Next of Kin (7 page)

‘What is it with these Americans anyway?' asked Samuel Levison. ‘One minute they want nothing to do with us, insist on running their damn country themselves, and the next they want to steal the bloody throne. Watch out or they'll become even more imperialist than we ever were.'

Charles opened his mouth to reply but closed it again as Montignac stepped through the door of the billiard room and stood staring at them with an angry look on his face. Samuel took a surprise and mishit the white; it bounced clear off the table and rolled along the floor, stopping precisely in front of their host's feet. Montignac looked down at it for a moment, as if unsure what a billiard ball could possibly be doing there, before reaching down and picking it up. He held on to it tightly, unwilling to replace it on the table.

‘Gentlemen,' he said quietly.

The others, old and young alike, were unable to look him in the eye and had the good grace to appear a little ashamed of themselves.

‘Bad business,' said one.

‘Terrible loss,' muttered another into his beard.

‘I wanted to thank you all for coming,' said Montignac quickly, in a voice which implied he wanted to do nothing of the sort. ‘Very good of you. My uncle would have been touched.'

‘He was a fine man, Montignac,' said the retired Home Secretary, waddling over and slapping him on the shoulder. ‘One of the finest I ever had the good fortune to know. And I've known them all.'

‘Yes,' replied Montignac in a non-committal voice. ‘Is everyone all right for drinks?' They muttered that they were. ‘Because they're serving tea and whiskies in the drawing room if you'd like to join them.'

A five-second silence, a quick glance at the retained white ball in Montignac's hand, and the men took the hint and replaced their cues in the rack on the wall, shuffling past their host, unable to look him in the eye. Only Alexander Keys remained, his oldest friend, and Montignac glanced at him, not particularly wanting a conversation.

‘All right, old man?' asked Alexander.

‘All right,' replied Montignac quietly.

‘Want me to stick around later? We could have a few quiet drinks.'

‘Maybe,' he said. ‘I'm tired. We'll see.'

They remained silent for a while and Montignac replaced the white ball on the billiard table, lining it up so that he had a direct view of the black and the left-hand corner pocket.

‘Sorry about all this,' said Alexander, nodding at the table. ‘We couldn't think of anything to do and just sort of drifted in here. We'd already started when we realized it mightn't be quite the thing.'

‘Forget it,' he said, shaking his head as if the matter was no longer of any interest to him. ‘What time do you think these people will leave at anyway?'

‘Soon enough, I imagine.'

‘God, I hate them,' he added with a sigh.

‘Hate them?' asked Alexander, laughing nervously. ‘That's a bit strong, isn't it?'

Montignac said nothing for a moment but slammed the white ball down the table with his hand, where it hit the black, sending it crashing into the corner pocket. The white bounced back, ricocheted off the cushion and crossed the table where its trajectory began to slow down as it approached the side pocket; it teetered there for a few moments on the edge before falling in. He frowned and shook his head.

‘Want me to drop a few hints out there?' asked Alexander. ‘Get them to put a shake on?'

‘Be grateful if you would.'

‘Consider it done,' said his friend, passing him by and leaving the room, tapping his arm for comfort as he went. ‘And if you want me to stick around later, you only have to ask. You know that. How's Stella holding up, by the way?'

‘She'll be fine,' said Montignac. ‘I'll see to that.'

‘Right. Good,' said Alexander. ‘I noticed that Raymond fellow mooching around outside in the garden. You'd think he'd be taking care of her today rather than playing with the flowers.'

‘I can take care of her,' said Montignac in a tone which made it clear to his friend that his presence was no longer required. After a few moments he heard the door close behind him and he turned around with a sigh, allowing his body to relax for a moment, glad to be left alone. In the corner he noticed a suit jacket that one of the men had left behind and stared at it, narrowing his eyes as he identified a bulge in the inner pocket. He walked over at a steady pace to where it lay, reached inside and withdrew a wallet. Opening it he saw a clutch of twenty-pound notes and selected five, placing them in the heel of his shoe, before returning the wallet to the jacket and leaving the room, closing and locking the door behind him.

*   *   *

RAYMOND DAVIS STOOD IN
the grounds of Leyville, examining the different breeds of roses that were planted outside the living-room bay windows. His parents had been keen gardeners and had passed their passion for all things horticultural down to him, and he had been growing new strains of roses in the grounds of his own home a few miles to the east of Leyville for several years. One particular variety, a deep pink, yellow-striped Cabana Hybrid Tea with ovoid buds, had taken him the best part of four summers to perfect but it was doing excellently now and a cutting from it, planted in the flower beds here, had taken root and was beginning to prosper. He touched the petals of the flower, stroking them tenderly as he might a sleeping cat, and recalled how Stella had decided to plant the cutting close to the house so that their scent might rise up when the roses had grown sufficiently and infiltrate the atmosphere of her father's bedroom, which was situated just above. Remembering this made him step back a little and he wandered down the steps into the garden proper. He didn't want to seem macabre but his eyes plotted a trajectory of their own and he found himself staring at the large bay windows of Peter Montignac's room some twenty feet above. They were locked now and the curtains were closed; they had remained so since his death.

Turning away he checked his watch and wondered why Stella had avoided him so completely today when he had hoped to be a source of comfort and support to her but she had spent most of her time with her cousin Owen instead, who Raymond only vaguely knew. They had been together for just over a year and he was keen for them to take the next step towards marriage but whenever the subject came up she dismissed it quickly and said they would talk of it another time. Their engagement had already been announced but Stella seemed to view that as something of no great importance. They had shared intimacies, however, and in a moment of weakness she had confided in him that she had been hurt before and that he should forgive her if she seemed difficult to grow close to.

It had been his intention recently to take Stella out to dinner and make a more formal proposal, setting a date in their diaries for the nuptials; in fact he had gone to Peter Montignac only a week earlier and asked for his approval, which he had grudgingly given. However, events had seen to it that the proposal could not take place for the moment and he wondered about the etiquette of such a thing, how long one was supposed to wait after the death of a prospective bride's parent before asking for her hand.

He turned to step back inside and looked up again towards the bedroom window where he saw the curtains twitch and suddenly open, followed by the windows themselves, and a shadow stepping away. He shivered, the unmistakable feeling of being watched.

*   *   *

THE GUESTS HAD LEFT
now and Owen had declined Alexander's offer to stay overnight. ‘Better if it's just the two of us,' he said. ‘Stella might want to talk in private. But thanks anyway.'

‘When are you coming up to London? We could go together. Make a time of it.'

‘Later this week, I expect. Lots to do. Lawyers and so on. Sick of it already and it's only just begun.'

‘I could come with you, Owen.'

‘Yes, do,' he said. ‘I'll speak to you tomorrow and we'll arrange things.'

The house seemed empty now as he made his way upstairs, although he could hear the servants moving between the kitchen and the drawing room, cleaning up and chatting away without a care in the world. He noticed his reflection in the stairway mirror and discovered he had a smile on his face and immediately wiped it away. Stella had gone to her room and he could hear her gramophone playing quietly in the distance, a tune he didn't recognize and didn't much care for either.

Passing by his own door, he found his feet steering him along the corridor and up the small flight of stairs towards the room that had been his late uncle's. The door was closed but unlocked and he turned the handle, stepping back slightly as he did so, as if he was afraid of what he might find inside. But as he looked around he found that everything was exactly as he remembered it. He looked from left to right and walked across the room towards the windows which had been closed since his uncle's death a few days earlier; the atmosphere in the room was stuffy on account of it. He stood close to them and placed his hand on the latch, holding it there for a moment before pushing it open, and a rush of air came in, followed by the scent of roses.

Looking below he saw that fool Raymond Davis stepping back inside the house and frowned. He thought everyone had left by now and he particularly despised Raymond. A mutual friend had told him how Stella and he had taken a suite at the Savoy two weeks before and stayed there together overnight, something she had never told him herself, and he felt a stab of pain and jealousy at the thought of it. If Raymond was any kind of a man it wouldn't be so bad, he thought, but he was a simpleton. A lover of flowers. Beneath Owen and unworthy of Stella. Undeserving of her intimacies. Exactly the kind of emasculated fool that Montignac could hardly look at without feeling a violent contempt. Why was he still here anyway? Couldn't he just leave like everyone else?

He stepped back from the windows and his eyes moved to the bed, where Peter Montignac had been on the last occasion that his nephew had seen him.

He looked at the pillows that had surrounded his weakened uncle on the bed and felt a slight twitch of unhappiness as he blocked the memory of that afternoon from his mind. Something he had eaten earlier made his stomach feel uncertain and he stepped quickly from the room, closing the doors behind him, and resolved not to enter again until the estate had been settled and was finally his.

With the death of his uncle there was no doubt in Owen Montignac's mind that he was about to become a very wealthy man; the one thing he could not afford, however, or so he told himself, was a conscience.

10

HENRY DOMSON ENTERED THE
dock with a look of remorse and humility on his face; however, had his expression mirrored how he felt inside there would have been a wide smirk plastered across his youthful features.

It had been almost six months since the evening when he, along with three friends, had broken into the Schulberg Jewel Warehouse beside London Bridge and almost nine since he had first drawn up the plans for the heist. It had all seemed remarkably simple to begin with. Through some of his more dubious underworld connections he had managed to get a schematic of the warehouse itself along with a timetable of the different guards who were on duty each night. They had simply forced the lock and overpowered two of the guards before filling their bags with millions of pounds' worth of jewellery and beginning their escape.

Everything had gone according to plan until they turned to leave the warehouse when they were surprised to see a group of policemen enter, shouting at them to drop the bags. When a chase ensued and he had found himself cornered by two of them, he had felt no hesitation in shooting the first and only regretted that his gun had stalled or he would almost certainly have made a clean escape.

When he first met his barrister, Mr Justice McAlpine, and the instructing solicitor they had looked at him contemptuously and informed him that this was something of an open-and-shut case and the best he could hope for was to admit the offence, throw himself on the mercy of the judge and pray for a custodial sentence. More and more murderers, they told him, were seeing their death sentences commuted to life imprisonment if they appealed for clemency but the murder of a police officer, well that was different. There was really very little hope.

‘It's encouraging to see that you throw in the towel so easily,' Domson said to McAlpine with a sarcastic laugh. ‘Do you have much of a record of winning your cases or are you generally too frightened to fight them?'

‘I can fight a case if there are merits on which to fight it,' said McAlpine in a gravelly tone, for he was far too old and experienced to allow himself to be spoken down to by a young man who had thought nothing of taking a life in cold blood. ‘But it's very difficult in a case like this to make out grounds for leniency.'

‘Perhaps I should tell you a little bit about my background then,' said Domson with a smile. ‘Maybe I can help you out.'

And so the business of Domson's birth and genealogy was brought to the surface. At first neither Mr Justice McAlpine nor his solicitor believed what Domson was saying—that his great-great-grandmother had been the youngest child of a middle daughter of King George IV. They made a few notes on a piece of paper and tried to calculate what the relationship would be.

‘What does that mean then?' asked McAlpine. ‘That would make you a first cousin once removed to the king, would it?'

‘A second cousin, actually,' said Domson, referring to George V, who was enjoying the dying months of his reign. ‘Queen Victoria was my great-grandmother.'

‘Then you would claim a position within the succession,' asked McAlpine dubiously.

‘Very distantly,' said Domson. ‘I believe I'm number twenty-seven at the moment. Although some years ago I reached as high as eighteen. Until they started breeding,' he added with disdain.