Minette Walters - The Devil's Feather

“For my own satisfaction then.”

I glanced towards the hall. “I wanted to kill him,” I admitted. “I would have done if I’d been a better shot. I was aiming for his head when I hit his fingers…and the only reason I didn’t take another swipe was because it felt as if I’d been electrocuted when the axe slammed on to the flagstones. I had judders all the way up my arms and into the base of my neck. That’s when I decided it would be better to tie him up.”

I squashed my fag end into the ashtray. “Jess wanted to kill him, too-she was devastated about Bertie-but we couldn’t see how to do it. Peter had already left and there wasn’t time to work anything out. I suggested we untie MacKenzie and argue self-defence, but Jess said we’d have to corner him to do it”-I sighed-“and I had this sudden picture of the women in Sierra Leone…all huddled against walls because there was nowhere else to go.” I fell silent.

“Did Ms. Derbyshire agree with you?”

“Yes. She said it might have been different if he’d been blindfolded but it wasn’t possible after she’d seen into his eyes.” I pulled a wry smile. “I don’t think it’s easy killing people. I don’t think it’s easy killing animals. I couldn’t kill a rat if it looked at me the way MacKenzie did. I can’t even kill woodlice. There’s a nest in some of the rotten wood in Lily’s drawing-room and the only way I can deal with them is to hoover them up and chuck them outside…”

H. L. MENCKEN ONCE SAID: “It’s hard to believe a man is telling the truth when you know you would lie if you were in his place.” If I’d realized earlier that Bagley shied away from killing animals, I’d have introduced rats and woodlice at the beginning. His views on psychopaths and sadists were extreme-they should all be hanged-but he empathized strongly with my inability to crush the life out of vermin. I’m not sure I ever fully understood the logic of his argument, but apparently my clear reluctance to kill anything was more convincing than repeated denials that I’d killed MacKenzie.

In a shameless PR exercise to encourage complete exoneration, I persuaded Jess to release her dogs in front of him. As she predicted, they headed straight up the field for Bertie’s grave and began a mournful howling around it. Bagley asked how they knew he was there and Jess said they’d attended the first funeral. Like elephants, they never forgot. Whether he believed that, I don’t know, but he declined her invitation to dig poor Bertie out a second time. The remaining dogs showed no inclination to go anywhere else in the valley, and had to be dragged away from the grave on leashes.

After that, Bagley left us in peace. Alan was amused by the motives I ascribed to this sudden end to suspicion, saying it had more to do with an absence of evidence than Bagley being unable to kill woodlice, but I still feel I showed my best side as a woman when I mentioned the hoover.

THE SECOND WEEK of September saw the arrival of my parents and the beginnings of an Indian summer after the rains of July and August. Jess took to them immediately, and in no time at all my father was up at the farm, lending a hand. My mother worried that he was over-exerting himself after his injuries, but Jess assured us he was only driving a tractor and helping Harry feed the livestock.

The subject of MacKenzie was taboo. None of us wanted to talk about him or what had happened. For all of us, it was done and dusted, and there was nothing to be gained by conducting a ghoulish post-mortem on who had suffered the most. Nevertheless, within a few of days of her arrival, my mother read some signals that were invisible to me and sought out Peter for a long chat.

I’d hardly had any contact with him since the incident, but I assumed he was still making regular visits to Jess. She’d mentioned his attendance at Bertie’s exhumation, and defended him for some of the information he’d given Bagley, but, bar a phone call one evening to ask if I was all right, he hadn’t been near me. I remember cutting the conversation short when he insisted on beating himself up for sins of omission and commission, but as Bagley arrived shortly afterwards Peter dropped out of focus again.

My mother gave me a hard time over it. I, more than anyone, should have understood how crippling it was to feel a failure. It was worse for men. They were expected to be courageous, and it destroyed their confidence to realize they weren’t. Tongue in cheek, I asked her if it would have been better for Peter if Jess and I had failed the bravery test as well, and she echoed Bagley’s statement about finding me deeply annoying.

“I don’t like to see you gloating, Connie.”

“I’m not gloating.”

“I don’t like to see your father gloating either.”

“He’s having fun,” I protested mildly. “Ploughing Jess’s fields is a lot more exciting than sitting at a desk all day.”

“He’s been cock-a-hoop since you phoned him in hospital,” she said accusingly. “What did you say to him?”

The demons are dead and buried… “Nothing much. Just that we’d all survived and MacKenzie had run away with his tail between his legs.”

Mum was peeling some potatoes at the sink. “Why should that please him? He wanted the beastly man dead or behind bars, not free to do the same thing to someone else. I can’t understand why you’re all so unconcerned about him getting away. Aren’t you worried that he’ll murder some other poor woman?”

I watched her busy hands and debated the merit of truth over lies. “Not really,” I said honestly. “It’s the age of the global village. The story’s gone round the world with his photograph, so he’ll be found very quickly if he’s alive. There are too many people looking for him.”

She turned to look at me. “If?”

“Wishful thinking,” I said.

“Mmm.” A pause. “Perhaps that explains your father. He’s behaving like a schoolboy at the moment.”

“Being on a farm reminds him of home.”

“Except the last time he operated a tractor was twenty years ago,” she said. “We employed a workforce for ploughing…Dad was the boss man who drove a four-by-four and checked the furrows were straight.” She held my gaze for a moment before returning to the potatoes. “But I’m sure you’re right. The simplest explanation is usually the correct one.”

ONE AFTERNOON, Jess said she was going to visit Lily and asked if I’d like to go, too. I knew Jess went to the nursing home regularly, even though Lily had no idea who she was, but this was the first time she’d invited me to accompany her. I went out of curiosity-a desire to put a face to the personality I’d come to know-and I’m glad I did. Even though the fires that had driven her were now absent, Lily’s beauty was so much sweeter than her daughter’s. It proved nothing-for I firmly believe that looks are skin deep-but I did understand when she smiled why Jess was so fond of her. I’m sure the same bemused affection had been in Frank Derbyshire’s smile when his daughter had quietly taken his hand in hers, and stroked it without saying a word…

IF I LIVE to be a hundred I’ll never understand my mother’s gift for socializing. When she and my father first arrived in London, they were on the Zimbabwean exiles’ dinner party list within hours of the plane landing. My father complained about it-“I hate being trapped at tables with people I’m never going to meet again”-but underneath he was secretly pleased. He had more in common with ex-pat farmers who had experienced Mugabe’s ethnic cleansing at first hand than he did with the London chattering classes who could only talk about their second homes in France.

Suddenly, visitors started appearing at Barton House. I knew a few of them through Peter, but most I’d never seen before, and I certainly wasn’t on dropping-in terms with any of them. The first time anyone appeared-a jolly couple in their sixties from Peter’s end of the village-Jess was in the kitchen and, despite her best efforts to melt into the background, my mother drew her back out again. I warned her she’d scare Jess away if she wasn’t careful, but it didn’t happen. Jess turned up each evening with Dad, and seemed content to be quietly included in whatever was happening, albeit on the fringes.