio and Nick was standing over there … he was still in his pyjamas, he was leaning with his back against the sink and he was eating a bowl of cereal, shovelling it in, he was barefoot and he hadn’t combed his hair, he looked like a boy… I wished …’ they saw that there were tears in her eyes. They waited and then Monica asked her gently
‘What did you wish?’
She swallowed the tears ‘Oh you know, that it could all just stay like that.’
They sat in silence again and then Felicity Haig-Mercer sniffed loudly and wiped the cuff of her shirt over her face. ‘It couldn’t of course. May I have some water?’
‘Of course – Sergeant.’
Sergeant Bee opened and closed cupboard doors,
‘The kitchen glass is in that one,’ she said, pointing.
He filled the glass and set it on the table.
‘Thank you.’ She swallowed some of the water. ‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘Later that day I began to make my preparations. I had their message system off pat, you see, I knew I just had to wait for Nick to be away and to fool the girl into going to the meeting place. Then it all just fell into place, like the answer to a prayer - although I suppose that prayers aren’t quite right in this context. Nick announced he was going up to London and that he would be staying overnight at his aunt’s flat, she’s away, in South Africa. I knew he wouldn’t be planning to smuggle his girlfriend into Aunt Marjorie’s, he would never get her past Gaston, the hall porter. I already had tickets for the game fair at the Bath and West. I was sure that there would be people at the fair who know me, people who would confirm that they had seen me there. I found that I could hire a nondescript van from a down at heel garage in Bristol … so I announced to Dorothy and Nick that there would be so much to see and do at the fair that I had decided to go on both days and stay overnight at the Royal …’
The Trebelzue Gate Page 21
