Minette Walters - The Devil's Feather

I sighed. “Only if you accept Peter’s estimate of how long anything took…but I honestly believe he’s given you some very exaggerated timings. You said he thought it was half an hour between him leaving the kitchen and my appearing in the office doorway, yet my estimate would be more like fifteen minutes. And as for the dogfight, there’s no way it lasted the five minutes Peter’s claiming. More like sixty seconds. In five minutes, MacKenzie could have killed every one of them.”

“Dr. Coleman’s used to emergencies, Ms. Burns. It’s his job. Why should his timings have been any less accurate than yours?”

“Because I have more experience of frightening situations. You learn very quickly in a war zone that everything becomes inflated…ten minutes under mortar bombardment seems like ten hours…a hundred-strong mob with machetes looks more like five hundred.” I leaned my elbows on the table. “I left Peter just long enough to see Jess to the top of the stairs-one minute max. She was very shaken and she didn’t know what MacKenzie had done with her clothes-so I told her to put on something of mine till we found them. Then I went back down and released Peter.”

The Inspector nodded as if he could accept that. “These being the clothes that were dropped outside the office window?”

“Yes. Jess thinks he did it to confuse the dogs in case they picked up his scent where he came in.”

“You should have left them there for the police to examine, Ms. Burns.”

“I couldn’t. Jess had nothing else to wear. Everything of mine was too long, and she needed her boots.”

Another nod. “Was Ms. Derbyshire in the hall when Dr. Coleman examined Mr. MacKenzie?”

“No, she was still upstairs.”

“Where were the dogs?”

“With Jess. She wanted to check them over for stab wounds.”

“Excluding”-he checked his notes-“Bertie. He was already dead?”

“Yes.”

“Who decided he was dead, Ms. Burns? You? Or Ms. Derbyshire?”

In view of the doubt I’d thrown on Peter’s ability to estimate time, I suspected a neat little trap. “You only had to look at him,” I said flatly, “or smell him. His sphincter muscle had relaxed and the contents of his rectum were on the floor. I’m sure in other circumstances Jess would have tried for a pulse, but she was more concerned about the others. They were covered in blood as well.”

“What did you do while Dr. Coleman examined Mr. MacKenzie?”

“Watched.”

I left out that Peter’s self-control deserted him and he swore like a trooper for a good minute after I removed his gag. At that stage he didn’t know who to blame for his perceived shortcomings. MacKenzie for humbling him? Me for being strong? Jess for taking most of the punishment? Himself for being frightened? His devastation increased when he saw Bertie, as if Bertie had somehow been sacrificed on the altar of his cowardice. Of course these “shortcomings” were his own creation-much as mine had been-for neither Jess nor I saw him in such terms.

Nevertheless, the result of this orgy of self-flagellation was that he set out to paint me and Jess in glowing colours. I became the iron lady who took control and exercised it-Peter even used the word “revenge” after describing what he’d seen on the DVD, claiming anything I did to MacKenzie was “reasonable.” Jess became the martyr figure who refused to give in to exhaustion or threats, and retained an icy composure even after the death of one of her dogs.

It left Bagley with the impression of two tough and determined women who, for different reasons, had wanted MacKenzie dead. An impression not helped by the various weapons hidden around the house, particularly Jess’s baseball bats and my carving knives. To Peter’s credit, he tried to set the record straight as soon as he realized the damage he’d done, but by then it was too late. If both Ms. Burns and Ms. Derbyshire were subject to panic attacks and agoraphobia, Bagley asked, why had we shown no evidence of it that night?

“You watched, ” he echoed now. “Yet I understand Dr. Coleman asked you to call the police and an ambulance. Why didn’t you do that?”

“The landline wasn’t working.”

“But you knew your mobile worked in the attic.”

“I didn’t think it was a good idea to leave Peter alone with MacKenzie.” I rested my forehead on my hands and stared at the table. “Look, what I’m going to say isn’t very kind, but it is true. Peter was petrified from beginning to end of the whole thing. I didn’t blame him-I don’t blame him now-but I guarantee MacKenzie would have freed himself somehow if I hadn’t stayed.”

“How?”

I dropped my hands into my lap. “Probably by pretending to be more injured than he was. Peter was uncomfortable about the way I’d bound his hands behind his back, particularly when he realized the fingers were broken. He wanted me to retie them at the front while MacKenzie was still unconscious.”

“But you refused. Why?”

“Because I wasn’t as convinced as Peter that he was unconscious.”

“You think a doctor would make a mistake about something like that?”

I shrugged. “It’s hardly difficult to fake but, in any case, it wasn’t a risk worth taking. I couldn’t see Peter leaping to my rescue if MacKenzie decided to grab me round the throat and throttle me. There’d have been a lot of hand-flapping and not much action. He made a hell of a fuss about getting Bertie’s blood on his trousers.”

It wasn’t a very fair description of Peter but it seemed to strike a chord with the Inspector. “Dr. Coleman certainly seems to have found the experience more”-he searched for the appropriate phrase-“soul-destroying than you and Ms. Derbyshire.”

“You don’t know much about women then,” I said flatly. “If it’ll bring an end to this, I’ll happily burst into tears and throw hysterics. Is that what you want me to do? It’s easily done…almost as easy as MacKenzie pretending to be unconscious.”

A gleam of humour appeared in his eyes. “I’d rather you told me why you persuaded Dr. Coleman to go back to his own house and call the emergency services from there. That puzzles me.”

“It didn’t happen like that,” I demurred. “It was Peter’s idea…I merely agreed it was sensible.”

The Inspector consulted his notes. “Dr. Coleman has the roles reversed, Ms. Burns. I quote: ‘When I told Connie we needed the police and an ambulance as a matter of priority, she pointed out that MacKenzie had cut the telephone line. She said the only option was for me to go home and call from there. I agreed.’ ”

“I honestly don’t recall it that way…but does it matter?”

He frowned. “Of course it matters. There were five working mobiles in the house, yours, Dr. Coleman’s and Ms. Derbyshire’s…plus Mr. MacKenzie’s and your father’s. We’ve already established there’s a perfectly good signal in the attic, so why not send Dr. Coleman upstairs? Why tell him going home was the only option?”

I shook my head. “I don’t remember doing that…but, even if I did, how does it make me the bad guy? Peter knew about the signal in the attic. He could have thought it through just as well as I could. It wasn’t a normal situation…we weren’t exactly sitting around, discussing the best way to proceed, you know. We were both shaking like leaves…and all I recall is jumping at the first suggestion that was going to bring us some help.”

“In fact Dr. Coleman expressed surprise when we told him it was possible to use a mobile at Barton House.”

“Then he’s two-faced,” I said crossly. “He knew all about the pyramid Jess built in the back bedroom so that I could use my laptop when I first arrived. You can ask my landlady. It was Peter who told her about it when I asked permission to install broadband.”