Murder of Gonzago (18 page)

He heard the creaking of a board outside his room, then he saw the door start opening slowly. What a pleasant surprise. Clarissa’s citadel of defence seemed to have crumbled. Clarissa had reconsidered. Clarissa knew which side of her brioche was buttered. Wise girl! Well, all he wanted from her was pleasant and pliant cooperation—

The next moment his smile faded. He put down his glass.

It wasn’t Clarissa who had entered his room.

‘What the hell are
you
doing here?’

Then he saw the gun in her hand.

The principal ground-floor state room at Remnant had an air of desiccated luxury about it. It was also a quintessentially English room on the grand scale. There was the
eighteenth-century
Carlton House desk designed by Hepplewhite, the Axminster carpets that matched the date of the desk, the extremely rare Wedgwood Etruria vases on top of the breakfront bookcase, the Sèvres porcelain lyre clock ticking on the mantelpiece, the fire-shield made of a stuffed Himalayan pheasant with outspread wings, iridescent breast and plumed tiara, and, above all, there was the view across the park.

Clarissa stood by the french windows, looking out. She was dressed in a beige twinset and pearls. On her wrist she wore the Keppel Clasp. That was what it was called, her mother had told her. Her mother, who was also her aunt. Clarissa frowned. She was finding the idea a little hard to swallow. Her left sleeve was rolled up to the elbow.

It wasn’t raining but the skies were ominously overcast. Like all English springs, the one which had come to Remnant Regis seemed unable to make up its mind whether to be nice or nasty. Only half an hour earlier the sun had been shining with extravagant brilliance, but then a sudden darkness had descended and the temperature had plummeted dramatically.

Clarissa looked down at the drop of blood drying on her forearm. She’d given herself a shot. She had needed a fix. She was in an impossible situation. She wouldn’t have been able to cope without a fix. She wouldn’t have been able to live another minute.

She heard the sound of a car.
Another
car? The front door bell rang. Tradewell will get it, she told herself. No, he wouldn’t. Tradewell wasn’t there. She heard the bell again. She didn’t move. She shrugged. I am not at home.

The door bell rang a third time. Go away, she murmured. You are wasting your time. When too much was happening and the future seemed uncertain, the best thing to do was to stay very still. She went on standing beside the windows, gazing at the sky.

She was a little startled when the door opened and a man and a woman entered.

‘Lady Remnant?’ The man looked military, it was the way he held his arms. Greenish tweeds, a regimental tie. Rather nice, actually.

She smiled. ‘Have we met?’ Her voice sounded as though it was coming from hundreds of miles away. She had to strain her ears.

‘You don’t know us. My name is Hugh Payne and this is my wife Antonia. The front door was open … Are you all right?’

‘Am I all right? I am not sure. Sweet of you to ask.’ Her hand touched the forelock on her forehead. They were staring at her bared forearm.

‘Have you had an accident?’ It was the woman who asked that. A very nice woman. Blue suited her. Maybe she should do her hair
slightly
differently. Kind eyes. Kind but sharp.
Clever
.

‘No, not really. It was something which I
had
to do. I had a terrible experience earlier on, but I am all right – now I am. At least I think so. Yes.’

‘Where is your husband?’

‘My husband? Let me see.’ Clarissa frowned. ‘He is upstairs. No, he is not upstairs. He is dead.’ She laughed. She covered her mouth. ‘Sorry. I forgot.’

She believed that was a line in a play.
My husband is not dead, he is upstairs
. She laughed again. Everything seemed so unreal. She felt a bit confused. A bit woozy. She was perfectly aware of the existence of formulas to be employed in social situations, when dealing with people one had never met before, and she searched for them in vain. The right things to say seemed to dash round the corner and conceal themselves, rather cunningly, she thought, in the crowd of things which she knew she should
not
say. Well, it happened each time she had a fix, she’d noticed.

No one was supposed to know her husband was alive. That was a fiction she had agreed to maintain. Roderick had sworn her to secrecy. Roderick had bribed her. And he had ordered her to bribe all the others. To buy their silence.

As the Dowager Lady Remnant she would have pots of money in the bank, she would be the sole possessor of Grenadin and she would be able go out with any man she liked. All she needed to do in return was keep her mouth firmly shut, or zipped up, as he’d put it.

As arrangements went, it hadn’t sounded bad at all. Roderick had promised to disappear under an assumed name, or rather under Peter Quin’s name. But now he wanted something from her – something that had
not
been part of the deal – that was the reason she had cranked herself up—

Why were they staring at her? Who were these people? How light-headed she felt. Perhaps she should shake their hands. That was what hostesses did. The next moment she saw the military-looking man standing beside her. How terribly odd. She hadn’t seen him move! She had only blinked her eyes. She laughed again. Suddenly she felt extremely tired.

They were on either side of her now, these kind,
well-bred
people: goodness, how undignified. She seemed to have slumped to the floor. Her legs had turned to jelly. Her visitors were helping her up, they were doing it very gently, propelling her towards the sofa. Sweet of them. How her feet dragged!

She wouldn’t have been able to manage by herself. They seemed awfully nice people. It was good to have them here. They were the perfect guests. She wouldn’t mind having them stay on Grenadin some time—

‘Is the car outside Lord Remnant’s?’ she heard the captain – she was sure he was a captain – ask.

‘No – his car is in the garage – a rented car – he’s been extremely careful.’

‘Whose is the Mini? Who else is here?’ Now it was the woman who had spoken. Was she his wife? Why were all the nice men always married?

‘No one else.’ Clarissa shook her head. ‘No, that’s not true. The Mini is Mama’s. Mama is here. At least she told me she was my mama. My
real
mama. It is all very confusing. Dear Aunt Hortense.’

‘Is Hortense Tilling here?’

‘She is here, yes. She arrived quite unexpectedly. She seemed extremely agitated. She was in a real state. She kept staring at the Keppel Clasp – that’s what it is called, apparently.’ Clarissa held up her hand, showing them the bracelet. ‘The Keppel Clasp. It’s exquisite, isn’t it?’

‘It certainly is,’ the man agreed.

‘You don’t look the kind of man who steps outside the rules,’ she said, looking at him fixedly.

He said something, she didn’t quite hear what, but it made her giggle. ‘Aunt Hortense – Mama – seemed determined
not
to allow Roderick to get me into bed with him. I hate the idea of it of course, but she – she behaved as though it were the end of the world.’

‘Where is she?’

‘She’d have none of it. She looked
furious
. She clenched her fists and raised them above her head and shook them, as if summoning to her all thunderbolts and lightnings … Well, if the worst had come to the worst, I’d have had to shut my eyes and think of – no, not of England – of Grenadin.’ Clarissa pulled a funny face indicative of rueful acceptance of her predicament.

‘
Where is she?
’

‘Aunt Hortense? I believe Mama is upstairs – Aunt Hortense and Mama are the same person, you see. How silly it sounds. I
must
get used to calling her Mama. She really cares about me. I’ve pledged never to be horrid to her. Mama wanted to have a word with Roderick. She seemed cross, oh so cross— Where are you going?’

‘You don’t know who I am, do you?’

‘That looks like one of the guns from the gun room. You shouldn’t mess around with guns, you know. Highly dangerous. What if it’s loaded?’

‘It is loaded. The ammunition was in the desk. You don’t seem to change your habits. You never lock anything up. Same as at La Sorcière.’

‘You made a big mistake at La Sorcière. You risk making another mistake now.’

‘Let me be the judge of that.’

‘You should get a new pair of glasses, perhaps?’

‘I hate you,’ she said.

‘Those one hates live for ever.’

‘So you don’t know who I am?’

‘You are my Anima. That’s a psychological term denoting the denied female element of the male psyche. Denied but desired.’ Lord Remnant picked up his glass. ‘Of course I know who you are, you old fool. You are Miss Baedeker. You are Clarissa’s dotty old aunt.’

‘I am five years younger than you.’

‘I’d never have thought it possible.’ He shook his head. ‘Well, men age differently from women. May I suggest you leave my room at once? In the next hour or so I shall be
frightfully busy. I don’t want to be discourteous, but I’ve got things to do. Unfinished business, you may say. It’s all rather delicate. Not for your tender ears. It may shock you. You’d probably say I had a genius for defilement.’

Hortense Tilling didn’t lower the gun. Her eyes behind the glasses looked at him steadily. ‘I thought you guessed that night. I thought you recognized me.’

‘Go away, Aunt Hortense.’ He waved his hands. ‘Shoo!’ Definitely a few stamps short of the first-class rate, he thought. Wouldn’t be able to tell a hawk from a handsaw, if one accepted that feat as an adequate criterion of sanity.

‘Look at me.’ She took off her glasses. There were tears in her eyes. ‘We met – years ago.’

‘No day is so dead as the day before yesterday,’ he said.

‘We met at the party at the Bruce-Daltons’. On the fifth of June.’

‘As a matter of fact, I used to know some people called Bruce-Dalton. I wonder if they are the same Bruce-Daltons. Do you mean we met at the Bruce-Daltons’? My memory is not what it used to be. Place in Blenheim Mews?’

‘Yes. You and I were at the party. I had no idea who you were. Who you
really
were. I believe you were wearing disguise. You pretended to be a foreigner. You introduced yourself as a Frenchman called Pierre La Russe.’

He took a gulp of malt. ‘One of my sobriquets, I imagine. Long time ago. No recollection of it at all. I’ll have to take your word for it.’

‘You asked me to dance. Then you brought me a drink. I don’t think I really liked you, but you were very persistent. I couldn’t shake you off. Then something happened. The room and everybody in it went fuzzy. Then I found I was in a cab with you.’

‘That seems to ring a bell, but only because that was the sort of thing that happened quite often at one time … You were a deb?’

‘I remember nothing after the cab. You spiked my drink, didn’t you?’

He shrugged. ‘I might have done. What if I did? It was the kind of thing I did every now and then. It doesn’t kill, you know. Just makes you soft and pliant. You must have been quite pretty. Pretty but obdurate. I wouldn’t have done it otherwise.’

‘You took me somewhere. I remember nothing. Nothing at all. I woke up late in the morning, feeling dreadful.’

‘Dreadful? Really? I believe it was jolly powerful stuff. Or maybe I overdosed you. Can’t remember the technical name now.
Aide d’amour
, that’s what
I
called it,’ Lord Remnant said thoughtfully. ‘Cost me a pretty penny, I think. I didn’t have that much money in those days, you know.’

‘Bastard,’ she said.

‘Hard to come by stuff like that in the sixties. No internet shopping in those days. No websites offering naughty meds. Why, in the name of Beelzebub, are you looking at me like that? So what if we spent a night together? We were young and impulsive. Must you make a song and dance about it?’

‘You stole my bracelet.’

‘Well, that’s the kind of thing I did. The action of a cad, I agree.’ He was getting impatient.

‘None of it was my fault,’ Hortense said, ‘but I have lived with a sense of guilt ever since. I have been blaming myself. The shame never left me.’

‘I’d rather you didn’t start expounding the complications of your psyche just now. I can’t help you, you know. I am no specialist. Have you considered going into therapy? Find yourself a good shrink? You may discover it is all a false memory.’

‘Monster,’ she said. ‘Beast.’

‘
Get thee to a nunnery
… How about religion? Why don’t you try religion?’

‘You deserve to die.’

‘You seem determined to utterly crush the optimistic streak in my nature.’ He gave a sigh.

‘You ruined my life. You ruined my daughter’s life.’

‘Don’t be so damned melodramatic. I don’t know your daughter.’

‘You don’t know what happened, do you?’ She spoke in a choked voice.

‘I must admit to being thoroughly fogged. It was all a long time ago. No day is so dead as the day before yesterday, I keep telling you.’ His eyes were on the gun in her hand.

‘I got pregnant,’ she said. ‘Nine months later I gave birth to a baby girl.’

‘Really? You mean I had a child?’

‘You
have
a child.’

‘It is alive? You didn’t have an abortion?’

‘No.’

‘Stupid and irresponsible.’ He shook his head. ‘Such compulsive urges to replicate are usually associated with cancer cells.’

‘I couldn’t bring myself to have an abortion. I was confused – frightened – I was at my wits’ end – I cried a lot – I felt great affection for my unborn child – I discovered I had a strong maternal instinct—’

‘I hate haranguing, Aunt Hortense, I really do, but
self-analysis
can actually cause an awful lot of damage to the psyche. I know Freud did it, but he had the advantage of, well, of being Freud.’ Lord Remnant wondered if he could disarm her if he pounced on her. He wasn’t as agile as he once was. ‘So we have a child? That’s a cause for celebration, don’t you think?’

‘No, it is not.’ Tears were rolling down her face. ‘It is not.’

‘Oh? Why not?’ The old fool wouldn’t dare pull the trigger, would she? On the other hand, she might. He reminded himself that she’d done it once already. If only he could get a little bit closer, he would have no problem disarming her.
He could cosh her with the bottle, he supposed. Or blind her by splashing malt in her eyes. Stupid old fool.

‘How about a drinkie? Do you good. Give you a cosy feeling. No? I need to replenish my glass—’ He reached out for the bottle of malt.

‘Don’t move.’

‘No? It’s time for you to throw in the towel, don’t you think?’

‘
Don’t move
.’ She raised the gun. Heavens, she was aiming at his forehead!

He sighed again. ‘If you only knew how ridiculous you look. A woman at your time of life should be in her garden, snipping off the heads of defunct roses, or sitting in her boudoir, making intricately shaped tea-cosies.’

Actually she presented a damned unnerving sight with her complexion the colour of weak lemonade and those round glasses gleaming in the morning light.

‘The baby was born on the third of March 1965. It was a girl.’

‘Does the exact date matter?’

‘It does. The third of March 1965.’

‘Actually, that rings a bell,’ he said after a pause. ‘Now why is that?’

‘I gave her the name Clarissa.’

‘Oh yes. That’s Clarissa’s birthday. Of course. Third of March 1965. Actually, I met Clarissa at the Bruce-Daltons’. How things come back to one. That was three and a half years ago. Clarissa is the daughter of the Vuillaumys.’

‘No, she isn’t. They didn’t have any children. They adopted Clarissa.’

He stared at her. There was a pause. He put down his glass. ‘What are you trying to say, you old witch? What are you insinuating?’

‘
Clarissa is our daughter. You married your own daughter.
’

It took him a moment to recover his poise. ‘So what if I
did? That kind of thing does happen. More often than one imagines, I am sure. The way you go on, one might be excused for thinking I’d strangled a whole litter of newborn babies or – or gone to a funeral, propped up the corpse in its coffin and performed a ventriloquist act. What was it the wag said? Vice is nice but incest is best—’ He broke off, amazed at his audacity. ‘Too late to make amends, anyhow.’

‘It is too late, yes,’ she said.

‘I suggest you keep your mouth zipped up, Miss Baedeker. Better, put a muzzle on it. You don’t want the world to know I married my daughter, do you? There’s the family name to consider and so on. I don’t want to give my sister-in-law the chance to indulge in schadenfreude. Still, Clarissa is my wife and, as it happens, I have started finding her madly attractive. In fact, I am going to her now—’

‘No, you are not.’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘You are
not
.’

‘Keep out of my way, you old loon—’

‘Stay where you are.’

Suddenly Lord Remnant was possessed by a fury so intense that for a few seconds it paralysed speech and even thought. It swept through his body like a wave of physical nausea, leaving him white and shaking. No one ever opposed him! No one ever told him where to stay! He flared up.

‘How dare you hold me up? Who do you think you are? Give me the gun at once or I’ll break your bloody neck—’

As he took a step towards her, she pulled the trigger.

The bullet hit him between the eyes.

For a moment he stood extremely still, a surprised expression on his face, then he fell to the floor.

The next moment the door burst open and Antonia and Major Payne entered the room.

‘This time I got the right one,’ Hortense Tilling said.