The Hardie Inheritance (16 page)

‘I don't want to be the cause of a family quarrel.'

‘Oh, it's a long time since David and I were friends. I never forgave him for murdering my pet cat when I was six. And there have been other quarrels since then. I don't propose to
appeal to him on grounds of fraternal affection. But I can offer him a trade.'

She made her way at once to the premises in Pall Mall where The House of Hardie had its headquarters. Several times, when she was a little girl, her father had taken her there and told her about some of the famous men who had passed through its doorway over the years. There was a large artist's sketchbook beside the reception counter, she remembered, containing designs for personal wine labels. Many of these had been scribbled by the customers themselves, before being redrawn by a draughtsman. The artistic efforts of men whose fame lay in other fields – Victorian prime ministers, Hanoverian generals – must be worth a good deal of money. But David had never considered selling them at the time when he had pressed her so hard to let him use Greystones as security for a loan.

She was shown straight up to her brother's office. As David rose to his feet he smiled as though he were delighted to see her and had no idea that her visit could be anything but a friendly one: but his dark eyes were wary.

‘I want to know why you're persecuting Ellis,' Grace said without preamble, refusing his invitation to sit down.

‘I don't know what you mean.' But his smile faded. He understood very well what she was saying.

‘You made a telephone call to tell the police about that party.'

‘I absolutely deny –'

‘Oh, shut up, David. Ellis and I both know it was you. You mentioned Ellis by name, to make sure that he wouldn't get away, whoever else did. And you're proposing to give evidence, aren't you, about what was going on.' The brief synopsis of the prosecution's case that morning had mentioned a witness. It seemed a reasonable guess that it would be David – perhaps inventing a reason why he had hoped to speak to Ellis – who would describe the scene he had interrupted.

He hesitated for only a few seconds longer before indirectly admitting her accusation.

‘It's for your sake, Grace. If you'd seen … It was disgusting! To think that my sister should be married to a beast like that! I thought you ought to realize … You have grounds for divorce.'

‘Have I ever said that I wanted a divorce? You believed it would make me happy, did you, to see my husband in court on a charge like this? Thank you very much indeed. My marriage is none of your business, David. My husband's behaviour is none of your business. It's too late to turn back the clock and persuade the police that they never knew about the party. But you are not going to stand up in court and name him as a – as a pervert.' She had learned a new vocabulary in recent days, but was not yet at ease in using the words.

‘And exactly how do you propose to stop me?'

‘You reminded me a few years ago, on the day of Tom's funeral, that I ought to make a will. I didn't take your advice then. But I'm telling you now that if my husband goes to prison I shall go straight to a lawyer and make Ellis joint owner of Greystones during my lifetime, and heir to my interest in it when I die. Is that what you want to happen?'

‘You're crazy,' said David.

‘I'm angry.'

‘And you think that's enough to make me withdraw my accusation, knowing that you could still take the same action the day after he's acquitted?'

‘No.' Grace sat down in the leather chair which her brother had originally offered her, prepared now to discuss the matter more calmly. ‘I don't suppose you told the police that it was your own brother-in-law you were shopping. The relationship will come out if you go into the witness box at the jury trial, of course, because our lawyers will suggest malice as one of the possible reasons why you were at the party yourself. But presumably until now you've been claiming to have recognized him after a glimpse on some public occasion.'

She paused, but David made no comment. ‘Well, you could tell the prosecution lawyers now that, after seeing Mr Faraday
in court, you no longer feel sufficiently sure that he was one of the two men in the private room. ‘I'm not asking you to say that it was someone else. But they can't force you to give evidence against your will. And in return I'll make you a promise: that Ellis will never own Greystones. That's all you want to know, isn't it? That's why you want me to divorce him. You don't care whether it makes me happy or unhappy. You just don't want him to get his hands on the house.'

David also sat down, taking his time to consider the proposal. ‘You mean that you will now make a will?'

‘Yes.'

‘And you'll bequeath the property inside the family?'

‘I'm telling you what I
won't
do, David, which is that I won't leave it to Ellis. I don't have to tell you what I
will
do. I could leave it to the Cats' Home if I chose!'

There was a sudden dramatic silence as she spoke the words. She had meant them only as a cliché: the ultimate threat of cantankerous old ladies. But as she – and undoubtedly David also – remembered how their childhood quarrel had begun with David's bow and arrow shooting of her beloved cat, the threat seemed dangerously appropriate. Since she had not intended it that way, she continued in a mollifying tone.

‘Well, I'm not suggesting that as a real possibility. My family feeling is as strong as yours. All I meant in that sense was that I could make a will on one day which would suit you and change it the next day without telling you. I'm not prepared to tie my hands for the rest of my life. But I am prepared, as part of a bargain, to give an absolute promise that Ellis will not inherit Greystones from me.'

David needed a few minutes longer, tapping his fingers together as he weighed up the proposal.

‘Even without my evidence, he may still be convicted,' he warned her.

Grace let out the breath she had been holding, realizing that she had won.

‘Yes,' she agreed. ‘But we shall be able to tell whether you've
kept your side of the bargain. And if you do, I shall keep mine.'

She stood up and made her departure with dignity, neither smiling nor thanking him. But once she had left the premises and turned the corner towards St James's Square she was forced to stop for a moment while she waited for the tension of her mind and body to relax. Her life had not prepared her for such encounters, and she was trembling with the nervous effort.

Well, that was one obstacle surmounted, and the price she had paid for it was insignificant. Ellis loved Greystones almost as much as she did, because it had been his father's first major work; but one result of the unusual circumstances of their marriage was that neither of them expected to share the other's life – or possessions – completely. When she told him what she had done he would be grateful rather than upset.

The next obstacle, however, loomed larger. There was still the trial to be faced.

Ellis and Jay took Grace shopping before the trial. Ellis paid for her clothes, but Jay chose them. He saw himself as the producer of what would be a brief but vitally important scene set in the witness box. The first requirement was that she should be suitably dressed.

‘I mean to say, you can't turn up wearing those awful overalls.'

‘Well, of course not!' protested Grace. Her mother, out of the windfall from the Beverley estate, had made her a present of an outfit which she thought eminently suitable for London, but Jay rejected it at sight as too matronly.

‘You may be nearly forty but there's no need to look it. You've got a marvellous complexion, good legs, a trim figure. What we've got to find is something which gives two impressions at the same time. You're a respectable married woman, living quietly in the country, with the sort of conventional opinions which would make you chuck Ellis out on his ear if you really believed he was guilty of the charge. But at the same time you're a desirable, sexy kind of woman to whom any man would like to come home in the evenings.'

‘Tall order!' Grace laughed, knowing that she was neither of these things.

‘You're not to run yourself down,' said her brother severely. ‘I know just the right place.'

The expedition took a whole morning. There were stockings and shoes to be bought, and gloves and a hat. Grace, who only on the very hottest days was prepared to protect her head with a wide-brimmed straw hat, tried to protest at this last
item but was overruled. A hat was part of her respectable image, just as a touch of lipstick should be applied to emphasize the other side of her character.

On the question of lipstick Grace was adamant, knowing that the contrast with her exceptionally pale complexion would make her look like a tart; but in every other respect she obeyed Jay's instructions. Ellis's sombre expression as he paid each bill in turn had nothing to do with the cost of the exercise. He would have preferred not to involve Grace at all; but she was determined to help him.

When he had completed his task as wardrobe master, Jay set to work on her lines, suggesting not only the words but the expressions on her face as she spoke them.

‘And there's one temptation to be resisted at all costs,' he told her. ‘If you're asked whether you disapproved of your husband going to a party with no women present, do not reply brightly that if he were to be invited to dine at the Athenaeum there'd be no women present there either but you'd think none the worse of the occasion for that. You'd be surprised how often people on trial think that sort of thing is funny, without stopping to reflect that the judge is bound to be a member of the Athenaeum himself.'

‘It would never have occurred to me,' said Grace. ‘But now you've put it into my mind, I shall hardly be able to resist it.'

‘You'd better try. Now then, stand up, look attentively at Counsel when he's asking you a question, but then turn your head and look the jury straight in their collective eye.'

He was doing his best to prepare her for every possible trap and opportunity, but this coaching did nothing, for her hope that the charge would be withdrawn if its chief witness withdrew his evidence was not fulfilled.

Without it, however, the prosecution case was greatly weakened, and this was recognized in the decision to try five men at the same time, presumably in the hope that if a charge of indecent behaviour could be made to stick against one of
them, the others – merely because they were on the premises at the same time – would be tarred with the same brush. Each of the five had his own team of defence lawyers, so that the courtroom was crowded when Grace at last took the stand. For a moment she was bewildered. But then she saw Ellis, soberly-dressed in a well-cut dark suit, and smiled at him. Jay had instructed her to give just such a smile, but she had forgotten the instructions: it came from the heart.

She was appearing as a character witness. The main strand of his defence had already been presented. He had adopted her suggestion of claiming to have been present on professional business – realizing too late that this would earn him the fury of the other defendants by labelling them as members of the illegal community which he wished to photograph. Now it was time to establish him as a happily married man.

In consultation with the lawyers it had been decided that Grace would take a risk. Ellis's own counsel would do no more than elicit a statement that she loved her husband, knew that he loved her, and did not believe him to be guilty of the charge against him. Only under hostile cross-examination would she play her trump card. The risk was that she would be treated gently instead of being submitted to a hostile cross-examination; but the prosecuting counsel played into her hands.

‘Did you know, Mrs Faraday, that your husband was proposing to attend a party on the evening in question?'

‘Oh yes. He always telephones if he expects either to be late home or to be spending the night in London, and tells me where he's going.'

‘How much did he tell you?'

‘He talked about it in terms of the photographs he was hoping to take.' Grace, having made the decision to lie, was lying with conviction. ‘I remember he was afraid that the light would be dim and the atmosphere smoky.'

‘He didn't mention the fact that there would be no females at the party.'

‘I don't really remember. I would probably have been pleased if he did. It would have been reassuring to know that he wasn't going to spend the evening surrounded by beautiful women. But I don't suppose he thought it important. I mean–' Grace could not resist this, in spite of Jay's warning – ‘he belongs to a gentlemen's club in London and often has meals there. But he doesn't bother to tell me every time that he'll be dining with other photographers and artists and that they'll all be male.'

‘How much time do you yourself spend in London, Mrs Faraday?'

‘Very little. My husband's main studio is there, because it's convenient for most of his sitters; so he has to spend part of each week in the city.'

‘Where he is attended, I believe, by a certain Alan Jenkins?'

‘Is that supposed to be significant?'

‘That's the question I'm putting to you, Mrs Faraday.'

‘Mr Prescott, if my husband were looked after in my absence by a pretty young maid, would you immediately suggest to me that I had grounds for divorce? Well, perhaps you would. If you start with a presumption of guilt, no doubt everything appears suspicious. All I can say is that I believe it to be quite usual for a gentleman's gentleman to be employed in a pied-à-terre.'

‘I'd be glad if you'd confine yourself to answering my questions, Mrs Faraday.'

‘I'm sorry. What exactly is the question?'

‘Why do you not live with your husband in London?'