17

In the afternoon of the following day, another conference of a different and more staid kind assembled at four thirty in the room of Mordecai Ledbury QC in King’s Bench Walk in the Temple. Oliver Goodbody entered, followed by Nicholas Lawton and one other – a short, stout, middle-aged man with an agreeable rather cherubic face, dressed in a tight-fitting dark suit. He was the man who had witnessed Fleur’s visit to Greg in Fulham, who had attended Paul Valerian’s funeral in Paris and who had asked the questions at Willoughby Blake’s press conference.

Mordecai was seated behind a vast eighteenth-century desk. He did not rise but waved to them to take a seat. Oliver Goodbody lowered himself into a red-leather armchair on his left, crossed his long legs and placed both hands on the gold knob of his cane.

‘Mr Rogers,’ he said, indicating the stout little man.

Mordecai nodded, and Mr Rogers bowed as he took a chair beside Oliver. The barrister, with his dark, swarthy skin, his outsize head bald except for the few strands of hair brushed across it and his prominent hooked nose above his thin twisted lips and high white stiff collar, reminded Mr Rogers of a vulture. And at the thought, Mr Rogers smiled happily to himself.

Nicholas was on Mordecai’s right, perched bolt upright on a straight-backed Regency chair. He was wearing the blue and red tie of the Guards Division.

When they were all seated, Mordecai’s clerk, Robins, drew the curtains across the windows behind Mordecai’s chair and turned on a television set at the far end of the room. ‘Begin,’ said Mordecai, and in silence they watched the short tape of the broadcast of Willoughby Blake’s press conference.

‘Again,’ said Mordecai when it ended. He had it played three more times before he signalled Robins to switch off the set and leave. As the door closed behind the clerk, Mordecai bent his head to read the copies of the newspapers spread on his desk in front of him. ‘Repeat, if you please, Mr Rogers,’ he said, ‘the report you made to Mr Goodbody.’

Mr Rogers gave his account of what had happened at the press conference. When he had finished, Mordecai said, ‘The tabloids at least seem to have got most of it, with a suitable display of asterisks.’ He looked up. ‘Did anyone at the conference know you?’

‘Not that I am aware.’

‘You had disrupted their proceedings. Did no one attempt to stop you as you left?’

‘No.’

Mordecai grunted and leaned back in his chair. ‘Blake will be well satisfied,’ he said grimly.

‘Satisfied?’ interjected Nicholas, looking at Mordecai with surprise. ‘I’d have thought the whole show was a disaster.’

Mordecai turned his head towards him. This, he presumed, was the military cousin who, Oliver said, was managing the estate; and making enemies. ‘I said that Blake will be satisfied,’ Mordecai repeated slowly. ‘He got all he wanted.’ He paused, still looking at Nicholas. ‘Are you contradicting me?’

‘No, of course not,’ Nicholas said hastily. ‘Only it seemed to me that it was a fiasco.’

‘Then you haven’t grasped the significance. The grandmother said things Blake could never have said himself. As a result he achieved more than he could have hoped for. She focused this case where Blake intends it shall remain – on race and class. Race because the claimant is black and the Caverels white; class because she comes from a humble background and is poor and the Caverels are aristocrats and rich.’

‘I sent Mr Rogers and I told him the questions I wished asked,’ Oliver said. ‘I decided to show Blake that we were aware of what they were up to – and that we knew the kind of people we are dealing with. I wanted to test how serious they are.’

Mordecai shook his head. ‘Blake’s purpose was to secure public attention and whip up public opinion. He hopes that if the media is sufficiently manipulated and takes up the cause, this might influence some weak judge – and if the pressure is strong enough, frighten off the family.’

‘If he thinks that, then he’s off his head,’ said Nicholas.

Mordecai swivelled round in his chair to face him.

‘Is he? Have you any idea what you and the family will undergo when the campaign gets under way? Public hostility, hounding by reporters and photographers, your private lives put under a microscope? Are you ready for that?’

‘You know perfectly well, Mordecai,’ Oliver intervened, ‘there is no question of the family surrendering to this fraudulent claim.’

Mordecai pushed the newspapers on his desk to one side. ‘Very well. But have any of you considered the possibility that this young woman is genuine? That she is Julian Caverel’s daughter?’

‘She’s not,’ Nicholas replied. ‘She’s a fraud.’

Mordecai looked up at the ceiling, then down at his hands folded on the desk. ‘So you say.’

‘Yes,’ said Oliver, ‘that is what Nicholas has said and it is what you will say in court, Mordecai, and you will say it loud and clear.’

For a time no one spoke. Mr Rogers was watching Mordecai from the corner of his sharp little eye. Eventually Mordecai broke the silence. ‘Has there been any DNA testing?’

‘There’s no purpose. Julian died twenty years ago in San Francisco,’ Oliver said. ‘He was cremated and his ashes scattered in the Bay. The alleged mother died more than twenty years ago and was buried in a cemetery which was flooded in the hurricane of 1989. Her corpse cannot be identified.’

‘The grandmother? The child? What about them?’

‘Any DNA testing on them would be inconclusive.’

‘It would, I venture to suggest, be more than inconclusive,’ Mr Rogers said, his fingers pressed together across his chest. ‘In the absence of any remains of the father and mother, DNA could not establish whether the young woman is their daughter, even were the remains of the half-brother, Robin Caverel, in existence, which I gather they also are not, and despite the existence of young Francis.’

Mordecai stared at him balefully. ‘You know what you are talking about?’

Mr Rogers bowed gravely. ‘I do. I have some knowledge, some experience of this.’

There was a long pause. Then Mordecai went on, ‘The claimant certainly appears to be of mixed blood.’

‘She does,’ said Oliver. ‘But she could be anybody. We say first, she is not Julian’s daughter. Second, if they prove she is, she was a bastard. Third we say that Julian was not the son of Walter, the 15th Baron Caverel who never acknowledged him during his lifetime.’

There was another long silence. Mordecai again examined the ceiling. He said at last, ‘The alternative is what you think is the unthinkable. That she is the rightful heiress.’

Nicholas uncrossed and crossed his legs, staring straight ahead of him as though he were on parade. Mr Rogers settled himself more comfortably in his chair, the tips of his fingers now together under his chin. He closed his eyes and looked like an observer to whom the discussion afforded merely some wry amusement. Mordecai was watching him. ‘Well, Mr Rogers,’ he said, irritated, ‘can we provoke you into saying something, apart from giving us a lesson on DNA? It was you who provoked the old woman at the press conference.’

Mr Rogers smiled and shrugged. He folded his small white hands over his tight-fitting waistcoat. ‘I don’t think that at this stage there is anything more I can usefully contribute. At the press conference I acted on instructions.’

Mordecai shrugged. ‘Very well,’ he said at last. ‘So if she is not Julian’s daughter, who is she and where has she come from?’

‘She could be anyone and she could have come from anywhere,’ Nicholas broke in. ‘Someone has put her up to it.’

Mordecai turned to him. ‘You may be right, Major Lawton. It is true that Julian was the improbable father of any child, but if he did not conceive this child, who did?’

‘It could have been anyone. If any of the story is true.’

‘I am examining the possibilities, Major Lawton,’ Mordecai growled. ‘We are here to review the case we shall have to meet in court.’

Nicholas shifted in his chair. ‘Of course,’ he said.

‘So who was the white man who seduced this girl’s mother twenty-five years ago and induced her to believe he was Lord Caverel’s heir?’ Mordecai looked at Nicholas. ‘If, of course, he did.’ He turned back to Oliver. ‘But if he did, why should he do that if he were not Julian Caverel?’

‘That assumes’, Oliver replied, ‘that there’s any truth in any of the story.’

‘Isn’t it fanciful to imagine that it is all invention? Lies by the foster mother, lies from the real mother?’

Oliver leaned forward in his chair. ‘No, it is not. We don’t know what the mother or the foster mother actually said or wrote. All we know is what the girl says they said and wrote. There may or may not have been a white man who fathered the child. But whoever it was, it was not Julian Caverel. The story is invention, with the girl telling lies she’s been taught to tell by the conspirators who see a chance to get their hands on a great estate and a great fortune.’

Mordecai looked down at his hands folded on the desk. ‘Assume the girl is telling the truth at least as far as this part of the story is concerned. Assume the mother had an affair with some man, some Englishman who was not Julian but who held himself out to be Julian Caverel and convinced the mother that he was. If that is so, then there has to be an Englishman in Beaufort County twenty-five years ago who seduced the black woman and conceived a child after telling her a story about a wealthy family and a lord in England.’

He paused, looking at the other three in turn. ‘But why in heaven’s name should he want to tell such a story?’

Oliver answered. ‘I knew Julian. I tell you he never fathered any child.’

Mordecai grunted. ‘That the man was homosexual doesn’t mean he couldn’t conceive a child.’

‘Of course it doesn’t, but throughout his life Julian was never known to have shown any interest in any woman. Why then should there suddenly appear a woman from South Carolina – or rather the ghost of a woman because she is conveniently dead – on whose behalf it is claimed that the homosexual Julian fathered on her a child? And what is the corroboration of this story? The foster mother who took in the child? Where is she? Also dead.’

‘There is a letter.’

‘No one has seen that letter. It was not produced at the press conference. I doubt if it exists. Who is to say who wrote that letter, if there ever was a letter?’

‘The lawyer in Charleston?’

‘Perhaps, but at the moment we have only the young woman’s word for any of it, and when it comes to court, it will be for her to prove she is who she claims she is, namely the legitimate daughter of the legitimate elder son of the then Lord Caverel. And when she seeks to do that, your task, Mordecai, will be to challenge that story, probe her background, her previous life, her backers and financiers and expose where they came from and why. I’ve briefed you, Mordecai, because the story is a pack of lies and because you are the best qualified counsel practising at the bar to expose what is nothing less than a conspiracy.’

When Oliver had finished, Mordecai lowered his head. ‘Then you’ll have to supply me with documents and facts and witnesses,’ he said quietly. ‘I cannot cross-examine on your unsubstantiated suspicions.’

‘That is why I have retained Mr Rogers.’

Mr Rogers bowed. Mordecai looked at him and grunted; then turned back to Oliver. ‘They will produce records of Julian’s marriage and the birth of the daughter.’

‘No doubt,’ Oliver replied. ‘But how genuine they’ll be is another matter. I don’t imagine it’s very difficult to manufacture such documents in Beaufort County.’

Mordecai turned back to Mr Rogers. ‘Then it’s up to you, Mr Rogers,’ he growled. ‘Without facts, without witnesses, we shall fail. The fate of this family is in your hands.’

‘So it appears.’

‘Have you sufficient…’ Mordecai was going to say ‘experience’ but paused. ‘Have you sufficient resources to undertake these enquiries?’

‘If he hasn’t, we shall see that he has,’ Oliver replied.

‘The estate’, Nicholas began, ‘is not –’

Oliver interrupted. ‘I know. The estate, despite its intrinsic value and wealth, has not much ready cash. Sales will have to be made, land, pictures. A very large sum will have to be raised.’

‘What will the court make of trustees’, Mordecai said almost to himself, ‘who sell the family silver to finance resistance to the claim of a lady whom the court eventually declares to be the genuine heir?’

‘You keep suggesting she’s the genuine heir,’ Nicholas broke in. ‘She’s an adventuress, an impostor.’ He bent forward, his face suddenly red and angry. ‘I don’t understand why you can’t see that she is. I thought you were hired on behalf of the family to be on the side of the family.’

‘That is offensive, Major Lawton,’ Mordecai snarled.

‘Nicholas! Mordecai!’ Oliver interjected, but Mordecai was not to be stopped.

‘I hoped that Major Lawton had the wits to appreciate that the purpose of this consultation is to examine the case that will be brought against us and that if we aren’t prepared and ready to meet it, then Lady Caverel and her child will be thrown on to the street and the black girl, with Blake and the drunken grandmother, will be in possession.’

There came a loud scrape of a chair being pushed back. Mr Rogers was on his feet. Mordecai swung round and bent forward to look at him. ‘What the devil do you want?’

‘I must be on my way.’ To Oliver he said, ‘I shall be in touch, Mr Goodbody.’

‘You know where to find me,’ said Oliver.

‘I do.’

‘If you are leaving us, let me give you some advice,’ said Mordecai.

Mr Rogers looked at him steadily. ‘I’m always very ready to listen to advice,’ he said coolly.

‘If this is a conspiracy,’ Mordecai growled, ‘as Mr Goodbody believes it is, and if these conspirators catch up with you, you’d better take care.’

‘I shall,’ Rogers replied gravely.

‘Do you know anything about any of them?’

‘I know of Blake and I have come across some of his associates. One of his henchmen especially is not…’ He paused and sought for the appropriate word. ‘… is not the most respectable of citizens. So I shall be careful.’ He bowed to Oliver and across the room to Nicholas. ‘Good afternoon, gentlemen,’ he said.

‘Anything you need, get in touch with me either at the office or at home, in London or the country. You know where to find me,’ repeated Oliver.

‘And if there’s trouble,’ added Nicholas, ‘you know where to find me.’

Mr Rogers liked the military so he did not smile at Nicholas’ offer. He bowed gravely. ‘Thank you, Major Lawton. I have had experience of what you call trouble and I have some expertise in avoiding it.’

‘If these gentlemen are right,’ growled Mordecai, ‘you’ll need all the expertise you’ve got.’

Mr Rogers stared at him as coolly as before and it was Mordecai who dropped his eyes. Mr Rogers swung round on his heel and began to walk to the door. Then he stopped and turned again. ‘If you will forgive me, perhaps you gentlemen ought to be considering not so much whose daughter she may be but whether she is who she says she is.’

He left the room, moving deftly, almost like a cat, balanced perfectly on his small, well-shod feet. When the door had closed behind him, Mordecai turned to Oliver. ‘Who the devil is he?’

‘He’s the best,’ Oliver replied, using the same words Stevens had used some weeks ago to Dukie Brown about Willoughby Blake.

*   *   *

On leaving the Temple, Oliver and Nicholas shared a taxi.

‘I didn’t like that fellow,’ Nicholas said.

‘Many don’t.’

‘Why did you brief him?’

‘Because he’s the best for what needs to be done. If you think he’s offensive to us whose side he’s paid to be on, wait until you see him with the enemy.’

‘Was he right when he implied you should never have sent that little man to the press conference?’

‘That’s his opinion, given after the event. I wanted those criminals to understand what they’re up against.’

‘He was bloody rude to me.’

‘He is to many. That’s the risk we take in briefing him.’

‘And the little man? You said he was the best. Best at what?’

‘At finding out.’

‘Where was he going when he left?’

‘I leave that to him. Europe, the Americas, wherever he has to.’

‘I suppose he charges a fortune.’

‘He does, and so does Mordecai. To defend this claim will cost the estate a great deal of money. So you’d better start selecting the treasures you’ll have to sell.’

Nicholas looked out of the window of the cab. They sat in silence. Then Oliver asked, ‘How is Andrea?’

‘Calmer now.’

‘She’ll need to be strong,’ said Oliver. ‘It’ll get much rougher, for her and for all of us. Especially when Blake really gets going and really whips up the media.’ He stared out of the window of the cab. ‘Ravenscourt is part of my life. It has been ever since I first went there when I was a boy. For you, it probably means even more, since you are attached to it by ties of blood. But I tell you, I shall do everything, everything that is needed, everything in my power, to make sure it remains in the family.’