‘Not on your father’s murder, perhaps … though I’m sure detailed police work could find some. But on the rape of Anita Garner, there’s very definite proof.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Have you heard of DNA testing?’
‘Of course I have.’
‘Well, Roland, you have left your mark in an indelible way. When you raped Anita Garner, you got her pregnant. Yes, you didn’t know you had a son, did you?’ It was Francis’s red hair and prominent underbite, the physical likeness he bore to his father, plain to see in the photograph in Mary White’s flat, that had explained things for Jude.
‘You’re lying!’
‘No, I’m not. Your son is in a seminary in Birmingham, training to be a Catholic priest. So, he’s another inconvenience, but not one you can get out of your life very easily. And your mother can’t do it either.’
‘I could kill him,’ said Roland Lasalle with icy precision. ‘It wouldn’t be the first time.’
Jude saw it all. ‘You killed Harry, didn’t you? You killed your father. Your mother knew what you’d done. So, she once again tried to protect you by confessing to the murder.’
‘She did it,’ said Roland coldly. ‘She knew what had happened between me and Anita.’
‘The rape?’
‘It wouldn’t have been rape if the bloody girl had cooperated. I was only after a bit of fun. But then she resisted and that made me mad. Just as it would have made any other red-blooded man mad. So, I had to teach Anita Garner a lesson. It was her own bloody fault!’
‘Her own fault, just for being a woman?’
‘No. Oh, you wouldn’t understand.’
‘Wouldn’t I?’ asked Jude. ‘Your father found out what you’d done, didn’t he?’
‘It was only because the bloody girl screamed. He heard her when he was doing his rounds that night. He was on his way up to investigate when the girl rushed past him on the stairs. He chased after to try and stop her. I saw the handbag and hid it, so nobody would know Anita had been there.
‘I met my mother on the landing. She worked out what had happened. If there was ever any investigation, she said we should put the blame on my father.’
‘But why?’
‘Because I had my whole future ahead of me and he was just a washed-up has-been. Anyway, there never was any investigation, not into my having sex with the girl.’
‘You raping the girl, you mean,’ said Jude implacably.
Roland Lasalle shrugged. ‘Whatever.’
‘But there was intensive investigation into her disappearance, wasn’t there?’
‘So I heard. I was spending most of my time in London by then. I wasn’t involved.’
‘But your father was. He had to put up with all the rumours … about him having had an affair with Anita Garner, about him having murdered her. He was the one who suffered.’
‘It blew over,’ said Roland dismissively.
‘It took a long time to blow over.’
‘But it was the right thing to do. Mummy worked it out. She said that allegations like that could have ruined my career. It was better that people suspected Daddy than me.’ He spoke like a petulant child.
‘But didn’t you feel any guilt?’
‘Guilt? Why should I feel guilt? Because some girl made a fuss about me wanting to have sex with her?’
Jude looked at Roland Lasalle in disbelief. How could anyone be so obtuse, so unaware of the consequences of his actions? Though maybe, if someone had been brought up by a besotted mother, who let him do anything he wanted, who told him everything he did was right … Yes, it figured.
She spoke, guided by intuition but knowing she was right. ‘You thought it was all over, didn’t you? But then, the accidental discovery of the handbag you’d hidden and probably forgotten about … that brought all the rumours back to life again. And put the pressure back on your father. And this time he wasn’t so keen to help you out, to protect you, was he?
‘You’d aced him out of this development project, hadn’t you? The conversion of Footscrow House to holiday flatlets. You didn’t want Lasalle Build and Design involved here, did you? And suddenly your father thought, “Then why should I play ball? Why should I relive all those allegations about me and Anita Garner? If I’m questioned again, why don’t I tell the police that my disloyal son was the one who raped the girl?”
‘So, when he actually told you what he’d decided, you knew you had to keep him quiet.’ There was a silence. ‘Am I right, Roland?’
‘If you were right,’ he responded coolly, ‘you’d have a hell of a job proving it.’
‘I’ve told you. The proof exists … currently living in a seminary in Birmingham.’
Various emotions were reflected in Roland Lasalle’s face. Then fury took over. ‘So, what if I did kill my father?’ he demanded, bullying. ‘How do you feel, being alone in a room with a murderer? Safe? Huh?’
He leapt at her, his hands suddenly constricting the soft flesh of her neck, his body clamped to hers in a parody of an embrace.
There was not enough air in her lungs for a scream but – thank God – some sound must have escaped through her gasping mouth. Thank God, because Pete, waiting on the landing, rushed back into the room and, with a couple of sharp punches, flattened Roland Lasalle to the floor.
He hadn’t been a very good criminal. Once the police started investigating Veronica Lasalle’s confession, they found all kinds of anomalies. And her account of having let herself into Fethering Yacht Club to sabotage Harry’s Dream was quickly disproved by a check on the footage of the CCTV cameras that covered the hardstanding in front of the club.
While the recording showed no sign of Veronica Lasalle, it did of course show her son entering the yacht club and setting up the carbon monoxide booby trap on the boat. Not a very good criminal. His boarding-up of Anita Garner’s handbag thirty years earlier hadn’t been a masterstroke either.
Roland Lasalle was duly charged with the murder of his father.
His other crime, the rape of Anita Garner, never came to court. Though evidence of his guilt existed, in the form of Francis White, the incident was not relevant to the police’s murder enquiries. Anita Garner’s disappearance remained unexplained, though still occasionally pontificated upon by Barney Poulton in the Crown and Anchor. He still supported the view that Anita Garner’s remains would in time be found in a shallow grave on the South Downs. As he would explain at great length to anyone who came into the bar.
The lack of investigation into the rape was welcomed by Mary White in Liverpool. Her life continued as she wanted it to, busy with her charitable work for the cathedral and looking forward to the day when she would see her precious son, Francis, ordained as a Catholic priest.
NINETEEN
‘Well,’ said Carole tetchily, ‘I would have thought getting a confession of murder is a very good outcome for any criminal investigation.’
‘Oh, I agree,’ said Jude, suppressing a smile, ‘but of course there are lots of reasons why people confess to crimes. And it’s not always because they committed them.’
That got a characteristic Carole Seddon ‘Huh’.
‘Incidentally,’ said Jude, ‘I had a call from Brandie yesterday.’
‘Oh yes?’ Carole feigned complete lack of interest.
‘You know she went off to the weekend course in Homeopathy in Wales …?’
‘No.’ Carole did know but she wasn’t going to pretend that the doings of Brandie Neville held any interest for her.
‘Apparently, she got totally caught up in Homeopathy. She thinks it’s the most wonderful therapy ever invented.’
‘Which one is it?’ asked Carole, who again knew full well. ‘Is it the one where you drip candlewax on to stones on people’s backs?’