The Devil's Feather - Minette Walters [121]
21
I HAD TO admire Madeleine’s flair for duplicity. She appeared with a concerned smile at eleven o’clock the next morning and said she’d just come from Peter, who’d been telling her about the awful events of the previous weekend. She looked cool and pretty in a white cotton shirtwaist, and I thought how well she confirmed my mother’s advice that no one should judge a book by its cover.
“I had no idea you and Barton House were involved until I spoke to Peter,” she said with convincing sincerity. “The papers talked about Dorset, but didn’t specify where. You must have been terrified, Connie. This man sounds appallingly violent.”
She used my name with casual ease, even though it was only a few days since she’d left a message calling me Marianne. “Come in,” I invited, pulling the door open. “How nice to see you.” She had no monopoly on duplicity.
Her eyes darted about, looking for anything unusual, and she found it immediately. Despite the efforts of a professional cleaner, brought in by the police, and further attempts by me and Jess the previous evening, the bloodstains on the unsealed flagstones and porous fifties wallpaper refused to come out. They were more the colour of mud than freshly spilt haemoglobin, but it didn’t take much imagination to work out what they were.
Madeleine clapped her hands to her mouth and gave a little cry. “Oh, my goodness!” she squeaked. “Whatever’s happened here?”
It was a girly response—the sort of thing clichéd actresses do—but it was genuine enough to persuade me that Peter hadn’t told her much. If anything at all. Jess had been certain the previous evening that, when it came to taking sides, he’d pick me and her over Madeleine, but I wasn’t so easily convinced. In my experience he had verbal diarrhoea where Madeleine was concerned.
I led her towards the green baize door. “Didn’t Peter tell you?” I asked in surprise. “How very strange of him.”
“Is it blood?” she demanded, her heels pecking across the flagstones behind me. “Did someone die?”
I shook my head, pushing open the door and ushering her through. “Nothing so dramatic. Jess’s dogs had a fight and one of them was wounded. It looks worse than it is.” I shepherded her down the corridor. “Would you like a coffee?” I asked, pulling out a chair for her. “Or are you caffeined out on Peter’s espressos?”
She ignored me to wave her hand rather wildly towards the hall. “It can’t stay like that,” she protested. “What will prospective tenants think?”
I retreated to the worktop. “I’m told the flagstones will come up good as new if the top layer is sanded off,” I said, ostentatiously lighting a cigarette. “I’ll have it done before I leave.”
“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