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“Is it possible that Michael . . . ?”
“No.” Alexia shook her head vehemently. “My son isn’t capable of that.”
Angus Grey raised an eyebrow but Alexia was unequivocal. “No.”
“Think about it, Alexia. Michael’s unconscious and likely to remain so. If he were to be convicted of this, he’d know nothing about it. Nothing would change.”
“Except that he’d have been branded a murderer. Falsely branded.”
“Okay. But if they pin this on Teddy, he’ll go down for life.”
Alexia laughed despairingly. “This is insanity! Neither of them killed Andrew Beesley.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know them, Angus. I know them!” With an effort, Alexia calmed herself down. “Look. I don’t know who killed Beesley and I don’t know why whoever it was buried him at Kingsmere. Maybe they hoped to frame me for the murder? There are plenty of crackpots out there.”
“It’s possible, of course.”
“I daresay Roxanne wasn’t the first girl Andrew had ever deceived or hurt. Who knows how many enemies the boy may have made.”
“Yes, but to dispose of the body in your grounds? There must be a link, a connection to your family.”
“Not necessarily. Maybe the killer was simply a local who thought t
he corpse was unlikely to be disturbed in an obscure part of the estate. They were right, in a way. It was the pagoda that brought the remains to the surface. If that had never been built . . . or, if it had been finished, and the concrete foundations poured like they were supposed to be . . . no one would ever have found him. He’d have had his own, private mausoleum. Which was more than he deserved, by the way. He was a thoroughly unpleasant young man.”
She watched Angus Grey’s brilliant mind ticking.
“You mentioned the possibility of somebody trying to frame you. Is there anyone in particular you were thinking of? Anyone with a vendetta against you or a reason to go to such drastic lengths?”
“No. The Patel people, I suppose. But I don’t think they’d kill a man just to get back at me.” Alexia thought about it. “There were a couple of incidents around the time I first took office. Teddy’s dog was poisoned.”
“Where? At Kingsmere?”
Alexia nodded. “It was horrible actually. Poor Teddy was terribly cut up at the time.”
“I’ll bet he was.”
“Yes, but come on, Angus. It was a dog. Not quite the same thing as slaughtering a man in cold blood, is it?”
Sir Edward Manning looked at his watch as he hurried along the Strand.
Two forty-five. He couldn’t be long. He must be available when the home secretary got out of her lawyer’s meeting. But he needed to give Sergei the good news.
Alexia De Vere was about to resign.
Sergei’s bosses, whoever they were, would get what they wanted.
In the back of his mind, Sir Edward Manning feared that this might not be the last he heard of Sergei Milescu. The bastard had those pictures, after all. He could still blackmail him, still use him for his own ends in the future, if he chose to. But for now, at least, the immediate danger was past. Sir Edward sensed that Sergei had become as scared as he was. He would want to know this. He would be grateful that Edward had told him personally, as soon as he was able.
Sergei’s new flat was in a modern building on the Embankment. While not luxurious, it was certainly far more than he could afford on his salary as a House of Lords janitor. Running up the stairs to the second floor, Sir Edward Manning wondered briefly who was paying Sergei’s rent. Then he put the thought out of his mind. By tomorrow morning, it wouldn’t matter.
There was no bell, so he knocked firmly on the front door. To his surprise, it opened.
“Sergei?”
It wasn’t like him to be so lax with security. Then again, the boy could drink, especially when he was agitated, as he had been recently. He’s probably passed out on the bed with a bottle of Stoli.
