Fox Evil (31 page)

Every doubt nancy had ever had about discovering her biological history screamed for the old woman to be quiet, but she refused to give Vera the satisfaction of saying it aloud. Had she been alone, she would have denied any relationship with Fox or his mother, but she was conscious that Wolfie was listening to every word being said. She had no idea how much he understood, but she couldn't bring herself to deny a relationship with him.

"What did you do it for?" she asked the old woman. "Money? Were you blackmailing Ailsa?"

Vera gave a grunt of laughter. "Why not? The missus could afford it. It was such a little amount to keep quiet about your daddy. She said she'd rather die, silly woman." She seemed to wander suddenly. "Everyone dies. Bob'll die. My boy gets angry when people annoy him. Not Vera, though. Vera does what she's told… do this… do that… Is that right?"

Nancy didn't say anything because she didn't know what to say. Was it better to sympathize? Or was it better to tie the old woman's brain in knots by arguing? She wanted to believe that Vera was so confused that nothing she said was true, but she had a terrible fear that the pieces relating to her were accurate. Hadn't she feared it all her life? Wasn't that why she had closed her mind to her heritage? It was truly said that "what the heart didn't know, it couldn't grieve over."

"The missus called my boy 'vermin,'" the old woman went on, her lips smacking ferociously, "so he showed her what happens to real vermin. She didn't like that… one of her foxes with its brains on the ground… said it was cruel."

Nancy screwed her eyes in pain as she inched forward.
She had to keep her talking…
"It
was
cruel," she said flatly. "It was even crueler to kill Henry. What did a poor old dog ever do to your rotten son?"

"It wasn't my boy did that. It was the other one."

Nancy took a breath, her nerve endings protesting at every movement. "What other one?"

"Never you mind. Common as muck, sniffing around petticoats. Vera's seen it… Vera sees everything. You get out the house, Ma, says my boy, and let me do the talking. But
I
saw him…
and
the flighty little piece he had in tow. She was always a problem… made her parents' life hell with her flirting and her whoring."

Elizabeth…?
"Stop blaming other people," she said sharply. "Blame yourself and your boy."

"He's a good boy."

"Bullshit!"
she spat. "He
kills
people."

More lip smacking. "He didn't want to," Vera whined. 'The missus brought it on herself. What's more cruel than giving money to save foxes, and refusing to help him. It wasn't enough to put him out of his house, she wanted him sent to jail as well." She smacked her fists together again. "It was her own fault."

"No, it wasn't," countered Nancy angrily. "It was
your
fault."

Vera cowered against the wall. "I didn't do it. It was the cold." Her voice went into a croon. "Vera saw her… all white and frozen with next to nothing on and her mouth open. She'd have been so ashamed. She was a proud lady. Never told anyone about
Lizzie
and my boy… never told the
Colonel
, He'd have been
very
angry. Got a bad temper has the Colonel."

Nancy shifted forward another inch. "Then he'll carve you into little pieces when I tell him you helped your son kill his wife," she snarled through gritted teeth.

Vera tapped in agony at her mouth. "He's a good boy. You put your feet up, Ma, he says. You've been a drudge and a slave all your life. What's Bob ever done for you? What's the Colonel ever done for you? What did the missus ever do except take the baby away because you weren't good enough?" Her mouth writhed. "He'd have gone away if she'd given him what he asked."

Wolfie seemed to grasp suddenly that Nancy was trying to work her way to the edge of the seat because he wedged his elbows onto the chair arm behind him and took his weight off her lap. "Of
course
he wouldn't have gone away," she said loudly, to keep Vera's attention. "He'd have gone on bleeding Ailsa till there was nothing left. Thieving and killing're all he knows, Mrs. Dawson."

"She didn't bleed," Vera countered triumphantly. "My boy was cleverer than that. Only the fox bled."

"Then there's a nice symmetry to this whole wretched story because it isn't my blood on this jacket, it's your darling boy's. So if you know where he is-and if you care for him at all-you should be persuading him to go to hospital instead of gibbering like a senile ape."

Vera's mouth puckered into uncontrollable movement again. "Don't you call me an ape… I've got rights. You're all the same. Do this… do that… Vera's been a drudge and a slave all her life-" she tapped the side of her head-"but Vera knows what's what… Vera's still got her marbles."

Nancy reached the edge of the seat. "No, you haven't."

The blunt contradiction was too much for the old woman's fragile hold on reality. "You're just like
her
," she spat. "Making judgments… telling Vera she's senile. But he
is
my boy. Do you think I don't know my own baby when I see him?"

"Okay, Mark, this is the deal. Take it or leave it. Lizzie and I will get Dad off the hook as long as he agrees to reinstate the previous will. We don't have a problem with everything going to Lizzie's kid in the long run but, in the short term, we want-"

"No deal," said Mark, breaking in as he moved into the corridor.

"It's not your decision to make."

"Right. So phone your father on the landline and put the offer to him. If you give me five minutes I'll make sure he answers."

"He won't listen to me."

"Congratulations!" Mark muttered sardonically. "That's the second time you've got something right in under a minute."

"Christ! You really are a patronizing bastard. Do you want our cooperation, or not?"

Mark stared at the corridor wall. "I don't view a demand for reinstatement as cooperation, Leo, and neither will your father. Nor am I prepared to test him on it because you and Lizzie will be dead in the water from the moment I open my mouth." He stroked his jaw. "Here's why. Your niece-Lizzie's daughter-has been in this house since ten o'clock this morning. Your father would give her the entire estate tomorrow if she'd agree to accept it… but she won't. She has an Oxford degree, she's a captain in the army, and she's due to inherit her family's two-thousand-acre farm in Herefordshire. The reason she's here is because your father wrote to her in a moment of depression, and she cared enough to follow it up. She expects nothing from him… wants nothing from him. She came with no ulterior motive except to be kind… and your father's besotted with her as a result."

"And showing it, I suppose," the other man said with a trace of bitterness. "So how would she be doing if he was treating her like a criminal? Not so well, I'll bet. It's easy to be nice to the old man when he treats you like royalty… bloody hard when you get the bum's rush."

Mark might have said, "You brought it on yourself," but he didn't. "Have you ever thought he might feel the same? Someone has to call a truce."

"Have you told him that?"

"Yes."

"And?"

"A little help in the present situation would go a long way."

"Why does it always have to be me who makes the first move?" There was a muted laugh at the other end. "Do you know why he called me the other day? To rant about my thieving. I got the whole catalogue from the time I was seventeen to the present day. And from that he deduced that I killed my mother in anger, then embarked on a campaign of vilification to blackmail him into handing over the estate. There's no forgiveness in my father's nature. He took a view of my character while I was still at home, and he refuses to change it." Another laugh. "I came to the conclusion long ago that I might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb."

"You could try surprising him," suggested Mark.

"You mean like the squeaky-clean granddaughter? Are you sure you've found the right girl? She doesn't sound like any Lockyer-Fox I've ever met."

"Your father thinks she's a cross between your grandmother and your mother."

"Point made then. They were only Lockyer-Foxes by marriage. Is she pretty? Does she look like Lizzie?"

"No. Tall and dark-more like you as a matter of fact, but with brown eyes. You should be grateful for that. If she had blue eyes I might have believed Becky."

Another laugh. "And if it had been anyone but Becky who'd said it, I might have let you… just for the amusement factor. She's a jealous little bitch… had it in for Lizzie from the start. I blame you, as a matter of fact. You made Becky think she was important. Bad mistake. Treat 'em mean, keep 'em keen. It's the only way if you don't want to ruin them for the next man that comes along."

"I'm not into revolving doors, Leo. I'd rather have a wife and kids."

There was a brief hesitation. "Then you'd better forget anything you learned at school, my friend. It's a myth that blue-eyed parents can't produce brown-eyed children. Ma was an expert on genetic throwbacks. It made her feel better about herself to blame her children's addictions and her father's alcoholism on some distant ancestor who belonged to the Hellfire Club." Another pause to see if Mark would bite, and when he didn't: "Don't worry. I can guarantee that Lizzie's baby was nothing to do with me. Apart from anything else, I never fancied her enough to sleep with her… not after she started going with riffraff, anyway."

This time Mark did bite. "What riffraff?"

"Irish tinkers that Peter Squires brought in to mend his fences. He had them camping in a field over one summer. It was pretty funny, actually. Ma made a tit of herself by taking the children's education in hand, then went ballistic when she discovered Lizzie was being shafted by one of them."

"When was this?"

"What's it worth?"

"Nothing. I'll ask your father."

"He won't know. He was away at the time… and Ma never told him. The whole thing was kept very hush-hush in case the neighbors found out. Even I didn't know till later. I was in France for four weeks, and by the time I got back Ma had put Lizzie under lock and key. It was a mistake. She should have let it run its natural course."

"Why?"

"First love," said Leo cynically. "No one was ever as good again. It was the beginning of the slippery slope for my poor sister."

Nancy put all her effort into her thigh muscles and, with an unsteady lurch, rose to her feet with Wolfie sitting on her left hip. It would take a feather to knock her down again, but she prayed the old woman wouldn't realize that. "Move away from the door, please, Mrs. Dawson. Wolfie and I are going downstairs now."

Vera shook her head. "Fox wants his boy."

"No."

Negatives disturbed her. She began smacking her fists together again. "He belongs to Fox."

"No," said Nancy even more forcefully. "If Fox ever had any rights as a parent, he forfeited them when he took Wolfie from his mother. Parenthood isn't about ownership, it's about duty of care, and Fox has failed to show this child any care at all. You, too, Mrs. Dawson. Where were you when Wolfie and his mother needed help?

Wolfie pressed his lips to her ear. "Cub, too," he whispered urgently. "Don't forget li'l Cub."

She had no idea who or what Cub was, but she didn't want to take her attention from Vera. "Cub, too," she repeated. "Where were you for little Cub, Mrs. Dawson?"

But Vera didn't seem to know who Cub was either and, like Prue Weldon, fell back on what she knew. "He's a good boy. You put your feet up, Ma, he says. What's Bob ever done for you except treat you like a skivvy? He'll get his comeuppance, don't you worry."

Nancy frowned. "Does that mean Fox isn't Bob's son?"

The old woman's confusion intensified. "He's
my
boy."

Nancy gave the half-smile that was so reminiscent of James's. It would have been a warning to the old woman if she'd been capable of interpreting it. "So people were right to call you a whore?"

"It's Lizzie was the whore," she hissed. "She lay with other men."

"Good," said Nancy, hoisting Wolfie higher on her hip. "Because I couldn't give a damn how many men she slept with-just so long as Fox isn't my father… and
you
aren't my grandmother. Now, will you
move
… because there is
no way
I am going to allow a murdering old bitch to take Wolfie from me. You aren't fit to look after anything, let alone a child."

Vera almost danced with frustration. "You're so high and mighty… just like
her
. She's the one took babies away. All puffed up with her good works… making out she knew more than Vera did. You're not a suitable mother, she said. I can't allow it. Is that fair? Doesn't Vera have rights, too?" Up came the finger. "Do this… do that… Who cares about Vera's feelings?"

It was like listening to a stylus jump tracks on a worn record to produce unrelated bursts of sound. The theme was recognizable but the pieces lacked cohesion and continuity. Who was she talking about now? Nancy wondered. Ailsa? Had Ailsa made a decision about Vera's fitness as a mother? It seemed unlikely-
on whose authority could she do it?
-but it might explain Vera's bizarre remark about "knowing her baby when she saw it."

Perhaps Vera saw the indecision in her face because the gnarled finger jabbed in her direction again. "See," she said jubilantly. "I said it wasn't right, but she wouldn't listen. It won't work, she said, better to give it to strangers. So much heartache… and all for nothing when she had to go looking for it in the end."

"If you're talking about me," Nancy said coldly, "then Ailsa was right. You're the last person in the world anyone should give a baby to. Look at the damage you did to your own child." She started to walk forward. "Are you going to move or will I have to make you?"

Tears welled in Vera's eyes. "It wasn't my fault. It was Bob's fault. He told them to get rid of it. I wasn't even allowed to see it."

But Nancy wasn't interested. Telling Wolfie to turn the handle, she backed into the old woman, forcing her aside, and with a sigh of relief hooked the door open with her foot and hurried into the corridor.