Edward Camden and Lieutenant Canetti had been arrested at once in the cemetery at Lazzetta. It was the first ripple of a devastating wave of litigation which was to sweep across Europe, gathering a flotsam of witnesses and depositing them high and dry at the Old Bailey, part of one of the longest and most sensational criminal cases ever tried there.
Television and the Press had a field-day. Many members of the so-called jet-set had made good use of their designated means of transport and had disappeared to various unfashionable (soon-to-be-fashionable, thanks to them) corners of the globe where they could pass a few months incognito; but enough were gathered together in London to supply an ongoing extravaganza of fame and wealth. In the days of their early married popularity Mark and Helen Ackland had certainly known everybody who was anybody in the world of the beautiful people.
Helen herself put on an extraordinary performance, denying nothing (what could she deny?) and accepting her guilt without any impassioned self-defence but with an icy dignity which dismayed all concerned. She was, par excellence, the soap opera villainess whom you love to hate. Many people, to their own surprised distaste, found themselves admiring her. Well, almost. And quite soon the usual lunatic fringe was straggling to and fro outside the Old Bailey, demanding her release, and probably her sanctification.
It soon became evident that she had loved neither Mark Ackland nor his surrogate, and more than once she showed quite shocking scorn for her incredulous and horrified children. The psycho-babblers had a field-day too.
Kate, Daniel and Steve gave their breathtaking evidence with commendable calm. Edward Camden broke down and wept, but nobody was impressed. His mother appeared from California in an alcoholic haze and had to be led from the court. Andrew Howard’s garbled defence was heard in stony silence and he was disbarred from future legal practice.
But eventually all the flotsam and all the melodrama were washed away by the inexorable tide of time. Helen Ackland and Edward Camden were both given heavy sentences on a variety of charges but murder was not among them. Although forensic investigation found minute traces of blood on the detached newel-post, despite thorough washing, it was impossible to date them and there was no evidence to connect this blunt instrument with Camden’s hand; his counsel deflected the indictment. But legal innocence has never had much to do with innocence as the world understands it, and as far as the world is concerned the suspicion of murder will follow them all their lives.
Daniel Ackland is now an enthusiastic patient of Dr Allard at the Blake Clinic where the cure is already showing guarded signs of success. He plans to sell a part of Long-water’s abundant acreage and set up a foundation to help other sufferers from Raynor’s Syndrome who cannot, like his old self, afford the treatment.
Kate and Steve opted for marriage because they want children and believe that children want parents, preferably two of them. They spent their honeymoon not far from Bastia in a charming little house discovered by Françoise, and are now looking after Longwater pending the return of the heir. Kate expected it to be too reminiscent of its previous inhabitants and was surprised to find this wasn’t so: perhaps because they never had any right to be there in the first place.
Steve has given up his job with Boyd Electronics in order to devote all his time to estate management. To his surprise—and to Kate’s amusement, remembering his previous antagonism to any such milieu—he is enjoying the whole experience; and though he describes himself as merely a caretaker it seems likely that Daniel, even if he comes back from the United States completely cured, will welcome the assistance, growing skill and hard-won business acumen of his brother-in-law.
Woodman’s stands empty. In the village they say that it’s haunted by Lydia Ackland. It would be unlike her not to make her presence felt one way or another.