The Caverel Claim

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The Caverel Claim Page 24

by Peter Rawlinson


  ‘It’s a mercy you got here before the storm,’ she said. She wanted to ask how the case had gone. She hadn’t heard or seen the evening news but she wouldn’t ask in front of the child.

  Andrea took her arm and whispered, ‘They say it’s over. We’re safe.’

  Alice crossed herself. ‘Thanks be to God.’

  ‘It’s getting very dark,’ Andrea said, switching on the lights in the hall. ‘Have you had tea?’ she asked Francis.

  ‘Hours and hours ago.’

  ‘Well, I’m starving.’ She hadn’t eaten when the court had adjourned at midday and she led Francis by the hand to the kitchen. ‘Where are the Thompsons?’ she asked as she filled a kettle. The Thompsons were the successors to the Masons.

  ‘Her father was taken to hospital last night, very bad. So he drove her to Shaftesbury this morning. They’ve just rung. They don’t want to leave her mother, poor old soul, by herself, especially if there’s a storm, so they’re staying with the old lady tonight.’

  ‘They’re quite right.’ Andrea poured the tea and cut some bread and spread the butter.

  The last time she’d sat here the ordeal of the trial lay ahead. Now it was behind her. She could still scarcely believe it. Francis danced around the table.

  ‘Time for your bath,’ Alice said and led him away, protesting.

  Andrea finished her tea and strolled into the library. She stood with both hands on the chimney-piece staring at the photograph of Robin in its silver frame. Above was the portrait of Robin’s grandfather painted by Frederick Leighton in his Garter robes, the flat velvet cap in his lap. Neither she nor Robin had known the grandfather whom Nicholas had so adored and Oliver so revered.

  She picked up Robin’s photograph. ‘We’re all right, darling,’ she said, ‘we’re all right.’ Then, to the portrait above, ‘You’ll be pleased.’

  An intensely bright flash of lightning startled her. She counted the seconds before it was followed, not as before by a rumble but by a crack of thunder. The storm was closer now. She wandered round the room, thinking of the afternoon in court and Ledbury’s menacing finger pointing and the frightened look on the witness’s face. Where was she now? Where had she fled? But at least she wasn’t alone. She had her lover. ‘Which is more than some of us have,’ Andrea said aloud.

  She went back to the photograph above the fireplace. Poor Robin, snared by the Italian when his wife was pregnant and far away. But he wouldn’t have betrayed her during the battle. He’d have been the respondent, not Francis, and she’d have been sitting beside him in front of Ledbury and beneath the witness box and the bad-tempered judge. That judge! He’d been so taken by the girl and had so hated her. Why, she wondered?

  She closed the library door behind her and climbed the staircase to the nursery. She’d have a bath and go to bed and read. She was dead tired.

  The lightning flashes were now more frequent and followed more rapidly by the thunder. In the nursery Francis pretended it was fun but when there was a loud clap he gripped her fiercely.

  ‘You’re coming with me, young man,’ she said and she scooped him up and carried him to her room. Alice followed. Andrea put him into the great canopied bed. She drew the curtains and put on the side light. ‘I’m going to have a bath,’ she said.

  An hour later the storm was at its height. Andrea was reading in bed with Francis beside her fast asleep when there was a particularly blinding flash followed by the noise of masonry falling from the roof. At the same time the bedside lamp went out and Francis woke. Andrea took him in her arms and with one hand searched in the drawer of the bedside table for a torch but couldn’t find it. She heard someone at the door and in the next flash of lightning saw Alice in the doorway.

  ‘The lights have gone out everywhere,’ said Alice, sounding remarkably calm. ‘I’ve some matches. There are candles on the dining-room table. That’s nearest.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Andrea said. There was another crash of thunder as she pulled on her dressing-gown and with Francis holding her hand and Alice striking matches and leading the way, they crept down the staircase to the dining-room.

  Soon the candles were alight. ‘We’ll all sleep together,’ Andrea decided, picking up the candelabra. ‘My bed’s big enough.’

  The wind had risen and rain was lashing the windows as they went across the hall and mounted the stairs. They had reached the first landing when they heard the bell, the outside bell with the long handle which hung outside the front door. Alice gave a cry.

  ‘It’s the wind,’ Andrea said. ‘Just the wind.’

  They stood on the stairs listening. The bell rang again. Then above the noise of the storm they heard the bang of the knocker on the great door.

  Alice stared at Andrea. ‘I’ll take a look from the window by the front door,’ she said.

  Andrea remained on the landing, holding the candelabra high above her head to light Alice down. With her other hand she gripped Francis.

  ‘I can see the lights of a car at the bottom of the steps,’ Alice called. ‘Someone’s by the door.’

  And Andrea knew who it was.

  * * *

  The storm had broken when they were many miles away. As they drew up at the steps beneath the great door, the thunder had lessened but the rain was sheeting down.

  ‘Stay in the car,’ she said. ‘I won’t be long.’

  Greg saw her run up the steps. The rain was so heavy that by the time she’d reached the door she was drenched. Peering through the car window, he saw her tugging at the bell and hammering on the door. It opened and she disappeared inside.

  * * *

  In the hall, her hair plastered around her head, the rain-water running down her face and off her clothes to make a pool at her feet, she shook herself like a dog. Alice closed the door behind her and stood against it. She crossed the hall and came to the foot of the stairs.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ Andrea called out but she took no notice and began to climb. Then she remembered the dream when she’d been with the Gypsy long before it all began – the hand holding the candle, the wax dropping on her feet and the nails clawing at her face. She stopped several steps below where Andrea was standing with the candelabra in her hand.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Andrea asked.

  ‘I came to see you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To tell you it’s over.’

  ‘I know it’s over.’

  ‘I wanted to tell you myself.’

  ‘Why?’

  The light from the candles and the flashes of lightning from the windows high up in the hall only half lit the staircase and the portraits on the walls.

  ‘Because I wanted you to hear what I have to say. I shan’t be going back to the court.’

  ‘Because you’ve been found out.’

  ‘I have not been found out. But I’m going away and I won’t be back, ever. I wanted to tell you to your face that it was all lies. I wanted you to hear the truth from me.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘That what they said in court was all lies, nothing but lies.’

  ‘And you want me to believe that, even after you ran away?’

  She pushed back her wet hair. ‘I couldn’t stand any more, the lies, the accusations, the bullying, the talk about my illness and the asylum. That’s why I went. But I came here to you because I want you to hear the truth from me.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Who I said I was.’

  ‘Then why are you running away?’

  ‘Because I want to. Because I want to go away. I hate this country, and its people. The trial was making me ill, the questioning, the shouting.’

  ‘It was you who did the shouting.’

  ‘Was it?’ She put her hand to her head. ‘I’m not ill, you know. Not in the way they pretended I was ill. But I get migraines, terrible pain, bad, very bad.’ Then more fiercely, ‘But I’m not mad.’ Once again she played with the wet hair around her face. ‘I never really wanted t
o start it,’ she said.

  ‘Then why did you?’

  ‘He persuaded me.’

  ‘The man who brought you here in September?’

  ‘No, not him. Paul. It was he who persuaded me.’

  The staircase was lit now only by the flickering candle-light, for the storm was moving away. She looked around her and shivered. ‘How can you stand living in this place? From the moment Blake brought me and we came through the door and up the stairs and you stood where you’re standing now and ordered us out, I hated it. I couldn’t live here.’

  She looked round her and then down at Alice standing with her back to the front door in the hall below.

  ‘It knows I hate it so it hates me. My father would have hated it, too. He never lived here and I’m glad I never will. I told Blake that, and I told Paul even before I’d seen it. So you’re welcome to it. You keep it and live in it, with all its ghosts. It’s better for you to have it, you and your little boy.’

  Andrea drew Francis closer to her.

  She pointed to the portraits. ‘My father’s ancestors. Take care they don’t haunt you.’ She pointed at Francis who buried his face in Andrea’s skirts. ‘His ancestors, his and mine. Our ancestors. Not yours.’

  She turned and went slowly down the stairs to the door and stood waiting imperiously for Alice to open it. Alice looked up at Andrea who nodded. Alice swung open the door. The rain blew in a great gust into the hall. She turned and called back to Andrea, ‘Tell my little cousin about me when he’s older.’

  Then she was gone.

  Andrea took Francis back to her bedroom. When the child was settled, Andrea said to Alice, ‘I’m sorry for her. She’s quite mad.’

  She tried to telephone but the lines were down so it wasn’t until Nicholas came in the morning that Oliver was told of Andrea’s visitor of the night before.

  * * *

  Robert Murray’s weekend was proving even more disagreeable than usual, Freda even more peevish. She had been reading about the Caverel case.

  ‘I knew them,’ she said.

  I knew you would, Murray thought.

  ‘The older ones, that is. Old Walter Caverel once made a pass at me in the South of France. Who is this wicked girl?’

  ‘I can’t discuss the case.’

  ‘I’m your wife. We’re not in court. You can say to me whatever you like and I can say to you whatever I like. It’s quite obvious she’s a fraud. The TV said she ran out of court when she was being questioned. Doesn’t that finish it?’

  ‘I’ll be told on Monday.’

  ‘Told what? That she’s run away? That she’s an imposter? I could have told you that from the start.’

  He thought of the young woman in the witness box when she had begun her evidence. A bonny lass was what he’d thought her.

  ‘A child could see through her. But then you were only clever about books – never about people.’

  * * *

  When the Vice Chancellor took his seat on Monday, the witness box was empty. Counsel were in their places, as were Oliver Goodbody, Andrea and Nicholas. No one was sitting in front of Percy Braythwaite.

  When he had arrived at his room in the Law Courts, Murray had sent his clerk to find out if the witness was ready to continue. Robinson had told him that he could discover nothing for certain.

  ‘Have counsel expressed a wish to speak to me in chambers before I sit?’

  ‘No, my lord. There’ll be a statement in open court. There’s talk that it’s all over.’

  Percy had wanted Ledbury to come with him and see the judge in his private room but Ledbury had refused. ‘I’m not going to talk to that brute in private,’ Ledbury snapped. ‘Say what you have to say in open court.’ And he rang off.

  In court Murray began. ‘Sir Percy, I see that your client, the witness, is not here. Where is she?’

  Percy had a sheet of paper in his hand. ‘I do not know, my lord,’ he said, ‘but on my arrival at my chambers this morning there was a fax for me, dated last Saturday morning, from I believe an hotel in Plymouth, and with the first post came a letter signed by my client. The letter and the fax are in identical terms. May I read it to your lordship?’

  Murray nodded. Percy read, ‘“I shall not be returning to court. I am going away. I have dismissed my lawyer, Stevens, and I abandon my claim. I have not lied to the court. I want you to tell the judge that I am not a liar.” It is signed’, Percy concluded, ‘Fleur Caverel.’

  The court burst into a rumble of noise. Murray banged with his open hand on the desk while the usher shouted for silence.

  ‘I take it from this, Sir Percy,’ Murray said, ‘that your client has abandoned her claim.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She writes she is not a liar. Why then has she abandoned her claim and why is she not here to resume her evidence?’

  ‘Because she is a liar,’ Mordecai said loudly. He struggled to his feet.

  ‘If she has lied on oath, she is a perjurer,’ Murray said. ‘She has tried to deceive the court.’ And succeeded, he thought. His indignation grew with the memory of how much he had liked her. ‘She must be found and prosecuted.’

  ‘I am instructed’, Mordecai said, looking down at Oliver who turned and nodded, ‘that although the family has suffered grievously, they take the merciful view that the young woman is seriously unbalanced. She is clearly an hysteric and was used by a wicked man, now dead, who induced her to play a part in an audacious fraud.’

  ‘She came to my court, acting a part, telling falsehoods in an attempt to deceive the court.’

  ‘Not that your lordship, I am sure, was taken in for one moment,’ said Mordecai silkily. He was enjoying himself. ‘Your lordship is far too shrewd a judge of human nature to have been deceived by so obvious a liar, but –’

  Murray cut him off. There were two spots of red high up on his cheek-bones. ‘She told deliberate falsehoods on oath, Mr Ledbury. That is perjury and perjury cannot be tolerated. The papers in the case should be sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions.’

  Mordecai looked at his watch. ‘All those who would be required as witnesses for any possible prosecution, namely the persons with whom I confronted the Claimant, are now on their way to Heathrow to board their aircraft for their different destinations overseas, and the family will give no assistance to any prosecution. The unfortunate young woman had a background of mental disturbance and lived in a fantasy world of her own, induced perhaps by drugs and who knows, fuelled by her odd preoccupation with the occult. It is possible she may even have believed that what she was saying was the truth. I was about to go deeper into her medical history in my cross-examination which is why I expect she fled. In these circumstances, as I say, the family will play no part in any prosecution. It is enough for them that the case over the Caverel inheritance is at an end. Nor do they ask for any order for costs – which in practice there would be little chance of their receiving. But I’m sure your lordship will be glad publicly to acknowledge their generosity.’

  Murray listened stony-faced. He could not get out of his mind her beautiful face and how it lit up when she smiled, and the way she spoke and the way she had looked at him. Then he thought of the errors Ledbury had led him into and how this odious man had taken over his court and turned it into a scene of disorder never witnessed before in a court of Chancery. The case, he knew, would do his judicial reputation little good.

  He pushed back his chair. ‘The claim is dismissed,’ he said abruptly, ‘with no order as to costs.’

  ‘A boor, to the very last,’ Mordecai said to Oliver in his stage whisper, but loud enough for it to carry to the judge’s retreating back.

  Andrea turned and leaned across the desk dividing her from Mordecai and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘thank you, from me and from Francis.’

  He smiled and took her hand and held it. ‘To coin a phrase,’ he said, ‘all’s well that ends well.’ He lifted her hand and kissed it. ‘All I did was to put into
words the instructions I received from Mr Goodbody based on the work of this gentleman.’ He half turned towards Mr Rogers who had come up to them. ‘When we first met, I was doubtful if he’d be able to help but he has ferreted out the truth. So it is he who primarily deserves your thanks. She was a sad, unbalanced young woman but plausible. As I told the judge, I believe that in the end she may have half believed the story herself. It has been a great ordeal for you, Lady Caverel.’ He smiled again. ‘Now go home, go home to your son, go home to Ravenscourt and, to coin another phrase, live happily ever after.’

  * * *

  Dukie Brown and Clem settled down in row 4, first class Quantas. He patted her knee and raised his glass. ‘His face,’ he said, ‘just to see the bastard’s face when we came in, that alone was worth it.’

  ‘And the money,’ Clem said as she drank from her glass of champagne. ‘What was the name again?’

  ‘Ella something, a French name. The little man told me what it was. I kept forgetting and he kept reminding. Blake’s face,’ Dukie repeated. ‘I’ll never forget Blake’s face.’

  * * *

  ‘Aunt’ Tess was making for California. She would live on the coast, three thousand miles from her former neighbours. ‘Aunt’ had been the little man’s conceit. It had added, he had said, that extra touch of authenticity.

  * * *

  Madame Valerian, more confused than ever, was escorted via the EuroStar to a home in Soissons where the nuns would see she was looked after to the end of her days.

  * * *

  The Turkish lady flew out of Heathrow on Turkish Airlines and was greeted at Istanbul airport by her husband. Their offer for the sweet-shop and café in Takim, he said wrapping her in a great bear-hug, had been accepted.

  * * *

  Dr Dubrescu went Air France to Paris, settled into the Ritz, had his hair cut, a shampoo and a facial. Then he set forth to buy himself a new wardrobe, starting with six Chavet ties. He had decided he would abandon medicine and invest in his cousin’s pharmaceutical business in Philadelphia. One day, he mused, they might even become a members of the Merion Cricket Club.

 

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