The Devil's Feather - Minette Walters [129]
“No. We’ll give you one hour to make up your mind—we’ll even let you consult with Nathaniel via loudspeaker phone—but if you don’t call your mother’s solicitor at the end of it…and if he doesn’t confirm to Jess that the house will be up for sale at the end of my tenancy”—I put my hand on the envelopes—“these will be on everyone’s doorsteps in the morning. Including Bagley’s.”
“What if I refuse? Are you planning to keep me prisoner forever? What do you think Nathaniel’s going to do when I tell him you’ve tied me up?”
“Give you some good advice, I hope. We’ll let you go at the end of the hour whatever you decide. You can have your interview with Bagley and say whatever you like about us. You can do the same in the village. You’ll have twelve hours to convince everyone that we forced you to implicate yourself before we mail-drop our version.”
“You’re mad,” she said in disbelief. “The police won’t let you.”
“Then take the gamble,” I urged. “You’ve nothing to lose.”
None of us spoke again until Jess had connected the speaker phone from the office to the socket in the kitchen. She set the dial tone buzzing through the amplifier. “Is he at the flat?” she asked Madeleine. “OK.” She punched in a series of numbers from a piece of notepaper. “Your hour starts as soon as he picks up.”
Madeleine wasted the first five minutes by gabbling at high speed and high volume about being taken prisoner by me and Jess, forced to say and do things for blackmail and being threatened with the sale of the house. It made sense to her and us, but none at all to Nathaniel. He could hardly get a word in edgewise, and when he did her strident voice overrode him, ordering him to listen.
I was interested by Jess’s reaction. She sat impassively, staring at the monitor, apparently uninterested in the exchange until Madeleine called Nathaniel a moron. With a hiss of frustration, she picked up the receiver and spoke into it. “This is Jess. The situation is this…” She explained it succinctly in a few sentences, then put him back on loudspeaker. “Now you can talk to Madeleine again. You’ve got fifty minutes.”
There was a short hesitation. “Are you listening, Jess? Is the other woman listening?”
“Yes.”
“Are you recording this conversation?”
“We’re filming it.”
“Christ!”
“Stop being—” Madeleine began.
“Shut up!” he ordered her. “If you keep digging you’re going to be in real trouble.” Another pause. “OK, Jess, have I understood you right? You’ve got some film of Madeleine abusing your friend and some kind of admission that she also abused her mother. In return for keeping that under wraps, you want her to approve the sale of Barton House. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“And if she refuses you’ll release her to say whatever she likes, then you’ll send out copies of the DVD to anyone who’s interested.”
“Yes.”
Madeleine tried again. “They won’t be able—”
“Shut up!” A longer silence. “Can I talk to the other woman? Is it Connie? What do you really want?”
“Exactly what Jess has told you. Madeleine can approve the sale or she can explain the DVD. It’s up to her. Either way she won’t be able to stay in Winterbourne Barton. She’s given too many details of how you and she terrorized Lily.”
“That’s a lie,” Madeleine called out. “I said hardly any—”
“Jesus!” Nathaniel shouted down the line, showing real anger suddenly. “Will you keep your mouth shut? I’m damned if I’ll let you drag me into this. There’s only one devil in this family…and we all know who that is.”
“Don’t you dare—”
“You say one more thing, Madeleine, and I’ll hang up. Do you understand?” He let a beat pass. “OK,” he went on more calmly, “I want to hear what you’ve got, Jess.”
“You don’t have time for it all,” she told him, “so I’ve keyed in the seven minutes that matter. You’ll hear Connie’s voice at the beginning saying: ‘You know, what really surprises me,’ then—”
Nathaniel cut across her. “How come you’ve already keyed it in?”
“I knew you’d ask for it.”
“How do I know it hasn’t been edited?”
“No time, but in any case I ran a clock