Minette Walters - The Devil's Feather

“Madeleine didn’t have to see Lily to do that. She just had to go to the outhouse.”

“But she wouldn’t want the whole world knowing what she was up to. I mean, you’re effectively accusing her of wanting to murder her mother.”

“She’s quite capable of it.”

I doubted that but I didn’t say so. “Supposing Peter had been here…supposing you had been here? Supposing someone had seen her drive through the village?”

“It depends when it was. The Horse Artillery could ride through Winterborne Barton at midnight and none of that lot-” she jerked her head in the direction of the village-“would hear them. If they’re not deaf, they’re probably snoring their heads off.” She crossed her forearms on the table and hunched forward. “It’s the one time Madeleine could have got away with doing something like that. I’m the only person who ever came in here. Everyone else went into the drawing-room. Even Peter.”

I’d learnt from experience that it wasn’t worth repeating questions, because Jess never answered anything she didn’t want to. The only technique that seemed to work was to point out Lily’s failings, which usually provoked her into defending the woman. “It doesn’t explain why Lily didn’t do something about it herself. Peter says she was functioning adequately enough to go on living here alone, so why didn’t she look up a maintenance man in the Yellow Pages? A total stranger wasn’t going to have her committed.”

Jess stared at the table. “She was much worse than Peter realized. As long as she looked neat, and could open the door to him, and roll out a few amusing anecdotes without too much repetition, he thought she was coping. She was pretty good at the airs and graces stuff…forgot everything else…but not that.”

“Was it you who was making her neat?”

Her dark gaze rested on me for a moment. “I wasn’t going to do it forever but while she was still-” she made a small gesture of resignation. “She was frightened about going into a home…made me promise to keep her out as long as possible.”

“Difficult.”

“It wasn’t all bad. I learnt more about my family after Lily went senile than I ever knew before.” Her eyes lit up suddenly. “Do you know, she really envied them? I’d listened to this crap for years about how low-grade we were-straight out of the primeval sludge without a brain between us-then suddenly it’s not fair that trolls with congenital syphilis inherit the earth.”

I smiled. “So what did she say to make you angry?”

“Nothing.”

“She must have done. You wouldn’t have abandoned her otherwise. You’re too kind.”

For a moment, I thought she was going to come clean, but something changed her mind. Probably my mention of kindness. “She was taking up too much time, that’s all. I thought if I left her to cope on her own for a bit, Peter would realize how bad she was and organize proper care.” She gave a hollow laugh. “Fat chance. He relied on me to tell him if she went downhill…then vanished off to Canada for a month.”

I shrugged. “You can’t blame him for that. First you help Lily hide her condition, then you want to expose her. At the very least, you could have told Peter you’d stopped visiting. He’s not a mind-reader. How was he supposed to know Lily had lost her safety net? How was anyone supposed to know?”

An obstinate expression closed over her face. “You’re in the same position. Do you want me to send round a note if I decide to stop visiting you? Whose business is it except yours and mine?”

“I’m not ill. I can ask for help if I need it.”

“So could Lily. She wasn’t completely shot.”

“Then why didn’t she?”

“She did,” Jess said stubbornly. “She took herself to the village…and none of them did a damn thing about it.”

We’d been this route before. It’s where every conversation about Lily ended-with Winterbourne Barton’s perceived indifference. I sometimes felt it was Jess’s excuse. As long as she could accuse them, she didn’t have to address her own part in Lily’s rapid decline. Although in truth I couldn’t see that anyone was really to blame. There was no law that said Jess had to take the brunt of a demanding woman’s care indefinitely, and no law that said her doctor and neighbours should have foreseen their sudden falling out.

It was harder to excuse Madeleine because she was Lily’s daughter, but was she any better at guessing from London what was going on than the people on the ground? I was willing to accept Jess’s view of her character-grasping, vindictive, spiteful, selfish-but not that she had a supernatural intelligence. “How could Madeleine have known that she could turn the Aga off with impunity? Did she know that you and Lily had a row? Would Lily have told her?”

“We didn’t have a row. I just stopped coming.”

“OK. Would she have told her that?”

I saw from Jess’s sudden frown that she knew what I was driving at. She could hardly accuse Madeleine of attempted murder if Madeleine was as ignorant as everyone else. She didn’t dodge the question. “No,” she said flatly. “Madeleine would have wanted to know why.”

I went back to the question she wouldn’t answer. “So what did Lily say to you that made you angry? And was so awful that she couldn’t repeat it to her daughter?” I watched her lips thin to a narrow line. “Come on, Jess. You play slave to a first-class bitch for twelve years…drop her like a hot potato when she really needs you…then start defending her the minute she’s off your hands. Does that make sense to you? Because it doesn’t to me.”

When she didn’t say anything, I lost patience with her. “Oh, to hell with it,” I said wearily. “Who gives a shit? I’ve better things to do.” I stood up and fetched the axe and the lead-weighted walking-stick from beside the door. “Do you want to help me stash these things or are you going home in a huff?”

If her mutinous glare was anything to go by, she was certainly thinking about leaving, and it made me angry suddenly. She was like a spoilt child who used tantrums to get its own way, and I found I didn’t want to play anymore. “There’s only one person who might have turned off the valve, and that’s you, Jess. Who else knew where it was or what impact it would have on Lily? Who-other than you-knew you weren’t visiting any more?”

With a funny little sigh, she pulled the pile of notes towards her and started tearing them up.

I made a half-hearted move towards her. “You shouldn’t be doing that.”

“Why not? Who do you want to show them to? The police? Peter? Madeleine?” She picked up the pieces and transferred them to the sink. “Can I borrow your lighter?”

“No.”

She shrugged indifferently before pulling a booklet of matches from her back trouser pocket. “It’s not what you think,” she said, striking a light and setting fire to the flimsy pile.

“It seems very clear to me.”

She put out an arm to hold me back, although I wasn’t thinking of stopping her. I couldn’t see the point of getting into a fight over evidence that was certainly duplicated in the oil suppliers’ records, and I wondered why Jess hadn’t thought of that. She might have been reading my mind.

“No one will check unless you mention it,” she said. “And if you do, I’ll say the valve was open and the level about six inches down…which is where it should have been. No one’s going to take your word against mine. You were acting like a zombie after your panic attack, and Peter will back me up on that.”

We stood in silence as the paper reduced to sooty ash in the sink, at which point she turned on the tap and washed it away. By then, of course, I was extremely curious about why she’d done it, as thirty seconds’ reflection told me she wouldn’t have mentioned the valve in the first place if it hadn’t surprised her to find it off. The whole thing was very strange.