‘One moment I was walking the dogs… well, I think I was, but that’s it, I don’t really remember.’ He paused, ‘I think I had a bang on the head… Anyway, the last thing I remember is calling the dogs and opening the kitchen door. I meant to take them through the garden to that field with the stream and the willows. I don’t know how far I went. I shouldn’t think far. Anyway, I woke up in Moira’s car in the garage… it’s still there… and it’s damn lucky I woke up at all… the engine was running …’ He stopped for a few moments.
‘It’s funny how the mind works. I knew absolutely at once that I had to switch off the engine. Extraordinary. Like a flash. I was in the back seat, sort of tumbled… toppled over… half lying. I got up and practically fell through between the front seats to reach the key in the ignition, and when the engine stopped I just lay there, you know, thinking that I was bloody uncomfortable but not having any more energy to move.’
‘Did anyone come?’ I said, when he paused.
‘No… I felt better after a while. I stumbled out of the car and was sick.’
‘Did you tell the police?’
‘Sure, I told them.’ His voice sounded weary at the recollection.‘It must have been about five when I set off with the dogs. Maybe seven by the time I called the police. I’d had a couple of stiff drinks by then and stopped shaking. They asked me why I hadn’t called them sooner. Bloody silly. And it was the same lot who came after Moira. They think I did it, you know. Had her killed.’
‘I know.’
‘Did the witches tell you that too?’
‘Joyce did. She said you couldn’t have. She said you might have… er…’ I baulked from repeating my mother’s actual words, which were ‘throttled the little bitch in a rage’, and substituted more moderately, ‘… been capable of killing her yourself, but not of paying someone else to do it.’
He made a satisfied noise but no comment, and I added, ‘That seems to be the family concensus.’
He sighed. ‘It’s not the police concensus. Far from it. I don’t think they believed anyone had tried to kill me. They made a lot of notes and took samples… I ask you… of my vomit, and dusted over Moira’s car for fingerprints, but it was obvious they were choked with doubts. I think they thought I’d been going to commit suicide and thought better of it… or else that I’d staged it in the hope people would believe I couldn’t have killed Moira if someone was trying to kill me …’ He shook his head.‘I’m sorry I told them at all, and that’s why we’re not reporting tonight’s attempt either.’
He had been adamant, in the sales car-park, that we shouldn’t.
‘What about the bump on your head?’ I asked.
‘I had a swelling above my ear. Very tender, but not very big. The word I heard the police use about that was “inconclusive”.’
‘And if you’d died …’ I said thoughtfully.
He nodded, ‘If I’d died, it would have wrapped things up nicely for them. Suicide. Remorse. Implicit admission of guilt.’
I drove carefully towards Cambridge, appalled and also angry. Moira’s death hadn’t touched me in the slightest, but the attacks on my father showed me I’d been wrong. Moira had had a right to live. There should have been rage, too, on her behalf.
‘What happened to the dogs?’ I said.
‘What? Oh, the dogs. They came back… they were whining at the kitchen door. I let them in while I was waiting for the police. They were muddy… heaven knows where they’d been. They were tired anyway. I fed them and they went straight to their baskets and went to sleep.’
‘Pity they couldn’t talk.’
‘What? Yes, I suppose so. Yes.’ He fell into silence, sighing occasionally as I thought over what he’d told me.
‘Who,’ I said eventually,‘knew you were going to Newmarket Sales?’
‘Who?’ He sounded surprised at the question, and then understood it. ‘I don’t know.’ He was puzzled, ‘I’ve no idea. I didn’t know myself until yesterday.’
‘Well, what have you been doing since the police left you last Friday night?’
‘Thinking.’ And the thoughts, it was clear, had been melancholic: the thoughts now saddening his voice.
‘Mm,‘ I said, ‘along the lines of why was Moira killed?’
‘Along those lines.’
I said it plainly.‘To stop her taking half your possessions?’
He said unwillingly,‘Yes.’
‘And the people who had a chief interest in stopping