The Devil's Feather - Minette Walters [135]
“Did Ms. Derbyshire agree with you?”
“Yes. She said it might have been different if he’d been blindfolded but it wasn’t possible after she’d seen into his eyes.” I pulled a wry smile. “I don’t think it’s easy killing people. I don’t think it’s easy killing animals. I couldn’t kill a rat if it looked at me the way MacKenzie did. I can’t even kill woodlice. There’s a nest in some of the rotten wood in Lily’s drawing-room and the only way I can deal with them is to hoover them up and chuck them outside…”
H. L. MENCKEN ONCE SAID: “It’s hard to believe a man is telling the truth when you know you would lie if you were in his place.” If I’d realized earlier that Bagley shied away from killing animals, I’d have introduced rats and woodlice at the beginning. His views on psychopaths and sadists were extreme—they should all be hanged—but he empathized strongly with my inability to crush the life out of vermin. I’m not sure I ever fully understood the logic of his argument, but apparently my clear reluctance to kill anything was more convincing than repeated denials that I’d killed MacKenzie.
In a shameless PR exercise to encourage complete exoneration, I persuaded Jess to release her dogs in front of him. As she predicted, they headed straight up the field for Bertie’s grave and began a mournful howling around it. Bagley asked how they knew he was there and Jess said they’d attended the first funeral. Like elephants, they never forgot. Whether he believed that, I don’t know, but he declined her invitation to dig poor Bertie out a second time. The remaining dogs showed no inclination to go anywhere else in the valley, and had to be dragged away from the grave on leashes.
After that, Bagley left us in peace. Alan was amused by the motives I ascribed to this sudden end to suspicion, saying it had more to do with an absence of evidence than Bagley being unable to kill woodlice, but I still feel I showed my best side as a woman when I mentioned the hoover.
THE SECOND WEEK of September saw the arrival of my parents and the beginnings of an Indian summer after the rains of July and August. Jess took to them immediately, and in no time at all my father was up at the farm, lending a hand. My mother worried that he was over-exerting himself after his injuries, but Jess assured us he was only driving a tractor and helping Harry feed the livestock.
The subject of MacKenzie was taboo. None of us wanted to talk about him or what had happened. For all of us, it was done and dusted, and there was nothing to be gained by conducting a ghoulish post-mortem on who had suffered the most. Nevertheless, within a few of days of her arrival, my mother read some signals that were invisible to me and sought out Peter for a long chat.
I’d hardly had any contact with him since the incident, but I assumed he was still making regular visits to Jess. She’d mentioned his attendance at Bertie’s exhumation, and defended him for some of the information he’d given Bagley, but, bar a phone call one evening to ask if I was all right, he hadn’t been near me. I remember cutting the conversation short when he insisted on beating himself up for sins of omission and commission, but as Bagley arrived shortly afterwards Peter dropped out of focus again.
My mother gave me a hard time over it. I, more than anyone, should have understood how crippling it was to feel a failure. It was worse for men. They were expected to be courageous, and it destroyed their confidence to realize they weren’t. Tongue in cheek, I asked her if it would have been better for Peter if Jess and I had failed the bravery test as well, and she echoed Bagley’s statement about finding me deeply annoying.
“I don’t like to see you gloating, Connie.”
“I’m not gloating.”
“I don’t like to see your father gloating either.”
“He’s having fun,” I protested mildly.