Дик Фрэнсис - Decider

‘ Little! Half an acre of it. Warehouse, mowers, radio controls, all cinders. William said everyone took it for granted it was arson. The insurance company sent investigators. The police were all over the place. Forsyth went to pieces and confessed to William in private.’

She paused, sighing.

‘So, what happened?’ I asked.

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

‘No. It’s not a crime to set fire to your own property. William paid it all off. He didn’t claim the insurance. He paid off the warehouse mortgage with penalties and sold the land it had stood on. Paid off all the contracts for the rotten mowers, to avoid lawsuits. Repaid the money the bank had lent, plus all the interest, to save Ivan losing the garden centre to the guarantee. It all cost an enormous amount. William told all the family that they would each inherit a good deal less from him because of Forsyth’s business venture and criminal folly. None of them would speak to Forsyth after that. He whined to William about it and William told him it was Coventry or jail, and to be grateful. Forsyth said Keith had told him to burn the warehouse. Keith said Forsyth was lying. But William told me it was probably true. He said Keith always said you could get rid of things by burning them.’

Like fences at open ditches, I thought. And grandstands, by blowing them up?

‘There!’ she said, as if surprised at herself for the ease of the telling, ‘I’ve told you! I can’t feel William standing at my shoulder telling me to shut up. In fact... it’s the other way round. I think he approves , dear, wherever he is.’

I wasn’t going to question that feeling. I said, ‘At least Forsyth’s was a straightforward fraud. No rapes or drugs involved.’

‘Yes, dear, much harder to cover those up.’

Some nuance in her voice, a quiet amusement, made me ask, ‘But not impossible?’

‘You’re encouraging me to be wicked!’

Once started, however, she’d been enjoying the saga.

‘I won’t tell them,’ I said. ‘I’ll be like you, with William’s secrets.’

I don’t know if she believed me. I don’t know that I meant what I said. It encouraged her, all the same, to go on.

‘Well... there was Hannah...’

‘What about her?’ I prompted, when she paused.

‘She grew up so bitter.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘No self-esteem, you see, dear.’

‘No.’

‘Keith never let her forget she’d been abandoned by her mother. By Madeline, poor dear. Madeline used to cry and tell me she’d give anything for a miscarriage, but we were both young then and we didn’t know how to get her an abortion... you had to know someone in those days as you’d never get a family doctor to help you. No one would ever help a young married woman get rid of her first child. Keith got to hear she’d been asking about it and he flew into a terrible rage and knocked two of her teeth out.’ She drank deeply of gin at the memory. ‘William told me that Keith told Hannah her mother had wanted to abort her. Can you believe it? Keith had always been cruel, but saying that to your own daughter! He wanted Hannah to hate Madeline, and she did. William said he tried for Madeline’s sake to love Hannah and bring her up properly, but Keith was there, poisoning her mind, and she was never a sweet little girl, William said, but always sullen and spiteful.’

‘Poor Hannah.’

‘Anyway, she grew up very pretty in a sharp sort of way, but William said young men were put off when they got to know her and she felt more and more rejected and hated everybody, and then she fell for this gypsy and let him have sex with her.’ Perdita shrugged, sighing. ‘William said he wasn’t even a proper Romany, just a rough wanderer with a police record for thieving. William said he couldn’t understand Hannah, but it was low self-esteem, dear. Low self-esteem.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, she got pregnant, of course. And this gypsy, he knew a good thing when it was shoved under his nose. He turned up on Keith’s doorstep demanding money, else he’d go round the village telling everyone how he’d got Keith’s posh daughter in the family way, and Keith knocked him down and kicked him and burst one of his kidneys.’

Hell, I thought, I’d been lucky.

‘Keith told William. Those three boys always loaded their troubles onto their father. William paid off the gypsy, and it cost ten times as much as the gypsy had been asking from Keith in the first place.’

‘Dire,’ I said.

‘So Jack was born, and he didn’t have much chance either of growing up decent. Hannah dotes on him. William, of course, paid and paid for his upbringing.’

‘William told you all this?’

‘Oh yes, dear. Not all at once, like I told you. In little bits. Sort of squeezed out of him, over the years. He would come to me very tired of them all, and unburden some of his thoughts, and we’d have a little gin and — if he felt like it, well, you know , dear — and he’d say he felt better, and go off home

She sighed deeply for times past.

‘Conrad,’ she said surprisingly, ‘years ago, he got addicted to heroin.’

‘Can’t believe it!’

Perdita nodded. ‘When he was young. Kids nowadays, they know they face terrible dangers all the time from drugs. When Conrad was twenty, he thought it a great adventure, William said. He was at university. He was with another young man, both of them injecting themselves, and his friend had too much, and died. William said there was a terrible stink, but he got Conrad out and hushed it all up and sent him to a very private and expensive clinic for treatment. He got Conrad to write him a letter describing his drug experiences, what he felt and saw when he was high. William didn’t show me what Conrad wrote, but he still had the letter. He said Conrad had been cured, and he was proud of him. Conrad didn’t go back to university, though. William kept him at home on the estate.’

Ah, I thought, that was Marjorie’s hammer-lock. Even after so many years, Conrad wouldn’t want his youthful indiscretion made public.

Perdita finished her gin and poured some more. ‘Freshen your glass?’ she asked me.

‘No, I’m fine. Do go on, I’m riveted.’

She laughed, talking easily now. ‘When Keith was about that age, when he was young and handsome and before all these really bad things, he spanked the daughter of one of the farm workers. Pulled down her knickers and spanked her. She hadn’t done anything wrong. He said he wanted to know what it felt like. William paid her father a fortune — for those days — to keep him from going to the police. It wasn’t a case of rape, though.’

‘Bad enough.’

‘Keith learned his lesson, William said. After that he only beat and raped his wives. You couldn’t get done for it, then.’

The fun went out of her face abruptly, and no doubt out of mine.

‘Sorry, dear,’ she said. ‘I loved Madeline, but it was all forty years ago. And she did get out, and marry again and have you. William said Keith never forgave her for despising him.’

Perhaps because I couldn’t help having it on my mind, I said, ‘Keith said yesterday that he’s going to kill me. Forty years on, he’s trying to get even.’

She stared. ‘Did he mean it?’

‘He meant it when he said it.’

‘But dear, you have to take him seriously. He’s a violent man. What are you going to do about it?’

I saw that she was basically more interested than anxious, but then it wasn’t her life or death problem.

‘It’s the sight of me that enrages him,’ I said. ‘I could simply go away. Go home. Trust to luck he wouldn’t follow me.’

‘I must say, dear, you take it very calmly.’