Authors: Minette Walters
I'll bet you a pound to a penny they're tucked up
together somewhere and she'll come wandering in
with a smile on her face when you least expect it. I
hope you tear strips off her for it, too. She's no damn
business to leave the boys on their own.'
She let it ride, unwilling to be drawn into another
argument about Rosheen's morals. Ian worked on the
principle that what the eye didn't see the heart didn't
grieve over, and refused to recognize the hypocrisy of
his position, while Siobhan's view was that Kevin was
merely a bit of 'rough' that was keeping Rosheen
amused while she looked for something better. Every
woman did it. . . the road to respectability was far from
straight. In any case, she agreed with his final sentiment.
Even if it was Liam who had phoned from the
cottage, Rosheen's first responsibility was to James
and Oliver. 'So what should I do? Just wait for her to
come back?'
'I don't see you have much choice. She's over
twenty-one so the police won't do anything tonight.'
'OK.'
He knew her too well. 'You don't sound convinced.'
She wasn't, but then she was more relaxed about
the way Rosheen conducted herself than he was. The
fact that they'd come home early one night and
caught her in the barn with her knickers down had
offended Ian deeply, even though Rosheen had been
monitoring the boys all the time via a two-way transmitter
that she'd taken with her. Ian had wanted to
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sack her on the spot, but Siobhan had persuaded him
out of it after extracting a promise from Rosheen that
the affair would be confined to her spare time in
future. Afterwards, and because she was a great deal
less puritanical than her English husband, Siobhan had
buried her face in her pillow to stifle her laughter. Her
view was that Rosheen had shown typical Irish tact
by having sex outside in the barn rather than under
the Lavenhams' roof. As she pointed out to Ian: 'We'd
never have known Kevin was there if she'd smutted
him into her room and told him to perform quietly.''
'It's just that I'm tired,' she lied, knowing she
could never describe her sense of foreboding down
the telephone to someone over a thousand miles away. Empty houses gave her the shivers at the best of times
- a throwback to the rambling, echoing mansion of
her childhood, which her overactive imagination had
peopled with giants and spectres . . . 'Look, go back
to sleep and I'll ring you tomorrow. It'll have sorted
itself out by then. Just make sure you come home by
Friday,' she ended severely, 'or I'll file for divorce
immediately. I didn't marry you to be deserted for the
Ravenelli brothers.'
'I will,' he promised.
Siobhan listened to the click as he hung up at the
other end, then replaced her own receiver before
opening the front door and looking towards the dark
shape of the barn. She searched for a chink of light
between the double doors but knew she was wasting
her time even while she was doing it. Rosheen had
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been so terrified by lan's threat to tell her parents in
Ireland what she'd been up to that her sessions with
Kevin were now confined to somewhere a great deal
more private than Fording Farm's barn.
With a sigh she retreated to the kitchen and settled
on a cushion in front of the Aga with Patch's head
lying across her lap and the bottle of wine beside her.
It was another ten minutes before she noticed that the
key to Kilkenny Cottage, which should have been
hanging on a hook on the dresser, was no longer
there.
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Wednesday, 10 February 1999
'But why are you so sure it was Patrick?' Siobhan had
asked the inspector next. 'Why not a total stranger?
I mean, anyone could have taken the hammer from
his toolbox if he'd left it in the kitchen the way he
says he did.'
'Because there were no signs of a break-in. Whoever
killed them either had a key to the front door or JŁ
was let in by Dorothy Jenkins. And that means it must
have been someone she knew.'
'Maybe she hadn't locked up,' said Siobhan,
clutching at straws. 'Maybe they came in through the
back door.'
'Have you ever tried to open the back door to the
manor, Mrs Lavenham?'
'No.'
'Apart from the fact that the bolts were rusted in
their sockets, it's so warped and swollen with damp
you have to put a shoulder to it to force it ajar, and
it screams like a banshee every time you do it. If a
stranger had come in through the back door at eleven
o'clock at night, he wouldn't have caught Miss Jenkins
in the kitchen. She'd have taken to her heels the
minute she heard the banshee-wailing and would have
used one of the phones upstairs to call the police.'
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'You can't know that,' argued Siobhan. 'Sower
bridge is the sleepiest place on earth. Why would she
assume it was an intruder? She probably thought it
was Jeremy paying a late-night visit to his grandmother.'
'We don't think so.' He picked up a pen and
turned it between his fingers. 'As far as we can establish,
that door was never used. Certainly none of the
neighbours reported going in that way. The paper
boy said Miss Jenkins kept it bolted because on the
one occasion when she tried to open it, it became so
wedged that she had to ask him to force it shut again.'
She sighed, admitting defeat. 'Patrick's always been
so sweet to me and my children. I just can't believe
he's a murderer.'
He smiled at her naivety. 'The two are not mutually
exclusive, Mrs Lavenham. I expect Jack the Ripper's
neighbour said the same about him.'
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Tuesday, 9 March 1999, 1.00 a.m.
People began to shiver as the smouldering remains
were dowsed by the fire hoses and the pungent smell
of wet ashes stung their nostrils. In the aftermath of
excitement, a sense of shame crept among the inhabitants
of Sowerbridge - schadenfreude was surely alien
to their natures? - and bit by bit the crowd began to
disperse. Only the Haversleys, the Bentleys and Jeremy
Jardine lingered at the crossroads, held by a
mutual fascination for the scene of devastation that
would greet them every time they emerged from their
houses.
'We won't be able to open our windows for weeks,'
said Nora Bentley, wrinkling her nose. 'The smell will
be suffocating.'
'It'll be worse when the wind gets up and deposits
soot all over the place,' complained Peter Haversley,
brushing ash from his coat.
His wife clicked her tongue impatiently. 'We'll just
have to put up with it,' she said. 'It's hardly the end
of the world.'
Sam Bentley surprised her with a sudden bark of
laughter. 'Well spoken, Cynthia, considering you'll
be bearing the brunt of it. The prevailing winds are
south-westerly, which means most of the muck will
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collect in Malvern House. Still - ' he paused to glance
from her to Peter - 'you sow a wind and you reap a
whirlwind, eh?'
There was a short silence.
'Have you noticed how Liam's wrecks have survived
intact?' asked Nora then, with assumed brightness.
'Is it a judgement, do you think?'
'Don't be ridiculous,' said Jeremy.
Sam gave another brief chortle. 'Is it ridiculous?
You complained enough when there were only the
cars to worry about. Now you've got a burnt-out
cottage as well. I can't believe the O'Riordans were
insured, so it'll be years before anything is done. If
you're lucky, a developer will buy the land and build
an estate of little boxes on your doorstep. If you're
unlucky, Liam will put up a corrugated-iron shack
and live in that. And do you know, Jeremy, I hope he
does! Personal revenge is so much sweeter than anything
the law can offer.'
'What's that supposed to mean?'
'You'd have been wiser to call the fire brigade
earlier,' said the old doctor bluntly. 'Nero may have
fiddled while Rome burned, but it didn't do his
reputation any good.'
Another silence.
'What are you implying?' demanded Cynthia
aggressively. 'That Jeremy could somehow have prevented
the fire?'
Jeremy Jardine folded his arms. Till sue you for
slander if you are, Sam.'
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'It won't be just me. Half the village is wondering
why Nora and I smelt burning before you did, and
why Cynthia and Peter took themselves off to Salisbury
on a Monday evening for the first time in living
memory.'
'Coincidence,' grunted Peter Haversley. 'Pure
coincidence.'
'Well, I pray for all your sakes you're telling the
truth,' murmured Sam, wiping a weary hand across
his ash-grimed face, 'because the police aren't the only
ones who'll be asking questions. The Lavenhams certainly
won't stay quiet.'
'I hope you're not suggesting that one of us set
fire to that beastly little place,' said Cynthia crossly.
'Honestly, Sam, I wonder about you sometimes.'
He shook his head sadly, wishing he could dislike
her as comprehensively as Siobhan Lavenham did.
'No, Cynthia, I'm suggesting you knew it was going
to happen, and even incited the local youths to do it.
You can argue that you wanted revenge for Lavinia
and Dorothy's deaths, but aiding and abetting any
crime is a prosecutable offence and - ' he sighed -
'you'll get no sympathy from me if you go to prison
for it.'
Behind them, in the hall of Malvern House, the
telephone began to ring . . .
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Wednesday, 10 February 1999
Siobhan had put an opened envelope on the desk in
front of the detective inspector. 'Even if Patrick is the
murderer and even if Bridey knows he is, it doesn't
excuse this kind of thing,' she said. 'I can't prove it
came from Cynthia Haversley, but I'm a hundred per
cent certain it did. She's busting a gut to make life so
unpleasant for Liam and Bridey that they'll leave of
their own accord.'
The inspector frowned as he removed a folded
piece of paper and read the letters pasted onto it.
Hanging is too good
for the tikes of JOU
m hell
'Who was it sent to?' he asked.
'Bridey.'
'Why did she give it to you and not to the police?'
'Because she knew I was coming here today and
asked me to bring it with me. It was posted through
her letterbox sometime the night before last.'
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('They'll take more notice of you than they ever
take of me,' the old woman had said, pressing the
envelope urgently into Siobhan's hands. 'Make them
understand we're in danger before it's too late.')
He turned the envelope over. 'Why do you think
it came from Mrs Haversley?'
Feminine intuition, thought Siobhan wryly. 'Because
the letters that make up "hell" have been cut from a Daily Telegraph banner imprint. It's the only broad
sheet newspaper that has an "h", an "e", and two "l"s
in its title, and Cynthia takes the Telegraph every day.'
'Along with how many other people in Sower
bridge?'
She smiled slightly. 'Quite a few, but no one else
has Cynthia Haversley's poisonous frame of mind.
She loves stirring. The more she can work people up,
the happier she is. It gives her a sense of importance
to have everyone dancing to her tune.'
'You don't like her.' It was a statement rather than
a question.
'No.'
'Neither do I,' admitted the inspector, 'but it doesn't
make her guilty, Mrs Lavenham. Liam and/or Bridey
could have acquired a Telegraph just as easily and sent
this letter to themselves.'
'That's what Bridey told me you'd say.'
'Because it's the truth?' he suggested mildly. 'Mrs
Haversley's a fat, clumsy woman with fingers like
sausages, and if she'd been wearing gloves the whole
exercise would have been impossible. This -' he
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touched the letter - 'is too neat. There's not a letter
out of place.'
'Peter then.'
'Peter Haversley's an alcoholic. His hands shake.'
'Jeremy Jardine?'
'I doubt it. Poison-pen letters are usually written
by women. I'm sorry, Mrs Lavenham, but I can
guarantee the only fingerprints I will find on this other
than yours and mine, of course - are Bridey
O'Riordan's. Not because the person who did it wore
gloves, but because Bridey did it herself
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