Daughter of Riches (41 page)

‘Croutes? For a minute I thought you said … Oops, sorry! Never mind bloody fried bread. Let's just eat. If you want to, that is. I'm not sure that I do.'

Juliet tried to smile but her lips felt stiff.

‘Just go and sit down, Viv. I'll serve in a moment.'

‘Sit down before I fall down, you mean? That's not such a bad idea, except that I think I'll sit here so we can talk while you're doing … whatever it is you're doing. Now, you were asking about Louis. What was it you wanted to know?'

‘Nothing really,' Juliet said and for the first time she meant it. The emerging picture of the uncle who had met his death when she was only four years old was not a pleasant one. Just at the moment she did not think she could face any more of it.

As soon as she decently could Juliet pleaded a headache and left, telling herself that Viv and Paul would probably be only too glad to see her go.

Dinner had been one of the most uncomfortable meals she could ever remember having to sit through. There had been no further mention of Louis – between them she and Paul had managed to steer the conversation towards less controversial topics and Viv had subsided into a mellower mood. But the awkward atmosphere had persisted and Juliet knew she was responsible.

‘I'm sorry, really sorry,' she said to Paul when Viv went to the bathroom between courses.

Paul served himself to an extra slice of Black Forest Gateau – straight from the hotel kitchens, Juliet guessed.

‘It wasn't your fault. Viv can be pretty explosive when she's been drinking. I'm just sorry you had to witness it.'

‘I know but …' She wanted to say that if she hadn't raised the subject of Louis it would never have happened but she could not bring herself to mention his name again.

‘In case you hadn't realised it Louis is a rather touchy subject in this family,' Paul said, as if reading her mind. ‘In life as in death. Viv put things pretty baldly but most of what she said was true. We sometimes used to joke that the only person who didn't hate him was his mother – rather ironic, as it turned out.' He pulled a face as he heard Viv coming back down the stairs. ‘Better change the subject. How about coffee?'

Juliet had agreed to the coffee and even offered to help wash up, an offer Viv had swiftly refused. The daily woman would be in in the morning, she could deal with the clearing-up then. Imagining her face when she saw the state of the cooker hob, the burned saucepans and the plates and cutlery which Viv had not even bothered to load into the dishwasher gave Juliet a brief moment's wry amusement, though it was tempered with sympathy. Any daily woman who could stand working for Viv for long must be sorely in need of a job!

When she left Viv kissed her warmly and said she hoped she would come again, as if she had totally forgotten the earlier scene. But Juliet found it less easy to put the incident – and her own sense of guilt concerning it – out of her mind. As she started up the engine of her hire car she had already more or less decided what she was going to do; by the time she had turned, not into the road leading to La Grange but towards St Helier, she acknowledged she was more or less on auto-pilot. Her curiosity had caused more than enough trouble already, creating far more problems than it had solved. Time to put a stop to it. She would see Dan Deffains and tell him she was not prepared to continue interfering with the ghosts of the past and she would tell him right now.

The lights were burning in the downstairs windows of the tall old house on the outskirts of St Helier. Juliet glanced at her watch. Ten o'clock. Late, but not too late. She couldn't imagine Dan being an early bird and in any case what she had to say would not take more than ten minutes.

She rang the bell and waited. No reply. Perhaps it
was
too late to come calling. Perhaps he was in the shower or engrossed in watching something on television. Or perhaps he just hadn't heard her. Juliet was just hesitating between ringing the bell again and going home and leaving what she had to say until the morning, when a light came on in the hall and the door was opened.

He was – thank heavens – fully dressed in shirt and slacks. ‘Juliet! What are you doing here?'

‘I wanted to talk to you.' She felt foolish suddenly. There really had been no need to come rushing round to see him tonight. The morning would have been quite soon enough.

‘I see. You'd better come in then.' As she walked past him into the hall she caught the fleeting gleam of quickening interest in his eyes.

‘I know it's late but I was practically passing,' she lied. ‘I thought maybe it would be better to come now rather than disturb you tomorrow when you may be working.'

Her voice tailed away suddenly. A woman had emerged from the sitting room, a petite dark-haired woman a few years older than Juliet herself.

‘I think it's time I was going, Dan. I'll see you again.' The woman stood on tiptoe, kissing him lightly on the cheek. ‘ Take care now.'

‘Yes, and you, love. I'll see you soon.'

‘All right. Bye now.' She smiled at Juliet as she passed but it was a guarded smile, without warmth, and Juliet wished heartily that she had not come. Stupid, really, but it had never crossed her mind Dan might have a woman with him. She wondered why the very idea of it made her feel irritated and depressed. A man as attractive as he was was bound to have women friends for heaven's sake!

‘I'm sorry,' she said awkwardly, ‘I didn't mean to interrupt.'

‘It's all right. You didn't. Fran was just leaving.'

Fran. Yes, she looked like a Fran. Self-assured and pretty. Just the sort he would go for. Juliet's stomach tightened another notch.

‘Look, I realise I should have waited until tomorrow,' she said hastily. ‘ It was a hell of an imposition, turning up like this. I'll go again.'

‘No need. I'm going to have a nightcap. Why don't you join me?'

His hand was under her elbow, steering her into the sittingroom. Fran's perfume lingered faintly. Juliet tried not to notice it.

‘What would you like?' he asked.

‘Oh, something soft. I've already had a couple of glasses of wine this evening and I'm driving.'

‘Mineral water?'

‘Fine.'

‘It seems awfully unexciting,' he said, passing her the glass.

‘No, really. I don't want anything else.' She didn't add that after seeing Viv's drunken performance this evening she thought she might very well give up alcoholic liquor completely and for ever.

‘So,' he said, pouring himself a good measure of whisky. ‘What brings you here at this time of night? Interesting developments?'

‘No. I'm sorry, Dan, but I've had second thoughts. I don't think I want to go on with this.'

‘Oh really?' Not for a moment did he allow his expression to betray his dismay. ‘Why is that?'

‘Because I think I'm stirring up a hornet's nest.'

‘That might mean you are getting somewhere.'

‘I suppose so but I'm beginning to wonder if I have any right to do that. My family must have suffered a great deal over what happened. What right do I have to rake it all up again?'

‘I thought you were anxious to establish your grandmother's innocence.'

‘She claimed responsibility. Nobody forced her to do that.'

‘How do you know?'

‘Oh come on! I've had a couple of weeks in which to get to know her but I think I can safely say she is not the sort of woman anyone can force to do anything. In her own quiet way she is a very determined lady. No one forced her and no one framed her. The decision to confess was hers. Right or wrong, who am I to interfere after all this time?'

‘Hmm.' He looked at her steadily. ‘What brought on this change of heart?'

Juliet sipped her mineral water. ‘What do you mean?'

‘The last time I saw you you were absolutely dedicated to investigating the past. Now you turn up at – well, rather a late hour for a social visit, saying you don't want to go on with it. Something must have happened to change your mind.'

‘Not necessarily,' she hedged. ‘I just don't like interrogating my relatives, that's all.'

His pulses quickened. ‘I see. And which of them was it you were interrogating when you suddenly developed a prickly conscience?'

The colour flamed in her cheeks. ‘I don't think that is any of your business.'

‘Really? Then let me remind you that you came to me asking me for my help. I have invested quite a bit of time and effort into helping you with your enquiries. I would have said that makes it my business.'

She bit her lip, embarrassed. Put like that it didn't sound too good.

‘Look, Dan, I don't really expect you to understand but I just feel terribly disloyal to my family. In the beginning I didn't really know them. My only loyalty was to my grandmother. I even thought in a naive sort of way that if I could prove she had been wrongly convicted my parents would make things up with her. They went to Australia because of what happened you see and they've really had nothing to do with her ever since. I thought maybe I could bring them together again. But now I feel like some kind of spy. I've got to know the others and to like them and I can't do this to them. When Viv blew her top tonight about Louis I realised for the first time just what a dislikeable person he must have been and I realised something else too. What on earth would happen if I discovered one of them had a hand in his death? It would start the whole nightmare up for them all over again. I can't do it, really I can't.'

Dan sipped his drink. He was sitting in one of the faded wing-chairs, long legs splayed, apparently very relaxed. But his eyes were narrowed and he tapped thoughtfully on the rim of his glass with his forefinger.

‘You think then that someone else in your family might be implicated,' he said after a moment.

‘Isn't that what
you
suggested when I first talked to you about it?'

‘Well, yes. Yes, I did, it's true. But now I'm beginning to wonder if I might have been wrong.'

‘How come?'

He turned his glass between his hands, regarding her steadily.

‘Suppose I told you I have uncovered at least one angle that has nothing whatever to do with any of your family, Louis excluded of course. Would that make any difference to the way you feel about going on with your enquiries?'

Juliet sat forward eagerly. Her eyes were suddenly very bright.

‘Say that again!'

‘What?'

‘That you think there's a chance someone else might be implicated – someone outside the family.'

‘I didn't exactly say that. Don't put words in my mouth.'

‘Who?' Juliet demanded.

He hesitated. He was still not certain whether he should be telling her what Phil Gould had told him. For one thing it was breaking a confidence, for another he was no nearer knowing what it was Louis and Raife Pearson had quarrelled about that night, and certainly he had not the least reason to suppose it had any bearing on the shooting. But in a way the second reason negated the first. Raife was not and never had been under suspicion. It was no secret – at the time plenty of people at his club had known about the quarrel, but no one had ever been able to point the finger at Raife. Now Dan felt the one way to make Juliet keep on digging was to dangle an incentive under her nose. And besides … she was obviously very worried and unhappy about this whole affair. He would have liked to be able to reassure her that none of her family were involved.

‘All right, I'll tell you as much as I know,' he said.

He watched her as he talked, watched the expressions flicker across her face, and found his attention wandering.

What was it about her that made him feel this way? It was so long since any woman had reached him on any level at all, let alone stirred this cocktail of tenderness and, yes, desire, that he was experiencing now when he looked at her, listening intently as he talked about Raife Pearson and the possible connection between him and Louis. He was, he thought, beginning to want her and the emotion was disturbing. Angry with himself, feeling oddly that he was somehow betraying Marianne, he dragged his full attention back to Louis Langlois.

‘So, there you have it,' he said at last. ‘Raife Pearson is just one man outside the family who had quarrelled with Louis.'

‘Hmm.' She was looking thoughtful, her earlier hopefulness overshadowed a little as if she too had seen through the thinness of the story. ‘Did he hate him enough to kill him though? I mean, if he'd been going to shoot Louis wouldn't he have done it there and then, not waited until he got home and shot him down in cold blood?'

‘Raife didn't shoot him. He couldn't have. It would have had to be a hired gun.'

‘It sounds awfully far-fetched to me. He would have had to have a pretty strong motive to go to all that trouble – or take the risk if it comes to that. I'd like to think it might have been him, of course. I've just got my doubts, that's all.'

Dan drained his glass and got up to pour himself a refill, wondering just how much he should say.

‘There were plenty of others who had good reason to hate Louis by all accounts.'

‘Hate him enough to kill him? Do you really think people go around killing other people because they hate them? Isn't it far more likely to be because they love them – well, love them too much, or for all the wrong reasons …' She broke off, realising what she had said – made out yet another argument as to why Louis should have been killed by someone close to him. ‘Oh shit!' she said softly and suddenly all the traumas of the evening came together, gathering into a knot of tears in her throat. She lowered her head, blinking fiercely in the hope that he would not notice. But the tears escaped anyway, rolling down her cheeks. She fumbled in her bag for a handkerchief. ‘Dammit, what's the matter with me?'