The clerk called the next witness, and Fenella Waverly rose from her seat and walked to the front of the room with a slow, deliberate step. She wore a dark coat, still buttoned, and a scarf of deep green, and her hair was drawn back, and her face was calm, though I could see the tension in her hands, clasped before her. She took the stand, and she laid one hand on the rail, and she looked at the hearing chair, and she waited.
"Mrs. Waverly," the chair said, "you bought two vessels from the Haversham Danube Line. Please tell this authority, in your own words, how that sale came about."
Fenella drew a breath, and she began. "I have bought and sold boats for thirty years," she said. "I know what a historic river vessel is worth, and I know what a fair price looks like. When Landon Haversham came to me, three months ago, and offered me the Wachau Queen and the Vienna Star, I was surprised, because those boats are the heart of his mother's company, and they are not the kind of vessels a family sells. But he was insistent. He said his mother was ill, and that the company needed money, and that the boats were costing more to keep than they were worth. He showed me a paper, a power of attorney, and he said it gave him the right to sell."
She paused, and she looked across the room at Landon, and her gaze was steady and cold. "I asked him why the price was so low. The two boats together are worth more than a million. He was offering them to me for two hundred thousand. I have never been offered a bargain like that in thirty years, and I have learned, in thirty years, that a bargain like that is never a bargain. It is a trap, or a theft, or both. I asked him, twice, whether his mother had agreed to the sale. He said yes, both times. He said she had signed the papers herself, and that she was too ill to come and sign them again. I believed him, because I had no reason not to. He is her son. A son does not lie about his mother."
A murmur ran through the room, and the chair raised a hand, and the murmur died. Fenella went on, her voice growing firmer with every sentence. "I paid the money, and the boats were transferred to me, and I took them to my own mooring, and I did not think about them again until Mrs. Haversham came to my door, alive, and standing on my step in the rain, and asked me to give her boats back. I thought I was seeing a ghost. She told me what had happened, and she showed me the logbook, and she showed me the partnership agreement, and I understood, in that moment, that I had been part of a theft, and that the only honourable thing I could do was to return the boats and to come here and tell the truth."
She reached into her coat and took out a folded paper, and she held it up. "This is the sale agreement," she said. "It is signed by Landon Haversham, and it is authorised by the power of attorney, and the price is written here, in black and white: two hundred thousand for two boats worth more than a million. And this," she said, taking out a second paper, "is the bank record of my payment. The money went to the company's account, and two days later, it went out again, to Alpen Trade. I have the records. I brought them with me, because I knew this day would come."
Landon's lawyer rose. "Mrs. Waverly, you bought the boats willingly. You signed the agreement. You cannot now claim you were deceived, when the papers were plain before you."
Fenella turned to him, and her voice was like ice on the river in January. "I signed a sale," she said. "I did not sign a lie. I was told the owner's mother had agreed. I was told the price was fair because the boats were in poor repair. Neither of those things was true. The boats were in good repair. I had them inspected the week after I bought them, and my own engineer told me they had been well kept, and that the price was a fraction of their worth. I was deceived, and I am here to say so, and I am here to give the boats back, because they were never Landon's to sell."
The hearing chair asked the clerk to take the sale agreement and the bank record, and the clerk marked them as evidence, and Fenella stepped down from the stand, and she walked back to her seat, and she did not look at Landon as she passed him, and I thought that was the greatest punishment of all, to be looked past, as if you were not there, as if you did not matter.
I caught her eye as she sat down, and I nodded to her, and she nodded back, a small, grave nod, and I knew that we understood each other, two women who had built their lives on the river, and who had both been lied to by the same man. Outside the window, the Danube moved on, grey and steady, and somewhere on it, I knew, the Wachau Queen and the Vienna Star were waiting at their mooring in Vienna, home again, and the thought of them, safe and sound, was the warmest thing I had felt all day.
Chapter 33
— Yvonne Takes the Stand