The Birthday Present (37 page)

There have been two coincidences over the years. If they are coincidences. Perhaps they should just be thought of as interesting happenings. My daughter Nadine's schoolfriend Hannah is going out with a boy called Justin Furnal, aged nineteen. It must be the same one. Philomena Lynch had a huge win on the National Lottery about five years ago and, according to the
Evening Standard,
bought with half the proceeds the house in Hampstead Garden Suburb once owned by Damian and Kelly Mason. Once more the
Standard
dug up all the dirt about Ivor and Hebe, the Masons and the birthday present, but Ivor up in Norfolk saw none of it.

Dermot died in that house, a year or so after his mother bought it, and then Ivor ceased to pay the pension. She and Sean had no need of it. Sean has got married and, as far as anyone knows, has become an exemplary citizen. Of the fates of Sheila Atherton, Erica Caxton, and the Trenants I have no knowledge. Nicola Ross has married a Polish count
and, like Ivor, has two children. But long before any of this, at the start of 1995, the police found the murderer of Jane Atherton.

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ONSIDERING THEY HAD
had Jane's diary for several months by then, they took their time. Perhaps they had too little evidence to proceed. But Jane had been raped, so I would have expected tests to show beyond a doubt that he was guilty. But I don't know. My ignorance on these matters is as profound as that of most law-abiding men, I suppose.

He was charged, appeared in the magistrates' court in February, and his trial took place at the Central Criminal Court in the following December. No one even remotely connected with this whole business had ever heard of him unless they had read Jane's diary. He was Stuart Thomas Higgs, twenty-eight, a window cleaner of Kensal Rise.

At the trial details of his association with Jane came out. He had been employed by the managing agents of the building where her flat was to clean the residents' windows inside and out. His counsel suggested that she gave him great encouragement, which is not suggested by the diary. She seems, eventually, to have been attracted to him out of despair, out of resignation to her only hope of finding love and companionship. They went to a pub together, apparently drank a good deal, and she invited him back home with her afterward. As far as they knew. Anyway, he must have been in the flat with her. His counsel told the court that she consented to sex with him, then changed her mind. Higgs had no memory of what happened after that. He said he found himself with one of her kitchen knives in his hand and the two of them there on her bed in a pool of her blood.

Higgs was sentenced to life imprisonment, as was mandatory, with a recommendation that he should serve a minimum of fifteen years. This means he should be out in three years' time.

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NANSWERED QUESTIONS REMAIN
Would Jane have attempted to blackmail Ivor? It must have been a large sum she meant to extract from him if she expected to live on it for the rest of her life. She seemed very determined. Would Ivor have agreed to what she asked? I have never mentioned that aspect of things to him. As far as I know, he isn't aware of the existence of the diary. Juliet has read it but she is even less likely than Iris and I are to tell him of it. Why did Der-mot Lynch drive across that Hendon junction fast and against a red light? A suggestion was made when I told the tale to a psychiatrist friend of Iris's, heavily disguised and with the names changed, that Dermot, a single and perhaps celibate man, had been overstimulated sexually by tying Hebe up and putting handcuffs and a gag on her while his own face was covered. This would perhaps have led to his total loss of control.

Having shown himself a master of drama in the handing back of the pearls, why did Gerry Furnal do nothing more? Why did he never speak to the media? Why did his wife never speak to them? Well, I have the impression he was always a quiet, reserved sort of man, the antithesis of what Ivor had been. As for her, no doubt she kept silent to please him.

What became of the pearls?

We spent last Christmas with Ivor and Juliet and their children at Ramburgh House. Over eighty by now, Louisa was there with her live-in carer and the Munros with their
daughters. Some cousins of Iris and Ivor's came and Juliet's brother with his girlfriend, so we sat down twenty to Christmas dinner. Juliet, a little heavier than she had been— she always ate heartily—but as beautiful as ever, was in black with pearls. According to Ivor she had said she “didn't do pearls,” but here she was wearing a string of them, large flawless pearls.

“Is it the same one?” Iris whispered to me.

I don't know. If it was it is perhaps a sign of the perfect accord between Ivor and his wife.