“What’s that exactly?” Manette enquired. “Someone pops down to London and asks for a second investigation into a matter already settled by the coroner so Scotland Yard takes up the case? Just like that? Please, Inspector. You can’t think I’m that stupid.”
McGhie said to Lynley, “What’s prompted this? It was a straightforward matter according to the coroner.”
“Dad’s throwing his weight,” Manette said to him. “God only knows how, but I reckon he knows someone who knows someone who’s willing to pull a few strings or make a donation to the widows and orphans. That’s how these things happen. My guess is he wants to see if Nick’s involved, no matter what the coroner said. God knows how Nick would have managed things, but with his history I daresay anything’s possible.” She looked at Lynley. “I’m right, am I not? You’re here to see if I can assist in putting the screws on my brother.”
“Not at all,” Lynley said. “It’s only a matter of getting a clear understanding of where everyone fits.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means that sometimes a death is placed too conveniently in time. A coroner wouldn’t be looking at that. There’d be no reason to if the circumstances are straightforward enough.”
“So that’s why you’re here? You’re determining the convenience, as you say, of my cousin’s drowning? And whom did Ian’s death convenience? Because I must tell you it didn’t convenience me. What about you, Freddie? Were you convenienced?”
McGhie said, “Manette, if Scotland Yard’s here— ”
“Oh bother,” she cut in. “If Scotland Yard’s here, my father probably handed over some cash. A new wing on their offices. Who the hell knows what else? You’ve been looking at the books, Freddie. You’ll find it if you look hard enough. There’ll be a payout that you can’t understand. Beyond the others you can’t understand.”
Lynley said to McGhie, “Are there irregularities with the books, then, in your father-in-law’s business?”
“I was joking,” Manette said, and then to McGhie, “Wasn’t I, Freddie?” in a tone whose meaning was don’t say a word.
What Freddie did say was, “Former.”
“What?”
“Former father-in-law.”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Current. Former. It doesn’t matter,” Manette said. “What matters is that Ian drowned, it was an accident, and if it wasn’t an accident, you need to be looking at who was convenienced by his death, which wasn’t me. That being the case, it seems to me, if I’m remembering this right, the big convenience is the one that fell into Kaveh Mehran’s lap.”
McGhie said to her, “What’s going on there?”
She said to him, “I haven’t told you. Kaveh’s now sole owner of the farm.”
“You’re joking.”
“Hardly. Ian left it to him. Or so he claims. I expect he’s telling the truth as it wouldn’t take a big effort to check out the paperwork.”
“Everything’s being looked into, Mrs. McGhie,” Lynley said.
“But you don’t think Kaveh killed Ian, do you?” Freddie McGhie asked.
“No one killed him at all,” Manette said. “His death might have been opportune for someone, but it was an accident, Freddie. That entire boathouse ought to be pulled down before it collapses of its own accord. I’m surprised Mother wasn’t the one to fall, smash her head, and drown. She’s in there more often than Ian anyway.”
McGhie said nothing, but his face altered, a subtle change in which his jaw lowered but his lips didn’t part. Something had struck him with his former wife’s words, something he was, perhaps, inclined to speak of if the prod was gentle enough.
Lynley said, “Mr. McGhie?”
McGhie’s hand was on the table, and his fingers curled till they made a light fist. He was watching Manette, but he was also deciding: what it would mean, Lynley reckoned, if he told what he knew.
There was always tremendous value in silence. It acted upon people in much the same way that time alone in a police interview room acted. Tension was the great equaliser among men. Most couldn’t handle it, especially when they themselves could so easily defuse the ticking bomb it comprised. Lynley waited. Manette’s gaze met her former husband’s eyes. She read there, apparently, what she didn’t want to know because she said, “We don’t know what anything means, Freddie.”
To which he replied, “True enough, old girl. But we can easily guess, can’t we?” And then without ceremony, he began to speak. She protested, but he made his position clear: If someone had set up the boathouse to hurt Ian Cresswell or, indeed, to hurt Manette’s own mother, then everything currently in the shadows had to come out.
The way Freddie McGhie saw it, Bernard Fairclough had been running through money for a number of years. Payments to various clinics to turn Nicholas around, the wealth put into the Ireleth Hall gardens, the purchase of Arnside House at a high point in the property market, the renovation of that building to make it suitably habitable for Nicholas Fairclough and his bride, the folly built to house Mignon, her subsequent operations to allow her finally to shed the weight she’d been piling on since childhood, the follow-up surgery for the excess skin she then carted round …
“Ian might have been writing the cheques, but he also would’ve been telling Bernard to stop, stop, stop,” was how McGhie put it. “Because some of this nonsense had been going on for years. There was no sense to it, as far as I can see. It was as if he couldn’t stop himself. Or he felt he had to for some reason. Had to lay out money, I mean.”
“For years?” Lynley clarified.
“Well, Nick’s been a problem for a very long time, and then there was— ”
“Freddie. That’s enough.” Manette’s voice was sharp.
Freddie said, “He’s got to know it all. I’m sorry, darling, but if Vivienne’s somehow at the bottom of this she’s got to be mentioned.”
“Vivienne Tully?” Lynley said.
“You know about her?”
“I’m learning.”
“D’you know where she is?” Manette asked. “Does Dad know?”
“Well, he has to, hasn’t he?” McGhie said to her reasonably. “Unless Ian was paying her every month without your father’s knowledge. But why in God’s name would he do that?”
“The obvious reason: because she knew about him, what he was hiding from Niamh and from everyone else. She held his feet to the fire. Blackmail, Freddie.”
“Come on, old girl, you don’t believe that. There’s only one good reason for payouts to Vivienne Tully, and we both know what it probably is.”
They’d almost forgotten he was in the room, Lynley realised, so intent were they upon believing whatever it was each of them wished to believe: about Ian Cresswell, about Vivienne Tully, about the money Cresswell had paid out left, right, and centre, either on behalf of Bernard Fairclough or without his knowledge.
Aside from everyone else taking handouts from Bernard Fairclough’s funds, Freddie McGhie told Lynley that Vivienne Tully— a long-ago employee, as Lynley already knew— had been receiving monthly sums for years, despite not having been employed by Fairclough Industries during that time period. This money wouldn’t have anything to do with profit sharing or a pension scheme, Freddie added.
“So the payout could mean any number of things,” he concluded. “A sexual harassment lawsuit Bernard was trying to avoid, an unlawful dismissal…” He glanced at his former wife as if for confirmation of this.
“Or Dad didn’t know,” was what she said. “You’ve said yourself: Ian might have been cooking the books all along.”