Daughter of Riches (2 page)

‘I know,' Dan said roughly. ‘I miss him too.'

‘I'd better get on.' Carol moved to the door with determined briskness. ‘ Enjoy your coffee.'

Dan lowered himself into his father's big leather chair, his face serious. Funny how it could hit you so suddenly. You'd go on, almost as normal, doing what had to be done, and then all of a sudden you'd realise that the reason you were doing it was because he wouldn't be coming back. Christ, it was hard to believe – a man of his powerful charisma snuffed out just like that in the space of less than an hour. It wasn't even as if he'd been old. Just sixty-five – and with not the slightest intention of retiring.

Dan poured himself a coffee and stirred in two spoonfuls of brown sugar and a portion of cream. Better give this up if he didn't want to go the same way. But not just now. Dan sipped the coffee with relish, pulled the Langlois file towards him and slid off the pink legal tape that bound it.

Let's have a look then, Dad. Let's see what it was that you used to go on about.

Half an hour later the coffee jug was empty and Dan was still reading. Fascinating – especially when one considered that the people involved were so well known in the island. What a stir it must have caused! With a sigh of resignation he closed the dusty manilla covers, then sat thinking about the story that had emerged from the statements, depositions and notes, yellowing now from age.

Sophia Langlois, then aged forty-six years, had been the widow of Bernard Langlois, founder of a leisure agency and a chain of luxury hotels whose very names were synonymous with discreet service and unashamed self-indulgence for the wealthy guests who stayed in them – La Maison Blanche, the Westerley, Les Belles Fleurs, the Belville. Dan knew her by sight though he had never had cause to meet her – a slimly built woman with hair that had turned prematurely to a silvery grey, whose chauffeur-driven Bentley could sometimes be seen slipping through the business and holiday traffic here in St Helier. There was a sereneness about her which made it almost impossible to associate her with scandal of any kind, much less violent death. Yet this was exactly the occurrence which had rocked the island eighteen years ago and the victim had been her son, Louis.

There had been three Langlois sons, Dan had gathered from the file, Louis and Robin, both in their middle to late twenties at the time of Louis's death, and a younger boy, still in his teens. That would be David Langlois, who headed the hotel empire now, Dan realised.

Back in 1972 Bernard, the boys' father, had only recently died – (he must have been even younger than my father, Dan thought; I wonder what caused him to cash in his chips?) and control of the hotel empire had passed to the two older boys. From reading between the lines Dan could see there had been any amount of family friction of one sort or another but presumably no one had foreseen the outcome.

One night in November 1972 Sophia had been to a glittering trade gala in St Helier. She had left early pleading tiredness and her chauffeur had driven her back to the family mansion on the North Coast of the island. Then at about midnight Sophia had made a telephone call to the emergency services. Her very words had been recorded and noted down: ‘This is Sophia Langlois at La Grange. I think I need both an ambulance and the police. I have just shot my son.'

Dan leaned back against the soft leather, imagining the furore that telephone call would have unleashed – sirens and flashing blue lights as police cars rushed through the night, their occupants still half-convinced perhaps that this was some kind of sick hoax, telephone calls for a scenes-of-crime officer, a photographer, the centenier of the parish … and Sophia's lawyer, his own father. What a night it must have been!

But why, he wondered, frowning, had his father been so insistent Sophia had not done it? Zeal in defence of one's client is all very well, but on paper this was an open and shut case.

Louis Langlois was dead, shot with his own gun. Sophia maintained her guilt from first to last. Clearly the police had believed the story and been only too glad to add it to their ‘ clear-up rate'. So why had his father gone to his grave convinced of Sophia's innocence?

Dan shook his head, tying the pink tapes around the file and preparing to toss it into the pile for the shredder. Then at the last moment he changed his mind and put it instead on the corner of the desk underneath his car keys and sunglasses.

Perhaps when he had finished here he would have another look at the file, see if there was something he'd missed. He couldn't imagine there would be. If there had been anything, the merest hint of suspicion that someone other than Sophia was responsible, she would never have been prosecuted – not an influential person like her. And at least his father had made sure the charge was not murder but manslaughter. Sophia Langlois had served only just over a year in a mainland gaol and returned to Jersey almost as if nothing had happened. Yet for some reason a question mark had remained in his mind over the whole business.

Now, remembering his father's doubts, expressed on more than one occasion, that Sophia Langlois had been guilty of anything but lack of adherence to the truth, Dan found himself wondering whether it was possible there was indeed more to the story than had ever come out. Had she lied that night when she had rung the police to confess to the killing of her son – and then stuck to the story so stubbornly that she had been prepared to serve a prison sentence rather than retract it? And if so – why?

All the investigative juices that had made Dan a good detective and now helped him make his living uncovering unsuspected frauds and hidden scandals were beginning to run, a heady dose of anticipation and sharp tingling intuition prickling his nerves and senses. What a story it would make if he could uncover some hitherto unsuspected angle to the case that had rocked the island's society almost twenty years ago! What a scoop!

Dan made up his mind that he would certainly study the case and do a few investigations of his own. But exciting though the prospect was, for the moment it was going to have to go on the back burner and wait its turn. He had more pressing, if far less interesting, matters to claim his attention.

Dan sighed, tore his gaze away from the Langlois file and went on with the interminable task of sorting his father's papers.

Juliet Langlois looked at her mother and father across the kitchen and wondered if she would ever really understand either of them.

Her father, she supposed, was not really such an enigma. His vagueness and his preference for peace-at-all-costs could be said to explain a lot of things. Robin hated arguments, hated conflict of any kind, and was happiest when the world was passing him by. An accountant by profession he loved classical music, good wine and her mother, though not necessarily in that order, and as long as he had them he was quite content with life.

But Molly puzzled Juliet profoundly. How was it possible for anyone to have reached their middle forties and be so ingenuous? How was it possible for anyone to be so ingenuous and yet so secretive? To all intents and purposes Molly conveyed the impression of almost childlike innocence. Her tastes had never matured, she liked frills and ice-cream and easy beat music and hated being left alone. But she was also secretive to the point of paranoia. Certain things always made her clam up and if Juliet tried to pry further she would adopt an attitude of hurt self-righteousness as if to be questioned was a personal insult.

That was the line she was taking now.

‘Juliet, can't we just drop the subject? I don't want you to go to Jersey and that is all there is to it.'

Juliet sighed in exasperation, pushing a hand through her mane of light brown hair, shot with golden highlights by exposure to the hot sunshine of a Sydney summer. The summer had gone now but the highlights remained, warm and pleasing to the eye.

‘I don't see what all the fuss is about. I was born there, I lived there until I was four years old, my grandma still lives there and so do most of my relatives. I am between jobs. It's an ideal opportunity to go and meet them all. So what objection could there possibly be?'

‘It's halfway round the world. You can't go dashing off just like that.'

‘Why not, for heaven's sake?'

‘You just can't. Besides, Sean wouldn't like it.'

‘Sean doesn't own me. He's my boyfriend, not my keeper.'

‘I thought the two of you were getting engaged.'

‘Don't say it like that, as if it were some sort of life sentence. You know very well we are going to get engaged and probably married next year. But as far as I'm concerned that's all the more reason for me to do this now, before I tie myself down to a home and family. Look, I'm sorry to be so obtuse but I simply don't see what the problem is. If it comes to that, I don't know why neither of you have been back in almost twenty years.'

The silence was sudden and complete. Molly's hazel eyes, just a shade lighter than Juliet's own, took on a dazed expression and it seemed to Juliet that her father, behind his newspaper, had stopped breathing. She laughed a trifle nervously.

‘Hey – what have I said?'

‘What do you mean? This is all getting extremely silly …' Molly fluttered.

‘It is, isn't it?' Juliet agreed. ‘If you think I can't see that you are hiding something you must think I'm an idiot. For goodness' sake, Mum, tell me what it's all about! What dark secret is there hidden in Jersey that you don't want me to find out about? I'm twenty-three years old and you can't continue to treat me like a child!'

‘Some other time, Juliet. I'm due at a meeting of the Museum Society.'

‘Oh no, Mum, you can't get out of it so easily.'

‘Juliet, please.'

‘She's right, Molly.' Robin folded his newspaper and took off his spectacles, rubbing his eyes with his fingers. ‘You can't keep it from her for ever.'

‘But we agreed …'

‘When she was a little girl. You thought it would be best.'

‘And so did you! You didn't want her to know either!'

‘What?' Juliet demanded. ‘ What didn't you want me to know?'

Robin looked at her nervously. Sometimes he found it difficult to believe that this lovely young woman was really his daughter, the baby he had taken for long walks in her push-chair around the mellow-gold-and-green island of Jersey, Channel Islands, the little girl he had taught to swim in their private pool here in Sydney. He remembered her at six, astride her first pony, her legs barely long enough to come even halfway down the pony's plump sides, he remembered her in pink leotard and tights, going to her ballet class at the age of eight. Perhaps that had been the first time he had realised just how pretty she promised to be. But it was impossible, all the same, to reconcile that child – his child – with the young woman she had become. Juliet was not tall by today's standards – five feet six in her rubber-soled flipflops – but she was perfectly proportioned with curves that matched the round prettiness of her face and long shapely legs, tanned to a warm golden brown. If photographs were anything to go by she was very like her grandmother – his mother – had been at her age, except for her eyes. Sophia, his mother, had had eyes of startling amethyst, the most unusual colour he had ever seen in his life.

Robin stood up. There was a weight of sorrow inside him suddenly.
That
was why he'd never told her … because he was a coward and some things did not bear thinking about.

‘Dad, you can't just leave it there – you have to explain,' Juliet said, planting herself in front of him. He sidestepped her, elegant in his lizard-skin sneakers.

‘Your mother will tell you.'

‘Oh yes, leave it all to me!' Molly called after him, exasperated, as he went out. ‘That's typical of you, isn't it?' There was no reply and she turned to Juliet, a small round woman, fussed and furious now. ‘ He's always been the same. He just won't …'

‘I know what he's like. Well, Mum, are you going to tell me what this is all about?'

‘You really want to know?'

‘For goodness sake, of course I do! If I hadn't wanted to before I would now. All this secrecy!'

Molly sighed, defeated. All these years they'd kept it from her – for her own good, they'd told themselves, though she had often wondered if that was the real reason and whether they were making a grave mistake. Sometimes over the years she had felt very tired of the lies and half truths and excuses. Robin would not talk about what had happened; Robin never would. It was not his way. But that did not mean they had forgotten, either of them, and sometimes she had wished she had the courage to break the self-imposed silence and remove once and for all the burden of wondering how long it would be before Juliet asked one question too many and refused to be satisfied until she had an answer. Now, it seemed, that moment had come. She looked at her daughter, planted there in front of her as if her flipflops had taken root, looked at the determined expression she had learned to know so well, and knew that this was the time for the truth – or at least, part of it.

‘Very well,' she said, fighting the catch in her voice, ‘I'll tell you. Your father had a brother …'

‘Uncle David. Yes.'

‘No, not David. David is a lot younger. He was just a boy when it happened. The brother I'm talking about was Louis.'

‘
Louis
?'

‘Louis was a year or so older than your father. He was …' This time there was no hiding the catch. Her voice faltered and she pressed her hand to her mouth for a moment, dangerously close to tears.

‘Go on,' Juliet pressed her.

Molly swallowed at the lump in her throat. ‘This isn't easy for me, you know.'

‘I know. But you've got to try.'

Molly nodded. Sometimes she felt she reacted to Juliet as if the relationship had been turned on its head and Juliet was the parent, stern and kind, and she was the child.