‘I suppose we could employ it as a rather unusual doorstop?’ Antonia suggested.
‘Not a bad idea!’
The phone rang and Payne picked it up.
It was a woman’s voice that he didn’t recognise.
‘Hallo – is that Hugh Payne?’
‘Speaking.’
‘Oh hallo, Hugh. It’s Deirdre Collingwood speaking. Hope you remember me? We met at a party at the Peruvian embassy some time ago, last February, I think.’
‘Of course I remember you. Those grisly canapés!’
‘They were rather awful, weren’t they?’
‘What a remarkable coincidence.’ Payne grimaced at Antonia. ‘My wife and I were just talking about diplomatic receptions.’
‘It was Rupert who gave me your number,’ Lady Collingwood explained. ‘I do hope you don’t mind terribly. I am at my wits’ end. Rupert was against my calling you. He said I couldn’t possibly bother you about it, that it wasn’t the done thing, that I should call the police –’
‘What’s happened?’ Payne asked.
‘Charlie isn’t answering his phone. I don’t know where he is. He answered his phone just once. The first time. That’s when he told me about Olga. I have no idea where he is or who he is with. He was in a car – I could tell by the noise. I don’t want to call the police, not yet. I am afraid Charlie would be furious if I did. Rupert is not much help. He is in one of his moods. He’s gone to his study now. Rupert’s study is – well, inviolable. I simply don’t know what to do. Could Charlie have been kidnapped, do you think?’
‘What makes you think so?’
‘I am perfectly aware that this is a terrible imposition, Hugh, but I was wondering whether I could ask you for help. Rupert said you knew all about this girl Olga Klimt. I understand he told you the whole story.’
‘He told me about Olga, yes.’ Payne cast another glance at Antonia. ‘What happened exactly?’
‘To be perfectly honest,’ Lady Collingwood said, ‘I couldn’t care less whether Olga is dead or alive. It’s an awful thing to say, but I am mainly concerned about Charlie’s safety and state of mind. He should never have got involved with that girl, never, but you know what young men are. I called Charlie about half an hour ago. He was in a dreadful state. He was sobbing. I have no idea where he is at this very moment. All he said was that Olga was dead.’
‘Is that all he said?’
‘Yes. Olga is dead.’
Payne asked her a couple more questions. He reached out for the pad and pen they kept on the telephone table and made some notes. Eventually he rang off. He looked at his watch. ‘That was Deirdre, Lady Collingwood.’
‘So I gathered.’ Antonia rose slowly from the sofa. ‘Something’s happened to Olga Klimt, hasn’t it?’
‘Olga Klimt is dead. Deirdre doesn’t know any details. She has no idea how accurate the information is. She phoned her son earlier tonight. All he said was, “Olga’s dead”. Then he rang off. She hasn’t been able to contact him since.’
‘What does she expect you to do?’
‘She wants me to track him down.’
‘She should have called the police.’
‘She doesn’t want to call the police because she is afraid it may infuriate Charlie.’
‘What has Lord Collingwood got to say about it?’
‘He appears to be incommunicado. He has shut himself in his study.’ Payne looked down at the pad. ‘Deirdre rang the clinic where Charlie’s been staying – place in Bayswater – but was told that, following a phone call, Charlie left – he was seen running out of the building – then the porter saw him get into a cab. He was wearing his dressing gown and slippers. He appeared to be crying.’
‘We could assume that the phone call he received was something to do with Olga. Someone told him that Olga was dead,’ Antonia went on thoughtfully. ‘It was either the person who stumbled across her body or else the killer announcing their deed to Charlie.’
‘Why should the killer want to declare their deed?’
‘I don’t know … Oh.’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘No, nothing.’
But there was something. Something impossibly silly and irrelevant. She had remembered Eddy chanting, Aunt Clo-Clo must die. Aunt Clo-Clo must die. It had happened that day at the Sylvie & Bruno Nursery School. When she had asked Eddy who Aunt Clo-Clo was, he said he didn’t know, but he had seen it written on a sheet of paper on Miss Frayle’s desk. The sentence had been written at least ten times, he had counted them! He had sworn he wasn’t lying.
Well, Antonia did remember him going up to the desk after Miss Frayle had left to attend to the man who had fainted and been brought into her nursery school. That man was Charles Eresby.
As it happened, it wasn’t Aunt Clo-Clo who was dead but Olga Klimt. Could there be a connection? Did Fenella Frayle have an aunt called Clo-Clo? Did she wish her dead? Antonia then remembered that Fenella Frayle had struck her as preoccupied when she and Eddy were first ushered into her office that morning … No, nonsense … Miss Frayle couldn’t have anything to do with Olga Klimt’s death!
Payne was talking, ‘Charlie may be anywhere at the moment, but we might as well start by visiting Olga’s little house in Fulham. It is called Philomel Cottage. Collingwood told me the address. It’s in Ruby Road … We’ve got the satnav, so we’ll get there in no time … Perhaps that’s where the body was found … Though it may be somewhere else … What do you say?’
‘Do we need to get involved in this?’
‘We most certainly do. I have been thinking of little else since Collingwood told me the Olga Klimt story. Things have now come to a head …’ He started patting his pockets. ‘Car keys?’
Antonia sighed. ‘I’ve got them.’
‘Allons-y! Cometh the hour, cometh the man. And the woman.’
‘She should call the police … There are better things we could do with our lives, Hugh.’
‘I am sure there are, my love, though not perhaps at this particular moment in time. We expected Olga Klimt to be killed and she was killed. How could we not get involved?’
In the car Antonia said, ‘She may have died a natural death. Sorry to be a wet blanket, but we shouldn’t immediately assume that she’s been killed. Or she may have died in an accident. Or she may have committed suicide.’
Payne looked at her.
17
THE UNNATURAL
ORDER OF THINGS
Fenella Frayle was on her knees, in a prayer-like position, heaving over the lavatory bowl.
She gasped for breath …
Eventually she rose shakily to her feet. She went up to the sink and splashed cold water over her face. She then brushed her teeth frantically and gargled with two different mouthwashes. She avoided glancing at her face in the mirror. She knew she looked dreadful – all blotched and mottled, her eyes puffy, wild and staring.
She had gone to Fulham in her car and driven back about half an hour ago.
She staggered into her unbearably cheerful sitting room, and collapsed on her freshly cleaned sofa. Her teeth were chattering. She thought of pouring herself some brandy but she couldn’t trust herself to get up. She suddenly felt drained of all her strength … She needed to rest … She hadn’t slept a wink the night before …
But the moment she shut her eyes, the flashbacks started … She saw herself bending over the body and making sure the girl was dead … She kept seeing the blood … She had touched the blood … The sickness returned … In normal circumstances, she was not squeamish about blood … She was used to seeing to nosebleeds and grazed knees in the nursery … But this time the circumstances were far from normal …
She felt panic rising inside her. Macbeth has murdered sleep and therefore Macbeth will sleep no more …
Now that she had made the phone call, there was no going back … It had been an impulsive action … One of those moments of madness … The words she had spoken on the phone kept coming back
to her. ‘Olga Klimt is dead. Exactly as you wanted it. Now it’s your turn. You’ll need to do your part of the deal –’
She couldn’t quite believe she had said that. It felt like someone else now!
She tried to predict Charles Eresby’s likeliest line of action. Would he do his part of the deal? She should have waited for him to say something. She shouldn’t have just rung off. Well, she had been terrified. She had lost her nerve … Would he call her back? He hadn’t so far … What did she want him to say? ‘Thank you ever so much, Miss Frayle, and please don’t worry, this will be our secret. I’ll deal with your aunt in the next three days, so you’d better go away and make sure you have a sound alibi …’ And even if she got some such reassurance from him, if he did eliminate her aunt, what then? Could she resume her life and carry on as though nothing untoward had ever happened?
But what if she had misjudged the situation completely? He had been very drunk when he asked her to kill his girlfriend … What if he never really meant her to do it? What if he had already called the police and reported her?
It looked like a garden and it seemed to lie on the outskirts of a wild forest. Pushing open a gate, he sauntered along a lane of sighing cypress trees. He noted with pleasure that there wasn’t a single weed in sight. The air was fresh and bracing. Everything looked extremely neat and orderly. It was the kind of place where a gentleman could stretch his legs without having his eyes or nose offended!
Then he saw the tombstones and realised that this was no garden but a cemetery …
Now and then a date, an epitaph, a name on a marble slab or a weeping angel arrested his attention. Suddenly he saw a woman walking between the graves. She looked very much like Deirdre, though he was sure it was not her. She was wearing an elegant evening dress, elbow-length gloves and a stole. She stood pointing to a tombstone. When he got closer he saw a grave that was only half dug. There was a spade abandoned on the ground.
‘Feel free to look round,’ the woman told him with a smile. She struck him as being simultaneously over-willing and over-elusive, he couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but found it a titillating combination.
He took off his black homburg. ‘They seem to do you pretty well here.’
‘No one knows better than I that you are a very important person. I am perfectly aware that you hold a position of unquestioned social eminence.’
‘I am the last of the Collingwoods now,’ he said. ‘My mother is a Collingwood by marriage only.’
‘Slips of the tongue can be dangerous,’ she warned him.
He thought carefully how best to formulate his answer. ‘We lead lives that are methodically regulated, but we have acquired a great number of little idiosyncrasies. Some brains hum incessantly, but I, for one, tend to drink coffee through a straw –’
Lord Collingwood woke up with a start. He was sitting in the swivel chair at his desk. His study was a large rectangular room lit by a Venetian glass chandelier converted to electricity. Two of the walls were lined with books. There was a luxurious carpet under his feet and two sash windows overlooking the back garden.
He discovered with some surprise that he was wearing his dinner jacket, though of course, following his contretemps with Deirdre, he’d refused to sit down and break bread with her.
On the desk in front of him there lay his morocco-bound gardening book, in which he religiously recorded his gardening experiences. He glanced at the last entry. The finest of all camellias is the Magnolia campbellii by the tennis court. If February is mild, it is bound to yield a thousand crimson blooms.
He looked up. Only nine-thirty? Not that late after all! For some reason he felt exhausted.
The sheet with the Collingwood family tree lay beside the gardening book. He frowned. It was no longer a sheet. It had been cut to ribbons.
He should perhaps join his mother at Collingwood Castle for a day or two? Scotland agreed with him. He could indulge in a spot of shooting. He and his mother could play billiards after dinner. There was no question of Deirdre joining him. London was Deirdre’s natural habitat.
He wondered how Deirdre had spent the day. He had caught her looking down at her hands as though – as though what? – as though she hated them? Perhaps she suspected she was getting liver spots?
Deirdre – sleek, smiling and enigmatic in her long golden dress. She brought to mind a Byzantine Madonna. They had been about to have dinner, but then she decided she needed to phone Charlie. On previous occasions these calls went on for hours, though not this time – ten seconds, if that – she had put the phone down and looked at him. Charlie said Olga was dead.
Then they had had a row. Deirdre had provoked him. She said he was hopeless in a crisis. She seemed to expect him to hire a cab and go round London looking for Charlie as she had no idea where he had phoned her from. Charlie seemed to have left his clinic and gone off God knew where. She really was the most annoying woman in the universe. He had lost his temper. He told her that by marrying her he had swallowed a form of slow poison, which had been corroding his life.
And that wasn’t all. He was sure Deirdre had been rummaging in his desk – some papers were not the way he had left them. When he challenged her, she denied it. She seemed to imagine he was an eyeless sap …
Lord Collingwood wondered if she had seen Ada’s letter. And what about the draft of his new will? Had she read it? Did she now know that he was leaving everything to Joan?
He rubbed his temples. He didn’t feel too well.
Olga Klimt couldn’t be dead. Of course not. Charlie was mistaken.
‘Nonsense,’ Lord Collingwood said aloud. ‘An utter impossibility.’
Whose was the name on the tombstone to which that woman had been pointing? He had an idea it might be his. He had meant to take a closer look. A half-dug grave waiting for him?
He couldn’t remember if had taken his ‘balancing’ pill. Maybe he had. ‘Balancing’ wasn’t its brand name of course. That was what he called it. Would one get over-balanced if one took an overdose? His doctor had told him to ‘complete the course’. His doctor had changed his pills twice already, so it was high time his dreams began to make more sense!
As they approached Fulham, Antonia said, ‘I may be making a complete fool of myself, but I do believe the solution to the Olga Klimt mystery lies at the Sylvie & Bruno Nursery School.’
‘I’ve got a good one,’ Payne said. ‘Olga is actually an Oleg. A transvestite rent boy, a clever female impersonator, who has been shared by Charlie and Lord Collingwood. Collingwood is the killer – Oleg has been blackmailing him – no, it doesn’t fit in with any of the facts.’
‘What ghouls we are,’ Antonia said. ‘We don’t even know for certain if Olga is dead!’
18
TO WAKE THE DEAD
‘Olga? Is that you, Olga – really you?’
‘Of course it is me, you silly boy! Why are you talking in this funny way?’
‘Is that really you?’
‘Stop saying that! Yes! Of course it’s me!’
‘I – I thought you were dead.’ His voice shook. He pressed his mobile to his ear.
‘I am not dead. I am at the clinic.’
‘The clinic?’
‘Yes! The clinic! Your clinic! I came to see you!’
‘You are at the clinic?’ Charlie’s relief was so great, so overpowering, he was not surprised that tears were rolling down his face once more.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I am so happy you are not dead. What – what are you doing at the clinic?’
‘I am having a cup of tea. The nurses are very nice, especially the older one.’
‘Nanny Everett! She’s always asking people if they want a cup of tea! I can’t tell you how happy I am. But – but what are you doing at the clinic?’
‘You asked someone to tell me to come to the clinic. Some friend of yours.’
‘I didn’t. What are you talking about?’
‘Somebody phoned me, and s
aid, go to the clinic at once – Charlie is not well. So you are at my house now, did you say? At Philomel Cottage, yes?’
‘Yes.’ He swallowed. ‘Why didn’t you answer your phone?’
‘I was on the Tube!’
‘That’s what Nanny Everett said … Who the hell is that then?’
‘Sorry?’
‘There is a dead body here, outside the house!’
‘What dead body?’
‘No idea who it is. It’s a girl. A blonde. I thought it was you. Someone rang me and said you were dead.’
‘Did you say a girl?’
‘Oh lord. I haven’t seen her face yet. Can you come at once, Olga? I’ll need your help. Please come at once.’
He pulled the body into the hall, shut the front door and turned on the light. He knew he shouldn’t have touched it, but he was thinking that perhaps the body should be made to disappear. Calling the police would be asking for trouble.
He believed he knew now who the dead girl was. It had come to him in a flash. It was one of Olga’s friends. Inge. Or Simona. Olga had given them replicas of the front-door key, she had told him. He’d said nothing but he didn’t like it. He had no illusions as to what these girls did. It was Bedaux who provided them with ‘jobs’ and he knew what those jobs were. And officially Bedaux was still in his employ!
The trail would inevitably lead to me, Charlie thought.
The two girls were Olga’s age, give or take a year. He had seen them. Like her they were blondes and quite pretty – though not a patch on her in the sheer-loveliness department!
He knew now what had happened. The nursery nut had made a fatal mistake – she had stabbed the wrong girl.
He bent over the body and slowly turned it over.
At Philomel Cottage all the lights were on.
Major Payne rang the front-door bell. As no one answered, he rang it again. Eventually the door opened and a girl stood on the threshold.
She was slim and was dressed in jeans, t-shirt and trainers. Her hair was very fair and it shimmered in the lamplight. Since she was lit from behind her face remained in shadow. Her shoulders, he noticed, were extremely tense.
The Killing of Olga Klimt Page 10
