At the top of the farm, he found a path that led up over the hill, away from the estuary. Helen hadn’t returned from going to meet her father so he had gone for a walk alone.
The earth was red and wet. It clung to his boots and doubled their weight. There were still blackberries in the hedgerows but when he reached out, plucked a fat one and put it in his mouth, it was bitter so he spat it out.
It felt good to stretch his legs, though. The slope steepened and the path became slippery.
At the top of the next ridge he hoisted himself up to sit on a gate to get his breath back and looked down towards the farm. He could see the path they must have walked along last night, on their way back from dinner, and the flat dark water of the estuary. The cows were lined up across the green of the field. He could now see Helen behind them, shooing the last ones into the yard for milking, her father lagging behind them.
He looked back up the path, wondering if he should continue. That was when he noticed the rabbit, just a few yards away, squatting down in a clump of long grass at the side of the hedge.
He sat still, not wanting to disturb the animal, wondering how long it would be before it saw him, or smelled him. It didn’t move. He remembered how his father talked of snaring rabbits as a child in Ireland. Breen could not remember the details, only that you had to set the trap exactly right. In the couple of years before he had stopped making much sense, he had talked a lot about his childhood in Ireland.
Breen realized his behind was aching from sitting so still, and stepped down. Undisturbed by the sudden noise, the rabbit still sat there motionless. Breen tiptoed closer until he was standing right next to it, close enough to see the thick discharge from its closed, reddened eyes and its slow, labored breathing. The creature didn’t seem to see or hear him; it just sat, ears pinned back against its body, waiting to die.
“You should have taken a rock and killed it,” said Helen, sitting in the kitchen, a cup of tea in her hand. “It would have been a kindness.”
“Myxomatosis,” growled her father. “Keeps them down. Best thing that happened round here.”
“Dad,” chided Helen.
When he’d gone back out to the yard, she said, “When we were little girls the fields around here used to be full of rabbits like that…dying. It was horrible. Hundreds of them, there were. Alex sneaked one up to her bedroom once and tried to care for it under her bed, but it died, of course. Dad said she could have caught something from it.”
The solicitor turned out to be an old friend of Julia Sullivan’s. His office was in Exeter in a Georgian house on the edge of a small green, with a brass plate on the door worn from polishing, and a dark entrance hall lined with oil paintings.
They had borrowed the Tozers’ rusting Morris Oxford to drive up there. The leather seats were dry and cracked. It smelled of sheepdogs and there were stacks of yellow receipts stuffed into the glovebox. Smoke poured from its exhaust.
“I won’t shed a tear,” said the solicitor. “I always thought he was a blackguard.”
His name was Percy Manville and he must have been at least sixty years old. He sounded out every consonant. “The Metropolitan Police? How very grand,” he said.
He was a neat, thin man with a trimmed moustache who wore a gray suit and waistcoat with a gold watch chain. “Mallory Sullivan was a spendthrift who squandered all of Julia’s inheritance on cars, gambling and idiotic investments.”
An elderly woman in pearls and twinset had placed a teapot with three china cups and saucers on Manville’s desk. “Will you pour, or shall I?” he asked Tozer.
“Oh no. You go ahead,” said Tozer.
“Julia Sullivan, on the other hand, is the love of my life. Always was. Me and half of the county. I was her father’s solicitor. Lovely man. Very good bridge player. Dead now, of course. Aneurism on the golf course. Lucky fellow. Best way to go. Sugar?”
“Loads, please,” said Tozer.
“Good girl. I can’t play golf anymore, unfortunately. Buggered up my back. Agony.”
He poured the tea into the delicate china cups and handed them around.
“Spendthrift, you say?” said Breen. “They were heavily overdrawn at the bank.”
Manville sat back down in a leather-studded chair and rocked it back and forwards.
“Let me tell you something in absolute confidence,” he said, like a man who enjoyed sharing others’ secrets. “In the summer he marched in and asked me for the deeds for Fonthill. ‘What for?’ says I. Of course, I knew. He was planning to mortgage the place to raise some money. So I told him the deeds were in both of their names and I couldn’t just hand them over without Julia’s permission. I’d made sure of that when they bought that stupid house. With her money, I might add. Should have seen the look on his fat face. A delight.”
“Did she give permission?”
“I doubt he even told her, frankly. He always did things behind her back. He was terrified that he’d disappoint her.” He picked up the small teacup and lifted it, little finger crooked.
“What did he want the money for?”
“Oh, it’s been a long, steady slide. He owes money left, right and center. I saw him in town the other day. Brand-new car. Some idiot had lent him some more, I expect. Well, they won’t be getting it back now, will they? I shouldn’t laugh. Poor Julia. It makes me sad to think of it. So is it true she shot him, then?”
“We don’t know.”
“Awful, really. Can’t say I blame her. Still, it’ll be hard on her, I suppose.”
“Why have you got all those handcuffs?” said Tozer, pointing to the wall.
There was a mahogany wall cabinet mounted on the wall. In it were about a dozen pairs of handcuffs, mounted in four rows of three, some brass, some iron, some chrome, all different shapes and sizes, each with a delicate label beneath them.
“I’m a collector, my dear,” said Manville.
“Of handcuffs?”
“He told us he was in London on business a few days before his daughter was killed,” said Breen. “Do you have any idea what that would have been about?”
“No, no idea at all, I’m afraid. Are you interested in handcuffs, my dear?”
“Only professionally.”
“I have several from the 1800s. All in working order. You can try them out if you like.”
“No thank you, sir,” said Tozer.
Manville smiled. “They’re wasted up there in the cabinet. They’d look lovely on you, I’m sure.”
“No, really, I’m fine, thank you.”
While they were talking, Breen had taken out the photographs of Morwenna standing in her tree house. He pushed them across the table towards Manville.
“Yes. There she is. Poor Morwenna too. An unfortunate girl. Her father’s looks instead of her mother’s. And his temper too. And dead now.”
“Do you recognize where that photo was taken?”
“That would be The Last Resort.”
“What?”
“That’s what Julia called it,” said the solicitor. “The Last Resort. It was just a glorified summerhouse, really. Beautiful spot up on Dartmoor. It was a kind of artistic commune. Wild parties. Orgies, I expect. She holed up in there with all these bohemians and beat poets. I visited her there sometimes. She was very refreshing, a very poetic person, if you understand me. And then that bore Sullivan came along and elbowed in and the moment they were married he insisted they move into somewhere grander off in Cornwall. He was an arse. He never understood her.”
“She sold it?”
“No, no. She refused. Good for her. But she had to rent it out because they needed the money.”
Afterwards in the car, Tozer said, “What a sicko. All those handcuffs. What do you think he does with them?”
“He just collects them, I suppose.”
“He’s kinky, if you ask me,” she said.
Compared with Cornwall, Devon seemed almost comically green. The lumpy hills and neatly trimmed hedgerows. The prettiness left him ill at ease.