Fox Evil (2 page)

She squinted up at him. "What the hell are you talking about?"

His teeth flashed in a brief grin. "Winning the jackpot," he said.

LOWER CROFT, COOMB FARM,

HEREFORDSHIRE-28 AUGUST 2001

Unusually for twenty-eight years ago, Nancy Smith had been delivered in her mother's bedroom, but not because her mother had avant-garde views on a woman's right to home birthing. A wild and disturbed teenager, Elizabeth Lockyer-Fox had starved herself for the first six months of her pregnancy and, when that failed to kill the incubus inside her, ran away from boarding school and demanded her mother rescue her from it. Who would marry her if she was saddled with a child?

The question seemed relevant at the time-Elizabeth was just seventeen-and her family closed ranks to protect her reputation. The Lockyer-Foxes were an old military family with distinguished war service from the Crimea to the standoff in Korea on the 38th parallel. With abortion out of the question because Elizabeth had left it too late, adoption was the only option if the stigmas of single motherhood and illegitimacy were to be avoided. Naively perhaps, and even in 1973 with the women's movement well under way, a "good" marriage was the Lockyer-Foxes' only solution to their daughter's uncontrollable behavior. Once settled down, they hoped, she would learn responsibility.

The agreed story was that Elizabeth was suffering from glandular fever, and there was muted sympathy among her parents' friends and acquaintances-none of whom had much affection for the Lockyer-Fox children-when it became clear that the fever was debilitating and contagious enough to keep her quarantined for three months. For the rest, the tenant farmers and workers on the Lockyer-Fox estate, Elizabeth remained her usual wild self, slipping her mother's leash at night to drink and shag herself stupid, unrepentant about the damage it might do to her fetus. If it wasn't going to be hers, why should she care? All she wanted was rid of it, and the rougher the sex the more likely that was.

The doctor and midwife kept their mouths shut, and a surprisingly healthy child emerged on the due date. At the end of the experience, interestingly pale and frail, Elizabeth was sent to a finishing school in London from where she met and married a baronet's son who found her fragility and ready tears endearing.

As for Nancy, her stay in Shenstead Manor had been of short duration. Within hours of her birth she had been processed through an adoption agency to a childless couple on a Herefordshire farm where her origins were neither known nor relevant. The Smiths were kindly people who adored the child that had been given to them and made no secret of her adoption, always attributing her finer qualities-principally the cleverness that took her to Oxford-to her natural parents.

Nancy, by contrast, attributed everything to her only-child status, her parents' generous nurturing, their insistence on a good education, and their untiring support of all her ambitions. She rarely thought about her biological inheritance. Confident in the love of two good people, Nancy could see no point in fantasizing about the woman who had abandoned her. Whoever she was, her story had been told a thousand times before and would be told a thousand times again. Single woman. Accidental pregnancy. Unwanted baby. The mother had no place in her daughter's story…

…or wouldn't have done but for a persistent solicitor who traced Nancy through the agency's records to the Smith home in Hereford. After several unanswered letters, he came knocking on the farmhouse door, and by a rare stroke of fate found Nancy home on leave.

It was her mother who persuaded her to speak to him. She found her daughter in the stables where Nancy was brushing the mud of a hard ride from Red Dragon's flanks. The horse's reaction to a solicitor on the premises-a scornful snort-so closely mimicked Nancy's that she gave his muzzle an approving kiss. There's sense for you, she told Mary. Red could smell the devil from a thousand paces. So? Had Mr. Ankerton said what he wanted or was he still hiding behind innuendo?

His letters had been masterpieces of legal sleight of hand. A surface read seemed to suggest a legacy-
"Nancy Smith, born 23.05.73… something to your advantage…"
A between-the-lines read-
"instructed by the Lockyer-Fox family… relative issues… please confirm date of birth…"
-suggested a cautious approach by her natural mother, which was outside the rules governing adoption. Nancy had wanted none of it-
"I'm a Smith"
-but her adoptive mother had urged her to be kind.

Mary Smith couldn't bear to think of anyone being rebuffed, particularly not a woman who had never known her child. She gave you life, she said, as if that were reason enough to embark on a relationship with a total stranger. Nancy, who had a strong streak of realism in her nature, wanted to warn Mary against opening a can of worms, but as usual she couldn't bring herself to go against her softhearted mother's wishes. Mary's greatest talent was to bring out the best in people, because her refusal to see flaws meant they didn't exist-in her eyes at least-but it laid her open to a legion of disappointments.

Nancy feared this would be another. Cynically, she could imagine only two ways this "reconciliation" could go, which was why she had spurned the solicitor's letters. Either she would get on with her biological mother or she wouldn't, and the only thing on offer in both scenarios was a guilt trip. It was her view that there was room for only one mother in a person's life, and it was an unnecessary complication to add the emotional baggage of a second. Mary, who insisted on putting herself in the other woman's shoes, couldn't see the dilemma. No one's asking you to make a choice, she argued, any more than they ask you to choose between me and your father. We all love many people in our lives. Why should this be different?

It was a question that could only be answered afterward, thought Nancy, and by then it would be too late. Once contact was made, it couldn't be unmade. Part of her wondered if Mary was motivated by pride. Did she want to show off to this unknown woman? And if she did, was that so wrong? Nancy wasn't immune to the sense of satisfaction it would give.
Look at me. I'm the child you didn't want. This is what I've made of myself with no help from you.
She might have resisted more firmly had her father been there to support her. He understood the dynamics of jealousy better than his wife, having grown up between a warring mother and stepmother, but it was August, he was harvesting, and in his absence she gave in. She told herself it was no big deal. Nothing in life was ever as bad as imagination painted it.

Mark Ankerton, who had been shut into a sitting room off the hall, was beginning to feel extremely uncomfortable. The Smith surname, coupled with the address-Lower Croft, Coomb Farm-had led him to assume that the family were farm laborers who lived in a tied cottage. Now, in this room of books and worn leather furniture, he was far from confident that the weight he'd given in his letters to the Lockyer-Fox connection would cut much ice with the adopted daughter.

A nineteenth-century map on the wall above the fireplace showed Lower Croft and Coomb Croft as two distinct entities, while a more recent map next to it showed the two within a single boundary, renamed Coomb Farm. As Coomb Croft farmhouse fronted a main road, it was obvious that the family would have chosen the more secluded Lower Croft as their residence, and Mark cursed himself for jumping to easy conclusions. The world had moved on. He should have known better than to dismiss a couple called John and Mary Smith as laborers.

His eye was constantly drawn to the mantelpiece, where a photograph of a laughing young woman in gown and mortarboard with "St. Hilda's, Oxford, 1995" inscribed at the bottom held pride of place. It had to be the daughter, he thought. The age was right, even if she bore no resemblance to her foolish, doll-like mother. The whole thing was a nightmare. He had pictured the girl as easy meat-a coarser, ill-educated version of Elizabeth-instead he was faced with an Oxford graduate from a family probably as well-to-do as the one he was representing.

He rose from the armchair when the door opened and strode forward to grip Nancy's hand hi a forceful clasp. "Thank you for seeing me, Miss Smith. My name's Mark Ankerton and I represent the Lockyer-Fox family. I realize this is a terrible intrusion, but my client has put considerable pressure on me to find you."

He was in his early thirties, tall and dark, and much as Nancy had imagined from the tone of his letters: arrogant, pushy, and with a veneer of professional charm. It was a type she recognized and dealt with daily in her job. If he couldn't persuade her by pleasantry, then he'd resort to bullying. He was certainly a successful lawyer. If his suit had cost less than a thousand pounds then he'd found himself a bargain, but she was amused to see mud on his shoes and trouser cuffs where he'd picked his way around the slurry in the farmyard.

She, too, was tall and more athletic-looking than her photograph suggested, with cropped black hair and brown eyes. In the flesh, dressed in loose-fitting sweatshirt and jeans, she was so different from her blond, blue-eyed mother that Mark wondered if there'd been an error in the agency's records, until she gave a slight smile and gestured to him to sit down again. The smile, a brief courtesy that didn't reach her eyes, was so precise an imitation of James Lockyer-Fox's that it was startling.

"Good lord!" he said.

She stared at him with a small frown before lowering herself into the other chair. "It's
Captain
Smith," she corrected mildly. "I'm an officer in the Royal Engineers."

Mark couldn't help himself. "Good lord!" he said again.

She ignored him. "You were lucky to find me at home. I'm only here because I'm on two weeks' leave from Kosovo, otherwise I'd be at my base." She watched his mouth start to open. "Please don't say 'good lord' again," she said. "You're making me feel like a performing monkey."

God! She was like James.
"I'm sorry."

She nodded. "What do you want from me, Mr. Ankerton?"

The question was too blunt and he faltered. "Have you received my letters?"

"Yes."

"Then you know I'm representing the Lock-"

"So you keep saying," she broke in impatiently. "Are they famous? Am I supposed to know who they are?"

"They come from Dorset."

"Really!"
She gave an amused laugh. "Then you're looking at the wrong Nancy Smith, Mr. Ankerton. I don't know Dorset. Off the top of my head, I can't think of anyone I've ever met who
lives
in Dorset. I
certainly
have no acquaintance with a Lockyer-Fox family… from Dorset or anywhere else."

He leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers in front of his mouth. "Elizabeth Lockyer-Fox is your natural mother."

If he'd hoped to surprise her, he was disappointed. He might as well have named royalty as her mother for all the emotion she showed.

"Then what you're doing is illegal," she said calmly. "The rules on adopted children are very precise. A natural parent can publicize his or her willingness for contact, but the child isn't obliged to respond. The fact that I didn't answer your letters was the clearest indication I could give that I have no interest in meeting your client."

She spoke with the soft lilt of her Herefordshire parents, but her manner was as forceful as Mark's and it put him at a disadvantage. He had hoped to switch tack and play on her sympathies but her lack of expression suggested she didn't have any. He could hardly tell her the truth. It would only make her angrier to hear that he had done his damnedest to prevent this wild goose chase. No one knew where the child was or how she'd been brought up and Mark had advised strongly against laying the family open to worse problems by courting a common little golddigger.

("Could it be any worse? " had been James's dry response.)

Nancy ratcheted up his discomfort by glancing pointedly at her watch. "I don't have all day, Mr. Ankerton. I return to my unit on Friday, and I'd like to make the most of the time I have left. As I have never registered an interest in meeting either of my biological parents, could you explain what you're doing here?"

"I wasn't sure if you'd received my letters."

"Then you should have checked with the post office. They were all sent by registered delivery. Two of them even followed me out to Kosovo, courtesy of my mother who signed for them."

"I hoped you'd acknowledge receipt on the prepaid cards I enclosed. As you never did, I assumed they hadn't found you."

She shook her head.
Lying bastard!
"If that's as honest as you can be, then we might as well call a halt now. There's no obligation on anyone to answer unsolicited mail. The fact that you registered delivery-" she stared him down-"and I didn't answer, was proof enough that I didn't want correspondence with you."

"I'm sorry," he said again, "but the only details I had were the name and address that were recorded at the time of your adoption. For all I knew, you and your family had moved… perhaps the adoption hadn't worked out… perhaps you'd changed your name. In any of those circumstances, my letters wouldn't have reached you. Of course I could have sent a private detective to ask questions of your neighbors, but I felt that would be more intrusive than coming myself."

He was too glib with his excuses and reminded her of a boyfriend who stood her up twice and then got the elbow.
It wasn't his fault… he had a responsible job… things came up…
But Nancy hadn't cared enough to believe him. "What could be more intrusive than an unknown woman claiming title to me?"

"It's not a question of claiming title."

"Then why did you give me her surname? The implied presumption was that a common-or-garden Smith would fall over herself to acknowledge a connection with a Lockyer-Fox."

God!
"If that's the impression you received then you read more into my words than was there." He leaned forward earnestly. "Far from claiming title, my client is in the position of supplicant. You would be doing a great kindness if you agreed to a meeting."

Loathsome little toerag!
"The issue is a legal one, Mr. Ankerton. My position as an adopted child is protected by law. You had no business to give me information that I've never requested. Did it occur to you that I might not know I was adopted?"