The Riddle of Sphinx Island (24 page)

Lady Grylls yawned. John might have a supply of cyanide – perhaps he’d used it to poison seagulls or something … John was mad as a hatter … He might have given the cyanide to Maisie … Maisie had been the only person who’d stood near Oswald Ramskritt’s glass of champagne in the drawing room … How easy it would have been for her to drop a lump of cyanide into the champagne …

Lady Grylls nodded to herself, satisfied with her own logic.

Maisie Lettering sat huddled in a chair in her room, staring at the flickering candlelight, her slender arms hugging her shoulders. She brought to mind a bird that had dashed its head against glass and had been picked up by a human hand. The bird crouches there terrified, unable to move, hoping to save itself by its immobility …

Oswald hadn’t been the man she had taken him to be. Her great respect for him had disappeared after he tried to violate her … And he had treated those poor German girls terribly…She had started hating Oswald … She recalled the revulsion she felt when Oswald said he wanted her to stand by his side and how she had tried to hide her true feelings …

John de Coverley said he had as much need for candles as he needed a third leg. The extravagance of it! One could be excused for imagining his sister was attempting to recreate Brompton Oratory. He said he rather liked the idea of sitting in the dark. ‘Actually, I’ve got a torch somewhere as well as my battery-operated lantern. If you are not careful with those candles, you may set the place ablaze, you know. I’d never forgive you if you did
.
Unlike you, I am attached to Mauldeley.’

‘I see you are in good spirits, dear boy,’ Sybil said. ‘I am so glad.’

‘Can I have my gun back, do you think? It is, after all, registered under my name.’ John de Coverley peered at his watch. ‘I’ll need to go out soon, you know.’

‘That would be quite impossible, I fear.’

‘You don’t mean I am still under house arrest?’

‘You are not under arrest. All you need is a good rest. It’s getting late. Why don’t you go to bed?’

‘I never heard a proposition I liked the sound of less. I need exercise. You are stopping me from having exercise.’

‘I will tell what you could do,’ she said. ‘Toss a pack of playing cards on the floor and then pick them up one by one. That’s one of the most marvellous exercises there is. Apparently our dear Queen and several Cabinet ministers swear by it.’

‘Who is that chap lurking behind you?’ John de Coverley pointed his forefinger.

‘He is not lurking. He is one of my guests.’

‘Is he your lover?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘You have that complacent secret smile. Your mug is smoother, as if a hand has passed over your skin and conjured away all the etchings of advanced middle age.’

‘No, not
advanced
.’

‘Your features should be worn with dissipation but they are not. You look repulsively rejuvenated. You positively glow. That’s what happens when women start imagining someone’s in love with them. I say, that chap looks a bit like papa!’

‘He does, doesn’t he?’

John grimaced. ‘Ugly things really hurt me, you know. You used to be as demure as an early Victorian bride, Sybil, but you look quite different now. I believe you are wearing lipstick. If you are not careful, you will soon start resembling one of those ghastly middle-aged
grandes horizontales.
Painted, powdered and predatory.’

‘I do think you should go to bed, John.’

‘The trouble with you, Sybil, is that you are too easily steered off course. It is imperative that you should get a proper occupation,’ he went on sternly. ‘Some sort of a reassuring routine to buttress your inner self that will keep you from getting pernicious ideas. I used to know a woman who found arranging multi-coloured skeins of silk in an alabaster box fulfilling.’

‘Shall I make you a cup of camomile tea? It will calm you down.’

‘That chap looks a frightful cad. All through my life I have been governed by one golden rule – and I am perfectly prepared to tell you – or anyone else who happens to be interested – what it is.
Give the cad the bum-rush
.’

‘He is not a cad. His name is Feversham.’

‘I heard you and your so-called guests smashing up the library this morning. Something happened this morning, didn’t it? One of your degraded orgies, no doubt.’

‘Nothing happened. Nothing at all.’

‘You and your so-called guests should be shut up in a dungeon and fed with the tails of haddocks, two a day, till you all perish of pure indigestion. I do think it’s time for the troupe, as they say, to be disbanded.’

‘I think it’s time you went to bed, dear boy.’

‘Where is the American girl? I need to talk to the American girl. I intend to ask her a very specific kind of question. It’s frightfully important,’ John de Coverley said. ‘Would you be kind enough to take time off your dalliance and tell her I want to see her? It’s terribly urgent.’

All the candles had now been distributed, two to three for each room.

While admitting that it was a filthy habit, Major Payne claimed that smoking helped him to concentrate. Indeed a pipe could prove a source of the subtlest inspiration. But his pipe needed cleaning. He produced the spear-shaped metal implement he used for scraping out dead ashes from the bowl.

The ‘spear’ caught the flickering light of his candle and flashed it back. Payne blinked.

‘What was that?’ Antonia sat up. ‘A metal object catching the light. Perhaps that was the light Maisie saw a moment before the window was broken. That’s possible, isn’t it?’

‘It is perfectly possible, yes. She saw it in the middle of the library, though … What was it doing in the middle of the library?’

There was a pause.

‘Somebody must have thrown a metal object across the room,’ Antonia said slowly.

‘Why would anyone want to do that? What metal object?’

‘I am not sure, but I think I can guess…’

‘No, don’t tell me.’ Payne held up his hand. ‘Let me think … Good lord,’ he said quietly. ‘I believe I know … Not the –?’

‘Yes.’

‘But then that means –’

‘Yes
.’

‘She lent it to Feversham but he never gave it back to her,’ said Antonia.

Enlightenment had come when least expected. The time was now half past seven.

There was a knock, the door opened and Ella Gales entered. In her hand she held a candlestick. Although they couldn’t see her face properly, they knew at once something had happened.

‘What’s the matter?’ Payne asked sharply.

‘It’s Doctor Klein. I don’t seem able to wake him up. He is a bad colour. He doesn’t seem to be breathing.’

The Paynes were quick and efficient. They asked no more questions. They got up and followed Ella. Each one of them held a burning candle.

The staircase creaked.

Back in the
1930
s, when it was first built, Mauldeley, had been considered the very essence of modernity. It had been new and bright and shining. There had been no ‘atmosphere’ about it. But things had changed. More than eighty years on, the house had become old and eerie, at the moment, quite terrifying. It seemed to be pervaded by a faint smell which suggested seaweed that had been left drying in the sun.

No one said a word. As Ella led the way into Doctor Klein’s room and they filed in after her, there was a sudden draught and their candles flickered.

Doctor Klein – it was difficult to think of him as a ‘Freddie’ – was lying on his right side. His bulging body threw grotesque shadows on the walls.

Payne put his candle down on the bedside table. He then bent over the bed. Antonia and Ella stood close by and held up their candles, so that he could see better.

Payne lifted the cold hand, noticing how small and soft it was, dainty, even. He raised the eyelid, then placed his forefinger at Doctor Klein’s neck. Rigor Mortis not set in yet. Doctor Klein’s eyes were open, frozen in what Payne imagined was a ferocious expression. The lips were parted. The teeth were clenched in what looked like a snarling grimace. Or was he imagining it? The light was very poor.

The lips appeared slightly bruised. A minuscule crystal sparked on the corner of the mouth. And there was another one on the lower lip. With extreme care Payne detached the crystals and placed them on his handkerchief. Then he noticed a tiny cloth fibre sticking to Doctor Klein’s teeth. He held it up and gazed at it thoughtfully. Green … and yellow?

Should have been wearing gloves, he thought. Damn. Too late.

He frowned. Something stirring at the back of his mind … No, gone.

He closed Klein’s eyes, then straightened up. His expression was difficult to read.

Ella said, ‘He is dead, isn’t he?’

‘Yes, he’s gone.’

They heard the patter of raindrops against the window-panes …

Payne’s eyes travelled to the bedside. No glass. No Bible. No, of course not. Doctor Klein had clearly cocked a snook at God’s divine right of determining who should be male and who female. There was a book sticking out of the drawer.
Thus Spake Zarathustra
. How very interesting. Payne picked it up. The central irony of the book was the fact that Nietsche had consciously mimicked the style of the Bible to present his defiantly anti-Christian ideas. Had Doctor Klein been fascinated by Nietsche’s
super-mensch
? That would be another irony.

Payne leafed through the book. His German was a little rusty …

Despisers of life, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary, so let them go!

Putting down the book, Payne raised the handkerchief to his nose and sniffed at it delicately.

‘What’s that?’ Antonia asked.

‘Cyanide crystals. He seemed to have swallowed a lump of cyanide.’ Payne lifted Klein’s right hand and examined it carefully by the light of the candles. There were several crystals stuck to it. What kind of despair compels a man to pop a lump of cyanide into his mouth as though it were some luxurious bon-bon?

‘There doesn’t seem to be a suicide note,’ Antonia said. ‘He’s still wearing the dress.’

‘He killed himself. Perhaps it’s for the best. In fact, I am sure it’s for the best,’ Ella said quietly. Her voice was expressionless, as though coming from far away. ‘I will miss him,’ she added.

Payne picked up the reticule from where it lay beside the body – from inside it he extracted a phial, which he held against the candlelight, squinting at it. He unscrewed it. His nose twitched.

‘Bitter almonds,’ he murmured.

The next moment Payne remembered.
Gloves
. Where
had
he seen a pair of green and yellow tartan gloves?

The door burst open and Mrs Garrison-Gore appeared. She was wearing a flowered dressing gown, a blanket around her shoulders, her pork-pie hat and gloves. Payne’s eyes fixed on the gloves. No – these were black.

Mrs Garrison-Gore was holding a candle. She had a wild air about her. She brought to mind Grace Pool in
Jane Eyre
, Antonia thought.

‘So sorry, didn’t mean to barge in, but I heard voices.’ Her teeth chattered.

‘I am freezing. It’s impossible to do
anything
. What’s happened?’ Her eyes fixed on the body on the bed.

‘Doctor Klein is dead,’ Payne said.

‘What? When?’ She clutched at her bosom. ‘How did he die?’

‘He was poisoned. Cyanide.’

‘My God! Not – not by his own hand?’

‘It would appear so, though of course it is for the police to have the final say.’

Mrs Garrison-Gore emitted an inarticulate sound at the back of her throat.

Her hand shook and wax from the candle dripped on the floor.

Her eyes went to the balcony door, then travelled to the chest of drawers.

‘Do you think you’ll be all right sleeping next door? We could ask Sybil to get you another room.’ Payne was watching her carefully.

‘No, thank you. I’ll be perfectly all right.’ Mrs Garrison-Gore lingered. She seemed to come to a decision. ‘I’ve got a confession to make. No, I am not the killer!’ She guffawed. ‘It’s about Doctor Klein. I knew he was a transsexual before most of you did. You see, I sneaked into his room and ransacked his drawers. I found papers and photographs.’

‘While he slept?’

‘No, no. I am not that brave! He was with Ella at the time. Happened the other night. I was curious. I’d been wondering about him. Terrible thing to do, but there you are. I am a snooper. A Nosey Parker. I know I will be in trouble. When the police come, they will find my fingerprints all over that chest of drawers. It didn’t occur to me to wear gloves. I only wear gloves when I am cold. I had no idea he would kill himself or be killed or whatever.’

‘You think he was killed?’

‘It would be idiotic not to consider the possibility.’

‘Any idea as to who might have done it?’ Antonia asked.

‘No. Rather, I wouldn’t like to say. Not till I have sorted out my thoughts.’

‘So you have an idea?’

‘I am not sure. Perhaps.’

‘You didn’t by any chance tell Oswald Ramskritt about your discovery? I mean about Doctor Klein being Freddie?’

‘No, of course not. I told no one. I had no idea he was Freddie, only that he was a transsexual.’ Mrs Garrison-Gore’s voice was gruff. Her bosom rose and fell. She kept rubbing her right hand with her left. She seemed to be in pain. ‘I am going now. I am sure I will survive the night. In fact I am not sure at all but another death on the island would definitely be
de
trop
, so I promise to do my best
not
to add to the count of dead bodies!’

The door slammed shut behind her.

Back in her room, Mrs Garrison-Gore lit the spirit lamp Sybil de Coverely had given her and made herself a cup of tea. She put in two spoonfuls of sugar and took a sip. She told herself she was one of those rare fortunate people who actually
know
the difference between good and evil.

She spoke her thoughts aloud. ‘He was entirely evil. An unregenerate bully, if there was one. He’d elevated the act of malicious teasing to an art form. But why did you have to draw attention to yourself, Romany? Was that wise? You seem to positively enjoy courting disaster, my girl. And why do you persist in splitting your infinitives? Well,’ she went on in a slightly modified voice, ‘snooping is not such a heinous crime. Not as bad as murder anyway.’