Murder at the Villa Byzantine chm-6

by R. T. Raichev

  ‘Hugh! Antonia! What a lovely surprise!’ Winifred clapped her hands. ‘Would you like to come in?’ She opened the door wide.

  Whatever Antonia had anticipated, it wasn’t such a spontaneous display of hospitality. Payne too was puzzled. Divided psyche, he thought. Or could it be a trap?

  They went in.

  ‘Poor Melisande is laid low. That’s why I am here, playing the nurse. Melisande appears to have had a nervous breakdown of sorts.’

  ‘Oh, I am so sorry,’ Antonia said.

  ‘She will be fine. She’s had nervous breakdowns before. I must say it completely ruined my plans for the evening. My sister never seems to tire of imposing her temperamental vagaries and physical needs on me – even when she is prostrate and unconscious!’ Winifred laughed. ‘I am not as callous as I sound! Dr Olwyn gave her an injection. She is asleep at the moment, so you can’t see her.’

  ‘As a matter of fact we wanted to see you,’ Payne said.

  ‘Did you? How perfectly splendid. I was just having coffee. I am experimenting with a new blend. Would you like to join me? I’d be terribly interested in your opinion. I must say this is a most welcome diversion. I’d resigned myself to a solitary vigil. I am reading the latest Anita Brookner. Another masterly study of well-bred desolation,’ Winifred prattled on. ‘Isn’t it odd how some authors never vary? She must be getting on. Her outlook has remained remarkably unchanged-’

  She led them into the shadowed half-light of the drawing room.

  Three low-voltage table lamps. A thin wood fire crackling in the grate. Leaping shadows over the chintz furniture. The air was filled with wood smoke that was subtly tinged with an essence of tuberose and regale lilies.

  A silver tray with a single coffee cup stood on the low coffee table beside a silver pot and a cream jug. Winifred asked them to sit down. ‘Coffee, yes? I could do with another cup. Won’t be a jiffy.’ She picked up the pot and walked jauntily out of the room.

  ‘I can’t think how she could possibly have anything to do with the murder,’ Antonia whispered.

  ‘She is driven by unconscious forces,’ Payne said calmly. ‘She doesn’t know who she is.’

  When Winifred reappeared with the fresh pot of coffee and two more cups, he remarked in conversational tones, ‘How do you find the Villa Byzantine? Not too – florid?’

  Antonia froze, her eyes fixing on the steaming pot in Winifred’s hand. Shock tactics. Hugh had decided on shock tactics. Would Winifred drop the pot and let it explode like a bomb on the floor? Or might she try to blind Hugh by splashing scalding coffee into his face?

  Winifred did neither. She placed the pot carefully on the tray, then pushed the latter towards the centre of the table. Her hands were thin, with long sensitive fingers, and she wore a delicate diamond ring on her fourth finger. How could these hands-?

  ‘It’s an extraordinary place, isn’t it? Tancred inherited it from an elderly cousin of his who went to live in Morocco and died there.’ A little line appeared on her smooth forehead. ‘I suppose it is florid. Yes. You are quite right. The mot juste. Something of a white elephant too. I have been trying to persuade Tancred to sell it and buy a house somewhere around here. When we are married. I saw just the right place the other day – a Queen Anne house – not far from Keats House. Do you like Keats? A hundred swords will storm my heart, Love’s fev’rous citadel. This always makes me shiver. Some think Keats morbid. I can see why.’

  ‘A hundred swords,’ Antonia echoed.

  ‘Sugar? Cream, Hugh? If I remember correctly you have an unquenchable passion for cream,’ Winifred said with unexpected archness. She laughed her tinkling girlish laugh once more.

  Bonkers, Payne thought. ‘You must be thinking of somebody else,’ he said pleasantly. ‘I drink coffee black. No sugar.’

  Antonia looked at the book on the coffee table. It was not the Anita Brookner Winifred had told them she had been reading, but The Rise and Fall of the British Nanny by Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy. Was that where she had been getting her ideas for Miss Hope?

  ‘Black and unsweetened. That’s how real men drink their coffee, apparently. Brutes like it bitter. Sweet is for sissies. That’s what my poor sister says,’ Winifred prattled. ‘Melisande claims she knows everything about men, but, entre nous, she often talks nonsense.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Payne said, taking his cup from her hand. He took a tentative sip.

  ‘Antonia? Cream? No? No sugar? How about a drop of cognac, Hugh? No?’

  Antonia wondered whether Winifred had put something in the coffee. Poison – or an overdose of some strong soporific substance. Though what would Winifred do with their bodies? Well, she could phone the police and say they had both collapsed shortly after they had arrived, so the poison would be something that simulated botulism symptoms. Winifred would have to go to their house first and prepare fish-paste sandwiches or whatever. How would she find contaminated fish-paste though? Not terribly practical. But then so was cutting somebody’s head off with a sword.

  Antonia watched her closely for a flicker of sly malevolence or some other giveaway sign, but Winifred’s expression remained serene. Eerily serene. That’s what breaking bread with the Borgias must have felt like. I mustn’t imagine things, Antonia told herself firmly. But it was difficult – the situation was far from normal.

  She tried to catch her husband’s eye. He gave a slight nod as though to say, the coffee’s OK. How could he be sure? Certain drugs had no taste at all.

  ‘Tancred adores cream, so do I. We are very naughty about it. But we must be careful. Not healthy, really. My sister wouldn’t approve. Melisande believes in “choreographing” one’s digestion.’ Winifred giggled. ‘The coffee is not too strong, I hope?’

  ‘No. It is fine. First-rate coffee.’ Payne cleared his throat. ‘I understand Vane is writing a biography of Prince Cyril of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha? Am I right in thinking the Coburgs used to provide studs for most of the royal houses of Europe? I find royal lives fascinating. The parallel existence, the exclusivity, the utter strangeness of it all – a life without the bother of British Gas, Thames Water, the Halifax or, for that matter, the Taxman!’

  Winifred smiled appreciatively. ‘There was a time when people believed that royal families were needed to create an illusion of heaven on earth, of a jewel-encrusted land, of a Valhalla. A monarch was hailed as a representative of the majesty of history – a link in a chain that leads back to the Middle Ages that in turn connects to antiquity and beyond – to the beginning of recorded time when – when-’

  ‘When the first hero slew the dragon of disorder and established the rule of law?’ Payne suggested.

  ‘I couldn’t have put it better.’ Winifred shot her visitor an admiring glance.

  ‘There’s of course the distinctly unheroic view. Remember Huckleberry Finn? All kings is mostly rapscallions.’

  As Winifred laughed exuberantly, Antonia suddenly realized what their hostess had said several moments earlier. ‘Did you say you were going to be married?’

  ‘Oh yes. We are. Sometime next spring. I would hate to be married in winter. Isn’t it funny that I should always have thought of myself as “not yet married”? I knew it would happen sooner or later. I didn’t mind waiting for Mr Right. You know what they say? Marry in haste, repent at leisure. Next April would be perfect.’

  ‘A week after Easter, perhaps?’

  ‘Yes!’ Winifred brought the palms of her hands together. ‘Tancred and I haven’t yet had a serious discussion about it, but we are going to, sometime this week. Tancred is so terribly busy at the moment, poor darling.’

  Payne said, ‘I understand Prince Cyril is taking up all his time and energy.’

  ‘Don’t I know it! Talk of the limitations of human effort! I’ve been trying to impress it on him, but he wouldn’t listen.’ Winifred shook her head in an exasperated manner. ‘Things keep going wrong with that biography. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. It seems to be jinxed. Poor Tancred hasn’t colle
cted as much information as he would have wished – and some of what he’s already got is not entirely reliable.’

  ‘In what way “not entirely reliable”?’

  Winifred took another sip of coffee, cast a glance round the room as though to make sure no one was lurking in the shadows. ‘One of Tancred’s so-called “sources” may not be who she says she is. I have the strongest suspicions. I have had them for some time. A Miss Hope. Rather, a woman who calls herself Miss Hope. You mustn’t breathe a word!’

  ‘We wouldn’t dream of it,’ Payne promised.

  ‘Poor Tancred hasn’t got an inkling. He is too decent, too trusting, the most ethical person I have ever known – though I wish he didn’t assume everybody was like him! Tancred doesn’t seem to have a safety valve. I fear it will come as a terrible blow to him when all is revealed. As it happens, I am investigating the matter at the moment.’

  ‘You are?’

  ‘Yes. It is quite serious. Deception on a grand scale. Impersonation. Misrepresentation. Misinformation. You seem surprised! It’s as bad as that, yes.’ She gave a mirthless laugh. ‘I am determined to get to the very bottom of it. In fact, I have come to regard it as my duty.’

  ‘Have you made any interesting discoveries?’

  ‘I have. I believe I know now what this woman does. I also know how she does it. She – the soi-disante Miss Hope – has rented a room in a house in St John’s Wood. She arrives, carrying her disguise in a bag. She is a woman in her mid to late fifties. She emerges as elderly Miss Hope and totters her way to the Villa Byzantine. Her landlord is under the impression that she is an eccentric actress who is practising for a part! She tells Tancred all manner of preposterous stories. The mind boggles, really. For example, she has suggested that Prince Cyril and not Hitler might have been responsible for King Boris’ death! She has been hinting at fratricide!’

  ‘Golly.’

  ‘She is completely irresponsible. Once her visit is over, she returns to her rented room, removes her disguise and takes the tube back to wherever she lives. Somewhere around here, I believe. She spends her evenings poring over books which she’s got from the library – royal biographies and so on. But she has started slipping up. On one or two occasions she’s even omitted to remove her disguise.’

  ‘That’s how you knew, I imagine?’ The third sister, Antonia thought. She exchanged looks with Hugh.

  Their hostess inclined her head. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Poor show,’ Payne harrumphed. ‘Jinxed, did you say? Something in that! Didn’t Vane’s other source get herself killed? The Bulgarian woman we met here last month, as a matter of fact? What was her name? Astra?’

  ‘Stella. She was James’ friend. That was awful, wasn’t it? She was beheaded. Poor Tancred’s drawing room might have been some sort of sacrificial ground! Incidentally, there was something about the inquest in today’s Times.’

  ‘Was there?’ Payne wondered whether Winifred could be trusted about anything she said. Winifred appeared highly suspicious of Miss Hope and was hoping to have her unmasked, but Winifred was Miss Hope. Was that what psychologists called disassociation? ‘What does The Times say about the inquest?’

  ‘Oh, nothing much. Only that it was going to take place on such-and-such a date. You are interested in murder, aren’t you? I suppose that’s why you went to the Villa Byzantine?’

  ‘Well, yes. Morland asked me to look into the matter… So Vane told you about my visit?’

  ‘Every little detail. We were on the phone for hours. Tancred tends to tell me everything. I am sure all that will change once we get married! Does your husband tell you everything?’ Winifred turned towards Antonia with an amused smile.

  ‘I don’t know. You’d better ask him.’

  ‘Hugh?’

  ‘Practically everything,’ said Payne solemnly. ‘I have no secrets from Antonia.’

  ‘How did you and Tancred meet?’ Antonia asked.

  There was a crack as a log on the fire collapsed and went up in a gush of pale flame.

  30

  Spellbound

  ‘It’s one of the most remarkable stories you are ever likely to hear. I’d hesitate to describe it as a romance, though it’s that all right. I must admit I was exceedingly romantic as a girl.’ Winifred Willard gave a self-deprecating laugh. ‘I used to identify with Juliet – with Heloise – with Isolde! Too embarrassing for words!’

  ‘I bet you know Tatiana’s letter to Onegin by heart?’

  ‘Why, yes – Hugh, how did you-? Goodness, I do believe you have a sixth sense!’ She lowered her eyes. ‘It all started with a photo. That woman – Stella – had taken a photo of Tancred with her mobile phone camera. She wanted a memento, apparently. She showed us the photo of Tancred – it was the day James brought her here – you remember?’

  ‘Oh yes. Melisande’s birthday party.’

  ‘It is extremely difficult to explain what I felt, it was such an intensely personal experience, it was also so very extraordinary, but, as a writer, Antonia, I am sure you will understand. I hope Hugh won’t say it’s the craziest thing he’s ever heard in his life?’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’

  ‘No. Of course not. It wouldn’t be your style. You see, till I met Tancred, I’d been leading a narrow, solitary sort of life, devoid of any significant human contacts. I kept reading books. I felt intellectually superior but I don’t think I was ever happy. I tended to indulge in melancholy introspection. The river of my existence was, as they say, sluggish. I yearned for the torrent of life, and yet I’d convinced myself that – that I’d found – how can I put it?’

  ‘That you’d found contentment in deprivation?’

  ‘Yes, Hugh! You seem to understand me so well. But then – then I saw Tancred – his photograph – his face – his smile – his eyes. That’s when – it happened. It was quite incredible. I experienced a quickening in my spirit. I felt an immense burden lift from my heart. Suddenly – suddenly I felt free. My spirit leapt out of its confines!’ Winifred threw her hands up and opened them, as though she were releasing a dove.

  ‘Remarkable,’ Payne said.

  ‘I felt as light as the proverbial feather. I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if I had started levitating. And then – then there was the jubilant ringing of bells! I knew in that instant that, whatever happened, I could never go back to my old constraints and restrictions. You heard the bells, didn’t you? Well, I must say that’s the closest I have ever come to a religious conversion. I hope you won’t think it terribly peculiar of me?’

  ‘Not at all, dear lady. Not at all.’

  ‘Do you remember in Death in Venice, when Aschenbach begins to see Tadzio as a bearer of death? Well, I saw Tancred as a bearer of life. No! As life itself. You do understand, Antonia, don’t you? I am sure you do.’

  ‘I believe I do,’ Antonia said gravely. She did her best to keep her face expressionless. (Why did they always have to meet oddballs?)

  ‘I managed to engage Stella in a conversation about Tancred Vane. I believe you’d gone by then? I did it most casually,’ Winifred went on. ‘I asked how she had established contact with him and so on. She showed me the advertisement. She took it out of her bag. It was a newspaper cutting from the International Herald Tribune – royal biographer Tancred Vane seeking information about Prince Cyril of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and the Bulgarian royal family – words to that effect. Well, I knew exactly what my next action should be.’

  ‘You phoned him?’

  ‘No. I feared that might be a little too forward. I have had a very strict upbringing, you see. My father used to make me write thank-you notes to him each time he punished me! I have remained, in many ways, an old-fashioned kind of girl.’

  ‘You wrote to him?’

  ‘I sat down and wrote Tancred a letter, yes. Like Tatiana! It was a very formal missive. Stiff and uninspired.’ Winifred gave a self-deprecating smile. ‘I addressed him as “Dear Mr Vane”. Tancred wrote back by return of post. He declare
d himself delighted by my letter. He said he was longing to meet me. He invited me to visit him at the Villa Byzantine. He said he would be counting the hours-’

  Of all the elliptic accounts, thought Antonia. What Winifred was omitting was the highly significant fact that she had written to Vane as ‘Miss Hope’, former nanny to Prince Cyril’s son, and that she had offered to share her ‘reminiscences’ with him. That of course was the only reason why he had written back by return of post and asked her to visit him at the Villa Byzantine.

  ‘Needless to say, Tancred and I “clicked” at once. Our very first meeting felt as though it had been pre-ordained. It was exactly as I had imagined it would be. We sat facing each other and we talked and talked! We couldn’t keep the smiles off our faces. It felt as though he and I had known each other all our lives.’

  There was a pause. Payne remembered something de Clerambault had written. That patients with this particular delusional disorder frequently cast a quasi-religious veil over their feelings. Patients were unlikely to seek help since they did not regard themselves as ill.

  He cleared his throat. ‘Going back to what we were saying earlier on, do you think it at all possible that it was Miss Hope who killed Stella?’

  Winifred remained thoughtful for a moment or two, then said quietly, ‘What would her motive have been?’

  ‘Perhaps Stella tumbled to her secret? Discovered she was an impostor?’

  ‘Yes… That is possible.’ Something like a shadow passed across Winifred Willard’s face and her expression changed a little. Her smile faded. She looked confused.

  ‘Did you know that a bloodstained handkerchief bearing the initials WW was found by Stella’s dead body?’

  ‘No. How extraordinary. I had no idea.’

  ‘Do you think it might be yours?’

  Oh dear, Antonia thought.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Winifred slowly rose from her seat. ‘I believe my sister is calling me. I am sorry. I will need to go upstairs. Would you mind frightfully if I said au revoir?’