‘Yes, very.’
‘Well, that’s it, really. He was reading the newspaper and cutting it out. He said she had been their nanny. That’s all.’ Marta turned a few pages, then paused. She pointed to a clipping. ‘This is about her funeral in London.’
‘Camilla Maynard.’ William’s stomach churned. ‘Did she have a brother, cousin, any relative called Andrew?’
He had a vision of the dead man floating in the overflowing bathtub, the water pink. He felt the sweat trickle down his back as he recalled Maynard talking about a much older sister who had died in a car accident. It had to be a coincidence, he thought, but he shuddered as he now saw the story’s chilling logic.
‘Answer me. It’s very important, Marta. Have you ever heard Justin mention Andrew Maynard? In connection with this nanny, perhaps?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘But you must have met him, surely. He stayed here at the villa — a tall, dark-haired man. A young English politician.’
Marta hesitated, and nodded slowly.
‘Ah yes, I did meet him, I mean, I served him his meals once or twice. But really, I hardly spoke to him.’
‘But he came here frequently. You must know more.’
‘Well, Justin explained that he wanted to be alone with him as much as possible, so I sometimes went on vacation when he came. Sometimes I went to see Laura. She was booked into clinics, you know, when she relapsed. She’s very fragile... physically as well as mentally.’
William asked her to continue her story of their childhood.
‘French law decreed that they couldn’t be locked up or tried there. They were too young. They were sent instead to a specialist psychiatric unit for disturbed children in England and my friend, Frances, took them into her home, as I told you. All was fine, until a budding young journalist wanted a scoop to kick off his career. He pressed on and on, determined to get his story. It became clear that they could not attend school, could not live in an ordinary home without people throwing bricks through the window. The stress of being hounded made them both become difficult. I don’t know exactly what went on. All I do know for sure is that they were taken away, separated.’ She showed William a garish paperback book. ‘Their case was then taken up by the British courts.’
‘Lord Chief Justice Bellingham,’ muttered William under his breath. The pieces of the jigsaw were slowly fitting together.
‘Justin was sent to borstal, Laura to a psychiatric hospital. The author probably didn’t even know what he had done. He wrote about their separation as if he had made some successful coup, but he ruined their lives.’
William glanced down at the cover, emblazoned with a picture of two pretty children wielding an axe that dripped blood. Angels or Devils? It was by Humphrey Matlock.
The book smelt of the dank, musty cellar. It contained further pictures: Laura’s frightened face as a small child being carried by a police officer, Laura’s face at a barred window, Laura in a garden aged twelve. There were more snatched photographs that had obviously been taken from some distance by the spying journalist, each one slightly blurred.
One photograph in particular made William want to weep: Laura in a car with raindrops trickling down the window, waving, a sweet smile on her angelic face. Then came pictures of Justin, who, unlike his sister, showed no sign of terror on his boyish face. He glared out from one photograph after another. There was one of him in a blaze of anger, hurling something towards the camera. There were a few photographs of the children together, hand in hand in sombre school uniforms. In the last section, there were pictures of their parents. William tried hard to imagine exactly what these two inhuman creatures could have been like. Their father’s eyes seemed pale and washed-out. His close-cropped hair and tidy beard made him look like D. H. Lawrence. Hard as he tried, William could not detect cruelty in their appearance. The last picture showed their mother holding Laura on her knee, her husband standing behind her chair with his hand resting on his small son’s shoulders. They looked like a normal happy family.
William read the book from cover to cover. It was, he hated to admit, well written and engrossing. He was intrigued when he read a quote from a nanny, who had obviously refused to give her name, which described the way the children had made sexual advances towards her and attempted to kill her. She was quoted as saying: ‘I knew from the first day I began caring for them that these were not normal children. They were too well behaved. Their manner was formal, and they seemed to be constantly entwined, at times speaking as one. The boy was over-protective of his sister. They even slept together. I saw them feed each other like birds. Yet, on the surface they looked like angels. I soon discovered a terrible, dark side to them. They frightened me. They were truly evil. Maybe they became that way because of whatever they had been subjected to by their parents. But I will never forget the nightmare I became embroiled in, and all I want now is to forget I ever met them. But it is hard to forget the sight of Laura and Justin, with their father’s blood dripping from their hands. It has haunted me.’
With that comment hanging in his mind, William closed his eyes. He felt leaden. He, too, had become embroiled in their lives, but he believed them to be far more dangerous as adults. It gradually dawned on him that he had been used. He now knew that the charade into which he had been drawn had been set up for one reason alone. William chastised himself for his blindness. How could he have allowed this to go on? His weakness and vanity gave him the answer. He had so wanted to get back at people and he had believed the lies he had been told because he wanted to. If he had applied just a modicum of his intellect, he would surely have been suspicious. He bowed his head, ashamed. He knew deep down in his heart that he had uncovered the truth. All along he had been suspicious about Maynard’s death and particularly the suicide note. Had Justin murdered him and written the note?
He recalled how Justin had gone through his hit-list, leaving only four main targets. No matter which way he looked at the overall picture, it was so sick it beggared belief. He recalled asking Justin whether or not he should invite his victims’ children, and he had replied that William’s own son and daughter had suffered at the hands of the press, so why not? He felt the ground opening up beneath him; dear God, had Oliver Bellingham been a part of it too? He was Lord Chief Justice Bellingham’s grandson after all. Had Justin’s revenge been planned to hurt even the younger, innocent generation? His blood ran cold. On the island there were three kids: James Matlock, Clarissa Hangerford and Max von Garten. Was Justin directing his madness against them? Hadn’t he said that they deserved to be punished?
William paced up and down erratically, as his mind jumped backwards and forwards. He had agreed, he had encouraged Justin! The sins of the fathers... Dear God! What monster had he released in his name? The fear that Justin would hurt the women and their children escalated in him. But surely even Justin wouldn’t do that, would he? But Oliver Bellingham was dead...
Chapter seventeen
Max had been waiting almost an hour at Suicide Point and was about to give up when he saw her running, her skirt held high in her hands and her wonderful hair flying loose like a silver wave. His heart leaped with joy as he held out his arms. She threw herself into them and hugged him tightly. ‘Oh, I have missed you so much, but I just couldn’t get away to see you. We have to be so careful.’ They embraced and then she eased him forward.
‘Laura, take care, we’re very close to the edge,’ Max said.