Next of Kin (45 page)

‘All right, Lewis, that's enough,' said Sir Quentin irritably, seeing how little of this Gareth was actually taking in. ‘He knows what he's doing.'

‘It's a funny thing, isn't it?' said Gareth quietly. ‘If I had simply used my senses I would be your pupil now, going into cases like this with you and afterwards … afterwards going for celebratory drinks, I suppose,' he added.

‘It was too many drinks that got you into this mess in the first place, young man. I wouldn't spend too much time thinking about things like that if I was you.'

‘Do you know who's up first?' asked Gareth.

‘The pathologist,' said Sir Quentin. ‘That'll probably take most of the morning anyway. We're looking at two weeks in total, I would think, until jury deliberations.'

‘And then the sentencing,' said Gareth.

‘Don't be so pessimistic. We haven't even started yet. You need to cheer up, only don't look too happy out there. Feel free to look outraged and appalled by the whole business. As if you can't believe the injustice of your being there.'

‘It's kind of you to say. Somehow I don't have a good feeling about this, though.'

In fact no one in the room, if they were honest with themselves, did.

Some miles away, Roderick and Jane were getting into their car and escaping the phalanx of reporters who had been waiting on their doorstep for them since early morning. When they managed to close the doors and drive off, Jane was close to tears.

‘Catherine Jones phoned this morning,' she said bitterly, referring to the next-door neighbour who had seen red over the encampment of reporters earlier in the year. ‘First thing too. Can you believe it? I was hardly out of bed. And said that she hoped that everything would go all right for us today but would it be possible to ask the young men on the street to move along to the Old Bailey instead? It lowers the tone, according to her. If I hadn't been in my dressing gown I would have gone next door and throttled her.'

‘That would be all we need,' said Roderick. ‘Two trials.'

‘Don't be flippant, Roderick.'

‘Well just ignore her then,' he replied. ‘We have more important matters to worry about than the neighbours' concerns for the value of their houses.'

They drove on in silence for a few minutes until Jane broke it with a quiet comment.

‘I'm frightened,' she said. ‘I never knew I could feel quite so frightened.'

He opened his mouth to reassure her but found that the words wouldn't come; he had been in the law long enough to know how a case looked and the last thing he wanted was to offer false hope.

‘We'll be there together,' he told her instead. ‘Both of us. And we'll be there for Gareth, whatever happens. You simply have to block everyone else out of your head.'

‘It's not everyone else I'm worried about, Roderick. It's Gareth. It's our son. It's the thought of what could happen to him if … if he's found guilty.'

She could barely bring herself even to suggest it but the possibility was there, it was more than a possibility, she had been married to a barrister for long enough to know that.

‘It's what they'll do to him then. At the sentencing.'

‘I told you that you can't worry about that now,' said Roderick, his vision blurry with tears as the idea came into his head too. ‘Remember, there's no mandatory sentence here. Even if he was found guilty—and there's no guarantee of that—but even if he was, well he could be sentenced to a few years perhaps—'

Jane laughed. ‘That's not what you would have done,' she pointed out. ‘It's not what you did. You sent that Domson boy to his death. And two others,' she added, recalling the other murder cases that had led to the death sentence during her husband's tenure on the bench.

‘That was different,' he said. ‘That boy was no good, he didn't have a job, he sponged off his wealthy parents, he'd committed a horrible murder…' His words trailed off; they were both struck by the fact that this was not so very different at all, that the cases were very much alike, and neither wanted to acknowledge it. They drove up towards the courthouse and both their hearts sank when the crowds outside came into view.

‘It's like déjà vu,' said Jane. ‘It's like a punishment for what happened before.'

‘Stop it,' said Roderick bitterly. ‘I won't have you talking like that, do you hear me? Now just keep your head down, hold my hand, and don't speak to anyone until we're inside the court, do you understand?'

She nodded, recalling the last occasion he had used those words to her and how that day had ended.

*   *   *

AS THEY STEPPED FROM
the car, Mr Justice Patrick Sharpwell KC finished robing in his chambers and checked his appearance in the full-length mirror, pleased by what he saw. Not as grossly overweight as some of his colleagues on the bench, he always believed he cut a rather fine figure in his red ermine. An experienced barrister and judge, he had woken early that morning too, quite looking forward to the case that lay ahead. Despite the fact that it was frowned upon, he had read some of the newspaper reports of the murder of Raymond Davis and had already formed an opinion on the case. Not that it mattered much; if the boy was found guilty the question of what would happen to him was not entirely in his hands. In that event, he would wait to receive his instructions.

There was a brief knock on his door and the bailiff informed him that the court was in place.

‘Right you are,' he said, following him out, down the corridor and up the steps to his seat, while the packed courtroom rose noisily to their feet and the case of Rex vs Gareth Bentley was called to be heard.

2

WHEN THEY WERE CHILDREN,
Peter Montignac's office was out of bounds to Andrew, Stella and Owen, and even after his death his only daughter avoided the room out of a mixed sense of awe and respect. From as far back as she could remember her father had run his estates and various businesses from that office, flunkies coming to and fro on the morning and evening trains or, for those who could afford it, in their motorcars. He maintained an office in London of course, where his managers were employed, but rarely visited it, preferring to spend his days and nights around the grounds of Leyville and in the company of his wife, children and nephew.

So Stella's decision to enter the room to plan her trip came as a surprise to Margaret Richmond who had also rarely set foot inside.

She had combed the house looking for Stella and couldn't find her anywhere, not even on the roof garden that she loved so much, and was returning downstairs when she saw the door to the office slightly ajar and went to investigate. She pushed it open, saw the figure sitting behind the desk and screamed.

‘Good God, Margaret,' said Stella, screaming in response and looking up in fright with a hand to her breast as if she feared a heart attack. ‘What on earth are you yelling about?'

‘You gave me a shock, that's all,' said Margaret. ‘You had the look of your father, when he was a young man, sitting behind his desk. What are you doing in here anyway?'

‘I came in to organize some things,' she said. ‘Do you know, this is the room in the house that I've spent the least amount of time in? Except when I was getting a telling-off as a child. Other than that, I've almost never been in here.'

‘Me neither,' said Margaret, maintaining her position at the door and rubbing her hands quickly up and down her arms. ‘It gives me the chills being in here,' she added.

‘It does?'

‘Well I've spent forty years in this house and always knew that this was your father's private place. I don't feel like I have any business being in here.'

Stella nodded; she had felt the same way coming inside but the room couldn't stay sealed off forever. ‘There are so many things here,' she said. ‘Documents, files, account papers. The London office is always asking for them. I think the thing to do is to get them to come up and organize to move everything down there, don't you?'

‘You're not going to manage his affairs yourself then?' asked Margaret in surprise.

‘I told you, Margaret. I'm not going to stay here.'

Margaret sighed; she had hoped that this idea had been dropped but realized now that Stella had been perfectly serious. So serious in fact that she had taken a trip to London the previous day to visit the London office that her father had set up, and had spoken to his—her—manager there and informed him of her plans. He was to take over all the day-to-day running of the business from then on, with an increased salary of course, but he would have access to all the papers that Peter Montignac had previously stored at Leyville.

‘You're serious about this then?' she asked.

‘Perfectly serious. This might come out like a joke, Margaret, but do you have any idea how wealthy I am?'

‘I'm sure I don't,' said Margaret with a sniff.

‘Well neither do I,' said Stella. ‘There's so much money, there's so much land, that I simply can't keep track of it all.'

‘What about Owen? Why don't you ask him to look after some of it.'

‘I tried,' said Stella, shaking her head. ‘I suggested it briefly to him shortly after Father's death but he turned me down flat. Said that if he hadn't been trusted enough to inherit it, then he wasn't going to act as an employee. So I could try to do it myself, which would be a bore, or I could pay professionals to do it for me, and then I could start to enjoy some of my money. Why not, after all?'

Margaret opened her mouth to protest but found that her conscience bothered her. In truth, she thought, why shouldn't she enjoy it? If she had had access to a fortune of that size when she was a young woman, wouldn't she have wanted to travel the world and have adventures of her own and meet interesting men rather than acting as an underpaid nanny to three children who weren't even her own? Three children who had never shown the slightest amount of gratitude to her for all she had done. Of course she would. But her selfish half, the half that feared being left alone, got the better of her.

‘You're walking away from your responsibilities,' she said. ‘Your father would never have approved.'

‘Then he should have left the lot to Owen,' said Stella in a distracted tone, who wasn't to be dissuaded. ‘Rather than to me.'

‘Perhaps he should have,' muttered Margaret.

‘What was that?'

‘I just think you'll regret it, that's all. The world's not a safe place at the moment. Why, look at the newspapers every day. All that trouble going on in Spain, the ructions in Germany—'

‘Oh come on, Margaret. I don't know what newspapers you've been reading but all I can see when I pick up
The Times
or
The Daily Telegraph
are editorials either denouncing the Simpson woman or calling on Stanley Baldwin to keep his nose out of another man's affairs.'

‘And don't get me started on that harlot,' said Margaret angrily.

‘I don't intend to. But what I do need you to do is speak to Annie for me.'

‘Annie?'

‘Yes. We're going to have to let her go.'

Margaret's mouth dropped open. ‘But you've already cut her hours to part-time. How am I supposed to explain this to her?'

‘There's no point having a cook on the staff if there's no one to cook for, is there, Margaret? Come on now. Be reasonable about this.'

‘And what about me?' asked Margaret. ‘Am I to be dismissed too?'

Stella sighed and came around from behind the desk. She could see the tears forming in her old nanny's eyes and felt bad for her. Of the three children she had always had the trickiest relationship with her. Not when she was a child, perhaps. But when she was a teenager, things had changed. It was true that the decisions Margaret made for her might have been meant for the best—in retrospect she didn't know what she would have done in her shoes had she been faced with a similar situation—but nevertheless it had damaged her and she had never been able to forgive.

‘Well you're not to be turned out of course,' she said. ‘This is your home, Margaret. It's yours for as long as you live. And you'll keep your salary. You'll be perfectly comfortable.'

‘Living all alone in a house this size? Good Lord, when I think back to when you were all children—'

‘Which was twenty years ago,' said Stella with a sigh, returning to her chair. ‘Father's dead, Mother's dead, Andrew's dead, Owen never visits—'

‘He is coming, though, I called him.'

‘You called him?' asked Stella in surprise, looking up.

‘Yes, you asked me to.'

‘He took the call?' she asked.

‘Well he answered the phone and there I was. He didn't have much choice in the matter.'

Stella smiled. She knew only too well how difficult it was to get hold of her cousin.

‘And what did he say?' she asked. ‘Is he coming down?'

‘Well he made an awful lot of excuses. You know what he's like. But yes, he said he'd see us in a few days' time.'

‘Good,' said Stella. ‘Because it's only fair that I let him know my plans.'

‘And what are your plans exactly?' asked Margaret. ‘Where do you intend on going?'

Stella shrugged her shoulders. To the right of the desk there was an enormous globe, an old-fashioned one with a wooden base and she twirled it slowly, watching as the multicoloured countries span past her, the blue of the oceans catching her eye as it rotated.

‘I thought America,' she said, as it slowed down. ‘Perhaps New York. That's where everybody goes nowadays, isn't it?'

‘New York?' asked Margaret, shivering again. ‘Isn't that terribly dangerous?'

‘No more dangerous than London,' said Stella in a cold voice. ‘Haven't you heard? Innocent young men get murdered there all the time.'