The Killing of Olga Klimt (13 page)

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!’

‘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 said, 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.

‘Yes?’

‘So sorry to disturb you, but we are looking for Mr Charles Eresby,’ Payne delivered with old-fashioned formality. ‘He lives here, doesn’t he?’

‘Who are you?’

‘I am Hugh Payne and this is my wife Antonia. We are his mother’s friends. You see, Lady Collingwood wanted us to make sure Charlie is OK –’

‘I don’t understand.’ The girl made a gesture that was exaggeratedly foreign.

‘Charlie’s mother was on the phone to Charlie but they were cut off,’ Payne said slowly. ‘Charlie only managed to tell his mother that a friend of his, the girl who lives in this house, actually, is dead. A girl called Olga Klimt?’

The girl took up a defiant pose, her arms akimbo. ‘I am Olga Klimt and I am not dead!’

Payne’s eyebrows went up a little, ‘You are Olga Klimt?’

‘Yes, I am! I am Olga Klimt! You want to see my papers? I am sorry but I am very busy. Please to go away –’ It looked as though she was about to shut the door.

‘Is Charlie here?’ Payne was looking over her shoulder, into the hall. He believed he had caught a movement. ‘Hallo, is that you, Charlie?’ Payne called out.

‘Charlie is not here – I can’t talk – I am sorry – I don’t understand – I am very busy.’

The door slammed.

‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ Antonia said.

‘Watch,’ Payne whispered and he gave Antonia a little wink. He then spoke in a histrionically loud voice, ‘We have no option but to call the police, my love, don’t you think?’

‘Yes, we must call the police. We have no option,’ Antonia agreed, equally loudly.

‘Have you got your mobile? I don’t seem to have brought mine,’ Payne said, playing for time. ‘999, shall we?’

They thought they could hear agitated voices, then the front door opened once more and a young man wearing a dressing gown over pyjamas appeared.

‘I’m so terribly sorry. I am Charles Eresby.’ He sounded a little breathless, ‘I was upstairs. I am afraid Olga didn’t understand you. She doesn’t speak English very well. Did you say you were friends of Mummy’s?’

‘Yes. My name is Hugh Payne and this is my wife Antonia.’

‘I am so sorry. Do come in, do come in,’ Charlie said and he opened the door wide. His floppy fair hair fell into his eyes.

His heartiness was a bit on the faux side, Payne thought.

The hall floor was made of expensive terracotta tiles, which gleamed in the electric light. Wet? Yes, the floor seemed to have been recently washed.

Odd time to wash the floor, Antonia thought. Could there have been something spilt on it?

Charlie seemed eager for them not to linger in the hall. He piloted them into the sitting room.

They stood beside the sofa but Charlie did not ask them to sit down. It was transparently obvious that he was anxious for them to go away as soon as possible. The girl – Olga – if she was really Olga – stood beside the door.

‘Your mother is in quite a state about you,’ Payne said.

‘I am so terribly sorry,’ Charlie said. ‘It’s so frightfully embarrassing that you should have come all this way on my account!’