The Hunt for Sonya Dufrette

by R. T. Raichev

  So They had no children in Anatole Vorodin’s obituary meant precisely that. The Vorodins had never had any children, natural or adopted.

  What about Veronica’s letter to Lena then? Well, it might have nothing to do with Sonya. They might have simply kept in touch, the way cousins did —

  ‘I lost him,’ she heard the driver say. ‘Your husband. I don’t know where he went.’

  ‘Never mind, drive to Richmond,’ Antonia said. He would be there. Perhaps he had gone to buy a hammer - or an axe. She was certain he would wind up at Twiston.

  They arrived at Richmond some minutes before five o‘clock. Antonia was amazed at herself for remembering the way to Twiston so well after twenty years. She told the driver to stop outside the wrought-iron gates. She realized then that she didn’t have any money on her. She had left her handbag in the library. She felt the merciless sun rays upon her and was aware of the rivulets of sweat coursing down her face. She didn’t even have a handkerchief to wipe her face!

  ‘I am sorry. Please, come to the club tomorrow morning,’ she said. ‘I’ll pay you then.’

  She must have presented a pathetic sight for the driver did not make a scene. He looked at her, shook his head and handed her a bundle of tissues. He then started the engine. Antonia stood watching the phantom of her distorted reflection receding in the curve of the dark glass, and as the cab disappeared in the distance, she dabbed at her brow and cheeks. Her nostrils caught a faint tang of wood smoke. She walked up to the gates and found them locked, but there was a smaller door further down the wall, which was open.

  She went in.

  23

  The Edwardian Game Larder

  Crunch-crunch, went the gravel under her feet, astonish ingly loud, as she walked along the avenue in the ever-scorching sun. She hoped she wouldn’t encounter any of Mrs Ralston-Scott’s gardeners or dogs.

  A sound that conveys ownership and ease. The words of Sir Michael Mortlock came back to her incongruously. Sir Michael, it occurred to her, had been the sanest person at Twiston on that fatal day, also the nicest. He hadn’t contributed to any of the gossip-mongering. He had tried to pour oil on troubled waters. He had done his best to keep everybody happy. She thought she could smell his cigar — Partagas, that was the Cuban brand he had smoked. (The silly things one remembered!) She expected to see him sitting on the rustic seat under the oak, clad in a light flannel suit and sporting a straw boater with a pink ribbon, engrossed in Geoffrey Household’s Rogue Male, which he must be reading for the tenth time. He would look up from the book at her approach, rise to his feet and take off his hat with old-fashioned courtesy, his pink wrinkled face creasing into a smile, his faded brown eyes twinkling. ‘Ah, Antonia. It was so much better in those days, when you knew who your enemy was, don’t you think?’ She then remembered that Sir Michael was long gone, dead — had been dead for nearly twenty years.

  She recalled reading Sir Michael’s obituary in The Times. It had come to her as a great surprise that he had been a Freemason as well as a member of various other esoteric-sounding societies. No one would have associated him with that sort of thing. Sir Michael had always struck her as the most down-to-earth of men, unaffected, placid, amiable and more than a little vague - not at all the kind that would go in for dressing up in strange robes and executing equally strange handshakes with his fellow Masons.

  Hugh had suggested that Sir Michael might have been a member of some kind of Herrenvolk cult. Impossible - ridiculous. What next? A member of the Babylonian brotherhood? There had been a chapter in Dufrette’s book entitled ‘Knights of the Dark Sun’. The Dark Knights practised the sacrifice of children and virgins, or so Dufrette had claimed. Sir Michael had been seen outside Twiston with his hands covered in blood. He had been holding a knife. Well, he had been cutting the liver out of a young boar. No - that was a dream Lady Mortlock had had. But didn’t dreams reflect reality in a distorted kind of way?

  Antonia rubbed her temples. Could one discipline one’s thoughts? Although the proximity of the river and the trees in the garden made the atmosphere here less sultry, she continued to feel rather light-headed. Every now and then luminous spots that were dark around the edges flashed before her eyes.

  Sir Michael was the only person who had been nice to Lena ... He had liked Lena, Dufrette had said. Sir Michael had had a penchant for large ladies ... He had kept inviting the Dufrettes to Twiston despite his wife’s disapproval of them ... Antonia saw him once more, this time beside the river, putting an arm around Lena ... No one else had tried to comfort Lena ... Sir Michael had disappeared at weekends - Lady Mortlock said so ... He had said he was going bird-watching ...

  Crunch-crunch. Antonia’s progress was slow, deliberately so. She had to be careful ... An adagio prelude to a furious overture? She hoped not. She walked with her head bowed, straining her ears for the sounds of a hammer striking against cement, though she knew that would be unlikely. Other noises kept coming to her ears: rustling of leaves, whispering, distant footfalls, dogs’ muffled barking, the splashing of the river, even the sweet old- fashioned sounds of ‘Lavender’s Blue’! She couldn’t be sure about any of them. For one thing the river couldn’t be heard from here. On a quiet day like this, there wasn’t likely to be a single ripple on it. She was imagining things. If she didn’t get a grip on herself, she’d be seeing Sonya’s ghost coming from the direction of the river next! The thought sent a slight shiver down her spine.

  There was no sign of Major Nagle. He hadn’t arrived yet, or could he be approaching the oak by a different route?

  A rogue male. Was he dangerous? Was he likely to turn nasty? Well, yes. If he saw that she suspected — nay, knew what he had done. He would have brought a hammer with him. All he needed to do was raise the hammer in his ham-like hand and bring it down on her head. Would he dare? The odd thing was that she didn’t feel in the least afraid. She had been brought to Twiston by a twist of fate, by a strange concatenation of chance and circumstance. She was on the track of a child-killer. She didn’t feel anxious, excited or thrilled either. This, Antonia thought, is something I’ve got to do. This is journey’s end. The denouement. No - the final action-filled sequence before the denouement. The chapter she would call ‘Rogue Male’. The denouement of course was going to take place in the library at Twiston -

  She shook her head. She was mixing fact and fiction again! She was overheated, probably dangerously so.

  She imagined her face taking on the characteristics of a hunting creature: brows drawn together, lips pursed tight, nostrils dilating as those of a dog on the scent ... Shouldn’t she have called the police and informed them of her findings? It was only now that the thought occurred to her and she frowned. Well, yes - this was a matter for the police. Only, she felt sure, they wouldn’t take any of it seriously. They would consider her unhinged - the dehydrated victim of sunstroke. Or - or they might think it was a publicity stunt, that she was doing it to increase the sales of her one detective novel.

  What was that, madam? A sadistic Major? A doll-like child immured inside the hollow of a Jacobean oak? A signet ring embedded in the cement? Revelations brought about by Gardeners’ Question Time? Even if they had been prepared to listen to her story, even if they gave her the benefit of the doubt and accepted that there might be something in it, they wouldn’t have rushed to Twiston in hot pursuit of Major Nagle. By the time they did decide to interview Nagle, it would be too late. He would have been able to remove the body and his ring several times over.

  Though would he? The whole idea seemed fantastic.

  How she needed Hugh’s advice! If only he had been with her now.

  She had come upon the old-fashioned garden thermometer that marked the highest and lowest temperatures of the day. It was attached to the wall of an octagonal structure with small round windows whose panes were of butter-scotch yellow and a pointed chocolate-coloured roof ending in what looked like a giant humbug, situated under a birch tree. She remembered both, the thermometer
and the building, very well indeed. The thermometer, she discovered, stood at eighty-four and a half.

  The building had held her entranced when she had first laid eyes on it. It was at once whimsical and vaguely menacing. It had something of the fairy-tale about it (shades of Hansel and Gretel?), though it had been a mere game larder in Edwardian times, placed under the birch tree for coolness’ sake, and by the time she had first seen it, no longer in use. As far as she could recall, it was only Sir Michael who had come to it to examine the thermometer. Sir Michael had considered converting the larder to a storage place of some kind, she couldn’t think exactly for what. As a matter of fact she had observed him carry an ancient lacquered toy-box through the garden and place it inside the larder. It had been - why, it was the day of her departure from Twiston! The day after the tragedy ...

  Her eye fell on an object on the ground. Something that had gleamed in the sun. She picked it up. A metal button, from a man’s blazer. Her heart missed a beat. Could Major Nagle be taking cover inside the game larder? The place was large enough - just about. No - the button was quite old, she could see now. It had been on the ground for some time, years maybe. Major Nagle was wearing a hacking jacket which had a completely different set of buttons. Besides, the door was padlocked and rusty and overgrown with some white flowering creeper that seemed quite undisturbed. What was it called? Polygonum ...? One of the experts on the Gardeners’ Question Time panel would know. The plant, she imagined, was of the kind that grew quickly, smotheringly, and was a menace to anything else that wanted to grow.

  Suddenly Antonia had a strange feeling, she couldn’t quite explain, and she stood frowning at the small white flowers that covered the larder door. Like a shrine, she thought. She tried to peer inside through one of the small yellow-panelled windows, but could see nothing. Sir Michael had had a nervous breakdown in the wake of Sonya’s disappearance and died soon after. That toy-box — like a child’s coffin. What if ... No. No.

  The heat.

  Where was the oak? Antonia stood looking round. Was it to the left or the right? Well, directions didn’t really matter - the tree was so big, it could easily be seen from anywhere in the garden. Only now she couldn’t see it. Not at all. How peculiar ... She started walking again, followed the path to the left. There was the statue of Pan covered in green moss and the disused pond filled with murky rain water. There was the rustic seat too, where Sir Michael had liked to sit. But the seat used to be under the oak! She saw the oak in her mind’s eye: dark and lifeless and melancholy, with brittle sharp branches, like a skeletal hand reaching into the sky. The oak should be - out there.

  But it wasn’t. Not any longer. Taking a few steps, Antonia stood blinking. She gasped as her eyes fell on the stump. It resembled the crater of a mini volcano. The oak was gone. It had been cut - removed - disposed of. The area had been carefully cleaned. There was not a single branch or bough littering the ground. How was that possible? When did it happen? Hadn’t Mrs Ralston-Scott been talking about the oak only three hours ago - she had sought advice on national radio. To cut or not to cut, she had said.

  Then Antonia saw what had happened. The programme had been a repeat. The radio recording must have been made the week before. Mrs Ralston-Scott hadn’t wasted time. She had called the tree surgeon soon after her appearance on Gardeners’ Question Time, probably the very next day, and requested the removal of the offensive oak. Enough, she must have thought, was enough.

  Antonia knelt beside the dun-coloured stump. The tree, she could see now, had been entirely hollow inside. The cement base was still there, but it had been broken up, smashed into several pieces. She ran her hand across one - burrowed her fingers in the cracks. There was nothing there. Nothing at all. Not a single trace of a small skeleton. No child had ever been immured in the hollow. That, she realized, had been her wild imagination at work again. Of all the preposterous propositions!

  She felt the blood rushing into her face. She bit her lip. She didn’t know whether to laugh or weep. Watch out for the ring, Miss Pettigrew had whispered in her ear, but Miss Pettigrew had proved a bad counsellor.

  Never trust an imaginary friend, Antonia thought as she rose to her feet.

  24

  The Hour of the Wolf

  But then who was that man - the man she had observed in the club library - and what had it all meant? An expression of shock had been on his brick-red face all right. She didn’t think she had been wrong about that. He had been listening to the radio, to Gardeners’ Question Time, to Mrs Ralston-Scott’s voice talking about the proposed sawing down of the ancient oak ... Though had he?

  Antonia sat down on the rustic seat, shut her eyes and replayed in her mind the scene she had observed, slowly, very carefully. The man had been reading the paper and she had seen him drop it as though in sudden agitation. It had been a racing paper. She had assumed that he had received a shock because of something he had heard on the radio, but what if it was something he had read in the racing paper that had caused him to look as though he were going to have a heart attack? The racing results ... Yes. He was a betting man. A lethal gambler. He had put a lot of money on the wrong horse and lost. That would account for it. He had lost a fortune, that’s why he had looked staggered - so terribly upset. Her imagination had done the rest.

  The man hadn’t been Major Nagle. It would have been too extraordinary, too fantastic, too serendipitous a coincidence if it had been him. It had been someone else. Another military type. Somebody who had had no intention of coming to Twiston, who had no idea where Twiston was. A stranger. She had been a fool. A crazy overheated fool. She couldn’t have misread the situation more completely. Her theory of the body in the hollow, like the uniform of George V in the portrait in the committee room, had seemed so perfect and clear from a distance, but on close inspection it proved to be no more than a fuzzy and meaningless blur. She had acted precipitously. She had ignored reason and allowed her imagination to lead her on a trail of false clues - and there she was now, in her summer frock, sunburnt, hot and grimy, at Twiston.

  Full circle, Antonia thought. Things had come full circle. It had all started at Twiston, with a tragedy, followed by a mystery, and it was ending at Twiston with a loose end. That was life, sadly. Only in detective stories were problems resolved neatly on the last page.

  She sighed and shook her head. She had been a fool. It would be embarrassing to tell anyone about it, even Hugh! She couldn’t blame the heat completely and exclusively - she had to take some responsibility for it herself ... At least there had been no murder and chances were that Sonya was still alive, leading a happy life with Mrs Vorodin somewhere abroad, near a cobalt-blue sea and golden beaches, under cloudless skies ...

  What now? She had no money on her. How could she get back to London? She couldn’t go on depending on the kindness of cab drivers! What a ridiculous situation. Perhaps she could ring David and ask him to come and collect her in his car? Yes. But she didn’t have any change for a phone call; she didn’t even know where the nearest telephone booth was ... She did possess a mobile phone but hardly ever used it. She always managed to leave it at home. She had no option but to go up to the house and ask Mrs Ralston-Scott for permission to use the telephone. Rising, Antonia began to walk slowly towards the house.

  What explanation for her presence on the grounds of Twiston should she give? Should she tell Mrs Ralston-Scott who she was and remind her of their conversation on the telephone the week before? Perhaps she could say that she was staying at a place not far from Twiston and that she had come to the house to relive memories? No - that wouldn’t explain why she needed to make an urgent phone call to her son in London -

  Suddenly she stopped. She had come out into a clearing. It was a smallish lawn with a sundial in its centre, surrounded by statuary of the classical kind. It was a secluded spot and she had no recollection of having been in this part of the garden before. It was at the middle of the lawn, at what lay there beside the sundial that she stood stari
ng. She couldn’t believe her eyes. The scene had a theatrical, surreal, rather hallucinatory quality about it. Well, she had come thinking of a body, looking for a body, and she seemed to have found it. Only — only it was the wrong body.

  This was not the tiny body of a child but that of a grossly fat woman ...

  Antonia felt her legs moving once more. Then she stopped again.

  The woman was dressed in a long white dress. She lay on her back, spread-eagled, arms flung out. Her face was bluish in colour, like a discarded rubber mask. Blubber lips. Swollen, sagging flesh - blotched, like a toad’s — obscene! Folds of double chin. The light brown eyes were wide open and glazed. Her hair very long, grey and straggly. She brought to mind some grotesque middle-aged Ophelia —