Page 19 of New Beginnings At Pencarrow Bay
‘I don’t know. She seems to think he wants her to believe she’s losing her mind.’
‘Lindy said that?’
‘Not in so many words. But last time we met she said,He’s making me feel weak and confused, so I’ll be more amenable.When I asked her what exactly she meant by that, she wouldn’t say. I can only assume she meant “amenable” to what Felix wants… Money, perhaps?’
‘This sounds crazy,’ Peggy said, after a moment. ‘How could you make someone like Lindy seem demented? She’s sharp as a tack.’ She shook her head, her irritation with the woman forgotten. ‘I’m really shocked, though.Felix?Would he manipulate his own mother-in-law like that? I can’t imagine it. He seems so nice.’
‘I agree. But she’s genuinely upset about it, Pegs. Vulnerable in a way I’ve never seen Lindy before. She’s normally so upbeat and confident.’ He sighed. ‘Whatever’s going on down there, it’s obviously really troubling her.’
Peggy frowned when he’d finished. ‘How horrible for her.’ She thought for a minute. ‘Where’s Kim in all this?’
Ted let out a slow stream of breath. ‘You’ve said yourself on a number of occasions that she seems very unwell, so no help there. She’s on antidepressants, Lindy says, as we suspected. But they don’t appear to be working.’
There was a long silence while Peggy tried to process what Ted had told her.
‘So, the day I met Quentin, she was talking to you about this on the bench behind the castle? I wish you’d told me,’ she said. ‘You know how my crazy brain works. I began to think there was something dodgy going on between you two, especially when I heard you’d been in the pub together… then the early morning phone call. At least I know now why you’ve been so strange recently.’
Ted looked contrite. ‘I’m so sorry, Pegs. She made me vow and swear not to say anything to you. I should never have agreed. But she pointed out it’s a very small community we live in, and that she was employing you. Said it would be really awkward, you coming to the house and knowing this was going on. She implied she couldn’t face that.’ He sighed. ‘So I promised… I know it was wrong.’
Peggy accepted his explanation. She was too intrigued– and puzzled– by what he was telling her to dwell on his transgression. ‘So what do you say, when she tells you all this? How does she think you can help her?’
‘I’m not sure. I never know quite what to say. She’s sort of jumpy and tearful, says she’s constantly on edge, not sleeping… feels Felix is constantly watching her. She worries about what he might do next.’
Frowning, Peggy asked, ‘What does she think he’ll do?’
Ted sighed. ‘Don’t know. But last time we met, she said she was feeling so ground down by it all, she was scared she actuallymightbegin to lose it, Felix was making her feel so uncertain.’
Peggy considered what he was saying. She hadn’t noticed any sign of this in Lindy, from the times she’d seen her.Although that day when she’d been arguing with Felix… ‘So this is from Felix hiding the phone and stuff? Or is there worse?’ She gave a short laugh. ‘Not that I’d appreciate someone hiding things to make me feel loopy, of course. I just wondered if there was anything more sinister.’
Ted nodded. ‘Sort of. Yesterday she told me that Felix had started talking casually about power-of-attorney the other night. Asked her what she knew about it– for his friend whose mother isn’t well,he said. But Lindy thought he was warning her somehow.’
‘Goodness, it’s hard to know what to suggest. I mean, could she talk to Dr Jenks? Lindy must know him well from when Gordon was ill. And everyone says he has a very sympathetic ear.’
Ted pursed his lips. ‘I suggested that, even though I’m not a big fan of the medical profession, as you know. She flatly refused even to consider it. Said why should she go to the doctor when she knows nothing’s wrong with her. Plus she’s convinced it would be round the village that she’s losing it within ten minutes… She claims Carol, the surgery receptionist, gossips for Britain.’
Peggy frowned. ‘But that’s not logical, is it? Wouldn’t Dr Jenks do tests or something, confirm therewasn’tanything wrong with her?’
Ted’s face took on a frustrated expression. ‘I know.’ He took a breath. ‘She desperately needs support, Peggy. I feel, now she’s opened up to me, I can’t let her down. Even if all I do is listen.’
Seeing the pain in his eyes– it almost felt like panic– Peggy sensed there was more weight to his anguish than seemed appropriate. ‘I’m still finding it hard to imagineFelix doing any of this to her. I know they have their differences, but he doesn’t seem the sort of man who’d do such an awful thing to his mother-in-law. I like him. You like him, too.’
Ted shrugged. ‘I do. But maybe he’s not quite who he seems. Lindy’s told me stuff about the debacle that lost him his job and his money that casts a very different light.’
‘Go on.’ It had always been something she and Ted had speculated about in the past.
‘I don’t have all the details– she always seems to pitch up when the van’s busy– but this is the gist. Apparently he and another guy were heavily involved in stock manipulation.’
‘What does that actually mean?’ Peggy had heard the term, but her brain instantly fogged over when faced with anything to do with financial markets.
Ted, knowing this about her, gave a brief smile, the first of the evening. Then he became serious again. ‘In Felix’s case it meant he and his boss managed artificially to deflate the stock price of a number of large-capital companies. It’s quite hard to do, but they were very good at it, according to Lindy.’
‘But isn’t that illegal? Why didn’t he go to jail?’ She still didn’t know how anyone would go about deflating a stock price or what exactly would happen if they did, but she wasn’t going to ask. She knew she wouldn’t understand the answer for more than a passing second and didn’t want to put Ted to the trouble of explaining the workings of the markets over and over, in more and more simplistic terms, until they fell into an exhausted heap.
‘Not sure,’ Ted was saying. ‘Something about strings being pulled, Felix knowing the right people. He claimedthat his boss had groomed him, bullied him into collaborating… Can’t remember if his boss went to jail. I know it’s a hard crime to detect and prove. The bank kept it all under wraps, Lindy said, to avoid a public scandal. But they still took a dim view of Felix’s behaviour– quite rightly.’
There was silence in the warm kitchen as the sunlight moved away and began to fade to a rosy dusk across the bay, leaving the room in shadow. Peggy stared out of the window. Then she turned back to Ted. ‘I just wonder… What if Felix really has seen something in Lindy? We haven’t noticed anything odd, but maybe at home, when her guard’s down, she does– unconsciously– do sort of concerning things.’ She paused. ‘His actions seem so strange, otherwise. It wouldn’t be easy to get his hands on her money and her house, anyway, if you’re right and that’s his aim. Not without a proper medical diagnosis of dementia or Felix obtaining power-of-attorney… which surely would be Kim, as her next-of-kin. And Lindy would have to agree to it.’
Ted stared at her, frowned. ‘Are you saying you think she might genuinely be having symptoms? That you believe Felix?’
