Next of Kin (50 page)

‘Don't flatter yourself, Stella. You may go to the Arctic Circle, the Kalahari Desert or the North Pole for all I'm concerned but if you think I am going to allow you to sell my birthright out from under me to a bunch of overpaid politicians and a man who's ready to throw in his country for some tart from Maryland then you've got another think coming. Grandfather may have done that to my father, and your father may have done it to me, but I won't allow it to happen again. The theft stops here, all right?'

‘My father took you in,' she insisted, standing up and raising her voice. ‘When you had nowhere to go, he gave you a home. He educated you.'

‘And he had the money to do so because he had stolen it from my father. After Grandfather died, why didn't your father seek to bring mine back into the family again then? Why did he wait until after he had died to bring me here?' Now his voice rose in anger. ‘Because he didn't want to give up what he had, that's why. For all his faults, he valued this place at least. And if he knew that you were considering such a thing, he'd be rolling in his grave right now.'

She stared at him and breathed deeply, counting to ten in her head. She could feel something inside of her ready to let rip at him but wanted to control it.

‘Well I'm sorry you feel that way,' she said. ‘But I've made my decision.'

‘You can't.'

‘I can and I have. I'm sorry, Owen, but there we are.'

‘This is being done purely out of grief,' he said, protesting. ‘You're still missing Uncle Peter, you're grieving over Raymond—'

‘Leave Raymond out of this.'

‘You brought him into it, Stella. You're the one who said that Leyville only had bad memories and he was one of them. Well he's a bad memory for me all right.'

‘Don't you talk about him like that.'

‘Oh please,' said Montignac. ‘We're all better off without him. Let him prune the rose gardens in Heaven and leave the grounds of Leyville alone.'

She narrowed her eyes and walked past him towards the door that led back inside. ‘I won't talk to you while you're in this mood,' she said. ‘I asked you here today out of courtesy, I told you my plans out of courtesy, I wanted you to be part of them because your last name is Montignac too. But if you think I am going to allow you to sit there and criticize my father and my fiancé just because you feel that things went wrong between us—'

He leapt from the seat, lunged towards her and slapped her face. A white mark appeared across her cheek, almost as white as the hair on his head. Stella stood there, frozen to the spot, and he stared at her, biting his lip for a moment before returning to his seat and finishing his glass of wine in one mouthful. When he turned to look in her direction again, she was gone.

7

JANE BENTLEY FOUND HER
husband, Roderick, sitting alone in the living room with only a table lamp switched on, not reading, not listening to the wireless, just sitting and drinking a whisky.

‘Roderick?' she asked, stepping forwards nervously. He was sitting in his chair without moving and for a moment the thought went through her head that he was dead, that the stress of recent events had finally got to him and he had suffered a stroke or a heart attack. She could barely breathe through nervousness. ‘Roderick?' she repeated. ‘Roderick, are you all right?'

After a moment his head gave the slightest nod and she realized how tensely she had been holding herself in too and breathed a sigh of relief, exhaling loudly. She switched on a second lamp and the room became bathed in the pale cerise light of the shade.

‘What are you doing sitting here all alone?' she asked. ‘You gave me a fright when I came in.'

‘Sorry,' he said. He looked up at her and was pleased that the light was so poor in the room; it meant that he could imagine the beautiful, youthful woman he had been married to and loved for almost thirty years and not the frightened, pale and drawn lady she had turned into in recent months. ‘I couldn't stay there any longer.'

‘When you didn't come back after the recess I thought perhaps you'd arrived late and had just taken a seat at the back,' she said.

‘No,' he replied. ‘I couldn't take it any more. I couldn't hear them talk about him like that for another moment.' He leaned forwards and although she was still a few feet away from him she suddenly realized that he was crying quietly and she went to him, kneeling on the floor beside him and taking his hand in hers.

‘Oh, Roderick, don't,' she pleaded. ‘Don't. Not now. I can't get through this if you're not strong.'

He nodded and breathed heavily and managed to contain his tears for now. ‘Well?' he asked after a moment. ‘What did I miss? Did it get any worse?'

‘Not really,' she said. ‘There wasn't too much of note in the afternoon. They called Maud Williams to the stand, of course.'

‘Who?' he asked.

‘Maud Williams. The lady who called the police that morning. She lives in the flat two floors up from Owen Montignac and was coming down the stairs to leave for work when she saw the door half open and peeped inside.'

‘Prying neighbours,' said Roderick, only too familiar with the curse of them.

‘She seemed like a sweet old thing actually,' said Jane. ‘Still quite traumatized by … by what she found.'

‘Did she make things worse?'

‘Not especially,' said Jane. ‘She was only reporting on what she saw and that had already been established. Quentin tried to discredit her a little by suggesting that she was entering a residence that she had no business entering but he gave up after a few minutes. It was clear that the jury had warmed to her and he was doing more harm than good.'

She stayed in her position on the floor and rested her head against her husband's lap and he allowed his hand to stray to her hair, smoothing it down with tenderness and affection. Her own day had been so traumatic, so difficult, that a moment of peace and respite like this was worth a thousand sunshine holidays. First there had been the destructive elements in Gareth's school friends' evidence and then her disastrous lunchtime conversation with Sir Quentin Lawrence. It was only fair, she thought, that the afternoon should provide a little relief.

‘What made you change your mind anyway?' she asked. ‘Did something happen at chambers over lunch?'

He shook his head, loath to tell her the facts. ‘I just couldn't face it,' he said. ‘I'd had rather a disturbing meeting.'

‘How do you mean?'

‘It doesn't matter. By the time I got back to the Old Bailey it was preying on my mind too much and I knew I couldn't enter the courtroom. So I just came straight home and I've been sitting here ever since.'

Jane had spent the afternoon debating in her mind whether or not she should tell her husband about the conversation she had had with Sir Quentin earlier in the day and the suggestions she had made to him but had decided against it. She knew him only too well to know that he would be appalled by her willingness to bribe jury members. She had cornered the barrister at the end of the day as he left the courtroom and begged him not to say anything.

‘Quentin,' she said.

‘Jane, not here,' he said quickly, looking at her with as much offence in his face as he could muster.

‘Quentin, I came to apologize. What I said was—'

He grabbed her by the arm and dragged her into a quiet alcove before she could utter another word.

‘Will you please shush, woman?' he said, for the first time in their long acquaintance behaving in a less than gentlemanly fashion towards her. ‘There are people here trained to overhear every whispered conversation.'

‘I just want to say I'm sorry,' she said. ‘And I won't mention it again.'

‘Good. You know my position.'

‘And to ask you not to tell Roderick.'

He nodded. ‘Fine,' he said. ‘Let's just pretend it never happened. Now go home and try to get some sleep. You look dreadful.'

Despite everything, she had felt offended when he said that and found herself dwelling on the remark all the way home in the car. She dismissed it now as pointless vanity.

‘You'll be coming on Monday, though?' she asked.

‘Of course.'

‘Good. Quentin is putting Owen Montignac on the stand and then it will be Gareth's turn to defend himself and he needs to see that we're both there for him. We can't let him down.'

Roderick nodded. He was barely listening to her. He was fifty-two years old and faced with the most difficult decision of his life and didn't know where to turn with it.

‘Jane,' he said quietly after a moment. ‘Jane, you do know that things aren't looking good.'

This was no moment for hysterics; she simply nodded her head and held his hand tighter. ‘I know that,' she said. ‘I can sense it in there every day. I just don't know what I can do to help him. I'm his mother and for the first time in my life I cannot think of a single thing I can do to make things right. Do you know what I spend my time thinking?'

‘What?'

She gave a gentle laugh. ‘That I spent so many months complaining about how the boy wouldn't get up in the morning, wouldn't get out of bed, wouldn't find a job. And now it all seems so pointless. What I wouldn't give to have him lying in his bed until noon every day.'

Roderick laughed too. It was strange, he felt, how the things that annoyed one most in one's children became the most endearing memories when the chips were down. They sat there in silence for a few minutes and Jane felt very warm and hoped the moment would never end, that they could just sit there alone forever and never get hurt again.

‘What was your meeting about?' she asked eventually.

‘Which one?'

‘You said you had a disturbing meeting at lunchtime. What was it about?'

He held his breath and considered his options. Earlier, he had resolved to say nothing about it. But now, faced with the question, he knew that he couldn't keep it in. For the life of him he didn't know what was the right thing to do and, although he knew how she would react, he found that he had to speak.

‘Lord Keaton came to see me,' he said.

‘Keaton?' she asked, without sounding at all surprised. ‘He picks his moments, doesn't he? He must know what we're going through here.'

‘Yes, he does. But he came anyway.'

‘About the king?'

‘Of course.'

She shook her head; these were yet more things that had once seemed so important to her and now she could scarcely have cared less about them. ‘Perhaps you should just resign from the committee,' she said.

‘Resign from it?' he asked, surprised.

‘Yes. With all we have to deal with, you can hardly be expected to concern yourself with whether or not he marries some woman who no one even really knows. My God, it all seems so trivial when you think about it, doesn't it?'

‘But it's not trivial,' said Roderick with determination. ‘It's not trivial at all. It's a matter of vital public concern. It's the throne, the empire. It's history. How can I just step away from that?'

She shrugged her shoulders; she didn't really care too much either way. ‘I suppose not,' she said. ‘Well if you're sure you can handle it.'

He took a deep breath and decided to lay his cards on the table. ‘Lord Keaton,' he began, ‘told me that the results of our committee will be taken to the prime minister and he will act on that advice to tell the king either to renounce the lady or renounce the throne. At the moment the opinions are deadlocked with Hailsham's tie-breaking vote most likely to go towards allowing him to marry. Keaton informed me that if I changed my vote and sided against the king, effectively forcing him to make that choice, then he will see to it that, should Gareth be convicted of murder, he would receive a light prison sentence rather than be subject to the death penalty.'

He felt Jane's head move a little by his leg as she stifled a brief laugh at the intricacies of the monarch's love life; although it was only seconds, it felt to him that it took an eternity for the meaning of his brief speech to seep into her brain and for her to realize the enormity of what he had just told her. When that eternity was over she sat up slowly and turned to look at him, blinking her eyes in the dim light.

‘What did you just say?' she asked very quietly.

‘You heard me,' he shrugged. ‘I just have to change my vote.'

‘Keaton said … he told you…' She looked away, her brow furrowed, trying to understand how this might have all come about. ‘Why would he say such a thing?' she asked.

‘Because he believes that under those circumstances the king will renounce the throne and the Duke of York will ascend. And if he does, then he will be appointed Lord Chancellor. He's in Baldwin's pocket, or perhaps it's the other way around, I don't know, and they both want the king out. He's interfering with their narrow view of what England ought to be. They see the whole system crashing down about their heads and will stop at nothing to get rid of him. It's all about power, Jane, and unfortunately because of the trouble that Gareth has got himself into, he's in a position to bribe me.'

Jane stared at him. She could scarcely believe it. ‘And he can do that?' she asked. ‘He can influence the judge?'

‘He says he can. And I don't suppose I have any choice but to believe him.'

She leaned forwards and her voice dropped quite low; when she spoke it was the purr of the lioness. ‘Then do it,' she said.

It was his turn to stare now. ‘I can't,' he said.

‘You can't? What do you mean you can't?'

‘Jane, I have served at the Bar for my entire adult life and I have never once compromised my integrity or my ethics. Not once. I have made difficult decisions, such as the ones that have led to men's executions, and I have learned to live with them. I have followed my heart and the law. I cannot give in to bribery now.'