Innocence

By MIREILLE PAVANE

"Who am I, detective? A principal? An accomplice? An accessory? Or innocent?"

A long time has passed since heiress Claire Leighton left the cocoon of her idyllic childhood. Yet the tendrils of the past still linger. Old sins, as they say, cast long shadows—and the innocent are as much in danger as the guilty of being ensnared in the tangled web of love, greed, lies, wickedness, and murder.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: MIREILLE PAVANE
• Release date: Feb 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9781540145284

MIREILLE PAVANE

Mireille Pavane cannot recall exactly when she began messing about with books and literature but since then (brainwashed at a young age by the French and Russian writers and E.M. Forster) it has remained an abiding love. Mireille continues to scribble away in secret when not otherwise distracted by a professional career or gardening duties in her alternate life. She also has an unhealthy curiosity and fondness for footnotes which she attempts to curtail from time to time. Mireille is a member of the international and local chapters of the Village Idiots’ Guild.

Book preview

EPIGRAPH

On ne peut point régner innocemment

(No one can reign innocently)

—Antoine Louis Léon de Richebourg de Saint-Just,

Sur le jugement de Louis XVI (1er discours),

speech to the National Convention (November 13, 1792)

CHAPTER ONE

A nd what was your relationship like with Mr. Morton-Parker, your late stepfather?

It is nearly 9:30 a.m. on a Monday morning. I have been awake for several hours since the doorbell rang as I was warming milk on the stove for my coffee. On any other weekday morning, those hours would have found me in the office, attending to the papers set before me by my secretary and ensconced in brisk conferences with the firm’s staff. This morning, a police detective stands before me in the living room, patiently asking questions which he assures me are routine. His partner has been wandering around the room, picking up items and examining them, examining me, with a dispassionate curiosity, interjecting questions from time to time. This is the least that one should expect when there is a death in the family.

Miss Leighton?

I have been brought up to value privacy. Being caught in the snares of a camera lens or spotlight, being the object of scrutiny in a press article, being ogled on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art at a society gala, being the subject of gossip and whispers behind glossy smiles, being judged by strangers is a corrosive poison—a lesson drilled into me by my mother and, later, my gran, as steadfastly as math and valency tables and Latin verbs were by my schoolmasters. Things always get distorted from the truth, however elusive the concept of absolute truth may be. The distortions take shape, their existence and reach as real and corporeal as the things built by hand. Ask the widow whose congressional candidate husband ate the barrel of a gun the day before the sordid corruption and strippers scandal broke in the evening news, or the society queen who stood stoically by her husband through countless affairs but chose to toast the loss of her husband’s crown as a stock market golden boy and titan of industry with a vodka martini and a full bottle of sleeping pills.

Stories, myths, gossip, rumor. These phantasms are as powerful as gods, disembodied, insubstantial, immortal armies impossible to fight or capture or elude, their agents as punishing and relentless as the Furies—and sometimes they are made of flesh and blood, taking the form of two NYPD detectives, intruding upon the sanctuary of my domain, this house and the courtyard beyond it, ordered and serene, enclosed by a high walled garden, a garden my mother had once tended as a girl, with dark and red ivy and a stone lion’s head fountain whose expression is as forbidding as the leonine pair at the front gates, shutting out the world beyond its sheltering walls.

Miss Leighton?

The detectives have been respectful, cautious in their demeanor, careful not to upset or antagonize me. It is likely that their politically astute captain had a quiet word with them to impart the wisdom of his honed survival instincts before they arrived, instructing them not to ruffle any sensitive feathers, at least not until they had something definite and actionable—the customary courtesy given as due to those bred within the influential and wealthy circles who are trigger-happy for retaliation for perceived (or sometimes real) slights. I had never thought I moved amongst that set, but to outsiders I suppose I am brushed with the same tar; it is my birthright as much as the prying eyes of strangers, as much as this house and the trust fund and the company holdings I inherited. And the news of the stepfather who was found dead in the early hours of yesterday morning, when the firemen had cleared away the last of the smoke and rubble and ashes remaining of the mansion built during the Gilded Age, alongside the body, or what was left of it, of another woman, a socialite by the name of Olivia Marlow.

The beautiful fresh clipped lawns, the tidy flower beds, old gnarly trees, the stone lion’s head, the ivy growing over the high walls are as tranquil as the heart of this house had been before the arrival of the detectives. The abandoned coffee and milk are a forlorn thought, growing cold and stale in the kitchen. The phantasms will be rising across the awakening city as the morning sun rises to its meridian peak, new ghosts and the resurrected memories of old hastening the activity in press offices and the lines of tinkling telephones next to breakfast trays in luxurious beds. I have seen a moment just like this, sailing out on the bay, a cloudless quiet poised before the rough squall, where a choice of action meant the difference between returning to moor in calm waters and sailing into the eye of a storm. A moment—one minute past, already drifting away as if on a distant shore—when my life was...

My stepfather and I were not close. He was briefly married to my mother before her death. I had been staying with my gran at the time and remained with her. And when I was not with gran, I was at school.

Distant but cordial?

Yes, you could describe it as that.

But your paths crossed again later, didn’t they, when you came into your inheritance? Your trust fund, the controlling share in the company, the family mansion— Mr. Morton-Parker had to cede control to you? That must’ve been a hard pill to swallow.

I’m not sure that it was as dramatic as you are suggesting. He did not have control over my mother’s estate—the trustee and custodianship duties had always been shared with my gran and the family lawyers. I believe he received a settlement for handing over his interest to me when I came of age. You could check with the lawyers. As for the family mansion, yes, the title deeds were given to me, but that is all I have of the house, a piece of paper. It hasn’t been my home for perhaps a decade. He retained possession of it. You—you found him there. It has been in his possession since he married my mother. An informal part of his settlement, if you like.

None of the other custodians—your grandmother, for instance—received such a generous settlement.

My gran passed away a year before I came of age. She had no need of a settlement. Half the money came from her anyway, from the empire she took over from my grandfather, and she had money in her own right from her father—a portion of it had been settled on my mother when she came of age, another portion on her first marriage, the rest of gran’s wealth was left to me, including this house. My stepfather’s settlement was unique, it was part of the terms of my mother’s will. My mother’s estate comprised of the money from my father and the settlements from my gran.

And the unfettered possession of prime real estate rent-free?

As I have said, it has not been my home for a long time. I had no mercantile or sentimental interest in it. The trust fund holds many other properties and investments. It was not a great loss.

There was talk...

Detective?

There was talk that your stepfather had been helping himself to the company funds, possibly to your trust fund as well, and that he was paid off to keep up appearances, that he used that pay-off as the seed money to start his investment business.

Do you believe all the gossip you hear, detective?

The detective does not directly answer.

You can check with the lawyers to confirm the terms of my mother’s will. This all happened many years ago, detective. What are you driving at with these questions? I agreed to answer questions to help your investigation into my stepfather’s death. Should I be calling a lawyer before I say anything more?

"Of course that is your right if you wish. But these