Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [44]
Cowley eyed Zed with no small degree of suspicion. His son held his scissors poised, but he’d stopped cutting his father’s hair. George said over his shoulder to him, “Get on with it, Dan,” and looked away from Zed. So much for friendly conversation, Zed thought.
“Lovely farm you’ve got,” Zed said. “Unusual to have it actually part of the village.”
“Not mine,” George remarked sourly.
“You run it, though, don’t you? Doesn’t that make it as good as yours?”
George cast him a look indicative of scorn. “Not hardly. And what’s it to you anyway?”
Zed glanced at the man’s son. Daniel’s face flushed. Zed said, “Nothing, actually. It merely looks an interesting place. The big house and all that. I’ve a curiosity about old buildings. It’s an old manor house, isn’t it? The bigger building?”
Cowley scowled. “Could be. Dan, are you cutting or not? I’m not ’bout to sit here all day in the cold. We’ve things to see to.”
Daniel said quietly to Zed, “Elizabethan, it is. We used to live there.”
“Dan!”
“Sorry.” He resumed his cutting. It looked like something he’d been doing for years, as he used both the comb and the scissors efficiently.
Cowley said to Zed, “So who bloody wants to know and why?”
“Eh?”
“The house. The farm. Why’re you asking about ’em? What’s your interest? You’ve some sort o’ business in the village?”
“Oh.” Zed thought of the approach that would glean him the most information with the least revelation on his part. “Just interested in the history of the places I visit. In the Willow and Well, the barman was saying that’s the oldest building in the village, that manor house.”
“Wrong, he is. Cottage’s older by a hundert years.”
“Is it really? I expect a place like that could be haunted or something.”
“That why you’re here? You looking for ghosts? Or”— sharply— “for something else?”
God, the man was suspicious, Zed thought. He wondered idly if the bloke had pieces of silver shoved up the chimney or something very like, with Zed there to case the joint, as the saying went. He said affably to Cowley, “Sorry. No. I’m only here visiting. I don’t mean to unnerve you.”
“Not unnerved. I c’n take care of m’self and Dan, I can.”
“Right. Of course. I expect you can.” Zed went for a jolly tone. “I don’t expect you get many people asking questions about the farm, eh? Or actually many people here at all, especially this time of year. Asking questions or doing anything else.” He winced inwardly. He was going to have to do something about developing a subtlety of approach.
Cowley said, “’F you like history, I c’n give you history,” but he crossed his arms beneath the sheet that was keeping the hair from his clothing, and his posture suggested nothing was forthcoming, in spite of his words.
Daniel said, “Dad,” in a tone that took a position between advising and warning.
“Didn’t say nothing, did I,” Cowley said.
“It’s only that— ”
“Just cut the bloody hair and have done.” Cowley looked away, this time to the manor house behind the wall. It was all of stone, neatly whitewashed right to the top of its chimneys, and its roof looked as if it had been recently replaced. “That,” he said, “was meant to be mine. Got bought out from under my nose, it did, with no one the wiser till the job was done. And look what happened: what needed to happen. That’s how it is. ’N am I surprised? Not bloody likely. You pay the wages in the end, you do.”
Zed looked at the man in utter confusion. He reckoned “what happened” was the death of Ian Cresswell, who, he knew, had lived in the manor house. But, “Wages?” he asked, while what he was thinking was, What the hell is the man going on about?
“Of sin,