The Devil's Feather - Minette Walters [139]
The only whisper I knew to be true (apart from the nursing-home injunction) was the restraining order which Thomas Balldock had applied for on behalf of Jess and myself. I don’t know what evidence he presented, but we were told to notify the police if Madeleine or Nathaniel tried to contact us or enter our properties. However, it wasn’t until Peter bumped into an acquaintance of Nathaniel’s in London that the separation was confirmed. According to the acquaintance, it was Nathaniel and Hugo who’d moved out of the flat, and Madeleine who remained in possession. Father and son were living in Wales with Nathaniel’s parents, and Madeleine was struggling to pay the bills.
The residents of Winterbourne Barton were surprisingly honest in their reactions. Most claimed to be shocked by the rumours, but a few said they’d always found Madeleine’s charm superficial. I was the recipient of several indirect apologies to Jess for some of the things that had been said and thought about her, but no one was brave enough to make them in person. If they tried, they were met with a ferocious scowl.
I stayed out of it, but I know my mother urged her to be generous since people were “only trying to be nice.” Jess replied that it was she who was being nice, by letting them “gawp” at her, because the only thing that had changed was their perception of Madeleine. Jess was the same as she’d always been and Winterbourne Barton remained a retirement village for rich, ignorant pensioners who knew nothing about the countryside. Under my mother’s emollient balm, she was persuaded to produce the odd smile in place of a scowl, but small talk remained beyond her.
I suggested to Mum that as soon as she and Dad went back to London Jess’s brief renaissance would be over. “I don’t want to schmooze the locals any more than she does,” I pointed out, “and my tenancy ends in December.”
“Jess has a kind heart,” she said. “If she hears of someone in trouble, she’ll help them. She helped you, didn’t she?”
“But I didn’t impose on the friendship.”
My mother laughed. “And neither will anyone else. People aren’t stupid, Connie. As long as she keeps making social calls, everything will work out fine. It’s hard to dislike someone with as much warmth as Jess has.”
Warmth…? Were we talking about the same person? Jess Derbyshire? Dysfunction on legs? “Jess doesn’t make social calls.”
“Of course she does, darling. How many times has she dropped in on you since you arrived here?”
“That’s different.”
“I don’t think so. When Peter tells her one of his patients needs some eggs, she’ll be round like a shot. It’s her nature to look after others. She’ll make an excellent doctor’s wife.”
It was my turn to laugh. “Do you think that’s likely? I don’t think she’s the marrying type.”
“Perhaps not, but she could do with a baby or two,” said my mother matter-of-factly. “Otherwise her farm will go to strangers when she dies.”
I eyed her with amusement. “Have you told her that? How did she respond?”
“Rather more positively than you’ve ever done.”
I didn’t believe her for a moment. Jess’s most likely retort was that giving birth to me hadn’t stopped strangers taking my parents’ farm in Zimbabwe—it was the answer she’d given when I’d strayed on to the subject of inheritance—but I decided not to argue the point. My mother was too well practised at turning other people’s babies into a lecture on my lack of commitment in the same department. In any case, I rather liked the idea of Jess producing little Derbyshire-Colemans. I thought they’d grow up to be as affectionate, competent and well balanced as her mastiffs.
I SPENT a couple of days in Manchester at the end of September, giving Alan Collins a full statement of the events in Baghdad. By then he’d built up quite a file against MacKenzie, which was available to other national and international police forces in the