‘What’s that?’ Lucy asked.
‘You said your brother Tom asked you to store an old document in your safe three days ago. That’s why you opened it up. But all I can see in here are modern-looking documents. Where’s the document he asked you to store?’
As Richard said this, he stepped back so that Lucy could see into the safe for herself. After a few moments, Lucy stood up again. She looked utterly baffled.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s not there.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. The gun’s gone. And the bullets. But so is the document.’
The three Police Officers looked at each other.
‘Then can you tell us what was in this document?’ Richard asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Lucy said, trying to remember. ‘It was just an old handwritten document. I didn’t really look at it. I think it was a list of names. But I can’t imagine for a second why anyone would want to take it.’
‘Okay, then I’m going to ask you something, and I want you to think very carefully before you answer. You’ve already told us that Tom knew that you kept a gun in your safe. Is that right?’
Lucy nodded.
‘And it was also Tom who told you to put an old document in your safe three days ago?’
Lucy nodded again.
‘Then, if Tom knew that your biological father Freddie Beaumont was on the plantation, would he have wanted to kill him?’
Lucy was shocked by the question.
‘Of course not. Why would he want to do that?’
‘I don’t know. You tell us.’
‘But it’s impossible. Tom was only four years old when we left the UK. He had no idea how evil that man was.’
‘And was he really evil?’ Camille asked.
Richard saw Lucy’s jaw tighten.
‘Yes,’ she replied.
‘But in what way was he “evil”?’ he asked.
‘Where do you want me to start? He was manipulative. He was selfish. He was jealous. He lied. He stole. He was emotionally abusive. Physically abusive. And he was drunk the whole time. How long have you got?’
‘He was physically abusive?’ Camille asked.
‘Never to me. I was only small. But he hit my mother the whole time. When he lost control. But I’d be in bed – in the middle of the night – and I’d hear her crying in the room next door. Just crying and crying. Can you imagine what that was like? Or there was the time I saw him smash a kitchen cupboard door into the side of her head. Just like that. In the middle of the day, and for no reason at all. He was just drunk and angry, and he wanted to cause her pain. We all lived in fear of him. In total fear. And Mother just took it. For as long as she could. So yes. That man was evil. But then, it’s not like it’s the first time our family has thrown up a nasty piece of work.’
‘It isn’t?’
‘You ask the rest of the family about “Mad Jack”.’
‘And who’s he?’
‘One of the younger sons of Thomas Beaumont, the guy who founded the plantation. And he was evil. Just like Freddie was. So yes. We’ve got bad genes, if you ask me. I reckon that whatever madness drove “Mad Jack” also drove my biological father.’
‘Very well,’ Richard said, wanting to move the interview on. ‘Then if not Tom, who else in your family might have wanted Freddie dead?’
‘No-one.’
‘Really?’
‘Of course not. You’ve got to understand, we haven’t seen my biological father in decades. He hasn’t even come up in conversation for years. He’s not part of our lives.’
‘So no-one else has a grudge against him?’
‘No.’
‘It’s just you that still hates him?’
‘That’s right. Just me. Not that it matters what I think of him.’
‘And why’s that?’
‘Because I was with you when he was killed. Thank God. So it doesn’t much matter that it was maybe my gun that was used to shoot him – or that I still hate him, even after all these years – I couldn’t have been the person who pulled the trigger, could I?’
Richard was surprised at the clarity with which Lucy had expressed herself, but he had to admit that she had a point. If Lucy were ever to stand trial for the murder of Freddie Beaumont, her defence lawyer would be able to put both Richard and Camille in the dock, and they’d have to admit that they were in the middle of a jungle clearing with Lucy at the precise moment that Freddie had been shot dead.
So, seeing as Lucy couldn’t be the murderer, who else could it have been?
It was pretty obvious to Richard that they needed to talk to Tom as a matter of some urgency. So, leaving Dwayne to finish processing the safe, Richard and Camille thanked Lucy for her time and headed back down the staircase to find her brother. On the way, Richard paused by the portrait of the Honourable Thomas Beaumont, the plantation’s founder. Richard found himself marvelling at how cold and dead the man’s eyes were. It was as though he was looking out from his picture, weighing Richard’s worth and finding it wanting.
‘So what do you think of Lucy?’ Camille whispered to her boss.
‘I don’t know. I thought she was pretty erratic at first, but now I’m not so sure. She explained how she couldn’t be the killer pretty succinctly, didn’t she?’
‘She did.’
‘And I just don’t think you’d so freely admit to hating the deceased if you really were the killer.’
‘Unless it’s a double bluff.’
Richard indicated the portraits of Thomas Beaumont and his many descendants on the walls. ‘And I’ll tell you something else Lucy was right about. An old family like this doesn’t get stinking rich without there being blood on their hands. And looking at the honourable Thomas here, I can well believe he was capable of spilling blood.’
Camille agreed, and she quietly smiled to herself at Richard’s ability to get so indignant about all injustice – no matter how many hundreds of years ago it might have happened. And as she looked at her boss, she saw how the little duck tail of hair at the back of his neck was wet with sweat. Dwayne was right, she thought to herself. They had to get Richard into more appropriate clothing. If he continued wearing woollen suits in the Caribbean, he’d eventually be out on a shout one day and drop down dead from heat exhaustion. But how to get her boss to understand that he had to change his wardrobe? That was the question.
Tom entered the hallway and saw Richard and Camille looking at the portrait.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘It’s you.’
‘Indeed,’ Richard said. ‘But more importantly, it’s you.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Could we have a word?’
Tom absorbed this information before replying.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You’d better follow me,’
Tom led through the hallway, along a blissfully cool corridor with stone flagstones, and into an office at the back of the house.
As Richard and Camille entered the room, Tom went and sat behind a desk that was placed squarely in front of windows that perfectly framed the summit of Mount Esmée behind. It was quite a powerful image, Richard found himself noting.
As for the rest of the room, it seemed a pretty typical farm office. A pile of muddy boots lay in a heap by an old stable door that led outside. There was a decades-old map of the plantation that was covered in Post-it notes and handwritten annotations. And all of the many shelves and metal filing cabinets in the room were covered in a mess of paperwork, manuals, books and magazines. Richard got the impression that this was a busy and active place of work.
‘Is this your office?’ Richard asked, seeing how proprietorially Tom was sitting behind the desk.
‘No way, man,’ Tom said with a laugh. ‘But when Dad’s not here, I get to pretend.’
‘And is he often not here?’
Tom smiled. ‘There’s a lot of work outdoors on a plantation like this. And when Dad’s not at work, he’s out in the fields doin
g his painting. So I get a pretty free run of his office.’
‘He paints, does he?’ Camille asked.
‘Sure does. You know, oils and pastels. And landscapes – that’s what he loves painting the most. Getting out under the big sky, he calls it. And he’s good. He had an exhibition at the Pascal gallery last year.’
Richard shook his head. The phrase ‘the Pascal gallery’ didn’t mean anything to him, but he could see that Camille was impressed. Very well. So Hugh was a fair-to-middling painter.
Richard picked up a spreadsheet of figures from the desk and looked at it.
‘So, what are you currently working on?’
‘Pretty much everything.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, since I graduated last year, I’ve been trying to understand how the plantation works. You know, dive into the balance sheets, try and get my head around the different variable and fixed costs, capital investment plans – that sort of thing.’
‘I see,’ Richard said. ‘You studied agriculture at Miami University, is that right?’
‘Sure did,’ Tom said, proudly.
‘And what was that like?’
‘It was tough. But rewarding. I learned a lot.’
‘And now you’re trying to return the plantation to profit?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Lucy just told us how the plantation hasn’t made any money for years.’
Tom looked guarded.
‘She did, did she?’
‘She did.’
‘Well, it’s hardly a secret. And you’re right. We haven’t really turned a decent profit since the great eruption of 1979. So that’s why I’m going through everything. I’m trying to see if I can turn the business around.’
‘And can you?’
‘Maybe. Don’t know yet. But it’s going to take a bit of a push. We’ve got to drag the whole production line into the 21st century.’
‘You sound pretty committed.’
‘Hey,’ Tom said with a warning note in his voice. ‘Just because I don’t take myself too seriously, doesn’t mean I’m not serious about my work. Okay? Anyhow, I don’t reckon you wanted to talk to me about business plans.’
‘No. Of course not. But we do want to know what the document was that you asked Lucy to store in her safe three days ago.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Did you ask your sister to look after a document for you three days ago?’
‘Yeah. So?’
‘And did you tell her to put it in her safe?’
‘What’s this got to do with anything?’
‘Did you ask her to store it in her safe?’
‘Sure. So what?’
‘Then perhaps you can tell us what this document was?’
‘Are you serious? My biological father gets shot dead in an outhouse and all you want to know about is what document I gave my sister three days ago?’
‘That’s it in a nutshell,’ Richard said with a smile.
‘Alright. If you must know, it was a list of the first slaves that Thomas Beaumont brought to the island. But that’s all it was. Just a hand-written list. From about two hundred years ago.’
‘And why did the document need putting in a safe?’
‘Okay,’ Tom said, and Richard could see that he was thinking less and less of the Police with each passing second. Very well, Richard thought to himself, let him feel superior – that’s when witnesses made mistakes.
‘So, I’ve been having a clear-out of this office,’ Tom continued. ‘I mean, I know it doesn’t look like it, but you should have seen this place before. There used to be a load more old books and ledgers everywhere. And Rosie and Matthew have been helping as well. In fact, Matthew’s been badgering me to get all our historical documents into one place for years. So he can write a definitive history of the family. That’s what floats his boat. But Rosie’s always been interested in the history of the plantation as well. So that’s what we’ve been doing these last few months. Trying to bring order to the chaos – that’s what Rosie calls it. Bringing order to chaos. And it’s been kind of rewarding. You know, finding all these old documents and records, and seeing how this place used to be run.
‘Anyway, I was going through this old ledger from 1803 and that’s when this slip of paper fell out. I could tell it was old from how yellow it was. And how it was torn at the edges. But I could also see that it was written in Thomas Beaumont’s own hand, and dated 1777, a month after his ship first arrived on Saint-Marie. Matthew got really excited. The Honourable Thomas Beaumont was the first Englishman to bring slaves to Saint-Marie, so this was basically a record of the first families from Africa to be brought to the island. He said we had to get it to the Saint-Marie museum. And in the meantime it had better be stored somewhere secure, like Lucy’s safe.’
‘So that’s why you asked Lucy to store the paper in her safe? Because it was of historical importance?’
‘Sure did. Now can I ask you a question?’
‘Of course.’
‘Who cares?’
‘Lucy’s safe is also where she kept her handgun.’
‘It is?’
‘As well you know, because it was you who got her the gun.’
After a moment, Tom shrugged his shoulders.
‘Okay. So I spoke to a few mates a few years back. They got hold of a gun for her. She keeps it in her safe. So what?’
‘We think it was her gun that was used to kill Freddie Beaumont.’
Tom’s eyes widened in surprise.
‘You’re kidding me,’ he said.
‘When we went to get it from her safe, we discovered that it was missing. Which makes it all rather coincidental, don’t you think? That the only other person in the family who knew about the existence of Lucy’s gun was also the same person who asked her to access her safe three days before the murder.’
‘But that’s all it can be. A coincidence.’
Richard didn’t believe in coincidences – not where murder was concerned – so he decided to go off on a stroll around the room and let Tom sweat for a bit. Stopping at a photo on the wall, Richard threw a sideways glance at Tom and saw how unsettled he was by Richard’s sudden silence. So Richard studied the photo some more. It showed fifty or so young boys wearing school uniform and standing on raised benches in front of an ivy clad wall. The faded handwriting underneath the picture said that it was a photograph of ‘Manor House 1983’, and the cut-out paper crest that was glued to the top of the picture made it clear that the boys were all in the same house at Eton College.
‘Is this a photo of Freddie?’ Richard asked, as if it was the most natural question in the world.
‘What’s that?’ Tom asked, confused by the sudden change of subject.
‘This school photo here. Is your biological father one of the boys?’
‘No, Freddie had left when that was taken. But father’s there if you look in the bottom left of the picture.’
Richard looked, and thought he could see a young, eighteen-year old Hugh Beaumont, with shaggy hair, staring back out at him from the front row.
‘Yes. I think I can see him. Which reminds me, Hugh said that every male member of the family has been educated at Eton for the last three hundred years.’
‘That’s right.’
‘But not you.’
‘Sure.’
‘So why was that?’
‘I didn’t want to go to boarding school.’
‘Why not?’
‘I just didn’t want to. Okay? So when I was about ten or eleven years old, I told father I wanted to stay on the island with my friends. And he agreed. He even told me he was proud of me. I’d be the first male member of the Beaumont family who’d break the cycle. So, instead of going to some posh school on the other side of the world, I got to spend my secondary school years with my mates. Surfing at the weekends. Partying the rest of the time. Man, have you any idea what it’s like being a teenager on a Caribbean island?’
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Richard of course didn’t, but he could see a smile slip onto Camille’s face as she remembered her teenage years. Yes, well, the less he knew about Camille’s teenage years the better, Richard thought to himself.
‘I see,’ Richard said. ‘And, of course, I don’t suppose your parents could have afforded to send you to boarding school. Not if the plantation’s been losing money since the great eruption of 1979.’
‘That was also part of it. For sure.’
‘So how did you feel when they sent Matthew to Eton?’
‘What’s that?’
‘Because it must have cost hundreds of thousands of pounds to educate him. Hundreds of thousands of pounds I can’t help noticing that your parents didn’t spend on you.’
‘Yeah, but I didn’t want to go. Matthew did. And if he’s never wanted to do anything original in his life, I can hardly blame him for that, can I?’
‘Do you really believe that?’
‘Of course. Or I wouldn’t have said.’
‘But how did your parents afford the fees?’
‘It wasn’t so hard. Dad sold a painting.’
‘One of his own?’
Tom laughed. Not entirely kindly, Richard noticed.
‘No way. One of the family heirlooms. Some old oil painting by some important dead guy. It fetched three hundred thousand pounds. And that’s the money that sent Matthew to Eton.’
‘Which is interesting,’ Richard said, ‘because you’re now saying that while you spent three years studying Agriculture at Miami University learning how to save the family business, your parents were spending hundreds of thousands of pounds giving your brother an education that was not only denied to you, but which could have been used to save the family business.’
‘That’s not how I saw it. Have you even been listening?’
‘Then tell me about the bird,’ Richard said, deciding that he wanted to keep Tom off balance.
‘What?’ Tom asked.
‘Nanny Rosie told us that she found you dissecting a dead bird when you were nine years old.’
Tom went very still.
‘I just wondered if you had anything to say about that?’
Tom placed his hands on the table, and Richard could see that he was trying to control his temper.
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