The hunt for Sonya Dufrette chc-1

by R. T. Raichev

  Did he have a ring on? No – she couldn’t see a ring. Why was she interested in his ring? Well, it wasn’t her who was interested in it but Miss Pettigrew. Miss Pettigrew had an idee fixe about a ring. Antonia smiled. Watch out for the ring. How ridiculous. If she didn’t feel so lethargic, she would laugh aloud. She was allowing bizarre intrusions of irra- tionality to enter the detection business!

  Was she dreaming? No. The man was real. He was there all right. She heard the paper rustle in his hands. She could hear his noisy breathing. She went on observing him from under half-closed eyelids. Striped tie – school or regiment, she couldn’t tell. It had been loosened. Small wonder! How did he survive in that jacket? She didn’t think she had seen him before. He was an instantly recognizable military type. Not a very nice person, she didn’t think. She might be doing him a grave injustice, mind. Appearances could be deceptive… His bottom lip protruded like the jaw of some belligerent freshwater fish. He was scowling. Not an attractive face – not by a long chalk. A somewhat haunted look about him – or was she being fanciful again? She saw him drop The Times and pick up the racing paper.

  He wasn’t aware of her presence. Well, she hadn’t stirred. She had pushed her chair back and was sitting in the shadow of the arch formed by the staircase where she imagined it felt cooler…

  The discussion on the radio was still going on, how funny. They had been talking all this time, these indefatigable gardeners. ‘I live in Cornwall and this is a piece of my lawn with a brown-headed weed in it. If you’d care to take a look – I have tried a number of weedkillers…’

  Fancy bringing a weed into the studio! Gardeners’ Question Time. That was the name of the programme. Of course. She never listened to it, if she could help it, didn’t see the point of it, really. She wasn’t interested in gardening. Antonia felt her eyelids drooping. It was as though she had been staring at a ticking hypnotist’s watch that had been going back and forth. Click-clack, click-clack… She could hear the watch very clearly now.

  Click-clack.

  No. That was the sound of the gardener’s secateurs coming from the garden. He must be standing somewhere close to the window. Only the other day she had considered that listening to the radio was rather out of place in the club environment, but at that particular moment nothing could be more appropriate. Had the gardener drawn closer, so that he could get some gardening tips? Yes. Tips from the gardening experts. How to kill children – no, weeds. She meant weeds of course

  …

  Antonia couldn’t tell how much time had elapsed. Two minutes – five? She woke up with a start, her heart beating fast, a metallic taste in her mouth. She had dreamt that she was at Twiston once more, walking about the garden in the afternoon glare, shading her eyes with her hand, looking for Sonya, calling out her name, steeling herself for what she might find…

  Somebody was talking about Twiston at that very moment.

  Her eyes opened wide. The man was still there in the chair, but it wasn’t him. Of course not. It was a voice on the radio. A woman’s voice. Very musical. Familiar somehow…

  ‘… outside Richmond-on-Thames. We bought it last year. A splendid place. The kind of place exiles think of when they dream of home, as somebody put it. Lovely gardens – with one exception. There is a tree there. An oak which is extremely ancient – over three hundred years old. It has illustrious origins – planted by James I and all that. It has a plaque on it that says so. It is dead of course. It is ugly. It looks like some malignant growth. It was highly thought of by the previous owners – they provided it with a cement base, if you please. It is entirely hollow inside, you see.’

  That was Mrs Ralston-Scott talking. The name came to Antonia at once. She was fully awake now and listening intently. She sat up and was surprised how quickly she had emerged from her stupor. She had spoken to Mrs Ralston-Scott on the phone only the week before, when she rang up to ask for Lady Mortlock’s telephone number.

  ‘The hollow seems to hold incredible attraction for all sorts of beasts and they tend to leap inside the tree. Squirrels and stray cats and once I thought I saw a rat as big as a kitten! My own dogs – I have two spaniels – seem to have developed that unfortunate habit too. I have got to detest that damned tree as much as – well, as much as one can detest a tree.’ (The audience laughed.) ‘There is a smell coming from inside the hollow, which makes walking in the garden on a balmy summer’s evening not such a pleasant experience after all. The long and the short of it – I don’t know whether you dear people are the right ones to consult about it – you’d probably be opposed to the idea, but I want and mean to get rid of the tree. I intend to have it sawn down…’

  Antonia’s eye caught a movement. The paper had slipped from the man’s hands. His face was turned towards the open window, from where the voice on the radio was coming. He sat completely still, as though suddenly turned to stone. He appeared to be listening intently to Mrs Ralston-Scott’s voice. He seemed mesmerized by what he was hearing – or could it be that he was feeling ill? His face looked very odd indeed. It had turned Puce. His mouth was open. Antonia wondered whether the heat had got to him at last, whether he might have suffered sunstroke, or was on the verge of some form of cardiac arrest. His eyes were bulging monstrously, bringing to mind the frog Footman in Alice, imparting to his face the aspect of someone who’s had a shock. Someone in mortal fear or in the thrall of some unimaginable horror. Though, again, Antonia reflected, it might be her imagination playing tricks on her. Do not rely on fanciful conclusions before you have first validated them with facts. She had read that somewhere. Yes, quite.

  The man seemed to find it hard to breathe. Something was the matter with him.

  ‘So that’s my dilemma,’ Mrs Ralston-Scott concluded. ‘To cut or not to cut. Unless you can suggest…’

  Antonia didn’t hear the rest. The man had given a groan and lurched forward. She saw him rise from his chair. He pushed his hand into his pocket and took out his car keys. His mouth was shut now and he seemed to have managed to get a grip on himself. He started walking towards the door but halted in front of Antonia’s desk, quite close by – she could have reached out and touched him. She smelled his aftershave – old-fashioned lavender water. Again, he didn’t see her. He shot out his cuffs. As he mopped his forehead with his handkerchief and straightened his tie, Antonia recognized him. Or thought she did. It was the odd juxtaposition of enormous ham-like fists and beautifully tended fingernails that did it. As she told Hugh later, she was forever on the lookout for quirky details.

  The last time she had seen him was twenty years ago, on 29th July, to be precise. Then he had been in a state of some considerable agitation caused by the loss of his signet ring.

  The man was Major Nagle.

  22

  The Hollow

  It took her several moments to recover from the night- marish jolt. She waited until he had lumbered out of the door, then, acting on an impulse, got up, walked round her desk and followed him. The heaviness had left her and she suddenly found herself overtaken by a strange, dreamlike lightness. Her head too had cleared.

  That Major Nagle should have appeared precisely when he did and given her the chance to observe him was an extraordinary coincidence, she reflected, but then coincidences did happen. The pieces of the puzzle rearranged themselves in her mind. She remembered things which she should have thought of earlier on, but hadn‘t, though her subconscious had not been inactive. She had after all heard Miss Pettigrew’s voice rather early on, urging her to watch out for the ring.

  Dufrette’s row with Major Nagle and the latter’s subsequent humiliation on the fatal morning. The suggestion Dufrette had made that Nagle was something of a sadist and that he had driven his wife to madness and suicide. Nagle’s distress and anger. Nagle had wanted to leave at once but Sir Michael had managed to persuade him to stay on. Nagle had then spent the whole morning in his room. He had been the only member of the house party whose movements hadn’t been accounted for. Nagl
e’s great agitation over the loss of his signet ring -

  In a flash Antonia saw what must have happened. The abduction plan had been concocted all right. The Vorodins paid Lena and the nanny. The date was fixed – 29th July, the day of the royal wedding, when they could be fairly sure there would be no witnesses. All of that did happen. The Vorodins left early in the morning. The phone call removing the nanny from the scene was put through. Lena then made sure that Sonya would be in the garden.

  Only something took place before the Vorodins came back.

  The plan went wrong.

  What they hadn’t counted on was that Major Nagle would walk out of the house and go into the garden, still simmering with fury, harbouring murderous grudges about Dufrette. Antonia remembered Dufrette’s words. If looks could kill. Did Nagle mean to kill Sonya? Antonia remembered him staring down at them from his window. She had felt disturbed by that stock-still figure whose face she couldn’t see. Well, maybe he did mean to kill. Or maybe not.

  Perhaps Nagle went out, needing a walk to calm his jangled nerves, to clear his head and collect his thoughts. As he strode about the garden, he came upon Dufrette’s daughter. At this – seeing what he must have regarded as an extension of his foe – all the pent-up resentment burst out of him and he hit her…

  Or it might have been an accident. Sonya might have stood in the middle of the path and got in his way – proffering him the flowers she had picked as likely as not. Maybe he pushed her roughly aside with his ham-like hand. Thoughts of Dufrette might have made him exercise undue force. Sonya, frail and doll-like, fell back and hit her head against a stone – on one of the decorative rocks? Nagle walked on but after a few steps looked back over his shoulder. Seeing the girl lying immobile, he wheeled round and retraced his steps. He touched her arm or cheek – shook her. She didn’t stir. He saw blood oozing out of a wound in her temple or the back of her head. Realizing she was dead, Nagle panicked. He had killed her! Had he been seen? No, no one. What should he do with the body? He couldn’t leave it there! His eyes then fell on the tree, the ancient oak with the gaping hollow, on which men in overalls had been working earlier on. He saw the cement mixer beside the tree.

  Everybody in the house knew the tree was being provided with a cement base. Nagle had a brainwave. Picking up the tiny body, he carried it to the oak and lowered it inside the hollow, into the still unset cement. Then he got busy, pouring more cement over the body. He succeeded in immuring Sonya inside the hollow – but lost his ring in the process. Nagle’s signet ring fell off his finger and remained under the layers of cement, with the body. Nagle realized that only when it was too late. By then the place was swarming with police. Hence his agitation, which Antonia well remembered. And there he was now, twenty years on, hearing the voice of Mrs Ralston-Scott, Twiston’s current chatelaine, talking of her intention to have the oak sawn down. The realization that the cutting of the tree would inevitably result in the discovery not only of Sonya’s body, but of his signet ring as well, must have hit him hard – which explained his shocked expression.

  Walking out of the club, Antonia stood on the steps in the shimmering heat, looking round, trying to locate Major Nagle. The next moment she saw him further down the street, entering his car, a battered Ford. She saw him start the engine. In some desperation she cast round looking for means of transport. There was only one thought in her mind – follow him, don’t let him out of your sight.

  As luck would have it, a taxi drew up and an elderly gentleman accompanied by a younger one got out. Antonia signalled to the driver and ran up to the taxi. She got into the passenger seat and said in a breathless voice, ‘Follow that car. Quick!’ Sweat was pouring down her face.

  Not even in her wildest imagination had she seen herself in a situation like that. The driver stared at her. ‘He is my husband – would you please hurry up?’ She didn’t quite know why she said it was her husband – maybe because it was preferable to saying, ‘He is a murderer.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ the driver asked.

  ‘Richmond, I think,’ Antonia said. Her voice sounded harsh. ‘Richmond-on-Thames.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Richmond, yes. I am pretty sure he’s going to Richmond. Place called Twiston. It’s a big house outside Richmond. I’ll tell you how to get there.’

  ‘I don’t want any trouble,’ the driver said, starting the engine. He clearly regarded her as a jealous, possibly vengeful, wife in pursuit of her flighty husband. His eyes raked her up and down as though to make absolutely certain she didn’t have a gun or any other weapon on her person.

  Antonia remained silent. Trouble. Would there be trouble? What was Major Nagle planning to do exactly? Well, drive his car to Twiston – sneak into the garden and make an attempt to get his ring back… But that would be impossible, surely? He would have to cut the tree first – the ancient oak. Then there was the twenty-year-old cement base – he would have to smash his way through the cement first. He wouldn’t be able to do it. The idea was absurd.

  On the other hand, why not? He was a powerfully built man. He might have a tool box in the boot of his car. A hammer. He would need a big hammer, or something equally heavy. Could he do it with a spanner? He would need an axe first and foremost! What about the noise? He couldn’t start hacking at the oak or hammering away without being heard. There were dogs at the house – Mrs Ralston-Scott’s spaniels. Could he pretend to be a tree surgeon? Could he get away with it? Well, Mrs Ralston-Scott couldn’t have left London yet – she was probably still in the radio studio. That was probably his chance – tell whoever was at the house, the secretary Laura or any servants, that he had been hired to saw down the tree. But he didn’t look like a tree surgeon!

  It was evident to her that Major Nagle was acting on a wild impulse. Well, he was a desperate man. He hadn’t been able to give the matter any coherent thought. He had looked apoplectic. He knew he was facing exposure – trial – social ruin – years in prison… Perhaps he would park his car outside the gates and sit inside and wait until dark? Would that help though? The noise would be much more conspicuous at night.

  Antonia glanced at her watch. Three o‘clock. They were stopping at traffic lights. In her mind she went back to the fatal day. So what happened after Nagle immured Sonya inside the tree? Well, he went up to the house and returned to his room. He hadn’t been seen. Soon after, the Vorodins arrived, as arranged. Maybe he watched them from his window, which overlooked that part of the garden. The Vorodins didn’t see Sonya but assumed she would appear at any moment. They found her doll, daisy chain and bracelet and laid the false trail to the river, suggesting she had drowned. Unwittingly they had helped Nagle! They had drawn attention away from the tree and focused it on the river. Antonia imagined Nagle nodding approvingly from behind the window curtain. Then the Vorodins waited a bit longer, but still Sonya did not appear. Eventually they went away, afraid that they might be seen. They were, after all, supposed to be on a plane bound for the USA. They must have suspected there was something wrong. Then of course they saw the news on the TV or read about Sonya’s disappearance and presumed drowning in the papers. What did they feel? Shock – regret – great sadness – guilt – remorse? That they were good and decent people Antonia had no doubt. They must have let Lena and the nanny keep the money…

  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 Twist
on 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.