Page 65 of The Secret Word
Wright rallied. “You are not fit to raise my grandson!”
“You are, demonstrably, not fit to be anywhere near my son—or any other boy,” Chris hissed. “As I will tell his Honor, here, if you insist. As I will prove in court, if that is what you wish.”
The solicitor returned with a glass, which he gave to Wright, who took a gulp. The eyes he raised to Chris burned with hate. “You have won. Much joy may it bring you. You’ll not work for me. You and Clem will not see another penny of my money. I’ll appoint someone else to run the company and be the boy’s trustee.”
Chris inclined his head. “My solicitor will leave a copy of the new agreement with yours. I will expect it to be returned to my solicitor, signed by you, tomorrow at noon.”
“Not so fast,” said the magistrate. I need to hear that word before I will dismiss the case.”
Wright argued, but the magistrate insisted, and in the end, the magistrate ordered the whole room cleared of all but him, Wright, and Chris. He then looked expectantly at Chris while Wright buried his face in his hands.
“For the sake of my wife and children, your honor,” Chris said, “I must ask you to keep this information in confidence, and take no action unless Wright goes back on his word to stop.”
The judge frowned, but his curiosity must have overcome his reluctance, for he said, “In confidence, then.”
Chris nodded, and Wright shrank further into his chair. “The secret word is ‘pederast’. I have evidence going back twenty years, and I dare say I could find more in Yorkshire. I will not let that man, unsupervised, anywhere near my son.”
The judge screwed his mouth up in disgust. “I do not blame you, Mr. Satterthwaite. Case dismissed. Now get this piece of filth out of my office.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Clem picked ather breakfast.
“Not hungry, darling?” Chris asked, looking concerned.
“How do I go on?” The words burst from Clem as if breaking through a dam. “How, Chris? He is my father, and he has been doing these terrible things. I never knew. How could I not have known? Such evil! I feel soiled, Chris. Guilty, too. I should have known somehow. I should have stopped him.”
Chris scooted around the corner of the table to take her in his arms, and she wept noisily on his shoulder. “Of course, you could not have known. He was at great pains to keep it secret, my love. And you are neither guilty nor soiled. We are not our fathers, and thank goodness for that.”
“That is very logical,” Clem acknowledged. “But Chris, I don’t feel logical.”
“I know. I know. But we shall get through this.”
Disgust still sat in her belly, cold and heavy, but she did feel a little better. Dread was there, too, though. “Chris, he will find a way to get back at us. More than cutting us off, I mean. He hates us now. We have beaten him, at least for the moment, so he will have to do something to hurt us. That is how he is.”
Chris took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh. “He is an evil man, Clem. Worse than my grandfather, and that takes some doing. We shall stay alert, I promise you.”
They were interrupted by a footman. “Sir, there is a constable at the door.”
“Give me a couple of minutes and then show him in,” Chris said. He dipped one of the napkins in a finger bowl and wiped Clem’s eyes. “Do you want to stay and hear him?”
Of course she did. “It will be Father,” she said. “I know it.”
It was, but not in the way Clem expected. The constable was uneasy about her being present, and she soon found out why he would have preferred to have spoken with her husband on his own. “I regret to inform you, Mrs. Satterthwaite, that your father, Mr. Bertram Wright, has been found dead in his offices. Shot, ma’am, perhaps by an intruder.”
Perhaps he expected her to fall into strong hysterics. Instead, she could only sit there, frozen, thinking,Will is safe. Chris is safe. My family is safe.
“Mrs. Satterthwaite has had a shock,” Chris was saying to the constable.
“Sir,” the constable said, obviously embarrassed, “I understand you have had a disagreement with your father-in-law. I need to ask you, sir, where were you last night?”
Trust Father to attack them even in dying!
But Chris was explaining to the constable that he had won the disagreement with Father. “Now if I had been shot last night, you might have looked at Wright for it. But—you can ask the magistrate—I won my case, so Wright was not a threat to me.” He went on to assure the constable that he had been at home all evening and all night, and that the servants could attest to that. He handed the constable over to the footman. “Take him through to the servants’ hall and tell everyone to answer any questions he might have,” he said.
When the constable was gone, Clem told Chris, “I am glad that he is dead. Does that make me a terrible person? But I am. Iknow you told him he could have supervised visits to Will, but I never wanted him to see our little boy again, and now he won’t.”
“I feel the same way,” Chris said. “But best if we keep that between ourselves, my love.”
