In sudden panic Lord Collingwood tried to break free from the straps and failed. He might have been a pitiful rodent gripped in the coils of a great boa constrictor – the more he struggled, the tighter the pressure upon him grew …
As he screamed, the mask slipped from the surgeon’s face and Lord Collingwood gasped in horror.
It wasn’t a fellow – it was his wife – it was Deirdre.
At breakfast at their house in Park Lane he was silent. He couldn’t get the dream out of his head. He had woken up and sat up in bed shaking like a leper in the wind. He found he had no appetite. He sat staring balefully at his boiled egg. The Black Dog, he couldn’t get rid of the Black Dog.
‘Are you seeing Joan today?’ Deirdre asked from the other end of the table.
‘Maybe I am.’
‘You see her often, don’t you?’
‘What if I do?’
‘Oh nothing. Nothing at all, Rupert. Simply curious.’
‘Curiosity killed the cat.’ Lord Collingwood smiled morosely.
It occurred to him that he occupied a hermetic, hierarchical kind of world where schedules and patterns of behaviour were constantly under some form of surveillance. It was a world filled with sinister potential. He remembered how his wife had pestered him to get a butler. He suspected Deirdre wanted a butler for the sole reason of bribing him to spy on him.
‘Do you have to be so bad-tempered?’ Deirdre helped herself to a piece of toast and started buttering it. ‘It was an innocent enough question.’
‘There is no such thing as an innocent enough question.’
‘You aren’t ill, are you?’
He was far from well, he said. He’d slept fitfully. He’d been tormented by bad dreams. At the moment he was feeling a vapourish kind of tightening around his brain. It was a most disagreeable sensation. He spoke slowly and patiently and rather loudly; he might have been addressing a foreigner or a refractory child.
‘Why don’t you go to the doctor?’
‘No. Not today. He’s already changed my pills twice.’
‘Perhaps it’s time you changed your doctor?’
‘That would be damned disloyal. That’s the sort of thing you would do.’
‘You said your new pills left you emotionally cauterised.’
‘I never said that.’
‘You said your doctor was never pleased to see you.’
‘I never said that.’
‘How about some tea or coffee?’
Lord Collingwood stared back at his wife with an expression of profound dismay. ‘The globe’s monetary system is on the point of collapse, the whole of Western civilisation is under threat, the world’s on the verge of a digital Armageddon, savages terrorise our embassies, and all my dear wife has to say is, how about some tea or coffee? What passes for conversation under this roof is no more than a list of utterances enfolding emptiness.’
Lady Collingwood remained unperturbed. She raised her coffee cup to her lips. ‘Joan and I had lunch yesterday. At the Criterion. She thinks very highly of you, you know.’
Lord Collingwood said that that was the blandest, the most uncritically unctuous, the most appallingly sycophantic kind of remark he had heard in his entire life. When they had first got married, he went on, he had imagined her to be a different kind of woman – less conventional, less county, more hedonistic, brimming over with effervescent wit and theatricality. In short, the kind of woman who wouldn’t think twice about wearing satin elbow-length gloves at breakfast.
‘Would you like me to wear elbow-length gloves at breakfast?’ Lady Collingwood asked.
‘Must you take everything I say so literally?’ He glanced at the clock. ‘I am seeing little Joanie later today.’
‘So you are seeing her’.
‘Well, yes. I said so, didn’t I?’ He seemed surprised. ‘I don’t think she’s quite given up on Charlie, you know. I may be entirely wrong, but I suspect she may be set on some unwise course of action.’
‘She told me she was no longer interested in Charlie. She said she was seeing someone else. Someone called Billy Selkirk. Perhaps she was lying, I don’t know.’
‘It would be useful to find out if such a person exists,’ Lord Collingwood said.
‘You can’t blame me for being suspicious about you and Joan. As middle age advances and one’s youthful illusions recede, almost the only way of starting again, of being reborn, is to have an affair with a young woman. You said that once.’
‘It sounds precisely the kind of thing I would say,’ he nodded. ‘Sometimes you do manage to hit the nail on the head, Deirdre.’
‘Can you swear by your soul’s salvation that you are not having an affair with Joan? You had an affair with her mother, you know.’
‘You shouldn’t listen to ill-natured gossip, Deirdre, you really shouldn’t.’ He shook his head. ‘It seems to be the new religion, gossip. Afrikaners, Norfolk farmers and middle-class moralists are said to be the only ones who don’t gossip, or so I read somewhere, but, sadly, they are not the sort of people one wants to see at one’s dinner table, are they?’
‘Do have some coffee, Rupert,’ she urged him. ‘It’s excellent this morning. It’s some exclusive brand. Kopi Luwak. Hideously expensive.’
‘I think I shall have a cup of coffee, if only to please you. For some reason I have started feeling better, you know. It must be your conversation. I can feel the Black Dog lifting.’ He reached out for the silver coffee pot. ‘The affair with Joanie Selwyn’s mother was a very long time ago,’ he went on conversationally. ‘You were probably not born at the time I had an affair with Joanie Selwyn’s mother. That was a joke. Not meant to be taken literally.’
A minute or two later Lord Collingwood rose from his seat and strode up to his wife in a purposeful manner. For a moment or two he stood gazing down at her through narrowed eyes as though trying to distinguish something in her that was very distant. He then put his hands on her shoulders, stooped over and kissed her. It was a kiss of great tenderness. ‘I am sorry, darling, but I’ve got to go.’
‘But it’s too early, surely?’
‘No, it isn’t. I’ve got an important job to do, several important jobs, actually. Promise me you will have a wonderful morning,’ he whispered in her ear.
‘I will miss you terribly.’
‘I know you will. I will miss you too. But I have a boring tendency to stick to my principles.’
‘I understand perfectly. And I admire you for it. Noblesse oblige.’
His expression changed. ‘I was hoping you wouldn’t say that.’
‘I don’t suppose you remember my very first visit to Collingwood, Rupert, do you?’ Deirdre spoke with a faint touch of coquetry.
‘Oh but I do remember. The weather was awful.’
‘That was part of the magic. Your mother’s dogs barked throughout the night. For some reason they didn’t take to me. Then at breakfast your mother asked me whether my medical knowledge extended to the binding-up of wounds inflicted while playing billiard-fives. It sounded like some sort of a code. She seemed to be taking me for a spy or a nurse!’ Deirdre laughed at the memory. She reached out for his hand. ‘You won’t get too tired, Rupert, will you?’
‘I will try not to, darling. I can’t promise.’
‘I really worry about you sometimes, Rupert.’
‘I am perfectly aware of it, darling. It means an awful lot to me. I don’t know what I would do without you. I’d be lost, completely lost, darling. I have a giant and deranged ego. Sometimes I am quite unable to articulate the enormity of my thoughts.’ He had started speaking with great urgency. ‘I am troubled by perpetual and inextinguishable fears. I am tormented by nightmares. You don’t really think I am losing my mind, darling, do you?’
‘I don’t. Of course I don’t.’ She gave his hand a reassuring squeeze.
‘Promise you will always be here when I come back, you must promise.’ He kissed her again.
‘I am jealous, so terribly je
alous.’ Lady Collingwood moaned. Her hand flew up to her mouth. ‘Every fibre, every neuron in my body militates against it but I can’t help myself. It’s a monstrous affliction. I am ashamed of it!’
‘On no account must you feel any shame,’ Lord Collingwood said. ‘I don’t mind you being shameless.’
‘I have tried to like Joan, I really have, Rupert. But she and I are so different – poles apart – we do not breathe the same air. She always looks so – so superior. That very correct censorious stare!’
‘I know exactly what you mean, darling … Lunch at the Criterion wasn’t much of a success, I take it?’
‘It was agony. She insisted on drinking only water. She chewed her oysters. I told her to swallow. She said she would but didn’t. I know it sounds awfully petty but I think she wanted to show me that my opinions didn’t cut any ice with her. She seemed keen on demonstrating her force of character.’
‘I am no psychologist, Deirdre, but I think that may be the effect Charlie’s rejection has had on her. She believes she should assert herself more. Incidentally I bumped into Payne at the club the other day and I told him all about Joan and Charlie and how Olga Klimt came between them. The whole sorry tale. Thought he might have some useful suggestions to make. Remember Payne?’
‘Not Hugh Payne? Of course I remember Hugh Payne! Nellie Grylls’ nephew. He’s wonderful. He is terribly amusing,’ Lady Collingwood gushed. ‘Clever enough to wear his considerable intelligence lightly, I have heard it said. Reputed to be the second cleverest man in London but likes to play the buffoon. No idea who’s the first. Similar in some ways to our beloved mayor, only ever so much more presentable.’
‘Payne’s wife writes. Murder mysteries. Don’t know how good she is. Nowadays very few people are. We must get some of her books. Perhaps we could have the Paynes round to dinner some time?’
‘I’d like that. Splendid idea.’
He patted her cheek. Then he straightened up, very much the cavalry officer he’d once been and examined his reflection in the mirror above the mantelpiece. He ran his forefinger inside his collar, straightened his tie, touched his little moustache, then smoothed his hair. His eyes, he noticed, were a little bloodshot. ‘I really must go now.’
‘I admire the rapidity of your intensely clever, quickly changing mind, Rupert … You do love me, don’t you?’
‘I find you incomparable. Au revoir.’
‘Au revoir.’
Deirdre Collingwood remained sitting at the table. She heard the front door open and close. As she considered the complex relationship she had with her husband, her smile slowly faded. She rang for fresh coffee, but then told the maid not to bother.
She rose decisively to her feet.
Five minutes later she was inside her husband’s study, kneeling beside his desk, struggling with a bunch of keys.
13
THE PERFECT MURDER (1)
If I can’t have her, no one else will.
I must admit I am extremely upset. Or this is what I believe being ‘extremely upset’ feels like. I remember that when I was a boy, I never cried.
Although at the moment I am quite unable to smile, the irony of my predicament has not escaped me. I feel very much the way Mr Eresby felt the day Olga told him she was breaking up with him. Mr Eresby, you may wish to remember, found his misery so acute, so unbearable, that he asked me to kill Olga Klimt for him.
I keep thinking about Olga Klimt’s duplicity, about her lies, about the game she played with me. I then recall her kisses and tender caresses and, like Mr Eresby before me, I am filled with the desire for revenge.
I hold out my hands before me. I flex my fingers. I clench my hands into fists.
I want her dead. I want Olga Klimt dead.
The moment I think it, I feel better.
Beauty that is unfamiliar as it is perilous …
Making up his mind not to see Olga Klimt had been the right decision, of that he had no doubt, one should never take risks with girls like that, yet he felt quite unable to stop himself wondering whether his mental image of her matched the reality or not. He was of course going to see her when Charlie condescended to formally introduce her to his mother and to him, which was bound to happen at some point if there was going to be a wedding.
Lord Collingwood glanced at his watch. Risks, yes. Girls of that sort were known to make claims and cause trouble. He considered himself a man of the world but he was also a cautious man. He had after all a position to maintain. She might decide to complain that he had ravished her or some such ugly accusation, the papers were full of stories these days, or she might try blackmailing him. Better be safe than sorry and not visit Olga.
He was sitting at a table at Richoux’s in Piccadilly, waiting for Joan Selwyn. He needed to concentrate. Producing a pad and a silver pen from his pocket, he wrote a little memo to himself. Essential employ every bit of eloquence in case of sudden opposition.
He had it all carefully mapped out in his head, the precise words he would use …
It was so frightfully important!
(Later he was to give Payne a detailed account of his meeting with Joan Selwyn.)
Suddenly he saw her walking towards him. He held his breath. This, he reflected, was how Judith, of Holofornes decapitation notoriety, must have looked: an air of gravity, head high, chin resolute, lips pursed, eyes serious and steady. He felt his scalp prickle. He shivered. No, he wasn’t being fanciful, dammit. There was something ruthless about Joan.
‘Ah, my dear,’ he said, rising and kissing her cheek. ‘There you are.’
‘I am sorry I am late,’ Joan said.
‘I’m so terribly glad to see you, my dear. I do apologise if I strike you as a bit on the low side but I slept badly. Besides, facing Deirdre across the breakfast table is always an unsettling experience.’
‘She seems to be jealous of me!’
‘She is jealous, yes. Went on and on about it. I almost wished we were having an affair! Ha ha! Flattering, in a way, shows one’s wife does care, but such a damned bore! You should have seen her this morning as she sat gulping down cups of some superior black coffee. So magnificently groomed, so admirably garbed, so tantalisingly aloof! Some people I know find Deirdre extremely attractive.’
‘Not Billy. Billy said Deirdre had all the allure of a cold hip bath. He’s seen her somewhere, at some matinee, I think. She was pointed out to him.’
‘Billy?’ Lord Collingwood’s left eyebrow went up. ‘Is that your new beau? So he does exist! Hoorah!’
She pursed her lips slightly. ‘Did you think he was a figment of my imagination?’
‘I did wonder! You know I only want what’s best for you! Such a relief! Jolly glad to know you are moving on, my dear.’
‘What did you want to see me about, Rupert?’
He looked at her with mock solemnity. ‘Well, Joanie, you promised to do something for me? You haven’t forgotten, have you, my dear?’
‘Oh that. Of course I haven’t forgotten. I said I would help you, didn’t I? You don’t have to worry. You know I always do what I say. Who is this mysterious friend anyway?’
‘He’s an old fool,’ Lord Collingwood said with a sigh. ‘But he’s done me several tremendous favours, so I feel under an obligation of sorts. I know the whole thing’s rather awkward, but I didn’t have the heart to say no, my dear.’
‘Who is he?’
‘He’d rather he remained anonymous, if you don’t mind. I’ve been sworn to secrecy.’
Joan Selwyn tried to hide her exasperation. ‘It’s such an incredible story. Are you sure he wasn’t making it up?’
‘I don’t see why he should want to send us on a wild goose chase, do you?’
‘He may have some sinister motive.’
‘No, no. I am convinced his request is entirely bona fide. He is an old fool. Ah there’s the waiter, at long last! Service in London is no longer what it used to be. What would you like, my dear?’
‘Just a cup of coff
ee. No, nothing to eat.’
‘I’ll have some scrambled eggs on toast. Feel ravenous. Hardly touched a thing this morning! Deirdre, on the other hand, kept stuffing herself with kedgeree. She generates such tension, you wouldn’t believe it.’ Lord Collingwood shook his head. ‘She didn’t want me to go out. If she could have her own way, she would keep me under lock and key!’
Fenella Frayle rose abruptly from her desk. Walking across her study, she locked her door. She then went up to a cupboard in the corner and producing a brand-new bottle of brandy, poured herself a glass. She took a resolute sip, then another.
She shut her eyes.
This is so unlike me, she thought as she raised the glass to her lips for the third time.
She could hear the children singing ‘An Impossible Dream’.
To fight the unbeatable foe –
The unbeatable foe was of course Aunt Clo-Clo. Aunt Clo-Clo had been on the phone to Fenella about half an hour earlier – once again ranting and raving – it had been worse than usual, actually –
‘I am giving you till Halloween to clear out. That’s my final word. A letter from my solicitors is on the way.’
Fenella shut her eyes. She was certainly capable of killing Aunt Clo-Clo. Was she capable of killing Olga Klimt? No one could kill a perfect stranger, could they? Not unless they were mad. But she wasn’t mad. She was the most sensible, the most rational person who ever walked the earth! But imagine – just imagine – for argument’s sake – she did kill Olga Klimt – what guarantee was there that Charles Eresby would reciprocate?
Fenella took another sip of brandy. No guarantee at all. Chances were that the biscuit heir had forgotten all about his plan by now. But the killing of Olga Klimt might spur him on. It might.
I could blackmail him, Fenella thought. He wouldn’t like it if I told the police we’d agreed to exchange murders. I could actually say that he’d paid me to kill his girlfriend. The heir to the Eresby biscuit millions wouldn’t want the publicity, would he?
She laughed. It wouldn’t work! All he’d need to do was deny the allegation. It would be her word against his. The whole thing was quite absurd!
The Killing of Olga Klimt Page 8
