The Devil's Feather - Minette Walters [40]
We…? “Do you have help?”
She put the lid back on the can of grease and picked up a rag to wipe her hands. “Some. There’s Harry who’s worked here for years and a couple of lady part-timers—one comes mornings, the other afternoons.”
“From Winterbourne Barton?”
“Weymouth.”
“What do they do?”
“Whatever’s on the rota.”
“Ploughing?”
She nodded. “Anything to do with the crops. Harry and I look after the herds, the fencing and the woodland…but we all lend a hand where necessary.” She eyed me curiously as she folded the rag and put it on the grease can. “Don’t they have women farmworkers in Zimbabwe?”
“Thousands.”
“Then why do you look so surprised?”
I smiled. “Because everyone in Winterbourne Barton describes you as a loner, and now I discover you have three people working for you.”
“So?”
“It’s a wrong description of you. I got the impression you lived and worked on your own.”
Her mouth twisted cynically. “That’s Winterbourne Barton for you. They’re completely ignorant about how much work is involved in running a farm, but then most of them have never lived in the country before.” She glanced towards the house. “I’m making some sandwiches for lunch. Do you want to come in while I do it?”
“Will the dogs be there?”
Her dark eyes narrowed slightly, but more in speculation than contempt. “Not if you don’t want them to be.”
I stood up. “Then I’d love to come in. Thank you.”
“You’ll have to move your car in case Harry or Julie comes back. If you park up there”—she pointed towards the left-hand end of the hedge—“you’ll see the path to the back door. I’ll meet you there after I’ve seen to the dogs.”
THE FARMHOUSE WAS a thin, straggling building, constructed in the same Purbeck stone as Barton House and Winterbourne Barton. The core, the rooms around the front door, was seventeenth-century, but the extensions on both sides dated from the nineteenth and twentieth. In floor space it was almost as big as Barton House, but its piecemeal fabrication meant it lacked the clean lines and elegance of Lily’s property.
We entered through the kitchen, which was larger, brighter and better appointed than Lily’s. A plate-glass window gave a view of the garden, which was entirely laid to lawn, without a shrub or flower in sight. Six-foot-high wire fencing ran inside the beech hedge, preventing the mastiffs from escaping, and a large wooden kennel stood in one corner. At the moment, there was no sign of any of them.
“They’re round the front,” said Jess, as if reading my mind. “I’ll let them back into this side when you go. My mother used to have flower borders all the way round but the first puppy I had rooted the plants out. It’s easier like this.”
“Are they always out?”
“If I’m working. When I’m here I have them in the house. If you think of them as overgrown hearthrugs, you might not find them so frightening. Mastiffs are a sociable breed…they love being around people. The only thing they ever do is put themselves between their owners and a stranger, but they won’t attack unless the stranger attacks first.”
I changed the subject rather too abruptly. “This is a nice room, Jess. Much nicer than Lily’s kitchen.”
She watched me for a moment before turning away to open the fridge door. “Do you want to look at the rest of the house while I make the sandwiches? I’m sure you’re curious…everyone else is.”
“Do you mind?”
An indifferent shrug was her only answer.
It was hardly the most fulsome invitation I’d ever had but I wasn’t going to argue about it. The rooms we inhabit say as much about us as how we behave, and Jess was right, I was deeply curious about her surroundings. I’d been told variously that the house was frozen in time, that it was a shrine to her family, full of morbid souvenirs and with an emphasis on death in the shape of stuffed animals. I came across these immediately,