The Hunt for Sonya Dufrette (6 page)

As Sonya and Miss Haywood passed by, Veronica said, ‘She looks like an angel, doesn’t she? Such a sweet little girl. Helplessness personified.’

‘I always thought angels looked confident and a bit smug - if Christmas cards are anything to go by. What is wrong with her exactly, do you know?’

‘She is said to be autistic. I wish Lawrence and Lena would do something about it. They haven’t really seen “everybody”. It doesn’t all start and end with Harley Street. There are good specialists abroad ... If I had a child like that, I’d love her more than I would a normal one!’ Veronica spoke vehemently, with genuine passion. ‘A mentally handicapped child is a very special child — a gift from God. A child like that would help me preserve my humanity — would prevent me from getting spoilt, keep me to the ground.’

How odd it is that one woman should consider a gift what another describes as punishment.

‘I love children, so does Anatole,’ Veronica went on. She had been a beauty queen and an actress, but she spoke simply and naturally, without the slightest trace of affectation. I found myself warming to her. ‘We don’t have any children, sadly. Do you?’

I told her I had a boy of Sonya’s age. Her face lit up. ‘A little boy! How wonderful for you. And he is — fine? He is in good health? I am so glad! You must be very happy. I’d love to meet him. What’s his name?’

‘David. I nearly brought him here with me.’

‘Oh, why didn’t you? I must send him something — some little present. How about a pair of platinum cuff links with the initial D?’

‘Oh, that’s very kind of you but I couldn’t possibly -’

‘Of course you can. It’s nothing. He can use them when he grows up. I have them in my room. We always carry two boxes full of cuff links that have all the letters of the alphabet on them. I carry the ones with A to K, Anatole has the rest. We present them to deserving little boys. I hope you won’t think us too peculiar!’ She laughed. ‘We have things for girls too.’ A shadow passed over her face. ‘We’d give anything to have a child. If you only knew what it means to us — ’ She broke off, then changed the subject. ‘Twiston is a lovely house, isn’t it? One thing we haven’t got is an English country house. Sorry, this sounds terribly spoilt of me!’

‘It is the kind of place exiles think of when they dream of home,’ I said.

‘Beautifully put... Perhaps one day I will buy this house and live in it.’

Lawrence Dufrette had strolled along and he was joined by Miss Haywood and Sonya. We watched him pick up Sonya and swing her round by her hands, making her scream with laughter. He then put her on his shoulder and unexpectedly broke into song.

‘Some to make hay, Dilly, Dilly,
Some to cut corn,
While you and I, Dilly, Dilly,
Keep ourselves warm.’

Sonya clapped her hands. She looked delighted.

Lawrence Dufrette was wearing a white shantung suit and a Panama hat, which he allowed Sonya to take off his head and throw down to the ground. This was repeated several times. She laughed. Her brown eyes were bright. He laughed too. I was amazed since I hadn’t thought Lawrence Dufrette capable of laughing like that. His whole face changed. He looked happy and relaxed. More importantly, it was clear to meat that moment that he loved his daughter. I said as much.

‘Oh yes, he loves her all right,’ Veronica said in a toneless voice. ‘Lawrence is nothing like Lena in that respect.’

Three men wearing overalls were walking towards the ancient oak tree. Veronica asked what they were doing, did I know? I did - Sir Michael had told me. ‘The tree is something of a historical monument. It was planted by James I. They are going to provide it with a cement base in an effort to preserve it. It is entirely hollow inside. It’s starting to disintegrate.’

‘It looks horrid. If it were up to me, I’d have it removed. Wasn’t there a poem about a hollow? Do you know the one? It always gives me the creeps when I remember it.’

‘Would that be Tennyson’s Maud?’

She looked blank. “‘I hate the dreadful hollow behind the little wood ...” How did it go on?’

I completed it for her:

‘Its lips in the field above are dabbled with blood and heath,
The red ribb’d ledges drip with a silent horror of blood
And Echo there, whatever is ask’d her, answers “Death”.’

6

The Royal Wedding

The cuff links had been left on her dressing table, in a charming presentation box with an onyx lid. She had found them later that day. She gave them to David on his twenty-first birthday, though she hadn’t seen him wear them very often . . .

How many people had there been altogether? Antonia was standing in her kitchen now, heating some excellent Marks and Spencer’s asparagus soup in a pan. Ten? Twelve? Excluding Sir Michael and Lady Mortlock, that was. She counted on her fingers. The Dufrettes, the Vorodins, Major Nagle, somebody called Bill Kavanagh, whose bald head and thick black-rimmed glasses brought to mind a bank manager, um, Sheikh Umair, several FO types and their wives. A couple called Falconer and another called Lynch-Marquis. She remembered Mrs L-M. as a large woman with a Roedean voice, wearing a long white silk robe with black stripes from the shoulders down both sides of the skirt.

The argument. For some reason she kept thinking about the argument. It had taken place at breakfast on the morning of the 29th. Lawrence Dufrette and Major Nagle had been no strangers to one another. For a while they had worked together in the same department. Neither man could stand the other, it had soon become apparent to everyone. (Sir Michael should never have asked the two of them together. What could he have been thinking of?) The reason for the animosity? ‘Some sort of rivalry, the usual office in-fighting,’ Lady Mortlock had said dismissively. ‘That, and Lawrence’s tendency to poke his nose into other people’s affairs.’

Nagle, it transpired, had asked to be transferred to another department because of Dufrette. It had been as bad as that. The argument had started as a result of Dufrette making some disparaging remark about the royal family and Nagle countering it. Dufrette didn’t like to be contradicted and he had said something very personal and extremely inflammatory - something about Nagle’s wife?

After finishing her soup and feeding the cats, Antonia went back to the sitting room. Should she spend some time on her novel? Standing beside her desk, she looked down at the bottom drawer, which was now closed. She hadn’t made
any
progress with her novel. She did need to work out the details of the rather complicated plot; it was at a stage when everything appeared hopelessly absurd . . . No, the drowning of Sonya Dufrette first.

She resumed reading.

It had been a most unsettled morning - the morning of the royal wedding. It had started promisingly enough. At eight o‘clock Antonia had been woken up by birdsong and had drawn her curtains made of rich, pea-green moire silk, fringed with applique galloon three inches broad, upheld by stout clasps of gold foliage and draped and tasselled festoons, to see the sun shining from a cloudless blue sky. From her window she could see the river. The sun’s slanting rays had turned it into a stream of shimmering molten gold. A light rain had fallen during the night and the air was brighter and fresher than the day before, with the sweet scent of roses and honeysuckle wafting in from the garden. Somewhere a sprinkler hissed. She felt happy and at peace, but also exhilarated. She reflected sentimentally on the sweet young girl who would one day be Queen and remembered the eve of her own wedding. She thought wistfully of Richard, wishing more than ever that he was with her at that moment . . .

Things started to go wrong when Miss Haywood left Twiston with the speed of lightning, in a cab. Antonia heard the story when the maid who had received the phone call, a kindly-looking middle-aged woman, brought her tea. ‘Poor girl. Her mother was rushed to hospital an hour ago. Suspected kidney failure. They phoned her from the hospital. At half-past seven! Came as a shock to the poor girl. Apparently her mother was fit as a fiddle the last time she saw her. Today of all days. Terrible.’

Miss Haywood wasn’t the only one who left. So did the Vorodins, in their car. At least their departure was pre-planned ; they were flying to the USA later in the day.

The row between Major Nagle and Lawrence Dufrette occurred at quarter to nine and resulted in Major Nagle declaring that he wasn’t staying under the same roof as Dufrette a moment longer. Nagle rushed out of the dining room and reappeared several minutes later, his face the colour of beetroot, a suitcase in one hand, his car keys in the other. It took Sir Michael all his diplomatic skills to persuade him to stay. Nagle did stay, though he spent the whole morning in his room, ‘covered in shame’, as an unrepentant Dufrette gloatingly told Antonia, who had only just sat down at the breakfast table.

‘You missed my coup. I managed to reduce old Nagle to a quivering jelly by making public a jolly murky episode from his very private life. He didn’t like it - what with Michael and Bill Kavanagh and the Falconers
and
Sheikh Umair listening. Bill’s the greatest gossip the FO has ever known!’

Dufrette gave a delighted croak. ‘I thought Nagle was about to explode. If looks could kill! Well, I do tend to acquire interesting information about people. In this particular instance, I ran into someone at my club, a chap whose late stepsister turned out to have been the first Mrs Nagle. He was of the opinion that Nagle was a monster. I said, what a coincidence, I was of that opinion too. That broke the ice. It turned out that the day before her death his stepsister had confided in him - told him what treatment she had been receiving at Nagle’s hands. Well, after a couple of scotches he spilled the beans. Nagle had been having an affair and he’d been flaunting it in front of his wife. Twice he made sure she found him and his mistress in bed together. Mrs Nagle then committed suicide. Hurled herself under a train. She’d had a history of mental illness of one kind or another, but there is no doubt that it was Nagle who drove her to it. He as good as killed her. Something of a sadist, old Nagle. He’s married his mistress since but it seems things are far from blissful. Nagle enjoys treating his women roughly, especially at bedtime, if you know what I mean - but that’s another story.’

It was at that point that a ghostly tinkling sound had been heard and Sonya walked into the dining room in her somnambulist manner, carrying a doll that was almost as big as her. Both girl and doll wore similar dresses: white and gold, with tiny bells at the waist - one of Lena’s dafter ideas, Antonia imagined. Sonya reached out and took Antonia’s hand. She started pulling her towards the open french windows that led into the garden. Antonia looked at Dufrette and received an approving nod. ‘It’s a lovely day, Mrs Rushton. Go and pick some flowers, why don’t you? She likes that.’

They walked out into the garden and Antonia made a daisy chain, which she placed on Sonya’s golden head. She pointed things out to her: a comic magpie, a busy squirrel, a strutting wood pigeon, but Sonya paid little attention - she was cooing to her doll. Happening to glance up at the house, Antonia saw Major Nagle standing stock-still at his open window, smoking. It was one of the south windows from which the garden layout of symmetrical beds, stone gate plinths and ironwork could be seen at its best, but she didn’t think Nagle was admiring the view. His eyes seemed fixed on them. Feeling somewhat disturbed, Antonia had steered the way briskly down a path leading to the river bank. Sonya had prattled the while, incomprehensible baby talk, directed exclusively at her doll. Beside the river it had felt pleasantly cool.

Antonia raised her brow again.
Could
Major Nagle -? No, no guesses - too early.

They had spent no more than a minute on the river bank, watching the dragonflies circle and the skitterbugs skate across the smoothish green surface of the river, before making their way back to the garden. There they stopped for another minute and Sonya picked some more flowers while Antonia watched the men in blue overalls pour cement into the hollow of the ancient oak. They were talking about Sir Michael’s weakness for ‘large ladies’. They had seen the Rubens in his study, apparently, and were making ribald jokes about it.

‘Will a cement base prevent the tree from decaying?’ she asked. The men shrugged and one of them said that the boss - he meant Sir Michael - certainly seemed to think that was the right thing to do. The man was clearly amused by Sir Michael calling the tree a ‘historical monument’ for he chuckled each time he uttered the phrase. Antonia and Sonya had then returned to the house.

And then?

She had let go of Sonya’s hand only when they reached the hall. That was the last time Antonia had seen Sonya. She had heard Lena say, ‘Run along, darling, Mamma’s terribly busy at the moment.’ She had not turned round to see where Sonya had gone but had walked into the sitting room in search of orange juice - she had been extremely thirsty.

Had Sonya, left unattended, wandered out of the front door and back into the garden? The door had certainly been open. Later Lena told the police that she had no recollection, that she hadn’t seen where Sonya had gone, but she was pretty sure it hadn’t been up the great staircase.

(Criminal
negligence, Miss Pettigrew had called it.)

In the wake of the Nagle-Dufrette contretemps, the house party had been subdued. Sir Michael tried cheering them up by playing numbers from Fred Astaire’s film
Royal Wedding,
with a reminder that the broadcast was about to begin in a quarter of an hour. Would they care to take their seats? Everybody - with the exception of Major Nagle - was there and they complied.

The sitting room was the size of a barn, filled with comfortable chairs and sofas, with ancestral portraits hanging from claret-coloured ropes with tassels against beige neutral silk walls. There was a giant TV set, as well as strategically positioned small tables with plates of sandwiches, bowls of smoked almonds and peanuts and stands containing canapes of various kinds. There were bottles of gin, whisky and brandy on two side tables, old-fashioned siphons, also two coffee percolators and a tea urn. Through the window Antonia had observed the men in blue overalls walking briskly in the direction of the servants’ hall, where, she knew, there was another TV set. Sir Michael was as considerate an employer as he was gracious a host. She remembered the whirring of an ancient electric fan in one corner of the room.