Cate Balcon stared out of the French windows of Huntsford Castle, watching as shadows fell into the dark study, snow settling on the sills. Outside, she saw two orbs of light moving up the long gravel drive.
‘I think he’s here.’
A few moments later, the heavy oak door to the drawing room creaked open, and David Loftus, a slim, wiry man, with eyes slightly too close together, walked in.
‘Mr Loftus,’ said Cate, rising to shake his hand. It was cold and dry, with the yellow-stained fingertips of a smoker. ‘This is David Loftus, the friend of Daddy’s,’ she said to the other women. ‘Mr Loftus is a writer. Just moved into the village, I believe. Please, David, take a seat.’
Ignoring her, Loftus moved to the huge open fire, rubbing his hands. ‘Stinking weather out there,’ he said, motioning his head towards the window. ‘The car could hardly get down the drive. Do you know there’s about a dozen photographers by the gates?’
Venetia Balcon nodded. ‘For some reason the press seems to think our father’s death constitutes news.’
‘And you’re surprised by that?’ replied Loftus with a sarcastic look. ‘You’re celebrities. Every hack in the land wants to be in this room today.’
His smile was crooked as he took in the grandeur of the room. The ancient Welsh slate fireplace, the walls lined with leather-bound books. His eyes moved up to the ceiling, all veined like a vintage cheese under the paintwork. Cracked under the magnificent surface. He smiled sourly: just like the Balcon family.
‘Well, now you’re here, what do you want?’ snapped Serena Balcon, who was feeling particularly impatient. Even for an actress, she’d had quite enough drama for one Christmas. She was the one who had found her father’s body in the castle’s moat the morning after the Christmas Eve party, mouth gaping open, skin frozen and spidered with purple veins. She shuddered at the memory as David Loftus watched her.
She was just as gorgeous in the flesh as on the screen, he thought. In fact, all four of Lord Oswald Balcon’s daughters were exactly as he’d imagined them to be. Blonde and beautiful, privilege clinging to them like expensive scent. And that haughty way they carried themselves: they thought they were so special. But now he was the one with the trump card and he was going to savour every sweet minute of it.
Without being asked, he poured himself a Scotch from a Murano glass decanter on the table and swirled it around the tumbler. As a barrister, Camilla Balcon recognized his technique. She’d used it in the courtroom a hundred times before: make your audience wait. Make them nervous.
‘I suppose the police have been round?’ Loftus asked, taking a swig of his drink.
‘And why is it any of your business?’ asked Camilla, her voice prickling with hostility.
‘Oswald was my friend,’ Loftus said. The whisky glistened on his upper lip.
‘Oswald was our father,’ replied Camilla firmly.
Loftus walked to the window, Huntsford’s grounds now just a series of shapes and shadows in the dark.
‘Accidental death? Is that what they’re saying?’
The girls looked at each other, unsure of how much to tell him. ‘Exactly,’ Cate said finally, staring into the fire. ‘He fell from the ramparts. He was watching the fireworks.’
‘Fell?’ said David, lifting one dark bushy eyebrow into a heavy arch.
Camilla flashed him a look. ‘And you are implying …’
Loftus cut Camilla short. ‘You do know that a lot of people wanted your father dead?’
‘He could be a bit difficult,’ responded Cate tartly. ‘But it’s hardly the same thing as being wanted dead.’
‘Difficult? Is that what you call it?’ he asked, tossing back the last of the whisky.
‘Your father was despised by half the people who knew him. No, I don’t think your father fell from the rooftop. I believe he was pushed. Deliberately.’ He paused. ‘I think your father was murdered.’
The fire was spitting and crackling in the background as the sisters looked at him, not daring to speak.
‘And I think that one of Daddy’s little girls killed him.’
Ten months earlier
The Honourable Serena Balcon lay back on the top deck of the Egyptian sailboat, La Mamounia, wriggled out of her pink Dior hot pants, and congratulated herself with a lazy swig of a Mojito. What a good decision, she thought smugly, looking up to watch the white sails of the boat fan out like two huge butterfly wings. Back home in London’s Chelsea, she hadn’t been sure whether to accept fashion designer Roman LeFey’s offer of a two-day cruise from Edfu to Luxor. As she received more than one hundred social invitations in the average week, she politely declined everything except the most public and most exclusive – or the odd charitable gesture. But this trip was looking very promising indeed. Only thirty of Roman’s most fabulous friends had been invited to the strictly A-list jaunt and, not only had Serena been invited, she’d been assigned La Mamounia’s Cleopatra Suite, a spacious, exotic cabin at the stern where you could open the shutters and enjoy the receding view from a claw-foot bath. She fished around for a phrase to describe the scene’s subtle grandeur. She smiled. It was appropriate.
‘How incredible is this?’ said Tom Archer, Serena’s boyfriend, leaning over the boat’s railing to get a 360-degree view. One of Britain’s most successful, not to mention fabulously handsome actors, the backdrop of the Nile suited him to a T.
‘Yes, you look very Agatha Christie, darling,’ said Serena with a hint of sarcasm, peering up from under the wide brim of her sunhat. ‘But don’t lean so far out. There could be piranhas or anything in that filthy water and I’m not jumping in to get you.’
Tom had conditioned himself not to listen to Serena’s sniping. Instead he carried on looking at a water buffalo grazing on the opposite bank, next to which an old woman was doing her washing in the tobacco-coloured waters. ‘Look at it,’ he smiled, ‘it still looks so biblical. I keep thinking we’re going to see Moses sitting on the bank.’
Serena glanced up casually. ‘I thought he was dead.’
‘Who?’
‘Moses.’
Tom rolled his eyes and Serena caught the gesture. ‘I saw that,’ she said sourly.
He turned to face her. ‘What?’
‘You just rolled your eyes at me as if I was stupid.’
‘Well, you were being stupid. Of course Moses is dead.’
‘I was joking,’ she snapped, hiding her face with a copy of Italian Vogue. ‘But yes, you’re right. It is rather special.’
Tom gave his girlfriend a wry smile, predicting the answer to his next question. ‘In that case, are you coming with me to Karnak after lunch? Biggest group of temples in the world, apparently. Roman was asking who was up for it. Doubt there’ll be a good turn out from this lot, though,’ he said, motioning towards the mezzanine deck where the rest of Roman’s