Daughter of Riches (12 page)

She broke off. Dan Deffains was looking guilty, almost like a small boy caught stealing the chocolate hiscuits.

‘I'm afraid there is a bit of a snag there, Miss Langlois. My father died last year.'

‘Oh!' Juliet was startled. ‘Why didn't you tell me that on the telephone?'

He paused, countering her startled response with a rueful grin.

‘I'm sorry – I should have explained on the telephone, I suppose, that I am not the Dan Deffains you thought I was, but I have to admit to having been fascinated by the case involving your grandmother for a very long time. I was only a boy when my father represented her, of course, but I know she was almost a cause celebre as far as he was concerned and I couldn't resist the opportunity of talking to you about it.'

‘I don't know what to say.' Juliet's disappointment was as evident in her voice as it had been in her face. ‘I had been hoping your father would be able to tell me something about what happened. As I said earlier I'm over here from Australia – we emigrated when I was four years old – and I thought perhaps as her lawyer he might be able to fill me in with a few details. Since that is obviously not possible I think we are both probably wasting our time.'

Dan Deffains regarded her thoughtfully. He too was disappointed – when she had telephoned he had thought that perhaps at last luck was turning his way and he might find a breakthrough point in the case that had occupied his thoughts for so long, both personally and professionally. But he was better at hiding his feelings than Juliet and in any case, from his point of view all might not be lost. It wasn't going to be handed to him on a plate as he'd thought it might be – but then, what in life was?

‘I'm not sure I agree we'd be wasting our time if we were to have a talk.' He ran a hand through his hair, thick, dark and very short. ‘Look – can I get you a coffee? Mrs Ozouf put it on for me ten minutes ago so it should be just about ready.'

Juliet hesitated. She couldn't think what he meant and she wondered briefly if he was making a play for her. But in spite of getting her here under false pretences he did not seem the sort of man to avoid being alone with and besides, although she could not see what he could possibly tell her she felt oddly reluctant to close the door on the one link with the past that she had established outside the family.

As if on cue the smell of freshly brewed coffee wafted in from the kitchen and she made up her mind.

‘All right, thank you. Though I still don't really see the point.'

‘I'll try to explain in a minute. Sit down – I'll fetch the coffee.'

Juliet perched on the edge of a worn brown wing chair, tucking her legs beneath her and wishing she had worn trousers instead of her mini-skirted linen suit. Back at La Grange it had looked sharp and smart, just the thing for a visit to a frowsty old advocate. Here, in this aggressively masculine room, she was acutely aware of her bare legs and felt oddly vulnerable.

‘Here we are then.' Dan came back into the room carrying a coffee jug, two mugs and a bowl of sugar on an enamelled tray. The design had faded somewhat, Juliet noticed as he put it down on a low table. But at close quarters the coffee smelled even better.

‘So,' Juliet said as he poured, ‘ why did you say we might not be wasting our time?'

As he pushed the cup towards her across the low table his glance lingered for a moment on her long tanned legs and his mouth quirked into a half-smile. But he said nothing. Somehow he did not think Miss Juliet Langlois would appreciate wisecracks, however honestly flattering they were intended to be!

‘My father was an advocate of the old school, French trained at Caen rather than an English lawyer such as you'll find today. He went into what was his father's practice and he had no partners – he liked to work alone. When he died all his current work was turned over to other firms and it fell to me to clear out his office and dispose of his archives. A pretty boring job it was too for the most part and I consigned the bulk of the stuff to the shredder. But one file I kept because it had always fascinated me, just as I knew it had haunted my father. That was the file relating to your grandmother's case.'

‘Really?' Juliet sat forward eagerly, annoyance forgotten. ‘And you still have it?'

‘Yep.' He got up, crossed to the heavy old chiffonier that stood in a corner and took out a cardboard file tied with pink legal tape. Then he brought it over, tossing it carelessly down onto the table beside the coffee cups. ‘There we are. ATTORNEY GENERAL v. SOPHIA LANGLOIS – November 1972.'

A nerve jumped in Juliet's throat. She stared down at the file, almost hypnotised by the wording on the label. ATTORNEY GENERAL v SOPHIA LANGLOIS. Seeing it in black and white was a shock somehow, giving substance to what had previously been almost a fiction, something that might never have happened at all.

‘It's all there,' Dan was saying. ‘Every last detail. Or, to be more precise, every last detail that the principals chose to tell my father.'

His tone was heavy with meaning. Juliet glanced up, meeting his eyes and reading the implication as a confirmation of the same doubts Catherine had expressed.

‘You mean … you think it's not necessarily the truth?'

‘I know my father always believed Sophia was innocent and it played on his mind. He had been in a cleft stick professionally speaking. On the one hand he was governed by his client's instructions and she never said one word to suggest she was anything but guilty. On the other he went to his grave feeling he had let her down by not insisting on persuading her to fight the charges. To be honest I wonder if the whole business had something to do with his early death – he had a heart attack at the age of sixty-five, and we all know stress plays a part in cases of that sort.'

‘I'm sorry …'

‘Not your fault. Nor your grandmother's, come to that. An advocate should be able to live with his own ethical decisions. I mention it only to show you that I do have a very real and personal interest in the case. But to get back to your question as to whether I believe the statements and so on in the file tell the truth, I have to say that if your grandmother was innocent – as my father was convinced she was – then clearly they do not.'

Juliet could feel her skin prickling. She had been so sure she was right, now hearing Dan Deffains's son more or less confirming her suspicions she experienced an emotion midway between elation and apprehension.

‘It all dovetails though?' she asked.

‘As far as one would expect. But I don't think the case was ever properly investigated. I don't know how much you know about our legal system here but to be honest it leaves something to be desired. The chief officers of law enforcement are civilians, known as the Constable, the centeniers and the vingteniers. In the old days the terms were strictly literal – a centenier was in charge of a hundred households and a vingtenier twenty. Nowadays of course that is no longer the case and there is a professional police force – the ‘paid police', as they are somewhat disparagingly called, but they are still answerable to the Honorary police and believe it or not they have no powers of arrest which are all vested in the elected officers.'

‘Paid police. Yes, I've heard of them. But I didn't realise the proper police didn't have any powers of arrest. How odd!'

‘To the rest of the world it must seem pretty feudal, but that's the way it is here. Until fairly recent times even the Parishes were all separately administered – if a criminal crossed the boundary he couldn't be followed until the law officers had sorted it out between themselves. Pretty ludicrous, really, especially in an island the size of Jersey, and as you can imagine the system causes friction between the Honorary and the paid police. On occasions it can be detrimental to the course of justice. I believe – and so did my father – that Sophia's was a case in point.'

‘Why?' Juliet sat forward, cup clasped between her hands, but the coffee untouched.

‘There was a fair old feud going on at the time between John Germaine, the centenier and Ivor Fauval, the detective inspector. Germaine was an old school country gentleman type, proud of his position, jealous of Jersey's history and traditions, typical well-to-do middle class. Fauval, on the other hand, was an ordinary career policeman and he resented everything about Germaine – his money, the breeding that oozed out of every elegant pore, and, most of all, the fact that he, Fauval, was answerable to him. That, I think, was the bitter pill he could not swallow. Here he was, a trained professional policeman, required to do the bidding of a man who, in his opinion, just played at the job.'

Juliet frowned. ‘Are you saying this Inspector Fauval pressed charges against my grandmother out of spite?' she asked.

‘No – simply that it might have made him less anxious to look for any other explanation. Let's face it, he had an open-and-shut case presented to him with Sophia's confession. You could hardly expect him to throw it out because she happened to be a friend of John Germaine – the ‘‘ boss'', so to speak.'

‘It sounds as though you have some sympathy with Inspector Fauval,' Juliet said.

‘I have – or at least with his point of view. I used to be a policeman myself and I know how galling it can be. In this case, however, I think resentment blinded Fauval to his duty. He knew the Langlois family – your family – were personal friends of the centenier. He knew the embarrassment the whole thing was causing him. And he was envious too of everything your family had – wealth, position, lovely homes, chauffeur-driven cars. When Sophia confessed he was only too glad to take her confession at face value. He marked it down to his clear-up rate and he never investigated it as thoroughly as he should have.'

‘I see.' Juliet's mouth was dry. ‘And what do you think he would have discovered if he
had
investigated properly?'

Dan's eyes narrowed. ‘I don't know, but I wish I did. I thought
you
might be able to fill in some of the blanks.'

‘Me!' She stared at him. ‘But I've told you – this is all totally new to me. I didn't even know until a few weeks ago that I had an Uncle Louis, much less that my grandmother had stood trial for killing him. My parents never told me and nobody here seems to want to talk about it either. I can understand that in a way. It must be something they would rather forget. But on the other hand the brick wall that goes up does seem a bit excessive. Especially since I get the feeling …'

‘Yes?'

‘I don't think they believe Grandma was guilty either. So why don't they want to get the whole thing out in the open and prove her innocence? She's a sick woman – she has a weak heart. She could have a serious attack and die at any time – wouldn't you think they'd want to clear her name before it's too late?'

‘Is that why you telephoned to talk to my father?' Dan asked directly. Faint colour rose in Juliet's cheeks.

‘Well, yes, if I'm honest I think it is. I wasn't certain what I expected him to say. I just thought I'd like to hear what happened from an independent source – someone not directly involved. And yes, I suppose I did fancy the idea of playing at detective. It's not a very nice thing, you know, for any of us. My parents emigrated to escape the scandal. I think I was hoping I might find some evidence to clear Grandma's name. But I suppose that is out of the question now.'

‘It might not be. If we worked together …' He hesitated, trying to gauge what her reaction might be, then he went on: ‘ Look – I have my father's file. I also have connections with the State of Jersey Police. I might be able to do a bit of digging in the archives. And you are in close contact with most of the people who were involved. You say that they clam up and refuse to talk about what happened. But if you were to ask the right questions perhaps you could get to the truth.'

Juliet shivered suddenly, remembering what Catherine had said about family skeletons and warning her to leave the past well alone.

‘So you do think the reason they are so cagey is more than just sensitivity. You think they are hiding something?'

‘I should say that is a certainty. One thing my years of police experience taught me is that practically everybody has something to hide. Whether it's important or not is the crux of the matter.'

Juliet bit her lip. All very well in theory to want to get to the bottom of the mystery. All very noble to talk about clearing her grandmother's name. But it was always possible she was starting something that might roar away out of control, reopening old wounds, letting all the mischiefs escape from the Pandora's box that had been tightly locked for almost twenty years. And besides …

‘What exactly is your interest in this?' she asked.

Momentarily Dan hesitated. Should he tell her the truth? But old habits die hard. Policemen – and investigative reporters – ask questions, not answer them. This had to be played close to his chest.

‘I told you – the case has always fascinated me,' he said smoothly. ‘I was brought up on it, remember. And I thought you were keen to get at the truth. Look – think about it. If you decide you want to go on, let me know. As I said, I still have police contacts and I can do a spot of digging. But there's no point unless you are prepared to ask a few questions too. It might be difficult. You might even find out some things you would rather not have known. But that's the price we have to pay for the truth.' He stood up, holding out his hand. ‘Look, I'm going to have to ask you to excuse me now. I have an appointment I can't miss. Think about what I've said and let me know what you decide. Then perhaps we can talk some more.'

Juliet nodded. ‘I'll do that.'

‘Good.' There was a hardness about the way he said it and Juliet thought suddenly that it was very easy to believe that he had once been a policeman. Then he smiled again and the impression of steel-like authority was almost instantly dispelled. ‘I'll hope to hear from you then.'