Fox Evil (18 page)

Instead, he sucked on his thumb and closed his eyes, and pretended he hadn't seen her. He'd done it before-closed his eyes and pretended he couldn't see-but he didn't remember why… and didn't want to…

The ringing of the telephone made Vera jump. It was a rare occurrence at the Lodge. She looked furtively toward the kitchen, where Bob was listening to the radio, then picked up the receiver. A smile lit her faded eyes as she heard the voice at the other end. "Of course I understand," she said, stroking the fox's brush in her pocket. "It's Bob who's stupid… not Vera." As she replaced the receiver, something stirred in her mind. A fleeting recollection that someone had wanted to talk to her husband. Her mouth sucked and strained as she tried to remember who it was, but the effort was too great. Only her long-term memory worked these days and even that was full of holes…

This time keys were unnecessary. Fox knew the Colonel's habits of old. He was obsessive about barring his front and back doors, but rarely remembered to lock the French windows when he left the house via the terrace. It was the work of seconds to sprint across the grass, after James and his visitors had disappeared into the wood, to let himself into the drawing room. He stood for a moment, listening to the heavy silence of the house, but the heat from the log fire was too intense after the cold outside, and he flung back his hood and loosened the scarf around his mouth as he felt himself start to burn up.

A hammer throbbed in his temple and he reached out a hand to steady himself against the old man's chair as sweat poured out of him. A sickness of the mind, the bitch had called it, but maybe the kid was right. Maybe the alopecia and the shakes had a physical cause. Whatever it was, it was getting worse. He gripped the leather chair, waiting for the faintness to pass. He was afraid of no man, but fear of cancer writhed like a snake through his gut.

Dick Weldon was in no mood to protect his wife. Plied with wine by his son-something he rarely drank-his belligerence had come to the fore, particularly after Belinda relayed the bullet points of her telephone conversation with Prue while Jack cooked lunch.

"I'm sorry, Dick," she told him in genuine apology. "I shouldn't have lost my rag, but it drives me mad when she accuses me of keeping Jack away from her.
He's
the one who doesn't want to see her. All I ever do is try to keep the peace… not very successfully." She sighed. "Look, I know this isn't something you want to hear, but the honest-to-God truth is that Prue and I loathe each other. It's a personality clash in spades. I can't stand her Lady-Muck routine, and she can't stand my everyone's-equal attitude. She wanted a daughter-in-law she could be proud of… not a country bumpkin who can't even make babies."

Dick saw the glint of tears along her lashes and his anger with his wife intensified. "It's only a matter of time," he said gruffly, taking Belinda's hand in both of his and patting it clumsily. "I had a couple of cows once when I was still doing the dairy lark. They took an age to do the business but they got there in the end. Told the vet he wasn't shoving the gizmo up far enough… worked a treat when he went in up to his elbow."

Belinda gave a half-laugh, half-sob. "Maybe that's where we're going wrong. Maybe Jack's been using the wrong gizmo."

He gave a grunt of amusement. "I always said the bull would have done it better. Nature has a way of getting things right… it's the shortcuts that cause the problems." He pulled her into a hug. "If it's worth anything, pet, no one's prouder of you than I am. You've made more of our lad than we ever managed. I'd trust him with my life these days… and that's something I never thought I'd say. Did he tell you he burned the barn down once because he took his friends in there for a smoke? I marched him up to the nick and made them give him a caution." He chuckled. "It didn't do much good but it made
me
feel better. Trust me, Lindy, he's come a long way since he married you. I wouldn't swap you for the world."

She wept her heart out for half an hour and by the time Julian called, several glasses later, Dick was in no mood to keep dirty laundry under wraps. "Don't believe anything Ellie tells you," he said drunkenly. "She's even more of an idiot than Prue is. Thick as two short planks, the pair of them, and vicious with it. I don't know why I married mine… skinny little thing with no tits thirty years ago… fat as a bloody carthorse now. Never liked her. Nag… nag… nag. That's all she knows. I'll tell you this for nothing… if she thinks I'm paying the damn legal bills when she's done for slander and malicious phone calls then she's got another think coming. She can pay for them herself out of the divorce settlement." There was a small hiatus as he knocked over his glass. "If you've any sense you'll tell that bit of scrag-end you married the same bloody thing. According to Prue, she's been smoking James out."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I'm buggered if I know," said Dick with unconscious humor, "but I bet James didn't enjoy it."

In the library, Fox's curiosity led him to press play on the tape recorder. A woman's voice came to life in the amplifier. He recognized it immediately as Eleanor Bartlett's. High pitched. Strident. Telltale vowels, exaggerated by electronics, which suggested a different background from the one she was claiming.

"…I've met your daughter… seen for myself what your abuse has done to her. You disgusting man. I suppose you thought you'd got away with it… that no one would ever know because Elizabeth kept the secret for so long… Who would believe her, anyway? Was that your thinking? Well, they did, didn't they…?Poor Ailsa. What a shock it must have been to find out that she wasn't your only victim… no wonder she called you mad… I hope you're frightened now. Who's going to believe you didn't kill her when the truth comes out? It can all be proved through the child… Is that why you demanded Elizabeth be aborted? Is that why you were so angry when the doctor said it was too late? It all made sense to Ailsa when she remembered the rows… how she must have hated you…"

Fox let the tape run while he searched the desk drawers. Eleanor's message clicked to one of Darth Vader's, followed by another. He didn't bother to rewind after he pressed stop. James had stopped listening when he took to guarding the terrace with his shotgun, and it was unlikely Mark Ankerton would notice the difference between one Darth Vader monologue and another. In a detached way, Fox recognized that the most powerful impact came, not from the endless repetition of fact, but from the five-second silences before Darth Vader announced himself. It was a waiting game that played on the listener's nerves…

And Fox, who had seen the old man's haggard face and trembling hands too often at the window, knew the game was working.

Julian's approach to his wife was rather more subtle than Dick's had been to Prue, but he had an advantage because of Eleanor's decision not to confront him about his infidelity. He recognized that Eleanor's tactics were to bury her head in the sand and hope the problem would go away. It surprised him-Eleanor's nature was too aggressive to take a backseat-but his conversation with Dick suggested a reason. Eleanor couldn't afford to alienate her husband if James's solicitor made good his threat to sue. Eleanor understood the value of money, even if she didn't understand anything else.

The one theory that never occurred to him was that she feared loneliness. To his logical mind, a woman who was vulnerable would have reined in her determination to have her own way. But even if he'd guessed the truth, it wouldn't have made any difference. He wasn't a man who ever acted out of sympathy. He didn't expect it for himself, so why should others expect it from him? In any case, he was buggered if he'd pay to keep a wife who tired him out of the courts.

"I've just been talking to Dick," he told Eleanor, returning to the kitchen and picking up the whisky bottle to examine the level inside. "You're going at this a bit strong, aren't you?"

She turned her back on him to look in the fridge. "Only a couple. I'm starving. I waited on lunch until you came home."

"You don't usually. Usually I get my own. What's different about today?"

She kept her back to him by taking a bowl of yesterday's sprouts off a shelf and carrying it to the cooker. "Nothing," she said with a forced laugh. "Can you stand sprouts again or shall we have peas?"

"Peas," he said maliciously, helping himself to another glass and topping it up with water from the tap. "Have you heard what that idiot Prue Weldon's been doing?"

Eleanor didn't answer.

"Only making dirty phone calls to James Lockyer-Fox," he went on, dropping onto a chair and staring at her unresponsive back. "The heavy-breathing variety, apparently. Doesn't say anything… just puffs and pants at the other end. It's pathetic, isn't it? Something to do with the menopause, presumably." He chuckled, knowing the menopause was Eleanor's worst fear. He treated his own midlife crisis with young blondes. "Like Dick says, she's fat as a carthorse so
he's
not interested anymore. I mean,
who
would be? He's talking about divorce… says he's damned if he'll support her if she ends up in court."

He watched Eleanor's hand shake as she took a lid off a saucepan.

"Did you know she was doing it? You're pretty good pals… always got your heads together when I come in." He paused to give her time to answer, and when she didn't: "You know those rows you mentioned," he continued casually, "between Dick and James's chap… and Dick and Prue… well, they were nothing to do with the travelers. Dick wasn't given a chance to talk about what's going on at the Copse, instead he was read the riot act about Prue's heavy breathing. He went straight off to bawl her out and she got all hoity-toity and said it was perfectly reasonable. She's so bloody thick, she thinks the fact that James hasn't challenged any of it is because he's guilty… calls it 'smoking him out'-" another laugh, rather more scathing this time-"or bollocks to that effect. You have to feel sorry for Dick. I mean, it's not something a moron like Prue would ever have come up with herself… so who's been feeding her the crap?
That's
the bastard should be done for slander. Prue's just the halfwit who repeated it."

This time there was a long silence.

"Maybe Prue's right. Maybe James is guilty," Eleanor managed at last.

"Of what? Being in bed when his wife died of natural causes?"

"Prue heard him hit Ailsa."

"Oh, for God's sake!" Julian said impatiently. "Prue
wanted
to hear him hit Ailsa. That's all
that
was about. Why are you so gullible, Ellie? Prue's a tedious social climber who was miffed because the Lockyer-Foxes didn't accept her dinner invitations. I wouldn't accept them myself if it wasn't for Dick. The poor bastard leads a dog's life and he's always asleep by the time the damn pudding arrives."

"You should have said."

"I have… numerous times… you never bother to listen.
You
think she's amusing,
I
don't. So what's new? I'd rather be in the pub than listen to a tipsy middle-aged frump trot out her fantasies." He propped his feet on another chair, something he knew she hated. "From the way Prue talks now, you'd think the Manor was her second home, but everyone knows it's a load of garbage. Ailsa was a private person… why would she choose the Dorset megaphone for a friend? It's a joke."

It was a good two hours since Eleanor had realized she didn't know her husband as well as she thought she did. Now paranoia entered her psyche.
Why the emphasis on middle age…? Why the emphasis on the menopause…? Why the emphasis on divorce…?
"Prue's a nice person," she said lamely.

"No, she isn't," he retorted. "She's a frustrated bitch with a chip on her shoulder. At least Ailsa had something in her life other than gossip, but Prue lives on the damn stuff. I told Dick he was doing the right thing. Get out quick, I said, before the writs roll in. It's hardly his responsibility if his wife embroiders the tag end of a conversation because she's so damn boring no one wants to listen to her."

Eleanor was provoked into turning around. "What makes you so convinced James has nothing to hide?"

He shrugged. "I'm sure he has. He'd be a very unusual man if he didn't."

He half expected her to say "you should know," but she dropped her gaze and said lamely: "Well then."

"It doesn't pass the 'so what' test, Ellie. Look at all the things you've been trying to hide since we moved down here… where we lived… what my salary was-" he laughed again-"your age. I bet you haven't told Prue you're nearly sixty… I bet you've been pretending you're younger than she is." Her mouth turned down in immediate anger, and he eyed her curiously for a moment. She was holding herself under enormous restraint. A remark like that yesterday would have brought a cutting response. "If there was any evidence that James killed Ailsa, the police would have found it," he said. "Anyone who thinks differently needs their head examined."

"You said he'd got away with murder. You went on and on about it."

"I said if he
had
murdered her, it was the perfect crime. It was a joke, for Christ's sake. You should listen once in a while, instead of forcing everyone to listen to you."

Eleanor turned back to the hob. "
You
never listen to me. You're always out or in your study."

He drained his whisky. Here it comes, he thought. "I'm all yours," he invited her. "What do you want to talk about?"

"Nothing. There's no point. You always take the man's side."

"I'd certainly have taken James's if I'd realized what Prue was up to," Julian said coolly. "So would Dick. He's never had any illusions about being married to a bitch, but he didn't know she was venting her spleen on James. Poor old chap. It was bad enough Ailsa dying without having some twisted harpy plaguing him with the equivalent of poison-pen letters. It's a form of stalking… the kind of thing sex-starved spinsters do…"

Eleanor could feel his eyes boring between her shoulder blades.

"…or in Prue's case," he finished brutally, "women whose husbands don't fancy them anymore."

In Shenstead Farm kitchen, Prue was as worried as her friend. They were both deeply frightened. The men they had taken for granted had surprised them. "Dad doesn't want to talk to you," Prue's son had said curtly over the phone. "He says if you don't stop calling his mobile, he'll have the number changed. We've told him he can stay here tonight."

"Just put him on," she snapped. "He's being ridiculous."

"I thought that was your province," Jack flashed back. "We're all trying to get our head round the toe-curling embarrassment of your phone calls to that poor old man. What the hell did you think you were doing?"

"You don't know anything about it," she said coldly. "Neither does Dick."

"That's exactly right. We don't… and never have done. Jesus wept, Mum! How could you
do
a thing like that? We all thought you were working the poison out of your system by slagging him off at home, but to plague him with calls and not even
say
anything… It's not as if anyone believes your version of what happened. You're
always
rewriting history to put yourself in a better light."