Sue for Mercy - Veronica Heley Page 0,54
couldn’t bear to look at her face. Julian caught at her arm. He spoke her name. I heard her laugh... and then she was gone, and he, poor fool, ran after her.
“It is not wise,” said Charles conversationally, “to frame a man for a crime if he has three able-bodied sons to defend him.”
Ronald snapped shut the lock on his briefcase, and Charles shuddered as if waking from a bad dream.
*
Of course, it wasn’t the end of the matter. J.B. arranged for Julian to be represented by a solicitor, and even found him a job of sorts until the trial came up. He visits Julian every other month in prison, but won’t talk about it. Bianca went to a hotel until the trial, and sent the bills to J.B. That marriage is definitely over. As far as we were concerned, our involvement with the police ended when Charles and J.B. left the Station that afternoon, but Charles still had one more battle to fight.
I had been waiting for him in his car, knitting and listening to the radio. I felt half asleep, but forgot my own troubles when Charles came. His face was incandescent with fatigue. He got into the car and sat there, playing with his keys.
“I’ve failed, you know,” he said. “I’ve cleared Dad. I’ve got the family firm back, and I’ve made a lot of money, but it’s too late. He’ll be dead before the summer’s out.”
“Now that’s nonsense...”
“He gave up when he was forced to plead guilty. I could see it in his face when he told us what he’d agreed to do. He’d been fighting the cancer before that; he’d wanted to live, to see David’s three little girls again, to see Jane’s baby, to see me settled. But after that night he stopped fighting. Mother thinks he had just resigned himself to the situation, and that’s why he was so passive. She said it was because he’d got used to prison routine, and being known by his surname and number. I tried to fool myself that was what it was, too... but I’m not much good at fooling myself. I ought to have thought of something which would have worked more quickly... No, the damage was done that first night! I must remember that.” He sighed, and fitted the key in the ignition. “Another thing — Jane’s baby is no good. It moved late and feebly. She’s had trouble all along. She may carry it to term, but if it isn’t stillborn, it won’t live long. She knows it; I see her put one hand on her stomach to try to feel movement, and all the time her eyes are frightened... She thinks she’s let Ronald down. She looks at him as if expecting him to stop loving her because she can’t bear him a healthy child.”
“You have an overactive imagination. You can’t possibly know these things for certain. You’ve been overworking. You’ll feel better...”
“And you hate J.B., don’t you? You won’t share me with him; I could read that in your face as soon as you met him. So I must leave him, and he will die, too.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. If he’d understood that I hated J.B., then he’d also understood that J.B. hated me.
He tried to start the car, and flooded the engine. “I must get a licence tomorrow,” he said. “Will your parents be very angry if we get married without any fuss, quickly? Strange to think I’ve never even met them. One thing — they won’t like me. How could they? I’ve no job now, no home to offer you, and I can be difficult to live with. But at least we’ll have sons.”
“How many?” I asked, trying to break his mood.
“How the hell should I know?” he asked irritably. He tried to start the engine again, failed, and handed me the keys. “You’d better drive — I’m bushed.”
*
The Sue Stephens of this world don’t usually get invitations to stay at places like Whitestones; they buy a ticket to go over it on Open Days. The drive was half a mile long. On one side of the house lay a heated outdoor swimming pool, tennis courts, a croquet lawn, a formal maze and a rose garden. Then there was a walled vegetable garden, a paddock, and stabling converted to flats for some of the staff, with garages beneath. The house itself was early nineteenth century, stuffed with antique furniture and portraits of heavy-faced English gentry.