The Riddle of Sphinx Island (23 page)

‘We were given to understand he was asleep,’ Payne said.

‘Maybe he sings in his sleep? Some people do. There was a certain incantatory repetitiveness to it, which I found jolly disturbing. I was put in mind of some compulsive ritual that was devoid of rational significance. I seem to have lost my silver bullet pen. I am sure Feversham stole it.’ Mrs Garrison-Gore started crying quietly into her handkerchief. ‘Everything’s gone wrong.
Everything.
I wish I didn’t feel so
low.
I feel the irrepressible urge to scream.’ She blew her nose. ‘No, don’t worry. I won’t do it.’

‘Did you by any chance notice a little light flashing in the middle of the library?’ Antonia asked. ‘Seconds before the window smashed?’

Mrs Garrison-Gore dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief. ‘What kind of light?’

‘We have no idea. Maisie believes she saw a light.’

‘Only one of the table lamps was on … There wasn’t
lightning
, was there?’

‘Everybody would have noticed lightning,’ Payne said. ‘Apparently this was a very tiny light, or so Maisie claims.’

‘No. No. I saw nothing. Is that important?’

‘It seems an insignificant little thing but I don’t need to tell you how tantalising details like that can be.’

‘I know exactly what you mean. Have you ever organised a Murder Game?’ Mrs Garrison-Gore asked.

‘No, never. We were approached once, I remember, but we said no.’ Antonia smiled at the memory.

‘The money was good. But we smelled a rat,’ Payne said. ‘We suspected the whole thing was going to be used as a cover for something sinister, didn’t we, my love?’

‘The venue was one of the grandest country houses in England,’ said Antonia. ‘We were sworn to secrecy, so I can’t tell you the name … We were asked to provide the script, act as advisors and generally supervise the whole thing … Unlike you, we didn’t have to provide a single actor. The actors were already there, at the house. All we needed to do was work out the details of the plot.’

Mrs Garrison-Gore sniffed. ‘I didn’t have to provide any bloody actor either.’

‘Didn’t you? We thought you did.’ Payne’s left eyebrow went up. ‘What about Feversham? Feversham was your idea, wasn’t he? That’s what we were given to understand.’

‘No, he wasn’t. Feversham was Oswald Ramskritt’s idea.’

‘In
re
Ramskritt – may I ditch the
de mortuis
dictum and speak with a degree of bluntness instead?’ Feversham said. ‘May I?’

‘Please do,’ Payne said.

‘I wouldn’t have called him a decent fellow. It wasn’t immediately apparent, but Doctor Jekyll could have taken a leaf out of Ramskritt’s book. Perhaps he had something and couldn’t help himself? One of those conditions. Tourette’s Syndrome? That’s not only to do with spontaneous swearing, is it?’

‘That’s to do with making socially inappropriate and derogatory remarks,’ said Antonia. ‘Tourette’s Syndrome sufferers also twitch, I believe.’

‘Ramskritt didn’t twitch but when he was shot at, he went mad, quite mad. Got DD. Disgustingly drunk. Didn’t look it, which is always a bad sign. I believe he was an alcoholic. Made a total nuisance of himself. Slapped poor Ella’s face. How she put up with him, I have no idea.’

‘Ramskritt slapped Ella’s face?’

‘Indeed he did. I saw it with my own eyes. I was at the other end of the corridor. They didn’t see me. Gave me quite a turn. Poor Ella – poor Maisie – and for that matter, poor Romany.’

‘Why poor Romany?’ Antonia asked.

‘Ramskritt teased her mercilessly about her books. About the fact that she writes Golden Age pastiches – and the fact she used Gutenberg
Lite
.’

‘Oh – all that old lamps for the new business?’

‘Yes. He had no sense of proportion. He just went on
and
on. But I have a specific incident in mind. It happened that same day, after he got DD. By an extraordinary coincidence, I happened to be passing by the study Romany had been using. Ramskritt was sitting beside the desk, reading out bits from the book she was writing and making fun of the way she changed names of characters and places. He called her “spoilt” because she had the Internet at her disposal. The Internet practically wrote her books for her, some such thing. I could see that it upset her.’

Antonia said, ‘Upset her enough to make her want to poison him?’

‘I’d have said no. Poison
is
a woman’s weapon, if one believes the popular myth, though I rather doubt Romany is the malefactor in this particular instance. I wouldn’t have called her a wonderfully balanced character, but she is by no means a homicidal loon. I believe Ramskritt got a serious kick out of rattling people. He called me an old fool –’

‘Who is “old Bonwell”?’ Payne asked. ‘Or Bonewell?’

‘As it happens, my father’s name is Bonwell.’ For a moment Feversham looked confused.

‘And is Norah perhaps your mother?’

‘My mother? Is this some game?’ The next moment Feversham slapped his forehead with his hand. It was a particularly histrionic gesture. ‘Good lord. You probably mean that silly piece of dialogue Ramskritt and I exchanged at tea on the day of your arrival? Oh that was nothing, my dear fellow, nothing at all. Romany instructed us to extemporise. We were all saying silly things at tea that day. Awfully silly things. A positive orgy of silliness, if I remember correctly.’ Feversham had started speaking very fast. ‘Things like, “I detest people who make helpless gestures” and so on. At the time of course I had no idea what an impossible fellow Ramskritt was, but then he was perfectly amiable to start with … But what a wonderful memory you have! You should have been an actor, you know.’

‘As a matter of fact I did consider the stage at one point. Talking of actors,’ Payne said, ‘I understand that it was actually Oswald Ramskritt who recommended you to Mrs Garrison-Gore?’

‘Ramskritt? No, of course not! Wherever did you get the idea?’ Feversham’s monocle fell off his eye. Suddenly he looked frightened.

‘Mrs Garrison-Gore told us that you were chosen to play the part of John de Coverley on Oswald Ramskritt’s recommendation,’ Payne said.

‘Poor Romany must have got hold of the wrong end of the stick. She hasn’t been herself, you know. If I were you, I would take everything she said with a pinch of salt.’

The afternoon was spreading like blood floating in water
.

Mrs Garrison-Gore sat hunched over her battery-operated laptop. She was trying to write in the hope it would take her mind off things. Well,
not
bad – as similes went, that is – but was it her own or had she come across that particular simile in somebody else’s book?

‘Romany, you must cease cannibalising other people’s books, or you’ll find yourself in hot water.’ She spoke the words aloud.

Taking a sip of coffee, she gazed balefully out of the window, at the sea below, glinting in the shadows. The waves crashed rhythmically against the unyielding cliffs. Suddenly another sound came: the disconcertingly human-like shriek of a gull. An angry but ultimately futile lament for the unhealable anguish of the world …

She really felt awful. Her ears reacted to the slightest sound. She longed for oblivion. She remembered how once, while on holiday in France, she’d visited a local museum where she had been shown a peculiar torture arrangement of the Middle Ages – an iron cage wherein prisoners had been confined and in which they could neither lie, stand nor sit. Well, that was the way she felt now. As though she’d been put inside that particular kind of iron cage!

‘I am my own prisoner,’ she said. ‘I am consumed with doubt and dread and vile intentions.’

For some reason her thoughts turned to her former husband. On one memorable occasion he told her she needed to be chastised for her soul’s sake –

It occurred to her that self-loathing had been her inseparable companion for some time now.

‘Unhealable anguish? You may not realise it, Romany, but you display an incorrigible taste for the bogus. Every word you write ought to be a prize item in any anthology of humbug.’

It was raining again.

Still no network. Major Payne put his mobile phone away. He shook his head. Being penned up on a small island with a devastated library and a dead body must be the ultimate in enervating experiences …

At five minutes past three in the afternoon they had tea brought to them in the dining room, which they now regarded as their ‘base’. It was so dark they had to turn on the lights.

Muffins, crumpets, pats of lightly salted butter, Devonshire cream, two kind of jam, strawberry and seedless raspberry, a variety of sandwiches: potted ham, egg-and-cress, cucumber on brown and white bread.

Tea, thank God for afternoon tea. As he picked up the silver knife and cut across a crumpet, Payne was struck yet again by the incongruity of it all.

At six o’clock, he asked Antonia, ‘What’s the most unusual solution you could think of?’

‘If I had to propound a theory, I’d say that the cyanide was intended for Klein. It was Ramskritt who put it into Klein’s glass. Ramskritt wanted Klein dead, silenced, because Klein could have created bad publicity for Ramskritt.’ Antonia paused. ‘Klein could have exposed Ramskritt’s spying activities, talked to the papers about Ramskritt’s awful treatment of the Hansen girls which led to Gabriele’s suicide and Freddie’s sex change and so on.’

‘But in the chaos that follows the smashing of the window, Ramskritt makes a mistake and picks up Klein’s glass?’

‘Precisely. Imagining it is his own. He takes a sip and dies. Though why
should
Ramskritt have been carrying cyanide in his pocket? He clearly had no idea as to Klein’s real identity, not till Klein told him. So he couldn’t have come down this morning, intending to poison Klein.’ Antonia sighed. ‘Makes no sense.’

‘Unless Ramskritt was only
pretending
he didn’t know who Doctor Klein was. What if someone had told him?’

It was at seven o’clock that they decided to talk to Doctor Klein. They asked Ella to see if he was awake and well enough.

Outside the rain was pouring.

‘I remember jigsaw puzzles on card tables that never got finished,’ Sybil said.

‘I remember
not
loving Paris in the springtime,’ Lady Grylls said.

‘
I remember, I remember the house where I was born – the little window –’

‘No, no. We can’t have poems, Fever. Didn’t you hear what Nellie said?’

‘Oh sorry, darling. Um. I remember disapproving of order and symmetry.’

‘I remember not knowing my catechism, nor understanding what an oath is,’ Lady Grylls said.

‘I remember my brother describing the sea as a pointillist picture. I remember accepting the anguish of ageing.’

It was the next moment that the lights went out and complete darkness engulfed the island.

‘Damn,’ Feversham said. ‘That rather puts the tin hat on, doesn’t it?’

They were sitting in what Sybil had referred to as ‘mama’s morning room’.

‘I’ve got a torch somewhere. Oh there it is.’ Sybil turned on the torch. ‘We could run the engine in the cellar, get it going. Perhaps you and Major Payne could do it between you, Fever?’

‘I must say, my dear, you are handling this latest crisis with laudable aplomb,’ Lady Grylls said.

‘May I suggest we leave our expedition to the cellar for tomorrow morning? There are several packets of candles in the kitchen, I noticed,’ Feversham said. ‘We could use those for tonight, if people don’t mind frightfully?’

‘You are afraid of the dark, admit it!’ Sybil teased him.

‘No, not at all. All right, maybe the tiniest bit.’

Lady Grylls pushed her glasses up her nose. ‘I was thinking of going to bed, but I can wait till you bring the candles. I doubt I’ll be up to navigating the stairs in the dark. I don’t suppose you would want an old baroness with a broken neck on top of everything else, would you?’

‘We most certainly would not. Are you sure you will be all right, Nellie, sitting alone in the dark?’

‘Perfectly sure. At my age, Sybil, there are few things that scare me.’

‘According to the Chinese,’ said Feversham, ‘the years between sixty and seventy are the richest in living and one is then most appreciative of the beauty and delight of life.’

‘I am well over eighty, alas. I’d give anything to be sixty-five again,’ Lady Grylls said. ‘I was in my element at sixty-five … I don’t think I will be the next victim somehow … Famous last words!’ She laughed.

The door closed behind Feversham and Sybil and the morning room was plunged into impenetrable darkness.

Lady Grylls adjusted the woollen rug across her knees. No, she wasn’t afraid of the dark … She mustn’t fall asleep in her armchair … Pins and needles in her left leg … Would make getting up later on a bore …

Who
was
the killer? Doctor Klein seemed to be ‘indicated’, but there were other possibilities … Little Maisie, for example … She and John had talked through the keyhole, like Pyramus and Thisbe, she’d admitted as much … What if John had taken a fancy to Maisie? Lady Grylls had joked about it, but what if John had hit on a scheme to employ Maisie’s services? What if they had come to some understanding?

John wanted to be rid of Ramskritt since Ramskritt intended to deprive him of the island … John might have commissioned Maisie to murder Oswald Ramskritt for him – in return for – what? His hand in marriage?
Yes
. The notion was not as laughable as it sounded.

Lady Grylls didn’t think Maisie had any illusions about Ramskritt, how could she? To start with, yes.
Not
after her ordeal. Maisie gave every impression of being endearingly naive and refreshingly straightforward, but what if that was only a front? Maisie might have said yes to John’s proposal. American gels did fall for mad English aristocrats. So many novels had been written on the subject. Quite a tradition at one time … The Duke of Marlborough had married Consuelo Vanderbilt … Adele Astaire had married the younger son of the Duke of Devonshire … Then there was Mrs Simpson … Then there was the Downton nonsense … As it happened, two of Lady Grylls’ cousins had also married Americans …