Fox Evil

19

Prue's face, too, looked hunted when she answered the hammering on her front door. A peek through her curtains had shown her the gleam of a pale car in the drive, and she assumed immediately that the police had come for her. She would have pretended she wasn't at home if a voice hadn't shouted: "Come on, Mrs. Weldon. We know you're in there."

She attached the chain and opened the door a couple of inches, peering at the two shadowy figures standing on the doorstep. "Who are you? What do you want?" she asked in a terrified voice.

"It's James Lockyer-Fox and Mark Ankerton," said Mark, jamming his shoe into the gap. "Switch on your porch light and you'll be able to see us."

She pressed her finger to the button, and a little courage returned with recognition. "If this is about serving a writ, I'm not going to accept it. I'm not accepting anything from you," she said rather wildly.

Mark gave an angry snort. "You certainly will. You'll accept the truth. Now let us in, please. We want to talk to you."

"No." She put her shoulder to the door and tried to close it.

"I'm not taking my foot away until you agree, Mrs. Weldon. Where's your husband? This will go a lot faster if we can talk to him as well." He raised his voice. "Mr. Weldon! Will you come to the door, please! James Lockyer-Fox would like to speak with you!"

"He's not here," hissed Prue, leaning her considerable weight against the insubstantial leather of Mark's loafer. "I'm on my own and you're frightening me. I'm going to give you one chance to take your foot away, and if you don't I'll slam the door so hard it'll really hurt you."

She relaxed the pressure briefly and watched the shoe vanish. "Now, go away!" she shouted, shoving against the panels and turning the mortise lock. "I'll call the police if you don't."

"Good idea," said Mark's voice from the other side. "We'll be calling them ourselves if you refuse to speak to us. What do you think your husband will feel about that? He was pretty unhappy when I spoke to him this morning. As far as I could make out, he didn't know about your malicious calls… the whole idea shocked him rigid."

She was breathing heavily from fear and exertion. "The police will be on my side," she panted, bending forward to bring her heaving chest under control. "You're not allowed to terrorize people like this."

"Yes, well, it's a pity you didn't remember that when you started your campaign against James. Or perhaps you think the law doesn't apply to you?" His voice took on a conversational tone. "Tell me… would you have been so vindictive if Ailsa hadn't run away every time she saw you? Isn't that what this is about? You wanted to boast about your chum at the Manor… and Ailsa made it plain she couldn't stand your poisonous tongue." He gave a small laugh. "No, I'm putting the cart before the horse. You were always poisonous… you can't help yourself… you'd have made these calls eventually whether Ailsa lived or died-if only to get your own back for being called Staggerbush behind your back-"

He broke off when he heard Prue's squeal of shock, immediately followed by the rattle of the chain and the mortise turning. "I think I've given her a heart attack," said James, opening the door. "Look at the silly creature. She'll break that chair if she's not careful."

Mark stepped inside and looked critically at Prue who was gasping for air on a delicate wicker seat. "What did you do?" He kicked the door closed with his heel and handed his briefcase to James.

"Touched her on the shoulder. I've never seen anyone jump so high."

Mark stooped to put a hand under her elbow. "Come on, Mrs. Weldon," he said, heaving her to her feet and supporting her with his other arm around her back. "Let's get you onto something more solid. Where's your sitting room?"

"This looks like it," said James, entering a room on the left. "Do you want to put her on the sofa, and I'll see if I can find some brandy?"

"Water might be better." He lowered her onto the padded seat while James returned to the kitchen in search of a glass. "You shouldn't leave your back door unlocked," he told her unsympathetically, hiding his relief as color came into her cheeks. "In these parts it's an invitation to enter."

She tried to say something but her mouth was too dry. Instead she took a swipe at him. She was a long way from dying, he thought, as he stepped out of reach. "You're allowed to use reasonable force only, Mrs. Weldon. You've already broken my foot because you're so damn fat. If you hurt me anywhere else I might just decide to prosecute."

She glared at him before taking the glass James handed her and drinking the water greedily. "Dick'll be so angry about this," she said, as soon as her tongue was loosened. "He'll… he'll…" Her vocabulary deserted her.

"What?"

"Sue you!"

"Is that right?" said Mark. "Let's find out. Does he have a mobile? Can we call him?"

"I'm not telling you."

"His son's number will be in the book," said James, lowering himself into an armchair. "I believe his name's Jack. As far as I recall, the other arm of the business is based in Compton Newton, and the house is on site. He'll know Dick's mobile."

Prue snatched up the phone beside the sofa and smothered it with her arms. "You're not ringing from here."

"Well, I am… but at my expense," said Mark, taking his mobile from his pocket and dialing Directory Inquiries. "Yes, please. Cornpton Newton… surname Weldon…initial J… thank you." He cut the line and redialed.

Prue took another slash at him, trying to knock the phone from his hand.

Grinning, Mark moved farther away. "Yes… hello. Is that Mrs. Weldon? I'm sorry… Belinda. Totally understood… Mrs. Weldon is your mother-in-law-" he lifted an eyebrow at Prue-"and you don't want to be confused with her. I wouldn't either. Yes, my name's Mark Ankerton. I'm a solicitor, representing Colonel Lockyer-Fox. I need to contact your father-in-law as a matter of urgency. Would you know where he is… or if he has a mobile number?" He watched Prue with amusement. "He's with you. Excellent. May I speak to him? Yes, tell him it relates to what we discussed this morning. The Colonel and I are in his house… we came to speak to Mrs. Weldon… but she assures us that her husband will take action if we don't leave. I'd appreciate confirmation of that as it will affect our decision on whether to involve the police."

He tapped his foot on the carpet while he waited. A second or two later he held the phone away from his ear as Dick's voice roared down the line. He made one or two attempts to halt the angry tirade, but it was only when Dick ran out of steam that he was able to jump in. "Thank you, Mr. Weldon. I think I got the gist all right… no, I'd rather you told your wife yourself. Do you want to speak to her now? Right… goodbye." He touched end and dropped the mobile into his pocket. "Dear, dear, dear! You seem to have upset everyone, Mrs. Weldon. There's not much support there, I'm afraid!"

"It's none of your business."

"Apparently Mrs. Bartlett's husband is equally angry… neither of them knew what the pair of you were up to. If they had, they'd have stopped it."

Prue didn't say anything.

"James guessed as much, which is why he hasn't taken any action to date… he didn't want to embarrass Dick or Julian. He hoped if he didn't react you'd lose interest or your husbands would start questioning what you were doing. It's gone too far for that now, though. The threats in these calls are too dangerous to be ignored any longer."

"I've never made any threats," she protested. "I've never said anything. It's Eleanor you should be talking to. She's the one who started it."

"So it was Mrs. Bartlett's idea?"

Prue stared at her hands. After all, what loyalty did she owe her friend? She'd called Shenstead House twice in the last hour and each time Julian had told her that Ellie was "unavailable." The word alone implied that the woman was there and refusing to speak to her, but the amused tone of Julian's voice confirmed it. Prue had excused her on the grounds that she didn't want to speak in front of Julian, but she suspected now that Ellie was busy blaming her in order to keep in his good books.

Prue's resentment against everyone grew. She was the least at fault yet she was the most accused. "It certainly wasn't my idea," she muttered. "I'm not the type to make abusive calls… which is why I never said anything."

"Why make them at all then?"

"Eleanor called it natural justice," she said, refusing to look at either man. "No one seemed interested in how Ailsa died except us."

"I see," said Mark sarcastically. "So despite a police investigation, a postmortem, and a coroner's inquest, you decided no one was interested. That's a very bizarre conclusion, Mrs. Weldon. How did you reach it, exactly?"

"I heard James and Ailsa arguing. You can't just put a thing like that out of your mind."

Mark watched her for a moment. "That's it?" he asked in disbelief. "You appointed yourself judge, jury, and executioner on the basis of a single argument between two people you couldn't see or even hear properly? There was no other evidence?"

She wriggled her shoulders uncomfortably. How could she possibly repeat in front of James what Eleanor knew? "I know what I heard," she said, falling back on the only argument she'd ever really had. Stubborn certainty.

"I doubt that very much." Mark propped his briefcase on his knee and brought out the tape recorder. "I want you to listen to these messages, Mrs. Weldon." He located a socket beside the armchair in which James was sitting and plugged in the machine, handing it to James to operate. "At the end I'd like you to tell me what you think you've heard."

There was nothing in the allegations of child abuse to shock Prue-she knew them all-but the relentless repetition did shock her. She felt dirty just listening to the continuously stated details of child rape, as if she were a willing party to their telling. She argued to herself that the calls hadn't come en bloc like this, but the cumulative effect was disturbing. She wanted to say, stop, I've heard enough, but she knew what the reaction would be. James hadn't been given that choice.

Every so often Eleanor's high-pitched rants and Darth Vader's distorted monologues were punctuated by periods of silence in which the sound of stealthy breathing-her breathing-was audible on the tape. She could hear the pauses as she turned away from the mouthpiece, afraid that Dick had woken up and come downstairs to discover what she was doing. She could hear her trembling excitement as fear of exposure and a sense of power collided in her chest to produce sibilant little hisses on inhalation.

She tried to persuade herself that Eleanor's strident hectoring was worse but she didn't succeed. Speech-whatever it said-had the merit of honesty; breathing-heavy breathing, the coward's furtive choice-sounded lewd. Prue should have spoken. Why hadn't she?

Because she hadn't believed what Eleanor had told her…

She remembered whispers of gossip from Vera Dawson about how Ailsa had had to return early from a two-year posting in Africa when Elizabeth contracted glandular fever at school. Of course no one was fooled. The girl was known to be wild, and she truanted too often-particularly at night-for a swollen belly to be anything but an unwanted pregnancy. Rumor had it that James didn't learn about the baby until he returned at the end of the posting, several months after it had been adopted, and his fury that Ailsa had allowed Elizabeth to sweep another mistake under the carpet had been intense.

Eleanor said it proved nothing except that James was capable of anger. A foreign posting allowed for holidays just like any other job, and if Elizabeth said he was in England at the time the baby was conceived then that was good enough for her. Elizabeth was the most damaged woman she'd ever met, she told Prue forcefully, and that sort of personality disorder didn't happen by accident. Whoever forced the adoption had pushed an already vulnerable girl into a spiral of depression and, if anyone doubted it, they should speak to Elizabeth. As Eleanor had done.

The dreadful procession of messages clicked through with one of Prue's to every two of Eleanor's and five of Darth Vader's, and it dawned on Prue that she'd been conned. Everyone was doing it, Eleanor had told her. People were livid that James had got away with murder. The "girls" were making at least one call a day, preferably at night to wake him. It was the only way Ailsa would ever receive justice.

Prue raised her head as James pressed the stop button and silence fell in the room. It was a long time since she'd looked the Colonel in the face, and a flush of shame spread up her neck. He had aged so much, she thought. She remembered him as an upright, handsome man with weather-beaten cheeks and clear eyes. Now he was stooped and gaunt, and his clothes were too big for him.

"Well?" asked Mark.

She chewed at her lip. "There were only three people. Eleanor, myself, and the man. Are there any other tapes?"

"Several," he said, nodding to his open briefcase on the floor, "but they're all just you, Mrs. Bartlett, and our friend who's too frightened to use his real voice. You started to flag recently, but you were calling in regular as clockwork every night for the first four weeks. Do you want me to prove it? Choose any tape you like and we'll play it for you."

She shook her head but didn't say anything.

"You don't seem very interested in the content of the messages," said Mark after a moment. "Does a catalogue of child rape and incest not disturb you? I've listened to these tapes for hours and I'm appalled by them. I'm appalled that a child's pain should be so callously exploited in this way. I'm appalled that I've had to listen to the details. Was that the intention? To humiliate the listener?"

She ran a nervous tongue around her mouth. "I… er… Eleanor wanted James to know we knew."

"Knew what? And please don't refer to Colonel Lockyer-Fox by his Christian name again, Mrs. Weldon. If you ever had the right to use it, you forfeited that the first time you picked up the telephone in menace."

Her face burned with embarrassment. She waved a despairing hand toward the recorder. "Knew about… that. We didn't think he should be allowed to get away with it."

"Then why didn't you report him to the police? There are cases of child abuse in the courts at the moment that go back thirty years. The Colonel would face a lengthy prison sentence if these allegations were true. It would also support your contention that he beat Ailsa if you could demonstrate a history of brutality against his daughter." He paused. "Perhaps I'm being stupid, but I don't understand the logic behind these calls. They were done in such secrecy-even your husband didn't know you were doing it-so what exactly were they supposed to achieve? Is it blackmail? Were you expecting money in return for silence?"

Prue panicked. "It's not my fault," she blurted out. "Ask Eleanor. I told her it wasn't true… but she kept talking about a campaign for justice. She said all the girls from the golf club were phoning in… I thought there'd be dozens of calls… I wouldn't have done it otherwise."

"Why only women?" asked Mark. "Why weren't men involved?"

"Because they sided with Ja-, the Colonel." She glanced guiltily toward the old man. "I never felt comfortable," she pleaded. "You can tell that by the way I never say anything…" She petered into silence.

James stirred in the chair. "There were one or two calls at the beginning before I installed the answerphone," he told her. "They were much like yours-long silences-but I didn't recognize the numbers. I presume they were friends of yours who felt a single call discharged their duty. You should have asked them. People rarely do as they're told unless they take pleasure from it."

Shame turned to humiliation. It had been a delicious secret between the clique that she and Eleanor had formed around themselves. Nods and winks. Stories about near misses when Dick got up for a pee in the middle of the night and almost caught her crouched over the telephone in the dark. What a fool she must have seemed, trotting out her poodle-like obedience to Eleanor, while the rest of their friends were secretly keeping their hands clean. After all, who would ever know? If Eleanor's plan to "smoke James out" had worked, then they would take credit. If it didn't, Eleanor and Prue would have no idea how two-faced they'd been.

Memories of what Jack had said beat against her brain. "…the toe-curling embarrassment of your phone calls to that poor old man… the only person who believes you is that idiot Bartlett woman…" Was that how her friends perceived it, too? Were they as disgusted and disbelieving of her as her family was? She knew the answer, of course, and the last remnants of her self-esteem ran in tears down her fat cheeks. "It wasn't pleasure," she managed. "I never really wanted to do it… I was always frightened."

James lifted a concerned hand as if to absolve her, but Mark overrode him. "You loved every minute of it," he accused her harshly, "and if I have my way, the Colonel will take you to court-either with the help of the police or without. You've slandered his good name… slandered his wife's memory… weakened his health with malicious calls… aided and abetted the killing of his animals and the burglary of his house… placed his life and the life of his granddaughter in danger." He took an angry breath. "Who put you up to it, Mrs. Weldon?"

She hugged herself frantically, his doom-laden words whirling in her mind. Blackmail… slander… malice… killing… burglary… "I don't know anything about burglary," she whimpered.

"But you knew that Henry had been killed?"

"Not killed," she protested, "only dead. Eleanor told me."

"How did she say he died?"

She looked scared. "I can't remember. No… truly… I can't remember. I know she was pleased about it. She said the chickens were coming home to roost." She pressed her hands to her mouth. "Oh, that sounds so callous. I'm sorry. He was such a sweet dog. Was he really killed?"

"His leg and muzzle were smashed before he was dumped on the Colonel's terrace to die, and we think the same man mutilated a fox in front of Ailsa the night she died. We believe you heard him do it. What you described as a punch was the sound of a fox's head being crushed, which is why Ailsa accused him of insanity. That's the man you've been helping, Mrs. Weldon. So who is he?"

Her eyes widened. "I don't know," she whispered, playing the sound of the punch through her mind and remembering, with sudden clarity, the order in which events had happened. "Oh, God, I was wrong. He said 'bitch' afterward."

Mark exchanged an inquiring glance with James.

The old man gave a rare smile. "She was wearing Wellingtons," he said. "I expect she kicked him. She couldn't abide cruelty of any sort."

Mark smiled in return before shifting his attention back to Prue. "I need a name, Mrs. Weldon. Who told you to do this?"

"No one… just Eleanor."

"Your friend's been reading from a script. There's no way she could know so many details about the family. Who gave them to her?"

Prue flapped her hands against her mouth in a desperate attempt to find the answers he wanted. "Elizabeth," she wailed. "She went up to London to meet her."

Mark turned left out of the farm drive and headed up toward the Dorchester to Wareham Road. "Where are you going?" asked James.

"Bovington. You have to tell Nancy the truth, James." He rubbed his hand up the back of his head where his headache of the morning had come back in force. "Do you agree?"

"I suppose so," the Colonel said with a sigh, "but she's in no immediate danger, Mark. The only addresses on file are her parents in Hereford and her regimental HQ. There's no reference to Bovington."

"Shit!" Mark swore violently as'he slammed on the brakes, slewed the steering wheel to the left and bumped to a halt on the grass verge. He tugged his mobile from his pocket and punched in 192. "Smith… initial J… Lower Croft, Coomb Farm, Herefordshire." He switched on the overhead light. "Just pray God they've been out all day," he said as he dialed. "Is that Mrs. Smith? Hi, it's Mark Ankerton. Do you remember? Colonel Lockyer-Fox's solicitor…? Indeed, yes… I saw her, too… I'm spending Christmas with him. A real thrill. The best present he could have had… no, no, I have her mobile number. I'm phoning on her behalf as a matter of fact… there's a man who's been pestering her… yes, one of her sergeants… the point is, if he calls she'd rather you didn't tell him she was at Bovington… I see… a woman… no, that's fine… you, too, Mrs. Smith."