Things seemed the same, yet they would never be the same. In a peculiar way Lord Remnant’s violent death had triggered something in his mind, something he had never suspected was there …
He discovered he was walking in the direction of Remnant Regis and soon enough he saw the castle rising in the mist, not unlike some crouching primeval monster with spikes on its back – that was what the chimneys made it look like.
Set in a kind of valley, next to a grey-watered artificial lake, Remnant Castle was surrounded by oaks, beeches and chestnuts of great size and strange growth. Long untrimmed branches dangled to the ground and creaked whenever the wind blew. There was a park on the other side, but it was invisible from where he stood. The lake was enshrouded in mists in most seasons, diaphanous and delicate in summer, thick and blighting in winter.
He raised his binoculars to his eyes. Somebody was turning on the lights at Remnant. How was Clarissa coping? When he had spoken to her at the crematorium, he had offered his services. She had allowed him to hold her hand in his for at least half a minute. He would have held it longer, but Louise had been hovering in the background, making impatient noises, sighing heavily, damn her. Clarissa had thanked him and said she would call him if she needed anything. She had sounded as though she meant it. She had looked him straight in the eye.
He wanted to see her. He longed to hear her voice. He could walk up to her front door and present himself. No, not yet. He shouldn’t act on an impulse. He was not the sort of man who took foolish and unnecessary risks – with one notable exception …
The Hunters lived at Clarenden Farm, set among acres and acres of land less than a quarter of a mile from Remnant Castle. They had been neighbours of the Remnants for quite a bit, though he’d never imagined they’d become anything like friends. He had been surprised when Clarissa had asked them for drinks, then to dinner, then to tea, then for drinks again; and had finally issued the invitation for a visit to their very own island.
Why had they been invited? They were not exactly Clarissa’s sort of people. Not as some kind of camouflage for Clarissa’s affair with the doctor, surely? That was what Louise had suggested. Louise was a nasty cat. He never ceased to marvel at the fascinating depths of his wife’s inexhaustible banality. Louise had gone out of her way to poison his mind against Clarissa. Louise was jealous. Terribly jealous. Well, there was nothing he could do about it.
Would things be different now that Lord Remnant was dead? Perhaps Clarissa would phone and ask him over for a drink. She owed him a lot. That was what she had told him the night Lord Remnant died.
What a night it had been …
The air had seemed full of electricity. They had stood about and stared … It was he and Sylvester-Sale who had eventually carried the body up the stairs – not to the master bedroom, Clarissa had said, but to Lord Remnant’s dressing room next door. They had laid the body on some kind of couch.
He had watched Dr Sylvester-Sale take off Lord Remnant’s cardboard nose, then his wig and the Gonzago beard. Lord Remnant’s eyes had been darkened with kohl – his cheeks covered in rouge – his mouth painted with purplish lipstick. The whole episode had had a nightmarish quality about it. They had kept the velvet cushion from the chaise longue downstairs under Lord Remnant’s head. The cushion had been damp with blood.
They had moved the body from the murder scene. They hadn’t called the police. It seemed that different rules operated at La Sorcière. Clarissa’s rules. Clarissa had taken charge of the situation.
He saw himself once more standing inside Lord Remnant’s dressing room. Each detail remained seared on his mind. The couch was upholstered in dark brown leather. There was a door on the right leading to the bedroom and another, a green baize door, to the en-suite bathroom on the left. A picture hung on the wall above the couch, an Edwardian painting entitled Cheating at Cards. It showed four men in full evening dress sitting stiffly around a table, one of them pulling a card sneakily out of his pocket.
Underneath the picture, pushed against the wall, stood a washstand of the greatest elaboration, dating back to the 1890s, or so he imagined; a freak of fancy, really, decorated with silverwork and a series of rhomboid-shaped painted panels. In the centre of it, forming the climax of the design, there was a prominent, highly ornamental copper tap.
As he stood looking down at Lord Remnant’s body, he had heard a sound. A laugh. A high-pitched giggle. He was sure he hadn’t imagined it. It had given him – well, quite a jolt, really. He had caught his breath. His hair had stood on end. Sylvester-Sale had been there, beside the door, on his way out, but he said he had heard nothing.
In a moment of weakness Basil had told Louise about it. He shouldn’t have. Louise had started speculating, wondering, propounding absurd theories … How could he ever have married her!
Basil Hunter stood still in his tracks and frowned. Though the window had been open, he didn’t think the sound had come from outside. He didn’t believe it had been made by a bird or an animal. It had been a human sound. Someone had laughed. Had there been someone hiding in the bathroom? But who? Who could it have been? Everybody had been downstairs – hadn’t they?
12
The Giant Shadow
Their eyes were glued to the TV screen. Again they saw the french windows and the net curtains over them and once more the woman with the silver hair and the glasses – Clarissa’s aunt – was walking briskly towards the windows, but before she managed to draw the silk curtains, Payne held out the remote control and pressed the Pause button.
‘There it is.’ Payne pointed at the frozen image. ‘Do you see it?’
‘See what, Hughie?’
‘Do look carefully, darling.’
‘I am looking,’ Lady Grylls said a little peevishly. ‘Though I have no idea what I am supposed to see. There’s Roderick in the ghastly Gonzago beard lying on the divan – is that a divan?’
‘A chaise longue. What do you see behind the chaise longue?’
‘You make it sound like a game. What do I spy with my little eye? I see the french windows – the aunt – I have a feeling the aunt’s pretending to be scattier than she is. Beware of emotionally volatile women of a certain age – I wouldn’t trust the aunt.’
‘Never mind the aunt. What else do you see?’
‘I see a pedestal with what looks like a too perfect statuette of Pallas Athene. She has an annoyingly smug expression on her face. Am I the only one who finds classical figures forbidding?’
‘We’ll discuss art later,’ said Payne. ‘What else do you see?’
‘Nothing else. Only the net curtains.’
‘Concentrate on the net curtains … D’you notice anything?’
‘What is there to notice?’
‘Do you mean the shadow?’ Felicity Remnant said quietly.
‘I do mean the shadow. Eureka! You see it, Lady Remnant, don’t you?’
‘I do.’
‘Goodness, yes. You are absolutely right. There is some sort of shadow outlined against the net curtain. Someone is standing outside.’ Lady Grylls pushed her glasses up her nose. ‘Doesn’t look like a human shadow – too big. What are those things sticking out of it?’
‘Are those – ears?’ Felicity frowned.
‘I believe so.’
Lady Grylls screwed up her eyes. ‘What is it? Looks like a giant rabbit. Goodness, how gruesome.’
‘It’s a person dressed up as some kind of long-eared animal,’ Felicity said.
Payne fast-forwarded and paused again. The silk curtains were now drawn across the french windows.
‘Watch carefully,’ he said. ‘Do keep your eyes on the curtains. What do you see? Now.’
‘The curtains move – they part – oh, there’s someone standing there! Yes! Goodness!’ Lady Grylls’s hand was at her bosom. ‘Something’s protruding from between the curtains – oh, it’s gone! It caught the light for a moment, but it’s gone now. Something shiny. Something made of metal. There was a flash of sorts, but i
t happened awfully fast!’
‘Yes. It happened very fast.’ Payne leant back in his seat.
They watched the flailing Lord Remnant lift his head, gape and stare at the camera as though in tremendous surprise, then fall back and lie still.
There was a pause.
‘I believe that was a gun,’ Felicity said. ‘Wasn’t it?’
Payne nodded. ‘It was a gun, no bigger than a toy.’
‘So that’s what killed him,’ Lady Grylls said. ‘A gunshot to the head.’
13
Two Go Adventuring Again
Two hours later Major Payne was back in Hampstead.
‘Well, you will be pleased to know my copy-editing problem has been resolved,’ Antonia said. ‘My beloved Emmy has been persuaded not to hang up her pencil quite yet … Did the chest live up to your expectations?’
‘What chest?’
‘The chest you went to inspect, Hugh. Felicity Fenwick’s chest. The Damascus chest. I thought your aunt was taking you to see Felicity Fenwick’s Damascus chest.’
‘She was. I saw it. It has a secret drawer. The chest is fine,’ Payne said absently. ‘One of the most beautiful objects that has ever been crafted by man. I found it quite remarkable. Definitely on my list of desiderata.’
There was a pause.
‘What is it, Hugh? Has something happened?’
‘Well, yes. You’d never believe it if I told you. The most extraordinary business. The devil of a business.’
‘Surely not?’
‘I am afraid so.’ Payne produced his pipe portentously. ‘The game, as they say, is afoot.’
Antonia remained unimpressed. ‘You say that at least once every couple of days. You said it when Dupin disappeared and you said it when we were charged for phone calls we’d never made.’
Dupin was their cat. Dupin had eventually reappeared, but Payne was convinced that he had been lured away and held captive by one of their neighbours, a solitary eccentric spinster who had been trying to persuade them to sell her Dupin.
‘This time it is much more serious than any cat or call we may or may not have made,’ said Payne. ‘Much more serious, my love, and utterly fascinating. More intriguing than, say, the case of the assassins at Ospreys.’
‘I don’t suppose you are talking about murder, are you?’
‘I am talking about murder. It happened on the privately owned Caribbean island of Grenadin. At a house called La Sorcière. No, I am not joking. The murder was committed with startling boldness in full view of at least five people, though none of them seemed to be aware that a shot had been fired.’
‘You are making this up.’
‘I am not. I saw it all with my very eyes.’
‘You mean you were one of the five witnesses?’
‘No. I saw a recording of it. The murder was captured on camera. That’s what makes the whole thing so terribly extraordinary.’
‘The island of Grenadin. Wasn’t that where—? It’s nothing to do with Lord Remnant, is it?’
‘It’s everything to do with Lord Remnant.’
Antonia stared back at him.
They had read Lord Remnant’s Times obituary together only a couple of days before. Antonia had idly commented on Lord Remnant’s photograph. She had said something to the effect that he looked arrogant and self-satisfied and she had taken particular exception to his wolfish smile.
‘The Times obituary said he died of a heart attack.’
‘That’s the official version. The consensus of opinion is that Lord Remnant was murdered.’
‘What consensus? Who are you talking about?’
‘My aunt. Felicity Remnant. Yours truly. We all agreed he was murdered. The whole thing is quite incredible. It starts with Felicity Remnant’s having her suspicions aroused at the crematorium,’ Payne went on. ‘She is struck by the conspiratorial behaviour of the people attending the cremation.’
‘I assume they were the very same crowd who watched as Lord Remnant handed in his dinner pail?’
‘The very same. Felicity thought they looked furtive. And then, as though in confirmation of her suspicions, she received an anonymous package containing a videotape showing Lord Remnant’s last moments.’
Payne went on to tell the rest of the story.
There was a pause.
‘Lord Remnant was shot through the back of the head by a giant rabbit,’ Antonia said.
‘Lord Remnant was shot by a person wearing a rabbit’s head, though I doubt it was a rabbit. I don’t think there are any rabbits in Shakespeare, are there?’ Payne held up his pipe. ‘Can you think of any animals at all in Shakespeare?’
‘There is a dog – Balthasar in Romeo and Juliet,’ said Antonia. ‘No – Balthasar is not a dog, but Romeo’s tragically precipitate friend. Sorry. How silly of me. I must be thinking of The Forsyte Saga – Old Jolyon and faithful Balthasar? Remember Balthasar’s death and subsequent burial?’
‘Vividly. The scene reduced me to tears. In which of Shakespeare’s tragedies does a character exit pursued by a bear?’
‘The Winter’s Tale? What has Shakespeare to do with Lord Remnant’s death?’
‘Lord Remnant died during a private performance of The Murder of Gonzago.’
‘I see. How fascinating … Hamlet’s brainwave. Hamlet was playing the detective. The play within the play. Hamlet also called it The Mousetrap … That’s where Agatha Christie got her idea.’
‘They keep thinking of ingenious ways of making Shakespeare more accessible to the masses, but there seem to be more misses than hits … Do you remember the way they did Gonzago in the David Tennant Hamlet? You hated it, didn’t you? The Player Queen! Remember the Player Queen?’
‘I most certainly do. The whole thing was terrible.’ Antonia shuddered squeamishly. ‘A veritable freak show.’
The Player King had sported monkey ears, and shuffled on boots attached to his knees. The Player Queen was a bare-breasted transvestite. Once murdered, the Player King had been shrouded in a white sheet and winched into the air where he had hovered, ghost-like. The regicide Lucianus had strutted about, wearing a heart-shaped spangled codpiece.
‘Lord Remnant’s murderer appears to have been dressed up as some long-eared creature,’ Payne said. ‘If not a rabbit, then Bottom in Midsummer Night’s Dream seems indicated, wouldn’t you say? I can’t think of any other ass in Shakespeare – can you?’
‘No. Bottom is not really an ass … Am I the only one who doesn’t find Shakespeare’s comedies funny? Who videotaped the thing?’ Antonia asked.
‘A servant, but then the camera changed hands and it was Clarissa Remnant’s aunt who took over.’
‘You said there was no sound?’
‘No, sadly. No subtitles either. It made me exercise my brains and eyes harder, which wasn’t such a bad thing.’
‘The package was addressed to Gerard Fenwick who is Lord Remnant’s brother … Any idea as to who the sender might be?’
‘Well, Clarissa’s aunt was the last to handle the camera, so the logical assumption is that she had the best chance of monkeying about with the film. This is backed up by the postmark.’ Payne frowned reflectively. ‘Her name is Hortense Tilling. Felicity says she looked particularly hag-ridden at the funeral. Well, Aunt Hortense may turn out to be one of those lonely middle-aged sensationalists who specialize in stirring up trouble for trouble’s sake – but it’s also possible that she sent the tape out of noble if somewhat muddled motives. She may be itching to spill the beans.’
‘Did you say postmark? What postmark?’
‘The Jiffy bag in which the tape was despatched bears the postmark Kensington and Chelsea and Aunt Hortense is the only member of the fatal house party who lives in Kensington. Dr Sylvester-Sale lives in Knightsbridge, the Hunters at a farm not far from Remnant Castle in Hertfordshire. Clarissa resides at Remnant Castle … As a matter of fact, I have been instructed to go and interview Aunt Hortense as soon as possible.’
‘What do you
mean “instructed”? Who instructed you?’
‘The new Countess Remnant. Felicity. She wants me to investigate the circumstances surrounding her brother-in-law’s murder. She urged me to leave no stone unturned. She wants to know what exactly happened. She said that if I discovered the truth, the Damascus chest would be mine free of charge. She said she would tear up the cheque I gave her.’
‘She would tear up the cheque? How very interesting. And you accepted her commission, just like that? No hesitation?’
He shrugged. ‘One mustn’t refuse the unusual if it is offered to one. That, perhaps, should be our motto. You agree of course?’
‘It seems to me that the new Countess Remnant doesn’t care much for the family she married into,’ Antonia said. ‘Or is that too fanciful?’
‘Not too fanciful. I think she would be pleased if her husband’s family were to be embroiled in some sort of scandal. My aunt suspects the settling of old scores. Apparently, Gerard’s late mama was beastly to Felicity when Gerard and Felicity first got married. Felicity doesn’t seem to think much of Clarissa either … None of my business, but I can’t help thinking there is something wrong with the Fenwick marriage. You should have seen the way her face hardened when her husband’s club got a mention.’
‘I don’t suppose you’ve been able to obtain Aunt Hortense’s address?’
‘As it happens, I have. Felicity managed to get it for me.’ Payne waved a piece of paper. ‘Well, my love, I’m going to pay Aunt Hortense a visit tomorrow morning, at about eleven. Um … What do you think?’
‘What does it matter what I think?’
He cleared his throat. ‘I was wondering whether you’d care to join me.’
14
The Sphinx without a Secret
Sometimes my wife suffers from a fury of possession and she cannot bear me to be drawn to anyone but her, Gerard Fenwick wrote in his diary. She may not look the kind of woman who falls prey to the emerald-eyed lizard, but the sad truth is she is jealous not only of pretty young things like Renée Glover, but of our Lithuanian maid, of my Davidoff Grand Cru cigars, of my books, of my silver-topped stylo and, indeed, of my writing.
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