Minette Walters - The Devil's Feather

When I said this, she replied rather scathingly that BSE and foot-and-mouth were no different. “I lost Dad’s whole herd to BSE when cattle over thirty months had to be incinerated-whether they had the disease or not-and it’s taken me eight years to build another herd half the size. It’s wrecked the beef and dairy industry in this country but you don’t hear much sympathy for farmers.”

“Weren’t you compensated?”

“Nowhere near what each animal was actually worth. It took Dad years to build his herd-he was always winning prizes at the shows-and none of them had BSE. I got an extra sixty quid for every animal that was killed unnecessarily when the tests post-slaughter proved negative. It was a joke…and bloody upsetting. I was pretty fond of those cows.”

“I’m sorry.”

She nodded. “You get on with it. Did your dad lose crops to locusts?”

“Only the human variety. Mugabe took his farm.”

“How long had your family been there?”

“Not long enough,” I said ironically. “Three generations-four if you count me-about the same length of time as Madeleine’s has been in Barton House.”

“How does that make it not long enough?”

“Wrong colour,” I said harshly. “If you’re black, you’ve been there for centuries…never mind you were born in Mozambique or Tanzania. If you’re white your ancestors stole the land from the indigenous people.”

“Is that what your family did?”

“No. My great-grandparents bought ours fair and square, but deeds of title don’t count for much when Zanu-PF thugs turn up on your doorstep.” I shrugged. “There are rights and wrongs on both sides, but stealing the land back again hasn’t solved anything. It’s just made it worse…turned Africa’s breadbasket into a dust-bowl. Ten years ago, the white farmers were producing enough food”-I broke off.

“Go on.”

“No,” I said with an abrupt laugh. “It makes me too angry. Like you and your dad’s herd. I wouldn’t mind so much if the farm had gone to our workers, but it’s been appropriated by one of Mugabe’s cronies and hasn’t produced anything for three years. It’s a crazy situation.”

“Will you ever go back?”

“I can’t,” I said unwarily. “I’m excluded indefinitely because of what I’ve written about Mugabe.”

There was a beat of silence before Jess changed the subject. She’d done it before when I made rash comments about myself, and I did wonder if Peter had told her I wasn’t who I said I was. It was noticeable that she never called me Marianne, preferring to wait until she caught my attention before saying anything. I had every intention of coming clean-certainly before my parents arrived, as two Mariannes in the same family would need explaining-but I kept postponing it. I wasn’t ready to talk about Baghdad-not then, not ever, perhaps-so I carried on with the pretence because it was easier.

There was no question Peter had told Jess that I knew about her relationship with Nathaniel because she made a reference to it the morning after I’d spoken to him. This left me deeply curious about Peter’s relationship with Jess. Had he been to her house the previous evening? Had he phoned to say I’d visited him? I wasn’t worried by the breach of confidence, because I hadn’t asked him to keep it to himself, but I was intrigued to know why he’d felt it necessary to inform Jess. At the very least, it implied a closer friendship than either of them was admitting to.

“It takes a crisis to show you what a person’s really like,” she said, jerking her chin at one of Nathaniel’s paintings. “He behaved like a complete tosser after my parents died.”

“What did he do?”

“Holed up in London rather than face the emotion down here. It worked out for the best in the end. I might have sold the farm if I’d listened to him. He wanted me to buy a house in Clapham with a studio upstairs.”

“For him?”

“Of course. He had visions of living in Bohemian bliss in some claustrophobic tenement.” She smiled slightly. “On my parents’ money…with him as the charismatic artist and me doing the washing-up.”

“Were you tempted?”

“Sometimes…at night. Come the mornings, I always had the sense to see it wouldn’t work. I need to be on my own with lots of space around me, and he needs an audience.” She paused. “I gave him the boot when I realized I wasn’t cut out to be a servant.”

Interesting choice of words, I thought. “Is that when he took up with Madeleine?”

“Nn-nn. He’d been sleeping with her for ages. She sprogged two months after I said I never wanted to see him again.” Jess gave one of her rare laughs at my expression. “That’s how Lily reacted. It was about the worst thing that could have happened…her only child getting pregnant by a Derbyshire cast-off. The way she carried on, you’d think Nathaniel and I were related. I thought it was pretty funny, myself.”

“Because Lily looked down on you?” It wasn’t my idea of humour.

“No. I liked the idea of Madeleine playing servant for the first time in her life.”

I’m sure it was at that point that I gave up trying to understand Jess. There were innumerable questions I wanted to ask, not least why she’d remained close to Lily, but instead I resorted to banality. “You’re well out of it.”

“I know,” she said, staring critically at Nathaniel’s painting, “but he isn’t. I feel quite sorry for him sometimes. He comes to the farm every so often, wanting to put the clock back, but I haven’t seen him since I told him I’d shoot his dick off if he tried it on again.” There was a glint of humour in her eye.

She really did have the capacity to surprise. “Does Madeleine know?”

Jess gave an indifferent shrug. “I shouldn’t think so. They hardly speak any more, which is why she wants this house. It’s her best chance to get rid of him…and she’d have done it by now if Lily hadn’t stymied her. Lily didn’t approve of divorce.”

“Why did Madeleine tell her?”

“She didn’t. I did.”

I might have guessed that, I thought. “Not a bad revenge, then?”

“Except I didn’t do it for revenge. I did it to protect Lily. Madeleine would have killed her, or stuck her in the cheapest home she could find, if Lily hadn’t reassigned the power of attorney. The only thing that stops her shoving a cushion over Lily’s face is that a solicitor’s involved. She’ll be worth a fortune when she inherits this place…as long as she gets shot of Nathaniel and the son first.”

THERE’S NO QUESTION Jess was my protector when she roared up the drive within ten minutes of my phone call. It was a little like having a knight on a white charger come to the rescue, except there was no chivalry and very little TLC. When I unlocked the back door her dogs came bounding in behind her, and she snapped at me angrily as I shrank against the wall. “I’m not facing an intruder on my own,” she hissed, following the mastiffs into the kitchen. “Wait there.” I heard her unlock the door to the corridor and then the swish of the green baize as she and the dogs disappeared into the body of the house.

It was only when she came back alone five minutes later that I saw she was carrying a gun. She broke it across her knee and put it on the table. “You’re OK. No signs of a break-in, and I’ve left the dogs in the hall. So what happened?”

I can’t remember what explanation I gave, other than to repeat that I thought I’d seen someone in the garden the evening before. The truth was too complicated, and I was too tired to pick my way through the minefield of revelation. Jess was unimpressed. “Why didn’t you call the police? That’s what they’re there for.”