Kennedy smiled coldly at his client. "Your father's outside, Miles. I suggest we don't make him wait any longer than we need to."
Miles shrank into his seat. "I'm not going," he said. "He'll kill me."
"Your mother and Fergus are with him. I'm sure they'll both be very pleased to see you." He gestured towards the door. "Your father's most aggrieved by all of this, Miles, and he gets very angry when he's aggrieved, as you know. You wouldn't want your mother and brother to bear the brunt of his anger, would you?"
Miles looked terrified. "No," he said, lurching to his feet. "It was my idea. Mum and Fergus were just trying to help. I thought if we put the shares up as collateral, we could get out from under once and for all. So it's me he should blame, not them."
Blake watched the young man pull the remnants of his courage together and thought he was braver than she'd given him credit for. But what the hell sort of man was Adam Kingsley to inspire such fear in his twenty-six-year-old son?
*21*
WEDNESDAY, 29TH JUNE, THE NIGHTINGALE CLINIC, SALISBURY-5:00 P.M.
Dr. Protheroe stood in Jinx's open doorway, watching her. She was speaking on the telephone, body rigid with tension, fingers clenching the receiver, shoulders unnaturally stiff. Her father, he guessed, for he doubted anyone else could elicit so much nervous energy. He remembered another woman standing in just this way listening to a voice at the other end of the line. His wife, hearing her own death sentence. I'm so sorry, Mrs. Protheroe. How long? It's difficult to say. How long? Twelve months-eighteen, if we're lucky.
Jinx watched him while she spoke. "What's wrong?" she asked as she replaced the receiver.
He shook his head. "Nothing. I was thinking of something else. Bad news?"
"No, good," she said dispiritedly. "They've let Miles go."
"With or without charges?"
"Without." She climbed onto her bed and sat cross-legged in the middle of it. "Kennedy was able to prove he was somewhere else."
"You don't seem very happy about it."
"Adam was on his mobile. I could hear Betty crying in the background. I think the sword has finally snapped its thread."
"Are we talking about the sword of Damocles?"
She nodded. "Adam's had it hanging over their heads for years. The trouble is..." She lapsed into one of her silences.
"They were too stupid to realize it," he suggested.
She didn't say anything.
"So what was Miles really doing that night?"
She pressed her hands flat on the counterpane, then released them, apparently intrigued by the depressions they'd made. "Cocaine," she said suddenly. "In between gambling his nonexistent fortune away. He and Fergus are in hock up to their eyeballs." She was silent for a moment, stroking and pummeling the bed. "Adam paid off fifty thousand pounds on their gambling debts in March, and he said if they ever gambled again he'd throw them out and disinherit them. He's had them watched for the last four weeks."
Alan took up her favorite position against the dressing table. "Why?"
"Because Betty sold the last of her shares halfway through May and he guessed it was to cover their losses."
"So why didn't he make good his threat then?"
She smiled rather grimly. "I imagine he wanted to know who he'd be dealing with when the boys failed to pay up."
"They're over twenty-one," said Alan dispassionately. "He's not responsible for their debts."
"You're back in your ivory tower again," she said, two spots of angry color flaring in her cheeks. "Do you honestly believe anyone would bother to take Adam Kingsley's sons to the cleaners if they didn't think they'd get their money? You've seen what Miles is like. Now imagine what he and Fergus will have said about Adam and Franchise Holdings while high on cocaine. There'll be a video somewhere full of damaging allegations."
Alan folded his arms. "He can't have a worse press than he's had in the last couple of days, so what does it matter what your brothers might have said?"
"It would have mattered four weeks ago," she said through gritted teeth. "Four weeks ago he was planning a society wedding and he couldn't afford any scandal, not if his precious Jinx was to have her day. Miles was right. It is my fault. If I'd had the sense to tell them I didn't want to go through with the bloody thing, well..." She fell silent again.
He watched her for a moment. "As a matter of interest, why didn't he kick them out at twenty-one and tell them to fend for themselves?"
She didn't answer immediately. "Because they'd have done this anyway," she said at last. "If he'd turned them loose, he'd still be expected to pay their debts. I think he hoped that by keeping them close he could check their worst excesses." She bent her head so that he couldn't see her expression. "They've always wanted to throw his money in his face the way I do, but get-rich-quick schemes were all they could think of."
Was that her subtle revenge, he wondered, pissing publicly on what her father valued most, his self-made wealth?
"He's making good his threat now," she went on flatly. "He's going to turn them off without a penny and divorce Betty."
"Do you blame him?"
"No."
"What will happen to them?"
"I don't know. I doubt he can leave Betty penniless because the courts won't allow it"-she pressed her forehead into her clasped hands-"but I'm not sure about Miles and Fergus. He says he doesn't care anymore."
She was more upset than he would have expected. If she had any love for her stepmother and her two brothers, she had always hid it well. "There is a bright side," he said after a moment. "If your father's had them watched for the last four weeks, then presumably one thing you can be sure of is that neither of them is guilty of the murder of Leo and Meg, or for that matter responsible for the attack on me."
"I never thought they were," she muttered at the bed.
"Didn't you?" he said, injecting surprise into his voice. "They've always struck me as likely candidates. They're self-centered, not overly bright, and very used to getting their own way, usually through you or their mother. I can imagine both seeing murder as a solution to a problem."
"It never occurred to me," she said stubbornly.
Of course it didn't, because you've always known who the murderer is. "I wish you'd tell me why you don't trust me," he said in a carefully impassive voice. "What have I ever said or done to make you feel you can't?"
She rested her chin on her hand and regarded him just as impassively. "How do you know it wasn't me who attacked you?"
He took the sudden switch in his stride. "It didn't look like you."
"Matthew says it was dark, the person was dressed in black, and the only description you could give was five feet ten and medium build."
"How does Matthew know what I said?" asked Alan.
"Everyone knows."
"Veronica Gordon," he murmured. "One of these days that woman's going to talk herself out of a job." He watched her curiously for a moment. "Look, there are plenty of compelling reasons why it couldn't have been you. You're too weak to wield a sledgehammer. You've no reason to want to attack me. You didn't know when I was coming back, and I'd ordered half-hourly checks to be made on you before I left. If you'd been out of your room, Amy or Veronica would have noticed."
"Except that I was out of my room."
He made no attempt to pretend surprise.
"After Sister Gordon did her nine o'clock rounds," she went on, "Amy took over. I was in bed with my light out the first time she came. The second time, I was in the bathroom in darkness, and she didn't bother to check whether the pillow I'd stuffed down in the bed was me or not. After that, I got dressed and went outside. I was wearing black jeans and a black sweater. I'm five feet ten, and before the crash I weighed ten stone, so my clothes can easily take some padding."