Angel With Two Faces (6 page)

They rounded another bend in the drive, and Josephine saw Loe House in its entirety – an embattled seventeenth-century mansion, with two slightly projecting wings and many features which had clearly been added at various points over the two hundred years that followed. She could see why Ronnie had warned her not to expect anything too grand: constructed of a self-effacing pale stone and topped with a grey slate roof, the building seemed to crouch into the parkland and its obvious restorations gave it a rather patched-together appearance; nevertheless, taken with the landscape on either side, there was something quite noble about the house in front of her. A long garden wall stretched out from both wings, topped to the right with a line of dark yew trees and forming a pair of linked enclosures on the left-hand side, one of which was filled with apple trees in blossom so thick that snow seemed to have settled on the leaves. Just past the kitchen garden, where the driveway joined a track leading round the lake to the sea, there were some ramshackle farm buildings and an immaculately kept stable block, built in a U-shape and crowned with a clock turret. It was just after seven, but a couple of men were still working in the yard, taking advantage of the pleasant evening and, as she watched them go leisurely about their tasks,
Josephine found it hard to imagine the kind of friction here that Archie had just described. To her, Loe House seemed to be that rare sort of place which encouraged the illusion that certain corners of England might never again be touched by conflict, the sort of place where a personal life undisturbed by politics might still be possible – and for that, she blessed it.

‘It
is
beautiful, isn’t it?’ he said, pleased at how captivated Josephine seemed by her surroundings. ‘It does me good to see it through your eyes for the first time – I tend to forget how special it is, particularly after a day like today. Let’s go in – the Snipe has pulled out all the stops in honour of your arrival, so I hope you’re hungry.’

Josephine nodded, noticing that there were three more cars in the driveway, parked next to Archie’s and the Austin in which Ronnie had collected her from the station. ‘Is anyone else coming for dinner?’ she asked casually, waving to Lettice, who was waiting in the doorway.

‘Good God, no,’ he said, knowing how she felt about parties. ‘William isn’t the type to stand on ceremony – he just has a passion for motor cars. And apart from being proud of Lettice and Ronnie, he’s not particularly interested in theatre, he won’t have read your novels, and he has no appetite whatsoever for the London crime scene. We might even have a nice evening.’

Kestrel Jacks stood under a sycamore tree at the edge of the small clearing, smoking a cigarette and watching as the bird beat out the last minutes of its life in the trap that he had set for it. Jackdaws were less of a threat than magpies or crows, but they were still a menace in the nesting season, hunting eggs in all the likely places, and the more he could wipe out the better.
It was his father who had taught him to build this particular ambush – a wire cage with an opening at the top which formed the mouth to a funnel; a pheasant’s egg, placed carefully on the grass below, was enough to seal the fate of any unsuspecting predator: as soon as a bird went down to get the egg, it lost all sense of direction and was powerless to find the narrow end of the cone which was its only hope of escape. Now, Jacks watched his latest victim panic and batter itself against the sides of the cage as it became increasingly disorientated, catching its feathers on the wire and emitting a sharp, almost doglike cry. The kind thing to do would be to wring its neck, but he waited a moment, enjoying the fact that the bird’s characteristic jauntiness had been so easily defeated. As it tired, he opened the door and walked over to where it was flapping pathetically on the floor. He picked it up by one of its wings and it lay still in his hands, seeming to know that he held its life in the balance. In that second, the bird reminded him of his wife and he turned and swung it hard against the fence, putting it out of its misery sooner than he had meant to. Annoyed with himself, he placed a new pheasant egg on the ground and shut the cage door securely behind him.

Jacks walked through the wood with the dead bird in his hand. When he got to the fence, he wound a piece of string around its neck and hung it on the fence next to the others, far enough away from the trap to ensure that the carcasses did not deter other birds from showing the same, fatal greed. As he looked up from his work, he saw Penrose in the distance, walking towards Loe House with a woman he didn’t recognise. He watched as they went inside, and followed their progress from room to room through the open curtains, feeling the anger well up inside him again as he remembered the wake.
Why Morwenna let that bastard get so close to her, he couldn’t imagine. When he had seen them alone together earlier, he had wanted to smash his fist into Penrose’s face and beat him to a pulp, just as he had wanted to hurt Harry Pinching all those years ago when Pinching warned him to keep away from his sister. But now, as then, he needed to play a cleverer game. He was accustomed to waiting and watching, protecting what needed protecting and destroying anything that threatened it, and he would have Morwenna, one way or another. Penrose – like that opportunist bird, the jackdaw – should look around carefully before assuming that the prize was his.

There were nine birds on the fence now, he noted with satisfaction. He was good at his job, and people would do well to remember that.

‘Is it me, or is this trout even tastier than usual?’ asked Ronnie with a devilish twinkle in her eye. ‘Must be something we put in the water.’

Lettice’s fork clattered to her plate as she realised what her sister was hinting at. ‘If you must say whatever comes into your head, could you at least do it before it’s too late?’ she asked sharply, looking ruefully at the head and bones which were all that remained of her fish course.

‘Just think what those eyes might have seen,’ Ronnie continued, warming to her theme. ‘We should have let Archie interrogate the poor thing before handing it over to the Snipe.’

More than used to sparring with his cousin, Archie flashed the smile he reserved for her across the table and decided to drop the subject of Harry’s death. His casual efforts to find out if any rumours were circling around the estate had only earned him jibes from Ronnie about bringing the Yard with him in a
suitcase, and when Josephine – in an effort to help – had asked William to describe the accident, his uncle’s reply told him nothing new. A straightforward question about suicide would, no doubt, wipe the smirk off Ronnie’s face very quickly and have them speculating for the rest of the night, but he couldn’t betray Morwenna’s confidence like that, so it was best to leave it and try again another time.

Josephine – who was far more interested in the people round the table than she was in the mythical Harry – was much better placed to satisfy her curiosity. She liked William Motley instantly – a reaction rare for her – and responded easily to his warmth and humour. He was, she guessed, in his early sixties, which was younger than she had expected, and he had an attractive, infectious vitality about him which had been passed down to his older daughter. Lettice was generally the more like him of the two – there was something continental about Ronnie’s beauty which she must have inherited from her mother – but William seemed to have Ronnie’s mischief as well as Lettice’s kindness, and Josephine could easily understand why many people would try their luck with him – and why it would take something very special to succeed.

‘Of course, what
was
remarkable was the way they found Harry’s body,’ he said now, refilling Josephine’s glass with the last drop of an excellent Chablis. ‘Did Morveth tell you about that, Archie?’

Archie shook his head, interested. ‘No. She just said that Morwenna was in a terrible state because of the waiting.’

‘Yes, that’s true, so Morveth took things into her own hands. She asked to borrow one of the boats from the Lodge and made Jago row her out to the middle of the lake early one morning with some of Harry’s clothes.’

‘Why? In case he was cold?’ quipped Ronnie, pouring herself a generous glass of red in preparation for the next course.

Josephine couldn’t help laughing, but thought she knew what William was getting at. ‘To find out where the body sank?’ she asked.

‘Exactly – you’ve heard of that before?’

‘Once, when I was a child. A holidaymaker went missing near the loch one summer, and his wife was convinced he’d drowned. Everybody else assumed he’d left her – we’re not a nation inclined towards the benefit of the doubt – but she insisted she could find him. Apparently, there’s an ancient belief that you can find drowned bodies by casting some of the dead person’s clothes on to the stretch of water where they died. The clothes are supposed to float on the spot where the body went down.’

‘Gosh – did it work?’ Lettice asked, fascinated.

‘Well, they found the man’s body about half a mile out from the shore at Foyers, so I suppose in a way it did. I couldn’t swear to you that any strange powers were involved, though. Personally, I think she did him in – but perhaps that’s just the Scot in me talking.’

‘And you say you haven’t got a criminal mind?’ Archie said, amused. ‘How old were you when this Loch Ness murder went undetected?’

‘About six,’ she admitted, ‘but I didn’t say I hadn’t got a criminal mind; I said I was too logical to be another Edgar Wallace. Readers seem to expect characters in fiction to do the most preposterous things, and I’m happy to oblige, but if I wanted to commit a real murder, I genuinely think I’d be very good at it.’

Archie held up his hands in defeat. ‘Just make sure you are,’ he laughed, ‘because I don’t want to have to arrest you. Bill would never forgive me.’

‘Perhaps Morveth bumped Harry off, then?’ Ronnie suggested helpfully.

‘That would certainly be the Scottish way of looking at things,’ Josephine said, ‘and I might bear it in mind for the book. If it’s good enough for Mr Wallace…’

They chatted inconsequentially for a while as a pretty young girl from the village came in to clear the plates away. ‘Mrs Snipe says I’m to apologise for the state of the lamb,’ she said earnestly, ‘but apparently things aren’t quite up to scratch in the kitchen. Half the stuff she expected to find is missing, she says, so I’m to tell you she’s done her best but she can’t perform miracles. She says she don’t know what sort of house we run here, and it wasn’t like that in her day. Honestly, sir, I’ve never heard of most of the things she was grumbling about – I think the city must have gone to her head.’

‘Don’t worry, Sheila,’ William said with a conspiratorial wink. ‘Things will be back to normal soon, and I’m sure the lamb will be perfect. Just tell her I’m sorry and that we all appreciate her efforts.’

Sheila smiled, winked back, and left to deliver her message. Lettice watched with relief as the trout bones were removed from the room, but the door had barely closed before Archie returned to the lake. ‘You’re not honestly telling me that Morveth conjured Harry’s body up with a pair of trousers are you?’ he asked William incredulously.

‘I wouldn’t have put it quite like that, but there’s no denying that the body came to the surface soon afterwards. Not quite where Morveth laid the clothes, but not far off. Jago spotted it
later that day, under those low-hanging branches along the western side by Bar Walk plantation.’

‘But that’s a coincidence, surely?’

‘I know what you mean – I suppose I’m sceptical about it, too, but there’s a part of me that
is
inclined to give Morveth the benefit of the doubt.’ He smiled at Josephine. ‘The English part, probably. Don’t ask me why, Archie, but you know how people round here trust her and believe in her – you included, if I remember rightly.’

‘I believe she’s a good person, yes. I’ll even go as far as to say that I believe she has the wisdom and the power to heal in ways that aren’t open to doctors and ordinary medicine. But I can’t stretch to magic tricks – not even from Morveth.’

‘What’s the difference? In the sense that finding Harry’s body brought comfort to Morwenna, don’t you think that what she did – if she did it –
was
a kind of healing? Your mother…’ He hesitated for a second, and Josephine got the impression that he had changed his mind about the rest of the sentence. ‘Your mother always said that Morveth could work miracles,’ he finished more gently. ‘Don’t be too dismissive.’

Archie seemed to relent a little. ‘You’re right,’ he said to William. ‘Where Morveth’s concerned, I’m happy to accept more things than any self-respecting policeman should. I just think that in this case there’s a more rational explanation. The body must have got caught in the weeds on the bed of the lake. The longer it was down there, the more it’ll have been eaten away at by fish and God knows what. It’ll have floated to the surface quite naturally sooner or later.’

‘For goodness’ sake, Archie, not during dinner,’ Lettice pleaded, and even Ronnie lost her colour for a moment.

‘All right, I’m sorry – but just one more thing. You say that
Kestrel Jacks was the only person who actually saw the accident?’

William nodded. ‘That’s right. It was early morning, and he was coming back by Lower Pentire at the time. We’ve had some trouble with gypsies out that way, and he’d been over to check the pheasants.’ ‘And did he see what startled the horse?’

‘No. He wasn’t watching them, particularly. He saw Harry riding along parallel with the bank, and the next time he looked up, Shilling had changed direction completely and was heading towards the lake.’

‘How is Shilling now?’ Josephine asked.

‘Better, but still not himself. It’s a terrible shame – he’s a magnificent animal. I’ve had him brought to our stables for the time being – it didn’t seem fair on Morwenna to have him at Loe Cottage as a constant reminder of the accident. You must go and see him when you’re passing – him and the others. The girls told me how fond of horses you are, and you’d be most welcome to take one out any time you like.’