Daughter of Riches (68 page)

‘Frank wouldn't have believed I had a scrap of evidence unless I produced you. That's why it was so necessary for you to come over.'

A nerve jumped in her throat and the nausea worsened.

‘We wouldn't really go to the papers would we? You wouldn't expect me to …?'

‘Well of course,' Louis said smoothly. ‘If he won't play ball I shall have to make my money by some other means. I shall sell the story to the highest bidder.'

‘
My
story!'

He ignored her, laughing as he swung the Porsche at high speed round the winding country lanes.

‘It might almost be better! Perhaps the gambling laws wouldn't be changed and the clubs and hotels would have to stay staid but we'd be assured of money on the nail. What could I screw them for, I wonder? Thirty thousand? I should think so. And would I enjoy it! Seeing some of those stuffed shirts turn the colour of ripe aubergines over the story you could tell would be a prize in itself! I can see the headlines now – “SEXY POLITICIAN IN ORGY SCANDAL” or “FRANK AS FRANK!”'

‘What about me?' Debbie demanded. She was close to tears. ‘I'd be telling the world I was at that orgy too!'

‘That doesn't matter does it?'

‘What do you mean – it doesn't matter? It matters to me! I didn't want to be there – it was horrible – embarrassing. Surely you wouldn't want to put me through that? Surely …'

She broke off as the truth hit her. He didn't care. Louis really did not care about her feelings at all. And that could mean only one thing. He did not have the slightest intention of marrying her or even bringing her to Jersey permanently. She had never been more than a diversion and now, when the de Val business was over, she would have outlived her usefulness.

He was swinging the car into a tree-lined drive.

‘Where are we going?' she asked.

‘Home. La Grange. I want to make a phone call.'

‘Oh.' In spite of herself she felt one last desperate shard of hope. She was going to La Grange, the family home. Perhaps she was wrong and he did not intend to discard her after all.

The house was in darkness.

‘You can come in if you want to,' Louis said. ‘Mother is at a gala in St Helier and David is ill in bed with flu.'

Debbie's heart sank. So she wasn't going to be introduced. ‘I'll wait in the car,' she started to say, then changed her mind, curiosity getting the better of her.

She followed Louis into the hall. Once, not so long ago, the grandeur of it would have overwhelmed her but the life she had led since going to London had changed all that. The fascination of La Grange lay in the fact that this was Louis's home, these walls had seen him as a child and a young man – days she could never share – and would see him, perhaps, through all the years ahead. Louis disappeared into what was obviously a study. She heard the ring of the phone as he lifted the receiver to dial and occupied herself looking at the paintings in the hall and running a finger over the carvings on the wooden chest that stood at the foot of the staircase. And what a staircase! Had Louis ever slid down these bannisters, she wondered. Most children surely would, given the chance and Louis had been a daredevil, she imagined.

An unexpected sound made her turn. The front door opened and a tall fair haired man came in.

‘Who the hell are you?' he demanded.

Though a little taken by surprise Debbie returned his hostile gaze.

‘I'm with Louis.'

The man snorted. He looked, Debbie thought, very angry.

‘Where is he?'

She indicated the study. ‘ In there – on the telephone.'

The fair haired man made straight for the study. His familiarity with the house as much as any passing likeness to Louis told Debbie who he was even before she heard Louis say in a surprised voice: ‘Robin!'

And then all hell broke loose.

In the years to come, when she tried to remember exactly what was said that night, Debbie always found she had an almost total mental block. So terrible was what followed that it was as if her brain was trying its best to shut off, to eliminate the whole scene from her memory. But although the actual words of the accusations and counter-accusations were lost in the whirlpool of emotion Debbie was never, for a single moment, in any doubt about what was behind the terrible sound of two men tearing one another apart.

Raife Pearson had carried out his threat to tell Robin of Louis's affair with his wife, and Robin, like a mad bull, had come chasing over to La Grange to have it out with Louis. Like most gentle men who are slow to anger, his temper when finally aroused could be terrible. Frightened, Debbie shrank away as the two men followed one another round through the downstairs rooms of the house, shouting at one another. Yet in a strange way she was very calm, very aware of an ice-cold place deep inside her, a despair she could no longer deny and a sense of total humiliation and worthlessness.

Whilst she had been waiting for Louis in London, longing for him, loving him with all her being, he had been being unfaithful to her here in Jersey with his own sister-in-law. Worse, he had not the slightest intention of making their relationship permanent. She was here now only because he wanted to use her for his own ends and he did not care how much he cheapened her in the process. She was nothing but a pawn now in the game he was playing to get what he wanted here in Jersey. That was all she meant to him now – perhaps all she had ever meant to him.

Debbie cowered in the hall, frightened and hurt beyond belief. She no longer knew where she would go or what she would do now. She only knew that it felt as though her heart was breaking.

Dan Deffains' office looked as if it had been struck by a bomb, more chaotic even than the usual organised clutter under which it disappeared when he was working on a story. The wastepaper basket had overturned, spilling half a dozen floppy discs on to the carpet and in the middle of the floor a huge pile of paper, newspaper cuttings and photographs resembled nothing so much as an unlit bonfire. Dan scooped the lot into a black plastic dustbin liner then reached for the last file remaining on his desk, a dog-eared manilla folder with pink legal tape hanging loosely from it and labelled both with a black marker pen and a typed stick-on label – ATTORNEY GENERAL v. SOPHIA LANGLOIS – November 1972. For a long moment he looked at it, remembering the day, over a year ago now, when he had found it whilst clearing out his father's office, and the excitement it had aroused in him. Then, with a heavy sigh, he tossed the folder into the dustbin finer on top of all the rest of the paraphernalia associated with the Langlois case.

What a bloody fiasco it had turned out to be! He had had such high hopes that the case might provide the basis for a new scoop in investigative journalism, perhaps even a book. His instincts had been right. But it was a story he could not use without hurting Juliet. That was not something he was prepared to do.

How ironic it was, Dan thought, giving the sack containing the fruits of many hours of his labours a vicious kick. From the moment Catherine Carteret had telephoned and told him certain startling facts he had known he could not go on with it. It would have made a story and a half, of course, if he had used what she had told him, and she must have known it. She had taken one hell of a chance, spilling the beans to him. But she had called on his loyalty to his father: ‘ You know he really would have been very distressed to know you were taking advantage of his privileged position as Sophia's advocate,' she had said in her sweetly reasonable tones. He had explained to her that he had never had any intention of violating the trust Sophia had placed in his father, that he had hoped, indeed, to prove her innocent. And it was then that Catherine had dropped her bombshell and he had known, with a great swoop of disappointment, that this was one story that must remain untold for a number of reasons – not the least of which was to protect Juliet.

Had his father known what lay behind Sophia's confession, he wondered. Or had he at least suspected? If he had, he had done the very best he could in the circumstances – though Dan, with his inherent respect for the truth, could not help feeling it might have been better if the facts had been allowed to come out at the time. But not now. Now it was far too late. So, in accordance with Catherine's request, he had written off his hopes of a story and tried to steer Juliet away from investigating any further. And what had happened? Somehow she had found out about him and was convinced he had simply been using her.

Not that he could blame anyone but himself for that – and to be honest, in the beginning it had been true. But that had been before the totally unexpected had happened and he had fallen in love with her.

Fallen in love. It wasn't a phrase he was used to using, never mind applying it to himself. He had, of course, been deeply in love with Marianne, but after her death he had never expected to feel that way about a woman again. Then Juliet had come into his life and suddenly all the old preconceptions had been blown away. He had found himself wanting her, and not only on a physical level. She had made him feel alive again, reawakened emotions he had thought he would never again experience, and after that last evening they had spent together he had been ridiculously cheerful, certain that he could fight her Australian boyfriend for her – and win.

Now all his hopes were shot to pieces, totally scuppered by his failure to be honest with her.

Why the hell hadn't he been, he thought. He was usually honest to a fault. But without giving it any great deal of thought he knew the reason well enough and it didn't make him proud of himself – he had been too damned afraid of losing her. And, it seemed, his fears had been justified.

The dustbin bag looked in danger of toppling over. Dan twisted a tight-tie round the top, picked it up and carried it downstairs. He couldn't put it out with the rubbish, there was too much dynamite there to risk it blowing about on a refuse tip. He'd see to shredding it personally when he had the time.

The coffee pot was bubbling invitingly. On the point of pouring himself a cup he changed his mind. Early in the day it might be but the way he felt this morning he was going to have a stiff whisky instead!

Halfway through the whisky a thought occurred to Dan. He lowered his glass, eyes narrowing, trying not to be carried away by the sunburst of excitement that was beginning inside him.

Raife Pearson had warned Juliet that someone was ‘not quite what they seemed' and with her reason blindfolded by emotion, she had translated that as a warning against him, Dan. But he couldn't have been the subject of Raife's warning. Raife wouldn't even have had any reason to know Juliet knew him, and even if he had known it was unlikely he would have made any connection between Dan and Harry Porter. No, he must have had someone else in mind – but who? Who, in Juliet's circle, was employing some kind of duplicity? Why? And how did Raife Pearson, of all people, come to know about it?

Dan's skin prickled and he knew it had nothing to do with the whisky. He picked up the telephone and dialled the Jersey Lily Nightclub. But when someone answered and Dan asked for Raife he was told that the owner was away for the next few days.

‘I'll be in touch when he gets back,' Dan said, disappointed. He was impatient to find out what Raife had meant, but he had long since learned that impatience was an impotent emotion. He would simply have to wait until Raife got back – and hope Juliet was still in Jersey when he got his answer.

‘I'm very worried about you, Sophia,' Deborah said, arranging the cushions at her mother-in-law's head. ‘I think it's high time Dr Clavell had the consultant to see you again. Your ‘‘turns” are coming a lot more frequently, aren't they? I don't like it at all.'

Sophia smiled gently. ‘Neither do I, but I don't think there's very much I can do about it.'

‘That's nonsense and you know it. I'm sure if you went into hospital for a few days, so that you could be properly monitored or whatever it is they do to you, you'd be fine again.'

‘Perhaps. But I have no intention of doing that whilst Juliet is here. My time with her is far too precious. Do you realise I haven't seen her since she was four years old? And once she goes back to Australia heaven knows when – if – I'll ever see her again. Unless, of course …' she added, brightening, ‘something comes of this business with Dan Deffains' son. Now if they were to get together it could be quite a different story!'

Deborah said nothing. She felt quite bad enough already having to warn Juliet off Dan Deffains junior.

Why is it I manage to bring trouble wherever I go, Deborah wondered. Yet perhaps she was being too hard on herself. In the last twenty years she had been a calming influence if anything – at least she had tried very hard to make it so, doing everything in her power to be a good wife to David and a good daughter-in-law to Sophia. And she had been – she
had
! She loved David very much and he loved her. Perhaps in the beginning she had been attracted to him because he was Louis's brother; perhaps he had been attracted to her for much the same reason. There was, she knew, a certain amount of glamour surrounding her in David's eyes for he had hero-worshipped Louis. But that was all a long time ago. David knew all about her now. He had accepted her for what she had once been and forgotten about it. Their marriage had been good and Deborah was now quite certain of David in the comfortable way that comes from almost twenty years of loving and sharing.

As for Sophia, Deborah had made every effort to be whatever Sophia needed most. She had been a nurse and ladies' maid, confidante and friend, and she and Sophia had become closer than she would ever have believed possible. Perhaps, she sometimes thought, they had fulfilled a need in one another – Sophia did not have a daughter; she, Deborah, had to all intents and purposes never had a proper mother. Between them they had forged a relationship closer than one of blood – and certainly a great deal more cordial than most relationships by marriage. But then of course her closeness to Sophia had predated Deborah's marriage to David; predated their meeting, even.