Chapter 27 #2
Culpepper’s mouth gapes slightly, but he instantly snaps it shut and nods curtly.
Then he makes a brief note on his iPad and looks at my father, at the head of the table.
Dad now starts to speak, babbling on about the measures taken to date.
All kinds of figures and graphs are projected onto the screen, and I spend the next forty-five minutes pretending to listen and take notes.
But all that appears on my paper are wild circles.
The pen in my hand feels a thousand times heavier the minute I even attempt to write down any of the stuff Dad and the rest of them are discussing.
Once, I catch the old bloke next to me glance at my open notebook, and his mouth twitches disapprovingly.
I shut it and stare straight ahead, not even touching the pen again.
The longest ninety minutes of my life eventually come to an end.
Two board members go up to Dad and get into a conversation with him, while I stand and stretch my arms over my head, trying to get the stiffness out of my limbs somehow.
Dad glares sternly at me, so I lower them again.
Then I wait for him, facing away, my notebook in my hand.
My father nods to his colleagues to hold on a moment and comes over to me.
“Get Percy to drive you home. I have a dinner meeting with Edward and Bancroft. We’ll be late, so I’ll stay in London tonight,” he says, nodding curtly at me.
I’m dismissed. I give the briefest of goodbyes and take the lift down twenty floors.
An incredible sense of relief washes over me as I step through the revolving doors and inhale the fresh evening air.
Percy is leaning against the Rolls and straightens up as he sees me.
He holds the door for me, and I drop onto the back seat.
Now that I’m behind the tinted windows and nobody in the building can see me, I can finally loosen my tie. It’s been choking me for hours.
“Everything all right, sir?” Percy asks as our eyes meet in the rearview mirror.
I can only shrug. I have no idea how to answer that question. It feels like I’ve been on holiday for months, and now I have to go back to a life that depresses me deeply all day long.
I lean back and shut my eyes. When I open them again, sometime later, they feel dry and tired. I must have nodded off. I rub my face with my hands and look out of the window. We’re just passing the sign for Pemwick, but instead of taking the exit, Percy drives on.
“You missed the turn, Percy,” I croak, leaning forward to take one of the little bottles of water out of the minibar.
I drain it in one, in the hope that it’ll stop my throat from feeling like sandpaper.
Then I look out again. Percy takes the next exit, but then turns left.
The next two turns are definitely not headed toward High Street either.
“Percy,” I say again, checking the light on the ceiling of the Rolls. It’s on, so he must be able to hear me.
But I get no response. Instead, he turns into the parking lot of a small pub. I frown as I study the yellowish light shining out of the windows.
I want to ask Percy what the hell we’re doing here, but he cuts in first:
“I need to talk to you about something, Mr. Beaufort.”
It’s a tiny pub, and there’s not much room between the tables, so I can’t help wondering how anyone’s meant to get through, especially with a tray.
But at the moment, the only people here other than Percy and me are a couple of men sitting in a corner watching football on a tiny wall-mounted TV.
We sit down and the waiter brings us dining menus.
Neither Percy nor I even glance at them.
“What I’m doing here will probably cost me my job,” Percy says after a few minutes. His voice is calm, as if he’s already come to terms with that.
I watch him, waiting.
Percy clears his throat and opens his mouth, but then the waiter reappears to ask if we want anything to drink. Not taking my eyes off Percy, I order a large bottle of water and two glasses. Then we’re alone again.
“At the end of last year,” he begins eventually, “I overheard your father on the phone.”
I open my mouth, but Percy seems to know what I’m about to ask.
“The intercom in the car was on.” He hesitates. “I didn’t think much about it at first. Your father talks about all kinds of things with me around. But I couldn’t stop mulling it over.”
I swallow hard and look expectantly at Percy.
He stares silently at the table for a few seconds. Then he takes a deep breath. “I couldn’t stop thinking about his words, because what he said was ‘Cordelia is dead. I need your help.’ ”
The hair on the back of my neck stands up. “Then what did he say?”
“He said he’d be there in twenty minutes and asked the person on the other end to meet him alone.”
My thoughts are whirling in confusion, my heart beating ever faster.
“Where did you drive him?” I croak.
“To Clive Allen’s.”
“Clive Allen, our lawyer? Why would Dad be meeting him in secret?”
Percy opens his mouth, but he’s interrupted by the waiter, who picks this moment to come back to the table and bring us our glasses and the water.
“When was that?” I go on.
“The night your mother died.”
My stomach lurches, and one thought fires up in my brain. What if Mum’s death wasn’t an accident? What if Dad was involved? But then I remember the night I saw him with the family portrait in the dining room.
I’ll never forgive you. Now I’m on my own with the two of them and I can’t do anything right and it’s all your fucking fault!
There’s no way that was an act. He seemed like he knew he was making mistakes. And he cried in front of me. I know there’s not much Dad isn’t capable of, but he loved Mum.
“For the first little while after that, I was too…had too much on my own mind to think about it. But I couldn’t forget the conversation. And once I’d chatted with Ophelia this weekend, I knew that I had to tell you about it.”
“What did Ophelia say?”
“She told me that in recent months, there have been worrying developments at Beaufort’s. Your father fired a chunk of the board.”
“He didn’t fire them, they left voluntarily. It was discussed at the meeting today,” I say, but at the same moment, it occurs to me that that’s probably only the official version of what happened. My stomach is already feeling queasy.
“Ophelia said that she wasn’t always in agreement with the way your mother ran the company, but at least she knew that for her, the spirit of Beaufort’s and your family traditions always came first. Now that seems slowly to be changing.”
I thought something similar in the meeting with my father this afternoon.
In the past, if Lydia and I visited the head offices and saw Mum at work, I always felt the passion behind every decision that she and her colleagues made.
Beaufort’s had heart. But today’s meeting was chilly and tense, and people’s words were emotionless clichés.
“I know what she means,” I say quietly.
“Ophelia doesn’t think your mother would have shared Mr. Beaufort’s visions.”
I frown. “Mum and Dad always used to work hand in hand.”
“That only worked because your mother’s input carried more weight than your father’s. She could control what he did because he was—strictly speaking—her employee.” He coughs. “I think your mother realized that something like this might happen if anything…were to happen to her.”
“Percy,” I say slowly. “What are you telling me?”
Percy just looks at me for a long moment, then sighs. He reaches inside his shirt collar and pulls out a thin silver chain with a pendant. Carefully, he pulls it over his head and holds it up so that I can get a closer look. The thing dangling from the chain isn’t a pendant—it’s a little key.
“A few years ago, your mother gave me this key. She told me to guard it with my life.” He stares at its little teeth and runs his finger over the tarnished metal.
He seems almost in a trance. Then he shakes his head, as if to snap himself out of it, and takes the key off the chain.
He pushes it over the table toward me, then slips the chain back over his head and tucks it under his shirt again.
I pick up the key and twist and turn it a few times. “Why did she entrust this to you?” I ask, my voice raw.
Percy swallows hard. “We were something like friends.”
That sets my mind whirling again, but I try to suppress the thoughts. All that matters now is that Mum had a secret. A secret that she wouldn’t trust Dad with, or even Lydia or me or Ophelia. And I’m holding the key to that secret in my hand.
“She never told me what it opens,” Percy says thoughtfully. “But I think you should have it.”
I look up and study Percy, suddenly realizing how sad he looks.
I remember something Ruby once told me. That none of this could be easy for Percy—Mum dying, and then Lydia and me moving out.
He’s staff, but he’s also one of the family.
And he clearly meant enough to Mum that she trusted him unconditionally.
“You think this key is linked to Dad’s weird phone call?” I ask in the end.
He shrugs. “I don’t know. But what I do know is that your father has something to hide.”
I turn the key in my fingers. Then I pull out my wallet, open it, and slip it in, right behind Ruby’s list. Then I look Percy right in the eyes. “I’m going to find out what this is.”
“I was hoping you’d say that, Mr. Beaufort.”