‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’
‘You don’t want to upset me. You think I might get a heart attack or something if you do.’ Lady Mortlock paused. ‘You did see the photographs in the sitting room, of course?’
‘I did.’ Antonia decided she might as well take the bull by the horns. ‘You knew Lena before she married Lawrence Dufrette.’
‘Was it ever suggested otherwise?’
‘Yes. You said that you had first met her when Lawrence introduced her as his young bride.’
‘Really? I believe you are right. I did. Lena came to see me, you know. I don’t remember when. Was it last year? Two years ago? It might have been last month. It doesn’t matter. She told me all manner of useless things. That she and Lawrence had separated, that she had had a fortune which she had frittered away and was now destitute, that Lawrence had been quite unable to keep his hands off that girl of theirs and how her mother’s heart had been broken, how much she missed Baltic herring on buttered brown bread, how ungrateful and mean someone called Vivian was -’
Antonia frowned. ‘Sorry to interrupt you -’
‘Lena seemed to believe I would be interested. She looked dreadful. She’s got really fat. Her hair was sickly orange and she reeked of brandy. She kept snivelling, bemoaning her fate. She tried to hold my hand. She even attempted to kiss me. It all made me so grievously ill that Bea thought the end had come. Bea had no idea of course that my visitor and the girl in the photographs were in fact the same person. Well, in a manner of speaking they weren’t… Do you dream, Antonia?’
‘I do.’
‘I had a very peculiar dream the other night. The wake of a battu. Dead boars, at least fifty of them, all very young, laid out on the drive leading up to the house. Some of them still twitching. The house, I am sure, was Twiston. All lit by flambeaux held by beaters – while men in letter-box red outfits were cutting out the boars’ livers. It has to be done at the moment of death, you see, that’s when it becomes a delicacy. One of the men was Michael and he was extremely busy cutting away with an enormous carving knife. His hands were covered in blood… He looked different from the others. He was got up in white robes, like some high priest… Funny how badly Michael took it when that little girl drowned. One would have thought she was his daughter!’
‘Miss Garnett thinks the girl in the photographs is your daughter.’
‘Well, that was a fiction which was started by George. Michael’s son. In the name of decency and propriety, I imagine. George had guessed my secret, you see. George is the master of polite fictions. He used to be in the diplomatic corps. Insufferable prig. Can’t stand him. When he is here, I always put on a show. I act as though I were really demented.’ Lady Mortlock laughed – it came out as a cackle.
‘Was Lena one of your pupils?’
‘Most perceptive of you. Yes, she was one of my pupils. She was at Ashcroft from 1951 till 1956, I think. She was not the brightest of girls, but one of the prettiest. No – “pretty” is not right. Lena had a certain quality, I can’t quite explain it… I taught her German. I allowed myself to become extremely fond of her. In academic terms she was little better than “satisfactory”. Do you know how I define “satisfactory”? “Neither laudable nor culpable.” None of it matters now. Long time ago.’ Lady Mortlock paused. ‘What else do you want to know? You are after something, aren’t you? You didn’t just wake up this morning and say to yourself, high time I looked up Hermione Mortlock, did you? You must have a good reason. Out with it.’
Antonia began, ‘Yesterday was twenty years since Sonya’s disappearance -’
‘Whose disappearance?’
‘Sonya’s. Sonya Dufrette – Lena’s daughter.’
‘Oh yes. Lena’s daughter. I remember her. Shrimp of a girl.’ Lady Mortlock yawned, displaying dazzling white teeth of preternatural regularity, clearly the result of superior dentistry. ‘She drowned, didn’t she? She had some form of mental deficiency. She was damaged goods. Hardly surprising. Bad heredity on both sides. If she’d been allowed to grow up, she’d have been one of those slobbering child-like idiots.’
‘What do you mean “allowed”?’
‘That’s only a figure of speech, Antonia. I’d be extremely grateful if you refrained from snapping at me,’ Lady Mortlock said grandly. ‘I did tell Lena to reconsider when she told me she was pregnant – we were still on speaking terms then – and she promised she would, but didn’t. She said afterwards she had forgotten – that it would have been too much trouble, having an abortion. I wanted her to have an abortion. Among other things, that would have made her marriage to Lawrence less real… Oh she was hopeless – hopeless!’
Antonia opened her mouth but then decided against saying anything. Better let her speak on, she decided.
‘I did warn her of the possible consequences. Lawrence suffered from pathological folie de grandeur while hers was an addictive, irresponsible, rather reckless personality – and of course she was a Yusupov on the distaff side. It was a recipe for disaster. The marriage itself should never have taken place… Sonya drowned, didn’t she? Michael cried his eyes out, the old fool. He kept calling out her name in his sleep… In my opinion that was the best thing that could have happened in the circumstances. What good would it have been to anyone if the girl had lived on – if she had grown up? So much time and energy, not to mention money, are spent nowadays on the care of idiot children. It’s like growing weeds in a garden. That poor young woman, I remember, Sonya’s nanny, didn’t have time to breathe. What good was Sonya to anyone?’
‘Her father loved her.’
‘A little bit too well, perhaps? No, don’t ask me what I mean – please – too tedious for words! A bee in Lena’s bonnet, that’s all. I shouldn’t have mentioned it at all. Lolita love. Still, to be fair to her, Lena had to put up with an awful lot. Not only married to a madman, but with an idiot child. Small wonder she became so fat and took to drink… Do you know? Every now and then I’d remember the sunny girl with skin as smooth and pale as pearls, the radiant smile and lithe limbs, and I’d feel warm – here.’ Lady Mortlock touched her shrivelled bosom. ‘Lena, you see, was the love of my life. My one folly. My only taste of the forbidden fruit. Lena made me happy in a way I’d never been happy before – or since.’
‘Didn’t Sir Michael suspect anything?’
‘About my vicio nifando? No. Nothing at all. Poor Michael. He who trained spies for a living wasn’t particularly perceptive in his private life. I took good care not to be discovered of course. Oh I hated the secrecy, the subterfuge, the pretence, but it was necessary. Duty and discipline, that was my motto. It wouldn’t have done for anyone to know. Remember that I was an extremely successful professional woman. It was under my headship that Ashcroft became a byword for academic excellence at a time when many other supposedly good schools were reeling under the pressures of post-war inflation and social change. There was Michael’s career to consider too. Dear me. It was so difficult. I remember reading Radclyffe Hall and feeling absolutely terrified. Are you familiar with The Well of Loneliness?’
‘I know what it’s about, but I haven’t read it.’
‘You needn’t sound so defensive… Look at this. You might as well.’ Lady Mortlock took a folded sheet of paper from inside the book on her lap and handed it over to Antonia. ‘Read it. Read it aloud.’
Antonia obeyed. The paper was yellow and brittle with age. ‘Dear Mine, my darling Mine -’
‘Hermione – Mione – Mine. It’s the name Lena had for me. I loved it when she said it. Go on, go on, don’t stop. Why did you stop?’
‘I do love you and want you and want to spend my life with you – more than anything in the world, and by this, I mean anything.’ Antonia looked up. ‘It’s unsigned.’
‘Lena wrote it. I let Bea think it’s one of Michael’s love letters. Well, Michael never wrote me any love letters. Michael was never interested in me in that way. Mercifully, he turned out to be what is known as “under-
sexed”. I wouldn’t have survived the marriage otherwise!’ She cackled. ‘We did our own things. Sometimes, at weekends, he disappeared completely. He went bird-watching. Anyhow. Lena kept writing notes like that, reckless creature. She loved me too. I think she was sincere. At one point she did want us to move in together, but of course that was out of the question. It was the fifties. I could never have contemplated setting up house with another woman and leading the life of a social outcast. Never. Besides, it wouldn’t have worked. I loved Lena but I also saw how she would deteriorate with age. The seeds were already there… By the way, it was she who seduced me, not the other way round. She was extremely knowledgeable about that sort of thing. You see, before I met her, she had been with both men and women. I was thirty-seven. Nothing like it had ever happened to me before. As a matter of fact, I rather despised women of that ilk. I remember when we went to see that play -’
‘Not The Reluctant Debutante?’
‘No. Of course not. Whatever gave you the idea? It was an underground play called The Monocled Countess. It had been inspired by Wedekind’s Lulu. The main protagonist was this tortured gentlewoman. A pathetic, tragic-comic sort of creature who sits at a rather louche cabaret and drowns her frustrated lusts in absinthe as she ogles the naked girlies who prance around her. We see her sitting at a table, on her own, with a carefully poised, long cigarette holder, a monocle and a mannish bob. That is how the play opens. After her heart is broken by a heartless little minx, she starts visiting Sapphic brothels. All of that was considered extremely risque at the time. I don’t suppose anyone would bat an eyelid nowadays?’
‘No.’
‘The performance took place in a cellar of sorts. Lena screamed with laughter throughout – she thought it all hilarious. I on the other hand could hardly contain my tears. Well, that was when I saw how different we were. The first cracks, as they say, had started appearing. Lena then introduced me to these two other women who lived together. Philippa and Diane. Philippa was the vanilla one; she had immaculately curled golden hair, tippety-tappety shoes, little white gloves and a skirt you could twirl yourself to death in. Diane was remarkably butch. Stocky, with a crew-cut, extremely baggy trousers and a striped blazer, with a sharkskin waistcoat underneath. She smoked untipped cigarettes and took snuff, I think. She took a wild fancy to me. She claimed I looked like the central figure in Jean Dupas’s picture Les Perruches. You know the tall, dark woman with the Roman nose who’s holding two rose bouquets?’
Antonia frowned. ‘She is surrounded by nudes, isn’t she?’
‘Indeed she is – while she herself is wearing a long black, rather puritanical-looking dress. I thought it quite flattering, actually. Philippa on the other hand tried to teach me polari, the dyke argot. It’s all very different now, isn’t it? I mean women do whatever they please. They are already vicars and they hope to become bishops, and they have male strippers at their hen parties. As you can see, I’ve been keeping up with the Zeitgeist. Well, Antonia, it was good seeing you. Would you like to go now? I am very tired.’
Antonia looked at her in desperation. ‘The day before Sonya disappeared you told me that Miss Haywood’s mother was very ill, in hospital,’ she said. ‘That was a lie. What was the purpose of it?’
‘Miss Haywood’s mother? What are you talking about?’
Antonia persisted. ‘It happened the day before Sonya disappeared -’
Suddenly Lady Mortlock gave a nod. ‘Oh yes. Yes. As a matter of fact I do remember our conversation. I did tell you that Miss Haywood’s mother was rushed to hospital. That’s correct.’
Antonia wondered if Lady Mortlock had started playing some game with her. She leant forward. ‘She wasn’t. That was a lie.’
Lady Mortlock shrugged. ‘Well, my dear Antonia, if it was, I had no idea. That was what I was told by Lena.’
‘I don’t believe you. I think the lie originated with you,’ Antonia suggested boldly. I have nothing to lose, she thought.
There was a moment’s pause. Lady Mortlock sat staring at her. ‘Are you by any chance thinking what I believe you are thinking? That I killed Sonya on account of her mental deficiency, because of my obsession with eugenics? That I ordered her to be drowned in the river, like some unwanted kitten? That perhaps I paid someone to do it?’
‘Well, did you?’
‘I can’t believe we are having this conversation. That’s the kind of thing that happens in detective stories of the more far-fetched kind. This is rather entertaining actually. Perhaps Guedalla was right when he said that detective stories are the normal recreation of noble minds. I am glad you didn’t leave when I told you to. I do feel better. Let’s see. I never left the drawing room that morning, not for a moment. Plenty of witnesses, including you. Consequently, it couldn’t have been me in person. Now then, could I have done it by proxy? Could I have commissioned one of my gardeners? Or perhaps that Major?’ She cackled. ‘What was his name? Eagle? Some such name. He was the only one without an alibi that morning – and he detested Lawrence.’
‘His name was Nagle.’
‘One of those seemingly unlikely murderous partnerships. Lady Mortlock and Major Nagle. You saw him kiss my hand when he arrived at Twiston for that party of course? You were in the hall at the time. Don’t you remember? Major Nagle raised my hand to his lips and held it there. It was an anachronistic, theatrical, rather foreign kind of gesture – Rudolph Valentino became famous for that sort of thing – not what one would associate with an English officer and gentleman. Why do you think Major Nagle did that? Didn’t it occur to you that he might be reassuring me that he’d carry out his pledge to me? That he wouldn’t fail me?’
‘No – no, I don’t remember.’
‘Perhaps the Major and I were members of some crazy neo-Nazi cult? Perhaps we were at the centre of some Herrenvolk plot to purge the world of its imbecile infants?’
Actually that is not such a bad idea for a story, Antonia thought. It could certainly be made to work. If people could believe that Diana and Dodi were alive, having faked their deaths, they could believe anything.
Lady Mortlock might have read her mind because she sighed and said, ‘Well, I credited you with greater intelligence than that, Antonia. I am disappointed in you.’
15
‘They’
‘Well, Antonia – I hope you don’t mind me calling you Antonia?’ Major Payne said. ‘Miss Darcy sounds forbidding somehow, don’t you think?’
‘I don’t see why it should.’
‘Shades of Pride and Prejudice and that pompous ass Darcy, whom I never managed to like, not even after his transformation. And wasn’t there a Miss Darcy – a snobbish sister, who was even worse?’
‘No. That was Bingley’s sister. Miss Darcy was rather nice,’ Antonia said. ‘If I remember correctly, she is described as having “no equal for beauty, elegance and accomplishments”.’
‘Oh yes. And for the affection she inspires.’ He looked at her in a way which made it clear he considered that an attribute she herself possessed in abundance.
It was half past eleven the following morning and they were in the club library, comparing notes over coffee. At least they had been comparing notes before they went off at a tangent. Antonia wasn’t sure whether she should feel annoyed or flattered by his attentions which seemed to be becoming more ardent. She blamed herself for encouraging him, by first telling him of the rather annoying phone call she had received from her former husband the night before, then teasing him about the dog Apollo and the cat Daphne. Major Payne had got hold of her hand and said he wouldn’t let go of it unless she told him how she had learnt about it.
Antonia could have named Colonel Haslett as her informant at once, but had delayed for at least a quarter of a minute, during which time her hand had remained in his. She had made several futile attempts to pull it from his grip, which had only led to him tightening it. She hadn’t tried hard enough. She had enjoyed the experience and now had a ridiculously guilty feeling about it. T
hat, she told herself, was not how responsible people in their fifties behaved. They had acted like silly teenagers. What would have happened if somebody had come in and seen them, engaged in a playful skirmish across her desk? Dallying in the library!
Antonia felt hot and a little faint. She found she was panicking. She wasn’t ready for a relationship, let alone marriage. It is too soon to allow another man into my life, she thought.
The day was warm and the library windows were open. From outside there came the smell of freshly mown grass – which, again, forcibly, reminded her of that fateful day at Twiston – also the sounds of Radio 4. The gardener was a young university student and he had his transistor radio on. As it happened, he was listening to a programme called Hopes and Desires, the first of a series of comedies about unconscious yearnings.
‘Well, if you are not happy with Miss Darcy, you can address me as Mrs Rushton.’ Which, Antonia pointed out with greater severity than she intended, happened to be her married name.
He sighed. ‘I’d rather call you Antonia and I hope you will call me Hugh one day. Well, we are making progress. The moving finger,’ he went on quickly, unless that be misconstrued, ‘is now firmly fixed on Lena… Lena didn’t really care about her daughter. Lena fed Lady Mortlock the canard about Miss Haywood’s mother being ill in hospital. Lena phoned the nanny – shortly after Sonya disappeared. She didn’t sound at all like a mother mourning the death of her child. She warned the nanny against talking. Her exact words were, You’d better keep your mouth shut, my girl, or they will kill us both. We do assume, don’t we, that Lena was part of whatever conspiracy there was? That she knew exactly what happened?’
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