Kelsey’s head jerked up. ‘Is Christine aware of that?’ he asked sharply.
Spedding spread his hands. ‘I have no reason to suppose so. She was certainly never informed of it by either James Boland or myself. There was no mention of her in Boland’s will, no bequest. She has never made any kind of inquiry about the trust at this office. I don’t imagine she’s aware of its existence.’ As joint guardian of Karen, Spedding had had dealings with Christine at the time the approach was made to her concerning the possibility of Karen going to live at Jubilee Cottage, but Spedding had never made any mention of the existence of the trust, let alone the possibility that she could in certain circumstances benefit under it. There was no direct connection between the payments made by the trust to the Social Services for Karen’s maintenance and the fostering allowances the Wilmots received from the department. All transactions under the trust were highly confidential.
‘Christine’s father, Maurice Boland, had made more than one attempt over the years to cadge money from his brother,’ Spedding continued, ‘but he had no success. James never wanted anything to do with his brother or sister-in-law. Maurice is dead now, and his wife, they both died before James Boland.’ Maurice had drunk himself into his grave, with shrieking DTs at the end. His wife followed him twelve months later. James hadn’t attended either funeral.
Christine was already grown up and married at the time of James Boland’s death. ‘She turned out a lot better than might have been expected,’ Spedding commented. Although James Boland had had nothing to do with the family, he was nevertheless aware of Christine’s progress. He felt she showed character, had taken charge of her life in a direct and sensible fashion. The moment her schooldays were over she had left home and gone into digs, had got herself a job behind the counter in a dry-cleaner’s shop, rising to manageress before she married Ian Wilmot. A couple of years after the marriage Wilmot was transferred to Cannonbridge.
‘Does Wilmot come from Okeshot?’ Kelsey asked.
Spedding nodded. ‘His parents keep a village store a few miles from here. I had some knowledge of Wilmot from when he worked in the planning department here in Okeshot. We still have occasional dealings with him now, in the Cannonbridge office. Planning applications, property development, disposals under wills and settlements, that kind of thing. It’s usually Trewin who deals with Wilmot now, he goes over there to see him sometimes. He and Wilmot were at school together, here in Okeshot. You met Trewin just now, he brought you in here.’ He sat back in his chair. ‘I was able to give Wilmot a good reference to the Social Services when the question came up about Karen going to live with them at Jubilee Cottage.’
Kelsey inquired about the circumstances of Enid’s second marriage.
‘Enid and Karen lived together for a couple of years after Boland’s death before she remarried,’ Spedding told him. ‘Karen seemed to accept Enid well enough and Enid always did her best for the girl, but it was never a close relationship. Lorimer worked in the public library here in Okeshot, he was a member of the same church as Enid. She came here and talked the whole thing over with me when she first thought of marrying Lorimer. I was her solicitor after Boland’s death, and of course we had dealings from time to time as joint guardians of Karen. Enid was clearly very much in love with Lorimer but she didn’t rush into the marriage. She thought it over very carefully, she tried to see it from Karen’s point of view as well as her own. She brought Lorimer with her one day, to introduce him to me.’
He made a little downward turn of his lips. ‘I must admit it seemed to me a good thing all round. It’s easy enough now with hindsight to wonder if Lorimer’s motive in marrying Enid was to gain easy access to Karen, but such a thought never entered my head at the time. I believed he took a normal, genuine interest in Karen, that he was really fond of Enid. I knew of nothing against him. He was well mannered, well spoken, decently educated, well read and well informed, very attentive to Enid, not at all bad-looking. I was very pleased for Enid, I thought it would work out very well. I spoke to Karen about it and she expressed no objection.’ In due course Spedding was invited to the wedding. The marriage made no difference to Enid’s financial position under the terms of the trust or of Boland’s will.
‘Everything appeared to go swimmingly for a time,’ Spedding went on. ‘Whenever I spoke to Karen she never gave the slightest sign that anything was wrong. And Enid seemed very happy. I never had the impression she suspected anything might be amiss.’ He grimaced. ‘Then six months later–whoosh! The whole shebang went up!’
He sighed and shook his head. ‘Enid simply could not accept the fact that Lorimer could possibly be guilty. She had to believe he loved her, that his only motive in marrying her was love. She couldn’t tolerate the notion that the presence of a young girl in the household might have been the real reason.
‘I was brought into it at an early stage, both as Karen’s guardian and Enid’s solicitor. Lorimer also considered me to be his solicitor by virtue of his marriage to Enid–certainly he had no other solicitor at the time. He and Enid came running to see me. Karen was inventing it all, fantasizing. She was jealous, resented the arrival of Lorimer in the household, and so on.’
He shook his head again. ‘But there was the medical examination, the undeniable fact of the pregnancy. Enid could scarcely put that down to invention or fantasy. I spoke to Karen on her own several times. Allowing for the situation in which she found herself, she seemed reasonably steady and composed, she was certainly never hysterical. I thought she took it all very stoically for such a young girl. She never departed from her story. It all seemed to me to hang together.’
He gave the Chief a look laced with significance. ‘Then other episodes came to light about Lorimer, about his past. It turned out he was not quite what he had seemed. There had been other young girls–but I expect you know all about that. Even in the face of that, Enid still wouldn’t–or, more likely, couldn’t–believe he was guilty.
‘She insisted that I take on the case, that I act for Lorimer. I had to point out that as one of Karen’s guardians, to say nothing of being a long-time friend of her father, I could scarcely take up a legal posture whereby I would in effect be challenging Karen in favour of Lorimer. Enid got very agitated, accused me of prejudging the case, having a closed mind, and so on.
‘Neither Enid nor Lorimer had access to any sizable amount of capital and she demanded that I should release capital from the trust fund, enough to allow her to engage a top QC to defend Lorimer.
‘I told her I had no such powers, even if I had wished to do such a thing, which I certainly did not. I had no doubt whatever of Lorimer’s guilt and I couldn’t see how anyone else could have. I very plainly told her so. In any case a top QC’s fees, apart from being a total waste of money in the face of such evident guilt, would be astronomical. They wouldn’t take long to extinguish the whole of the trust fund.’
‘How did she take that?’ Kelsey asked.
‘She was quite beside herself. She took violent exception to my attitude.’ He grimaced. ‘It was a great revelation to me. I’d always seen her as very disciplined, quiet, self-effacing. To find her capable of such animus, such strength of feeling . . .’ He shook his head reflectively. ‘She ceased there and then to employ me as her solicitor. She told me she would take her business–and Lorimer’s business–elsewhere. Of course she was still obliged to maintain some contact with me because of the trust and the guardianship. She always remained one of Karen’s guardians, even though Karen had been taken into care. She’s always been very formal with me since that day, courteous but very cold. She’s never forgiven me.’
‘Did she find another solicitor willing to take on Lorimer’s case?’
Spedding permitted himself a hint of a smile. ‘The legal grapevine’s very efficient. I soon learned she went straight off from this office to the local Law Centre. The man she saw there isn’t one of these dewy-eyed, newly-fledged young men ready to take a tilt at anything, he’s an experienced, hard-nosed man. He told her bluntly that Lorimer hadn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of getting away with it.
‘He strongly advised Lorimer to plead guilty. That way there wouldn’t be the need for Karen to be put through further ordeal, and Lorimer would almost certainly get a shorter sentence.’ He waved a hand. ‘If Lorimer had any thoughts of trying to make out in court that he’d received any kind of encouragement from Karen, that she’d led him on in any way, he’d better forget them, he’d be lucky to escape being torn limb from limb by outraged females if he persisted in that kind of tale. Lorimer finally accepted the advice and pleaded guilty.’
He sighed again. ‘I was very sorry for Enid–I still am, come to that. She had a hard time of it from start to last. In many ways the hardest time of all must be starting now, with Lorimer out of gaol, trying to make a new life. He’s not going to find it easy. But at least she has Lorimer’s company now. She found herself very isolated and lonely after he went to prison. She gave up what social life she had, and her charitable work. She has the temperament to feel that kind of notoriety very keenly. Some people can harden themselves to it, but she couldn’t.’
‘When she had to choose between Karen and Lorimer, did she have any conflict?’
‘As far as I could tell, none at all. She unhesitatingly chose Lorimer. I can’t say I was surprised. When Karen realized she’d have to stay in care till she was old enough to be independent, she told me she’d like to be moved away from this area, she’d feel better able to make a fresh start elsewhere. It seemed the best thing in all the circumstances, so she was sent to a children’s home in Wychford, and then later on she went to foster parents, the Roscoes.’
He looked reflective. ‘I knew Karen from the day she was born. She was a merry, outgoing, trusting child. Then, one by one, things happened to her over the years. The terrible shock of her mother’s death. The realization that her father was going to die. His hasty marriage to Enid. His death soon afterwards. Enid’s marriage to Lorimer, with all that flowed from that. Everything served, step by step, to turn her from that merry, trusting, little girl, into the quiet, wary, reserved young woman she was the last time I saw her.’ Kelsey saw the glitter of a tear in his eye.
Spedding had last seen Karen some three weeks earlier. He had had business in the Cannonbridge area so he had arranged an appointment with Karen and the Wilmots at Jubilee Cottage for the early evening. He had chatted to them together and separately, had been at pains to assure himself all was well.
Kelsey asked if Spedding had spoken to Karen about the Paul Clayton episode at the time the relationship came to light.
Yes, he had spoken to her. He had gone over to the Roscoes’ as soon as he heard of it, to hear Karen’s side of it. He made a deprecatory gesture. ‘I thought the whole thing grossly exaggerated. A typical uproar on the part of virtuous females.
‘I was delighted when she went to the Wilmots not long afterwards. I thought she had a good chance at last of feeling she had a real home again, of putting down some roots. Christine was hesitant at first about taking Karen. She felt it would be a great responsibility. But Ian thought it would be a good thing for the girl, that she’d fit in well. He set about persuading Christine and before long she got quite keen on the idea. I’m sure they both grew genuinely fond of Karen. I believe it was working out very well.’
Kelsey asked what were the circumstances in which Enid had left the house in Okeshot and moved to Furzebank Cottage.
‘She came to see me about it back in the summer,’ Spedding told him. ‘She was anxious to leave Okeshot altogether, to cut all links with the past. She wanted to have a home ready and waiting somewhere else for Lorimer when he came out of prison. She knew she had only a lifetime right to occupy the Okeshot house, she didn’t own it, but she wanted to know if it would be possible under the trust for the house to be sold and another bought elsewhere, her right to occupancy being transferred to the new house.’
He shook his head. ‘I told her that wasn’t possible under the very precise terms of the trust and will, but there was nothing to stop her renting out the Okeshot house and using the money to rent another elsewhere. The Okeshot house could be rented out on a shorthold tenancy, or, if necessary, on a succession of shorthold tenancies, so that if she later changed her mind and decided to come back again to Okeshot to live, she could always regain possession.’
He waved a hand. ‘For all I knew, her attitude to Lorimer might change completely after he came out of prison. They hadn’t been married long before the trouble blew up, and Lorimer would certainly come out of prison a very different man from the one who went in.’ He smiled slightly. ‘Of course I didn’t spell those thoughts out to her. She jumped at the idea of renting out the Okeshot house and asked if I knew of any suitable property for herself and Lorimer. I pointed out that tax would have to be paid on the rent received, reducing the amount available for renting another house. The Okeshot property is very modest and can’t command a high rent, so she wasn’t likely to find anything very grand for the money, in fact she’d be lucky to find anything at all. She said she didn’t mind what it was like, old, dilapidated, small–but it must be secluded, preferably isolated. I told her I’d do my best. I found Furzebank Cottage a week or two later, and she took it at once.’
There was a knock at the door and a clerk entered. She apologized for disturbing them, went over to the desk and spoke to Spedding in a low voice. He looked across at Kelsey.
‘Are we likely to be much longer?’ he asked. ‘A client has called to see me on urgent business.’
Kelsey stood up. ‘We’ll be getting along, we’ve just about covered everything. We very much appreciate your help, it’s been most useful. We’ll see ourselves out.’
Outside in the corridor he glanced at his watch: twenty minutes to one. At the reception desk he asked the girl if Mr Trewin was about. She offered to get him and a minute or two later Trewin came into the hall.
‘We’d like a word with you,’ Kelsey told him without preamble.
Trewin’s manner was far from cooperative. He was very busy, he had papers to deal with at top speed, papers a client was impatiently waiting for. Kelsey asked what time he went off for lunch.
‘One o’clock,’ Trewin answered reluctantly.
Kelsey asked where he went, if he used a car. With even greater reluctance Trewin named a nearby pub, adding that he walked there.
Kelsey crossed to the window and jabbed a finger over at a street corner. ‘We’ll be parked down that turning. You come over there, one o’clock sharp. We’ll run you out somewhere quiet, we won’t keep you many minutes. We’ll drop you back at your pub after we’ve had a talk.’
Trewin glanced nervously along the corridor. He looked about to protest or refuse.
‘Yes or no?’ Kelsey demanded. ‘I can always go back in there–’ he jerked his head in the direction of Spedding’s office–‘and get your boss to send for you, say what I have to say to you in front of him.’
Trewin’s brow broke into perspiration. ‘All right, then.’ His voice was sullen. ‘I’ll be across the road in ten minutes.’
‘If you decide not to show up,’ the Chief warned, ‘we’ll be in through these doors again the minute Spedding gets back from lunch. Never you doubt it.’
Trewin didn’t appear to doubt it. As one o’clock struck from a church tower he came into view, striding rapidly along the pavement. He reached the car and Kelsey flung open the rear door.
‘In here!’ he commanded. Trewin got in beside him, turning his head from the gaze of any curious passer-by. He sat well back in the corner, with a hand up to shield his face.
‘You know why we came here today to talk to Spedding,’ the Chief began as Lambert set the car in motion.
‘You are a friend, a friend of long standing, of Ian Wilmot, Jubilee Cottage, Overmead?’
This time there was a perceptible pause before Trewin again nodded. He looked extremely uneasy.
‘You are aware of the existence of a trust set up by the late James Boland for the benefit of his daughter Karen?’
A somewhat longer pause, then again a nod. Trewin shifted in his seat.
‘Earlier this year an approach was made to the Wilmots, to see if they would be willing to foster Karen Boland.’ Trewin sat silent and motionless. ‘I put it to you that Ian Wilmot immediately contacted you to ask you to ferret out the details of the trust, that you did ferret out the details–highly confidential details–and passed them on to Wilmot.’
Trewin’s eyes roved about. ‘That isn’t how it was,’ he said at last in a tone of protest.
‘Then how was it?’
Trewin jerked out a hand. ‘Ian happened to be over here in the ordinary course of his duties. He called in at the pub where I go for lunch. He just wanted a chat, that was all.’ He came to a halt, he had to be prompted by the Chief before he continued.
‘It just so happened that a few days before, the Social Services asked Mr Spedding his opinion of the Wilmots as possible foster parents for Karen Boland. Mr Spedding mentioned this to me, as I’ve known both Ian and Christine a good many years. He wanted to know what sort of housekeeper Christine was, was she fond of children, what interests they had, all that kind of thing. We had quite a chat about it, he wanted to satisfy himself he could recommend them.’ He fell silent again, again had to be prompted.
‘I just happened to mention this to Ian in the pub,’ he went on with growing reluctance. ‘And he asked me–very casually–about the trust fund. It was all perfectly harmless, we were just chatting.’
‘How did Wilmot know there was a trust fund?’
Trewin looked extremely uncomfortable. ‘I’m not sure,’ he ventured at last. ‘It could have been something the Social Services people said to him. Or–’ his tone suddenly increased in confidence as if he had hit on a brilliant inspiration–‘he could have worked it out for himself. He would always have known from Christine that James Boland had done well in life, he must have left plenty of money. It stands to reason he’d have set up a trust for Karen, she was his only child.’
‘So you obligingly supplied Wilmot with all the details–in case there was any little point he might not have been able to work out correctly for himself.’
‘No, not then,’ Trewin put in defensively. ‘I don’t go round carrying in my head all the details of every trust we’ve drawn up–and it was some years since we drew up the Boland trust.’
‘So you went back to the office and discreetly looked up the details for him.’
Trewin made no reply, he sat chewing his lip.
‘And then what? Did you phone Wilmot?’
He shook his head. ‘He phoned me at home that evening.’
‘And you gave him all the details then?’
Trewin drew a long, miserable breath, then gave a couple of despairing nods.
‘So the end result of all this casual chat, all this just happening to mention this and that, all this idle inquiry, was that by the end of the same day Wilmot had ferreted out from you, a confidential clerk, the precise details of the Boland trust?’
Trewin’s forehead was beaded with sweat. ‘I suppose so,’ he conceded after several moments had slipped by.
‘I don’t want any supposing about it,’ Kelsey persisted. ‘Did he or did he not ferret out the precise details?’
‘Yes, he did,’ Trewin was forced to admit. He suddenly darted a glance at Kelsey with the air of a badgered animal. ‘I saw no real harm in it,’ he flung out defiantly. ‘I still see no real harm in it. If Christine had gone to see Mr Spedding, if she had asked him openly for the details of the trust, he’d very probably have told her–or at least he’d have told her the details that affect her personally.’
‘Ah!’ Kelsey rejoined softly. ‘But Christine didn’t go to see Spedding, she didn’t ask him openly for the details of the trust.’ He stabbed a finger at the lapel of Trewin’s jacket. ‘Instead, Ian went to see you.’