Minette Walters - The Devil's Feather

“What about the walls?”

“Those, too.”

She looked suspiciously around the kitchen and I wondered if she’d noticed the faint hum that was coming from the scullery, or the two loops of fabric tape at either end of the Aga rail. “What were the dogs fighting about?”

I shrugged. “Whatever dogs usually fight about. I’m not much of an expert, I’m afraid. Should I stick to the same colour scheme, or would your mother’s solicitor prefer something different?”

“I don’t-” she stopped abruptly. “Did it happen while this man was here?”

“Didn’t Peter tell you?”

She folded herself on to the chair, placing her bag on the floor beside her feet. “Not every detail. I think he wanted to shield me from the worst.”

“Why?”

“Presumably because he didn’t want to worry me.”

“I see.”

She had trouble with short answers. In her world everyone played the game and readily divulged their scrubby little pieces of gossip. She forced a smile. “Peter’s so sweet. He kept it as low-key as possible to avoid upsetting me but the truth is, I’d rather have had the details. It is my house, after all.”

“Oh dear,” I murmured, tapping ash into the sink, which brought an immediate scowl to her face, “that means I’ve given the wrong information to the police. I told them it belonged to your mother. I believe Peter did as well. He even supplied them with the solicitor’s address…the one who has power of attorney.”

She kept the smile in place. Just. “It’s the family home.”

I nodded. “You told me last time.”

She opened her mouth as if to say, “Well then,” but seemed to think better of it. “The papers said this man-MacKenzie-held three people captive then escaped before the police arrived. Was Jess one of the three? You said her dogs were here.”

“I said they had a fight,” I corrected mildly.

“While MacKenzie was here?”

“Jess’s mastiffs are better guard dogs than that.”

Her impatience got the better of her. “Then who was here? You must see how worrying it is for me to know that a man broke in so easily with three people on the premises. Did one of them let him in? What did he want? Was he after something in the house?”

“Why don’t you ask your mother’s solicitor?” I suggested. “I’m sure he’ll be able to set your mind at rest. Or even the police. I can give you the name of the detective leading the inquiry.”

“I already know it,” she snapped. “I’ve asked to see him this afternoon.”

“Then there isn’t a problem,” I pointed out reasonably. “He’ll tell you as much as he can.”

She stared at me for a moment, trying to assess if there was any mileage in continuing, then with a shrug reached for her bag. “You’d think the crown jewels had been stolen the way everyone’s behaving.”

“Well, you can be reassured on that front at least,” I said with a small laugh. “MacKenzie didn’t think there was anything worth stealing…so your husband’s paintings are still here.”

She threw me a look of dislike. “Perhaps he was targeting my mother’s antiques. Perhaps he didn’t know she’d left.”

“That was Inspector Bagley’s first idea,” I agreed, “which is why he wanted a list of anything that had struck me as unusual since I took over the tenancy. I said there were several things…but I didn’t think they were connected with Saturday’s events.”

Madeleine froze. Only briefly, but enough for me to notice. “Like what?”

I blew a ring of smoke towards the ceiling. “The water had been turned off.”

It was a guess, much like the guesses I’d made about MacKenzie’s mother, but as I’d said to Jess the previous evening, why stop at turning off the Aga? Why not the water? I couldn’t get it out of my head that Jess had found Lily beside the fishpond. Or that memory might have told her there was a well under the logs in the woodshed. What was she doing outside at eleven o’clock at night? And why did she go to other people’s houses to clean her teeth and have a cup of tea?

“That wasn’t me,” Madeleine said abruptly, searching through her bag so that she wouldn’t have to look at me. “It must have been the agent. The stopcock’s under the sink. All you had to do was turn it back on again.”

“I didn’t mean it was off when I arrived,” I told her. “The taps in the kitchen were fine. The problem was upstairs. There was so much air in the water pipes to the bathroom taps that they all started banging. It scared the living daylights out of me.”

“It’s an old house,” she said carefully. “Mummy was always complaining about the pipes.”

“I called in a plumber because I was so worried, and the first thing he did was check the stopcock. According to him, air gets into a system when the main supply is interrupted and people keep trying the taps because they don’t understand why nothing’s coming out. Water runs out downstairs and air fills the void upstairs. He said it could only have happened while someone was living here…and that must have been your mother because the house was empty till I took it on.”

She took a tissue from her bag and touched it to the end of her nose. “I don’t know anything about the water system. All I know is that Mummy said the pipes were always banging.”

I was relying very heavily on the fact that she knew nothing about the water system. Or any other system. My “oddities” were courtesy of Jess. “Try Madeleine with the electricity as well,” she had said. “The night I found Lily, the house was in darkness and I couldn’t get the outside lights to work. That’s the main reason I took her back to the farm. I didn’t want to waste time trying to find out which of her fuses had blown. Everything was working fine the next day, and I rather forgot about it.”

“Something else that was unusual,” I went on, “was that several of the fuse cartridges had been removed from the electricity box. If Jess hadn’t been here, I’d have spent my first night in darkness because none of the lights in the bedrooms worked. It was only when she checked the box that we discovered why. They were laid in a row on the top of the case…and as soon as they were plugged back in the lights came on.”

Madeleine played with her tissue.

“Do you know who might have done that? The police are wondering if an electrician did some work. If so, how did he get in? They’re very keen to find anyone who’s had access to the house in the last six to nine months. They’re wondering if your mother let him in…but why would he leave her in darkness?”

She shook her head.

“The really strange thing,” I said, reaching into the sink to turn on the tap and drown my fag end, “is that the valve on the oil tank was turned off but the gauge was reading full. And that doesn’t make any sense, because Burton’s last delivery was at the end of November…and your mother didn’t go into a nursing-home until the third week in January. It meant she had no hot water or cooking facilities for the last two months she was here.” I paused. “But how could that have happened without you knowing? Did you not visit her during that time?”

Madeleine found her voice at last. “I couldn’t,” she said rather curtly as if it was a criticism she’d faced before. “My son was ill and I was helping Nathaniel prepare for an exhibition. In any case, Peter came in regularly so I would have expected to hear from him if anything was wrong.”

“But not from Jess,” I said matter-of-factly. “She’d already written to tell you that she’d withdrawn her support from Lily.”

“I don’t recall that.”

“I’m sure you do,” I said, taking a copy of Jess’s letter from my pocket. “Do you want to remind yourself of what she said. No? Then I’ll do the honours.” I isolated a passage. “ ‘Whatever’s gone before, your mother needs your help now, Madeleine. Please do not go on ignoring her. For a number of reasons, I can no longer visit, but it’s in your interests to come down and organize some care for her. Without support, she cannot stay at Barton House alone. She’s more confused than Peter realizes but if you allow him or anyone else to decide on her competence you might regret it.’ ” I looked up. “All of which was true, wasn’t it?”