The Hunt for Sonya Dufrette (20 page)

She paused and took another sip of wine. She was becoming garrulous. She was getting mixed up. Why had she started talking about her writing problems? Well, the wine was at last taking effect.
Good.
High time. That was better than feeling depressed and anticlimactic and empty and futile ... How idiotically self-indulgent of her to be disappointed that there had been no murder, to feel ‘flat’ about the absence of a dramatic denouement, to mourn over the lack of a final twist in the tale. This is
not
a tale, she reminded herself.

‘Your confidence will go up with every novel you put under your belt,’ Major Payne was saying. ‘I refuse to believe your new novel is going badly.’

‘As a matter of fact it’s going nowhere.’ Antonia took another sip of wine. ‘I haven’t yet taken it out of the bottom drawer.’

‘Well, that’s because you’ve been busy, running about interviewing autocratic Lady Mortlock, exotic Lena, mad bad Lawrence Dufrette -’

‘Do they
exist?
Sometimes I wonder ... You do make them sound like characters in a book.’ She frowned. ‘Were we really at a place called the Elsnor today?’

‘We were. Twice.’

‘True. Yes ... I did imagine all sorts of deranged and awful things. I even thought Sonya might have been the victim of some sacrificial ritual performed by the Babylonian brotherhood! Do they perform sacrificial rituals?’

‘As a matter of fact they do. Young children and virgins, if Dufrette is to be believed, are in particular demand.’

Antonia shook her head. ‘All along - all along - the rather obvious solution has been staring me in the face. Neat, bloodless, convincing, not particularly original. Adoption. Pure and simple. All right, not pure and not simple, not this one, but nothing like the gothic horrors I imagined. Why didn’t I think that Sonya might have been taken, not for some hideous reason, but because she had been loved and wanted and cherished? I had at my disposal all the clues pointing in the right direction .... Besides, the Vorodins weren’t there when it happened!’

‘Ah yes. That should have alerted you at once. That’s always highly suspicious, isn’t it? The perfect alibi. “Alibi”, after all, means “elsewhere”.’

‘Doing evil that good may come.
That’s in the Bible, I think. That’s what Veronica must have believed she was doing ... I rather liked Veronica. I thought she was genuinely caring, sweet and sensitive. Not at all spoilt by wealth. I am convinced she has been a good mother to Sonya. Better than Lena would ever have been. I hope Dufrette never finds them. He is a dangerous man. He called the Vorodins thieves. He said they stole his daughter.’

‘Which, at any rate, is not strictly true. The Vorodins didn’t steal Sonya. They paid vast sums for her,’ Payne pointed out. ‘By their own lights, they did the decent thing.’

‘Where do you think they are?’

‘In South America, somewhere, surrounded by servants and bodyguards and high-tech surveillance systems and the best resident doctors and nurses money can buy. You shouldn’t be depressed, really. This is a happy ending of sorts. There was no murder. That’s good news. Let’s drink to it.’

They drank to it. ‘What’s the matter now?’ Payne asked as Antonia sighed.

‘I’ve been leading you on a wild-goose chase -’

‘What absolute rot.’

‘Kind of you to say so, but I
have
wasted your time.’ Antonia vaguely wondered whether she wasn’t spouting all these negative statements so that he could contradict them and reassure her. If she had to be honest with herself, she rather enjoyed being reassured by him.

‘Nothing of the sort. I enjoyed every minute of it.’ Major Payne reached out and took her hand. She let him hold it. What the hell, she thought.

He went on, ‘The - what shall we call it? The hunt for Sonya Dufrette hasn’t been a failure.
Au contraire.
All right, we haven’t been able to discover Sonya’s whereabouts, but we did find out what happened. You had a hunch that there was something wrong and you were proved correct. A crime
was
committed, no matter how noble the motive for it. We did uncover greed, skulduggery, intricate scheming and deception. That’s an achievement. Truth has prevailed. That’s a cause for celebration and that’s what we are having now.’ He raised his glass again. ‘To Truth.’ He looked at her. ‘And to Beauty too.’

‘You are being silly now.
Very
silly. I am not really happy about it. In fact I wish we’d let sleeping dogs lie.’

He shook his head with exaggerated disapproval. ‘I am surprised at you, Antonia. Judging by your book, I was convinced that you were an uncompromising moralist.’

‘What I mean is, I am extremely uneasy about Dufrette - about what he might do next. He won’t give up until he has tracked down the Vorodins. And he won’t wait until Lena recovers - if she ever does - to get Veronica’s address. He will find another source of information soon enough. He said it himself. He looked absolutely determined.’

‘Yes.’ Payne ran a thoughtful forefinger along his jaw. ‘Absolutely, uncompromisingly, insanely determined. He looked like a man possessed by the spirit of a wolf hanged for manslaughter. Does that strike you as completely nonsensical? Why do these things sound so much better in one’s head? Am I right in thinking that it rather captures the essence of Lawrence?’

‘The hour of the wolf,’ Antonia said. ‘I hope it never comes ... That’s when people die, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. According to Scandinavian mythology.’

‘He has a gun. He is prepared to use it,’ Antonia went on. ‘He not only wants his daughter back -
he wants revenge.
You did hear him say, “Paytime.” Lena, the nanny, Veronica - are they safe from him? I know this sounds wildly melodramatic, but then Dufrette is a melodramatic kind of person.’

‘True ... He does seem to relish the role of the lone vigilante ... He didn’t like it one bit when you suggested that the police should be told. Crikey - he actually
snarled
at you!’

They had been standing inside the Elsnor lobby. Lawrence Dufrette had said he’d be
very
cross if they told the police. He had patted his pocket suggestively. He had expressed the hope that their paths wouldn’t cross again. He had said their meddling days were over, that they should make themselves scarce, that from that moment on
he
was in charge, that his hour had come. He had spoken in a low menacing voice. He had directed at Antonia a look full of antagonism and scorn and, yes, he had snarled at her. She had been shocked. She had thought they had been getting on really well. Of all the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde transformations!

‘Not a word of thanks either,’ Major Payne murmured. ‘To think that, but for us, he would never have known his daughter was alive.’

‘And
he took that letter. We shouldn’t have let him. He will get someone to translate it for him ... I wonder what was in it.’

‘It may be something totally irrelevant. Veronica saying, I took Sonya to Versailles yesterday. She enjoyed herself an
awful lot.
We wished you were here with us,’

‘I can’t imagine anyone wishing Lena were with them anywhere ... Could they be in France?’

‘I don’t know. V.V. did use French writing paper, but that means nothing ... Shall we order pudding and coffee? What would you like?’

‘A
pêche Melba
with chocolate sauce,’ Antonia said recklessly. ‘How about informing the police?’

‘I don’t think it will make much difference.’ Payne took out his pipe. He went on, ‘You see, don’t you, that we can’t prove a thing? Dufrette will no doubt deny the existence of any letter point blank and express concern over the state of our respective minds. Miss Haywood
may
break down and confess fully, but there’s no guarantee. And I think it highly unlikely that Lena will ever admit to selling her daughter to the Vorodins.’

‘What if Lena did tell the truth about Dufrette and Sonya? What if some kind of sexual abuse did take place?’

‘Again, nothing that has the remotest chance of standing up in court. It was twenty years ago. A mentally deficient child too. Would Sonya - assuming she were ever tracked down - be able to testify? I rather doubt it.’ Payne lit his pipe.

There was another pause.

‘We could always report Dufrette for possessing a gun,’ Antonia said.

‘They are sure to discover that he has a licence for it.’

Antonia sighed.

20

Interlude

The next day Major Payne was called away to his farm in Suffolk, rather urgently, as a sudden crisis had arisen. His manager had been involved in a car crash, not a fatal one, but he was to spend at least a month in hospital, consequently Payne needed to take over the reins. He asked Antonia to go with him and, although she was tempted, she said it would be impossible. She couldn’t afford to take any more days off so soon after coming back from her holiday. They agreed to keep in touch either by e-mail or by phone.

‘Do let me know if something crops up,’ he said.

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know. Something might. I have a funny feeling ... Somehow I don’t think this is the end of the affair,’ he said. ‘For one thing we haven’t found Sonya Dufrette.’

She let him kiss her goodbye.

As it happened, she was very busy herself. It was the day for her monthly report to the club committee and she discovered she hadn’t done it. What with the flurry of recent activities, it had completely slipped her mind. She had only remembered the report as she woke up in the morning, and had jumped out of bed in a panic. She did manage to complete it in less than an hour, though it was far from satisfactory - or so she feared. Her only hope was that it wouldn’t be scrutinized too closely. That’s what she told Hugh, who phoned her at half-past eleven that same morning to see how she was getting on. He was insouciant about it. ‘Bluff your way through. They aren’t a particularly efficient bunch, from what I have heard.’ He meant the club committee. She agreed - they weren’t. ‘What’s that music?’ he asked. ‘Are you having a knees-up in the library
^?
’

‘It’s the gardener’s radio. History of flamenco.’

At three o‘clock in the afternoon she went up the wide sweep of the staircase. She walked along the corridor, beautifully carpeted and decorated with taste but besmirched by a superfluity of signs and directions. The club was a notorious maze and, without the signs, newcomers would get lost and wander around until rescued by club members or staff. Antonia knew the place like the back of her hand, so the signs only annoyed her.

The committee meetings were invariably held in a huge gilded room with long curtained windows that looked over an enclosed formal garden. The walls were decorated with portraits of Nelson, Wellington and George V in his Sailor King uniform. Above the fireplace there was an obscure painting of the Battle of Balaclava.

Antonia was the first to arrive. It always happened that way. The committee weren’t famous for their punctuality. For a couple of moments she amused herself idly, standing beside the portrait of George V, bringing her face very close to it and seeing the intricately, even finickily, rendered blue uniform and perfectly trimmed beard disintegrate into a fuzzy, meaningless blur of brushstrokes. She then headed for the rickety, baize-covered card table, around which were ranged some ill-assorted chairs of good quality. She sat on one of the two Sheratons and, inconsequentially, remembered that last time she had sat on the Louis Quinze.

She opened her folder in front of her. Random thoughts kept revolving inside her head. The true nature and personality of Lawrence Dufrette. (How dangerous was he?) The need for a pair of shoes to go with the dark blue suit she was wearing. (Would Hugh like them?) The possible whereabouts of Veronica and Sonya. (What new names might Sonya have been given?) Hugh’s whereabouts at that very moment. (Could he be attending some tea-party organized by one of his numerous well-wishers with the sole purpose of introducing him to some highly eligible local widow? She sincerely hoped not.)

Where had Curzon, the giraffe with the bitten ear, disappeared ? The answer to this one suggested itself almost at once: Sonya had missed it and Veronica had contacted Lena and asked her to send it to them, which Lena had done ... So Lena did have a forwarding address ...

Where was it she had heard ‘Lavender’s Blue’ played? And why did she think it was extremely important that she should remember ... Had it been on the radio? She felt sure she had been sitting in the library ... Had Mrs Cathcart hummed it, perhaps? Unlikely. Colonel Haslett? No, she didn’t think so. Colonel Haslett often hummed but it was usually some Gilbert and Sullivan tune - or ’Colonel Bogey‘.

Antonia shut her eyes.
Watch out for that ring,
Miss Pettigrew had said.

Suddenly she sat up. She had heard the familiar cackling and shuffling noises outside the door, heralding the imminent arrival of the club committee. They didn’t come in at once, though, but started a discussion outside, over whether the sign on the door should be changed from
Vacant
to
Meeting in Progress,
or whether doing so would put off any legitimate latecomers. Eventually it was decided to change the sign, and three people entered the room.

Mrs Compton, Mr Reece and Commander Bridges.

They appeared greatly surprised to see Antonia and even more surprised when they heard that she had been waiting since three o‘clock. ’Oh dear. We
did
say half-past, didn’t we, Douglas?‘ Mrs Compton said. She was a tall willowy woman of indeterminate years, dressed elegantly in a light green suit with darker green facings, whose immaculate coiffure the unlikely colour of ’Dutch gold’ added to her height and sophistication.

Commander Bridges, thus appealed to, went very pink. He attempted to solve the dilemma between his conscience and manners by saying that it had been half-past three
to start with -
and that went back
at least five years -
they must be living in the past! He made it sound like some sort of a joke. He tugged at his intricately tied cravat and beamed and nodded at Antonia. He was clad in a dark blazer and grey trousers. He was seventy-six but looked younger, though sitting down and getting up were a problem. Antonia saw him glance down nervously at the Louis Quinze. He hated being helped either way. Given the option, he would have remained standing.