Antonia decided to change tack. She held up the letter. ‘I believe this belongs to her.’ She had raised her voice for the benefit of whoever might be hiding behind the door, listening.
The secretary blinked. ‘Oh?’
‘It’s a letter Mrs Vorodin wrote to Mrs Dufrette.’
There was a pause, then the secretary said in a voice that was only slightly changed, ‘I am sure you are mistaken, but I will see that Mrs Ralston-Scott gets the letter, if you really think it is hers. Just leave it with me.’
‘Would you also tell Mrs Vorodin – I mean Mrs Ralston-Scott – that Sonya’s father has no intention of pursuing the matter further? Lawrence Dufrette came to Twiston, looking for Sonya, but now that she is dead, he sees no point in bothering Mrs Vorodin.’ Antonia paused. ‘He sends a message. He said that he appreciates what Mrs Vorodin has done for Sonya. He realizes that he wouldn’t have been able to cope with Sonya’s deteriorating condition as effectively as Mrs Vorodin has been able to do. Would you tell her that?’
The secretary gave a little strained smile. ‘I will certainly convey your message to Mrs Ralston-Scott, though I am sorry to say I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Who is Mrs Vorodin?’
‘All right, Laura, that will do.’ A musical voice was heard and a woman came out from behind the door, as Antonia had felt sure she would. ‘Thank you very much. You may go now. Would you see that everything is done – properly?’
‘Yes, certainly, Mrs Ralston-Scott.’ The secretary disappeared.
Antonia rose from her seat. ‘Mrs Vorodin. You didn’t really think I’d just go away, did you?’
‘Mrs Rushton? That was your name, wasn’t it?’ Veronica Vorodin advanced upon Antonia with an extended hand, seemingly unruffled. ‘We did speak on the phone the other day, didn’t we? I am sorry but I didn’t recognize you from the window. It has been a long time. It is too late for tea. May I offer you a drink?’
26
Another Self
The archetypal squire’s lady – to the manor born – the country gentlewoman par excellence. And she had chosen the perfect name to match the part: Mrs Ralston-Scott. What was her first name now? Had she changed it to something like Charlotte or Celia? Well, it wasn’t such a difficult character part to play. She had been an actress and a superb mimic, as Dufrette had said, so she could do it easily. Who was it who had said, ‘If you are assuming another identity, you will never keep it unless you convince yourself that you are it?’ Well, Veronica Vorodin had become ‘it’.
She wore a bluish-grey blouse, a single string of pearls around her neck, a long black skirt and black court shoes. Her iron-grey hair was short and windswept in an uncompromising manner and she seemed to have made no concession to any current fashions. How old was she? At the time of their last meeting she had been thirty-eight, Antonia remembered, which made her fifty-eight. Twenty years ago she had struck Antonia as much younger, barely out of her teens, but now she had decided to look her age. Her face was weather-beaten and she wore next to no make-up. She had perfect cheekbones and was still what could be described as a ‘handsome woman’, though one had to look very hard to recognize in her the glamorous bronzed creature with the Gucci glasses, to whom Antonia had chatted in the garden about children in general and Sonya in particular.
She sat on the sofa facing Antonia. She had poured herself a whisky in a cut-crystal glass. Antonia had plumped for home-made lemonade with lots of ice.
At first sight Veronica seemed perfectly composed but it was clear that she had been crying. The lavender eyes were red and every now and then she pressed a handkerchief against her lips.
After she had listened to Antonia, she nodded and said, ‘I see you know everything. You’ve been extremely clever. You are absolutely right in every detail. I did buy Twiston because I’d always wanted to live here. It was love at first sight. But there’s more to it. I hope you will understand. I rather liked the idea of there being a symmetry about it.’
‘Symmetry?’
‘Yes. You see, Twiston had been made an unhappy place after we took Sonya, so I wanted to bring her back to it, to make it happy again. I meant to repair the balance. Foolish of me. I could be incredibly sentimental sometimes – fatalistic too. It’s my Russian blood, I suppose. I do get these irrational fancies. You strike me as a terribly logical and sensible person, so I don’t suppose you have much patience with the sort of thing I mean?’
‘You’d be surprised,’ Antonia murmured.
‘Really? Well, that does make me feel better. But you want to hear about Sonya and the missing twenty years, don’t you? What happened after we… bought her from Lena? Well, to start with, everything was wonderful. I mean, as wonderful as could be, given the state of Sonya’s mental health. Sonya didn’t seem to notice that she had a new set of parents. She became genuinely attached to us and allowed us to love her. That was the really important thing. She was happy, in her own way. I’d like to think that she was happier than before. Well, she didn’t seem to need much, poor thing. We showered her with gifts, of course. We went to live on Simi. Have you heard of Simi?’
‘Is it a paradise island?’ Antonia gave a little smile.
‘You might call it that. It is one of the least known and prettiest of Greek islands off the Turkish coast. The kindest people live there. We did an awful lot of yachting. Sonya loved the sea. Eventually we moved to America. Until she was twelve, she was perfectly manageable, but things started getting difficult when she entered puberty. At first, it was generally assumed that she was autistic, but it soon became clear that she was a lot more than that. She started displaying other symptoms, some, I must say, rather disturbing. She became psychotic. We kept taking her to doctors – once she was seen by seven different doctors in one month, but no one could help.’
Antonia asked what exactly had been wrong with Sonya.
‘Head… brain… nervous system… glands… She had several “syndromes”. Long Latin names. Something called “paranoid psychosis”. A thyroid disorder known as Hashimoto’s – it presents itself in a dizzying variety of ways. Oh, practically everything was wrong with her!’ Veronica cried. ‘One moment she was sweet and angelic, the next she would start writhing and screaming and kicking and biting. When she became depressed, she would hardly be able to breathe and then, suddenly, she would be possessed by this manic energy and start running about, punching things. It was dreadful. She developed headaches. Sometimes they were so bad, she passed out. We kept giving her stronger and stronger pills – painkillers, sedatives, anti-depressants, stimulants. Then she was prescribed injections. In fact, over the last couple of years she’s had both pills and injections. Oh dear. I do sound exasperated, don’t I?’
‘It seems you took on more than you could handle.’
‘You are right. It wasn’t terribly responsible of me, what I did. It was all my idea. Anatole had doubts – it was his pragmatic French side – but he went along with me. Some may say I am like those people who buy a puppy for Christmas and then, by the following Christmas, discover they can’t cope with it, but that’s not right. I did my best for Sonya. I had her for twenty years…’ Veronica pressed her handkerchief against her lips. ‘You’ll agree that’s a long time… Her health kept deteriorating. The pills and the injections she had to be given increased in number, in variety and in strength. That caused all sorts of side effects. Talking of irrational fancies! At one point Sonya became convinced that her head was full of water and that it contained a fish. The thought upset her dreadfully. She started banging her head against the wall, to let the fish out – ’
‘The bruise on her forehead?’
‘Yes. She kept hurting herself. You can’t imagine how distressing that was to watch – worse than the kicks and bites and blows I have had to suffer.’ Veronica raised her forearm and Antonia saw it was covered in scratch and bite marks. ‘I didn’t want to send her to an institution. I could have, but I didn’t have the heart. I didn’t want to let he
r out of my sight. I felt – perhaps misguidedly – that she was my responsibility. That I had to stick to it.’
‘Were you afraid someone might guess who she was?’
‘Well, yes, that too… I did provide her with the best nursing care available. Two private nurses. Extremely competent – discreet. Every so often she would start smashing her head against the wall. Two months ago she broke a mirror and cut herself really badly. Her eye was damaged. It was a miracle she didn’t go blind… Her condition wasn’t something she grew out of. That, you see, was what I’d been hoping and praying for and, ultimately, believing. That she would grow out of things. I failed to assess the situation accurately. It was extremely naive of me, I know. She didn’t grow out of things. She grew worse and worse and worse. She kept putting on weight, so it became extremely hard to restrain her physically. She grew obese – enormous – gross. You saw her.’
‘Lena used to call her kotik… Kitten…’
‘I know… Well, she became as big as an ox – and as strong. She had this insatiable appetite. She’d eat everything in sight if she came upon a table with food on it. She couldn’t stop herself. Then she would throw up. And she would scream and hurl things whenever we tried to prevent her from gorging herself. She developed a passion for sweets – mints in particular. She’d put in her mouth anything that looked like mints. Small buttons. Pearls. Once she tore apart one of my necklaces. Pills – we had to be really careful about pills.’
Rising abruptly and holding the handkerchief to her lips, Veronica went up to the sideboard and replenished her glass with more whisky, adding only a modicum of soda water from an old-fashioned siphon and dipping the silver tongs into the ice bucket. ‘Are you sure you don’t want a proper drink?’ She glanced at Antonia.
‘No, thank you… Sonya looked much older than twenty-seven.’
‘She aged prematurely. When she was seventeen she already looked about thirty. She changed out of all recognition. The docile affectionate kotik – the sweet doll-like little girl with the gentle smile – was no more. She couldn’t have disappeared more completely if she had been carried away by the river that day.’ Veronica resumed her seat on the sofa. ‘She turned into a monster. Grossly fat, pugnacious, violent. Sometimes we had to tie her up. Put her in a straitjacket of sorts. We had no choice. Lena didn’t believe me when I told her how bad it was.’
Veronica glanced at the letter which Antonia had left on the small table beside her chair. ‘Lena didn’t let you have the letter, just like that, did she? I expect she sold it to you?’
‘No. We stole it,’ Antonia said.
‘We? Oh. So somebody knows that you are here?’
‘Yes.’ Antonia didn’t elaborate. She knew it was absurd of her, but she felt safer now that she had suggested a ‘partner’ might be waiting to hear about her findings. There was something about Veronica – the mixture of the familiar and unfamiliar – the two persons in one – that made Antonia uncomfortable. She had to admit that she also felt a bit afraid.
She went on quickly, ‘You wrote to Lena that Sonya’s condition had deteriorated, that she was very ill, that she was not fit to be seen by anyone. You wrote that you found it unbearable, watching Sonya’s misery.’ She saw Veronica shut and open her eyes. ‘I don’t suppose Lena wanted to come to Twiston out of any maternal urges?’
‘No. What she was after was lucre – filthy lucre – more and more of it. For her I was the goose that lays the golden eggs. I had to take a firm line in the end. I made it absolutely clear that “no more” meant precisely that. We exchanged several letters. She kept phoning too, but Laura managed to deal with her very efficiently. She never thought of coming in person. Too lazy, I suppose. Or never sober enough. She did try to blackmail me in a half-hearted kind of way. She said she’d tell the police, but I knew it was just talk. Well, she wasn’t the only one -’ Veronica broke off. ‘Lena wouldn’t have dared go to the police. That would have meant giving herself away. Her involvement in the affair was after all fairly central. She’d have had to admit that she sold her daughter. How ugly that sounds.’
Antonia frowned. ‘What do you mean, she wasn’t the only one?’
‘Sorry?’ Veronica looked vague.
‘Did someone else try to blackmail you?’
There was a pause, then Veronica said, ‘All right. You know so much already, it won’t make the slightest difference. Yes. Someone else did try to blackmail us. You see, we were seen that morning -’
‘By Major Nagle?’ The real Nagle, Antonia thought.
‘Clever of you. Yes. That dreadful man saw us from his window, apparently. He said he saw me pick up Sonya and carry her towards the gates. We weren’t aware of it. He kept quiet about it for a long time. Nineteen years. That was his revenge on Lawrence, from what he let drop. He’d been gloating over Lawrence’s loss for the whole of nineteen years. He could have told the police at once but he didn’t. Dreadful man. He turned up on my doorstep in person last year. It was soon after we had moved into Twiston.’
‘How did he know you were at Twiston?’
‘The internet. Some stupid website. There were several of them, actually. I wasn’t aware of their existence then. That’s been dealt with now, though I wish – I do wish – I’ d done it sooner! It would have saved… a certain amount of trouble.’ Veronica’s eyes narrowed and she looked towards the fireplace. ‘Nagle knew all about me. He knew about Anatole’s death, that it was I who had bought Twiston. Some local enthusiast who was mad about Twiston’s history had set up a website devoted to it. Meddlesome fool. We caught him on the grounds once, trespassing. Set the dogs on him, but he did manage to take a couple of snapshots of me in the garden, which he added to the Twiston website. “Mrs Ralston-Scott, the new chatelaine.” That kind of nonsense.’
‘Nagle saw the photo?’
‘Yes. He recognized me.’ Aware of Antonia’s eyes on her, Veronica gave a wry smile. ‘I looked different then. More like what you remember, I suppose. I was still clinging to my youth. Well, I’ve been taught a lesson. Nagle, it turned out, had been looking up every possible source of information, trying to find my whereabouts. He had already put two and two together. He said he remembered how I used to gush about Twiston. He already had an idea he might find me here.’ She paused. ‘He needed money – badly. A lot of money. Now, as blackmailers went, he was the real thing. He was a menace – he presented a genuine threat.’
‘Did you pay him off?’ Antonia asked.
‘I did. Yes.’ Veronica spoke in a toneless voice.
‘Won’t he bother you again?’
‘I don’t think so. Sonya’s dead now. There would be no point.’ Veronica paused. ‘You should have seen him that day, respectability personified, with his navy-blue blazer and bowler hat and polished boots… I was extremely polite. I even gave him a drink. No, he won’t come again. Nagle qua menace is – what was that silly phrase Sir Michael used to quote? A spent egg?’ She laughed. It was a musical kind of laugh. ‘Is that Wodehouse? No, Major Nagle won’t come a second time… Are you sure Lawrence won’t decide to pay me another visit?’
‘He won’t. He admitted he wouldn’t have been able to cope with Sonya as well as you. He is a very strange man… He lost Sonya twice, it suddenly occurred to him. Once twenty years ago, the second earlier today. He didn’t recognize her at once, you see, and it gave him a shock when he did.’
‘Yes. Terribly sad. Lawrence did love her. I know.’ Veronica took a sip of whisky. ‘Of course you realize that she wasn’t his daughter?’
Antonia stared at her. ‘Sonya wasn’t his daughter?’
‘No. She had brown eyes. Both Lawrence and Lena have blue eyes. Blue-eyed people can’t produce a brown-eyed child, though a brown-eyed father and a blue-eyed mother can. I remember reading about it after we took Sonya. Anatole and I too have blue eyes. I was worried that someone might notice. Of course no one did. People don’t usually – unless they are scientists or something.’
‘Sir M
ichael,’ Antonia whispered. ‘Was Sir Michael Sonya’s father?’
‘As a matter of fact he was. Lena and he had an affair. It went on for some years, apparently. Lena told me about it. Michael was mad about her, she said. Lawrence had no idea – neither did Hermione for that matter. Lena believes Lawrence is sterile, though he was always too proud to go and have a test.’
There was a pause. ‘How did Sonya die?’ asked Antonia.
‘She…’ Veronica’s eyes narrowed again. ‘She emptied a bottle of pills into her mouth. She thought they were mints. We had no idea – until it was too late. I found the empty bottle. It happened between the nurses’ shifts. She had been in bed, pretending to be asleep. That was why we had relaxed our vigil. Sonya was cunning… She then managed to run out of the house. We had no idea where she’d gone. We kept looking for her. She knew she had done something very wrong, you see. We couldn’t find her. When we did, it was too late. She had swallowed some pretty powerful sleeping stuff. Zolpicone. Apparently she collapsed where you found her… Lawrence had already appeared on the scene… Then there was you.’
Another pause.
‘What are you going to do now?’ Antonia asked.
‘I believe the ambulance has already been called. They’ll be here any moment. Do we need to inform the police as well?’ Veronica opened her eyes wide. Deep circles of red burned on her cheeks and suddenly she looked young and beautiful again. ‘I mean, it was, after all, only a tragic accident?’
‘I think you’ll have to call the police, yes.’
‘Oh dear… Poor Sonya. It was an awful thing to happen, but it’s better for her to go that way, don’t you think? It wasn’t much of a life. It would have broken my heart to see her being led away in a straitjacket… That must be the ambulance.’ Veronica Vorodin looked up as a car was heard drawing up outside. ‘I do hope you stay on a bit longer, Mrs Rushton. May I call you Antonia? You must call me Veronica
… Actually, I’d like to ask you to do something for me… Do you mind? We have very little time…’
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