Next of Kin (46 page)

Margaret frowned; she didn't like to hear Stella speaking like this. She hated the idea of her being turned cold and bitter by what had happened.

‘Don't,' she said quietly.

‘Don't what?'

‘You mustn't torture yourself so. By thinking about Raymond like that.'

‘I've lost more important things than Raymond, Margaret,' she said. ‘And I've survived. Or don't you remember?'

Margaret felt herself grow angry and turned away just as Stella started to spin the globe again.

‘Of course,' she said after a moment, ‘I could go east rather than west. Perhaps visit old friends in Switzerland.'

‘I hardly think that's a good idea, do you?'

Stella shrugged. ‘I don't know,' she said. ‘What harm could it do after all this time?'

Margaret opened her mouth to speak but didn't want to get drawn on the topic. ‘Well I don't want to get into all that,' she said finally. ‘You know what I think. But if you're determined to make mistakes—'

‘I'm determined to do what I think is best.'

‘Well then it's none of my business at the end of the day.' She sighed in a grumpy way and looked around the room, shivering slightly. ‘It's so cold in here,' she said. ‘Why don't you sit in the drawing room?'

Stella shook her head. She had been just about to leave in fact but changed her mind when it was suggested.

‘I think I'll stay a while,' she said. ‘But you go if you want to.'

Margaret turned and looked at a case of legal books that stood to her left and ran her finger along one of the shelves, examining it afterwards and shaking her head. It was only on the rarest of occasions that Peter Montignac had even let anyone in here to clean. He claimed that he knew where everything was and he didn't want a single item to be disturbed. ‘And it's so dusty too,' she said. ‘I'll have to get someone in to clean it. It's been ignored all this time. That bin is overflowing,' she added, reaching forwards to pick up a wastepaper basket at the side of the desk that was full to the brim and taking it with her. ‘I'll see you later,' she said as she left.

‘And you'll speak to Annie?'

‘If you're sure you want me to.'

‘I'm sure.'

‘Then I'll speak to her. But will you do one thing for me? Will you just think about what you're doing? Or at least speak to Owen about it. You're still grieving, you know, for both your father and your fiancé and if you only realized that—'

‘Thank you, Margaret. I'd like to be left alone now.'

Margaret opened her mouth to speak again, thought better of it and turned and left.

Stella sat at the desk for a few minutes, doodling on a pad of paper with a pen. Her mind drifted to her dead fiancé and she wrote his name down in the centre of the page:

Raymond

She stared at it for a few moments before writing a phrase on top of it:

Living without

Raymond

She tapped her fingers against the desk and thought that this was what she would have to get used to from now on. Living without Raymond. No one had ever realized just how special he really was, not even—she decided—herself. She picked up the pen once more and wrote three words beneath it:

Living without

Raymond

is too painful

She stared at it, frowning at the self-pity of the words, and ripped the piece of paper from the top of the pad, crumpling it up to throw in the bin but Margaret had taken it away. Shaking her head irritably, she stuffed it in the top drawer of the desk instead and stood up, shivering in the chilly atmosphere of the room, and went out and locked the door behind her.

3

RICHARD SMITH HAD TAKEN
over as clerk in the Rice Chambers after the forced retirement of Alistair Shepherd and the position had turned out to be a lot more controversial than he had ever imagined it would be at the outset. In his previous chambers, where he had been a junior clerk, the phone only rang when there was an instructing solicitor on the other end trying to book a meeting with a barrister to represent one of their clients; that, after all, was the business of chambers. Here, however, every second call was from a newspaper editor or a reporter looking for a comment from their venerable head on the murder case involving his son. Richard had quickly learned not to put these calls through to Roderick and told each one in as polite a tone as he could muster that they were not to call back, but it had reached the point where he was beginning to answer the phone in a tetchy manner himself. It was his considered opinion that Roderick should do the decent thing and resign before bringing chambers into further disrepute.

The first call of that day, however, had been from another senior member of the judiciary, Lord Samuel Keaton, wanting to know whether Mr Justice Bentley would be available to see him later that day.

‘His schedule's a little awkward at the moment,' said Richard, flicking through the diary where whole mornings and afternoons had been scored out. ‘I'm sure I don't need to tell you that—'

‘The trial of course,' said Keaton quickly. ‘I know he's there most of the day but does he pop back to chambers at all?'

‘Sometimes on the lunch recess,' said Richard cautiously, who would not have given this information out to anyone but a judge of Keaton's seniority. ‘You might perhaps find him here then if you wanted to drop by.'

‘Well don't book any appointments for him today,' ordered Keaton. ‘I need to speak to him on a matter of urgency.'

‘Right you are, sir,' he said, making a note of it as he rang off and hoped that this employer would not be angry with him.

As it turned out Lord Keaton arrived at chambers before Roderick and was waiting for him when he came up the stairs, hunched forwards, head bowed, looking like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders. He walked right past his colleague without even noticing his presence and gave only a cursory nod to the clerk's desk out of habit; the desk could have been inhabited by a two-hundred-pound gorilla and he would scarcely have noticed.

‘You have a visitor, sir,' said Richard, nodding past Roderick towards Lord Keaton.

He turned around and seemed surprised to see him there. ‘Keaton,' he said, not entirely happily. ‘This is unexpected. Did you want to speak with me?'

‘If you can spare me a few moments, I would appreciate it,' said Keaton with a smile.

Roderick nodded, his eyelids heavy from lack of sleep, and indicated that he should follow him and they walked up the stairs together towards his office.

‘I'm sorry to intrude on you,' said Keaton. ‘I know this is a difficult time. I can't imagine what you're going through. How are things developing anyway?'

‘Not very well,' said Roderick as they stepped inside and hung their coats on the stand. ‘Please, take a seat, Keaton.' He paused and let out a deep sigh as he sat down behind his desk. ‘The prosecution are still presenting their case but it doesn't look good. Harkman's doing a wonderful job. He's making Gareth out to be some sort of combination of Jack the Ripper and Attila the Hun. They're bringing up the alcohol, events from the boy's past—'

‘He's a prosecutor,' said Keaton, not without sympathy. ‘You know it's nothing personal. He's just doing his job. You've done the same thing in the past.'

‘Well it's very difficult to listen to,' explained Roderick. ‘To hear your own son labelled in those terms. A boy you brought up, educated, had so many hopes for … You have children, don't you, Keaton?'

‘Five.'

‘Well there you are. You can only imagine what it's like to hear someone you love so defamed.'

Keaton nodded; in a small corner of his heart he felt bad for Roderick, a decent man who had had the misfortune simply to be picked for the wrong advisory committee. Gareth Bentley's imprisonment, he realized, could be directly related back to the choices that Lord Hailsham made and to Owen Montignac's gambling debts.

‘And Jane?' asked Keaton. ‘How is she coping?'

‘She's not,' he said with a shrug. ‘She goes through the day like a zombie. She hasn't cried very much but it's like she's visibly ageing before my eyes. She's in a state of blind panic and I want to help her, I want to be there for her, but I simply don't know what to do. It's all I can do to keep my own head above water. If this ends badly—'

‘It's something you have to prepare yourself for,' said Keaton. ‘If the evidence mounts up.'

‘Do you think I don't know that?' he snapped. ‘I'm sitting there, listening as they present their case and wondering how I would feel if I was presiding over it and by this stage I would be thinking to myself that it's open and shut. I'd be starting to think about the sentence.'

‘Ah,' said Keaton. ‘Well there's the crux of the thing.'

‘Don't, please,' said Roderick, raising a hand. ‘I can't even bear to think about it. Even the idea of—' He found himself unable to complete his sentence. Tears were welling up in his eyes and he blinked them back in shame and embarrassment as he looked across at Lord Keaton with an attempt at a smile on his face. ‘You know, all I can think about is the families of those three boys I sentenced to death during my career. Their parents. I used to look at them in the courtroom and their faces were filled with devastation and horror but it never affected me. And the ridiculous thing is that I always congratulated myself on the fact that I could be so unmoved. That it made me a better judge, when all it really did was make me ignore the effect these sentences can have on the actual families. That it's their sentence as well. I'm so sorry,' he said, aware that he was growing more and more distressed with each sentence. ‘I must seem like a dreadful ass behaving like this.'

‘You're behaving like any father would.'

‘Yes, well…' he said, clapping his hands together to indicate that portion of the conversation was over as he coughed and tried to move on. ‘Anyway, what can I do for you? I'm sure you didn't come all the way over here just to hear my troubles.'

‘Actually, to an extent I did,' said Keaton. ‘But I also wanted to discuss the other matter.'

‘The king?'

‘The king.'

‘That's not for another few days yet, though, is it? Our next meeting?' He flicked through his diary, looking for the appointed date.

‘No, that's right,' acknowledged Keaton. ‘But I thought it might be worthwhile for us to have a little chat in advance. You know we both seem to be the standard-bearers for the armies of the left and right.'

‘I suppose we are,' said Roderick. ‘One of us behind the king, one of us behind York.'

‘Just so. And Monckton is obviously on the king's side, the two are inseparable. While Altringham is much closer to mine. Hailsham will only make the casting vote if it's a tie, which will inevitably be for the status quo if we can't reach an agreement. Which really means that you have the casting vote. The most important vote of all, you might say.'

‘I don't quite see that,' said Roderick with a frown. ‘To be honest, as I've considered it recently I find that I am as adamant in my support for the king as you are opposed. I'm not sure that I can be convinced otherwise.'

‘Really?'

‘Yes. You made a strong argument last week, conjuring up images of the two armies meeting on the battlefield as in days of old, but somehow I just can't believe that would happen. The world isn't the same as it was in the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries. Parliament and the law would decide who was the legal heir and that would be the end of the matter. Civil war wouldn't be tolerated. And besides, look around the country. Can you really see the people answering a call to arms to fight against each other like that? People don't have that level of selflessness any more.'

Keaton smiled. ‘Actually, I can,' he said. ‘But as you pointed out, it wouldn't be in our lifetime anyway. The question remains who best serves the British people now. A layabout wastrel who thinks only of his own pleasures and puts the entire future of the empire in jeopardy—'

‘Steady on, Keaton!'

‘Or a quiet, decent family man, with two heirs already provided, who will always put duty before … personal pleasures.'

‘The king is the king,' said Roderick in frustration, beginning to grow irritated at having to discuss this while his son was on trial for his life. ‘We don't have the right to unseat him. And as you say, if my vote is the crucial one, then you're asking me to be entirely responsible for removing him from the throne. I might just as well say that your vote is the crucial one if I could persuade you to my side.'

‘Oh, but that's impossible,' said Keaton with a laugh.

‘And it's impossible for me to change my mind too,' said Roderick with finality. ‘I will stand behind him. I don't pretend that I much like the idea of the marriage because I don't. I've never met the woman but I can't say I care for her. But nevertheless I have an overriding feeling that it's simply none of my business. Who am I to say who a man can and can't fall in love with? So I'm going to vote in favour of it. I'm sorry, Keaton, but my mind is made up.'

Keaton nodded; he had hoped that he might be able to persuade him to change his vote but it was clear now that Roderick was as staunch in his opinions as Keaton was in his. There was nothing left to do now but to lay his cards on the table.

‘Very well,' he said. ‘Of course I have to admit I am a little surprised by your support for him. After all, it's not so many months ago that you were sentencing his cousin to the gallows.'

‘Henry Domson was the king's third cousin,' said Roderick defiantly. ‘He was hardly what you would call a close relation.'