"That's a bit of an exaggeration, isn't it? You're hardly an inexperienced rider, so you must have been in this situation before." She glanced around the field. "You know you're going to face the sabs at some point, so presumably taking them on is part of the fun."
"That's rubbish," he snapped, reaching down to ease his left stirrup, which had jammed against his heel in the fracas with the saboteur. "You could say the same thing about these blasted hooligans with their horns."
"I do and I will," she said cheerfully. "It's gang fighting. Sharks against Jets. Toffs against proles. From where I'm standing the fox seems fairly irrelevant. He's just an excuse for a rumble."
It wasn't Julian's habit to back away from an argument. "If you print that you'll be laughed out of court," he told her, straightening again and gathering in his reins. "Whatever your views on the fox, at least credit all of us-saboteurs and huntsmen alike-with doing what we do for love of the countryside. It's the wreckers you should be writing about."
"Sure," she agreed disingenuously. "Tell me who they are, and I'll do it."
"Gyppos… travelers… whatever you want to call them," he growled. "Busloads of them arrived in Shenstead Village last night. They muck up the environment and steal off the locals, so why aren't you writing about them, Ms. Fowler? They're the real vermin. Focus on them and you'll be doing everyone a favor."
"Would you set your dogs on them?"
"Damn right I would," he said, wheeling Bouncer away to rejoin the hunt.
Wolfie was crouched in the woodland, watching the people on the lawn. He thought it was two men until one of them laughed and the voice sounded like a woman's. He couldn't hear what they were saying because they were too far away, but they didn't look like murderers. Certainly not the old murderer that Fox had talked about. He could see more of the man in the long brown coat than he could of the person with the hat pulled low, and he thought the man's face was kind. He smiled often and, once or twice, put his hand behind the other's back to steer him in a different direction.
A terrible longing grew in Wolfie's heart to run from hiding and ask this man for help, but he knew it was a bad idea. Strangers turned away whenever he begged for money… and money was a little thing. What would a stranger do if he begged for rescue? Hand him over to the police, he guessed, or take him back to Fox. He turned his frozen face toward the house and marveled again at its size. All the travelers in the world could fit inside it, he thought, so why was a murderer allowed to live there alone?
His sharp eyes caught a movement in the downstairs room at the corner of the house, and, after several seconds of concentrated staring, he made out a figure standing behind the glass. He felt a thrill of terror as a white face turned toward him and sunlight glinted on silver hair. The old man! And he was looking straight at Wolfie! With heart knocking, the child scrambled backward until he was out of sight, then ran like the wind for the safety of the bus.
Mark thrust his hands into his pockets to keep his circulation going. "I can only think it was James's change of mind about involving you that persuaded you to come," he told Nancy, "though I don't understand why."
"It has more to do with the suddenness of his decision," she said, marshaling her thoughts. "His first letter implied he was so desperate to make contact that he was prepared to pay a fortune in compensation just to get a reply. His second letter suggested the exact opposite. Keep away… no one will ever know who you are. My immediate idea was that I'd done the wrong thing by replying. Maybe the plan was to provoke me into suing as a way of draining the family finances away from his son-" she broke off on an upward inflection, making the statement a question.
Mark shook his head. "That wouldn't have been his reason. He's not that devious." Or never used to be, he thought.
"No," she agreed. "If he were, he'd have described himself and his son in very different terms." She paused again, recalling her impressions of the correspondence. "That little fable he sent me was very strange. It effectively said that Leo killed his mother in anger because she refused to go on subsidizing him. Is that true?"
"You mean did Leo kill Ailsa?"
"Yes."
Mark shook his head. "He couldn't have done. He was in London that night. It was a very solid alibi. The police investigated it thoroughly."
"But James doesn't accept it?"
"He did at the time," said Mark uncomfortably, "or at least I thought he did." He paused. "Don't you think you might be reading too much into the fable, Captain Smith? If I remember correctly, James apologized in his second letter for using emotive language. Surely it was symbolic rather than literal. Supposing he'd written 'ranted at' instead of 'devoured'? It would have been a lot less colorful… but far closer to the truth. Leo was prone to shout at his mother, but he didn't kill her. Nobody did. Her heart stopped."
Nancy nodded abstractedly as if she were only half listening. "Did Ailsa refuse to give him money?"
"Insofar as she rewrote her will at the beginning of the year to exclude both her children." He shook his head. "As a matter of fact, I've always regarded that as a reason for Leo not to kill her. Both he and his sister were informed of the changes, so they knew they had nothing to gain by her death… or not the half-million they were hoping for, anyway. They had a better a chance of that if they kept her alive."
She looked toward the sea with a thoughtful frown between her eyes. "This being the 'mending of ways' that James referred to in the fable?"
"Effectively, yes." He took his hands from his pockets to blow on them. "He's already told you they're a disappointment, so I'm not giving anything away by stressing that. Ailsa was always looking for leverage over their behavior, and changing her will was one way to exert pressure for improvement."
"Which is where the search for me came in," Nancy said without hostility. "I was another lever."
"It really wasn't as callous as that," said Mark apologetically. "It was more about finding the next generation. Both Leo and Elizabeth are childless… and that makes you the only genetic link to the future."
She turned to look at him. "I never thought about my genes until you turned up," she said with a small smile. "Now they terrify me. Do the Lockyer-Foxes ever consider anyone but themselves? Are selfishness and greed my only inheritance?"
Mark thought about what was on the tapes in the library. How much worse would she feel if she ever heard them? "You need to speak to James," he said. "I'm just the poor bloody solicitor who takes instruction, though for what it's worth I wouldn't describe either of your grandparents as selfish. I think James was very wrong to write to you-and I told him so-but he was clearly depressed when he did it. It's no excuse, but it might explain some of the apparent confusion."
She held his gaze for a moment. "His fable also suggested that Leo will kill him if he gives any of the money away. Is that true?"
"I don't know," he said honestly. "I read the damn thing for the first time yesterday and I haven't a clue what it's about. James isn't very easy to talk to at the moment, as you probably realize, so I'm not sure myself what's going on inside his head."
She didn't answer immediately, but seemed to be mulling over ideas to see if they were worth voicing. "Just for the sake of argument," she murmured then, "let's say James wrote exactly what he believes: that Leo killed his mother in anger because money was denied him and is threatening his father with a similar fate if he dares give the money away. Why did he back off involving me between his first and second letters? What changed between October and November?"