Free The Devil`s Feather by Minette Walters

so much of a single artist’s work simply to hang it in a rented house.
    When I asked Jess about it, her mouth twisted into a cynical smile. “I expect they’re only there to hide the damp.”
    “But who’s Nathaniel Harrison? How come Lily bought so much of his work?”
    “She didn’t. Madeleine must have imported them after she stripped the house of her mother’s paintings. It would have been cheaper than having the house redecorated.”
    “How did Madeleine get them?”
    “The way she gets everything,” she said caustically. “Sex.”

 

    Extracts from notes, filed as “CB16–19/05/04”

    …I can’t separate specific events anymore. I’m not sure if I’ve shut my memory down or if I was too disorientated for it to function properly. Everything’s fused into time inside the cage and time out of it. I described the cage to Dan and the police, and I said it was in a cellar, but the rest…

     

    …The police thought I was being deliberately evasive when I said I couldn’t tell them anything else. But it was the truth. When Dan asked me what happened, I couldn’t tell him either. It wouldn’t have helped, anyway. The police weren’t going to arrest a man on the evidence of smell. What sort of identification is that?

     

    …The artist Paul Gauguin once said, “Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.” I dream of revenge. All the time.

 

    7

    T HE ONLY INFORMATION Jess gave me about the Aga was that the oil tank was outside and needed to be kept at least a quarter full. She took me to the back door and pointed to a wooden lean-to at the side of the garage. “The tank’s in there and there’s a glass gauge that shows the level. There’s also a valve that controls the flow, but I’ve turned it on and you shouldn’t need to touch it. If you allow the oil to drop too low, you could run into trouble. The supplier’s phone number is stuck to the side of the tank but if they’re busy they may not come for a few days. It’s better to order a refill early rather than later.”
    “How full is it at the moment?”
    “Up to the top. It should last a good three to four months.”
    “Do I have to close the valve if I want to turn off the Aga?”
    “You’ll have cold baths if you do,” she warned. “There’s no immersion heater in this place. It means the kitchen’s fairly unbearable in the summer but the Aga’s the only way to heat the water. The house is pretty antiquated. There’s no central heating and no boiler, and if you’re cold at night you have to light a fire.” She indicated a wood store to the left of the outhouse. “You’ll find the number for the log supplier on the tank under the oil company.”
    I think Jess was disappointed that I took all this in my stride, but it wasn’t so different from the way I’d grown up in Zimbabwe. Wood was our primary fuel rather than oil, but we didn’t have central heating, and hot water had been at a premium until a day’s sunshine had heated the tank on the roof. Our cook, Gamada, had coaxed wonderful meals out of the wood-burning stove, and, having learnt from her, I’d never been comfortable with electric ovens that offered more touch controls than the flight deck of the Concorde.
    I was a great deal less complacent about the single telephone point in the kitchen. “That can’t be right,” I said when Jess showed me the wall-mounted contraption beside the fridge. “There must be phones somewhere else. What happens if I’m at the other end of the house and need to call someone?”
    “It’s cordless. You carry it with you.”
    “Won’t the battery run down?”
    “Not if you hook it up at the end of the day and recharge it overnight.”
    “I can’t sleep without a phone beside my bed.”
    She shrugged. “Then you’ll have to buy an extension cable,” she told me. “There are places in Dorchester that sell them, but you’ll need several if you want to operate a phone upstairs. I think thirty metres is the