The Death of Kings

by Rennie George Airth

  She smiled.

  ‘I didn’t want to talk to him. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I was too miserable. But he wouldn’t be put off. He said he wasn’t going to leave me. He would sit there all night if necessary. And so after a while we began to talk: that is, I began to talk and he to listen. We sat there until nearly dawn and then he said I had to go to bed. I needed to get some sleep, he said, but since he was leaving later that morning I would have to be up and ready to go by ten o’clock at the latest.’

  She laughed.

  ‘I told him he was mad, but he was absolutely insistent. There was no way he was going to leave me behind. I had to go with him on his safari. He would show me Africa—the real Africa—and we could continue talking. “Don’t you see?” he said, as though it were the simplest thing in the world and how could I not understand it. “We’ve so much to say to each other. And we’ve hardly begun.”’

  She smiled again.

  ‘I’ll spare you the details—my protestations and so on. Suffice to say when the moment came for the lorry that was carrying Jack and his gear to leave I was on it. I remember waving goodbye to my friends and thinking what an addition this would make to the catalogue of scandalous behaviour that had attached itself to my name over the years.

  ‘I told myself I was setting out on another of my foolish adventures—Lord knows there’d been enough of those—but all the same I had a feeling that this time it would be different. I had already sensed a quality in Jack Jessup that I wasn’t used to finding in the men I’d known: a deep strain of kindness. It was what had kept him sitting up with me all night. He had seen that I was in pain and had set out to heal me if he could. Of course he had no way of knowing that what he was about to show me—the wildness of Africa, the animals, the wonderful unspoilt country—was a dream I had carried in my heart since childhood. I don’t know what Dr Freud would have made of the attraction I felt for this man who reminded me in so many ways of my father and who had appeared as if from nowhere to take me by the hand. But we didn’t become lovers for some time: not on the safari, and not when we returned to Nairobi. It was only on the voyage back to England. But by then I knew we weren’t going to part.’

  She was silent for a moment, lost in memory.

  ‘Jack had told me from the very beginning that he couldn’t marry me. His wife wouldn’t give him a divorce—it was her last way of punishing him—and he was too much the English gentleman to divorce her on grounds of desertion. I told him it didn’t matter; and truly it didn’t. I had long since lost any desire for respectability. All I wanted was to remain with him for the rest of my life; or his, as it turned out.’

  She shifted her glance away from Madden to the sun-dappled lawn beside them and they sat in silence. Then she faced him again.

  ‘We settled down at Foxley Hall and from that moment on we were seldom separated for more than a day or two. I soon realized that, like me, he was also trapped in a way of life he had neither sought nor wanted. I mean the company—Jessup’s. It was something he had inherited, something he couldn’t get rid of: until Richard grew up, that is, and was able to take it off his hands.’

  ‘He told me he didn’t see much of his father when he was young.’ Madden was absorbed by the tale he was hearing. ‘Was that because of his mother?’

  Mrs Castleton nodded. ‘As I say, she wanted to punish Jack, and keeping his son away from him was the best way of doing that. But when he got older Richard wanted to know him better, and by the end they had developed a close bond. It made an enormous difference to Jack’s last years: not only because of the personal link, but because Richard proved to be such a strong ally when it came to dealing with the company. He seemed born to take over the business, and Jack came to lean on him more and more.

  ‘They were like each other in so many ways. I don’t know how I would have coped with the loss of Jack if Richard hadn’t made it plain from the outset that as far as he and Sarah were concerned, I was as much a part of the family as if we had been married. It’s been a great blessing to me, and one I hardly feel I deserve given my disreputable past. I seem to spend almost as much time in Hampshire with them and their children as I do here. I can never thank them enough.’

  Her expression had changed while she was talking. She looked thoughtful now.

  ‘But although they were alike in many ways—both kind and generous—there was one great difference between them. Underneath it all, Richard has a core of steel. I often wonder if he inherited it from his mother. I never met her, but by all accounts she was a woman of iron will, and absolutely unforgiving where Jack was concerned. When Richard began the process of taking over from his father, of gathering the reins of Jessup’s into his hands, he realized that some heads were going to have to roll, especially in Hong Kong. Over the years Jack had let things slide to an alarming degree—his heart was never in the business—and Richard told me later he’d been appalled to discover the true state of affairs and how close the company was to bankruptcy. He had had to act quickly. The firings were wholesale and some of the people involved were old friends of Jack’s; they had been with Jessup’s for years. There was no question that radical action was needed; but it was something Jack could never have brought himself to do. It simply wasn’t in him. But Richard sees things with a cooler eye. He’s never been one to be blinded by sentiment. He can do what has to be done. I don’t know about you, Mr Madden, but it’s a quality I’ve come to admire and value.’

  ‘But not one all of us possess.’ Madden’s smile was rueful. ‘He gave me a hint of it when we talked about Stanley Wing. He said he had had to get rid of him.’

  ‘Ah, yes . . . Stanley Wing.’

  Her gaze had clouded.

  ‘Richard said you would want to ask me about him,’ she said.

  ‘Well, I wasn’t altogether surprised when Jack told me he’d invited Stanley down to Foxley Hall for that week-end. He had always felt bad about him after Richard had insisted that the tie between Wing and Jessup’s had to be broken. He didn’t disagree with the decision—I think he knew in his heart that Stanley was a rotten apple—but having been moved to rescue him when he was a boy, he had always felt some sort of responsibility for him. Of course I knew the whole story—how they came to meet, what Stanley’s background was—before we went out to Hong Kong for the first time. But it still came as a shock when I realized that under all his surface politeness and formal good manners, he obviously detested us.’

  ‘Detested you?’ Madden was brought up short by the words. ‘What do you mean? And how could you know that if he didn’t show it?’

  ‘Oh, my instincts are seldom wrong: especially when it comes to men.’ She caught his eye and smiled. ‘I could see that he hated all of us, the British community as a whole, including the senior staff at Jessup’s, even if he tried to keep it hidden. I’m afraid Jack was wrong about him. He believed that Stanley was grateful and even felt some affection for him. But I sensed he was cold, without what we think of as human feeling; cold and watchful. I don’t know what his early life did to him; perhaps the damage he suffered was irreparable. But I felt instinctively that he was a dangerous man and it worried me that Jack was so attached to him.’

  She paused, frowning.

  ‘Mind you, Stanley had much to be bitter about. We British have such an ingrained sense of what we like to think of as our superiority to other races that we sometimes forget the effect it has on them; and Stanley, being of mixed blood, had the added misfortune of not being accepted by either community—British or Chinese. Wing isn’t his real name, you know. His father was called Liang, and his mother gave him that name, partly out of defiance, Jack told me. Not that it did any good: the family turned their back on her. They refused to acknowledge any connection with Stanley. After Jack took him up he changed his name to Wing, which isn’t a Chinese name, properly speaking. Perhaps Stanley wanted to distance himself from his father’s people
. But he found no great welcome from the British, either, I’m afraid.’

  ‘“A touch of the tar brush” . . .’ Madden grimaced. ‘I heard someone use those words about him recently, quite casually, and without thinking. I imagine it’s the sort of thing he had to put up with.’

  ‘You can be sure of it.’ Mrs Castleton frowned. ‘Mind you, Richard wasn’t like that. He would never have spoken in that way. He took after his father. But he saw quite early on that Stanley was using the company for his own purposes, some of them illegal, and he was determined to get shot of him. It was a painful decision as far as Jack was concerned; but he knew Richard was right. Still, nothing would have made him turn his back on the boy he had saved from the streets, and when Stanley called that summer and asked if he could come and see us, Jack agreed at once. I know that Stanley ended up in prison finally. I’m just thankful it didn’t happen while Jack was alive.’

  In the silence that followed her words, the fluting warble of a thrush sounded from the shrubbery at the foot of the garden. Another of the species had been busy on the lawn for some time, stabbing at the grass with its beak in a ceaseless search for insect prey. Mrs Castleton watched it for a moment. Then she turned back to her visitor.

  ‘Forgive me. I’ve spent all this time telling you about my wicked past when what you want to know about is that week-end. But is it really likely that the police will re-open the investigation into the poor girl’s death? Richard seemed uncertain.’

  ‘And so am I,’ Madden said. ‘I haven’t come across anything yet that would justify it. As he may have told you, I’m only doing this for a friend, a man I worked under at the Yard years ago, and I know from experience that once you start probing into people’s lives and their behaviour, which is what happens in a police investigation, all sorts of odd, and sometimes embarrassing, things come to light which have nothing to do with the inquiry you’re making.’

  ‘Dear me. That does sound ominous.’

  ‘I hope it won’t be that bad.’ Madden smiled. ‘But from what I’ve been told it seems that even before Miss Blake’s murder, that week-end wasn’t entirely without incident. There was something in the air . . .’

  ‘You’re alluding to what happened at dinner the night before: that extraordinary performance of hers.’ Mrs Castleton shook her head. ‘I’d never seen anything like it. And the dress she was wearing—it would have turned heads in a Soho dive. We were all spellbound when she appeared downstairs; and from that point on, rather like grand opera, things only got worse.’

  ‘According to Sir Richard, she seemed to make a point of tormenting Rex Garner. Was that your impression?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ Mrs Castleton took a moment to think before responding to the question. ‘Mind you, she was sitting across the table from him, so in a sense he was her natural audience for all the byplay that was going on with the pendant. I felt she was quite aware that the rest of us were watching her, too, and rather enjoying the effect she was having on the party. Stanley, for one, was positively glaring.’

  ‘The pendant—it was very much part of her act, was it?’

  ‘It was quite central to it, I would say. She kept playing with it, swinging it from side to side like a pendulum. I couldn’t think what she was up to.’

  ‘Sir Richard said the effect was hypnotic: on Garner, at least.’

  ‘Did he?’ She smiled bleakly. ‘I would have said he looked more dazed. He had his wife sitting almost beside him. I think that upset him more than anything. He kept glancing at her as if to reassure her; or at least suggest that he didn’t know why Miss Blake was behaving in that way.’

  ‘I asked Sir Richard if there had been anything between them in the past. He said that Garner had sworn to him that there wasn’t; though he admitted to knowing the girl, or at least having met her.’

  ‘So I gathered. Richard told me later that they knew each other. If I’d known I would never have invited the two of them down to Kent at the same time. But Miss Blake was a complete stranger to me. I heard her name for the first time when Jack told me that Stanley had asked him if he could bring someone with him.’

  ‘I have another question, though I don’t know whether you can answer it.’ Madden hesitated. ‘Did Miss Blake know that Rex Garner would be there that week-end?’

  Taken aback, she hesitated before replying. ‘You’re wondering whether she planned that scene with him.’

  ‘That, and whether Wing might have put her up to it. He seemed to have some kind of hold over her. That’s according to the woman she shared a flat with.’

  ‘What a disagreeable thought.’ Mrs Castleton brooded on the notion. ‘Well, I can’t answer your first question except to say that the invitation to Stanley Wing was extended before I decided to invite the Garners, so neither he nor Miss Blake could have known that Rex would be there at that point. However, Stanley and Rex had been acquainted for a number of years, and if they had run into each other in London, which I believe they did, it’s quite possible that Rex might have mentioned he would be in Kent on those dates.’

  ‘It could have been after that that Wing got in touch with Sir Jack again.’ He saw that his meaning had escaped her. ‘Sir Richard told me that Wing rang his father a second time only a week before he was due to come down to ask if he could bring Miss Blake with him.’

  ‘I’d forgotten that.’ She frowned. ‘But you’re right. Jack was captivated by the idea. He told me he’d never associated Stanley with a girlfriend and couldn’t wait to see who he would bring with him. In the event, Miss Blake, when she appeared, was quite a shock. She was a very pretty girl, and Jack simply couldn’t get his mind around the fact that it was Stanley of all people who had brought her down.’

  She paused.

  ‘But as for Wing being perhaps behind that display she put on during dinner, I think you’re mistaken. After everyone had gone to bed I went to check on something upstairs, and when I walked past Miss Blake’s room I heard the two of them arguing—she and Wing. Only they weren’t quarrelling exactly: it was more a case of Stanley reading her the riot act. I didn’t pause to eavesdrop, but I heard enough to convince me that he was simply furious with her over the way she had behaved. That in itself was unusual; he so seldom showed emotion of any kind. But he was seething, fairly hissing with rage. “What is this game you’re playing?” I heard him say. A few minutes later, when I came back, I heard her laughing. “Don’t worry. They’re in a safe place,” she said. Then he muttered something which I didn’t catch. But he sounded furious.’

  She sighed then.

  ‘It was a terrible shock for all of us when we heard what had happened to Miss Blake the next day; but particularly for darling Jack. He had a very traditional view of his role as host. That one of his guests—even if it was someone he barely knew—should come to such an awful end was a dreadful shock. As it was, he hadn’t been well for some time—he had a degenerative heart condition—and the blow seemed to affect his health. He never really recovered after that, and as you probably know, he died the following year.’

  ‘Then I can only say how sorry I am to have brought it all back.’ Seeing the sadness in her eyes, Madden regretted the inadequacy of his apology. ‘I should have realized.’

  ‘You’re not to think that.’ She spoke firmly. ‘Both Richard and I want this business cleared up. If there’s anything more you need to ask me, please don’t hesitate.’

  ‘Then I’ve only one other question, but it’s a delicate one.’

  ‘Be brave, Mr Madden.’ Her tone was teasing.

  ‘It has to do with the Garners. How would you characterize their marriage?’

  ‘Oh, dear!’ The smile that had come to her lips vanished in an instant. ‘Must I? Can it really have anything to do with Miss Blake’s death?’

  ‘It’s possible.’ Madden had to consider his reply. ‘But only just. I’ll admit I’m clutching at
straws here. I gather she was a rich woman.’

  ‘Yes, she came from a wealthy Scottish family. She was an only child.’

  ‘And that Garner very likely married her for her money.’

  ‘That was generally thought to be the case. There seemed no other reason for it. Rex is good looking, and a lot of women find him attractive. Personally, I’ve never cared for him, but Margaret was immensely flattered by his attentions. They made an odd-looking couple: the handsome pheasant cock and his dowdy hen. We could see the way things were going, Jack and I, but we were powerless to prevent it. Rex had her under his thumb from the start, and I know that as time went by she suffered more and more from the way he behaved.’

  ‘Sir Richard told me how she died. Is it possible she took her own life?’

  ‘Not according to the coroner.’ Mrs Castleton shrugged. ‘He ruled it a case of accidental death. I had my doubts, however; and so did others. Margaret was in the depths of depression. She seemed unable to face the prospect of what would certainly have been a squalid divorce case. I wasn’t alone among her friends, though, in wishing she had grasped the nettle, if only to deprive Rex of what he eventually acquired.’