All eyes in the room turned to settle on Diana Hope-Bruce, sitting almost at the head of the table, but not quite, her head bowed.
‘His son Jos was dead,’ continued Dixon. ‘And his testamentary intention was quite clear. Clause twelve of his will is an administrative provision: references in this my Will to children and/or issue shall not include adopted or stepchildren. That means bloodline only, and you’re not of his bloodline.’
‘Is that true, Diana?’ demanded Malcolm.
No reply.
‘Jos was three months old at the time,’ continued Dixon. ‘And died at his mother’s hand before his father, Robert Hope-Bruce, ever clapped eyes on him. By the time he returned from Saudi Arabia, Jos had been replaced with you, Patrick, and he was none the wiser.’
‘The gift in Robert’s will fails in that case,’ said Malcolm, clapping his hands. ‘And he left the shares to me and Penny in the event that Jos died before him. I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen, the deal’s off. Oake Cider is a family company and it’s bloody well going to stay that way.’
A single glance from Dixon was enough to wipe the glee from Malcolm’s face. ‘As you now know, Patrick, you were snatched from a bridge team standing on the terrace of the Palace Hotel during a fire in the ballroom. Your real mother, Miriam, and your grandfather died in that fire, and four members of that bridge team have since been murdered. You are also to be investigated in connection with those murders.’
‘Wait a minute.’ Diana jumped up, two uniformed officers moving quickly to flank her. ‘He knows nothing about this; any of it.’
‘About what?’
She took a deep breath, then slumped back down into the chair. ‘I killed them. The first three, anyway. Will killed the last one – stabbed him.’
‘Don’t say anything, Mum.’
‘I’m not your mum, Jos. He’s right. Your real name is Patrick Hudson.’
Dixon looked at Jane and nodded in Diana’s direction. The room hushed, listening to Jane arresting her for the murders of Deirdre Baxter, Michael Allam, Thomas Fowler and Geoffrey Pannell.
‘We’ll also be looking again at the deaths of Joanne Lucking and your husband, Robert,’ said Dixon.
‘My brother was murdered?’ Malcolm again.
‘Who’s Joanne Lucking?’ asked Diana.
‘She was found dead on a park bench on Babbacombe Downs,’ replied Dixon. ‘The official cause of death was accidental drug overdose.’
Diana was watching Dixon, shaking her head. ‘We employed a private detective to see if there were any witnesses and he found some druggie who’d seen me running along the coast path with a baby in my arms. So, she had to die. I gave her the fatal dose and sat with her while she injected it; watched her drift off. It was quite peaceful, really.’
‘Who’s we?’ Patrick’s hands were handcuffed behind his back now, a uniformed officer holding each arm.
Dixon placed two framed pictures on the table in front of Diana. ‘This is a photograph of your parents that we found in your dressing room. And this a photograph of William Hudson’s parents we found at his house.’
She looked ready to deny it, but crumpled. ‘Yes. He was my brother.’
‘If he was your bloody brother, how come I never met him until I was going out with Freya?’ demanded Patrick.
‘No one could know,’ replied Diana. ‘We talked on the phone, met in secret. The two sides of the family had never met, so it was easy enough.’
‘So, when you ran up to Deirdre Baxter on the terrace and said, “He’s my nephew, I’ll look after him,” you were telling the truth?’ asked Dixon, handing the framed photographs back to Jane.
‘It was a couple of days after Jos died and I’d gone for a drink with Miriam. She was at the hotel with her father, who was in the bridge thing. It was a longstanding arrangement and I couldn’t get out of it, so I told them Jos wasn’t well – sniffles or something – and I’d get a babysitter. When I got there the fire was raging and this group of people was standing on the terrace with Patrick, so I took him off them. The woman said Miriam had handed him to her on the fire escape, gone back for her father and not reappeared. I told her the baby was my nephew and she gave him to me. The police came knocking the next day. They knew I’d not long given birth, so I told them he was mine. What else could I do? I’d killed my own baby.’ Diana was breathing heavily, her chest heaving. ‘All hell broke loose after that, what with the hunt for the missing child. Then Will came to see me maybe a week later. He’d have recognised Patrick straight away, so I told him what had happened, about Jos and everything. I’d have gone to prison. My own beautiful baby boy. I shook him, and shook him . . . he just wouldn’t stop crying . . .’
Dixon waited while she gathered her composure.
She gave a long, slow shrug. ‘Will was going to have enough trouble as a single parent as it was, without a baby on his hands – Freya was only two – and I’d have probably ended up looking after Patrick anyway, so he decided to let me keep him. It was either that or watch his sister go to prison. And then there was what we could offer Patrick . . . money was no object.’
‘Fucking Harrow,’ sneered Patrick. ‘I hated it anyway.’
‘The private detective and the campaign to find him – it was just a smokescreen,’ continued Diana, lost in her own thoughts. ‘We knew where he was the whole time. All we had to do was get to the bridge team before the police did, which was easy enough. The teams were listed on the bridge union website and Somerset was the only team of six with four men and two women. Will spoke to them one by one, assured them Patrick was safe – he was the boy’s father after all – offered them some money and that was that. They kept quiet; told the police they had no recollection of seeing a baby that night. Will was protecting me, bless him. He’d always done that, but that’s another story I’ll not repeat in front of all these people.’ She closed the lever arch file in front of her and slid it into the middle of the table. ‘If it had come out that Patrick survived the fire then I’d have gone to prison for killing Jos. And the CPS had dropped the charge against Rodwell relating to Patrick’s death, so we weren’t even perverting the course of justice, Will said. It was a private family arrangement, and nobody else’s business.’
‘What about my brother?’ asked Malcolm.
‘That was an accident, it really was,’ replied Diana. ‘But it gave us an opportunity. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, Patrick was Robert’s son, so he inherited half the company. I’d been helping Will financially; not the most astute of businessmen to say the least, but this was thirty million in cash we’re talking about if this deal went through.’ She clenched her fists. ‘Then the piece of waste ground behind our old house was sold and builders found Jos’s body. It all started to unravel after that.’
‘You took a bit of a gamble sending Patrick to take the DNA test, given that he was Jos’s cousin,’ said Dixon.
‘What choice did I have? We were told it was only a partial profile, so I thought he was less likely to be a match. I’d have stood no chance. Sending him seemed like the perfect answer, and it worked.’
‘I’m guessing it was Thomas Fowler who got in touch, wanting more money, seeing as he was the first to die.’
Diana’s eyes narrowed. ‘I thought I’d got away with it, once they buried him. It had to be you, didn’t it, and not the Torquay lot. Will had them wrapped around his little finger.’ She gave a self-pitying sigh. ‘We’d paid the bridge team off and the private detective couldn’t get them to talk. They were still denying all knowledge of Patrick surviving the fire, so we thought we’d be all right. Then the call came. Fowler had seen the report of the baby’s remains in the paper, put two and two together, and demanded to know if they were connected. He didn’t really know anything, but then he didn’t need to; all he had to do was ask the question. Or tell the police about Patrick and leave them to ask the question; that’s what he threatened to do. He wanted more money, said he was going into a care home and needed it for that. I was wearing Sally’s OT uniform and the silly old sod let me in before he realised who it was. Died surprisingly quickly, come to think of it. They all did.’
‘Why not just pay him off again?’ asked Dixon.
‘We didn’t have any money to give him at that point. I tried reasoning with him – said if he could wait just a few months – but he wouldn’t.’
‘Were the others blackmailing you as well?’
‘No, but Will said we couldn’t take the chance. By then there was too much at stake, and we’d got away with it once already. The slightest suspicion that Jos wasn’t Jos and that shit would’ve demanded a DNA test.’ Diana jabbed her finger at Malcolm. ‘We couldn’t risk the sale of the company falling through; losing all that money.’
‘I really don’t think you should be saying any more, Mrs Hope-Bruce,’ said her corporate lawyer. ‘Not until you’ve spoken to someone in our crime team.’
