‘We do, darling.’
‘It’s certainly suggestive,’ Jonson said non-committally.
‘Suggestive? My good man – it’s what they call a clincher! It proves beyond doubt that the blasted American woman wrote the death threats as well. You need look no further. She’s your pigeon.’
‘That would be the obvious conclusion, yes.’
What is the matter, Corinne? Why don’t you answer? (The second letter began.) It is now more than a month since I wrote to you. Airmail letters take no more than four days to get to Europe. I did check. I sent the letter to Fabiola, your record company in France, by registered mail, same as my first. You must have received it, so why don’t you answer? I wouldn’t have minded a postcard, with just a few words of acknowledgement and some expression of sympathy, perhaps? Is that too much to ask?
You couldn’t have been busy. If you had been, it would have said so on your official website. (I check your Agenda every day, twice.) You have had only one concert and that was last November. It is January now. You can’t pretend you never received my letters. I wouldn’t believe you if you said you didn’t.
Last night after I went to bed and turned off the light, I heard a voice whispering in my ear. I’d been expecting to hear from Griff, but it wasn’t his voice. It was a woman’s voice. (It sounded uncannily like mine!) It was very interesting, what the voice said. ‘Remember the singing mermaids that lured poor Odysseus’ sailors to their doom?’
The letter ended abruptly, with a squiggle and the initials E.M.
‘Why isn’t this person in a loony bin?’ Lady Grylls scowled at Jonson as though expecting him to provide an immediate answer.
The third letter in contrast was startlingly amiable – cheerful and girlish. To Antonia’s way of thinking it was the spookiest of the three. Eleanor Merchant appeared to have been on some kind of a ‘high’ when she wrote it.
Dear Corinne, I haven’t heard from you yet, but I want you to know that I am not in the least mad at you. I am not! I am sorry I lost my temper last time. Perhaps it wasn’t your fault. Perhaps you didn’t receive any of my letters. Well, letters do get lost in the post – even registered ones!! In fact I think I know what must have happened: the person at Fabiola didn’t pass them on to you! They simply forgot!! You should have them sacked!
I have a surprise for you. I am flying to Paris next week. Yes! I have already booked my plane ticket, a week from today. I have started brushing up my French by re-reading Maupassant’s short ‘contes’ in the original, though of course your English is perfect.
There have been developments. They have changed my medication and I feel much more positive about things. More importantly, most importantly, Griff has been trying to get through to me. I heard his voice this morning, only it was so muffled, it was hard to make out what he was saying. He sounded as though he were speaking through a cushion, or had filled his mouth with cotton wool. I am sure it is only a question of time before we manage to establish proper contact. In the manner of a demanding film director, I keep rehearsing our reunion in my mind, striving to make it more moving, more triumphant. I am full of hope. I await my reunion with Griff with a girl’s ardour. This world has its impossible limitations but the idea no longer troubles me. A whole new dimension has opened up! The realization has put a smile on my face. It felt as though I had been watching a conjuror make dozens of gaudy umbrellas explode out of a small box!
You and I shall meet soon. There are all sorts of questions I would like to put to you. I know that what you did was very, very wrong, but I am prepared to give you a chance, so that you could explain yourself. Au revoir. A bientot!
‘Prozac?’ Antonia said thoughtfully. ‘Morphine?’
Payne pointed to the dates. ‘Eleanor Merchant’s last letter from America was written on 25th February. She said she’d be flying to Paris in a week’s time… 4th March? All the envelopes that contained the death threats have Paris stamps – 5th March, 8th March, 11th March… They’ve been written at three-day intervals.’
‘That’s what they call irrefutable evidence. It’s her. Eleanor Merchant.’ Lady Grylls leant towards Jonson and tapped his arm. ‘You’d be a fool if you went looking for anybody else. You’d be wasting your time.’
‘You are probably right, Lady Grylls, but I do need to collate the evidence, sequence it and assess it properly.’
‘You’d be wasting your time,’ she repeated.
‘How did the death threats reach Corinne?’ Major Payne asked.
‘Through Fabiola, that’s Mademoiselle Coreille’s record company – same as the letters.’
‘It’s her,’ Lady Grylls said. ‘Eleanor. What do you think, my dear? She compares Corinne to the singing mermaids and so on. Hasn’t it been said that obvious solutions are usually the correct ones?’
Antonia agreed that that was so. The other, also rather obvious possibility – she went on after a moment’s hesitation, rather apologetically – was that somebody was using Eleanor Merchant as a scapegoat. Eleanor had written the letters all right, but she might be no more than a harmless lunatic while it was another person – the real killer – who had sent the death threats to Corinne. Eleanor Merchant was being set up – as the killer prepared to strike.
‘I wouldn’t call Eleanor Merchant harmless,’ Lady Grylls said. ‘But if you are right, then it’s got to be somebody who is familiar with Eleanor Merchant’s letters!’
‘Someone who’s close to Corinne – who has had access to her private papers – who knows about Eleanor Merchant’s letters.’ Major Payne paused. ‘A member of Corinne’s coterie – of her inner circle?’
‘I don’t think there’s such a thing as an inner circle,’ Jonson said. ‘There’s only Maitre Maginot.’
‘Ah. The ruthless, manipulative, cunning, power-mad Maitre.’ Lady Grylls gave a portentous nod. ‘I completely forgot about her.’
‘Darling, you are attributing to her qualities normally associated with the conclaves of the Mafia capi… Well, it might be the chambermaid who was so unceremoniously sacked for selling stories to the press,’ Payne went on. ‘Emilie. Emilie, you must agree, has a goodish reason for seeking revenge, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Emilie left in December. Eleanor Merchant’s first letter arrived a month later, in January,’ Antonia pointed out.
‘Does Corinne employ a large staff?’ Payne turned to Jonson.
‘No, not that large. Two maids, a secretary, a gardener, two security guards. They have very little contact with Mademoiselle Coreille… As it happens, they are all rather young. In their twenties. I understand some of them hadn’t even heard of Corinne Coreille when they went for their interviews. It is Maitre Maginot who does the interviewing. She deals with references, conducts all the character checks, draws up the contracts and so on.’
There was a pause. ‘Why only young people?’ Antonia said.
‘Fear of age? The cult of youth?’ Payne stroked his jaw with a thoughtful forefinger. ‘All in keeping with Corinne’s unchanging appearance? Perhaps they don’t want people who are old enough to remember Corinne in her prime?’
‘I think you just said something very interesting -’ Antonia broke off and frowned. ‘I don’t know in what way exactly it is interesting
…’
‘I am sure it will come to you in due course. The little grey cells, they will not fail you.’ Lady Grylls tapped her forehead significantly.
Antonia saw Jonson run his hand across his face. She remembered how deeply he had flushed earlier on. Once more she wondered about what it was he knew.
13
Vendetta
The library, Major Payne reflected, was as he remembered it. It hadn’t changed one little bit. The oak panelling, the Gothic fan tracery ceiling by Wyatville, the sagging leather armchairs, the pictures of horses and dogs. Talking of the pictures, his aunt had said that there was nothing there she could not sell to a wandering sheikh for something as pathetic as a fifty-pound note. If a wande
ring sheikh had anything as pitiful as fifty-pound notes on his person, Major Payne had riposted – but he knew that that was a fanciful exaggeration. Some of the pictures were genuine Stubbses and Landseers. They all hung as they had done for some hundred and fifty years, on chains, from original gold lion masks.
Payne recalled the fascination the lion masks had held for him when, as a boy, he had been left to stay with his aunt and uncle. The smell hadn’t changed either. Ancient paper, dust, stale cigar smoke, musty pot pourri, leather. The windows were wet with rain and the wind howled in the Adam fireplace. The mantelpiece was decorated by a bronze of a hawkish Wellington on horseback and a bowl of chrysanthemums that had been defunct for quite some time – not from last autumn surely?
It was getting dark. He turned on two table lamps and stood looking at the rows and rows of books in dark mahogany cases built into the walls, the leather and vellum of their bindings cracked and scarred by age or neglect. Some books, on the other hand, looked as good as new. The Encyclopaedia Britannica – two sets of it, an Edwardian one and a 1960 edition, neither of them showing signs of ever having been opened. There were some uncut first editions, which must be valuable… Black Beauty, The Country House in our Heritage, Greyfriars Bobby, Where’s Master? by Caesar. Caesar was a dog, of course, one that had belonged to Edward VII. Caesar had walked immediately behind the gun carriage at the King’s funeral in 1910 and every now and then he had raised his head and howled disconsolately. That poignant passage, Payne remembered, had reduced him to tears when he had read the book as a boy. He had actually believed that it was Caesar who had written the book!
Detective novels: ancient green Penguins from the late ‘40s and early ’50s. Ronald Knox, John Wade, E.C. Bentley. Did anyone read them nowadays? Forgotten biographies. The Regent and his Daughter by Dormer Creston. A very prettily bound almanac of poems, circa 1835, with a lyre engraved on the cover. Maupassant’s complete short stories -
That was the book he had been looking for. A bee in my bonnet, he thought. ‘Oh hello,’ he said as Antonia entered.
‘Perhaps I could help your aunt tidy up the library. I don’t think I have yet lost my expertise,’ she said. Until a couple of months before, Antonia had worked as a librarian at the Military Club in St James’s Street in London, but after the success of her second detective novel she had given up her job to write full time.
‘You mean cataloguing and dusting and things?’ He went on to say it would be the kind of labour Hercules would have bridled at.
‘It would be a shame to allow all these books to go to rack and ruin.’ She was standing beside the huge round table. From among the piles of ancient communications from various wine societies and an assortment of seed and plant catalogues, she picked up a book and started leafing through it. ‘Listen to this… Nothing can be more unfair or more unjustifiable than a doubtful answer given under the plea of sparing the suitor’s feelings. It raises false hopes. It renders a man restless and unsettled -’
‘Golly. That’s exactly how I felt after I proposed to you and you said you’d have to think about it!’ Payne cried. ‘Restless and unsettled sums it up nicely. What book is that?’
‘A Victorian book on etiquette… Constable, 1895. I thought I might find Jonson and your aunt here. They are going round the house.’
‘Ah, the security checks… He looks as though he’s taking it all extremely seriously, doesn’t he?’
‘He does. What do you make of him?’ Antonia asked.
‘Of Jonson? Seems a decent enough chap.’ Payne cocked an eyebrow. ‘You disagree? What is it?’
‘I don’t know.’ Antonia paused. ‘He is immensely likeable, but I do believe there is something he isn’t telling. Several things, perhaps. It’s the way he talks about Corinne and Maitre Maginot – the way his voice and expression change.’
‘You don’t think it’s anything to do with Peverel?’
Antonia stared. ‘Peverel?’
‘Jonson said he’d met him in Paris. Which is where Corinne Coreille lives.’
‘Yes… Your aunt is convinced it was Peverel who took your sister to Corinne’s second concert. He denied it point blank.’
‘That was odd, wasn’t it?’
‘Very odd… What’s that book?’
‘Maupassant’s short stories.’ Payne was running his finger down the contents page. ‘The Merchant uses the name Saverini on her website.’
Antonia frowned. ‘What’s that got to do with Maupassant?’
‘In her third letter the Merchant writes that she’s been reading Maupassant’s contes. Well, the name Saverini struck a chord the moment I heard it.’ Payne started leafing through the book. ‘I remembered a short story by Maupassant with a character called Saverini in it. The widow Saverini… Here it is! It’s called “Vendetta”. I knew I was right!’
“‘Vendetta”?’
“‘Vendetta”. Rather suggestive, isn’t it? It did occur to me that the Merchant might be identifying with the widow Saverini. The widow Saverini’s son is murdered and she plots an elaborate revenge on the killer. She is single-minded, ruthless, methodical and, although it’s never spelled out for us, more than a little crazy. Maupassant clearly wants us to sympathize with her, which is jolly unsettling… Listen to this. Don’t worry, my boy, my poor child. I will avenge you. Do you hear me? It’s your mother’s promise, and your mother always keeps her word. You know that.’
‘Why are you putting on an Italian accent? I believe I’ve read it
… A dog comes into it, doesn’t it?’
‘It does. The widow Saverini proceeds to train her dog to attack an effigy made in the likeness of the killer, who is a local man. She roasts a sausage and sews it inside the effigy. She goads the dog into ripping the effigy apart. Then she does it all over again – another effigy, another sausage and so on – then again. Months pass… She starves the dog… The whole thing’s impossibly contrived and wildly improbable – but in a funny way, it’s also rather frightening.’
‘Obsession is always frightening.’
‘The story ends with the dog jumping on the killer and chewing open his throat. The widow Saverini then goes back home and for the first time since her son’s death, she has a good night’s sleep.’ Payne paused. ‘It does suggest that the Merchant has revenge on her mind. Why else call herself Saverini?’
‘Why indeed… Yes. She is a driven woman. I don’t quite see how she could possibly find out that Corinne was coming to England.’
‘I don’t see either. You heard what Jonson said – everybody’s been sworn to secrecy by Maitre Maginot and so on.’
‘That’s what Jonson said… What if -’ She broke off. ‘Just imagine…’
‘Imagine what?’
She shook her head. ‘No, nothing… Let’s stick to the known facts. Nothing’s happened yet and I hope it stays that way!’
‘I think I know what you mean,’ he said slowly.
‘No, you don’t. You can’t read my mind.’
‘I can -’
‘Where does your aunt keep her scrapbooks?’ Antonia had started looking around the library.
‘If memory serves me right, they used to be in that mahogany cabinet, over there, by the potted palm. That palm needs watering… What do you want the scrapbooks for?’
Antonia went up to the cabinet and opened it. There were two scrapbooks inside. She took them out. They were bound in faded maroon leather and had the dates stamped in gold on their spines, 1943-1949 and 1950-1960.
‘I want to check something,’ she said. ‘It’s nothing to do with any of this. At least I don’t see how it could be. Just an idea.’
‘A bee in your bonnet.’ Payne nodded in a gratified fashion. ‘Aunt Nellie was right. We are terribly alike. That’s why we got married. We’d have remained incomplete if we hadn’t.’
Antonia looked at him. ‘We don’t really finish each other’s sentences, do we? It’s been bothering me.’ Blowing the dust off its surface, she opened
the first scrapbook and started leafing through it.
It wasn’t really surprising that Lady Grylls’s youthful tastes should be revealed as a mixture of high society gossip, scandal, matrimony – and crime.
14
The Secret History
Lord Redesdale denies being a fascist… King Farouk’s young daughter sends chocolates to Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret
… Mrs Charles Sweeney falls forty feet down empty lift-shaft… Was Mr Somerset Maugham a spy?… The Hon. Jessica Gerrad’s Lagonda stolen… Lady Mosley released from Holloway prison.
There were pictures cut from the Illustrated London News. They were brittle, crinkly and yellow with age. Dnshing debs: Miss Rosamund Cadogan and best friend the Hon. Anelie de Broke presented at court. Well, Corinne’s mother was exactly as Lady Grylls had described her: a proud beauty, head held high, almond-shaped eyes, dark and long-legged, wearing a most revealing dress. Lady Grylls had denigrated her own appearance, but she wasn’t bad-looking either. Somewhat on the plump side, true, but not unattractively so – she might have posed for Rubens. Lots of men liked that type, Antonia reflected. She had a lovely heart-shaped face, luxuriant blonde hair and a sweet shy smile. She had taken her horn-rimmed glasses off for the picture and was clutching them in her hand. There was something endearing about it.
Mrs George Keppel buried under cypress trees in Protestant Cemetery in Florence… Lady Docker’s jewels stolen… M. Francois-Enrique Coreille and Miss Anelie de Broke dining at the Cafe de Paris in Coventry Street. M. Francois-Enrique and Miss Rosamund (‘Ruse’) Cadogan dining at the Savoy.
Le falcon – if one had to call him that – did look devastatingly charming and was, in all probability, utterly rotten. Ruse was gazing at him in an adoring manner. She was wearing a shimmering sleeveless dress. Her arms blazed with diamond bracelets from wrist to elbow and she sported a striking brooch on her bosom: two ostriches attached, back-to-back, Siamese-twin fashion. It was the kind of brooch Mrs Simpson had favoured, Antonia thought.
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