women picking flowers and men letting them be. It was Lawrence, she thought; women were always picking flowers in his novels, watched by men. “Bavarian Gentians.” What a strange poem.
“We’ve all been frightened at some time or other,” Isabel said. “And I’m no exception.”
Minty dropped the flower, dusting her hands as if to remove its traces. “Of course. Momentarily. It’s different, though, living with fear. All the time.”
“I suppose it is,” said Isabel. Was Minty in that position? It was difficult to imagine this competent, successful woman living with fear; it just seemed somewhat unlikely.
“Fear like that,” said Minty, “is really odd. It’s there with you all the time—you don’t forget it. It’s like … well, I suppose it’s like a thundercloud. It’s the backdrop to everything you do.”
Isabel stopped walking. It was time, she thought, to find out what Minty was driving at. She was frightened— obviously—but why? Threats of legal action? Blackmail? The possibility occurred to Isabel as she looked at the house. It was respectability and success rendered in stone and mortar, but such edifices could so easily be toppled, brought down, by a few words.
“What’s frightening you?” Isabel asked. “Is that what you want to talk about?”
The directness of Isabel’s question seemed to irritate Minty. “I was just trying to explain,” she said. “People don’t necessarily know what it’s like.”
“I can imagine,” said Isabel quickly. “But what is it? What’s making you feel that way?”
“Somebody’s targeting me,” said Minty.
“How?”
“Small things. Or quite big, sometimes. A sudden investigation by the tax authorities. That often means that somebody has given them a tip-off or made an allegation.” She paused, looking sideways at Isabel. “Unjustified, of course. But very annoying—and expensive. Accountants’ fees.”
“But you can’t really tell, surely,” said Isabel. “They do random checks, don’t they?”
Minty ignored this. “Then my PA resigned. I relied on her and she suddenly announced she was leaving. A better offer. I said that we would match whatever they—whoever they were—had offered and add five per cent on top of that. But she wouldn’t even discuss it. I think she was threatened. Simple as that. Scared off.”
Isabel admitted that this was rather strange. But, again, people changed jobs and had their reasons for not explaining why. Privately, the possibility crossed her mind that Minty’s PA disliked her, as one might; Jamie certainly did, and Isabel had in the past.
Minty nodded. “Yes, yes, there are plenty of reasons for getting a new job. But there have been other things— quite a lot of them. The worst was last week. I came back from work in the evening and discovered that somebody had ordered flowers to be delivered to the house.”
It now occurred to Isabel that Minty was not well. Paranoia showed itself in odd ways—she had had an uncle on her father’s side, a retired stockbroker, who had insisted that the postman was hiding his mail, and had eventually attacked and bitten him. The postman had been remarkably understanding and had joked about the frequency with which he and his colleagues had been bitten by dogs, suggesting that to be bitten by householders was really only a small escalation. That attitude—and an understanding procurator fiscal—had avoided an embarrassing prosecution. Uncle Fergus had spent his remaining days in a nursing home, quite content, it seemed, although suspicious to the end that the home’s matron was intercepting his letters. She, though, had been as many matrons used to be, built like a galleon and with attitudes to match. He would never have dared bite her, Isabel’s father had pointed out, and had then added the observation that deterrence and fear were major inhibitors of crime, and that criminologists might care to reflect on that.
“Flowers,” said Isabel quietly.
Minty’s eyes flashed with anger at the recollection. “In the shape of a wreath,” she said.
Isabel was silent.
“A wreath,” Minty said again. “A funeral wreath. And there were other things too. A fire in one of the greenhouses, for example. It was started deliberately. We were away at the time.”
“Who might have done this?” asked Isabel. “Have you any idea?”
The question seemed to distress Minty, and it was a few moments before she answered. “I think I do.”
Isabel waited. Minty was looking away from her, out towards the hills.
“Why don’t you go to the police?” She realised, of course, that this question was seldom helpful. In an ordered, middle-class world there was an assumption that people could go to the police and receive the help and protection that the police are meant to provide. But that was not the world as it really was. Often there was nothing the police could do; often there was nothing that the police wanted to do. Much of the time, people simply had to look after themselves.
Minty sniffed. “What help could they offer? None. And they’d treat it as some sort of neighbourhood dispute, you know. They don’t like to get involved in people’s private arguments.”
Isabel knew that this was true. The police liked to talk of a light touch, but that light touch could mean inaction.
She realised that Minty had not revealed the precise nature of her suspicions. So she asked again, “Who is it?”
Minty turned and looked directly at Isabel. When she spoke, her voice was lowered. “I haven’t talked to anybody about this. And I don’t know why I’m telling you.” She stopped herself. “Well, I do, I suppose. There’s something about you … Well, I trust you. You can keep things to yourself, can’t you?”
Isabel nodded. “I hope so.”
Minty added a qualification. “Of course I assume that you’ll tell Jamie. That’s all right. But otherwise …”
“I won’t. I just won’t.”
