CHAPTER TEN

Sentimental appeals proved even less effective than recriminatory arguments. I tried both over the next couple of weeks without making the slightest impact on Adrian’s determination to push through acceptance of the Bushranger bid. From his point of view, it solved our problems at a stroke, never mind that the problems were of his creation and the solution an humiliating end to a proud piece of history. Simon and Jennifer went along with him, Simon because his share of the sale price would get Joan off his back and Jennifer because she could see no other way out of deficit. As for Bella, when I eventually succeeded in speaking to her, it became apparent that she regarded the dissolution of Timariot & Small as tantamount to a mercy killing. “Hugh should have negotiated something like this years ago. Then he might not have worked himself into an early grave.” My hope that Sir Keith might consider injecting capital into the company to make it independently viable was abandoned before I’d even expressed it.

That left Uncle Larry and me in a decisive minority. Adrian dismissed us as unrealistic romantics and I suppose he had a point. Uncle Larry’s reluctance to see the family firm taken over could be seen as no more than an old man’s refusal to live in the present. While the irony of my position was that I’d become more committed to Timariot & Small-past and future-than my brothers or sister, despite remaining aloof from it far longer than any of them. Perhaps that was the point. Perhaps I understood what we’d lose by selling out just because I’d spent twelve years away from it. And perhaps they failed to because they hadn’t. Familiarity had bred contempt. Later, I knew, they’d regret it. But their regrets would be futile. We could only destroy what our forefathers had created once. It was an irreversible act. But it was an act they were clearly set on carrying out.

Busy chasing false hopes and faint chances of staving off the Bushranger takeover, I gave little thought to my Benefit of the Doubt interview besides savouring the prospect of any small embarrassment it might cause Bella. Seymour had told me the programme would go out sometime in mid-June and had promised to send me a video of it in case I didn’t catch the broadcast. I’d intended to check Radio Times to see when it was coming up, but somehow never got round to doing so. If I had done, I’d have known a week in advance that it was scheduled for transmission at eight thirty on Wednesday the sixteenth of June. In the event, my first inkling of that was when I returned home from work two nights before to find a parcel small enough to fit through the letter-box lying in wait for me on the doormat. It was the promised video. I played it straightaway. And long before the end I realized just how big a fool I’d been.

Seymour wasn’t just a handsome front man. He was clever as well. If I hadn’t known that before, I found it out now. The doubt he sowed in the viewer’s mind about Naylor’s guilt wasn’t based on clinching facts or convincing arguments. It relied instead on impressions and implications. The programme started out as a straight-forward summary of the case from the discovery of the murders to Naylor’s conviction. Then Seymour turned his attention to Naylor’s defence. “Let’s see if this stands up,” he coolly said. “Let’s suspend disbelief for the time it takes to subject Shaun Naylor’s version of events to some obvious tests. We’ll begin where he says it began, at the Harp Inn, Old Radnor.” The camera panned across the pub’s façade, then moved to the man who’d testified at the trial that he’d seen Naylor there with a good-looking woman on the evening of 17 July 1990. He seemed more confident now than before that it was Louise Paxton. “I reckon it was, yes. They were getting on well together. Laughing and joking.” If he was right, Seymour pointed out, they could only just have met. At the very least, this indicated a willingness for flirtation on Lady Paxton’s part. Was that credible? Did that fit her character?

Suddenly, Sophie Marsden was on screen, relaxing in the horse-brassed black-beamed interior of her Shropshire home. She looked as much at ease as Seymour had made me feel, perhaps more so. And she was talking freely about the friend she’d known. “Louise wasn’t really the saintly wife and mother she’d been portrayed as. She was a lot of fun. She lived life to the full. Sometimes she flirted with strangers. And sometimes it may have gone beyond flirting. I know of at least one occasion when it certainly did. She told me about it. She wasn’t boasting. It was… the kind of secret we shared.”

Before I could absorb the full ramifications of what Sophie had said, Seymour was in the picture, striding up the track from Kington to Hergest Ridge. “So, according to Lady Paxton’s best friend, Shaun Naylor’s account of how they met is feasible. What’s more, we know she met at least one other man that evening under similar circumstances. Up here, on Offa’s Dyke, where solitary male walkers are often to be found.”

Then my face was staring out of the screen at me, the sitting-room at Greenhayes visible in the background, including part of the very television set I was watching. And I was saying what Seymour wanted to hear. “Lady Paxton was friendly and approachable. She seemed to want to talk. Not just about the weather. About something else. But she was reluctant to talk at the same time. As if… Well, I’ve never really been able to describe her state of mind, even to myself. It was so difficult to assess. When she offered me a lift, I thought it was just a kindly gesture. Now I’m not so sure. I think she must have wanted me-wanted somebody-to stay with her.” Then we were back with Seymour on Hergest Ridge. Leaving me to shout at his video-recorded face: “Hold on. What about the rest? That’s not all I said, you devious bastard.” Just how devious he’d been sunk in only when I replayed the interview several times. Then, at last, I was able to recollect exactly what I’d gone on to say. “I think she must have wanted me-wanted somebody-to stay with her. To give her some disinterested advice about a problem she was trying to solve. To listen while she talked whatever it was out of her system.” What I’d recounted couldn’t possibly be regarded as a sexual proposition. But Seymour’s edited version of it could be. “I think she must have wanted me-wanted somebody-to stay with her.” The phrase echoed in my mind as Seymour quoted it to camera. “Failing to find that somebody in Mr. Timariot, did Lady Paxton strike luckier half an hour later at the Harp Inn? The evidence available to us suggests she may have done.”

The film cut to the frontage of Whistler’s Cot. Seymour strode into the picture. “The prosecution argued at the trial that Lady Paxton would hardly have risked using somebody else’s house for illicit sex. But her relationship with the owner was never explored. We know she was in effect his patron. He owed her a good deal. Might he have been willing to repay that debt by making his cottage available for her use? Or might she have known he wasn’t going to be there until later that night? With both of them now dead, we cannot hope to find out. But Lady Paxton’s friend, Mrs. Marsden, did say this.”

Sophie returned to the screen. “Louise and Oscar got on well together. There was a spark between them. An understanding. That’s why she appreciated his paintings better than most. You’d think they had nothing in common to look at them. In fact, there was an intuitive bond between them. Platonic, but genuine.”

Then we were back with Seymour. “If the jury had heard that, they might not have been so sure Shaun Naylor was lying about being brought here by Lady Paxton. But they’d still have come up against a substantial objection to his version of events. If he didn’t murder Oscar Bantock and Lady Paxton, who did? And why? Until three months ago, there seemed no other conceivable suspect or motive. Then this book”-he brandished a copy of Fakes and Ale-“was published. And suddenly the situation became rather more complicated.”