Minette Walters - Fox Evil

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."