Next of Kin

by John Boyne

  ‘One last question,’ she said. ‘Will you be testifying at the trial?’

  ‘I believe I’ll be called as a witness, yes.’

  ‘A prosecution witness?’

  He hesitated before giving her a gentle nod. ‘It doesn’t really matter who calls me,’ he said then. ‘I don’t really have an awful lot to say about it. I simply wasn’t with him long enough.’

  ‘No, but you could testify to the fact that he was so inebriated, yes? Perhaps they will take that into account when it comes to sentencing.’

  Montignac noticed that she had already decided the verdict would be guilty. If even the poor boy’s mother didn’t believe him, what chance did he have? He felt almost sorry for him.

  ‘I’ll testify as to what I saw,’ he said. ‘And what the judge does with that information … well you must know only too well from your own husband.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But if they ask you about his character, Mr Montignac? You’ll be able to say good things about him, won’t you?’

  ‘I’m afraid that will be rather difficult for me. For one thing, we didn’t really know each other long enough for me to form an opinion about him. And for another, I can hardly stand there and have my cousin hear me say nice things about the man accused of murdering her fiancé.’

  ‘But you did know Gareth,’ she insisted. ‘You liked him. You employed him.’

  ‘Of course, but—’

  Jane leaned forwards, her eyes searching his face for some connection with her. ‘You’re a successful young man, Mr Montignac. And your name is a well-respected one. If the court heard you say that you didn’t believe Gareth was capable of such a crime—’

  ‘Mrs Bentley—’

  ‘If you told them that you had heard that Raymond Davis had enemies, for example, then maybe—’

  ‘But he didn’t have any enemies,’ insisted Montignac.

  ‘How do you know that?’ she pleaded and then, aware that she was starting to shout, she lowered her voice and spoke in a more confidential tone. ‘You have to help him, Mr Montignac,’ she said, reaching forwards and taking his hand in both of hers. Her skin was terribly soft to the touch but he could feel the tension in her grip, her unrelenting horror at what was happening to her life. ‘You have to help him. If you do, if you could do something to stop all this … you understand there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to help my son, don’t you? There’s nothing you could ask of me—’

  Montignac pulled his hand away and stood up, turning his back on her and looking out the window. He bit his lip, wishing he could just disappear into another life, another world, anywhere that didn’t involve any of this. He’d never seen someone as desperate for help and yet there was nothing he could do.

  ‘So you won’t testify on his behalf?’ asked Jane Bentley finally, her voice adopting a more robotic tone of resignation now.

  ‘I will say what I witnessed and I’ll answer any questions that are put to me,’ he insisted. ‘But other than that I can’t help you.’

  Jane nodded and stood up. He turned around and watched as she walked away and then, to his annoyance, she stopped for a moment and turned back to look at him.

  ‘I was looking at your paintings earlier,’ she said. ‘The paintings in the gallery, I mean. While I was waiting for you.’

  ‘Yes?’ said Montignac. ‘Did one of them interest you?’

  ‘None of them did,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I don’t mean to be rude but I don’t think I’ve ever seen worse in my life. Is it supposed to be some sort of joke?’

  She stared at him for a moment but then, aware that he couldn’t find an answer, she turned and walked away slowly.

  He sat there musing over her visit for some time. Remorse was not an emotion that Montignac was familiar with, and he examined his conscience to find out whether it would visit him now. He decided not. He’d been dealt a difficult hand twenty years before when his parents had been killed. He, like his father, had had his entire fortune and inheritance stolen away from him by his cousin’s family. But he had taken control of his life and worked to win it back. He was responsible for Raymond’s death, that was true, but Stella was no innocent either. She had killed someone close to him, even if she’d never acknowledged it as such. Gareth Bentley was responsible for his own actions; as Lord Keaton had pointed out about Raymond, he was little more than a casualty of war.

  He felt nervous doing so but picked up the phone and dialled the Westminster number, waiting for a long time before it was finally answered.

  ‘Hello?’ said a voice on the other end in a rushed tone, as if he was just about to run out the door.

  ‘It’s Montignac.’

  A slight hesitation. ‘Hello, Montignac,’ said Lord Keaton, not entirely pleased to hear from him. ‘We don’t have any further business to conduct yet, do we?’

  ‘I’ve just had a visit from Jane Bentley.’

  ‘Roderick’s wife.’

  ‘Yes. Naturally she’s very concerned about what’s going to happen to her son.’

  ‘Well I would imagine she would be,’ said Keaton with a gentle laugh. ‘Get all weepy on your shoulder, did she?’

  ‘No,’ he said, offended for her. ‘She’s a very determined woman actually. I quite liked her.’

  ‘Well don’t like her too much. We can’t afford for anything to go wrong at this stage. It’s good that she came to see you, though. She’s obviously willing to go down any route to get her boy off. Did she offer to bribe you to change your story?’

  ‘No,’ he said, unwilling to spell out exactly what had been on offer. ‘Would you have expected her to?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought it impossible. They’re a fairly wealthy family.’

  Montignac considered it but dismissed the idea as unreasonable. ‘I couldn’t do it anyway,’ he said. ‘The only way the case holds up is if I stick to the story. Otherwise I’d look guilty as hell.’

  ‘That’s true. Well don’t worry about her. I’ll start working on her husband from this side and she’ll start from the other side and between us we’ll get to him.’

  ‘But where are we on this anyway?’ he asked, glancing at the calendar on his desk. ‘It’s almost November. I told you at the start that I only had until Christmas before I’d need the money.’

  ‘Relax, my boy, it’s all in hand.’

  ‘It seems to me a lot to hope that you can resolve matters by then. In eight weeks? What are the chances of an advance payment anyway? Say fifty per cent?’

  ‘Twenty thousand pounds?’ asked Keaton sharply. ‘Are you joking?’

  ‘You know as well as I do what Delfy is capable of.’

  ‘I know what you’re capable of too.’

  ‘Not against him. He has too many people on his side. I wouldn’t survive it.’

  Keaton sighed. ‘My dear boy, you have to start trusting me. It’s not going to come to that, I guarantee it. The trial begins in a couple of weeks and I can’t see it lasting too long. Two weeks perhaps at the most, which brings us to the end of November. If I can’t persuade Roderick in that time then—’

  ‘Is he starting to crack?’

  ‘Actually, you caught me just as I’m on my way to a rather important meeting. I need to take stock of exactly how staunchly he stands behind the king. I’ll know better then. I intend to start working on him immediately, though.’

  Montignac nodded. ‘So you won’t give me the advance,’ he said finally.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t. You’ll receive your money when the king renounces the throne. But it wouldn’t matter anyway. I know Nicholas Delfy of old and if he says he wants the rest of his money by Christmas, well then, that’s exactly when he wants it by. And he’s not going to accept anything less than the full amount. He’s been fairly generous with you so far anyway. He must like you. But you shouldn’t test his patience any further.’

  ‘All right,’ said Montignac irritably. ‘Well keep in touch with me, will you? I need to know what’s going on.�
�

  ‘I’ll let you know, don’t worry,’ he said, hanging up the phone.

  Montignac replaced the receiver in the cradle and sat there nervously staring at it for a moment, racking his brain for a way to raise the money should the plan not come to fruition. There was always one other option but he wasn’t sure he wanted to take that. Not yet anyway. The phone rang again a moment later and he picked it up anxiously.

  ‘What?’ he said. ‘Did you forget something?’

  ‘Owen?’ said a voice on the other end of the phone. ‘Is that you?’

  ‘Margaret,’ he replied with a sigh, running his hand before his tired eyes. ‘Hello.’

  ‘I can’t believe I’ve got you at last. You’re not very good at returning phone calls, are you?’

  ‘I’m sorry about that. I’ve been very busy.’

  ‘Well there’s been a lot happening here too. What are you doing this weekend?’

  ‘Why?’

  She sighed and spoke to him as if he was a child once again. ‘Do you have any plans for this weekend, Owen?’

  ‘Nothing special,’ he said.

  ‘Right. Well Stella has asked me to ask you to come down on Saturday. She wants to see you.’

  ‘This Saturday?’ he asked, regretting not having said that he was busy.

  ‘Yes, of course, this Saturday.’

  ‘How is she doing anyway?’ he asked, ignoring the question.

  ‘She has her ups and downs. But she’s talking about doing some crazy things. Things that she’ll regret.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘She’ll tell you herself, Owen. Will you just come down and see her? Perhaps you can make her see the foolishness of her plan.’

  He nodded and glanced at his diary which was empty for the weekend, as he preferred it.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll be on the lunchtime train.’

  ‘Good. We’ll see you then.’

  She rang off without a goodbye and Montignac put the phone down irritably. He found himself wishing that it was New Year’s Day, that all this business was either behind him or he’d faced the consequences of his actions. Either way, it was getting close to the time when he wanted the whole business to draw to a close.

  10

  THE ATMOSPHERE IN THE room was electric when Lord Keaton entered it.

  ‘I won’t walk away from my duties just because of a family tragedy,’ Roderick Bentley was saying in a forceful voice. ‘That’s just not the man that I am. I couldn’t do it.’

  ‘Keaton, come in,’ said the Lord Chancellor, Lord Hailsham, as he stepped inside.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ said Keaton, sitting down and glancing around at the other men’s faces anxiously. ‘I was just leaving my office when I got a call and I couldn’t get the bugger off the phone.’

  ‘Well you’re here now and that’s what matters,’ said Hailsham. ‘We haven’t got started anyway. I was just telling Roderick here that in light of his…’ He searched for the appropriate and most inoffensive words. ‘Present difficulties, that if he wanted to recuse himself from this advisory committee that would be entirely understandable.’

  Keaton frowned and looked around at their faces. Sitting directly to the right of the Lord Chancellor, like Peter on Christ’s right hand, sat Walter Monckton, the king’s most important adviser and his representative in the room. To his left sat Lord Altringham and beside him Sir Roderick Bentley.

  ‘And I told him,’ said Roderick, turning to look at Keaton, ‘that there were no circumstances, no circumstances at all, in which I would even consider such a thing. That this is an extremely important group, considering the future of our country, and I won’t compromise it in any way by stepping away from it.’

  ‘Quite right too,’ said Keaton nervously. ‘And if I may say so, Hailsham, it’s not fair to ask him to. You’re suggesting that Roderick won’t be able to give this matter its due consideration and I think we all know him better than that. It’s something of an insult in fact.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant at all,’ said Hailsham, sounding a trifle offended. ‘I was only trying to be helpful, actually. I didn’t think he’d want to have to worry about this as well as everything else.’

  ‘Well he’s made his decision,’ said Keaton gruffly, who couldn’t afford to lose him now. ‘So let’s get on with things.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Roderick, looking at him gratefully, a little surprised by his show of support. In all the discussions they’d had so far it had become clear that Keaton and Roderick were the two most extreme representatives of both sides of the case. It comforted him, therefore, that the other man set so much store by his own integrity.

  ‘Well I do have something important to tell you,’ said Hailsham in a gruff tone, as if he was being blamed for something when he was only trying to be kind. ‘Now that you’re all here. I went to Downing Street yesterday evening to meet with the prime minister. Slipped in by the cabinet office so that I wouldn’t be seen by the press—’

  ‘They’re on to the story now anyway,’ said Lord Altringham. ‘You’ve seen the editorials, I presume?’

  ‘I’ve seen them,’ said Roderick. ‘Lot of rot, if you ask me. Who do these fellows think they are anyway?’

  ‘I imagine they think they have as much right to discuss the future of their king as a group of judges sitting around a stuffy room in Westminster,’ said Walter Monckton with a shrug. Hailsham threw him an irritated glare.

  ‘Well they should keep their noses out of it,’ said Hailsham firmly. ‘It’s too much, it really is. Anyway, I went to see Baldwin and he knew we were meeting this morning and wanted me to make a few things clear to you all.’

  ‘Oh let’s not waste time on that,’ snapped Monckton irritably. ‘We all know that he’s opposed to the king. Well no one’s stopping him from resigning if he feels so strongly about it.’

  ‘That’s what he wanted me to let you know,’ said Hailsham with a sigh. ‘The PM has no intention of stepping down over this matter and if he did, you’d find that the country would end up in a state of anarchy overnight.’

  The other men frowned and leaned forwards as the Lord Chancellor lowered his voice and spoke in a more conspiratorial tone.

  ‘He held a meeting the night before last,’ he confided in them. ‘Baldwin invited Attlee to Downing Street in his role as leader of the opposition. And Sinclair too, to represent the Liberals. And also Winston Churchill.’

  ‘Churchill?’ roared Keaton in exasperation. ‘What in blazes was he doing there? Who does he represent?’

  ‘Mr Churchill’s a fine man,’ said Monckton quickly.

  ‘Mr Churchill is the king’s man,’ pointed out Keaton. ‘Everyone knows that. He’s a sycophantic has-been who loves clinging on to the shirt tails of power in the deluded hope that he may get some himself one day.’

  ‘It hardly matters what you think of him personally,’ said Hailsham irritably. ‘The point is that they were all there. And both Attlee and Sinclair agreed that should the government have to resign over the matter, then neither of them would form an alternative government in its place. The whole system, you see, would come crashing down.’

  ‘Ha!’ said Keaton. ‘Don’t be so naive. Churchill would be over to the palace before the deed was done looking to install himself as PM with his friend Beaverbrook pulling the strings.’

  ‘No,’ said Hailsham. ‘Churchill stated clearly that he would not do that.’

  ‘I wouldn’t trust that man as far as I could throw him,’ muttered Keaton. ‘And you’ve all seen him. That would be a short throw. Now listen. Before we get on to who’s resigning and who’s forming governments and who isn’t, can’t you let us know whether any of these things that we’re reading about are true or not? The papers may write a lot of rot, as Roderick suggests, but it can’t all be rot, can it? Walter, where exactly does the king stand right now?’

  Monckton let out a long sigh and nodded, accepting their right to know. ‘As Lo
rd Hailsham would no doubt tell you,’ he began, ‘the king and Mrs Simpson remain very much an item.’

  ‘Disgrace,’ mumbled Altringham.

  ‘Their relationship, if anything, is stronger than ever,’ he continued, ignoring him. ‘Particularly now that she’s divorced her first husband.’

  ‘Second husband,’ said Keaton. ‘Ernest Simpson was her second husband. She does get through them, doesn’t she? Quite the merry widow.’

  ‘Trading up all the time,’ said Altringham.

  ‘Second husband, you’re quite correct,’ said Monckton, ignoring the jibes. ‘The king and Mr Baldwin have discussed the matter and his majesty came up with a proposal concerning a possible resolution to the country’s concerns. And that, gentlemen, is what we are here to discuss today.’

  The judges sat forwards eagerly. They, like most of the citizens of the island, had become fascinated with the developments in the matter of Edward and Mrs Simpson but it was so difficult at times to get any fresh news. Here, direct from the king’s own plenipotentiary, was the latest development.

  ‘The king proposes that he and Mrs Simpson marry but that their marriage be a morganatic one—’

  ‘A what?’ said Altringham, his face frowning at the unfamiliar word.

  ‘A morganatic marriage,’ repeated Monckton. ‘Whereby the issue of the marriage would not be in line for the throne.’

  ‘Good God,’ said Keaton. ‘She’s not pregnant, is she?’

  ‘No she’s not,’ said Monckton quickly and angrily. ‘And let us remember that we are discussing the king here and that a certain level of decorum needs to be maintained. As I was saying, the issue, should there be any,’ he added loudly, ‘would not be in line for the throne. After the king’s death, the throne would pass to the Duke of York or, should he predecease him, to the Princess Elizabeth.’

  ‘He can’t be serious,’ said Altringham.

  ‘He’s perfectly serious,’ said Monckton, sitting back. ‘And it seems a perfectly fair proposal if you ask me.’

  ‘It would satisfy both sides of the debate,’ said Roderick, nodding his head. ‘And Mrs Simpson. What title would she expect?’