The Caverel Claim

by Peter Rawlinson

  For she had been glad to get away from Italy. It was in Rome that, for the first time since the murder of her grandparents when she was a child, she had been deeply unhappy. It was when she had brought the newly born Francis back from her father’s home in Shropshire that she learnt of Robin’s brief love affair. He swore it was over. It was madness, he said. He had been overwhelmed by remorse and the marriage had survived. By the time of the move to Ravenscourt it had become, Andrea thought, as happy as before. So when she first arrived and set foot in the hall and saw on the walls above the great staircase the frames of the portraits hung with dark green sheets, her heart had leaped with excitement. The family had come home, to their rightful place, to the house built by the ancestors of her husband and her son.

  She spent the first weeks exploring, planning which rooms to begin to restore and designing her garden. With the help of three women from the village they had battled during that first year to get straight the West Wing where they established the family rooms; next they turned to the library and sitting-room off the rotunda in the centre of the house; finally the state rooms, the great salon and dining saloon. With the gardener, Peachey, and a boy, she had transformed the pleasure garden so that it would eventually become a mass of blue and white foxgloves, delphiniums, veronica, and lobelia; with banks of red roses at one end, white at the other.

  As she now followed Francis and the spaniel along the snow-covered path, she thought of that last summer with Robin. It had been a happy time, although a damp, wet summer unlike the summer after his death, the first summer of her widowhood when one scorching day had followed another until the rains had come in late September – and with the rain, the thunderbolt of the claim.

  The shock, following so soon after Robin’s death, had for a time almost unbalanced her. It had even turned her against the house. As the autumn weeks passed, with the visit of the woman journalist and then the confrontation on the staircase and the mounting campaign in the press, she’d imagined in her misery that it was somehow the work of the house, as though the house resented their presence and the sounds of a child running up and down the great staircase and along the vast corridors; as though it preferred its years of silence and emptiness, and was punishing them. She began to think that it hated them and when recently gales had toppled some of the trees in the park and the wind howled and sang around the chimneys and crashed against the immense windows, she thought she felt a sense of hostility, of malevolence. She had moved her sitting-room from the ground floor to the first floor so that she could be near Francis’ nursery, and when he had gone to bed she would sit there with Alice, drinking chocolate in front of the fire. The Masons had their own quarters, a bedroom, bathroom and sitting-room in the East Wing, some way from the family’s rooms and the kitchen and pantry on the ground floor. Andrea had never trusted the whining Mrs Mason and her husband, but when she’d said this to Nicholas, he had demurred.

  ‘He’s a former policeman. He’s a good person to have in the house.’

  But the past months had toughened her. Her anger at the effrontery of the claim, the wickedness of the impostor and the people behind her manipulating the media had strengthened her and helped her overcome her imagining about the house. She saw how foolish she’d been to attribute to the house her pain, and she began to make it her friend again. Now it was home, home for her and for Francis, the home of the Caverels; and she would fight with every ounce of strength to keep it, even if it meant bankrupting the estate and themselves. Nicholas had warned that Oliver kept demanding more and more sales in order to pay for the mounting costs of the defence. Sell everything if you have to, she had told him. Do whatever is necessary.

  She brushed the snow off a stone bench and sat watching Francis as he tried to make a snowman. She got up to help him but it was growing too cold.

  ‘Come on,’ she said and taking him by the hand she led him out of the walled garden.

  In the warmth of the vast kitchen, Alice was by the Aga making tea.

  ‘Where’s Mrs Mason?’ Andrea asked.

  ‘Lying down, wore out by all the work, the poor old soul. We’re too demanding, my lady, so I’m getting the tea.’ She laughed and catching up Francis swung him around, sitting him on the giant kitchen table.

  ‘I know,’ said Andrea. ‘The three of us give the two of them far too much to do.’

  ‘The two of you,’ Alice said. ‘I looks after meself.’

  Andrea poured herself some tea as Alice gave Francis a piece of cake. ‘How’s the fire in the sitting-room?’ she asked.

  ‘Fair enough. I put on some more logs on my way down.’

  ‘Supper?’

  ‘She’ll be back to do it. He’ll be off to the pub later.’

  ‘In this weather?’

  ‘That won’t keep him away.’

  The telephone on the dresser rang. The telephone in the kitchen was the Masons’ outside line, with an extension to their flat. Alice went on feeding Francis cake. Andrea sat, her hands around her mug of tea. The ringing kept up.

  ‘They’ve forgotten to switch it through to the flat,’ said Alice.

  ‘Can you do it?’

  ‘No, I don’t know how.’

  It went on ringing. ‘You’d better answer it,’ Andrea said.

  Alice picked up the receiver. ‘Who is it?’ She made a face at Andrea. ‘George Headley, yes?’

  Both of them knew what Nicholas thought of Headley.

  ‘No, it’s Alice. I’m in the kitchen. Yes, I’m alone.’ She winked at Andrea. ‘They’re in the flat and they’ve forgotten to switch it through. No, of course I can’t. I’m getting tea for Francis. Mason should be here later. All right, I’ll give him the message.’ She repeated what Headley was saying. ‘The friends from London will be at the Plough at Ansleigh at eight. All right. If I don’t see him, I’ll leave him a note.’

  * * *

  Ansleigh was eight miles from Ravenscourt. At a quarter to eight Andrea sat in her car in the darkness in the car-park of the Plough. She’d been curious about Headley’s message. Who were the friends from London that Headley and Mason were to meet? And why at Ansleigh and not at the Caverel Arms in the village? She thought she’d find out for herself.

  She parked in the car-park between a van and the wall. There were no other cars. She switched off the lights and the engine. After twenty minutes she saw the headlights of a car coming down the lane, and she ducked below the windshield when the car turned from the lane into the car-park. It drew up on the other side of the van. The lights were switched off and when she heard the slam of the car door, she raised her head and peered through her side window. The front door of the pub opened and she saw the silhouettes of two men. To make sure that these were the friends from London, she waited another ten minutes. No other car came so she went to the side door of the public house. Inside a passage led to a door to the dining-room and beyond that to another door into the bar. The top part of the partition between the two doors was glass, a series of internal windows from which the inside of the bar could be seen. Behind the bar she saw the publican, talking to an elderly man sitting on a stool. At the far end, a couple were playing darts. There was no one else, except for a group of four men seated in front of the fire. One, with his back to her, was Headley. Next to him, also with his back to the bar, was Mason. Facing them were two other men, the friends from London. And she knew them both. One was the photographer, the other the reporter who had been with the young woman when she had been brought to Ravenscourt by the man with grey hair. It had been Mason, Andrea now remembered, who had let the party in through the front door. As she peered through the glass partition, she saw the reporter look around and, seeing they were unobserved, hand an envelope to Mason and another to Headley.

  When she opened the bar door and came in, the group by the fire was engrossed in conversation. She walked slowly across the room and stood a few feet from them. The photographer was the first to notice her. He half rose. As he did so, Mason turned. So
did the others. Mason got to his feet. She remained quite still, a few feet from them, looking from one to the other. No one spoke. She turned on her heel and left.

  She was shaking as she got into the car. She drove straight to the dower house, praying that Nicholas would be there.

  The Masons were packed up and gone by noon the following morning, after an angry, ugly scene. Headley was given notice and forbidden the premises or the woods. Until they could find another couple, Nicholas moved into the house.

  25

  It was ten days before Easter and Mr Rogers was in Venice. During the past winter he had only once returned to London, a fleeting visit during which he did not go to his home in Sanderstead in the suburbs of London but was given a bed in the spare room in Oliver Goodbody’s flat in Kensington. The two men talked late into the night and by eight o’clock on the following morning Mr Rogers was on his way to Gatwick airport. From there he flew to Charlottesville and then on to Charleston. He was met by Clover Harrison. In the car Harrison told Mr Rogers that Judge Blaker had been busy and the sandy-haired Englishman, Jameson, had been back several times. Lawyer Walker had died.

  They drove not to the city but to a motel about twenty miles west where they conferred again with the middle-aged black woman Mr Rogers had spoken to at such length during his previous visit.

  Mr Rogers did not spend long in South Carolina but soon left for Florida. From Miami he flew to Jamaica, visited Haiti and ended with a swing through the islands, spending a few days in the Leewards and the Windwards and the arc of the Lesser Antilles before returning to Miami. Then he flew north to New York and crossed the Atlantic to Paris. Forty-eight hours later he was in Istanbul where he remained for a week before he began to work his way westward, reaching Venice in early April.

  From the airport he took a taxi to the Piazzale Roma where he boarded the vaporetto. It was cold but the sun was shining as he sat in one of the forward seats, observing the familiar sights with satisfaction while the vaporetto zigzagged from station to station along the Grand Canal. As he disembarked at the Accademia and made his way to the Albergo Rosa, a small, rather shabby establishment, he promised himself a few days’ holiday over Easter.

  There was no restaurant in the Albergo but he found one in the Calle Tollette to eat pasta and drink red wine. While he ate, he propped his newspaper, the Herald Tribune, against the flask of wine, studying the personal advertisements one of which many months ago had led to his present argosy. After a cup of strong and very sweet coffee, he paid and left. As he had promised, he took precautions; before emerging into the street he stood in the doorway looking up and down. There was no one about and he set off. As always he had with him the photograph which he carried wherever he went.

  The season, he knew, would not begin until after Easter; only the bar would be open but he was seeking the proprietor who resided in an apartment above the club itself.

  A week later he was in Rome where his quarters were a pension in the Via Giulia in the old city. The place he sought in this city was an establishment in the Campo dei Fiore, a more up-market club than that he had visited in Venice. But by now it was Holy Week and the club would not open until Easter Monday. Mr Rogers, though not of the Roman faith, had an historical and eschatological bent and he decided to spend the following five days visiting shrines.

  On the evening of Easter Monday, his holiday over, he resumed his work and stood on a rusty carpet on raised steps leaning over a rail above a small dance-floor facing a platform on which the band was playing. There were only a few tables occupied along the side of the room and only three or four couples on the dance-floor. He chose a table near the entrance and far from the stage on which the cabaret performers appeared, first a comedian-conjuror, then a single stripper who paraded down the room, boredly casting off her clothes before she disappeared through a curtain beside the band. When the dancing began again, Mr Rogers dispensed several 100,000-lira notes, and as a result was escorted through the curtain behind which the stripper had disappeared and conducted to the director’s office. He returned the next day at noon and was taken to several rooming-houses in the city.

  On the Wednesday he flew to Berlin where he stayed this time in an expensive hotel, the Maritim Grand Hotel, in the Friedrichstrasse. A registered package from London was waiting for him and after a stay of only twenty-four hours he flew on to Bucharest where on several consecutive days he visited a doctor’s office near the Herăstrău Park. From Bucharest he returned once more to Istanbul. Here he spent three days and by early May he had resumed his zigzag tour around the cities of Europe, reaching Amsterdam via Milan at the end of the month. From Amsterdam he set off on what he reckoned would be his last lap. It was a journey which was to take him to the other end of the world.

  Part II

  26

  By ten o’clock in the morning it was already warm and the forecast was for the hot weather to continue. A crowd, many recruited from north London by the staff of the Black Banner, had gathered outside the forecourt of the great mock-Gothic building of the Law Courts in the Strand. They were carrying placards – ‘Justice for Fleur’ and ‘Give Fleur her rights’. An army of reporters and camera-men attended them, and all who had any business that day in the courts had to run the gauntlet between the ranks of the noisy demonstrators and the flashing cameras. When Fleur and Willoughby stepped out of the black limousine which had brought them from the hotel in Kensington, they were immediately recognised. Willoughby had made sure they would, and the crowd broke into a great cheer. He put his arm around Fleur and waved happily. Fleur tried to break away but Willoughby held her back and made her turn as the camera-men shouted their instructions. With a last jovial wave, he led her inside.

  When Andrea and Nicholas arrived a little later in a taxi, the crowd did not recognise them. But the photographers and camera-men did and, taking their cue from the attentions of the reporters, the crowd realised that these must be the enemy, the family which was denying Fleur her rights, and began to hiss. Nicholas marched a pale-faced Andrea through them without a sideways glance.

  Within five minutes of the public being admitted, not a seat was to be had in the public gallery of the court of the Vice Chancellor, the head and senior judge of the Chancery Division, while the court-room below the gallery was packed. Briefless barristers in pristine white wigs crowded into the rows beside and behind the counsel engaged in the case; law clerks and solicitors stood alongside the benches from the entrance doors to the well of the court, while the seats behind counsel were filled with prospective witnesses and the privileged few, such as Eleanor Braythwaite and Oliver’s friend Anne Tremain whom the barristers’ clerks had managed to smuggle into a seat. By chance the two were put beside each other, neither knowing who the other was nor the connection that had brought each to the court.

  Percy Braythwaite had already arrived and was seated in the QCs’ row, the front row of counsel’s benches. He looked handsome and immaculate in his crisp white linen and well-cut black court coat under his silk gown. On his stand were his notes, while documents from his brief were spread across the desk. Michael Stevens led Fleur to the seats immediately in front of him. Willoughby had handed her over to Stevens in the corridor, and everyone in the court strained to see her, some in the public gallery standing until an usher ordered them to sit.

  Willoughby had taken great care and given much thought to her outfit and hair, and she was modestly but smartly dressed in a neat, expensive-looking light linen suit and white silk blouse with a bow at her neck. She wore no hat, little make-up except for a touch of colour on her lips, and no jewellery. She smiled shyly at Percy and, as Willoughby had instructed her, sat and remained very still, looking down at her hands folded in her lap. She appeared calm and composed, but inwardly she was in turmoil. She’d been warned that after Sir Percy had ‘opened’ the case – that is after he had told the judge the facts and outlined the law – a few witnesses would deal briefly with documentation and she would then be cal
led to give her evidence. She must expect to be in the witness box a long time, Stevens had added. Her evidence could begin today, and on her evidence the result of the claim would depend.

  Willoughby had gone to the place which had been kept for him next to the Senora and Mrs Campion. The Senora, neither overdressed nor over made-up, sat looking about her holding Mrs Campion’s hand. He smiled at her reassuringly. She looked, he thought with relief, quite respectable. Her stay in the nursing home following her fall appeared to have done her good.

  After he had taken his seat, Willoughby every now and then stood, pretending to be looking for someone but really making sure that he’d be noticed by anyone important and by the press who were squeezed into their bench immediately below the witness box. He cut a striking figure in his light grey suit, bright blue tie, a red carnation in his buttonhole and his silver hair brushed high above his sun-tanned – or rather carefully stained – forehead. One or two of the journalists winked at him and he nodded and smiled in reply.