Minette Walters - Fox Evil

Fox let the tape run while he searched the desk drawers. Eleanor's message clicked to one of Darth Vader's, followed by another. He didn't bother to rewind after he pressed stop. James had stopped listening when he took to guarding the terrace with his shotgun, and it was unlikely Mark Ankerton would notice the difference between one Darth Vader monologue and another. In a detached way, Fox recognized that the most powerful impact came, not from the endless repetition of fact, but from the five-second silences before Darth Vader announced himself. It was a waiting game that played on the listener's nerves…

And Fox, who had seen the old man's haggard face and trembling hands too often at the window, knew the game was working.

Julian's approach to his wife was rather more subtle than Dick's had been to Prue, but he had an advantage because of Eleanor's decision not to confront him about his infidelity. He recognized that Eleanor's tactics were to bury her head in the sand and hope the problem would go away. It surprised him-Eleanor's nature was too aggressive to take a backseat-but his conversation with Dick suggested a reason. Eleanor couldn't afford to alienate her husband if James's solicitor made good his threat to sue. Eleanor understood the value of money, even if she didn't understand anything else.

The one theory that never occurred to him was that she feared loneliness. To his logical mind, a woman who was vulnerable would have reined in her determination to have her own way. But even if he'd guessed the truth, it wouldn't have made any difference. He wasn't a man who ever acted out of sympathy. He didn't expect it for himself, so why should others expect it from him? In any case, he was buggered if he'd pay to keep a wife who tired him out of the courts.

"I've just been talking to Dick," he told Eleanor, returning to the kitchen and picking up the whisky bottle to examine the level inside. "You're going at this a bit strong, aren't you?"

She turned her back on him to look in the fridge. "Only a couple. I'm starving. I waited on lunch until you came home."

"You don't usually. Usually I get my own. What's different about today?"

She kept her back to him by taking a bowl of yesterday's sprouts off a shelf and carrying it to the cooker. "Nothing," she said with a forced laugh. "Can you stand sprouts again or shall we have peas?"

"Peas," he said maliciously, helping himself to another glass and topping it up with water from the tap. "Have you heard what that idiot Prue Weldon's been doing?"

Eleanor didn't answer.

"Only making dirty phone calls to James Lockyer-Fox," he went on, dropping onto a chair and staring at her unresponsive back. "The heavy-breathing variety, apparently. Doesn't say anything… just puffs and pants at the other end. It's pathetic, isn't it? Something to do with the menopause, presumably." He chuckled, knowing the menopause was Eleanor's worst fear. He treated his own midlife crisis with young blondes. "Like Dick says, she's fat as a carthorse so he's not interested anymore. I mean, who would be? He's talking about divorce… says he's damned if he'll support her if she ends up in court."

He watched Eleanor's hand shake as she took a lid off a saucepan.

"Did you know she was doing it? You're pretty good pals… always got your heads together when I come in." He paused to give her time to answer, and when she didn't: "You know those rows you mentioned," he continued casually, "between Dick and James's chap… and Dick and Prue… well, they were nothing to do with the travelers. Dick wasn't given a chance to talk about what's going on at the Copse, instead he was read the riot act about Prue's heavy breathing. He went straight off to bawl her out and she got all hoity-toity and said it was perfectly reasonable. She's so bloody thick, she thinks the fact that James hasn't challenged any of it is because he's guilty… calls it 'smoking him out'-" another laugh, rather more scathing this time-"or bollocks to that effect. You have to feel sorry for Dick. I mean, it's not something a moron like Prue would ever have come up with herself… so who's been feeding her the crap? That's the bastard should be done for slander. Prue's just the halfwit who repeated it."

This time there was a long silence.

"Maybe Prue's right. Maybe James is guilty," Eleanor managed at last.

"Of what? Being in bed when his wife died of natural causes?"

"Prue heard him hit Ailsa."

"Oh, for God's sake!" Julian said impatiently. "Prue wanted to hear him hit Ailsa. That's all that was about. Why are you so gullible, Ellie? Prue's a tedious social climber who was miffed because the Lockyer-Foxes didn't accept her dinner invitations. I wouldn't accept them myself if it wasn't for Dick. The poor bastard leads a dog's life and he's always asleep by the time the damn pudding arrives."

"You should have said."

"I have… numerous times… you never bother to listen. You think she's amusing, I don't. So what's new? I'd rather be in the pub than listen to a tipsy middle-aged frump trot out her fantasies." He propped his feet on another chair, something he knew she hated. "From the way Prue talks now, you'd think the Manor was her second home, but everyone knows it's a load of garbage. Ailsa was a private person… why would she choose the Dorset megaphone for a friend? It's a joke."

It was a good two hours since Eleanor had realized she didn't know her husband as well as she thought she did. Now paranoia entered her psyche. Why the emphasis on middle age…? Why the emphasis on the menopause…? Why the emphasis on divorce…? "Prue's a nice person," she said lamely.

"No, she isn't," he retorted. "She's a frustrated bitch with a chip on her shoulder. At least Ailsa had something in her life other than gossip, but Prue lives on the damn stuff. I told Dick he was doing the right thing. Get out quick, I said, before the writs roll in. It's hardly his responsibility if his wife embroiders the tag end of a conversation because she's so damn boring no one wants to listen to her."

Eleanor was provoked into turning around. "What makes you so convinced James has nothing to hide?"

He shrugged. "I'm sure he has. He'd be a very unusual man if he didn't."

He half expected her to say "you should know," but she dropped her gaze and said lamely: "Well then."

"It doesn't pass the 'so what' test, Ellie. Look at all the things you've been trying to hide since we moved down here… where we lived… what my salary was-" he laughed again-"your age. I bet you haven't told Prue you're nearly sixty… I bet you've been pretending you're younger than she is." Her mouth turned down in immediate anger, and he eyed her curiously for a moment. She was holding herself under enormous restraint. A remark like that yesterday would have brought a cutting response. "If there was any evidence that James killed Ailsa, the police would have found it," he said. "Anyone who thinks differently needs their head examined."

"You said he'd got away with murder. You went on and on about it."

"I said if he had murdered her, it was the perfect crime. It was a joke, for Christ's sake. You should listen once in a while, instead of forcing everyone to listen to you."

Eleanor turned back to the hob. " You never listen to me. You're always out or in your study."

He drained his whisky. Here it comes, he thought. "I'm all yours," he invited her. "What do you want to talk about?"

"Nothing. There's no point. You always take the man's side."

"I'd certainly have taken James's if I'd realized what Prue was up to," Julian said coolly. "So would Dick. He's never had any illusions about being married to a bitch, but he didn't know she was venting her spleen on James. Poor old chap. It was bad enough Ailsa dying without having some twisted harpy plaguing him with the equivalent of poison-pen letters. It's a form of stalking… the kind of thing sex-starved spinsters do…"