Page 88 of The New House

‘You told me you didn’t know who was in that car,’ I say.

‘I was still figuring things out,’ Harper says. ‘I wasn’t sure if I could trust you.’

‘You realise you’ve just put my family at risk?’ I demand. ‘If she decides to come after you again. She’s not some random stranger. She knows you’re staying with me. She knows where I live.’

‘I find it interesting,’ Harper says, ‘thatyoudon’t have any trouble believing me about Stacey.’

‘I find it’s always easy to believe the worst of people,’ I say dryly.

‘It wasn’t Felix in the car with her,’ Harper says.

‘Then who was it?’

‘I don’t know,’ she says honestly. ‘It all happened in a split second. I was sitting at the lights when I saw the car coming right at me, and I just saw a glimpse of Stacey behind the wheel, and someone next to her – I don’t even know if was a man or a woman, but I know it wasn’t Felix. Too short, wrong profile. Next thing I know I’m waking up in hospital feeling like I’ve got a baby elephant sitting on my chest.’

She follows me as I go back into the kitchen and put a pod of the despised Nantucket blend into the coffee machine. ‘I want to help,’ she says.

‘Help with what?’

‘Whatever you’re planning. You’ve got a plan, right?’

Of course I have a plan.

‘She tried to kill me,’ Harper says. ‘And Tom says she’s lying to the police about Felix’s nosebleed to screw you over. Whatever you think of me, Millie, we’re on the same side. Let me help.’

‘I’m thinking,’ I say tersely.

What threat could Harper pose that would induce Stacey to take such a monumental risk? She couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t be picked up on CCTV, however careful she was. She’d have had to get a car from somewhere – a rental, maybe – because she could hardly use her own. Harper’s ridiculous crusade to get her vlog followers to boycott banks that won’t sign up to her ‘copper bottom’ pledge has nothing to do with Stacey – it’s a meaningless gesture. And Stacey must know Felix isn’t likely to be found by Harper’s ‘Kyper Nation’ or anyone else. So why the need to silence her?

And the questiondu jour: who the hell was with Stacey in that car?

chapter 52

stacey

No one knows where Felix is. He’s been missing for more than four weeks now, and the police have no more idea of his whereabouts than they did at the beginning.

The media think he’s done a runner with the funds he embezzled from Copper Beech. The consensus seems to be Argentina, though Rio and Spain’s costa del crime are popular alternatives. But public interest in the story is already waning, and with it the media’s appetite to pursue it. A middle-aged, middle-class white man having a midlife crisis and going AWOL – well, it’s not very sexy. Stacey’s a journalist. She wouldn’t bother with it either.

She reaches into the shower and turns it on, perching on the side of the bath as she waits for the water to run warm. Everyone on theMorning Express Showhas been tiptoeing around her for weeks now, pulling their mouths into sad little moues of sympathy whenever they catch her eye. She saw the same expression on their faces when she interviewed a woman whose husband caught Covid and ended up in a life-changing coma: part pity, part there-but-for-the-grace-of-God relief. When she watched the playback of the interview afterwards, she saw the same expression on her own face. No one knows how to respond to a woman who’s not widowed, but bereaved all the same.

They all rallied round though when Millie Downton tried to ambush her at the studio last week. As she told the security staff, Millie had already been to her house on numerous occasions, banging on the windows and harassing her. Stacey explained she didn’t want to report the woman to the police: she felt sorry for her because she was clearly in need of some sort of help. So security just had a quiet word, and she’s not heard from Millie since.

Steam billows into the bathroom as Stacey opens the shower door. Felix always prefers cold showers, he finds them bracing, but she likes the water hot enough to almost scald. Hot enough to scour away the conversation she just had.

The police have told her to prepare herself for the worst. Officially, they’re still investigating Felix’s disappearance as a missing persons case, but the fact he hasn’t used any of his credit cards or his phone in a month is ominous, DCI Hollander told her gravely, no doubt about it. They’ve got forensic accountants going through digital records at Copper Beech, but so far they haven’t found any suspicious external transfers connected to her husband. In fact, the only transactions they can find show money comingin, not goingout,the most recent of which was a large deposit from Harper Conway, which is still sitting untouched in a frozen account at Copper Beech. If Felixdidsalt money away to fund his disappearance, he’s covered his tracks exceptionally well.

The police aren’t treating Stacey as a suspect any more: they’re focusing on Millie Downton. They seem to accept Stacey isn’t involved.

Stacey has freely admitted she and Felix were having marital problems – no point lying about it – but as she told the two detectives, they were both still hoping they could work it out. They have a child together, after all. She’d never want any harm to come to Felix, of course, but she’s sounded off about him now and then to her girlfriends, of course she has,I’d be better off without him, that sort of thing, it’s what women say when they’ve had a row, isn’t it, it doesn’t mean she didn’t love him. But now she’s dreadfully afraid Millie might have misconstrued what she said and taken matters into her own hands and done something terrible.Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?Stacey said. (Then she had to explain to DCI Hollander and DS Mehdi it was a quote attributed to King Henry II in 1170 when he sounded off about his aggravating Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, which prompted four knights to travel to Canterbury where they killed Becket in his own cathedral, thinking they were doing the King a favour.)Maybe I said something that made Millie think I wanted something bad to happen to Felix,she told the detectives.I know she had a bit of a crush on me, but I never thought it’d go this far.

The thing is, Stacey said, Millie has a history of domestic abuse, and she can’t help wondering now if she triggered the other woman. Stacey flushed scarlet as she explained she and Felix enjoyed an enthusiastic and vigorous sex life; a bit too vigorous, sometimes. There were … well, there werebruises. Sometimes. A black eye when she fell off the bed and couldn’t stop her fall, because her hands were … God, this was so embarrassing … well,tied together. DCI Hollander got a bit pink around the ears himself at that point.

She turns her face up into the hot spray and closes her eyes as the water sluices over her breasts and shoulders. She doesn’t know what was going on in Millie’s head, what deluded narrative she’s been telling herself, but as she told the two detectives earlier, she feels responsible for not picking up on it before. She was the one who invited Millie to her tennis club, to herhome. If something she said or did has led Millie to hurt Felix—

The police officers rushed to assure her it wasn’t her fault, but, as she told them, if anything’s happened to Felix, she’ll never forgive herself.

She’s not sure why they haven’t arrested Millie, to be honest, given the wealth of evidence they’ve amassed against her. She’s told them Felix has never had a nosebleed, and certainly not when Millie Downton was with them: the woman had Felix’s blood on her shoes and clothes, and she left fingerprints in his blood on the underside of the stair bannister. How can thatnotbe sinister? It’s incredibly unfortunate Stacey had the house professionally cleaned the same week Felix disappeared, as she does twice a year (the cleaners are on an automatic contract: the police checked into that). The forensic team’s UV lights didn’t pick up any traces of blood in the kitchen or anywhere else in the house, nothing to indicate foul play other than those incriminating fingerprints; but then they wouldn’t after the cleaners had been through with their bleach.

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