The Devil's Feather - Minette Walters [105]
“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