Felix Francis - Guilty Not Guilty

When questioned by Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs as to whether my parents would henceforth pay Edward a commercial rent, I had asked whether it was now the taxman’s practice to expect all parents who had given up their own home to pay their children commercial rents when they lived with them in their old age, and the matter had been dropped.

My father returned with a glass of white wine for my mother and two cut-glass tumblers with an ample measure of amber spirit in each for him and me.

‘Bugger the lot of them,’ he said, lifting his glass high in a toast, then he tossed a third of his whisky down his throat in one large gulp.

I smiled ruefully at him as I sipped at mine. It wasn’t that easy just to dismiss them all with an expletive. Maybe I could try telling the police to bugger off, but they probably wouldn’t have taken any notice.

And they didn’t.

I had a disturbed night and it was not just because my bedroom was cold, although that hadn’t helped.

Dinner was not easy.

My elder brother, Edward, was not particularly happy that I was there at all. It was clear from his body language.

‘How are the boys?’ I asked, trying to make things civil.

‘Away at prep school,’ Stella said. ‘Near Chester.’

‘You must miss them,’ I said.

‘I do,’ she replied, smiling at me wanly before glancing rapidly at Edward to check his reaction. ‘But they’re home for the half-term break this Friday. I can’t wait.’ This time the smile was genuine.

Edward, meanwhile, was building up a head of steam and it finally blew loudly and tactlessly over the main course.

‘You’re blackening our family’s good name,’ he said directly to me across the table.

I looked down at my food and ignored him — it was less stressful than getting into a fight.

‘Now, now, Edward, dear,’ my mother said, stroking the back of his hand. ‘William has enough trouble without you adding to it.’

It did not noticeably appease my brother, who pompously expressed his opinion that the common people looked to families such as ours to provide role models for their behaviour.

He had clearly forgotten that the first earl, our ancestor, had been a depraved and shameless womaniser who had acquired this castle as a result of a bet on cards in a brothel, and then had allegedly demanded a title in exchange for keeping quiet about an eighteenth-century royal scandal in the same establishment.

Nowadays that might have been called extortion.

‘It’s an outrage him being here,’ Edward muttered to no one in particular.

I looked up at him. ‘I’ve done nothing wrong,’ I said quietly.

I could see from his face that he thought I was lying, and he was about to say something else when our father cut in sharply. ‘That’s enough, Edward. You heard your mother.’

We all sat there in awkward silence for a while, the only noise being the clinking of our cutlery on the plates. And any conversation during the remainder of the meal was somewhat uneasy and forced, such that I think we were all relieved when it was over and Edward and Stella could return to their own quarters at the far end of the castle.

‘I’m tired,’ my mother announced. ‘I’m going up to bed.’

She offered her cheek for a goodnight kiss.

‘I think I might do the same,’ I said. ‘It’s been a long day.’

‘How about a nightcap?’ my father said, raising his bushy eyebrows at me in a manner that suggested that it wasn’t really a request, more of an order.

‘Fine,’ I said.

‘Don’t stay up too late, you boys,’ my mother said with a hollow laugh as she disappeared out through the door.

‘Whisky?’ my father asked. ‘Some of that Glenmorangie you brought with you?’

‘Just a very little,’ I said.

I wasn’t a habitual drinker of alcohol, let alone neat spirits, but on this occasion I welcomed the sharp warming sensation it made in me as it slipped down.

‘Now then, William,’ my father said, clearing his throat. ‘I think it’s time you fought back.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You can’t just stand by and let all this happen to you without responding. Look at this evening at dinner. You let Edward off without as much as a whimper, sitting there with your head down as if he were right and you are guilty. The same with this Bradbury man. It’s time to fight back, boy.’

I stared at him. Part of me agreed with him, and strongly so.

‘But I have been advised by my solicitors not to respond in any way.’

‘I don’t care what their advice is,’ my father said, banging his hand on the table to emphasise the point. ‘Your silence has got to stop or else everyone will believe you killed Amelia. And I’m assuming you didn’t.’

‘No, Pa, I didn’t.’

‘Then say so. Shout it from the ramparts and sue the damn papers for libel.’

‘Suing newspapers is extremely expensive,’ I said.

‘Only if you lose.’

I shook my head. ‘It would be expensive anyway. Even if you win, you never get all your costs back, and your lawyers expect you to pay them what they call a retainer before they will do anything. All of it, up front, just in case you lose. It would run into the hundreds of thousands. I haven’t got that sort of cash lying around, and neither have you.’

‘It’s so bloody unfair,’ my father said in frustration.

It certainly was.

We finished our drinks and then I made my way up the cold stone spiral staircase to my bedroom high in one of the towers that had made up the main defences of the castle.

The original thirteenth-century structure had been rectangular with a round tower at each corner and another midway down each side, the towers joined by curtain walls between them. It had not been built for comfort but simply to house a garrison of troops to defend itself and to dominate the surrounding countryside.

It had been Sir Thomas Humberly who had converted the interior of the towers from damp fetid dungeons into proper living accommodation, including the installation of square windows set high into the stonework, not an easy task considering the four-feet-thick fortified walls that sloped gradually inwards from ground level.

This bedroom was not where I’d spent my early childhood nights, that had been in the part now occupied by Edward and Stella, but this had been my space since I’d been a teenager when my father had inherited. The only difference since that time being the swapping of the single bed for a double after my marriage — something that, in itself, had been quite a task as it had had to be dismantled, carried up the narrow stairway in pieces, and then reconstructed in situ.

I sat down on the side of that bed and felt very alone. Amelia had loved this place, although more so in the warmth of the summer rather than now, as winter approached, with the bitter cold already seeping into my every joint. Central heating remained one of the modern-day comforts that the castle was still lacking although, thankfully, electricity, running water and sanitation had been installed in the first quarter of the twentieth century.

I undressed quickly and put on my warm pyjamas together with some bedsocks and my sweater. While folding my trousers, I came across the three envelopes that I had stuffed into a pocket at the Old Forge.

As I’d assumed, one of them contained a bill that could wait, but the other two did not. They were both letters and I read each of them through several times, absorbing the bad news.

The first was from the chairman of the BHA telling me that my services as an honorary racecourse steward were no longer ‘in the best interests of British racing’ and therefore my name had been struck from their list; all my future appointments as a steward had been cancelled.