Fox Evil (10 page)

"It's a bit of a mess," he apologized, swapping his Gucci loafers for some old Wellingtons, and shrugging into a Dryzabone oilskin. "I sometimes think everyone who's ever lived here has abandoned bits of themselves as proof of passage." He flicked an ancient brown ulster hanging from a peg. "This belonged to James's great-grandfather. It's been hanging here for as long as James can remember, but he says he likes to see it every day… it gives him a sense of continuity."

He opened the outer door on to a walled courtyard and ushered Nancy through. "Ailsa called this her Italian garden," he said, nodding to the large terra-cotta urns that were scattered around it. "It's a bit of a suntrap on a summer evening and she used to grow night-scented flowers in these pots. She always said it was a pity it was at the scrag-end of the Manor because it was the nicest place to sit. That's the back of the garage." He nodded to a single-storey building to their right. "And this-" he lifted the latch of an arched wooden door in a wall ahead of them-"leads into the kitchen garden."

The courtyard looked curiously neglected, as if it hadn't been entered since the death of its mistress. Weeds grew in profusion between the cobbles, and the terra-cotta tubs contained only the brittle skeletons of long-dead plants. Mark seemed to take it for granted that Nancy knew who Ailsa was, even though he hadn't told her, and Nancy wondered if he knew about the Colonel's letters.

"Does James have any help?" she asked, following him into the vegetable garden.

"Only an elderly couple from the village… Bob and Vera Dawson. He does the gardening and she does the cleaning. The trouble is, they're almost as old as James, so not much gets done. As you can see." He gestured 'round the overgrown vegetable garden. "I think mowing the lawn is about all Bob can manage these days, and Vera's virtually senile so dirt just gets moved around. It's better than nothing, I suppose, but he could do with some energy about the place."

They picked their way along a vestigial gravel path between the beds with Nancy admiring the eight-foot-high wall that surrounded the garden. "It must have been splendid when they had staff to manage this properly," she said. "It looks as though they grew espalier fruit trees all along that south wall. You can still see the wires." She pointed to a raised plateau of earth in the middle. "Is that an asparagus bed?"

He followed her gaze. "God knows. I'm a complete ignoramus when it comes to gardening. How does asparagus grow? What does it look like when it's not in a packet in a supermarket?"

She smiled. "Just the same. The tips push up out of the ground from a massive root system. If you keep banking up the earth, the way the French do, then the tips stay white and tender. That's how my mother does it. She has a bed at the farm that produces pounds of the stuff."

"Is she the gardener in the family?" he asked, steering her toward a wrought-iron gate in the western wall.

Nancy nodded. "It's her profession. She has a huge nursery complex down at Coomb Croft. It's amazingly profitable."

Mark remembered seeing the signs when he passed on his way to Lower Croft. "Did she train for it?"

"Oh, yes. She went to Sowerbury House as an under-gardener when she was seventeen. She stayed for ten years, rose up the ranks to head gardener, then married my father and moved to Coomb Croft. They lived there till my grandfather died, which gave her time to develop the nursery. She started as a one-man band, but now she has a staff of thirty… it virtually runs itself."

"A talented lady," he said with genuine warmth, opening the gate and standing back to let Nancy through. He found himself hoping she would never meet her real mother. The comparison would be too cruel.

They entered another enclosed garden, with L-shaped flanks of the house forming two sides of the square and a hedge of thickly growing evergreen shrubs running from the kitchen wall to the quoin on the left. Nancy noticed that all the windows overlooking this space were shuttered on the inside, giving them a blind white stare from the painted wood behind the glass. "Isn't this wing used anymore?" she asked.

Mark followed her gaze. If he had his bearings right, then one of the second-floor rooms was Elizabeth's-where Nancy had been born-and beneath it was the estate office where her adoption papers had been signed. "Not for years," he told her. "Ailsa closed the shutters to protect the furnishings."

"It's sad when houses outgrow their occupants," was all she said, before returning her attention to the garden. In the center was a fishpond, heavily iced over, with reeds and the dead stalks of water plants poking above the surface. A bench seat, green with mold, nestled among clumps of azaleas and dwarf rhododendrons beside it, and a crazy-paving path, much degraded by weeds, wound through dwarf acers, delicate bamboos, and ornamental grasses toward another gate on the far side. "The Japanese garden?" Nancy guessed, pausing beside the pond.

Mark smiled as he nodded. "Ailsa loved creating rooms," he said, "and they all had names."

"It must be stunning in the spring when the azaleas are in bloom. Imagine sitting here with their scent filling the air. Are there any fish?"

Mark shook his head. "There certainly were when Ailsa was alive, but James forgot to feed them after she died and he says he couldn't see any the last time he came here."

"They wouldn't die from lack of feeding," she said. "It's big enough to provide insect life for dozens of fish." She squatted down to peer through the sheet of ice. "They were probably hiding in the water plants. He ought to ask his gardener to thin them out when the weather improves. It's like a jungle down there."

"James has given up on the garden," said Mark. "It was Ailsa's preserve, and he seems to have lost interest in it completely since she died. The only part he ever visits now is the terrace, and then only at nighttime." He gave an unhappy shrug. "It worries me, to be honest. He parks his chair just to the right of where he found her and sits there for hours."

Nancy didn't bother to pretend ignorance of what he was talking about. "Even in this weather?" she asked, glancing up at him.

"He's certainly been doing it for the last two nights."

She pushed herself upright again and walked beside him along the path. "Have you talked to him about it?"

Another shake of his head. "I'm not supposed to know he's doing it. He vanishes off to bed at ten o'clock every night, then creeps out again after I've switched off my bedroom light. He didn't come in till nearly four o'clock this morning."

"What does he do?"

"Nothing. Just huddles into his chair and stares into the darkness. I can see him from my window. I nearly went out on Christmas Eve to give him a rocket for being stupid. The sky was so clear that I thought he'd die of hypothermia-even wondered if that was the intention-it's probably what killed Ailsa-but he kept relighting his pipe so I knew he wasn't unconscious. He didn't mention it yesterday morning… or this… and when I asked him how he'd slept, he said, fine." He turned the handle on the next gate and shouldered it open. "I suppose it
may
have been a Christmas vigil for Ailsa," he finished without conviction.

They emerged onto an expanse of parkland with the bulk of the house lying to their right. Frost still lay in pockets under the shrubs and trees that formed an avenue facing south, but the bright winter sun had warmed it to a glistening dew on the sweep of grass that sloped away and gave an unrestricted view of Shenstead Valley and the sea beyond.

"Wow!" said Nancy simply.

"It's stunning, isn't it? That bay you can see is Barrowlees. It's only accessible via the dirt track that leads to the farms… which is why this village is so expensive. All the houses have a right of way attached to them which allows them to drive their cars down to the beach. It's a complete disaster."

"Why?"

"They're priced outside local people's reach. It's turned Shenstead into a ghost village. The only reason Bob and Vera are still here is because their cottage is tied to the Manor and Ailsa promised it to them for life. I wish she hadn't, as a matter of fact. It's the only cottage that still belongs to James, but he insists on honoring Ailsa's word even though he desperately needs help. He had another cottage up until four years ago, but sold it off because he had trouble with squatters. I'd have advised short-term lets rather than sale-precisely for this eventuality-but I wasn't his lawyer at the time."

"Why doesn't he have someone living in the house with him? It's big enough."

"Good question," said Mark dryly. "Maybe you can persuade him. All I get is-" he adopted a quavery baritone-" 'I'm not having some damn busybody poking her nose in where it isn't wanted.' "

Nancy laughed. "You can't blame him. Would you want it?"

"No, but then I'm not neglecting myself the way he is."

She nodded matter-of-factly. "We had the same problem with one of my grandmothers. In the end my father had to register his power of attorney. Have you set up a document for James?"

"Yes."

"In whose name?"

"Mine," he said reluctantly.

"My father didn't want to exercise it either," she said sympathetically. "In the end it was forced on him when Granny was threatened with having her electricity cut off. She thought the red bills were prettier than the others, and lined them up along her mantelpiece to brighten her room. It never occurred to her to pay them." She smiled in response to his smile. "It didn't make her any less lovable," she said. "So, who else lives in Shenstead?"

"Hardly anyone permanently. That's the trouble. The Bartletts in Shenstead House-retired early and made a fortune selling up in London; the Woodgates at Paddock View-they pay a peppercorn rent to the company that owns most of the holiday cottages in return for managing them; and the Weldons at Shenstead Farm." He pointed at a woodland that bordered the parkland to the west. "They own the land that way so, strictly, they're outside the village boundary. As are the Squires and the Drews to the south."

"Are they the tenant farmers you told me about?"

He nodded. "James owns everything from here to the shoreline."

"Wow!" she said again. "That's some acreage. So how come the village has a right-of-way across his land?"

"James's great-grandfather-the fellow whose ulster you saw-granted rights to fishermen to transport boats and catches to and from the coast in order to build a lobster industry in Shenstead. Ironically, he was faced with the same problem that exists today-a dying village and a dwindling workforce. It was the time of the industrial revolution and youngsters were leaving to find better-paid work in the towns. He hoped to tap in to the successful Weymouth and Lyme Regis operations."

"Did it work?"

Mark nodded. "For about fifty years. The entire village was geared to lobster production. There were carriers, boilers, preparers, packers. They used to freight ice by the ton and store it in icehouses round the village."

"Do the icehouses still exist?"

"Not as far as I know. They became redundant as soon as the fridge was invented and electricity was brought in." He nodded toward the Japanese garden. "The one that was here became that pond we've just been looking at. James has a collection of copper boiling pans in one of the outhouses, but that's about all that's survived."

"What killed it off?"

"The First World War. Fathers and sons went off to fight and didn't come back. It was the same story everywhere, of course, but the effects were devastating in a small place like this which relied on its menfolk to heave the boats in and out of the water." He led her out to the middle of the lawn. "You can just about see the shoreline. It's not a good anchorage so they had to haul the boats onto dry land. There are photographs of it in one of the bedrooms."

She shielded her eyes against the sun. "If it was that labor-intensive then it was always doomed," she said. "Prices would never have kept up with the cost of production and the industry would have died anyway. Dad always says the greatest destroyer of countryside communities was mechanization in farming. One man on a combine harvester can do the work of fifty, and he does it quicker, better, and with far less waste." She nodded toward the fields in front of them. "Presumably these two farms contract out their plowing and harvesting?"

He was impressed. "How can you tell just by looking at them?"

"I can't," she said with a laugh, "but you didn't mention any laborers living in the village. Does the farmer to the west contract out as well?"

"Dick Weldon. No, he's the contractor. He built up a business on the other side of Dorchester, then bought Shenstead Farm for peanuts three years ago when the previous owner went bankrupt. He's no fool. He's left his son in charge of the core business to the west and now he's expanding here."

Nancy eyed him curiously. "You don't like him," she said.

"What makes you think that?"

"Tone of voice."

She was more perceptive than he was, he thought. Despite her smiles and her laughs, he still hadn't learned to read her face or inflection. Her manner wasn't as dry as James's but she was certainly as self-contained. Anywhere else, and with a different woman, he would have flattered to seduce-either to be fascinated or disappointed-but he was reluctant to do anything to queer James's pitch. "Why the change of heart?" he asked abruptly.

She turned to look at the house. "You mean, why am I here?"

"Yes."

She shrugged. "Did he tell you he wrote to me?"

"Not till yesterday."

"Have you read the letters?"

"Yes."

"Then you ought to be able to answer your question yourself… but I'll give you a clue." She flicked him an amused glance. "I'm not here for his money."

The hunt was the shambles Julian Bartlett had predicted. The saboteurs had kept a surprisingly low profile at the start but, as soon as a fox was put up in Blantyre Wood, cars raced ahead to create avenues of safety by using hunting horns to divert the hounds onto false trails. Out of practice after the long layoff, the dogs quickly became confused and the huntsman and his whippers-in lost control. The riders circled impatiently until order was restored, but a return to Blantyre Wood to raise a second fox was no more successful.

Hunt followers in their cars attempted to block the saboteurs and shout to the huntsman the direction the fox had taken, but an amplified tape of a pack in full cry, played through loudspeakers on a van, drew the hounds away. The aggravation levels among the riders-already high-mounted alarmingly as saboteurs invaded the field and waved their arms at the horses in a criminal and dangerous attempt to unseat the riders. Julian lashed out at a foolhardy lad who tried to catch Bouncer's reins, then swore profusely when he saw he'd been photographed by a woman with a camera.

He circled and came up beside her, wrestling to keep Bouncer in check. "I'll sue if you publish that," he said through gritted teeth. "That man was frightening my horse and I was within my rights to protect myself and my mount."

"Can I quote you?" she asked, pointing the lens at his face and clicking off a fusillade of shots. "What's your name?"

"None of your damn business."

She lowered the camera on its neck strap and patted it with a grin, before pulling a notebook from her jacket pocket. "It won't take me long to find out… not with these pictures. Debbie Fowler,
Wessex Times
," she said, retreating to a safe distance. "I'm a neutral… just a poor little hack trying to make a living. So-" another grin-"do you want to tell me what you have against foxes… or shall I make it up?"

Julian scowled ferociously. "That's about your level, isn't it?"

"Talk to me, then," she invited. "I'm here… I'm listening. Put the hunt's side."

"What's the point? You'll paint me as the aggressor and that idiot there-" he jerked his chin at the skinny saboteur who was backing away, rubbing his arm where the crop had caught him-"as the hero, never mind he made a deliberate attempt to break my neck by unseating me."

"That's a bit of an exaggeration, isn't it? You're hardly an inexperienced rider, so you must have been in this situation before." She glanced around the field. "You know you're going to face the sabs at some point, so presumably taking them on is part of the fun."

"That's rubbish," he snapped, reaching down to ease his left stirrup, which had jammed against his heel in the fracas with the saboteur. "You could say the same thing about these blasted hooligans with their horns."

"I do and I will," she said cheerfully. "It's gang fighting. Sharks against Jets. Toffs against proles. From where I'm standing the fox seems fairly irrelevant. He's just an excuse for a rumble."

It wasn't Julian's habit to back away from an argument. "If you print that you'll be laughed out of court," he told her, straightening again and gathering in his reins. "Whatever your views on the fox, at least credit all of us-saboteurs and huntsmen alike-with doing what we do for love of the countryside. It's the wreckers you should be writing about."

"Sure," she agreed disingenuously. "Tell me who they are, and I'll do it."

"Gyppos… travelers… whatever you want to call them," he growled. "Busloads of them arrived in Shenstead Village last night. They muck up the environment and steal off the locals, so why aren't you writing about them,
Ms.
Fowler? They're the real vermin. Focus on them and you'll be doing everyone a favor."

"Would you set your dogs on them?"

"Damn right I would," he said, wheeling Bouncer away to rejoin the hunt.

Wolfie was crouched in the woodland, watching the people on the lawn. He thought it was two men until one of them laughed and the voice sounded like a woman's. He couldn't hear what they were saying because they were too far away, but they didn't look like murderers. Certainly not the old murderer that Fox had talked about. He could see more of the man in the long brown coat than he could of the person with the hat pulled low, and he thought the man's face was kind. He smiled often and, once or twice, put his hand behind the other's back to steer him in a different direction.

A terrible longing grew in Wolfie's heart to run from hiding and ask this man for help, but he knew it was a bad idea. Strangers turned away whenever he begged for money… and money was a little thing. What would a stranger do if he begged for rescue? Hand him over to the police, he guessed, or take him back to Fox. He turned his frozen face toward the house and marveled again at its size. All the travelers in the world could fit inside it, he thought, so why was a murderer allowed to live there alone?

His sharp eyes caught a movement in the downstairs room at the corner of the house, and, after several seconds of concentrated staring, he made out a figure standing behind the glass. He felt a thrill of terror as a white face turned toward him and sunlight glinted on silver hair. The old man! And he was looking straight at Wolfie! With heart knocking, the child scrambled backward until he was out of sight, then ran like the wind for the safety of the bus.

Mark thrust his hands into his pockets to keep his circulation going. "I can only think it was James's change of mind about involving you that persuaded you to come," he told Nancy, "though I don't understand why."

"It has more to do with the suddenness of his decision," she said, marshaling her thoughts. "His first letter implied he was so desperate to make contact that he was prepared to pay a fortune in compensation just to get a reply. His second letter suggested the exact opposite. Keep away… no one will ever know who you are. My immediate idea was that I'd done the wrong thing by replying. Maybe the plan was to provoke me into suing as a way of draining the family finances away from his son-" she broke off on an upward inflection, making the statement a question.

Mark shook his head. "That wouldn't have been his reason. He's not that devious." Or never used to be, he thought.

"No," she agreed. "If he were, he'd have described himself and his son in very different terms." She paused again, recalling her impressions of the correspondence. "That little fable he sent me was very strange. It effectively said that Leo killed his mother in anger because she refused to go on subsidizing him. Is that true?"

"You mean did Leo kill Ailsa?"

"Yes."

Mark shook his head. "He couldn't have done. He was in London that night. It was a very solid alibi. The police investigated it thoroughly."

"But James doesn't accept it?"

"He did at the time," said Mark uncomfortably, "or at least I thought he did." He paused. "Don't you think you might be reading too much into the fable, Captain Smith? If I remember correctly, James apologized in his second letter for using emotive language. Surely it was symbolic rather than literal. Supposing he'd written 'ranted at' instead of 'devoured'? It would have been a lot less colorful… but far closer to the truth. Leo was prone to shout at his mother, but he didn't kill her. Nobody did. Her heart stopped."

Nancy nodded abstractedly as if she were only half listening. "Did Ailsa refuse to give him money?"

"Insofar as she rewrote her will at the beginning of the year to exclude both her children." He shook his head. "As a matter of fact, I've always regarded that as a reason for Leo
not
to kill her. Both he and his sister were informed of the changes, so they knew they had nothing to gain by her death… or not the half-million they were hoping for, anyway. They had a better a chance of that if they kept her alive."

She looked toward the sea with a thoughtful frown between her eyes. "This being the 'mending of ways' that James referred to in the fable?"

"Effectively, yes." He took his hands from his pockets to blow on them. "He's already told you they're a disappointment, so I'm not giving anything away by stressing that. Ailsa was always looking for leverage over their behavior, and changing her will was one way to exert pressure for improvement."

"Which is where the search for me came in," Nancy said without hostility. "I was another lever."

"It really wasn't as callous as that," said Mark apologetically. "It was more about finding the next generation. Both Leo and Elizabeth are childless… and that makes you the only genetic link to the future."

She turned to look at him. "I never thought about my genes until you turned up," she said with a small smile. "Now they terrify me. Do the Lockyer-Foxes ever consider anyone but themselves? Are selfishness and greed my only inheritance?"

Mark thought about what was on the tapes in the library. How much worse would she feel if she ever heard them? "You need to speak to James," he said. "I'm just the poor bloody solicitor who takes instruction, though for what it's worth I wouldn't describe either of your grandparents as selfish. I think James was very wrong to write to you-and I told him so-but he was clearly depressed when he did it. It's no excuse, but it might explain some of the apparent confusion."

She held his gaze for a moment. "His fable also suggested that Leo will kill him if he gives any of the money away. Is
that
true?"

"I don't know," he said honestly. "I read the damn thing for the first time yesterday and I haven't a clue what it's about. James isn't very easy to talk to at the moment, as you probably realize, so I'm not sure myself what's going on inside his head."

She didn't answer immediately, but seemed to be mulling over ideas to see if they were worth voicing. "Just for the sake of argument," she murmured then, "let's say James wrote exactly what he believes: that Leo killed his mother in anger because money was denied him and is threatening his father with a similar fate if he dares give the money away. Why did he back off involving me between his first and second letters? What changed between October and November?"

"You wrote extremely forcefully to say you didn't want his money and didn't want to confront Leo over it. Presumably he took that to heart."

"That's not the issue, though, is it?"

He looked puzzled. "Then what is?"

Nancy shrugged. "If his son is as dangerous as the fable implies, why wasn't he always worried about involving me? Ailsa had been dead several months before he sent you to look for me. He believed when he wrote his first letter that Leo had something to do with her death, but it didn't stop him writing to me."

Mark followed her logic step-by-step. "But doesn't that prove you're assuming too much from what he wrote? If James had thought he was putting you in danger, he wouldn't have asked me to go looking for you… and, if I'd had any doubts, I wouldn't have done it."

Another shrug. "So why do an about-turn in his second letter and fill it with guarantees of noninvolvement and anonymity? I was expecting a bullish reply, saying I'd got the wrong end of the stick entirely; instead I had a rather confused apology for having written in the first place." She assumed from his suddenly worried expression that she wasn't explaining herself very well. "It suggests to me that someone put the fear of God into him between the two letters," she said, "and I'm guessing it's Leo, because he's the one James seems to be afraid of."

She was studying his face and saw the guarded look that had come into his eyes. "Let's trade information on that bench over there," she said abruptly, setting off toward a seat overlooking the valley. "Was James's description of Leo accurate?"

"Very accurate," said Mark, following her. "He's a charmer until you cross him… then he's a bastard."

"Have you crossed him?"

"I took James and Ailsa as clients two years ago."

"What's wrong with that?" she asked, rounding the bench and looking at the saturated wooden slats.

"The family affairs were managed by Leo's closest friend until I arrived on the scene."

"Interesting." She nodded toward the seat. "Do you want to lend me a flap of your Dryzabone to keep my bum dry?"

"Of course." He started to undo the metal poppers. "My pleasure."

Her eyes twinkled mischievously. "Are you always this polite, Mr. Ankerton, or do clients' granddaughters get special treatment?"

He shrugged out of his Dryzabone and threw it across the seat like Sir Walter Raleigh subduing a puddle before Queen Elizabeth. "Clients' granddaughters get special treatment, Captain Smith. I never know when… or if… I'm going to inherit them."

"Then you'll freeze to death in a lost cause," she warned, "because this is one granddaughter who won't be inherited by anyone. Doesn't that make this gesture a little OTT? All I need is a triangle… if you open out the flap, you can go on wearing it."

He lowered himself onto the middle of the seat. "I'm far too frightened of you," he murmured, stretching his legs in front of him. "Where would I put my arm?"

"I wasn't planning on getting that close," she said, perching awkwardly beside him in the small gap that remained.

"It's unavoidable when you sit on a man's coat… and he's still in it."

He had deep brown eyes that were almost black, and there was too much recognition in them. "You should go on a survival course," she said cynically. "You'd soon discover that keeping warm is more important than worrying about what you're touching."

"We're not on a survival course, Captain," he said lazily. "We're sitting in full view of my client who won't be at all amused to see his solicitor put his arm round his granddaughter."

Nancy glanced behind her. "Oh, my God, you're right!" she exclaimed, surging to her feet. "He's coming toward us."

Mark leaped up and whipped around. "Where? Oh, ha-bloody-ha!" he said sarcastically. "I suppose you think that's funny."

"Hilarious," she said, sitting down again. "Were the family affairs in order?"

Mark resumed his seat, this time pointedly putting distance between himself and her. "Yes, insofar as my predecessor followed James's instructions at the time," he said. "I replaced him when James wanted to change the instructions without Leo being given advance warning."