The Devil's Feather - Minette Walters [140]
“I think he died the night he came to your house, Connie.”
“How?”
“Probably the way you suggested to Nick Bagley…he lost his bearings in the dark and fell.”
“Off the cliff?”
“Unlikely.”
I watched him for a moment. “Why not?”
Alan shrugged. “His body would have been found. Nick tells me there’s a rocky shoreline along that part of the Dorset coast.”
“Perhaps he went in farther down. Some of the cliffs to the east are sheer.”
“Perhaps,” he agreed.
“You don’t sound very convinced.”
He smiled slightly. “Did I ever tell you I took the family on holiday to Dorset once? We rented a cottage near Wool, about ten miles from where you are. The children loved it. There was a well in the garden with a thatched roof and a bucket painted red. They were convinced there were fairies living at the bottom of it, and they used to climb on the stone surround to look down. My wife was terrified they were going to fall in.”
I folded my hands in my lap. “I’m not surprised.”
“It was quite safe. It was capped below the parapet to prevent accidents. I asked the old boy next door what he’d done with his well, and he told me he’d filled it in and put a patio over the top. He said he’d had to wait until the late sixties for mains water, and he didn’t want any reminders of the back-breaking days. According to him, every old house in rural Dorset has a redundant well somewhere. The big houses usually have two…one outside and one inside.”
I squeezed my hands between my knees. “Well, if there are any at Barton House they were covered over long ago. You could look forever and never find one.”
Alan watched me while he shuffled his papers together and tapped them on the desk to square them up. “Nick tells me the woman who owns Barton House asked for an interview but never turned up. Do you know why not?”
“Lily Wright?” I said in surprise. “She can’t have done. She has advanced Alzheimer’s. Her solicitor put her in a nursing home eight months ago.”
“I believe he said the name was Madeleine Wright.”
“Oh, her!” I said scathingly, wondering how many conversations he’d had with Bagley, and how much he’d said to him about wells. “You mean Madeleine Harrison-Wright, the double-barrelled daughter.”
He looked amused. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Not my type,” I told him. “Not yours either, I wouldn’t think, unless you like spoilt forty-somethings who expect to be kept all their lives. She doesn’t work—far too grand—but she’s not above selling a story. She tried to pump Peter Coleman for the gory details on MacKenzie, and when he refused she said she’d ask Bagley.”
“So why didn’t she?”
“I don’t know for certain. I was told Lily’s solicitor became involved, and he read her the riot act on behalf of Jess and me.” I pulled a wry face. “Madeleine lives in London and never lifted a finger to help her mother…which makes her very unpopular in Winterbourne Barton. They’re all over sixty-five and imagine their children love them.”
Alan gave a snort of laughter. “Meaning what? That you and Jess won the grey vote, and the wrinklies ran her out of town so that she couldn’t make money out of you?”
I smiled in return. “Something like that. They’ve been very protective of us.”
“And the fact that Madeleine’s the only person who knows the ins and outs of Barton House has nothing to do with it?”
“Hardly. If Bagley wants to talk to her, he can always ask Lily’s solicitor for her phone number.”
“He’s done that already.”
“And?”
“Nothing. She said she didn’t keep the appointment because her car broke down, and the only thing she wanted to ask was whether she could go ahead with having the flagstones cleaned.”
I shrugged. “That’s probably right. She told me it all had to be done before I left so that the next tenant wouldn’t complain about Bertie’s blood all over the place.”
Alan tucked the papers back into MacKenzie’s file. “Will anyone ever ask me for this, Connie?”
“I don’t know,” I said lightly. “Maybe a body will wash up on the Dorset coast one day, and put us all out of our misery.