The Devil`s Feather (29 page)

She pondered for a moment. “Supposing I say to you…it’s old history…Lily’s in a good place…and it’s better to let sleeping dogs lie or people will be hurt. Will you drop it?”

“No, but I might agree to keep it to myself.”

She sighed. “It’s really none of your business. It’s no one’s business except mine and Lily’s.”

“There must be someone else involved,” I pointed out, “or you wouldn’t have burnt those delivery slips. I can’t see you doing it to protect Madeleine. You might do it to protect Peter”—I lifted an eyebrow in query—“except Peter wouldn’t have turned off the valve. And that leaves only Nathaniel. I’m betting November was when you threatened to shoot off his dick.”

She capitulated suddenly, pulling up another chair and leaning forward to stare at the monitor. “It’s my fault. I should have guessed he’d do something stupid. I gave him some ammunition to use against Madeleine, and I think he may have decided to take it out on Lily first. He probably thought it was funny.”

“Bloody hilarious,” I said sourly. “He might have killed her.”

“People don’t die because their Agas go out for a few hours. I imagine he wanted to make her angry, and that was the easiest way to do it. He knew where the outhouse was, so all he had to do was leave his car at the gate and sneak across the grass. Lily hated it when things went wrong.” She pulled a face. “I should have told him how bad she was, and he wouldn’t have done it.”

“Madeleine would have told him.”

“I doubt it,” said Jess. “They hardly speak these days.”

“According to who? Nathaniel?”

“He wasn’t lying.”

“Oh, give me a break!” I said crossly. “The man’s a complete shit. He swaps sides at the drop of a hat, dangles his todger in front of any woman who’s prepared to admire it, then thinks he can take up again where he left off. Do you think he tells Madeleine where he’s going when he comes down here to see you? Of course he doesn’t. Cheats never do.”

Jess rubbed her head despairingly. “You’re worse than Peter. I’m not a complete idiot, you know. If you remember, it was
me
who told
you
Nathaniel was a shit. I don’t like him. I never have done. I just…
loved
him for a while.”

“Then why protect him?”

Jess was full of sighs that evening. “I’m not,” she said. “I’m just trying to stop this whole damn mess getting any worse. I don’t see that my life is anyone else’s property. Haven’t you ever wanted to bury a secret so deep that no one will ever find out about it?”

She knew I had.

16

O
NE OF THE
dogs gave a sudden high-pitched bark, and we looked at each other with startled expressions. When it wasn’t repeated, Jess relaxed. “They’re just playing,” she said. “If there was anyone out there, they’d be barking in unison.”

I didn’t share her confidence. The hairs on the back of my neck were as stiff as brush bristles. “Is the back door still locked?”

“Yes.”

I looked towards the sash window but the darkness outside was total. If the moon had risen, it was obscured by clouds, and I remembered how Jess had been lit up like an actor on a stage when she was in the kitchen. Now the pair of us were visible to anyone. “This isn’t the best room to be in,” I said nervously. “It’s the only one that doesn’t have two exits.”

“If you’re worried, call the police,” Jess said reasonably, “but they won’t get here for twenty minutes…and I wouldn’t advise crying wolf unnecessarily. It’s a long way to come for nothing. The dogs will protect us.”

I bent down to retrieve the walking-stick and axe that were lying on the floor. “Just in case,” I said, handing her the stick. “I’ll keep the axe.”

“I’d prefer it the other way round,” she said with a smile. “I don’t fancy being in a confined space with you and that thing. You’ll drop it on your head the first time you try and lift it…or you’ll drop it on mine. If you have any muscles in your arms I haven’t noticed them. Here.” She made the switch and placed the axe on the chair beside her. “Hold the stick by the unweighted end and swing it at his legs. If you’re lucky, you’ll break his kneecaps. If you’re unlucky, you’ll break mine.”

I must have looked extremely apprehensive, because she drew my attention back to the computer screen. “You wanted to know why we ended up with more land than the Wrights. Which version do you want? My grandmother’s or Lily’s?”

It was done to distract me, because she never volunteered information lightly. I made an effort to respond, although my ears remained attuned for sounds I didn’t recognize. “Are they very different?”

“As chalk and cheese. According to my grandmother, my great-grandfather bought the land when Lily’s father sold off the valley to pay death duties. Everything on this side of the road went to a man called Haversham, and everything on our side to us. Joseph Derbyshire took a loan to do it, and increased our holding from fifty acres to one and a half thousand.”

“And Lily’s version?”

She hesitated. “Her father made Joseph a gift of the land in return for”—she cast around for a suitable phrase—“services rendered.”

I looked at her in surprise. “That’s some gift. What was land worth in the fifties?”

“I don’t know. The deeds of title are with the house deeds, but there’s no valuation and nothing to show that Joseph ever took out a loan to pay for them. If he did, the debt was cleared before my father inherited the property.” She fell silent.

“What kind of services?”

Jess pulled a face. “Lily called it a disclaimer. She said Joseph signed a letter, promising silence…but there’s no copy of anything like that with the deeds.”

I was even more surprised. “It sounds like blackmail.”

“I know.”

“Is that the ammunition you gave Nathaniel?”

She shook her head. “It’s the last thing I’d want Madeleine to know. She’d take me to court if she found out.”

I had no idea where UK law stood on property acquired through coercion fifty years before, but I couldn’t believe Madeleine would have a case. “I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about,” I told her. “The rule of thumb says possession is nine-tenths of the law…and if you demonstrate that at least two generations of Derbyshires have farmed it in good faith…” I petered out in face of her glum expression. “Did your father know?”

“He must have done. The first thing Gran asked me after the funerals was whether Dad had told me the history of the farm.” She rubbed her knuckles into her eyes. “When I said no, she gave me the loan story…and I never questioned it until Lily became confused and started confiding the family secrets.”

“Because she thought you were your grandmother?”

“In spades. Sometimes she’d be re-running conversations they had after the folks died…other times she’d jump back half a century to when Gran was her maid.” She made a rolling gesture with her hand as if to denote a cycle. “It took me ages to work out that a thank-you referred to the nineteen-nineties and an order meant she was back in the fifties. She kept telling me how kind Frank had been to her…and what a sweet wife he’d found in Jenny. How they’d never taken advantage…in spite of her beastliness at the beginning. Her biggest regret was that she’d never acknowledged Dad while she had the chance.” She lapsed into another silence.

“In what way?” I prompted.

“As her brother.” This time her sigh was immense. “If Lily was telling the truth, then my father’s father was
her
father, William Wright…not Gran’s husband, Jack Derbyshire, who died shortly after the war. Which makes Lily my aunt…Madeleine my first cousin…and me a Wright.” Her stare became very bleak suddenly. “The Derbyshires don’t exist anymore except as a name, and I really
hated
Lily for telling me that.”

I was at a loss what to say because I couldn’t tell which she thought was worse—to be a Wright or not to be a Derbyshire. “You don’t have to believe it. If it’s the word of a confused woman against what your grandmother said twelve years ago, then I’d put my faith in your grandmother. Why would she lie? Wasn’t that the one time to tell you you weren’t alone—that you still had family?”

“I think Lily asked her not to. She said a couple of times, ‘Don’t tell the girl,
I’ll
do it, she’s too depressed at the moment.’ ”

“But Lily never did…or not while she was still thinking straight.”

“No.”

“Then either there was nothing to tell,” I pointed out, “or she never intended to do it.”

“I think she changed her mind after Gran died. That’s when I did
this.
” Self-consciously, she turned her left wrist towards me. “I came up here to tell her Gran was dead and she kept saying the wrong things…like, it was a good way to go…Gran had had a good innings…it wasn’t the end of the world. And I started shouting at her, which brought on a panic attack.” She shook her head. “I was so mad with Lily…I was so mad with my
family
…and I thought…what’s the point? It
is
the end of the fucking world.”

“Were you serious?”

“About killing myself? Not really. I remember thinking how much pain I was in because everyone had died…and hoping that other people would suffer a bit…but the act itself”—she shrugged—“it was more of a scream than anything.”

“Have you ever tried again?”

“No. Once bitten, twice shy. I hated the fuss more than anything.”

I identified with that sentiment more than she knew. “What was Lily’s reaction?”

“Called Peter to try and keep the whole thing under wraps. She wanted him to stitch the wounds himself, but he wouldn’t do it—said he’d lose his licence if he didn’t have me properly assessed—so I ended up in hospital with psychiatrists and bereavement counsellors.” She rubbed her eyes again. “It was awful. The only person who remained halfway sensible was Lily. She got me discharged by promising that she’d take responsibility for me, then never spoke about it again.”

“Did you stay with her?”

“No.”

“Then how could she take responsibility for you?”

“She didn’t try, just asked for my word that I wouldn’t do anything stupid if she left me alone at the farm, then gave me a mastiff puppy.” Her eyes sparkled at the memory. “Much better medicine than anything the doctors had to offer.”

“But why should any of that make her change her mind, Jess? It seems so odd. The natural thing would have been to open her arms and say, you’re not alone, I’m your aunt.”

“Except she wasn’t a demonstrative woman, and then the whole thing with Nathaniel happened.” She shrugged. “I suppose she felt there was never a good time to do it.”

Personally, I doubted that Lily had ever planned to acknowledge Jess as a relative, although she certainly seemed to have had a soft spot for her. Perhaps she discovered she had more in common with her niece than her daughter, preferring Jess’s quiet, introverted nature to Madeleine’s more extroverted one. Rightly or wrongly, I’d formed an impression of Lily as a self-contained woman with limited friendships, whose only real loves were her garden and her dogs, and in that she was no different from Jess. She may well have been able to put on a “show” for visitors, but I wondered if it was just that—a show—and in her head she was mentally counting the seconds to their departure.

“So what was the ammunition you gave Nathaniel if it wasn’t to do with your family?” I asked curiously.

“I told him Lily had given enduring power of attorney to her solicitor.”

“I thought you said it was ammunition
against
Madeleine. Wouldn’t that have helped her…given her a chance to come down here and persuade Lily to overturn it?”

Jess pulled her mouth into a wry twist. “I half-hoped she would, as a matter of fact. Money was about the only thing that might have persuaded her to pull out her finger for the first time in her life…but I didn’t think Nathaniel would tell her. I was only trying to give him a head start before the shit hit the fan. Madeleine kept up a pretence of harmony as long as she thought this place was within her grasp…but she’s probably throwing saucepans at him by now.”

“I don’t understand. A head start on what?”

“Divorce…ownership of their flat…custody of the kid. If he’d moved quickly enough, he might have been able to persuade Madeleine to sign everything over—including her son—
before
she found out she’d been bypassed. She’d already agreed in principle as long as Nathaniel made no claims on Barton House or Lily’s money.” She smiled at my expression of disgust for the child. “She uses Hugo as a bargaining chip because she knows Nathaniel won’t leave without him. I wasn’t joking about the saucepans, you know.”

“But—” I couldn’t get my head round it. “Are you saying he wants a divorce and she doesn’t?”

“Not exactly. She’ll divorce him like a shot when she gets her hands on this place, but not before. Otherwise they’ll have to sell the flat and split the proceeds, and she won’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because she’ll end up in somewhere like Neasden with her half. At the moment they’re in Pimlico. She’d rather live with people she hates than move down the social ladder. It’s not as if she’s got Lily’s allowance anymore. At least Nathaniel’s salary—” Jess came to an abrupt halt as five throaty barks split the silence outside. “OK,” she said calmly, seizing the axe in both hands. “We have a visitor. What do you want to do? Find out who it is, or sit tight and phone the police?”