Fox Evil

5

SHENSTEAD-25 DECEMBER 2001

Vehicles moved onto the tract of unregistered woodland to the west of Shenstead Village at eight o'clock on Christmas evening. None of the inhabitants heard their stealthy approach, or if they did there was no linkage of ideas between engine sound and New Age invasion. It was four months since the events at Barton Edge, and memories had dimmed. For all the hot air expended over the pages of the local rag, the "rave" had inspired a Nimby Schadenfreude in Shenstead, rather than fear that the same thing might happen there. Dorset was too small a county for lightning to strike twice.

A bright moon allowed the slow-moving convoy to negotiate the narrow lane across the valley without headlights. As the six buses neared the entrance to the Copse, they drew onto the side of the road and killed their engines, waiting for one of their party to explore the access track for pitfalls. The ground was frozen to a depth of two feet from the bitter east wind that had been blowing for days, with another hard frost promised for the morning. There was absolute silence as a torch beam flickered from side to side, showing the width of the track and the crescent-shaped clearing at the entrance to the wood that was large enough to accommodate vehicles.

On another, warmer, night the ramshackle convoy would have become bogged down in the soft, damp clay of the track before it reached the relative safety of the root-toughened woodland floor. But not on this night. With careful marshaling, as precisely dictated as aircraft movements on a carrier, the six vehicles followed the gesturing torch beam and parked in a rough semicircle under the skeletal branches of the outer trees. The torchbearer had a few minutes' conversation with each driver before windows were obscured with cardboard and the occupants retired for the night.

Although unaware of it, Shenstead Village had had its resident population more than doubled in under an hour. Its disadvantage was its situation in a remote valley that cut through the Dorset Ridgeway to the sea. Of its fifteen houses, eleven were holiday homes, owned by either rental businesses or distant city dwellers, while the four that remained in full-time occupation contained just ten people, three of whom were children. Estate agents continued to describe it as an "unspoiled gem" whenever the holiday homes came up for sale at exorbitant prices, but the truth was very different. Once a thriving community of fisherfolk and workers of the land, it was now the casual resting place of strangers who had no interest in fighting a turf war.

And what could the full-time residents have done if they had realized their way of life was about to be threatened? Called the police and admit the land had no owner?

Dick Weldon, half a mile to the west of the village, had made a halfhearted attempt to enclose the acre strip of woodland three years earlier when he bought Shenstead Farm, but his fence had never remained intact for more than a week. At the time he had blamed the Lockyer-Foxes and their tenants for the broken rails as theirs was the only other property with a competing claim, but it soon became apparent that no one in Shenstead was ready to let a Johnny-come-lately increase the value of his property for the cost of some cheap wooden posts.

It was well known that it took twelve years of uninterrupted usage to claim a piece of wasteland in law, and even the weekenders had no intention of surrendering their dog-walking territory so tamely. With planning permission for a house the site would be worth a small fortune, and there was little doubt in anyone's mind, despite Dick's protest to the contrary, that that was his goal. What other use was woodland to an arable farmer unless he felled the trees and plowed the land? Either way, the Copse would fall to the ax.

Weldon had argued that it must have belonged to Shenstead Farm at some point because it cut a U-shaped loop into his curtilage with only a meager hundred yards bordering the Lockyer-Foxes at the Manor. Privately most people agreed with him, but without the documents to prove it-almost certainly a careless oversight by a solicitor in the past-and with no guarantee of success, there seemed little point in arguing the case in court. The legal costs could amount to more than the land was worth, even with planning permission, and Weldon was too much of a realist to risk it. As ever in Shenstead, the issue died through apathy, and the "common land" status of the wood was restored. At least in the minds of the villagers.

The pity was that no one had troubled to record it as such under the 1965 Commons Registration Act, which would have given it status in law. Instead, unclaimed and unowned, it remained tantalizingly available to the first squatter who took up residence on it and was prepared to defend his right to stay.

Contrary to the instructions he had given his convoy to stay put, Fox stole down the lane and prowled from house to house. Apart from the Manor, the only property of any size was Shenstead House, home to Julian and Eleanor Bartlett. It was set back from the road down a short gravel driveway, and Fox picked his way along the grass verge to deaden his footsteps. He stood for several minutes beside the drawing-room window, watching through a gap in the curtains as Eleanor made serious inroads into her husband's cellar.

She was a good sixty, but HRT, Botox injections, and regular home aerobics were doing their bit to keep her skin firm. From a distance, she looked younger, but not tonight. She lay on the sofa, eyes glued to the television screen in the corner where EastEnders was playing, her ferrety face puffed and blotchy from the bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon on the floor. Unaware of a Peeping Tom, she kept delving her hand into her bra to scratch her breasts, making her blouse gape and showing the telltale sags and wrinkles around her neck and cleavage.

It was the human side of a nouveau-riche snob and it would have amused Fox if he had any liking for her. Instead, it increased his contempt. He moved around the side of the house to see if he could locate her husband. As usual, Julian was in his study, his face, too, flushed with alcohol from the bottle of Glenfiddich on the desk in front of him. He was talking on the telephone and his hearty laugh rattled against the pane. Snippets of the conversation drifted through the glass. "…don't be so paranoid… she's watching telly in the sitting room… of course not… she's far too self-centered… yes, yes, I should be there by nine thirty at the latest… Geoff tells me the hounds are out of practice and saboteurs are expected in droves…"

Like his wife he didn't look his age, but he kept a secret stash of Grecian 2000 in his dressing room that Eleanor didn't know about. Fox had found it on a stealthy tour of the house one afternoon in September when Julian had gone out and left the back door unlocked. The hair dye wasn't the only thing that Eleanor didn't know about, and Fox toyed with the razor in his pocket as he thought of his satisfaction when she found out. The husband couldn't control his appetites, but the wife had a vicious streak that made her fair game to a hunter like Fox.

He abandoned Shenstead House to stalk the weekender cottages, looking for life. Most were boarded up for the winter, but in one he found a foursome. The overweight twin sons of the London banker who owned it were with a couple of giggly girls who clung to the men's necks and shrieked hysterically every time they spoke. The fastidious side of Fox's nature found the spectacle distasteful: Tweedledum and Tweedledee, with the sweat of overindulgence staining their shirts and glistening on their brows, looking to score over Christmas with a couple of willing scrubbers.

The twins' only attraction for women was their father's wealth-which they vaunted-and the fervor with which the drunken girls were throwing themselves into the party spirit suggested a determination to be part of it. If they had any intention of emerging before their libidos wore out, Fox thought, they wouldn't be interested in the encampment at the Copse.

Two of the commercial rents had staid-looking families in them, but otherwise there were only the Woodgates at Paddock View-the husband and wife team who looked after the commercial properties, and their three young children-and Bob and Vera Dawson at Manor Lodge. Fox couldn't predict how Stephen Woodgate would react to travelers on his doorstep. The man was deeply lazy, so Fox's best guess was that he would leave it to James Lockyer-Fox and Dick Weldon to sort out. If nothing happened by the beginning of January, Woodgate might make a phone call to his employers, but there'd be no urgency until the letting season got under way in spring.

By contrast, Fox could predict exactly how the Dawsons would react. They would bury their heads in the sand as they always did. It wasn't their place to ask questions. They lived in their cottage courtesy of James Lockyer-Fox and, as long as the Colonel honored his wife's promise to keep them there, they would pay lip service to supporting him. In a bizarre echo of the Bartletts, Vera was glued to EastEnders and Bob was closeted in the kitchen, listening to the radio. If they spoke at all that night, it would be to have a row, because whatever love they had once shared was long since dead.

He lingered for a moment to watch the old woman mutter to herself. In her way she was as vicious as Eleanor Bartlett but hers was the viciousness of a wasted life and a diseased brain, and her target was invariably her husband. Fox had as much contempt for her as he had for Eleanor. In the end, they had both chosen the lives they led.

He returned to the Copse and picked his way through the wood to his vantage point beside the Manor. It was all good, he thought, catching sight of Mark Ankerton sitting hunched over the old man's desk in the library. Even the solicitor was on hand. It wouldn't suit everyone, but it suited Fox. He held them all to blame for the man he had become.

The first person to see the encampment was Julian Bartlett, who drove past at eight o'clock on Boxing Day morning on his way to the West Dorset meet at Compton Newton. He slowed as he spotted a rope across the frontage with a painted notice saying "keep out" hanging from its center, and his gaze was drawn to the vehicles among the trees.

Dressed for the hunt, in yellow shirt, white tie, and buff breeches, and towing a horsebox behind his Range Rover, he had no intention of becoming involved and speeded up again. Once out of the valley, he drew onto the side of the road and phoned Dick Weldon, whose farm the land abutted.

"We have visitors in the Copse," he said.

"What sort of visitors?"

"I didn't stop to find out. They're almost certainly fox lovers, and I didn't fancy taking them on with Bouncer in the back."

"Saboteurs?"

"Maybe. Most likely travelers. Most of the vehicles look like they've come from a scrap-metal yard."

"Did you see any people?"

"No. I doubt they're awake yet. They've slung a notice across the entrance saying 'keep out', so it might be dangerous to tackle them on your own."

"Damn! I knew we'd have a problem with that piece of land eventually. We'll probably have to pay a solicitor to get rid of them… and that's not going to be cheap."

"I'd call the police if I were you. They deal with this kind of thing every day."

"Mm."

"I'll leave it with you then."

"Bastard!" said Dick with feeling.

There was a faint laugh. "It'll be chicken feed compared with the melee I'm heading for. Word is the sabs have been seeding false trails all night, so God only knows what sort of a shambles it's going to be. I'll call when I get home." Bartlett switched off his mobile.

Irritably, Weldon pulled on his Barbour and summoned his dogs, calling up the stairs to his wife that he was going to the Copse. Bartlett was probably right that it was a job for the police, but he wanted to satisfy himself before he phoned them. His gut feeling said they were saboteurs. The Boxing Day meet had been well publicized and, after the ten months' layoff because of foot-and-mouth, both sides were spoiling for a fight. If so, they'd be gone again by the evening.

He bundled the dogs into the back of his mud-spattered Jeep and drove the half-mile from the farmhouse to the Copse. The road had a hoar of frost on it and he picked up Bartlett's tire tracks coming from Shenstead House. There was no sign of life anywhere else and he guessed that, like his wife, people were making the most of their bank-holiday lie-in.

It was a different story at the Copse. As he drew into the entrance, a line of people spread out behind the rope barrier to block his way. They made an intimidating array with balaclavas and scarves hiding their faces and thick coats bulking out their bodies. A couple of barking Alsatians on leads lunged forward as the vehicle stopped, teeth bared aggressively, and Dick's two Labradors set up an answering clamor. He cursed Bartlett for driving on by. If the man had had the sense to demolish the barrier and call for reinforcements before these buggers could organize, instructions to keep out would have had no validity. As it was, Dick had a nasty suspicion they might be within their rights.

He opened his door and climbed out. "Okay, what's this all about?" he demanded. "Who are you? What are you doing here?"

"We might ask you the same thing," said a voice from the middle of the line.

Because of the scarves across their mouths, Dick couldn't make out who had spoken, so he homed in on the one at the center. "If you're hunt saboteurs, I don't have much of an argument with you. My views on the subject are well known. The fox is not a pest to arable farmers so I don't allow the hunt across my land because of the damage it does to my crops and hedgerows. If that's why you're here, then you're wasting your time. The West Dorset Hunt will not come into this valley."

This time it was a woman's voice that answered. "Good on yer, mate. They're all fucking sadists. Riding around in red coats so the blood won't show when the poor little fing gets ripped to pieces."

Dick relaxed slightly. "Then you're in the wrong place. The meet's in Compton Newton. It's about ten miles to the west of here, on the other side of Dorchester. If you take the bypass and head toward Yeovil, you'll see Compton Newton signed to the left. The hunt is assembling outside the pub, and the hounds will be called for an eleven o'clock start."

The same androgynous woman answered again, presumably because she was the figure he was looking at: big and burly in an army-surplus overcoat and with an accent straight from the Essex marshes. "Sorry, mate, but I'm the only one that agrees with you. The rest couldn't give a shit one way or the other. You can't eat foxes, see, so they ain't much good to us. It's different with deer 'coz they're edible, and none of us can see the point of letting dogs 'ave their meat… not when there's humans like us needs it."

Still hoping for saboteurs, Dick allowed himself to be drawn into discussion. "There's no deer hunting with dogs in Dorset. Devon possibly… but not here."

"Sure there is. You think any hunt will pass up the chance of a buck if the hounds get wind of it? It ain't no one's fault if a little Bambi gets killed 'coz the dogs go after the wrong scent. That's life. There ain't nothing you can do about it. Numbers of times we've set traps for somefink to eat, and we end up with a poor little moggy's foot in the workings. You can bet your bottom dollar there's an old lady somewhere, weeping her heart out 'coz Tom never came home… but dead is dead, never mind it ain't what you planned."

Dick shook his head, recognizing that argument was futile. "If you're not prepared to tell me why you're here, then I'll have to call the police. You've no right to trespass on private property."

The remark was greeted with silence.

"All right," said Dick, taking a mobile phone from his pocket, "though be warned, I will prosecute if you've caused any damage. I work hard for the environment and I'm sick to death of types like you ruining it for the rest of us."

"Are you saying it's your property, Mr. Weldon?" said the same well-spoken voice that had answered him at the beginning.

For the briefest of moments he had a sense of recognition-it was a voice he knew, but without a face he couldn't put it in context. He searched the line for the speaker. "How do you know my name?"

"We checked the electoral register." This time there was a rougher edge to the vowels, as if the speaker had noticed his sharpened interest and wanted to deflect it.

"That wouldn't help you recognize me."

"R. Weldon, Shenstead Farm. You said you were an arable farmer. How many others are there in the valley?"

"Two tenant farmers."

"P. Squires and G. Drew. Their farms are to the south. If you were one of them you'd have come the other way."

"You're too well informed to have got all that from the electoral register," said Dick, scrolling through his mobile menu for the local police station. His calls usually concerned poachers or burned-out cars in his fields-an increasing nuisance since the government had declared zero tolerance on unlicensed vehicles-which was why he had the number on file. "I recognize your voice, my friend. I can't place it at the moment-" he selected the number and punched the call button, raising the phone to his ear-"but I'm betting this lot will know who you are."

The watching people waited in silence while he spoke to the sergeant at the other end. If any of them smiled as he became increasingly irritated at the advice he was being given, the smiles remained hidden behind their scarves. He turned his back toward them and walked away, making an effort to keep his voice down, but the angry hunching of his shoulders was the best indication they could have that he didn't like what he was hearing.

Six vehicles or less were considered an acceptable size for an encampment, particularly if it was at a distance from neighbors and posed no threat to road safety. The landowner could apply for eviction, but it would take time. The best course was to negotiate the length of stay through the Traveler Liaison Officer at the local authority and avoid unnecessary confrontation with the visitors. The sergeant reminded Dick that farmers had recently been arrested in Lincolnshire and Essex for using threatening behavior against groups who had invaded their land. The police were sympathetic to landowners but their first priority was to avoid anyone getting hurt.

"Godammit!" Dick rasped, cupping his hand across his mouth to muffle the words. "Who wrote these rules? You telling me they can park wherever they fancy, do whatever they like, and if the poor sap who owns the bloody land objects, you bastards'll arrest him? Yeah… yeah… I'm sorry… no offense intended. So what rights do the poor sods who live here have?"

In return for occupying the site, travelers were asked to agree to certain conditions. These concerned appropriate disposal of household and human waste, the proper control of animals, health and safety issues, and agreements not to reoccupy the same site within a period of three months or use threatening or intimidatory behavior.

Dick's ruddy face turned apoplectic. "You call those rights?" he hissed. "We're expected to offer house-room to a bunch of crooks and all we get in exchange is a promise that they'll behave in a halfway civilized manner." He shot an angry glance toward the line. "And how do you define threatening and intimidating behavior anyway? There's a dozen of them blocking my way and they're all wearing masks over their faces… not to mention some damn dogs and the 'keep out' notice they've slung across the track. What's that if it's not intimidating?" He hunched his shoulders lower. "Yes, well, that's the problem," he muttered, "no one knows who owns it. It's an acre of woodland on the edge of the village."

He listened for a moment. "Jesus wept! Whose side are you on, for Christ's sake?… Yeah, well, it might not be an issue for you but it sodding well is for me. You wouldn't have a job if I didn't pay my taxes."

He snapped the mobile closed and shoved it into his pocket before returning to the Jeep and yanking the door open. A ripple of laughter ran along the line.

"Got a problem, have you, Mr. Weldon?" said the voice in a mocking tone. "Let me guess. The busies have told you to phone the council negotiator."

Dick ignored him and climbed behind the wheel.

"Don't forget to tell her that no one owns this land. She lives in Bridport, and she'll be mighty stroppy if she has to drive all this way on her holiday to learn it from us."

Dick started the engine and turned the Jeep broadside to the line. "Who are you?" he demanded through the open window. "How do you know so much about Shenstead?"

But the question was greeted with silence. Furiously grinding his gears, Dick made a three-point turn and returned home to discover that the negotiator was indeed a woman, did live in Bridport, and refused to give up her holiday to negotiate over a piece of unclaimed land that squatters had as much right to occupy as anyone in the village.

Mr. Weldon should never have mentioned that the land was in dispute. Without that knowledge she could have negotiated a length of stay that would have suited neither party. It would have been too short for the travelers and too long for the villagers. All land in England and Wales was owned by someone, but a failure to register left it open to opportunists.

For whatever reason, Mr. Weldon had volunteered information that suggested solicitors would become involved-"No, I'm sorry, sir, you were a fool to take advice from the squatters. This is a gray area of law…"-and there was little she could do until agreement was reached on who owned the land. Of course it was unjust. Of course it went against every norm of legal fairness. Of course she was on the side of the taxpayers.

But…

SHENSTEAD MANOR, SHENSTEAD, DORSET

1 October 2001

Dear Captain Smith,

My solicitor informs me that if I attempt to contact you, you will sue. For that reason I should make it clear that I am writing without Mark Ankerton's knowledge and that the entire responsibility for this letter is mine. Please be assured, too, that any suit you bring will not be contested and I will pay any compensation that a court sees fit to award.

In these circumstances, I am sure you are wondering why I am writing so potentially costly a letter. Call it a gamble, Captain Smith. I am wagering the cost of damages against a one in ten-perhaps even a one in a hundred-chance that you will respond.

Mark has described you as an intelligent, well-balanced, successful, and brave young woman, who feels an absolute loyalty to her parents and has no desire to learn anything about people who are strangers to her. He tells me your family has a long history, and that your ambition is to take over your father's farm when you leave the army. In addition, he says you are a credit to Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and suggests that your adoption was the best thing that could have happened to you.

Please believe there is nothing he could have said that would have given me greater pleasure. My wife and I always hoped that your future was in the hands of good people. Mark has repeated several times that you have no curiosity about your relations, to the extent that you do not wish even to know their names. Should your determination remain as strong, then throw this letter away now and do not read on.

I have always been fond of fables. When my children were small I used to read Aesop to them. They were particularly fond of stories about the Fox and the Lion, for reasons that will become obvious. I am reluctant to put too much information into this letter, for fear of giving you the impression that I care little for your strongly held feelings. To that end, I enclose a variation on an Aesop fable and two newspaper clippings. From what Mark tells me, you will certainly be able to read between the lines of all three and draw some accurate conclusions.

Suffice it to say that my wife and I failed dismally to achieve the same high standard of parenting with our two children as the Smiths achieved with you. It would be easy to lay the blame for this at the door of the army-the absence of a father figure whenever I was away on duty, foreign postings when neither parent was at home, the influences they fell under at boarding school, the lack of supervision during holidays at home-but that would be wrong, I think.

The fault lay with us. We overindulged them to compensate for our absences and interpreted their wild behavior as attention-seeking. We also took the view-shamefully, I fear-that the family name was worth something and rarely, if ever, did we ask them to face up to their mistakes. The greatest loss was you, Nancy. For the worst of reasons-snobbery-we helped our daughter find a "good husband" by keeping her pregnancy secret, and in the process gave away our only grandchild. If I were a religious man, I would say it was a punishment for setting so much store by family honor. We abandoned you rashly to protect our reputation without any understanding of your fine qualities or what the future might hold.

The irony of all this hit me very strongly when Mark told me how unimpressed you were by your Lockyer-Fox connection. In the end, a name is only a name and a family's worth resides in the sum of its parts not in the label they have chosen to attach to themselves. Had I come to this view earlier, I doubt I would be writing this letter. My children would have grown up to be stable members of society, and you would have been welcomed for who you were, not banished for what you were.

I will finish by saying that this is the only letter I shall write. If you don't reply or if you instruct a solicitor to sue, I shall accept that the gamble is lost. I have purposefully not explained my real reason for wanting to meet you, although you may suspect that your status as my only grandchild has something to do with it.

I believe Mark told you that you would be doing a great kindness by agreeing to see me. May I add that you would also be offering the hope of redress to someone who is dead.

Yours sincerely,

James Lockyer-Fox

The Lion, the Elderly Fox,

And the Generous Ass

The Lion, the Fox, and the Ass lived together in intimate friendship for several years until the Lion grew scornful of the Fox's age and derided the Ass for her generosity to strangers. He demanded the respect due his superior might, and insisted her generosity be shown only to him. The Ass, in great trepidation, assembled all her wealth into one large heap and offered it to the Fox for safekeeping until the Lion mended his ways. The Lion burst into a great rage and devoured the Ass. Then he requested the Fox do him the favor of making the division of the Ass's wealth. The elderly Fox, aware that he was no match for the Lion, pointed to the pile and invited the Lion to take it. The Lion, assuming the Fox had learned sense from the death of the Ass, said, "Who has taught you, my very excellent fellow, the art of division? You are perfect to a fraction." The Fox replied, "I learned the value of generosity from my friend, the Ass." Then he raised his voice and called upon the animals of the jungle to put the Lion to flight and share the Ass's fortune among themselves. "In this way," he told the Lion, "you will have nothing and the Ass will be avenged."

But the Lion devoured the Fox and took the Fox's fortune instead.

Lockyer-Fox-Ailsa Flora, unexpectedly at home on 6 March 2001, aged 78. Dearly loved wife of James, mother of Leo and Elizabeth, and generous friend to many. Funeral service at St. Peter's, Dorchester on Thursday 15 March at 12:30. No flowers please, but donations if desired to Dr. Barnardo's or the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

CORONER'S VERDICT

A coroner's inquest ruled yesterday that Ailsa Lockyer-Fox, 78, of Shenstead Manor died of natural causes despite an inconclusive postmortem and pathologist's report which failed to identify a reason for death. A police investigation was launched after bloodstains were found near the body and neighbors alleged an angry argument on the night of her death.

Mrs. Lockyer-Fox was discovered on the terrace of Shenstead Manor on the morning of 6 March by her husband. She was wearing nightclothes and had been dead for some time. Colonel Lockyer-Fox, who gave evidence at the inquest, said he believed she must have risen during the night to feed the foxes that were regular visitors to Shenstead Manor. "I can only assume she lost consciousness and died of cold." He denied that the French windows were locked on the inside when he came downstairs, or that Mrs. Lockyer-Fox was unable to regain entry to the house had she wished.

The coroner referred to one neighbor's claim that she heard a man and woman arguing shortly after midnight on 6 March. Colonel Lockyer-Fox denied that he and his wife were the people in question, and the coroner accepted his statement. He also accepted that bloodstains found on flagstones two meters from the body were animal and not human. In dismissing the speculation that has surrounded Ailsa Lockyer-Fox's death, he said: "Rumor in this case was entirely unfounded. I hope today's verdict will bring an end to it. For whatever reason, Mrs. Lockyer-Fox decided to go outside on a cold night, inadequately dressed, and tragically collapsed."

The daughter of a wealthy Scottish landowner, Ailsa Lockyer-Fox was well known for her campaigns against cruelty to animals. "She will be greatly missed," said a spokesman for the Dorset branch of the League Against Cruel Sports. "She believed that all life had value and should be treated with respect." She was also a generous benefactor of local and national children's homes and charities. Her personal estate, valued at £1.2m, passes to her husband.

Debbie Fowler

Kosovo

Tuesday, 6 November

Dear Colonel Lockyer-Fox,

Your letter was forwarded to me by my mother. I, too, have an interest in fabular culture. The bones of your fable are "The Lion, the Fox, and the Ass," one of whose morals could be described as: "Might makes Right." You could have applied a similar moral to your own tale: "The Might of Many makes Right," since the implication is that you are dismantling your wife's fortune in order to give it away to more deserving causes than your son-presumably children and animal charities. This seems to me a very sensible course, particularly if he was responsible for her death. I am not a great believer in leopards (or Lions) changing their spots, so I remain cynical that he will "mend his ways."

I am not entirely clear from the clipping re: the coroner's verdict who was the subject of the speculation following your wife's death, although I suspect it may have been you. However, if I have read your fable correctly then your son is Leo the Lion, your wife was Ailsa the Ass, and you are the Fox who witnessed her murder. So why didn't you inform the police of this instead of allowing speculation to grow? Or is this another case of hiding family "mistakes" under the carpet? Your strategy would seem to be that redress for your wife is best achieved by denying your son his inheritance, but isn't justice through the courts the only true redress? Whatever instability problems your son has will not be improved by allowing him to get away with murder.

You seem to refer to this in your last sentence. "The Lion devoured the Fox and took the Fox's fortune instead." This is obviously a prediction and not a fact, otherwise you could not have written to me, but I strongly question how acknowledging me as your only grandchild can shift this prediction in your favor. I fear it will do the exact opposite and force your son into precipitate action. In view of the fact that I have no interest at all in your or your wife's money-and have no wish to confront your son over it-I suggest it would be infinitely wiser to seek the advice of your solicitor, Mark Ankerton, in respect of putting the money beyond your son's reach.

Without wishing to be offensive, I see no reason at all why you should allow yourself to be "devoured" so tamely, nor why I should be proposed as a stalking horse.

Yours sincerely,

Nancy Smith

Nancy Smith (Captain, Royal Engineers)

SHENSTEAD MANOR, SHENSTEAD, DORSET

30 November 2001

Dear Nancy,

Please think no more about it. Everything you say is completely justified. I wrote in a moment of depression and used emotive language that was unforgivable. I did not wish in any way to give you the impression that you would be in confrontation with Leo. Mark has constructed a will that honors my obligations to my family while giving the bulk of the estate to worthy causes. It was an old man's foolish whim and arrogance that wanted the "family silver" to pass intact to family.

I fear my last letter may have given you a false impression of both myself and Leo. Inadvertently I may have suggested that I am perceived in warmer terms than he. This is far from the truth. Leo is extraordinarily charming. I, by contrast-indeed Ailsa, too, when she was alive-are (were) rather shy people who appear stiff-necked and pompous in company. Until recently I would have said that our friends perceived us differently, but the isolation in which I now find myself has shattered my confidence. With the honorable exception of Mark Ankerton, suspicion, it seems, is more easily attracted than dispelled.

You pose the question: How will acknowledging you as my only grandchild benefit me? It won't. I see that now. It was an idea conceived some time ago when Ailsa came to share my view that we would do our children more harm than good by giving them access to large amounts of money on our deaths. However, Mark's view was that Leo would challenge any will that gave large bequests to charities on the basis that the money was family money and should pass to the next generation. Leo may or may not have won, but he would certainly have found it harder to challenge a legitimate heir in the shape of a grandchild.

My wife was always a believer in giving people second chances-the "mending of ways" that you referred to-and I believe she also hoped that recognition of our grandchild would persuade our son to rethink the future. Since hearing from you, I have decided to abandon this plan. It was a selfish attempt to keep the estate intact, and took no account at all of your love and loyalty to your rightful family.

You are an admirable and wise young woman with a marvelous future ahead of you, and I wish you long life and happiness. As the money is of no interest to you, nothing can be gained by involving you in my family's difficulties.

Be confident that your identity and whereabouts will remain a secret between Mark and myself, and that you will under no circumstances feature in any legal documents relating to this family.

With gratitude for your response and the warmest good wishes for whatever comes your way in life,

James Lockyer-Fox