Murder at the Mill Page 14

  Ariadne let out a stifled sob.

  ‘Who’d have thought it?’ said Billy archly, lighting the cigarette he’d been rolling. ‘The first genuinely unselfish thing Dad ever did turns out to be the last thing he ever did.’

  Marcus turned on him. ‘What? What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘Only that now we’ll finally be able to take our inheritance and leave this hellhole,’ Billy replied deadpan, blowing smoke out through his nose like a louche dragon. ‘Thanks, Daddy dearest.’

  Jenna gasped, glaring at her brother-in-law. ‘Have you no shame?’

  ‘Apparently not,’ Billy grinned, winking at her. He was clearly trying to provoke Marcus into losing it again and hitting him, but it didn’t work this time. Instead, turning away in disgust, Marcus thanked Detective Inspector Cant for his time and for letting them know and walked him to the door.

  ‘Your brother didn’t get along with your father, I take it?’ Cant observed as he took his leave.

  ‘My brother doesn’t get along with anyone,’ Marcus replied. ‘Billy has a lot of problems, I’m afraid. He wasn’t always like that.’

  ‘He’s probably still in shock,’ DI Cant said kindly. ‘People say all kinds of things they don’t mean in these sorts of situations. I wonder if I might take a look around your father’s study?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Marcus, calm again now. ‘I’ll show you where it is.’

  A few minutes later Cant and his sergeant were alone in the cosy panelled room where Dom Wetherby had spent so much of his time.

  ‘Is this where he wrote the books, then?’ Sergeant Trotter asked, gazing at the shelves stuffed with Grimshaw titles as well as photos and memorabilia.

  ‘I imagine so,’ said Cant, running a gloved finger slowly along the edge of Dom’s desk. The dead man’s laptop was still open, but when Cant hit ‘return’, he found the battery was dead. Closing it carefully, he handed it to his sergeant. ‘Put this in an evidence bag. And find the charger. When we get back to the station, have Sally open it up straight away.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Trotter took the MacBook Air without comment. Checking the deceased’s computer was standard practice with any suspicious death. Dom Wetherby was no different. Meanwhile Trotter’s boss began systematically opening and emptying drawers, looking for other devices.

  ‘Phone.’ Cant handed the iPhone to his sergeant. ‘And here’s his tablet.’

  ‘At least he was organised,’ Trotter observed, placing both items in sealed bags. ‘I usually think of writers as being scatterbrained sorts of people, don’t you, sir? Always spilling their tea down their fronts and tying their trousers up with string. But this place is neat as a pin.’

  He’s right, thought Cant. Wetherby’s office was remarkably neat. Not that he’d ever been the tea-spilling type. But even so, it was uncanny how absolutely everything was exactly where it should be. Almost as if Dom’s things were waiting for the police to find them.

  You’re making something out of nothing, Cant told himself, shaking his head to dislodge the suspicious thought, like a dog with water in its ear. So Dom Wetherby was organised. So what? The guy could be allowed one virtue at least, couldn’t he, without having it picked apart?

  ‘Keep a lookout for diaries, letters and any bills or credit-card statements,’ Cant instructed his sergeant. ‘The rest we can leave. We need to give the family some space.’

  Sergeant Trotter nodded dutifully and the two men got to work.

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later Marcus Wetherby smiled thinly and waved as the policemen got into their car. The detective inspector was empty-handed, but the junior man was carrying three large sealed evidence bags under his arm.

  Did that mean anything? Was it normal to compile evidence after a suspected suicide? As a lawyer, he ought to know, but his mind had gone blank. Or rather it was overloaded with other, more pressing thoughts. Like had his father really been that unhappy? And what the hell was going on with Billy? Marcus couldn’t stop thinking about the argument he and Billy had had on Christmas Eve. There was no way the police could know about that. Could they?

  Despite the detective’s comforting words earlier, Marcus knew that Billy had meant what he said today, just as he had meant it the night of the party. Every hateful, outrageous word had been loaded with intent.

  It wasn’t till later that night, in bed, that Jenna and Marcus had a chance to talk about it.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Reaching out, Jenna touched Marcus’s cheek gently. The scratch on his face was still there, but it had lost its power to hurt her now, overshadowed by the terrible shock of Dom’s drowning. ‘I mean, I know you’re not all right,’ she corrected herself. ‘But can I help?’

  Pulling her to him, he hugged her tightly, closing his eyes and breathing in the familiar, comforting smell of her hair. ‘You are helping. You’ve been amazing with the children today and with Clive and Lorcan. Do you think he’ll be all right?’

  ‘Lorcan? I don’t know,’ Jenna said truthfully. ‘I think he needs to see someone.’

  ‘A shrink, you mean?’ Marcus’s knee-jerk British disapproval of all psychotherapy usually irritated Jenna. As a trained psychologist herself, it was frustrating and demeaning to have one’s experience dismissed. But under the present circumstances she could hardly expect him to be tactful.

  ‘I mean someone who understands how kids his age with Down’s get through this kind of stuff,’ she explained. ‘We’re in uncharted territory here.’

  Marcus sighed heavily. ‘I know. I just … I can’t believe it. I don’t believe it.’

  Jenna sat up in bed, suddenly animated. ‘Oh my God, I am so glad you said that. Because I was starting to worry. After the inspector left, and your mom was all, like, “At least now we know,” I kept waiting for someone to say something, but then I figured you probably just didn’t want to upset her any more and—’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Marcus frowned, cutting her off.

  ‘The suicide thing,’ said Jenna, surprised. ‘I mean, we all know Dom wasn’t suicidal, right? Not remotely! He wasn’t even depressed.’

  ‘Well, clearly he was,’ Marcus replied, his voice suddenly brittle.

  Jenna opened her mouth to say something, but then closed it again. Had she misunderstood? ‘But I thought you just said you didn’t believe it.’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Marcus. ‘But the fact is, Dad is dead.’ He shuddered at the memory of his father’s limp, frozen, waterlogged corpse in his arms, remembered the awful weight of it.

  ‘I know, honey.’ Jenna tried to sound soothing. ‘But suicide?’

  ‘You heard the police,’ Marcus said sullenly. ‘No struggle, no bruising. No signs of foul play.’

  ‘But, Marcus, you don’t really think that Dom would—’

  ‘What’s the alternative?’ Marcus shouted, cutting her off once more. His stress levels were clearly rising exponentially. ‘You think somebody murdered him? Tied a rock round his legs and threw him in the Itchen while he just sat there and let them do it?’

  ‘Don’t get upset, darling,’ said Jenna, wishing the conversation had not taken this turn. Besides which, Marcus did have a point. When you put it like that, it did sound nonsensical. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Sighing, relaxing a little, Marcus pulled her back into his embrace. ‘No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be shouting at you. I don’t want to accept that Dad killed himself either. It’s an awful thought and I can barely wrap my head around it. But sad as it is, that’s what happened. It won’t help Mum or Lorcan or anyone else for people to start second-guessing it.’

  Jenna let it go, lying patiently in Marcus’s arms until he finally fell asleep. Then she wriggled free and back to her own side of the bed, eyes wide open, thinking. About Dom. And about Billy, and his vile outburst today. A deep feeling of unease possessed her. Something was wrong, very wrong. Something that it was outside Jenna’s power to control.

  It took her a very long time to fall asleep.<
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  * * *

  Iris Grey blew on the top of her frothy hot chocolate and took a contemplative bite of her Chelsea bun as she leafed through the Daily Mail. The warm fug of Hambly’s teashop enveloped her, the air smelling of a heady combination of yeast and sugar and freshly ground coffee and wood polish and the intermingled perfumes of the handful of customers who’d braved the cold on this dismal December morning.

  Iris herself had walked into the village to escape the oppressive atmosphere at Mill Cottage since Dom Wetherby’s death. Boxed in by reporters who, not content with blocking Mill Lane and the drive that led to both Mill House and Iris’s cottage, thought nothing of knocking on Iris’s door at all hours asking for interviews and then ringing her phone repeatedly when she said no, Iris had started climbing the walls. And if the press interest weren’t oppressive enough, there was Mill House itself, looming over Iris’s tiny cottage like some great sad, lost giant whose heart had just been ripped out. Before Dom’s death, Iris had always thought of the big house as a benevolent, protective presence, but now its mellow stone walls seemed grey and bleak, a study in sadness, just like the faces Iris glimpsed in its windows. The bright light that had been Dom Wetherby had been extinguished, and overnight it was as if the house and everyone inside it had been unplugged. Plunged into darkness. Stopped dead. As if Dom’s energy had been their energy and without it they were like dolls in Iris’s doll’s house or puppets in a play. Empty shells.

  ‘’Scuse me, love.’ A heavyset man carrying a tray laden with tea and scones squeezed past the back of Iris’s chair. Setting the tray down with a clatter on the next table, he nodded towards Iris’s open newspaper. ‘Awful business, isn’t it? Like one of his books. Grimshaw the Great, wasn’t it, where the fella drowned? The scientist? Or was it Grimshaw’s Gift?’

  Dom Wetherby’s shock drowning was the tabloids’ top story, a gift to editors wondering how on earth to fill their pages during the ‘dead’ week between Christmas and New Year, when all normal news ground to a halt. Naturally the interest levels in Hazelford were at fever pitch, with the village revelling in its fifteen minutes of notoriety. But the idea that the creator of the much-loved Grimshaw crime series should be found dead on Christmas Day in such grisly and mysterious circumstances seemed to have gripped the whole of Britain. So far, somewhat miraculously in Iris’s view, no one in the media had got hold of the detail about the body being weighted down. As a result, most papers were still speculating about some sort of ‘tragic accident’, while being careful not to rule out the juicy possibility of something more sinister.

  Iris found the whole thing salacious and distasteful. Or did she? She could practically hear Dom’s voice in her head, laughing, ‘You’re still reading it, though, aren’t you? It’s no good playing the saint with me, Iris. We all love a bit of gossip.’ Which, of course, was true. It was also true that Dom himself would have delighted in the intrigue and attention surrounding his death. This sort of drama would have been right up his street.

  ‘Wait a minute!’ The man next to Iris pointed at her suddenly. ‘You’re that painter, aren’t you? Don’t you live down at the Mill?’

  ‘I rent the cottage, yes,’ said Iris wearily. ‘I don’t live there full-time.’

  ‘Was you there when it happened?’ the man asked eagerly, forgetting his cooling tea in his excitement at meeting someone with first-hand knowledge of the Wetherby tragedy.

  ‘No,’ Iris lied.

  ‘You weren’t staying there at Christmas?’ The man sounded disappointed.

  ‘Well, I … I was at the cottage,’ Iris found herself explaining.

  ‘So you was there! Is it true what they’re saying in the papers? About the boy with Down syndrome finding his dad’s body?’

  Iris looked at him witheringly. ‘Excuse me.’

  Leaving a twenty-pound note on the table, Iris grabbed her coat and handbag, and left, hurrying into one of the side lanes off the hill before anybody had a chance to come after her, then slumping back against a crumbling brick wall.

  Ian was right. There’d be no escape from prying eyes and intrusive questions in Hazelford. Surely now was as good a time as ever for Iris to go back to London. Escape the media circus at the Mill. Start the difficult marital conversations that she’d been putting off for months. See friends like Annie and Joe, and her gallery, and her agent, Greta, whose calls Iris had been failing to return for weeks. Go to a hairdresser whose repertoire went beyond blue rinses and shampoo-and-sets. After all, she couldn’t hide out here for ever. And with Dom Wetherby dead, she no longer had the excuse of her portrait commission to fall back on.

  Ian had been surprisingly kind in the last few days, since it happened. He’d rung to ask Iris how she was and how he could help, sentiments she hadn’t heard from him in a very long time. And while he’d suggested she come home, for once he hadn’t pushed or insisted or threatened. It was a welcome change, but it had taken Iris by surprise, plunging her back into confusion about her marriage where only a few days earlier there had been resolve.

  To add to the confusion, Graham Feeney had also called, twice.

  ‘Such an awful thing. And you were there when they found him?’

  ‘Yes.’ Iris found herself confiding in Graham, pouring out emotions she never even knew she had about that terrible night. Her fascination with what had happened to Dom Wetherby had rather taken her by surprise, consuming her mental energy and feeding her natural curiosity to a degree she wouldn’t have thought possible before. As if a long-dormant part of her had suddenly been awakened. In some ways, it was exhilarating. But beneath her intellectual curiosity lurked some real, painful feelings. ‘Lorcan’s screams. I’ll never forget them. Just the most harrowing sound.’

  Graham hadn’t said much, but he’d understood, instinctively. How she was finding it hard to sleep, or focus. How even painting had become difficult. He had lost his own brother to suicide years before, so he was no stranger to family tragedy and its impact.

  ‘Yes, but it’s not my family, though,’ Iris reminded him. ‘Not my grief. I mean, I liked Dom, of course, but I barely knew him. It’s not even as if we were close friends.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Graham, with a confidence that immediately made Iris feel better. ‘It’s the shock. You can’t go through something like that and expect not to be affected.’

  ‘I feel like an intruder,’ said Iris. ‘Like I shouldn’t be here. The problem is, I don’t know where else to be.’

  ‘You could always come and stay with me,’ Graham offered. ‘Come to London. Get away.’ It was said semi-playfully and Iris couldn’t tell if he was serious.

  ‘I’m not sure that would be the wisest idea right now,’ she answered cautiously. She couldn’t come to London and not stay at the flat with Ian. Or at least, if she did, she’d be making a statement about the marriage and her intentions that she wasn’t yet ready to make. And if she was staying with Ian, she could hardly meet up with Graham. Even a friendly lunch would look wrong, for someone who was supposedly still trying to save their marriage.

  But is that what I’m trying to do?

  Somehow, Dom Wetherby’s death had brought all the dilemmas of Iris’s ‘real’ life back to the fore and into sharper focus. Painfully sharp, at times.

  ‘Iris, isn’t it?’

  Iris looked up, startled. A car had pulled up beside her, slowing to a halt in the middle of the tiny lane where she was still standing, leaning against someone’s garden wall.

  ‘Sorry, did I spook you?’ A blonde woman a few years younger than Iris stuck her head out of the driver’s-side window. Iris recognised her, but she couldn’t remember where from. ‘It’s Jenna Wetherby,’ the blonde explained helpfully. ‘Marcus’s wife?’

  ‘Of course it is. Sorry.’ Iris shook her head, embarrassed. ‘I’m afraid I was in a world of my own.’

  Jenna hesitated for a moment. Then she asked tentatively, ‘Are you busy? Like, right now?’

  Iris shook her he
ad. ‘Not at all. I was trying to get away from the mayhem back at the Mill, but it’s easier said than done. Why?’

  ‘I just wondered … I’d like to talk to you,’ Jenna said. ‘I had to get out myself. I left the kids with Ariadne and made up an excuse about needing more logs!’ She laughed nervously. ‘Stupid, I know, but it was the first thing I could think of. I’m off to Betcheman’s Farm to put in an order. D’you wanna ride with me?’

  It was an odd invitation. Friendly but definitely odd. Iris barely knew Jenna. Didn’t know her, in fact. Then again, it wasn’t as if she had anything better to do.

  ‘Sure.’

  * * *

  Five minutes later the two women were bumping slowly along the single-track potholed lane that wound through Betcheman’s Woods. Hazelford was behind them, its rooftops out of sight, and rural Hampshire lay spread out in front of them, a green-and-brown patchwork of muddy fields after a wet autumn followed by a suddenly freezing winter.

  Jenna and Marcus’s Volvo was oven-warm and comfortable, despite being littered with the typical detritus of family life: packets of baby wipes and empty crisp wrappers were everywhere, and in the back, the car seats were strewn with half-built McDonald’s Happy Meal toys and Dora the Explorer sticker books.

  ‘You probably think this is weird, right? Me kidnapping you like this?’ Jenna’s American accent had been softened after so many years in London, but Iris noticed it came out more strongly when she asked questions. Her artist’s eye took in both Jenna’s beauty – natural, wholesome, radiant – and her exhaustion, as evidenced by the storm-cloud-grey shadows under her eyes and the deep, weary grooves running from her nose to the corners of her mouth.

  ‘You said you wanted to talk.’

  ‘Yeah. I just…’ Jenna exhaled deeply, unsure where to begin. ‘You knew my father-in-law.’

  It was a statement, not a question, so Iris didn’t respond.

  ‘What I mean is, as a portrait artist, I assume you try to get to know your subjects? You talk to them; they talk to you?’