Next of Kin (49 page)

‘Surely there's a way that some of these people could be helped,' she said gently, ignoring his attempt at humour. ‘Surely they would appreciate it if a charitable donation was made to them to help them out with their lives, with their children's lives?'

Sir Quentin narrowed his eyes and laid down his knife and fork, his appetite for the steak and kidney pie destroyed at last. This was exactly why he didn't like to be disturbed at lunch. ‘Jane, I'm going to stop you before you say anything else,' he said.

‘Just listen to me,' she said, interrupting him quickly.

‘No, I don't believe I will—'

‘It wouldn't have to be the whole jury, just two or three of them. Four or five at most. Enough to swing things our way. If we could just let them know, offer them—'

‘Jane, stop it!'

‘In a way it would be like making amends for what Gareth has done, trying to improve the lives of some needy people—'

‘Jane, I must insist,' he shouted, his voice rising so high that the few other people in the bar turned and glanced coolly in the direction of the arguing couple in the corner, suspecting a love affair gone awry. Jane stopped talking and bit her lip, looking away from both them and him.

‘We're not wealthy by any means,' she said now, reaching forwards and pinning his hand to the table with her own. ‘But we're extremely comfortable. We have the money. I have it myself if need be.'

‘Does Roderick know that you're having this conversation with me?' he asked suspiciously.

‘No, of course not. He'd lose his mind.'

‘I daresay he would,' said Sir Quentin. ‘And for what it's worth you could go to jail for what you've just suggested and while you're at it you could ensure your son's conviction and execution.'

She turned to stare at him again, her face suddenly pale as if he had slapped her.

‘That's right, Jane,' he repeated. ‘Execution. And if you ever make a suggestion like that again and anyone overhears you, that's exactly what could happen. And I have to tell you, I am offended, mortally offended that you think I would go along with such a scheme.'

She leaned forwards, her lips seeming to recede slightly as she bared her lips, the lioness defending her cub. ‘Don't play the high and mighty with me, Quentin,' she said. ‘You don't have any children, do you?'

‘No, but—'

‘Then don't you think for a moment that I wouldn't do everything in my power to defend mine. If they want to hang him, they'll have to hang me too.'

He sat back and took the napkin off his trousers and laid it on the table, standing up.

‘I'm going back to court now, Jane,' he said, barely able to look at her; she seemed like she was losing her reason entirely. ‘Because I have known and respected your husband for so many years I will do you the courtesy of pretending that this conversation never happened. However, if you ever broach this topic with me again I shall resign from the case and will have no alternative but to report my reasons to the judge. Do you understand me?'

She stared at the table, no tears now, just a sense of total and utter impotence, unable to control what was going on around her. The frustration of seeing her life disappearing, her son's life on the point of extinction. He, on the other hand, refused to budge until she confirmed it.

‘Do you understand me?' he repeated and then a third time.

‘Yes!' she said quickly and angrily. ‘Yes, yes, yes. Yes, I understand you. What do you care anyway? You get paid no matter what happens, don't you?'

She turned and looked at him and he shook his head and left the bar, leaving her alone in the seat. The fact that she was unable to do anything to save her son felt like a ticking time bomb inside her and it was all she could do not to overturn the table and scream as loudly as possible; it was what she wanted to do. Scream and scream and scream until they came to take her away and lock her up and fill her full of enough medication that she would forget about all of this and be transported back to a time when the only things that mattered to her, the only things of any importance, were securing invitations to garden parties at Buckingham Palace and finding the right hat to wear to Ladies' Day at Ascot.

6

HE FOUND HER SITTING
in the roof garden, reading a travel guide to America; it was a beautiful day and she was wearing a sleeveless dress, dark sunglasses and had a glass of white wine on the table beside her. She looked for all the world like a woman without a care or concern. She was luminous, Montignac thought. The most beautiful woman he had ever known. On a whim he re-enacted that favourite game of his from when they were children; he stood silently for a moment, then stamped his right foot forwards loudly and she jumped in her chair, dropping her book as she let out a small cry of alarm.

‘Hello,' he muttered, his voice barely carrying.

She looked towards him, laughing a little as she did so. ‘I didn't hear you arrive,' she said, reaching down to recover the book. ‘Actually, I think I'd drifted off into some sort of trance.'

‘I took the lunchtime train,' he said, sitting down opposite her and wishing he had a pair of dark glasses too, not just to ward off the sun but because he felt she suddenly had an advantage over him by being able to see his eyes when he could not see hers. She glanced at her watch.

‘It must have come in late, did it?' she asked. ‘When you weren't here by two thirty I thought you weren't coming at all.'

‘I got delayed,' he explained, not wishing to recount how or why he had got off the train two stops early and walked the remaining six miles to the house.

‘Well you're here now and that's what matters. Would you like some wine?' she asked, lifting the bottle and holding it over the glass she had set out for him. He nodded and she poured one for him, which he tasted carefully, allowing it to linger on his palate for a few moments. ‘It's from Father's cellar,' she said as he looked impressed. ‘I decided to start trying some of it rather than just letting it go to waste. I have no idea how many bottles there are down there but there's an awful lot of them. They go back to our great-grandfather's day, some of them.'

‘There's almost four and a half thousand,' he said quickly and she looked at him in surprise.

‘Really?' she asked.

‘Really. Less whatever you've managed to get through, of course.'

‘I haven't gone through that many. Don't worry. How was your journey anyway?'

Montignac sighed; he was in no mood for small talk. ‘I'm sure you didn't ask me here to talk about the train trip,' he said.

‘Well, no.'

‘How have you been anyway?' he asked, not wishing to sound aggressive from the start. ‘I wondered whether I would see you in London during the week.'

‘For the trial, you mean?' She shook her head. ‘I thought about it,' she admitted. ‘But in the end I couldn't see the point. It seems like a foregone conclusion that he's going to be found guilty, doesn't it?'

‘I'm afraid it does,' he said.

‘What do you mean by that?' she asked, taken aback.

‘Well it's a tragedy for all concerned, isn't it? Raymond's family, Gareth's family. Gareth himself. You.'

‘And Raymond,' said Stella harshly. ‘Let's not forget him. He was the victim here, remember?'

‘Of course,' he replied quickly. ‘I meant alongside Raymond.'

‘Well forgive me if I don't have a lot of sympathy for your young friend—'

‘He's not
my
friend, Stella. He simply worked for me, that's all. And he didn't even do very much of that.'

‘I know, I know,' she said sadly, shaking her head. ‘Sorry, Owen. I didn't mean to imply anything by that. You could hardly have known that things would work out the way they did. He came from such a good family too.'

‘I'm giving up the flat in Bedford Place,' he said. ‘I didn't tell you that, did I?'

‘No,' she said, a little surprised for he had been there for about four years and it was convenient and comfortable. ‘When did you decide this?'

‘A week or so ago. I told my landlord I'd be moving out in about a month. I couldn't stay there any longer. I didn't feel that it was appropriate to stay any longer after what happened.'

Stella found herself touched by his decision and had an urge, which she resisted, to reach across and squeeze his hand. ‘I think that's very kind of you,' she said. ‘Do you know where you'll go yet?'

‘Not really. I have to start looking. I dread it.'

An idea came into her head. ‘What about Father's apartment?' she asked. ‘The one in Kensington? It's all bought and paid for and there's no one in it at the moment.'

‘Father's apartment, as you put it,' he said, ‘is your apartment now, remember? He left it to you.' He resisted the urge to add the suffix:
along with everything else.

‘Yes, but I'm not using it. Oh, Owen, you should take it. It's so beautiful there and you'll have three times as much space.'

He shook his head. ‘He left it to you,' he repeated. ‘He obviously didn't want me to have it.'

‘But it's not his to decide about any more,' she said.

He looked away and stared out over the grounds of Leyville. ‘Do you remember when we were children and we used to come up here to hide from Margaret or your parents?' he asked with a smile. ‘And then we'd get into worse trouble because they were always afraid we'd fall off and kill ourselves. And your mother wanted to put up a railing so that couldn't happen but Uncle Peter refused, he said it would destroy the view.'

‘I remember,' said Stella.

‘I think the only reason why they didn't want us up here was so that it could be their own refuge. All the little lunches they had up here with their friends. The wine receptions. They didn't want us interfering with them.'

‘Well we're here now,' said Stella.

‘Yes, we are.'

‘And no one can stop us any more.'

‘No.'

He seemed to be drifting off into his own thoughts and she snapped him back to her. ‘Owen, I'm glad you came down. I wanted to talk to you about something.'

He looked across at her and took another sip of wine. ‘Go on,' he said.

‘Well it's about Leyville. What's to become of it.'

He sat back in surprise. ‘What's to become of it?' he asked. ‘I don't follow you. Why, what are you thinking of doing to it?'

‘I'm not thinking of doing anything
to
it as such,' she explained, a little nervously. ‘But I've decided I don't want to live here any more.'

The news could hardly have surprised him more. ‘Why not?' he asked.

‘After Father died, and particularly after Raymond died, I just started to think that the place was no good for me. I had this vision of myself hiding away for the rest of my life, only rising above the parapet for food and water, and dying surrounded by a hundred cats, not being discovered for weeks on end. Don't you think this place has caused only trouble for people?'

‘Not at all,' he said with certainty. ‘I love Leyville, you know that. My father loved it too. Our grandfather—'

‘Yes, yes, I know they did. But I don't. Isn't that strange? After all these years to suddenly feel like you don't belong in your own home? No, I've decided I don't want to stay here any longer. I'm thinking of going travelling in fact.'

‘Hence the book,' he said, nodding towards the travel guide on the table.

‘Exactly.'

He frowned; he found it extremely difficult at times to be around Stella but the idea of her being elsewhere, in another country or continent, a place where he could not keep track of her and the lowlifes who tried to get close to her, was anathema to him.

‘You can't be serious,' he said.

‘I'm perfectly serious.'

‘And what would you do with the house? Just close it up?'

‘Well that's what I wanted to talk to you about,' she said, a little irritably he thought. ‘I had an idea about donating it. To the National Trust. Letting them make a sort of museum out of it. A place that the public could come to visit. What would you think of that?'

His mouth dropped open in surprise. The public, those millions of nobodies with mud on the soles of their shoes and cigarettes dropping ash on the floors, marching through his ancestral home, searching for a coffee shop or a convenient bathroom; his father's birthplace, the birthright that was stolen from him … the idea was too much.

‘I think it's obscene,' he said. ‘And I don't for a moment believe you mean to go through with it.'

‘Obscene?' she asked, a little taken aback by his choice of words. ‘I don't see what—'

‘Your father did not leave you Leyville in order to see you throw it over to the government or the crown,' he said, pointing a finger at her. ‘Good God, if he thought you were going to do that he never would have cut me out of the will.'

Now it was her turn to look surprised. ‘I can't believe you just said that,' she said.

‘Well, believe. And anyway, I don't think you have the right to do any such thing. The will made it clear that you couldn't sell any of the land or estate, that you had to live off the income and only your heirs—'

‘Actually, I've already spoken to Denis Tandy about that,' she said defensively. ‘It's true that I'm not allowed to sell Leyville, but I can give it away. I can create a trust whereby the house becomes the property of the nation with a board to oversee its activities over which I would preside. And I had very much hoped that you would want to be a board member too.'

‘Not if my very life depended on it,' said Montignac.

She stared at him, truly surprised by his attitude. ‘I don't understand you, Owen,' she said. ‘I didn't think you'd react like this at all. I thought you might be sad at my going away but—'