by Mark Raven
So that morning, after a rather pricey breakfast at my budget hotel, I had located the solicitor’s office and had made an appointment for two o’clock.
Now, gabbling like a schoolgirl, I told all this to my new client as she led me through her father’s house.
It was a cavernous place. The sort of holiday home the rich bought in the good old days when there were servants they could send ahead to get the beds turned down and a rip-roaring fire established in the grate. A staircase in carved oak dominated the entrance hall, with a stained glass window halfway up. There was the distinct tang of furniture polish, like a museum, and the paintings on the walls were dark and done in murky oils. Roses, seascapes, stick figures skating on a frozen lake reminiscent of the Dutch school, but with no light to them and definitely no sense of humour. No illicit assignations, no rogues taking a leak behind a barn.
‘I know,’ Jenny Forbes-Marchant observed. ‘Hideous.’
I followed her down a corridor into a large kitchen. We were at the back of the house with a view over what estate agents term ‘landscaped lawns to the rear’. I supposed that the house would be on the market before very long and that was why Jenny Forbes-Marchant was sorting it out. She was certainly dressed down for the occasion. Besides the tight jeans, she wore an even tighter blouse (pink) and a pair of red cowgirl boots. The ensemble was daring but it suited her. I resisted the temptation to say so. I had learned not to compliment her from our last encounter. It was as if you woke something up inside of her, and she might turn it on you without really thinking.
Besides, now she was my client it would be unethical.
In contrast with the rest of the house, the kitchen was light and airy and still had the old servants’ bells above the door. It smelled less museum-like and more lived in.
‘My father,’ Jenny Forbes-Marchant continued, ‘had no appreciation of the fine arts. I think he bought all his pictures as a job lot to fill the wall-space.’
‘It has been known,’ I said, not feeling like critiquing a dead man’s taste in art, however ‘fine’.
‘Tea? Coffee?’
She lifted a kettle from the Aga and shook it at me. I declined. She had already made herself a cup and wrapped her hands around it. They were tanned and her nails were a shiny carmine. Like everything about her it was just that tiny bit off-key.
‘I can come with you if it helps,’ she suggested. ‘To the solicitors.’
I thought there was nothing less likely to ensure success.
‘Let me try on my own first,’ I said. ‘Then, if I don’t have any luck... Well, we’ll see.’
I don’t like to give my clients too much information. Before she could object, I added, ‘Actually, right now I just need the paperwork from you. Then I’ll toddle off down to the sailing club to take some photos.’
‘Do you need me for that?’
‘No, it should be all right. I rang ahead. There’s a Commander Kenilworth who said he’ll show me around.’
‘Wing-Commander,’ she corrected me. ‘One of Daddy’s pals. He virtually lives there. Perhaps best I don’t come, after all. I’ll just go and look for the boat documents.’
She left the kitchen, and I heard her boots click down the corridor. I glanced around the kitchen, stood up, opened one or two drawers, and read a shopping list pinned by a magnet to the fridge. Inside, it was fairly well stocked: bacon, cheeses, several jars of pickle, and some vacuum packed beetroot. Nothing rotten or going off. Nothing past its sell by date.
I went to the kitchen door and peeped down the corridor. It ran along the back of the house and led to a room on the right. I could hear Jenny Forbes-Marchant rummaging around. That must be the study, I thought. Makes sense, looking out on the back gardens. All shipshape and Bristol fashion. I heard the study door close, so I went back to the table and sat down.
Jenny Forbes-Marchant came back in, carrying a file of papers. She put them on the table.
‘I hope these are what you need.’
While she drank her coffee, I leafed through them. They seemed good enough to represent proof of ownership, not that it mattered too much for the case I was going to make. When I looked up, her eyes were upon me.
‘All there?’
I nodded.
‘Anything else you need from me?’
‘Just my retainer.’
‘Retainer?’
‘Five hundred pounds should suffice, and a note saying I'm representing you.’
Reluctantly, she dug into her handbag and brought out a chequebook.
‘The letter’s more important,’ I said. ‘Anything. Write on this.’
I gave her my notebook and dictated a note. She wrote like a good little girl in her best copperplate that I was acting on her instructions in the matter of the sale of the Cassandra to PiTech—I read out the company address—on 17 August 2013. She handed it back and turned her attention to the cheque.
‘Your father,’ I asked. ‘Did he have a housekeeper?’
She glanced up and said, ‘Why do you ask?’
‘The place seems so well kept. Note on fridge door. Place polished, and well stocked. All signs of long term female occupancy.’
‘A little bit sexist, Mr Becket?’
‘Entirely,’ I agreed. ‘So, the housekeeper?’
‘He did,’ she sighed. It was a different type of sigh today, I noted, more regretful than sad. ‘A housekeeper, if you can call her that. I had to let her go, I’m afraid. Before anything went missing.’
‘I see,’ I said, although I didn’t.
Jenny Forbes-Marchant regarded me with appraising eyes. She put her pen down and leant forward, her tanned forearms in pleasant contrast to the pine tabletop. Her breasts pressed against the silky pink blouse. Another button had come undone, presumably in the pursuit of documents. She was about to say something when, fortunately for me, her mobile phone rang. She listened, stood abruptly and wandered out the back door. A few moments later, she appeared in the garden, stalking about on the lawn. Then she paused under a tree and started picking at the bark. It was obviously a very intense conversation.
I went along the corridor and into the study. I could still see Jenny Forbes-Marchant from there. She was now kicking the tree with her cowgirl boot. Perhaps someone had promised to buy a collage and then hadn’t.
The room was in a mess. It was as if it had been burgled by an amateur: paper was everywhere—on the desk, the floor, the window sills, the chairs—it formed in drifts against the door and bookcase. The drawers of an old metal filing cabinet gaped pathetically, emptied no doubt by Mrs Forbes-Marchant. It was the only paper-free zone in the room. The bookcases had not been searched. The books were tightly packed and on a whole variety of subjects: mathematics, marine engineering, boats—as you would expect—but also on contemporary politics, geography, history and a row of old green Penguin paperback crime novels.
The bookcase was clearly well used, with texts crammed in where and when Sir Simeon Marchant had stopped reading them, or looked up something. All along the bookcase there were bottles of pills. They were all for the same drug: Exelon. More than anywhere else in the house, the study highlighted his absence. It was sad. A sad place.
There was tray of unopened correspondence on the desk. They looked like circulars. I read the postmarks: South Africa, USA, India. One was a magazine wrapped in cellophane: ConGress 13, it said. I glanced out of the window, and put it down. Jenny Forbes-Marchant was striding back across the lawn towards the kitchen.
Hayling Island Sailing Club was a more modern building than I’d expected. It jutted jauntily out over the shingle beach like a bird craning its neck. The viewing platform—or whatever it was—reminded me of an air traffic control tower. After twenty-two years in the RAF it was a sight that I associated with home. Perhaps members of the sailing club felt the same when they rounded the headland and saw its steel railings glinting in the sunlight.
The boats and racing yachts surrounding the club also resembled l
ight aircraft in a way. Despite recent British successes in the Olympics, it still seemed a very specialised sport: technical, exclusive and one needing very serious money to take part in. The overall ambience of the club was sporting rather than leisure, but there were a number of what I would call ‘ordinary boats’ beached outside the clubhouse. Several members were taking advantage of the good weather to do some running repairs. But it seemed the Cassandra was past all help.
She leant on her side less like a beached whale than an exhausted dog. Her sails had been removed, her masts lowered and laid to rest beside her. The gleaming paintwork and varnished wood that I had pored over on eBay had been dulled by the sea and darkened where crude oil had splashed against it. The yellow-and-black police incident tape was still draped over her, but in several places this had been ripped by the wind or by prying hands.
‘A sorry sight, indeed,’ the old man observed, as if reading my thoughts.
Wing Commander (retired) Sydney Kenilworth was an elderly gentleman, probably not quite the same vintage as Sir Simeon Marchant, post-war I’d say, but still getting on a bit. When I had told him I was representing Mrs Jenny Forbes-Marchant, he had sniffed grimly and said, ‘Ah, the daughter.’
I took some photographs on my phone. I was not sure if I needed them, but it gave me something to do while Wing Commander Kenilworth thought of the next thing he was going to say. He wiped his nose vigorously with a red-spotted handkerchief.
‘Wants to find out what went on, does she? The daughter?’
I thought of replying, No she’s just after the money. But I thought better of it.
‘Of course, who wouldn’t?’
‘Indeed,’ the old man said. ‘Tell her she’ll have to wait until the inquest like everybody else.’
‘Mr Prajapati’s inquest?’
‘That’s the fellow. I have been called to give evidence,’ he added self-importantly. ‘Now, poor Simeon is not here.’
‘You met Mr Prajapati, then?’
The old man put his hankie away. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to wait till the inquest too, Mr...’
I reminded him of the name on the card in his pocket. Becket, one T as in the martyr. I skirted around the boat, taking more needless snaps.
‘You know I was in the RAF myself,’ I added conversationally.
We were upstairs in the deserted clubhouse. Fortunately, Wing Commander Kenilworth had a key to the bar so was able, with great agility for a man of his years, to duck through the lower door, prepare a couple of pink gins and bring them over to where I sat by the window.
‘Plymouth, none of your London Dry malarkey. Chin-chin!’
I raised my glass, ‘Thank you very much, sir!’
Thankfully we had got past the sharing of information stage: RAF talk, postings and people—you would hardly even call them mutual acquaintances—that we had both come across during our service. I still thought it wise to call the old man ‘sir’; it cost me nothing and clearly gave him pleasure. My own father had not been that dissimilar, but he had never made it to the exalted rank of Wing Commander. Both Beckets, senior and junior, père-et-fils, had been Warrant Officers, and had the distinction of being addressed by all and sundry as ‘Mr Becket’. Something both of us had carried forward into civilian life. It saved putting ‘Retired’ after your name, which seemed to be sole province of senior officers of whatever service.
‘I left the bitters in, Mr Becket.’
‘Very wise, sir. I’m driving, after all.’
He looked thoughtful.
‘Nice little car you have there,’ he said, nodding to where the Spider glinted uncomfortably in the sunlight. ‘I’ve had an MG Sprite for many years. I do like to see the bonnet when I'm driving, don’t you? So many of these modern cars fall away into the road. Like driving a blessed television screen.’
I had heard this before from old pilots. The need for a horizon. Flying jets was a different game these days. Closer to flying a television screen—attached to a games console, of course. I looked out to sea. It was a fine day; cloud scudding high and yellowed like in a Turner print, the water slate-grey and choppy out towards Chichester Bar. We talked some more of the treacherousness of the sea without feeling the need to touch on the case of Sunny Prajapati.
‘Have you always been interested in sailing, sir?’
‘I have, Mr Becket. Since I was a child. Swallows and Amazons stuff. If I had a choice I would have gone into the senior service. But my father was having none of it.’
Same with me, I thought. My father insisted I joined the RAF. But I didn’t say this unless Wing Commander Kenilworth got sidetracked into more reminiscences.
‘And Sir Simeon was a friend of yours?’
The old man stiffened in his chair. ‘I had that honour.’ He sipped. ‘A great man. Many’s the time we’d go out in the Cassandra. Clip around the islands. Simeon was a great birdwatcher.’
He stared into the distance, his thoughts souring on him.
‘Introduced me to the club. Best president we ever had. Not everyone thought that way, of course, but...’
‘He was unpopular?’
‘Well, for this new breed it is all sport, you see. Sir Ben Ainsley this and that. America’s Cup. Hanging off the side of a catamaran, scurrying around like bilge rats, racing hither and thither. All very well, but they want to make it the be-all-and-end-all of things...’
‘They?’
‘The new breed. The boy racers. Simeon was trying to maintain our traditions.’
‘Gentlemen not Players?’
‘What? Oh, I see. Exactly! Gentlemen not Players. Very good!’
Wing Commander Kenilworth sipped at his gin. The colour had risen in his face. Despite his faith in Angostura Bitters, he seemed profoundly affected by the alcohol. But it was a wicked gin he mixed.
‘This is why those chaps are making such a fuss.’
‘The ones who said Sir Simeon sold the Cassandra to an inexperienced sailor?’
‘You heard,’ he said grimly. ‘Sheer bad form. The man was perfectly competent.’
‘So you met Mr Prajapati, then?’
And we were back to where we were half an hour ago. Wing Commander Kenilworth seemed to have forgotten. And this time he did not say that I would have to wait for the inquest.
Chapter Ten
The Chapel of Lancing College rose like a neo-Gothic cliff above the Adur Valley. I had often seen it from the A27 travelling westwards, but never before had it been so up close and personal.
The memorial service had already begun. I could hear the organ droning away inside. The school’s quadrangle had the empty feeling that churches manage to convey when a service is on. Like an admonition, I thought. But for what exactly?
Perhaps because I had driven much too quickly from Hayling Island, with a very large pink gin—Plymouth, none of your London Dry malarkey—inside of me. Consequently, the Spider clicked and cooled by the side of the road. A coach had blocked the entrance to the car park, so I squeezed in on the yellow lines outside the chapel between a Range Rover and another car on steroids.
The nearest thing the wealthy have to horses these days, I thought. The rich mounted high above the road, Becket the lowly peasant in his Alfa looking up at them.
How strong was that gin? I asked myself.
I blew into the palm of my hand as I walked up the path. At least my breath didn’t smell too bad. But I crunched an Extra Strong Mint anyway.
Inside, the choir were singing something Bach-like. I slipped into the first pew available. It was not yet term time but the place was full of blazers. Wing Commander Kenilworth had explained that Prajapati children were in the sixth form at the private school so the memorial service was being held there. Grammar schoolboy that I am, I never cease to be amazed at the English public school system. Here you got the best sense of the class divide in modern Britain and its complexity. It was not just about wealth—although having £30,000 per annum to spare definitely helped—but the expe
ctation that this was what one did. One went where one’s parents went, even if one’s grandparents had to pay. For people like Sunil Prajapati and his parents back in India there were, of course, much greater costs—not least, in those days, a nine month’s separation a year. But he had duly gone to Lancing and when his kids were old enough, so had they—but as day pupils, of course. The old Wing Commander had even said that he suspected that was why Prajapati had located his company in the area; so his kids could go to school at Lancing.
The chief mourners were out of sight at the front. The rest of the congregation seemed to be well-to-do families and employees of PiTech, many of them only a few years older than the sixth formers, but with less of an idea of how to dress for such occasions. Some were not even paying attention but staring up at the chapel’s arched roof as if it were a mathematical puzzle they hadn’t come across before.
I had to admit the ceiling was worth looking at. I almost missed the end of the hymn and the request to be seated. The Bishop of Chichester, no less, welcomed us all and, with the air of a politician on the hustings, opened proceedings. He knew this wasn’t his usual crowd and wasn’t going to waste the opportunity. He informed the congregation that this was not a funeral service but a memorial—just as significant, for some, as a rite of passage—and had been brought forward at the family’s and the school’s request to ease the pain of the whole community. It was, he said, at such times, his eyes roving the serried ranks of blazers, that one appreciates the support that one’s fellows can give one. That support, that compassion, was part of the same compassion, the very passion, that Jesus...
I zoned out. We were on to the Jesus bit. It is remarkable, I thought, how a clergyman could find the shortest route from any given subject to Jesus. The record was held by a radio slot called Thought for the Day, which would begin with a reflection on supermarket trolleys in canals and within sixty seconds would be onto the Parable of the Talents. I regarded the ceiling until everyone rose and sang ‘How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds in a Believer’s Ear’.
