A hammer throbbed in his temple and he reached out a hand to steady himself against the old man's chair as sweat poured out of him. A sickness of the mind, the bitch had called it, but maybe the kid was right. Maybe the alopecia and the shakes had a physical cause. Whatever it was, it was getting worse. He gripped the leather chair, waiting for the faintness to pass. He was afraid of no man, but fear of cancer writhed like a snake through his gut.
Dick Weldon was in no mood to protect his wife. Plied with wine by his son-something he rarely drank-his belligerence had come to the fore, particularly after Belinda relayed the bullet points of her telephone conversation with Prue while Jack cooked lunch.
"I'm sorry, Dick," she told him in genuine apology. "I shouldn't have lost my rag, but it drives me mad when she accuses me of keeping Jack away from her. He's the one who doesn't want to see her. All I ever do is try to keep the peace… not very successfully." She sighed. "Look, I know this isn't something you want to hear, but the honest-to-God truth is that Prue and I loathe each other. It's a personality clash in spades. I can't stand her Lady-Muck routine, and she can't stand my everyone's-equal attitude. She wanted a daughter-in-law she could be proud of… not a country bumpkin who can't even make babies."
Dick saw the glint of tears along her lashes and his anger with his wife intensified. "It's only a matter of time," he said gruffly, taking Belinda's hand in both of his and patting it clumsily. "I had a couple of cows once when I was still doing the dairy lark. They took an age to do the business but they got there in the end. Told the vet he wasn't shoving the gizmo up far enough… worked a treat when he went in up to his elbow."
Belinda gave a half-laugh, half-sob. "Maybe that's where we're going wrong. Maybe Jack's been using the wrong gizmo."
He gave a grunt of amusement. "I always said the bull would have done it better. Nature has a way of getting things right… it's the shortcuts that cause the problems." He pulled her into a hug. "If it's worth anything, pet, no one's prouder of you than I am. You've made more of our lad than we ever managed. I'd trust him with my life these days… and that's something I never thought I'd say. Did he tell you he burned the barn down once because he took his friends in there for a smoke? I marched him up to the nick and made them give him a caution." He chuckled. "It didn't do much good but it made me feel better. Trust me, Lindy, he's come a long way since he married you. I wouldn't swap you for the world."
She wept her heart out for half an hour and by the time Julian called, several glasses later, Dick was in no mood to keep dirty laundry under wraps. "Don't believe anything Ellie tells you," he said drunkenly. "She's even more of an idiot than Prue is. Thick as two short planks, the pair of them, and vicious with it. I don't know why I married mine… skinny little thing with no tits thirty years ago… fat as a bloody carthorse now. Never liked her. Nag… nag… nag. That's all she knows. I'll tell you this for nothing… if she thinks I'm paying the damn legal bills when she's done for slander and malicious phone calls then she's got another think coming. She can pay for them herself out of the divorce settlement." There was a small hiatus as he knocked over his glass. "If you've any sense you'll tell that bit of scrag-end you married the same bloody thing. According to Prue, she's been smoking James out."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"I'm buggered if I know," said Dick with unconscious humor, "but I bet James didn't enjoy it."
In the library, Fox's curiosity led him to press play on the tape recorder. A woman's voice came to life in the amplifier. He recognized it immediately as Eleanor Bartlett's. High pitched. Strident. Telltale vowels, exaggerated by electronics, which suggested a different background from the one she was claiming.
"…I've met your daughter… seen for myself what your abuse has done to her. You disgusting man. I suppose you thought you'd got away with it… that no one would ever know because Elizabeth kept the secret for so long… Who would believe her, anyway? Was that your thinking? Well, they did, didn't they…?Poor Ailsa. What a shock it must have been to find out that she wasn't your only victim… no wonder she called you mad… I hope you're frightened now. Who's going to believe you didn't kill her when the truth comes out? It can all be proved through the child… Is that why you demanded Elizabeth be aborted? Is that why you were so angry when the doctor said it was too late? It all made sense to Ailsa when she remembered the rows… how she must have hated you…"
Fox let the tape run while he searched the desk drawers. Eleanor's message clicked to one of Darth Vader's, followed by another. He didn't bother to rewind after he pressed stop. James had stopped listening when he took to guarding the terrace with his shotgun, and it was unlikely Mark Ankerton would notice the difference between one Darth Vader monologue and another. In a detached way, Fox recognized that the most powerful impact came, not from the endless repetition of fact, but from the five-second silences before Darth Vader announced himself. It was a waiting game that played on the listener's nerves…
And Fox, who had seen the old man's haggard face and trembling hands too often at the window, knew the game was working.
Julian's approach to his wife was rather more subtle than Dick's had been to Prue, but he had an advantage because of Eleanor's decision not to confront him about his infidelity. He recognized that Eleanor's tactics were to bury her head in the sand and hope the problem would go away. It surprised him-Eleanor's nature was too aggressive to take a backseat-but his conversation with Dick suggested a reason. Eleanor couldn't afford to alienate her husband if James's solicitor made good his threat to sue. Eleanor understood the value of money, even if she didn't understand anything else.
The one theory that never occurred to him was that she feared loneliness. To his logical mind, a woman who was vulnerable would have reined in her determination to have her own way. But even if he'd guessed the truth, it wouldn't have made any difference. He wasn't a man who ever acted out of sympathy. He didn't expect it for himself, so why should others expect it from him? In any case, he was buggered if he'd pay to keep a wife who tired him out of the courts.
"I've just been talking to Dick," he told Eleanor, returning to the kitchen and picking up the whisky bottle to examine the level inside. "You're going at this a bit strong, aren't you?"
She turned her back on him to look in the fridge. "Only a couple. I'm starving. I waited on lunch until you came home."
"You don't usually. Usually I get my own. What's different about today?"
She kept her back to him by taking a bowl of yesterday's sprouts off a shelf and carrying it to the cooker. "Nothing," she said with a forced laugh. "Can you stand sprouts again or shall we have peas?"
"Peas," he said maliciously, helping himself to another glass and topping it up with water from the tap. "Have you heard what that idiot Prue Weldon's been doing?"
Eleanor didn't answer.
"Only making dirty phone calls to James Lockyer-Fox," he went on, dropping onto a chair and staring at her unresponsive back. "The heavy-breathing variety, apparently. Doesn't say anything… just puffs and pants at the other end. It's pathetic, isn't it? Something to do with the menopause, presumably." He chuckled, knowing the menopause was Eleanor's worst fear. He treated his own midlife crisis with young blondes. "Like Dick says, she's fat as a carthorse so he's not interested anymore. I mean, who would be? He's talking about divorce… says he's damned if he'll support her if she ends up in court."