Page 20 of The New House

I’m not making excuses for them, of course.

Theychoseto follow Manson, to join his doomsday cult, to kill without pity, without remorse, and take pleasure in it.

But to coin a phrase, some people are born psychopaths, and some have psychopathy thrust upon them.

The first time everyone in our property chain met was at the charity gala for the Princess Eugenie Hospital.

Everyone knows about that night now, of course. The newspapers did it to death after everything came out. There was even a reconstruction-for-TV of the whole evening, including the auction, although they made it a lot more dramatic than it seemed at the time. None of us knew it then, of course, but a terrible chain of events was set in motion that night.

Our meeting was no less fateful than the day a teenager called Susan Atkins sat down to listen to a young man with hypnotic eyes play his guitar.

And it would end the same way.

In murder.

chapter 12

millie

Tom is sitting on the opposite side of our table from me, back to back with Harper, with whom he’s been conducting an animated conversation all through dinner. I watch them, wondering what they can be talking about.

I worry about Tom sometimes. He has a weakness for dangerous women. And something tells me that despite outward appearances, Harper Conway could be very dangerous indeed.

As the wait staff clear away our plates after the main course – overcooked salmon, but the hollandaise sauce was decent enough – one of the men at Stacey’s table, a middle-aged sports presenter running to fat, starts to complain loudly about the quality of the wine to a poor waitress young enough to still have braces on her teeth.

‘He wouldn’t know a good claret if he had a transfusion with it,’ Stacey murmurs in my ear as she gets up from the table. ‘Excuse me, I’ll be back in a minute.’

The hospital’s chief executive, a whip-smart Wharton grad called Michèle Harrington, approaches a podium set up on the small dais usually used by the band. While the dinner has been underway, a silent auction has taken place: guests have had the opportunity to sign up to bid on a number of items laid out on linen-covered trestles at the back of the ballroom, including a pink sapphire Dinny Hall ring and a week in Nevis I found rather tempting.

Michèle begins to announce the winners in advance of the live auction just as Stacey slides back into her seat. The bids far outstrip the worth of the items; this is a charity fundraiser, after all. And nothing opens wallets like having your name and ability to pay written on a bid sheet visible to your peers.

The aggressive walrus at Stacey’s table visibly jumps in shock when his name is announced as the winner of a case of vintage 2009 Margaux.

‘Incredibly generous bid,’ Michèle says, beaming at him as she leads a round of applause. ‘Ten thousand pounds, ladies and gentlemen!’

He pales beneath his fake tan.

‘I didn’t – I don’t remember bidding on that,’ he sputters to the table at large.

‘It’s for such a good cause,’ Stacey says, winking at me.

At the next table, Tom roars with laughter at something Harper has said.

‘By the way, Millie,’ Stacey says, ‘I have a few pieces of furniture we can’t take with us to our new apartment, and I wondered if you’d be interested in having me leave them behind? That teal Julian Chichester cabinet in the sitting room, and the Agostino mirror. They’re simply too big.’

‘Are you sure? They’re so beautiful,’ I say.

‘You’d be doing me a favour taking them off my hands. In fact,’ she adds, ‘why don’t you come and take another look at them and then decide? Maybe Saturday morning? Felix makes a mean mimosa.’

‘I could do Sunday,’ I say. ‘I have surgical rehearsal this Saturday.’

‘Sunday works.’

Felix leans behind the man seated between him and his wife. ‘Stop it, Stacey,’ he says.

His tone is cold. I don’t know if he objects to the brunch invitation in general, or me in particular.

Michèle launches the live auction, perfectly timed for this point in the evening when the guests are nicely lubricated. The bidding is lively and even raucous at times as donors compete to flex their philanthropic muscles.

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