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third cousin of the king’s. It’s not as if he was in the direct succession. We’re all probably royal if those are the requirements.’
    â€˜Well that’s the newspapers for you,’ said Roderick, harking back to his favourite theme. ‘They will exaggerate. That’s how they’ve sold so many papers off the back of this case. I should be on some sort of percentage commission.’
    â€˜Nevertheless,’ she said. ‘Oh look, there’s a rather good picture of him here too. That’s unusual. Not a bad-looking boy I suppose, if you see him in the right light, although I’ve never been a fan of that Hanoverian jawline. None of them has a chin, it seems to me.’
    â€˜He was on trial for the murder of a police officer, Jane,’ said Bentley. ‘Not for the aesthetic charm of his appearance.’
    â€˜It’s sad, though, isn’t it?’ she asked. ‘He’s only the same age as Gareth. To have the rest of your life…’ She looked at her husband who was giving nothing away. ‘Well whatever happens to him, whatever the sentence, it’s unfortunate. I can’t imagine how his mother must feel, how I would feel if our son was in such a situation. I know it’s a terrible cliché but it’s impossible not to blame the parents in such a case, isn’t it? They must have set him a dreadful example.’
    â€˜Our son would never find himself in such difficulties,’ insisted Roderick. ‘But it doesn’t matter who the defendant is, the law is the law. Whether you’re a third cousin of the king’s or the youngest and most illegitimate son of a fish trader from Cockfosters. The law is the law,’ he repeated.
    Jane nodded and threw the paper back on the bed. ‘I’ll read it in the car,’ she said. ‘I better go and have my bath. And you can’t be the most illegitimate,’ she added for she was a stickler for grammar. ‘There are no superlatives. One is either a bastard or one is not.’
    Roderick shrugged it off and continued to watch her as she left the room although he stayed seated until he heard her footsteps padding up the stairs to the bathroom on the third floor. Only then did he walk across to the bed and—against his better judgement—pick up the newspaper and look at it. It wasn’t the article he wanted to read, there was nothing that the reporters could tell him about this case that he didn’t already know; rather, he wanted to see the picture.
    For almost six months now that young man had sat across from him in the dock, his expression changing from arrogant dismissal at the start to terrified anguish at the end and running the gamut of the emotional spectrum in the time in between. Caught by a photographer for the paper, however, being bundled into a Black Maria handcuffed to a middle-aged policeman, he looked startled, as if he couldn’t believe that this whole drama was actually drawing to a close and the curtain was about to descend on what, until now, he had viewed as little more than a disagreeable diversion. That he had been found guilty of murder and that he would either be spending the rest of his life in prison or be put to death. He appeared younger than his twenty-three years, almost like a little boy caught doing something he shouldn’t; he looked terrified.
    Roderick threw the paper on the bed in exasperation at his own lack of judgement in looking at it in the first place.
    â€˜One rule for all,’ he muttered fiercely between his teeth. ‘Paupers or kings. One rule for all.’
    5
    MARGARET RICHMOND WENT INTO the kitchen to check on the servants. A lot of things had changed during the nearly thirty years she had worked for the Montignacs but this was one of the rare occasions now when there was a full complement of staff on hand, although most had been hired especially for the day. When Andrew, Stella and Owen had been