Next of Kin (38 page)

‘And did he ever show any signs of this kind of thing before?'

Alexander shook his head. ‘Not this bad,' he said. ‘I mean I knew that he had something of a drink problem. It stretches right back to his schooldays apparently. I think there was some sort of incident back then that was all covered up—'

‘Yes, he mentioned something about that to me.'

‘I don't remember the ins and outs of it to be honest but I believe one of the boys in his class was quite badly hurt. But Gareth's father made sure it never got out. But other than that … well he had changed a little in recent years. In the old days, whenever we went out, he would knock back three or four drinks for every one that I got through. And he insisted on my buying rounds despite that. And then he started not to drink at all, claiming that he'd turned over a new leaf.'

‘Yes, I knew about the drink problem,' said Montignac. ‘It became clear to me early on.'

‘The night we met you at the Unicorn, the night of his birthday, that was the first time I'd seen him drinking in quite some time and I must admit I thought he'd got a handle on it because he only had a few and then stopped. And he left quite early. He met you outside, didn't he?'

‘Yes. He followed me out.'

‘How's Stella handling the whole thing anyway?' asked Alexander, his voice adopting that level of concern which is appropriate with such questions.

‘Not very well,' said Montignac, who had barely seen her since Raymond's death.

‘The poor creature. Were they very close?'

Montignac stared at him in amazement. ‘Well they were engaged to be married,' he said. ‘So yes, I would assume so.'

‘Quite, quite. Well I just hope we're not going to be dragged into the whole thing,' he added cautiously.

‘How do you mean?'

‘The trial, of course,' said Alexander, leaning forwards. ‘I mean obviously they're going to want to call you as a witness. You were there on the night in question, weren't you?'

‘I was there at the start of the evening. I left him quite early.'

‘And it happened at your flat?'

‘Yes, I made the mistake of giving him a key.'

‘So you will no doubt be called as a witness. Do you suppose they'll ask you how you met Gareth in the first place?'

Montignac shrugged. ‘I don't know,' he said. ‘I suppose they might. I can't see how important it would be.'

‘Well try to keep my name out of it anyway if you can, will you? The last thing I need is any more trouble from my editor and I don't think he'd appreciate finding his least favourite reviewer linked to the Unicorn Ballrooms, which you won't be surprised to hear do not have a tremendous reputation, let alone to a murder. I'm hoping to start writing profiles soon of dead writers who I never met and essays about books that I've never read and I don't want to jeopardize that.'

‘I'll do my best,' said Montignac. ‘I saw him, you know.'

‘Who?'

‘Gareth.'

‘You saw him?' asked Alexander, sitting forwards in surprise. ‘You mean recently?'

‘Yes. Quite recently. Yesterday afternoon, in fact.'

‘Good Lord. Where?'

‘Where do you think?' asked Montignac with a smile. ‘Walking down Carnaby Street in a top hat and tails? In prison, of course.'

‘Why on earth did you go there?'

‘I don't know,' he replied. ‘He asked for me to visit and something … a sort of morbid curiosity took me over.'

‘Well I'm not sure I would have been quite so forgiving in your shoes,' said Alexander. ‘I think I would have left him to rot. Does Stella know?'

‘Oh God, no.'

‘Well I'd keep it that way if I was you. How is the old fellow anyway? How's he looking?'

‘Absolutely dreadful. A shadow of his former self.'

‘Well I daresay he doesn't look half as bad as Raymond Davis,' said Alexander.

‘No. I imagine not.'

‘And was he repentant?'

‘Very. He doesn't remember any of it, of course, but he seems to think that he might have been capable of such an act even if he never meant to do it.'

‘They do say that it's always the quiet ones.'

‘He was hardly quiet, Alexander. He was a raving alcoholic. He'll be no loss to anyone.'

‘Loss?' he said in reply, raising an eyebrow at the word. ‘You think he'll swing for it then?'

‘I think it's a possibility,' said Montignac. ‘They'll certainly push for it.'

Alexander shuddered; the whole thing was proving far too real for him. ‘Well anything you can do to keep me out of it, Owen, would be much appreciated,' he said. ‘I don't even want to think about it.'

‘What a good friend you are, Alexander. Deserting our young Gareth in his hour of need.'

‘He's not
my
young Gareth,' said Alexander, glancing around at the company to make sure that no one could overhear them. ‘And you shouldn't think of him as
your
young Gareth either, if you've any sense. Anyway, enough of this. I don't want to talk about him any more. The whole thing is too horrible and he's old news now. Let's just leave him to his own repentance and punishment. Shall we have some tea?'

Montignac nodded; he was feeling hungry. It struck him how cruel people could be to their former friends. How once they had outlived their usefulness they were dropped, almost as if they had never existed in the first place. When Gareth was gone, Montignac knew that his entire history among them would be rewritten by these so-called friends, all the good things he'd ever done for them forgotten, all his kindnesses ignored. Scandals would be invented, non-existent conversations recounted until he had become more of a cartoon figure, a Dickensian villain, than a person with blood and feelings, a man who had once meant something to them and who had cared for each one in return. It seemed odd to him that the only member of Gareth's circle who probably cared at all whether he lived or died was he himself and he, after all, was the one who had put him in that position in the first place.

Still, there was nothing he could do to fix that now. This was what Lord Keaton had needed him to do and that was what he had done. It would earn him forty thousand pounds. And if someone had to die, Montignac reasoned, better him than me.

6

STELLA WASN'T IN HER
room when Margaret brought her breakfast up but it was such a beautiful day outside that she had an idea where she might find her and carried the tray up the stairs to the roof garden, where she discovered her walking around the parapet, using the hose that was kept up there to water the dozens of pot plants which were dotted around the area.

‘I thought I'd find you up here,' said Margaret, resting the tray on the table. ‘I brought you some breakfast.'

‘I'm not very hungry,' said Stella, eyeing the plate of bacon and eggs warily.

‘You don't have to look at it like that, it's not poisoned,' said Margaret with a smile. ‘And you should untangle that hose,' she added, looking at the coils of tubing gathered like a nest of snakes around her feet. ‘You'll trip over it one of these days.'

Stella gave a brief smile, her first in days.

‘I'm sorry, Margaret. I don't think I can manage food.'

‘You have to eat. I'm not having you wasting away.'

For a moment they had reverted to their old roles, with Margaret as nanny and Stella as truculent child and after a moment Stella relented, switched the hose off and came to the table. She picked up her fork, mostly in order to evade further discussion on the subject.

‘I was just thinking,' she said, ‘of how much Raymond could have done with the grounds here had we married. He spoke to me of it once, you know. Of how he would re-landscape them and all the different trees that he'd like to plant. He wanted to build some greenhouses too so that we could grow our own tomatoes, and talked about a herb garden under our bedroom window. It would have been beautiful, I think.'

‘There's nothing wrong with it the way it is,' said Margaret, a little irritated by Raymond's presumption. ‘Your grandmother designed the gardens and to my way of thinking she did a lovely job.'

‘Yes, but it would have made a nice change. It's all very staid as it is. Anyway, it would have been an interesting project to have worked on, don't you think?'

‘Well, perhaps you could still do it yourself,' suggested Margaret. ‘It would take your mind off things.'

Stella shook her head. ‘I couldn't face it now,' she said. ‘I wouldn't even know where to begin. Raymond had all the plans in his head. And besides, I don't know how much longer I'm going to stay here anyway.'

Margaret stared at her in surprise. ‘What do you mean by that?' she asked.

‘I've been thinking about it,' said Stella, shrugging her shoulders. ‘What's the point in maintaining such a big house just for me? I'm thinking of closing it down and moving away.'

Margaret's mouth dropped open, horrified by the prospect.

‘You can't be serious,' she said.

‘I am.'

‘And what would you do? Move to London?'

‘Oh no,' said Stella quickly. ‘No, I couldn't face London. Too many people. I thought perhaps I could travel. There's so few places that I've seen, other than England and Switzerland. Obviously I'm not allowed to sell Leyville but I could donate it to a trust perhaps. It could be turned into a museum.'

‘Stella, you're not thinking straight,' said Margaret, who had visions of being turned out of her home on the whim of a grieving girl. ‘You can't do something like that. You'd regret it forever.'

‘I've always loved it here,' she said dreamily. ‘But there's been a lot of unhappiness in this house and I'd be glad to say goodbye to that. When you think back to what Grandfather did, cutting off Owen's father like that, well that must have been a horrible time to have lived through. And then when Father took the place over and Owen had to come to live here and he was so frightened at first, do you remember?'

‘I remember,' said Margaret quietly, recalling the look of terror on the child's face that had taken months to drift away.

‘And then Andrew died,' she continued. ‘And Mother. Then Father. And now Raymond.'

‘Raymond didn't die at Leyville, though. He's not connected with it in any way.'

‘If he hadn't met me, he wouldn't have met Owen. And if he hadn't met Owen, he wouldn't have been going to his flat that night and he'd still be alive. It's as much my fault that he's dead as anyone's.'

‘That's nonsense,' said Margaret in a stern voice. ‘You had nothing to do with it. The only person to blame for Raymond's death is that young man who killed him.'

‘Gareth Bentley,' said Stella quietly.

‘Yes and you don't have to worry about him because he's safely locked up in prison and will no doubt be found guilty and that'll be the end of him.'

Stella grimaced; she hated the idea of executions. There was something so medieval about them, she thought.

‘I don't want that,' she said.

‘Well you may not have a say in it. The law's the law.'

‘If he did kill Raymond,' said Stella. ‘I would prefer for him to live a long, long life and spend all of it in jail. Hanging would be too swift a release for him.'

‘
If
he killed him?' asked Margaret, surprised by the qualification. ‘What do you mean “if”?'

‘Well he hasn't been found guilty yet, has he?'

‘It's only a matter of time,' replied Margaret, who was following the case avidly in the daily newspapers, although she was keeping them far away from Stella's sight. To read the details would, she knew, only upset her.

Stella sighed and said nothing for a while, picking at her breakfast without making any great inroads into it.

‘Have you spoken to Owen lately?' she asked after a while.

‘I've left messages for him. I haven't heard back from him.'

‘Will you do something for me?' asked Stella. ‘Will you call him again and ask him to come down for the weekend? There's something I want to talk to him about.'

‘If you like. But you're not going to talk to him about this ridiculous idea of leaving Leyville, are you?'

‘No, it's not that. It's something else.'

Margaret narrowed her eyes suspiciously. ‘What is it, Stella?'

She shrugged her shoulders and wouldn't look Margaret in the eye; the moment took her back in time ten years to when Stella was a teenager, to that dreadful time just before she was sent away to Geneva. When she had sat down with them both and they had confided in her. Just before Margaret had taken the matter in hand.

‘It's nothing special,' said Stella. ‘Just something I want to discuss with him.'

‘I'll call him if that's what you want,' said Margaret. ‘Just be careful with him, that's all I ask.'

Stella stared across the table. ‘Be careful with him?' she asked. ‘Be careful with what? He's my cousin, isn't he? He's not going to harm me.'

‘Yes,' said Margaret forcefully. ‘That's my point exactly. He's your cousin. Perhaps you should leave him to live his life in London and you should get on with yours down here.'

‘Anyone would think you don't like to see the two of us together.'

‘I don't.'

‘Margaret—'

‘Well, do you seriously expect me to say anything else?'

Stella shook her head. ‘Really, Margaret. Anyone would think that it was you who—'

‘Stop that,' said Margaret, slapping her hand down on the table. ‘Stop it this instant. You know that I don't like to talk about those days.'

‘Feeling guilty, are you?' she asked, aiming to hurt.