Jack took himself to his shed and locked the door behind him. This was his space, all his. He had bought the wood with his own money and had built the damned thing himself. No one could take that away from him, but then he had a thought. Where did his money come from? The Ardens. Roy Arden. He was an employee; he always would be. He hadn’t thought it possible to feel any worse today, but now he was positively in the gutter, and he should have been celebrating. Roy Arden, the man he despised, was dead. The police weren’t sure what had happened to Roy, but one thing they were certain of, and that was that the man wasn’t coming back. Roy was dead. Good and proper. Jack couldn’t help but smile at that.
Then Jack recalled what Caroline had said to him just moments ago, and his elation evaporated. They hadn’t talked about it previously. Either because Caroline didn’t want to know or because she hadn’t thought about it, but now it was said, she couldn’t take it back.
‘Whose idea was it?’ she had asked him casually as he mopped up the gravy from their dinner with a piece of bread.
‘What?’ he had asked, even though he knew what she was talking about.
‘The knee rail,’ she said. ‘I can’t get it out of my mind.’
‘Your pa wanted people to see the view,’ Jack said. ‘That old rusted railing wasn’t fit for purpose.’
‘So Daddy asked you to remove it and replace it with that useless short wooden rail?’
‘Just like I told you.’
‘And you’re sure?’ she had said, accusing him. She showed herself to be a true Arden when she did things like this. But what did he expect? She was her pa’s child. ‘You didn’t mention it to him,’ she continued.
Jack had told her the truth. What was the point of lying? He had, of course, suggested the change to her pa. He was, after all, the estate manager, and it was up to him to get the property looking just right. The Ardens hadn’t had a party like that in years. Roy wanted to show off his estate. The old man could see Jack’s reasoning; all it took was one comment and the idea was planted. Roy took ownership of the suggestion as Jack knew he would.
‘And the railing that went up in its place,’ she said. ‘Why was it so low and weak? It was more like a trip hazard.’
The police had asked the same question, which had momentarily raised his blood pressure. But he explained to them just like he had just had to explain to his wife that the local builders’ merchants didn’t have the right timber in stock. The widths were too narrow, which was why the rail wasn’t as sturdy as he would have liked, and he had to do the best he could with the materials he had. How much the police knew about carpentry and whether they would verify his story with the local trade places was another matter, but his wife, he knew, could easily be pacified.
‘Why the sudden questions, love?’ he had asked later when they were washing up. He put his arms around her waist, but she had flinched at his touch, and he had pulled away. ‘What have the police been saying?’ he had asked, but she told him she didn’t know. That the last she had heard was that they were no further forward in establishing whether Roy Arden had fallen or had been pushed.
Jack had once read that it was almost impossible to tell if someone was pushed or had fallen off a cliff because the damage was so great. Roy Arden was left with a ruptured spleen and pancreas, and most of his bones had been broken. At eighty you were frailer than most. It was the risk you took if you loitered at the edge for too long. In the absence of any defensive wounds, there would be nothing for the police to go on.
There would be an inquest, Caroline had told him. Good, he thought. That would put it to rest once and for all. They could bury the man six feet under and they could all move on with their lives. For now the police were looking for a motive, that’s what he had gleaned from his interview with them. They wanted to know who would want to harm the old man.
Who wouldn’t?
There were many people with a motive to kill Roy Arden, but what was the probability of someone acting on it?
Now, in the safety of his shed, he thought about it again. Quite high, he thought. Quite high indeed.