The Ravenscar Dynasty

Alfredo steadied himself, and said in a low tone, ‘Your father, uncle and cousin sustained head injuries, Mr Edward,’ and then he looked across at Neville, and continued, ‘All three men died instantly. Dr Buttafiglio told me—’

‘Someone attacked them? Killed them? Are we understanding you correctly?’ Edward cut in, his voice rising.

‘You are…I’m so sorry to give you this dreadful news, and you, too, Mr Watkins. Very, very sorry.’

‘And so the fire was started to conceal the crime? Is that what you’re suggesting?’ Neville asked, his expression grim, his voice hard.

‘Yes, I am. That is the doctor’s theory, and I concur with him. The men of your family were killed, and the fire was set in order to burn their bodies to a crisp, so that nobody would know that murder had been committed. But whoever did this had not bargained for the rain. It was a deluge. It stopped the fire.’

‘You mentioned my father, uncle and cousin, but not my brother,’ Edward exclaimed, staring at Alfredo. ‘What of Edmund?’

Alfredo Oliveri had been dreading this question and for a split second he could not speak. He lost his courage; but he knew that he would have to tell Mr Edward later, if not now, and so he took a deep, steadying breath and said, ‘It appears that after I left Mr Richard and the others at the hotel, Mr Edmund went out again. No one knows where he went, and by that I mean the police, who made inquiries later, to no avail. They found out nothing. Anyway, as he was returning to the hotel, probably just before the fire was started, Mr Edmund was waylaid in one of the side streets and attacked. He—’

‘By whom? Who would attack my young brother?’ Edward demanded in a loud voice, his face growing flushed and angry.

‘I don’t know. No one knows, no one here understands it at all. Everyone is baffled, believe me they are.’

‘And no one saw it happening?’ Neville asked sceptically, in that same sharp voice, a voice like a whiplash.

‘Not the actual attack, no. But Benito Magnanni, the owner of the Colisseum Restaurant, was on his way home after closing up, and he saw two men bending over a body. It just so happens there was a street light on in the alley where they were standing, and he began to run down the alley, shouting at them. They immediately fled. They were English, though.’

‘How do you know that?’ Will asked quickly, staring hard at Alfredo. He was aware Edward and Neville were too distressed to speak at this moment, and so took charge.

‘Because Benito told the police they looked English, and that he heard one of the men say something about London, and the man made a remark like let’s ski diddle. This phrase didn’t make sense to either Benito or the police. But it did to me. I believe that what the man was saying actually was let’s skedaddle back to London, something like that.’

‘How did they kill him?’ Edward asked in a voice so inaudible they could barely hear him.

Alfredo hesitated, wondering if he should lie in order to save Edward Deravenel’s feelings. But he knew he could not; he must speak the truth. He owed it to Edward and to his father. ‘He died very quickly,’ Alfredo replied at last. ‘Doctor Buttafiglio told me it must have been an instant death.’

‘But how?’ Edward pressed.

‘They cut his throat,’ Alfredo answered in a shaky voice, one as quiet as Edward’s had been.

There was a moment of utter stillness in the room.

Stunned shock filled the air, was a palpable thing almost.

Rigid in the chair, his face draining of all colour, Edward cried out, ‘No! Not my lovely Edmund. To die like that. Such a brutal way. Oh, no. No, it can’t be. Who would commit such a foul crime? He was only seventeen, for God’s sake, an innocent boy—’

Edward broke off, his face crumpling, tears glistening in those bright blue eyes. He brought his hands to his face, and he grieved a second time for his beloved brother.

At once Neville was on his feet, going to Edward. He bent over him, encircled him with his arms. After a moment, Edward struggled to his feet, turned to Neville and clung to him as though his life depended on it. For a while the cousins stood together in tight embrace. They were united more than ever in their mutual grief, shocked and horrified that Edmund had been killed in this heartless, brutish manner. And they shared their sorrow for their other kin who had been so cruelly slain.

Eventually the two men broke their embrace, and went back to their chairs. It was Neville who spoke first. Looking across at Alfredo, he said, ‘Let me ask you something…do you personally believe that Mr Edmund was killed because he was a Deravenel? That it was not just an odd coincidence that he was attacked that night?’

‘I don’t think the attack on Mr Edmund was a coincidence. Not at all. He was killed because he was a Deravenel and Mr Richard’s son. They did not find him at the hotel when they killed the others, so they went looking for him, in my opinion.’ Alfredo shook his head vehemently. ‘Nothing will convince me otherwise. They went out searching for him.’

‘Do you think Mr Edward is in danger?’

‘Yes, I do. Perhaps not here in Carrara, not now. The murderers have fled back to London. But I do think he’s in danger. Because he’s Mr Richard’s son. In my opinion, Mr Watkins, your Uncle Richard was killed because he was the true heir to Deravenels. Everyone knows it in the company…Deravenels was stolen sixty years ago by the Lancashire Deravenels. Some of the directors are happy with the status quo, but not everyone. There are those who have always believed Mr Richard should have been sitting in the chairman’s seat. Quite a few of us, actually. Henry Grant is ineffectual, always has been in my opinion. He’s been riding on the coat-tails of the two other Grants who went before him. His grandfather, who stole the company, and his father, who made it greater. But it’s slipping. Things are not good, take my word for it. He’s an absentee landlord, just as Mr Richard always said he was. He has no head for business or finance, and he’s dominated by his French wife and her followers. Margot Grant has quite a few supporters, you know, who do her bidding.’

‘I did know. My uncle confided in my father.’ A deep sigh rippled through Neville, and he shook his head, sorrow shadowing his light blue eyes. ‘My father and brother died because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time…’ His saddened voice filtered away, and he pursed his lips. ‘God rest their souls in Heaven.’

‘And so Deravenels, the company started by my ancestor, Guy de Ravenel, is actually being run by a young woman who is not even a Deravenel by birth. That has to make you shudder, Neville,’ Edward remarked in a voice dripping ice.

‘Actually it makes me laugh, if a little hollowly,’ Neville retorted. ‘That woman is a joke, she doesn’t know what she’s doing. But of course she’s being used by James Cliff and John Summers. It is they who have the power there. Still, I do think she is dangerous, she has no conscience whatsoever, and it’s more than likely she’s behind the murders. Don’t you fret, Ned. We will have our revenge, as I said we would at Ravenscar. I will not permit a young and incompetent woman to get the better of you, be assured of that.’

TWELVE (#ub7b0b04c-a0c3-5954-8f70-4723c4224835)

Kent (#ub7b0b04c-a0c3-5954-8f70-4723c4224835)

‘Why aren’t you pursuing the matter with the police?’ Lily Overton cried, her face growing flushed, her eyes filling with sudden indignation. ‘I don’t understand, I really don’t, Ned.’

‘You should. I’ve already explained it several times!’ Edward shot back, striving to keep his temper in check. ‘But I’ll try to do so once again. This is not a matter for Scotland Yard. The crime was not committed here, under their jurisdiction. It occurred in Italy, in Carrara, to be precise, and the—’

‘I know that, Ned,’ she interrupted. ‘I was referring to the police in Carrara. Why aren’t they continuing their investigation? That is what I meant.’

Clenching his fists, taking a deep breath, Edward answered in as controlled a voice as he could manage, ‘Neville and I, and Will, spent hours and hours with the local police chief, attempting to get to the bottom of things. He was very cooperative. Certainly he had done a very detailed investigation before we got there, and came up with nothing. All the police had, in fact, was the information given to them by a local restaurant owner, who told them he had seen two men attacking someone in an alley late at night. He immediately ran to the rescue, shouting at the attackers, who instantly fled. He was too late, of course. The young man, my brother, was dead when he got to him. Benito Magnanni, the restaurant owner, also reported hearing the two men, the attackers, shouting at each other in English. And that is it…there is nothing more.’

Lily did not respond. She merely sat back on the sofa, staring across at him, shaking her head as if baffled, a nonplussed expression crossing her face.

Staring back at her, Edward realized she looked as if she were about to burst into tears. He unclenched his hands, relaxed his body, adopted a more casual stance in front of the fire roaring up the chimney. He knew she was not a stupid woman, quite the contrary, but she could be maddeningly dense about certain things at times, and this drove him to distraction.

Taking a deep breath, he adopted a lighter, softer tone when he murmured, ‘Alberto Oliveri truly went out of his way to probe every aspect of the murders with the police, and, of course, the cause of the fire, its point of origin, everything to do with it, in fact. But there’s not very much anyone can do when there are no murderers loitering on street corners, no arsonists hanging around, for that matter. The whole affair is clouded in mystery…’ He paused, sighed, added, ‘Without credible evidence the Carrara police are totally stalled.’ He shifted on his feet and another small sigh escaped him as he finished, ‘This is not the first case which will go unsolved, Lily, I can assure you of that.’

‘And so do I,’ Will Hasling said from the doorway, walking into the study of his sister’s house in Kent, where the three of them were spending the weekend with Vicky. He went on, ‘It’s also extremely frustrating, since we more or less know who is at the root of this ghastly crime, yet there’s nothing we can do—’

‘Why not?’ Lily cut in swiftly, sitting up straighter on the sofa, looking from Will to Ned, who remained standing in front of the fire.

‘Because we cannot retaliate in kind,’ Edward snapped after a moment, his annoyance with her rising to the surface. ‘We can’t go around killing people off, just because we think they are behind the deaths of my father and brother, Neville’s father and brother. Certainly Scotland Yard would be involved then …they’d be on our backs.’

Lily reached into her pocket for a handkerchief, blew her nose, patted her eyes. ‘It’s such an…agony,’ she muttered, crumpling her handkerchief between her long, supple fingers, playing with it nervously. ‘I don’t know how you can stand it, Ned.’

The room became absolutely still.

Suddenly, the fire spurted, crackled; fabric rustled like a faint whisper as Lily moved on the sofa; light rain began to patter against the window panes. Otherwise there was total silence. Neither man spoke. Lily herself swallowed the sentence on the tip of her tongue, afraid to utter a word, accepting she had just said the wrong thing.

Slowly, almost cautiously, Will walked across the room to the fireplace where his best friend stood rigid and unmoving. Will put a hand on his arm as if to steady Ned, then took a position next to him.

For his part, Edward Deravenel looked perturbed; a veil dropped over his face, obscuring his true feelings. He took a tight rein on himself, breathing deeply.

At last, after a long moment or two, Edward focused his entire attention on Lily Overton. He said, finally, in a cold clipped voice, ‘How can I stand it, you ask? If the truth be known, I can’t. But I have to. I have no choice. Now, let us bring this discussion to a close, shall we? There is no real point to it. We are helpless, as far as prosecuting those whom we believe are responsible. Neville and I have buried our loved ones…they are at peace now. There is nothing to say—’ He broke off, leaned forward, staring at her intently, his face resembling a mask of stone. ‘The matter is now at an end.’

No, it’s not, it’s just starting, Will Hasling thought. It won’t end until Ned and Neville Watkins have destroyed the Grants. Each and every one of them. That is irrevocable.

And as these thoughts swirled in his head, Will felt the hackles rise on the back of his neck and a cold chill swept over him.

Vicky Forth’s second husband Stephen, a well-known banker of some standing, had gone to New York on a business trip, and she had talked her brother into spending a weekend in the country with her.