Ferocious beasts, p.5
Ferocious Beasts, page 5
Will would often disappear into the night like this.
FIFTEEN
Cloud covered the moon, making the night black, and the dusty scent of cut wheat hung in the warm air. Carl Jones’s headlights illuminated a man standing by a car at the gatehouse to Bainbridge Manor.
It was Constable Peter Moore. He was smoking a cigarette when Carl pulled up beside him and wound down the window.
“Evening, Constable.”
“Oh, it’s you, sir,” Moore said, having not recognized the car in the otherwise pitch-black night.
“Anyone up there?”
Moore glanced over his shoulder through the barred gate. The house gazed back at him from the crest of a hill.
“No, sir,” Moore replied, turning back.
“Good. Can you get the gate?”
“Sure.”
The constable flicked his smoke into the road and carried his vast bulk to the barrier. It creaked open and Carl nodded a thanks from the open window as he drove into the estate, his headlights reflecting off the tall, latticed windows of the house.
Parking on the carriageway next to Will Bainbridge’s abandoned Fiesta, Carl got out and opened the trunk. From it he took a folded camping bed.
Trapping this under an arm, he made his way to the arched front door. Gargoyles perched along the edge of the roof looked down at him like they were getting ready to spit. The key turned easily, but the thick oak door was stiff and he had to apply his shoulder to it.
Inside, it smelt of dust and gunshot. He walked to the kitchen. The table was still covered in blood that had gone black. Something appeared to move within it, and when he snapped the light on, Carl revealed innumerable fat bluebottles squirming like bathers on an overcrowded beach.
He switched the light back off and left the room, the camp bed still clamped under an arm. Upstairs, he stopped at the children’s bedroom. Police tape came across it in an X. He pulled it away and opened the door.
For a minute, Carl Jones did no more than gaze at the children’s beds. Only the iron frames remained.
All he saw, though, was their sleeping faces. Their white skin and almost white hair. In the autopsy report he’d read that one of the girls had had her eyelids closed postmortem. They wondered whether she’d not awoken to her sister being shot. Either hearing it, or, possibly, feeling it. Didn’t they say twins have some type of extrasensory ability regarding their sibling? Did she feel her sister dying?
Carl shook himself. Switching the light on, he stepped into the room and knelt by the three indentations on the rug. They were still there. Whatever had been on it had been there some time.
He unfolded the camp bed. At both its ends and in the middle were feet. He placed them over the indentations and found that it nearly fit.
After that, Carl spent the next two hours searching every room and cupboard in the house, before moving outside and checking the barns and other outbuildings.
At no point did he find what he was looking for.
A gap in the clouds allowed a glimpse of the moon. It was while staring up at it that Carl observed a thin column of smoke rising from somewhere near the coast. In his estimates, it was about a mile away.
Carl fetched his car and drove along stubble fields bathed in silver moonlight, traveling up and down vales, until he could smell the sea, and then there it was, the white foamy lines of gentle waves flowing into the black rocks of the cliffs.
The smoke rose up where the rocks were highest. Carl knew of a small cave pitted into the face of that part. High enough not to be bothered by the strike of the waves.
Parking close to the edge, Carl got out and took an empty plastic bottle from the trunk. Before doing anything, he looked about. They’d still not harvested the wheat and barley in this area and the fields swayed in the breeze as though they too were a part of the sea. Oak trees stuck up out of it, resembling sentinels guarding the fields, and everything was still under their watch.
Carl Jones turned back to the rising smoke. Tucking the bottle into a pocket, he leaned over the cliff edge and began lowering himself down, using the well-worn rocks for tread and easily descending to a collection of flat boulders that stood a few feet out of the water and were smoothed and flattened by infinite tides.
Spray gently lashed him as Carl stepped along the squeaking, popping seaweed to the water. A wave slapped the rocks and when it receded, he lowered the bottle and filled it up. This he took to the cave and emptied on the small fire churning within, making it hiss and smoke even more.
He did this another two times until there was nothing left except a lump of smoldering ash.
Using a stick he found, Carl poked the pile. Something hard was under the layer of cinders. Dragging it out with the stick, a metal frame was revealed.
Greedily, he went to lift it and swore when he burned his hand. Using the stick, he went back to prodding the ash pile and it was then that he found the charred corner of a blanket.
A bed frame belonging to a camp bed and blankets, he thought. I fucking—
Carl jumped when a collection of small rocks fell nearby, almost hitting him. He looked sharply up and immediately spotted the outline of someone leaning over the edge and gazing down at him.
“Hey!” Carl Jones shouted.
The figure removed itself from the edge and Carl clambered up the rock face, which took around three minutes, and, inevitably, by the time he was at the top there was no one there.
He straight away went to searching the fields with his eyes.
But nothing except the sight of the vast swaying crops stared back at him. No sign of life.
Carl Jones got his phone out.
“John,” he said when it was answered, “I need you and another operative out to Bainbridge Foreshores. The clifftops. You’ll see my car. Make sure you bring some large evidence bags.”
SIXTEEN
Mandy spotted Will the second he emerged from the trees bordering the stubble field. She was still standing at the bathroom window, having been unable to go back to sleep and therefore drawn back here to perform this sad vigil.
He’d been gone four hours and the sun was beginning to wake up, along with the chirping birds. As he slunk across the field, Will would occasionally stop, turn around and gaze behind him, as if he feared someone was following him.
Mandy was in the garden when he opened the gate.
“Where’ve you been?” she asked the second he was through it.
He rolled his eyes at the sight of her and groaned.
“I needed a walk,” he said, coming past her and entering the house.
She followed right behind. “Please, tell me where you’ve been?”
He stopped in the hallway, shoulders slumping forward, another groan emanating from him.
“You smell of smoke,” she observed.
He turned rabid-eyed on her and she spotted the soot streaked across his cheek.
“I made a fire in the woods,” he said. “Okay? I made a fire to keep warm so I could think.”
“Why can’t you think here?”
“Because you’re here.”
And with that, he stomped heavily up the stairs and went to bed.
PART TWO
SEVENTEEN
The morning sun hovered above the water and the horizon looked like it was on fire. Carl Jones was standing upon the wet rocks with the stench of the sea in his nostrils, watching gulls loop through the flames, when John Dunn came behind him.
The forensics man touched his shoulder and Jones turned around.
“We retrieved these from the fire,” Dunn informed him.
He held up two large evidence bags. One carried several pieces of pink blanket and the other had the aluminum frame of a camping bed.
“Can I borrow that for a couple of minutes?” he asked Dunn, pointing at the frame.
“Of course,” Dunn replied. “I’m going to send the blanket on for analysis in Bath, but you’re free to take the frame.”
Jones left the cave and made his way to the top.
Reaching his car, he opened the back door and threw the frame onto the seat, before getting in and driving away. Making his way back to Bainbridge Manor, he couldn’t help glancing every so often at the passing fields. Half expecting to see a head pop up.
It didn’t happen, of course, and he reached the manor without incident.
Carrying the frame with him, he marched directly to the children’s bedroom. He’d been waiting to do this since he’d found the fire, but had needed forensics to check everything first. Now, he was chomping at the bit as he knelt next to the indentations, using his teeth to rip open the evidence bag like a ravenous dog, pulling out the soot-covered frame, unfolding it, and then, his breath frozen in his chest, placing it on the carpet and watching the legs at either end slip perfectly into those indentations.
A perfect match, floating through his head.
EIGHTEEN
Will didn’t know how, but he was inside the manor.
Moonlight shone in through a window and he was standing in the kitchen. His father sat at the end of the table looking terribly glum.
Screaming made Will turn sharply to the hallway.
It was his mother.
He ran out and followed the sound to the back staircase. More screaming. His nieces this time. Their shrieking screams sounding like wet fingers being dragged down a windowpane.
Bang!
The first shot exploded and he stumbled to his knees on the long, winding staircase.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
He cringed further and further into the staircase, their screams filling his ears, until—
“Will?”
He opened his eyes to find Mandy sitting atop of him.
“Thank God you’re awake,” she said, looking worried. “They’re at the door.”
Will mumbled something incoherent and began rousing underneath her. As he did, he started to hear banging, slowly realizing that someone was knocking.
He pushed Mandy roughly to the side and sat up in bed.
“Who is it?” he asked.
“Who do you think?”
“The police?”
“No. It’s the press. They turned up a couple of minutes ago. I’m surprised it didn’t wake you up all the row they’ve been making.”
Mandy’s bedroom was right over the front door and a window looked down upon it. With both of them naked, they wrapped themselves in sheets and approached it cautiously.
Pulling back the curtains, they immediately recoiled, Will feeling himself sink. There were at least thirty people out there, and the second they spotted Will and Mandy in the window, the camera flashes went off in a volley.
Will fled back into the room, but in his haste, he didn’t let go of the sheets and whipped them away from Mandy.
For a good few seconds Mandy King stood with her breasts exposed to the world, the window ledge thankfully high enough to hide the rest of her. The cameras continued to go off, and, clasping her large bosoms in her arms, she dived for the bed.
“Brilliant, Mandy,” Will said as he gathered his clothes up from the floor. “What’s that going to look like?”
“Who cares?”
“My parents are dead, Mandy. I care.”
“Really? It’s not like you even liked them.”
Anger set fire to him. He grabbed her arm and glared into her eyes. “I loved my family, Mandy.”
“Did you?” she said with a dubious frown.
“Yes. Even Julia. I loved her and the twins. I loved them all. And now they’re dead.”
“Do you love me, Will?”
“Not this again.”
It was then that someone began shouting through the letterbox.
“Mr. Bainbridge, have you got anything to say about the tragedy at Bainbridge Manor? What about the stories that your sister was a member of a cult?”
Crumpling his hair up in his hands, Will breathed, “Oh, God. I can’t handle this.”
“You could go out there and talk to them,” Mandy suggested.
“And say what? Fuck off?”
“Tell them you’re grieving. They can have their interviews later.”
“They don’t want interviews, Mandy. They want a bloody story. Turn this into some double-page spread. I can see it now: Wacky ex-model guns down family at house of horrors!”
“I like the sound of that one,” Mandy said with a childish smile. “Especially the wacky part.”
“No.” Will shook his head. “The only interview we need to worry about is your date with the police later today. Jones is sure to get you. So what do you say?”
“That I was with you all night.”
“Good girl.”
While Will hurriedly dressed, Mandy sat on the bed gazing at him.
“Will,” she said in the soft voice of an innocent, “is lying to the police illegal?”
He paused his dressing and turned to her with narrowed eyes.
“You know it is,” he said dryly.
“Then I could get in a lot of trouble?”
His eyes remained fixed to her.
“Mr. Bainbridge,” came the voice through the letterbox, “how does it feel to be the sole beneficiary of Bainbridge Manor and all its lands and companies?”
Mandy smiled when she heard that.
“Do you love me, Will?”
His eyes lost practically all their color. A dead look flooded his face.
“Do you love me?” she repeated.
He continued to stare at her when someone else shouted through the letterbox.
“William?” a woman’s voice called. “William, it’s Harriet.”
Will clenched his eyelids shut. “Oh, God,” he mumbled hopelessly between his teeth. “I was wondering when they’d turn up.”
“You’d better go down and let them in,” Mandy advised him.
“Will, are you there?” a male voice followed, one that always held the same note of haughty conceit.
“Great,” Will complained. “She brought him.”
Will finished dressing and went down the narrow staircase to the front door. The second he opened it, the questions flew at him like spears. He let a man and woman inside, the two of them squeezing in through a gap, and avoided the microphone that was thrust between their heads as they ducked in.
“Do you have any comment to make, Mr. Bainbridge?”
He shut the door, almost catching the person’s arm as it quickly retracted the mic, and it was like closing the airlock on a spacecraft.
Turning to the newcomers, Will used his most ingratiating tone when he said, “Harriet. Marcus. How are you both?”
“Oh, Will,” Harriet gasped, gathering him up in her arms and squeezing tight. “It’s so awfully awfully terrible.”
The two were his cousins: Harriet and Marcus Bainbridge. Their father was the brother of his father, Rupert.
Marcus Bainbridge leaned with his back against a wall, gazing at Will with sad eyes.
“What an absolute shocker, cuz,” he said, swallowing a lump. “Rupert was like a father to me.”
“Me too,” Will retorted with a sly grin.
Marcus pierced his eyes. “Hardly the time to be sarcastic.”
“No,” Will said, shaking himself and becoming serious. “Probably not. When did you arrive?”
“This morning,” Harriet told him. “We tried to find you at your cottage but you were gone. It was then that a neighbor of yours said you might be here.”
“Have you been to the manor yet?”
“Have you?” Marcus asked accusingly.
Will turned to him and met his eyes.
“No,” he said. “I don’t want to go back there yet.”
“It’s terrible what the police left behind,” Harriet complained. “The whole place is a mess.”
“The blood’s still there,” Marcus added.
“They haven’t cleaned it up?” Will asked.
Harriet shook her head sadly.
“The flies have already gotten to it,” Marcus said, “so you should clean it up before they lay their eggs.”
“I can’t,” Will muttered.
“Of course,” Harriet said with a soft look. “Marcus was only playing.”
She gave her brother a look of admonishment.
“Will?”
They all turned their gazes towards the stairs.
Mandy was standing at the top. Dressed in a leather pencil skirt and a gauzy top that showed off her tightly packed bosom.
“Mandy,” Will said as she began descending the steps, “these are my cousins. Marcus and Harriet Bainbridge.”
More knocking interrupted any attempts at more detailed introductions, and the four of them turned to the door as the letterbox flipped open and a set of lips began calling into the hallway.
“Mr. Bainbridge, what do you think of the Bainbridge curse? After all, it was only last year when your uncle topped himself.”
Harriet jumped in her skin, terror attacking her countenance, and Marcus began scowling at the door.
Turning to Will, Harriet said, “We must get away from these terrible people.”
“My car’s in the alley out back,” Mandy suggested.
“Then do lead the way,” Marcus commanded, turning from the door, his face pale with anger.
NINETEEN
LONDON
Like always, Jack had gotten up before the rest of the house and was now sitting at the kitchen table putting his shoes on. Upon hearing Carrie’s bedroom door open above his head, he paused tying his laces and gazed up at the ceiling.
His eyes then followed the light thud of her feet as she crossed the landing to the bathroom and the door slammed shut.
When she emerged, Jack was standing right outside.
“Carrie, please talk to me,” he said pathetically.
Anger swept over her face and her eyes burned into him.
“Why don’t you talk to whoever you’re sleeping with behind Mum’s back,” the teenager put to him before marching across the landing and slamming her bedroom door in his face.
FIFTEEN
Cloud covered the moon, making the night black, and the dusty scent of cut wheat hung in the warm air. Carl Jones’s headlights illuminated a man standing by a car at the gatehouse to Bainbridge Manor.
It was Constable Peter Moore. He was smoking a cigarette when Carl pulled up beside him and wound down the window.
“Evening, Constable.”
“Oh, it’s you, sir,” Moore said, having not recognized the car in the otherwise pitch-black night.
“Anyone up there?”
Moore glanced over his shoulder through the barred gate. The house gazed back at him from the crest of a hill.
“No, sir,” Moore replied, turning back.
“Good. Can you get the gate?”
“Sure.”
The constable flicked his smoke into the road and carried his vast bulk to the barrier. It creaked open and Carl nodded a thanks from the open window as he drove into the estate, his headlights reflecting off the tall, latticed windows of the house.
Parking on the carriageway next to Will Bainbridge’s abandoned Fiesta, Carl got out and opened the trunk. From it he took a folded camping bed.
Trapping this under an arm, he made his way to the arched front door. Gargoyles perched along the edge of the roof looked down at him like they were getting ready to spit. The key turned easily, but the thick oak door was stiff and he had to apply his shoulder to it.
Inside, it smelt of dust and gunshot. He walked to the kitchen. The table was still covered in blood that had gone black. Something appeared to move within it, and when he snapped the light on, Carl revealed innumerable fat bluebottles squirming like bathers on an overcrowded beach.
He switched the light back off and left the room, the camp bed still clamped under an arm. Upstairs, he stopped at the children’s bedroom. Police tape came across it in an X. He pulled it away and opened the door.
For a minute, Carl Jones did no more than gaze at the children’s beds. Only the iron frames remained.
All he saw, though, was their sleeping faces. Their white skin and almost white hair. In the autopsy report he’d read that one of the girls had had her eyelids closed postmortem. They wondered whether she’d not awoken to her sister being shot. Either hearing it, or, possibly, feeling it. Didn’t they say twins have some type of extrasensory ability regarding their sibling? Did she feel her sister dying?
Carl shook himself. Switching the light on, he stepped into the room and knelt by the three indentations on the rug. They were still there. Whatever had been on it had been there some time.
He unfolded the camp bed. At both its ends and in the middle were feet. He placed them over the indentations and found that it nearly fit.
After that, Carl spent the next two hours searching every room and cupboard in the house, before moving outside and checking the barns and other outbuildings.
At no point did he find what he was looking for.
A gap in the clouds allowed a glimpse of the moon. It was while staring up at it that Carl observed a thin column of smoke rising from somewhere near the coast. In his estimates, it was about a mile away.
Carl fetched his car and drove along stubble fields bathed in silver moonlight, traveling up and down vales, until he could smell the sea, and then there it was, the white foamy lines of gentle waves flowing into the black rocks of the cliffs.
The smoke rose up where the rocks were highest. Carl knew of a small cave pitted into the face of that part. High enough not to be bothered by the strike of the waves.
Parking close to the edge, Carl got out and took an empty plastic bottle from the trunk. Before doing anything, he looked about. They’d still not harvested the wheat and barley in this area and the fields swayed in the breeze as though they too were a part of the sea. Oak trees stuck up out of it, resembling sentinels guarding the fields, and everything was still under their watch.
Carl Jones turned back to the rising smoke. Tucking the bottle into a pocket, he leaned over the cliff edge and began lowering himself down, using the well-worn rocks for tread and easily descending to a collection of flat boulders that stood a few feet out of the water and were smoothed and flattened by infinite tides.
Spray gently lashed him as Carl stepped along the squeaking, popping seaweed to the water. A wave slapped the rocks and when it receded, he lowered the bottle and filled it up. This he took to the cave and emptied on the small fire churning within, making it hiss and smoke even more.
He did this another two times until there was nothing left except a lump of smoldering ash.
Using a stick he found, Carl poked the pile. Something hard was under the layer of cinders. Dragging it out with the stick, a metal frame was revealed.
Greedily, he went to lift it and swore when he burned his hand. Using the stick, he went back to prodding the ash pile and it was then that he found the charred corner of a blanket.
A bed frame belonging to a camp bed and blankets, he thought. I fucking—
Carl jumped when a collection of small rocks fell nearby, almost hitting him. He looked sharply up and immediately spotted the outline of someone leaning over the edge and gazing down at him.
“Hey!” Carl Jones shouted.
The figure removed itself from the edge and Carl clambered up the rock face, which took around three minutes, and, inevitably, by the time he was at the top there was no one there.
He straight away went to searching the fields with his eyes.
But nothing except the sight of the vast swaying crops stared back at him. No sign of life.
Carl Jones got his phone out.
“John,” he said when it was answered, “I need you and another operative out to Bainbridge Foreshores. The clifftops. You’ll see my car. Make sure you bring some large evidence bags.”
SIXTEEN
Mandy spotted Will the second he emerged from the trees bordering the stubble field. She was still standing at the bathroom window, having been unable to go back to sleep and therefore drawn back here to perform this sad vigil.
He’d been gone four hours and the sun was beginning to wake up, along with the chirping birds. As he slunk across the field, Will would occasionally stop, turn around and gaze behind him, as if he feared someone was following him.
Mandy was in the garden when he opened the gate.
“Where’ve you been?” she asked the second he was through it.
He rolled his eyes at the sight of her and groaned.
“I needed a walk,” he said, coming past her and entering the house.
She followed right behind. “Please, tell me where you’ve been?”
He stopped in the hallway, shoulders slumping forward, another groan emanating from him.
“You smell of smoke,” she observed.
He turned rabid-eyed on her and she spotted the soot streaked across his cheek.
“I made a fire in the woods,” he said. “Okay? I made a fire to keep warm so I could think.”
“Why can’t you think here?”
“Because you’re here.”
And with that, he stomped heavily up the stairs and went to bed.
PART TWO
SEVENTEEN
The morning sun hovered above the water and the horizon looked like it was on fire. Carl Jones was standing upon the wet rocks with the stench of the sea in his nostrils, watching gulls loop through the flames, when John Dunn came behind him.
The forensics man touched his shoulder and Jones turned around.
“We retrieved these from the fire,” Dunn informed him.
He held up two large evidence bags. One carried several pieces of pink blanket and the other had the aluminum frame of a camping bed.
“Can I borrow that for a couple of minutes?” he asked Dunn, pointing at the frame.
“Of course,” Dunn replied. “I’m going to send the blanket on for analysis in Bath, but you’re free to take the frame.”
Jones left the cave and made his way to the top.
Reaching his car, he opened the back door and threw the frame onto the seat, before getting in and driving away. Making his way back to Bainbridge Manor, he couldn’t help glancing every so often at the passing fields. Half expecting to see a head pop up.
It didn’t happen, of course, and he reached the manor without incident.
Carrying the frame with him, he marched directly to the children’s bedroom. He’d been waiting to do this since he’d found the fire, but had needed forensics to check everything first. Now, he was chomping at the bit as he knelt next to the indentations, using his teeth to rip open the evidence bag like a ravenous dog, pulling out the soot-covered frame, unfolding it, and then, his breath frozen in his chest, placing it on the carpet and watching the legs at either end slip perfectly into those indentations.
A perfect match, floating through his head.
EIGHTEEN
Will didn’t know how, but he was inside the manor.
Moonlight shone in through a window and he was standing in the kitchen. His father sat at the end of the table looking terribly glum.
Screaming made Will turn sharply to the hallway.
It was his mother.
He ran out and followed the sound to the back staircase. More screaming. His nieces this time. Their shrieking screams sounding like wet fingers being dragged down a windowpane.
Bang!
The first shot exploded and he stumbled to his knees on the long, winding staircase.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
He cringed further and further into the staircase, their screams filling his ears, until—
“Will?”
He opened his eyes to find Mandy sitting atop of him.
“Thank God you’re awake,” she said, looking worried. “They’re at the door.”
Will mumbled something incoherent and began rousing underneath her. As he did, he started to hear banging, slowly realizing that someone was knocking.
He pushed Mandy roughly to the side and sat up in bed.
“Who is it?” he asked.
“Who do you think?”
“The police?”
“No. It’s the press. They turned up a couple of minutes ago. I’m surprised it didn’t wake you up all the row they’ve been making.”
Mandy’s bedroom was right over the front door and a window looked down upon it. With both of them naked, they wrapped themselves in sheets and approached it cautiously.
Pulling back the curtains, they immediately recoiled, Will feeling himself sink. There were at least thirty people out there, and the second they spotted Will and Mandy in the window, the camera flashes went off in a volley.
Will fled back into the room, but in his haste, he didn’t let go of the sheets and whipped them away from Mandy.
For a good few seconds Mandy King stood with her breasts exposed to the world, the window ledge thankfully high enough to hide the rest of her. The cameras continued to go off, and, clasping her large bosoms in her arms, she dived for the bed.
“Brilliant, Mandy,” Will said as he gathered his clothes up from the floor. “What’s that going to look like?”
“Who cares?”
“My parents are dead, Mandy. I care.”
“Really? It’s not like you even liked them.”
Anger set fire to him. He grabbed her arm and glared into her eyes. “I loved my family, Mandy.”
“Did you?” she said with a dubious frown.
“Yes. Even Julia. I loved her and the twins. I loved them all. And now they’re dead.”
“Do you love me, Will?”
“Not this again.”
It was then that someone began shouting through the letterbox.
“Mr. Bainbridge, have you got anything to say about the tragedy at Bainbridge Manor? What about the stories that your sister was a member of a cult?”
Crumpling his hair up in his hands, Will breathed, “Oh, God. I can’t handle this.”
“You could go out there and talk to them,” Mandy suggested.
“And say what? Fuck off?”
“Tell them you’re grieving. They can have their interviews later.”
“They don’t want interviews, Mandy. They want a bloody story. Turn this into some double-page spread. I can see it now: Wacky ex-model guns down family at house of horrors!”
“I like the sound of that one,” Mandy said with a childish smile. “Especially the wacky part.”
“No.” Will shook his head. “The only interview we need to worry about is your date with the police later today. Jones is sure to get you. So what do you say?”
“That I was with you all night.”
“Good girl.”
While Will hurriedly dressed, Mandy sat on the bed gazing at him.
“Will,” she said in the soft voice of an innocent, “is lying to the police illegal?”
He paused his dressing and turned to her with narrowed eyes.
“You know it is,” he said dryly.
“Then I could get in a lot of trouble?”
His eyes remained fixed to her.
“Mr. Bainbridge,” came the voice through the letterbox, “how does it feel to be the sole beneficiary of Bainbridge Manor and all its lands and companies?”
Mandy smiled when she heard that.
“Do you love me, Will?”
His eyes lost practically all their color. A dead look flooded his face.
“Do you love me?” she repeated.
He continued to stare at her when someone else shouted through the letterbox.
“William?” a woman’s voice called. “William, it’s Harriet.”
Will clenched his eyelids shut. “Oh, God,” he mumbled hopelessly between his teeth. “I was wondering when they’d turn up.”
“You’d better go down and let them in,” Mandy advised him.
“Will, are you there?” a male voice followed, one that always held the same note of haughty conceit.
“Great,” Will complained. “She brought him.”
Will finished dressing and went down the narrow staircase to the front door. The second he opened it, the questions flew at him like spears. He let a man and woman inside, the two of them squeezing in through a gap, and avoided the microphone that was thrust between their heads as they ducked in.
“Do you have any comment to make, Mr. Bainbridge?”
He shut the door, almost catching the person’s arm as it quickly retracted the mic, and it was like closing the airlock on a spacecraft.
Turning to the newcomers, Will used his most ingratiating tone when he said, “Harriet. Marcus. How are you both?”
“Oh, Will,” Harriet gasped, gathering him up in her arms and squeezing tight. “It’s so awfully awfully terrible.”
The two were his cousins: Harriet and Marcus Bainbridge. Their father was the brother of his father, Rupert.
Marcus Bainbridge leaned with his back against a wall, gazing at Will with sad eyes.
“What an absolute shocker, cuz,” he said, swallowing a lump. “Rupert was like a father to me.”
“Me too,” Will retorted with a sly grin.
Marcus pierced his eyes. “Hardly the time to be sarcastic.”
“No,” Will said, shaking himself and becoming serious. “Probably not. When did you arrive?”
“This morning,” Harriet told him. “We tried to find you at your cottage but you were gone. It was then that a neighbor of yours said you might be here.”
“Have you been to the manor yet?”
“Have you?” Marcus asked accusingly.
Will turned to him and met his eyes.
“No,” he said. “I don’t want to go back there yet.”
“It’s terrible what the police left behind,” Harriet complained. “The whole place is a mess.”
“The blood’s still there,” Marcus added.
“They haven’t cleaned it up?” Will asked.
Harriet shook her head sadly.
“The flies have already gotten to it,” Marcus said, “so you should clean it up before they lay their eggs.”
“I can’t,” Will muttered.
“Of course,” Harriet said with a soft look. “Marcus was only playing.”
She gave her brother a look of admonishment.
“Will?”
They all turned their gazes towards the stairs.
Mandy was standing at the top. Dressed in a leather pencil skirt and a gauzy top that showed off her tightly packed bosom.
“Mandy,” Will said as she began descending the steps, “these are my cousins. Marcus and Harriet Bainbridge.”
More knocking interrupted any attempts at more detailed introductions, and the four of them turned to the door as the letterbox flipped open and a set of lips began calling into the hallway.
“Mr. Bainbridge, what do you think of the Bainbridge curse? After all, it was only last year when your uncle topped himself.”
Harriet jumped in her skin, terror attacking her countenance, and Marcus began scowling at the door.
Turning to Will, Harriet said, “We must get away from these terrible people.”
“My car’s in the alley out back,” Mandy suggested.
“Then do lead the way,” Marcus commanded, turning from the door, his face pale with anger.
NINETEEN
LONDON
Like always, Jack had gotten up before the rest of the house and was now sitting at the kitchen table putting his shoes on. Upon hearing Carrie’s bedroom door open above his head, he paused tying his laces and gazed up at the ceiling.
His eyes then followed the light thud of her feet as she crossed the landing to the bathroom and the door slammed shut.
When she emerged, Jack was standing right outside.
“Carrie, please talk to me,” he said pathetically.
Anger swept over her face and her eyes burned into him.
“Why don’t you talk to whoever you’re sleeping with behind Mum’s back,” the teenager put to him before marching across the landing and slamming her bedroom door in his face.
