Fox Evil (6 page)

The coroner referred to one neighbor's claim that she heard a man and woman arguing shortly after midnight on 6 March. Colonel Lockyer-Fox denied that he and his wife were the people in question, and the coroner accepted his statement. He also accepted that bloodstains found on flagstones two meters from the body were animal and not human. In dismissing the speculation that has surrounded Ailsa Lockyer-Fox's death, he said: "Rumor in this case was entirely unfounded. I hope today's verdict will bring an end to it. For whatever reason, Mrs. Lockyer-Fox decided to go outside on a cold night, inadequately dressed, and tragically collapsed."

The daughter of a wealthy Scottish landowner, Ailsa Lockyer-Fox was well known for her campaigns against cruelty to animals. "She will be greatly missed," said a spokesman for the Dorset branch of the League Against Cruel Sports. "She believed that all life had value and should be treated with respect." She was also a generous benefactor of local and national children's homes and charities. Her personal estate, valued at £1.2m, passes to her husband.

Debbie Fowler

Kosovo

Tuesday, 6 November

Dear Colonel Lockyer-Fox,

Your letter was forwarded to me by my mother. I, too, have an interest in fabular culture. The bones of your fable are "The Lion, the Fox, and the Ass," one of whose morals could be described as: "Might makes Right." You could have applied a similar moral to your own tale: "The Might of Many makes Right," since the implication is that you are dismantling your wife's fortune in order to give it away to more deserving causes than your son-presumably children and animal charities. This seems to me a very sensible course, particularly if he was responsible for her death. I am not a great believer in leopards (or Lions) changing their spots, so I remain cynical that he will "mend his ways."

I am not entirely clear from the clipping re: the coroner's verdict who was the subject of the speculation following your wife's death, although I suspect it may have been you. However, if I have read your fable correctly then your son is Leo the Lion, your wife was Ailsa the Ass, and you are the Fox who witnessed her murder. So why didn't you inform the police of this instead of allowing speculation to grow? Or is this another case of hiding family "mistakes" under the carpet? Your strategy would seem to be that redress for your wife is best achieved by denying your son his inheritance, but isn't justice through the courts the only true redress? Whatever instability problems your son has will not be improved by allowing him to get away with murder.

You seem to refer to this in your last sentence. "The Lion devoured the Fox and took the Fox's fortune instead." This is obviously a prediction and not a fact, otherwise you could not have written to me, but I strongly question how acknowledging me as your only grandchild can shift this prediction in your favor. I fear it will do the exact opposite and force your son into precipitate action. In view of the fact that I have no interest at all in your or your wife's money-and have no wish to confront your son over it-I suggest it would be infinitely wiser to seek the advice of your solicitor, Mark Ankerton, in respect of putting the money beyond your son's reach.

Without wishing to be offensive, I see no reason at all why you should allow yourself to be "devoured" so tamely, nor why I should be proposed as a stalking horse.

Yours sincerely,

Nancy Smith

Nancy Smith (Captain, Royal Engineers)

30 November 2001

Dear Nancy,

Please think no more about it. Everything you say is completely justified. I wrote in a moment of depression and used emotive language that was unforgivable. I did not wish in any way to give you the impression that you would be in confrontation with Leo. Mark has constructed a will that honors my obligations to my family while giving the bulk of the estate to worthy causes. It was an old man's foolish whim and arrogance that wanted the "family silver" to pass intact to family.

I fear my last letter may have given you a false impression of both myself and Leo. Inadvertently I may have suggested that I am perceived in warmer terms than he. This is far from the truth. Leo is extraordinarily charming. I, by contrast-indeed Ailsa, too, when she was alive-are (were) rather shy people who appear stiff-necked and pompous in company. Until recently I would have said that our friends perceived us differently, but the isolation in which I now find myself has shattered my confidence. With the honorable exception of Mark Ankerton, suspicion, it seems, is more easily attracted than dispelled.

You pose the question: How will acknowledging you as my only grandchild benefit me? I see that now. It was an idea conceived some time ago when Ailsa came to share my view that we would do our children more harm than good by giving them access to large amounts of money on our deaths. However, Mark's view was that Leo would challenge any will that gave large bequests to charities on the basis that the money was family money and should pass to the next generation. Leo may or may not have won, but he would certainly have found it harder to challenge a legitimate heir in the shape of a grandchild.

My wife was always a believer in giving people second chances-the "mending of ways" that you referred to-and I believe she also hoped that recognition of our grandchild would persuade our son to rethink the future. Since hearing from you, I have decided to abandon this plan. It was a selfish attempt to keep the estate intact, and took no account at all of your love and loyalty to your rightful family.

You are an admirable and wise young woman with a marvelous future ahead of you, and I wish you long life and happiness. As the money is of no interest to you, nothing can be gained by involving you in my family's difficulties.

Be confident that your identity and whereabouts will remain a secret between Mark and myself, and that you will
under no circumstances
feature in any legal documents relating to this family.

With gratitude for your response and the warmest good wishes for whatever comes your way in life,

James Lockyer-Fox

SHENSTEAD MANOR-CHRISTMAS EVE TO

BOXING DAY, 2001

Ankerton's faith that James Lockyer-Fox would never have harmed his wife was under assault on all sides, not least from James himself. True, Mark had forced his presence in the house, refusing to accept the Colonel's cool assurances that he was quite able to face his first Christmas alone in nearly fifty years, but James's secretive behavior and inability to carry a conversation for more than a few minutes were deeply worrying to his lawyer.

He wouldn't look Mark in the eye, and there were tremors in his hands and voice. His weight had decreased alarmingly. Always meticulous about his appearance in the past, he had become dirty and unkempt, with straggly hair, stained clothes, and patches of silver stubble on his chin. To Mark, for whom the Colonel had always been an authoritative figure, such a dramatic change in physical and mental strength was shocking. Even the house smelled of dirt and decay, and Mark wondered if Vera Dawson had compounded her legendary laziness by ceasing to work at all.

He blamed himself for not having come down since August, when he'd delivered Nancy Smith's verdict to the old man. At the time James had taken it well and had instructed Mark to draw up a will that would result in the breakup of the Lockyer-Fox estate with only minimum bequests going to his two children. It had remained unsigned, however, with James sitting on the draft document for months, apparently reluctant to take what he perceived as an irrevocable step. When urged over the telephone to voice his concerns, his only answer had been an angry one: "Stop harassing me. I still have my faculties. I'll make the decision in my own good time."

Mark's worries had increased a few weeks back when an answerphone had suddenly appeared on the Manor line, as if James's naturally reclusive nature now extended to a ban on all access. Letters, which had previously been dealt with by return, went unanswered for days. On the few occasions when James bothered to return Mark's calls, his voice had sounded remote and indifferent, as if the affairs of the Lockyer-Fox estate no longer interested him. He excused his lack of enthusiasm on grounds of tiredness. He wasn't sleeping well, he said. Once or twice, Mark had asked him if he was depressed, but each time the question was greeted with tetchiness. "There's nothing wrong with my mind," James had said, as if it were something he feared nevertheless.

Certainly Mark had feared it, hence his insistence on this visit. He had described James's symptoms to a doctor friend in London, who told him they sounded like full-blown depression or post-traumatic stress disorder. These were normal reactions to unbearable situations: avoidance of social contact-withdrawal from responsibility-listlessness-insomnia-anxiety about incompetence-
anxiety
, full stop. Use your imagination, his friend had advised. Anyone of the Colonel's age would suffer loneliness and distress when his wife died, but to be suspected of killing her and questioned about it…? It was delayed shock. When had the poor old fellow been given a chance to grieve?

Mark had arrived on Christmas Eve, armed with advice about bereavement counseling and the ability of mild doses of antidepressants to lift the mood and restore optimism. But he had prepared himself for sadness, and sadness was absent. Talk of Ailsa only made James angry.

"The woman's dead," he snapped on one occasion. "Why this need to resurrect her?" On another: "She should have dealt with her estate herself instead of passing the buck to me. It was pure cowardice. Nothing was ever gained by giving Leo a second chance." An inquiry about Henry, Ailsa's elderly Great Dane, brought an equally curt response. "Died of old age. Best thing for him. He was always mooching around trying to find her."

Mark's contribution to the holiday was a hamper from Harrods after his doctor friend told him that depression didn't eat. The truth of that was starkly obvious when he opened the fridge to store his brace of pheasant, pate de foie gras, and champagne. No wonder the old man had lost so much weight, he thought, eyeing the empty shelves. The freezer in the scullery was fairly well stocked with meat and frozen vegetables, but thick layers of frost suggested most of it had been put there by Ailsa. Announcing that he needed bread, potatoes, and dairy products, even if James didn't, he drove to the Dorchester Tesco's before it closed for the holiday and stocked up on essentials-throwing in detergents, bleach, shampoo, soap, and shaving equipment for good measure.

He set to with a will, scrubbing and disinfecting the surfaces in the kitchen before mopping the stone-flagged hall. James pursued him like an angry wasp, locking the doors of rooms that he didn't want him entering. All questions were greeted with half-answers. Was Vera Dawson still cleaning for him?
She was senile and lazy.
When did he last have a decent meal?
He wasn't expending much energy these days.
Were his neighbors watching out for him?
He preferred his own company.
Why hadn't he been answering letters?
It was a bore to walk to the post box.
Had he thought about replacing Henry, and giving himself an excuse for a walk?
Animals were too much trouble.
Wasn't it lonely living in that rambling great house with no one to talk to? Silence.

At regular intervals the phone rang in the library. James ignored it even though the drone of voices leaving messages was audible through the locked door. Mark noticed that the jack to the phone in the drawing room had come out of its socket, but when he attempted to plug it back in, the old man ordered him to stop. "I'm neither blind nor stupid, Mark," he said angrily, "and I would prefer it if you ceased treating me as if I had Alzheimer's. Do I come into your house and question your arrangements? Of course not. I wouldn't dream of being so crass. Please do not do it in mine."

It was a flicker of the man he had known, and Mark responded to it. "I wouldn't need to if I knew what was going on," he said, jerking his thumb toward the library. "Why aren't you answering that?"

"I don't choose to."

"It might be important."

James shook his head.

"It sounds like the same person each time… and people don't keep calling unless it's urgent," Mark objected, raking ashes out of the fireplace. "At least let me check if it's for me. I gave my parents this number in case of emergencies."

Anger flared again in the Colonel's face. "You take too many liberties, Mark. Do I need to remind you that you invited yourself?"

The younger man relaid the fire. "I was worried about you," he said calmly. "I'm even more worried now that I'm here. You may think I'm imposing, James, but you really don't have to be rude about it. I'll happily stay in a hotel for the night, but I'm not leaving till I'm satisfied you're looking after yourself properly. What does Vera
do
, for Christ's sake? When did you last have a fire? Do you want to die of hypothermia like Ailsa?"

His remarks were greeted with silence and he turned his head to assess the reaction.

"Oh lord," he said in distress as he saw tears in the old man's eyes. He stood up and laid a sympathetic hand on James's arm. "Look, everyone suffers from depression at some time or another. It's nothing to be ashamed of. Can't I persuade you to talk to your doctor, at least? There are various ways of dealing with it… I've brought some leaflets for you to read… all the advice says the worst thing to do is suffer in silence."

James pulled his arm away abruptly. "You're very keen to persuade me I'm mentally ill," he muttered. "Why is that? Have you been talking to Leo?"

"No," said Mark in surprise, "I haven't spoken to him since before the funeral." He shook his head in perplexity. "What difference would it have made if I had? You won't be ruled incompetent just because you're depressed… and, even if you were, enduring power of attorney is invested in me. There's no way Leo can register with the Court of Protection unless you revoke the document I hold and issue one in his name. Is that what's been worrying you?"

A strangled laugh caught in James's throat. "Hardly
worrying
me," he said bitterly before dropping into a chair and lapsing into a morose silence.

With a resigned sigh, Mark squatted down again to light the fire. When Ailsa was alive the house had run like clockwork. Mark had spent a couple of working holidays in Dorset, "learning" the estate, and he'd thought his ship had come in. Old money-
well invested
; rich clients-
without pretensions
; people he liked-
with chemistry that worked
. Even after Ailsa's death the bond with James had remained strong. He'd held the old man's hand throughout his questioning, and he'd come to know him better than his own father.

Now he felt estranged. He had no idea if a bed was made up. It seemed unlikely, and he didn't fancy poking around looking for sheets. In the past he had stayed in the "blue" room where the walls were covered in photographs from the nineteenth century, and the shelves were filled with family diaries and leather-bound legal documents relating to the lobster industry that had flourished in Shenstead Valley during James's great-grandfather's tenure. "This room was made for you," Ailsa told him the first time he came. "Your two favorite subjects-history and law. The diaries are old and dusty, my dear, but they deserve a read."

He had felt more saddened by Ailsa's death than he'd ever been able to say because he, too, had not been given time to grieve. So much turbulent anguish had surrounded the event-some of it affecting him personally-that he had retreated into coolness in order to cope. He had loved her for a number of reasons: her kindness, her humor, her generosity, her interest in him as a person. What he had never understood was the gulf that existed between her and her children.

Occasionally she talked of siding with James, as if the breach were not of her making, but more usually she cited Leo's sins of omission and commission. "He kept stealing from us," she said once, "things that we didn't notice… most of them quite valuable. It made James so angry when he finally found out. He accused Vera… it made for a lot of unpleasantness." She fell into a troubled silence.

"What happened?"

"Oh, the usual," she sighed. "Leo owned up. He thought it was very funny. 'How would an idiot like Vera know what was valuable?' he said. Poor woman-I think Bob gave her a black eye over it because he was afraid they'd lose the Lodge. It was awful… she treated us as tyrants from then on."

"I thought Leo was fond of Vera. Didn't she look after him and Elizabeth when you were away?"

"I don't think he had any feelings for her-he doesn't have feelings for anyone except possibly Elizabeth-but Vera adored
him
, of course… called him her 'blue-eyed darling' and let him wrap her round his little finger."

"Did she never have children of her own?"

Ailsa shook her head. "Leo was her surrogate son. She bent over backward to protect him, which wasn't a good thing in retrospect."

"Why?"

"Because he used her against us."

"What did he do with the money?"

"The usual," she repeated dryly. "Blew it on gambling."

On another occasion: "Leo was a very clever child. His IQ was 145 when he was eleven. I've no idea where it came from-James and I are very average-but it caused terrible problems. He thought he could get away with anything, particularly when he discovered how easy it was to manipulate people. Of course, we asked ourselves where we went wrong. James blames himself for not taking a stronger line earlier. I blame the fact that we were abroad so often and had to rely on the school to control him." She shook her head. "The truth is simpler, I think. An idle brain is the devil's workshop, and Leo was never interested in hard work."

Of Elizabeth: "She lived in Leo's shadow. It made her desperate for attention, poor child. She adored her father, and used to throw tantrums whenever he was in uniform, presumably because she knew it meant he was going away again. I remember once, when she was eight or nine, she cut the legs off his regimental trousers. He was furious with her, and she screamed and yelled and said he deserved it. When I asked her why, she said she hated him dressed up." Another shake of her head. "She had a very disturbed adolescence. James blamed Leo for introducing her to his friends… I blamed our absences. We lost her effectively by the time she turned eighteen. We set her up in a flat with some girlfriends but most of what we were told about her lifestyle was lies."

She was ambivalent about her own feelings. "It's impossible to stop loving your children," she told him. "You always hope things will change for the better. The trouble is, somewhere along the line they abandoned the values we taught them and decided the world owed them a living. It's led to so much resentment. They think it's their father's bloody-mindedness that's caused the money to dry up instead of recognizing that they took the pail to the well once too often."

Mark sat back on his heels as the fire roared to life. His own feelings for Leo and Elizabeth were anything but ambivalent. He disliked them intensely. Far from taking the pail to the well once too often, they had installed permanent taps that worked through emotional blackmail, family honor, and parental guilt. His own view was that Leo was a psychopath with a gambling addiction, and Elizabeth was a nymphomaniac with an alcohol problem. Nor could he see any "mitigating circumstances" for their behavior. They had been given every advantage in life, and had failed spectacularly to build on them.

Ailsa had been putty in their hands for years, torn between maternal love and maternal guilt for her failures. To her, Leo was the same blue-eyed boy that Vera adored, and all James's attempts to contain his son's excesses had been met with pleas to give him a "second chance." It was no surprise that Elizabeth had been desperate for attention, no surprise either that she was incapable of sustaining relationships. Leo's personality dominated the family. His mood swings created strife or calm. At no point was anyone allowed to forget his existence. When he wanted, he could charm the birds from trees; when he didn't, he made life miserable for everyone. Including Mark…