Minette Walters: Fox Evil

"Yeah," said Bella thoughtfully. "No question Vixen and Cub were vegetables. Vera, too, if it comes to that. What's gonna happen to her , then?"

"I've managed to find a nursing home in Dorchester that will take her," said Mark.

"Who's gonna pay?"

"James," said Mark wryly. "He wants her off the estate as fast as possible and says he doesn't mind how much it costs if it'll keep him from killing her."

Bella chuckled. "The old guy's pretty hot on this blood money lark. Me and Nancy have been watching Ivo skulking in the wood, trying to wave to his woman. It's pretty funny. All she's done so far is give him the finger."

"She'll have to go soon. That's the other thing the police are pressing me on. They want the buses moved to a secure site. It's going to be a bit of a gauntlet-run, I'm afraid, because the press are lining the road, but you'll have a police escort the whole way."

Bella nodded. "How long?"

"Half an hour," said Mark apologetically. "I asked for longer, but they're using up too much manpower guarding the site. Also they want the house cleared so that James can make an inventory of anything that's missing. It looks as if the dining room's lost most of its silver."

The big woman sighed. "It's always the same. Just as you start getting comfortable the flaming cops turn up and move you on. Never mind, eh?"

"Will you talk to Wolfie first?"

"You bet," she said roundly. "Gotta tell him how to find me if he needs me."

The photographers weren't pleased that under sub judice rules none of their shots of Julian Bartlett resisting a search warrant could be used until after his trial. The police arrived in force at Shenstead House, and the man's fury when DS Monroe served him with the warrant was dramatic. He tried to slam the door and, when that didn't work, he seized a riding crop from the hall table and whipped at Monroe's face. Monroe, younger and fitter, caught his wrist in midair and twisted his arm up behind his back before frog-marching him toward the kitchen. His words were inaudible to anyone outside, but the reporters all wrote with confidence: "Mr. Julian Bartlett of Shenstead House was arrested for assault at 11:43." Eleanor sat in a state of shock while Julian was handcuffed and cautioned in front of her before being taken to another room while the search of the house began. She seemed unable to grasp that the focus of police attention was her husband, not herself, and kept tapping her chest as if to say mea culpa, the blame is mine. It was only when Monroe put a series of photographs in front of her and asked her if she recognized any of them that she finally opened her mouth.

"That one," she whispered, pointing to Fox.

"Could you name him for me, Mrs. Bartlett?"

"Leo Lockyer-Fox."

"Could you explain how you know him?"

"I told you last night."

"Again, please."

She licked her lips. "He wrote to me. I met him in London with his sister. I don't remember his hair being like this-it was much shorter-but I remember his face very well."

"Do you recognize any of the other photographs? Take as long as you like. Look at them closely."

She seemed to feel it was an order and picked up each one in shaking fingers and stared at it for several seconds. "No," she said at last.

Monroe isolated a picture from the middle and pushed it toward her. " That is Leo Lockyer-Fox, Mrs. Bartlett. Are you sure he wasn't the man you met?"

What little color she had left drained from her cheeks. She shook her head.

Monroe laid another series of photographs on the table. "Do you recognize any of these women?"

She hunched forward, staring at the faces. "No," she said.

"Are you absolutely certain?"

She nodded.

Again he isolated one. " That is Elizabeth Lockyer-Fox, Mrs. Bartlett. Are you sure she wasn't the woman you spoke to?"

"Yes." She stared up at him with tears in her eyes. "I don't understand, Sergeant. The woman I saw was so convincing. No one could pretend to be that damaged, could they? She was shaking the whole time she talked to me. I believed her."

Monroe pulled out a chair on the other side of the table. Time enough to put the fear of God into her when he had her husband in the bag; for the moment he wanted cooperation. "Probably because she was afraid of the man who was calling himself Leo," he said, sitting down. "Also, she may have been telling you the truth, Mrs. Bartlett… but it would have been her own story and not Elizabeth Lockyer-Fox's. Sadly, we believe the woman you met is now dead, although there's a chance we've found her passport. In a day or two I'll ask you to look at some more photographs. If you recognize any of those faces then we may be able to put a name to her and find out something about her history."

"But I don't understand. Why did she do it?" She looked at Fox's picture. "Who's this person? Why did he do it?"

Monroe rested his chin on his hands. "You tell me, Mrs. Bartlett. Two strangers weren't likely to know that you'd be interested in a fabricated story about Colonel Lockyer-Fox. How did they know you'd believe it? How did they know you had a close friend in Mrs. Weldon who would support a campaign of nuisance calls? How did they know you both thought the Colonel had murdered his wife?" He gave a sympathetic shrug. "Someone very close to you must have given them your name, don't you think?"

She really was deeply unintelligent. "Someone who doesn't like James?" she suggested. "Otherwise, what was the point?"

"You were a decoy. Your phone calls were designed to make the Colonel think there was no one he could trust… not even his son or daughter. Your role-" he smiled slightly-"which you performed extremely well-was to drive a defenseless old man to confusion and exhaustion. While he was concentrating on you-and by default his children because of what you were alleging-he was being robbed." He raised inquiring eyebrows. "Who knew you well enough to set you up like that? Who knew you resented the Lockyer-Foxes? Who thought it would be amusing to let you do his dirty work?"

As monroe told his inspector afterward, it might be true that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, but hell broke loose in Shenstead House when a scorned woman found she'd been framed. Once started, Eleanor couldn't stop. She had an absolute memory of their finances at the time of the move, the approximate value of Julian's portfolio, the amount of his early- retirement package and the minimal pension he was receiving until he turned sixty-five. She leaped at the chance to construct a list of her own expenditures since moving to Dorset, including the cost of every home improvement. The list she made of Julian's known expenses ran to two pages, with the gifts mentioned in the GS emails scored into the paper at the end.

Even Eleanor could see that expenditure far outweighed income, so, unless Julian had sold every share they possessed, there was money coming from somewhere else. She disproved the sale of shares by taking Monroe to Julian's study and locating the stockbroker file in one of his cabinets. She then assisted the police further by going through all his other files and isolating anything she didn't recognize. She grew more and more confident as evidence of her husband's guilt became apparent-bank and investment accounts that he'd never mentioned, receipts for goods sold that had never belonged to them, even correspondence with a previous mistress-and it was obvious to Monroe that she was rapidly beginning to see herself as the victim.

He had requested specifically that she look for a file containing letters from Colonel Lockyer-Fox to a Captain Nancy Smith, and when she finally unearthed it at the bottom of a rubbish bag which she remembered Julian taking outside that morning- "he's never so obliging usually" -she handed it over with a triumphant flourish. She was even more triumphant when one of the officers dug farther into the coffee grounds and sprouts and produced a Darth Vader voice distorter. "I told you it wasn't my fault," she said stridently.