Assassins at Ospreys

13

Polaroid

Major Payne said, ‘I am truly sorry and I promise never to do it again. Never.’

‘Why do a silly thing like that?’

‘I don’t know what possessed me. I really don’t. I couldn’t resist it.’

‘You couldn’t resist scaring me?’

‘I mean I thought it would be funny.’

‘It was extremely thoughtless of you. You did scare me. Is that a smirk, Hugh?’

‘No! Of course not,’ he cried. ‘I am just terribly happy that we are on speakers again. I can’t bear you not speaking to me. It’s worse than writing five hundred lines of Latin Georgics!’

‘I should hope so.’

‘I did believe there was blood on the door handle. I did think someone had been killed!’

He kissed her and held her to him and repeated in her ear that he was sorry. He sounded genuinely contrite, so she told him about the phone call she had received from Beatrice Ardleigh. He stared at her. ‘Golly. She went along with the act? I suppose that was the right thing to do in the circumstances. Renshawe is dying – what difference would it make?’

‘None whatever,’ Antonia agreed. ‘It’s not as though she’s been gaining his favour under false colours.’

‘It is funny, when you think about it – dashed ironic – that it should have been Renshawe’s deadliest enemy – mad Ingrid – who managed to win him over!’

The clock started chiming nine. They went into the dining room and sat down to breakfast. The warm weather was continuing and the windows were wide open. They could hear birdsong coming from the garden.

‘Ingrid needs urgent medical attention, if not the attention of the CID,’ said Antonia. ‘I do think we should do something about it, Hugh, since Bee doesn’t want to get “poor” Ingrid into trouble. Bee would hate to be considered a “snitch”. Bee abhors the very idea of “ratting”.’

‘You don’t seem to like Beatrice much,’ said Payne mildly. He dug into his bacon and eggs.

Antonia took a sip of tea. ‘Not much, no.’

‘Well, she’s got a husband to advise her. Colville’s head seems to be screwed on the right way. Besides, he is no fan of Ingrid’s.’ Payne glanced at the clock. ‘What time was Renshawe’s solicitor going to Ospreys?’

‘Eleven.’

‘If Renshawe does manage to change his will, Beatrice will be one fabulously rich lady,’ said Payne thoughtfully. ‘However, if he were to die before he had seen his solicitor, she would get nothing. This is fascinating, don’t you think?’

Antonia agreed it was fascinating.

‘A fortune is at stake and it all depends on the purest of chances. Renshawe is a dying man – he can pop off at any moment. Who do you think inherits by his original will?’ Antonia shrugged and said she had no idea. No one had mentioned any children, so she doubted he had any. Illegitimate children? Chaps like Renshawe always had illegitimate sons, Payne said thoughtfully.

‘He may have nephews – or a niece or two,’ she said after a pause.

‘Imagine their shock if Renshawe does manage to change his will.’ Payne helped himself to toast and Oxford marmalade. ‘Do they know about Uncle Ralph’s intentions? Would they approve?’

‘I don’t see how they could possibly approve.’

Payne looked at her. ‘What do you think will happen next?’

Antonia said. ‘Nothing, I hope.’

Even at the best of times he was prone to mood swings, to descents into the doldrums, to sudden overpowering ‘downers’, as Bee put it. Bee had said it was due to the fact he was born under Saturn, the planet of melancholy, that for those born under Saturn there was no lasting escape from the ‘black dog’. She had spoken like an expert. Woof, woof, she had added. He had managed a laugh – he didn’t want her to say again that he was ‘deficient in the drollery department’ – but the remark had hurt him beyond reason. He had expected greater understanding from her. Well, the truth was Bee had never even tried to enter his feelings.

Leonard Colville sat on the sofa in the sitting room at Millbrook House, leaning against the silk cushions. All the cushions smelled of Bee – of Ce Soir Je T’Aime – her favourite scent. He stroked one particular cushion; there were two golden hairs sticking to it. Then, picking up the cushion, he buried his face in it and inhaled deeply. It didn’t help – if anything, his heart grew heavier. A mood of extreme dejection was overtaking him.

She lied to me, Colville whispered, replaying once more the scene at breakfast.

Bee, in her silver-coloured silk peignoir with rabbit fur trimmings, dipping her spoon in her dish of Fortnum and Mason’s Soya Porage, bringing it up to her mouth, blowing at it gently, parting her lips. It had been a delight watching her. Bee wrinkled her nose and her green eyes narrowed. Colville caught a glimpse of her even pearly teeth and of her tongue the colour of ripe strawberries. He could have sat and watched her like that for eternity.

Then they started talking about the money – what they would do with it if Ralph Renshawe really did leave his fortune to her. That very morning Renshawe’s solicitor was going to Ospreys; a new will was going to be drawn up. Well, darling, Bee said, her voice vibrant with expression, all our financial problems will be resolved once and for all. It was the fairy godfather solution. A cruise – they would go on a cruise, the two of them. A second honey-moon, darling – Bee smiled at him. You would like that, wouldn’t you?

He remembered his thoughts. Never before have I known such bliss – such perfect oceanic peace.

That was only moments before the telephone rang and Bee rushed to it. Colville chided himself for the unworthy thought, but it was almost as though she had expected the phone to ring.

He watched her pick up the receiver. He heard her say hello. He saw her expression change – Bee listened, then gasped, ‘Where are you?’ The colour in her cheeks heightened and she cast a furtive glance in his direction. (He was sure he hadn’t imagined it.) ‘Look here – I -’ She bit her lip. ‘Very well.’

Colville pretended to be absorbed in the Telegraph and rustled it ostentatiously.

‘Oh, thanks for reminding me, sweetie,’ Beatrice said. ‘I am such a chump! I forgot. It completely slipped my mind!’

Bee had spoken these last words in an over-loud voice, shouted almost, for his benefit, clearly. She must have a poor opinion of his intelligence, Colville reflected gloomily. Replacing the receiver, she told him it had been Alessandro, her hairdresser. She had completely forgotten that she had made an appointment at the hairdresser’s for ten! She stood looking at him, like a bold little girl. There was a curl of hair lying across the side of her forehead and touching her left eyebrow, which the bright sunlight turned to filaments of gold. Colville wanted to run to her, put his arms around her, bury his face in her neck, hold her tight and ask her -no, beg her – not to leave him – ever! Bee had gone up to her room, then reappeared, wearing a hat made of shiny black straw and dark glasses that instantly transformed the way she looked, imparting to her the mysterious air of the archetypal beautiful spy of fiction. She had put on a mauve shade of lipstick, not her usual dark-rose red, which further altered her appearance. (She didn’t want to be recognized, clearly.) She then pecked him perfunctorily on the cheek, turned round and was gone. Her hairdresser was in Oxford and she said she was going to drive; she was taking the Mini. She had looked tense and nervous, but also excited.

Colville buried his face in his hands. He was convinced that Bee was off to a secret rendezvous somewhere. Bee was going to meet a man – her lover – at some roadside motel. Colville’s heart stopped at the thought of Bee writhing naked in a strange man’s arms, moaning and gasping and laughing. He felt shivers run through his body. Another thought followed. No, not a strange man – she had gone to meet Payne, Antonia Darcy’s husband.

Colville had noticed that Bee hadn’t been the same since the day of the Paynes’ visit. Something happened that day. Bee had laughed even at Payne’s silliest remarks. For the life of him, Colville couldn’t remember what Payne had actually said – some nonsense about the Light Brigade – but he did believe that Payne’s remarks had contained hints and innuendo, encoded messages, to which Bee responded. Payne was the kind of man who wooed his women with puns, quotations and oblique compliments. Glances of complicity had passed between them, of that Colville was sure. Although Payne was at pains to conceal the fact, he had been smitten with Bee!

Bee had exercised her compelling power over him. Like Circe, Bee could unhinge a man with one toss of her tangled blonde curls! Payne had sat pretending indifference, but all along he had watched her covertly, drinking her in, his eyes as busy as coals just thrown on a fire.

The night before, in their bedroom, Bee had initiated an odd kind of conversation. She had started talking about certain African tribesmen who offered their wives to favoured visitors for the night. She knew he was interested in Africa – did he approve or disapprove? Bee had demanded an immediate answer. She had been in a peculiar mood, intense, febrile, peremptory. Well, it was an African custom, Colville said – he neither approved nor disapproved. She had shaken her head and sighed gustily, indicating she found his answer unsatisfactory.

‘You disapprove – admit it,’ she challenged him.

‘I don’t disapprove,’ he said.

‘Then you approve? Say you approve!’

‘I neither approve, nor disapprove.’

‘You disapprove! I knew it!’ Bee had cried triumphantly. It had been the silliest of conversations. When he tried to kiss her, she pushed him away, saying she had a raging headache. She then picked up a book from her bedside table, the biography of the imperial Russian dancer Mathilde Kschessinska. Mathilde, she informed him inconsequentially, had bedded at least five Romanovs and at one stage had lived in a menage a trois with two grand dukes, by one of whom she had a son. Bee’s eyes had been very bright and her voice had contained a provocative note.

Was he paranoid to think Bee’s choice of conversational topics suggestive?

It was very warm in the sitting room. He couldn’t breathe. He was aware he was still hugging the silk cushion. He could hear the loud ticking of the clock and the buzzing of a fly somewhere. He was reminded of his old school – the same mixture of misery and cosiness and numbed longing. He felt his depression deepening.

He reached out and picked up the Polaroid camera that lay on the coffee table, thinking back to the day before yesterday. They had been so happy. Deliriously, insanely happy. Each one of us should live only for the other. That was what Bee had said. She had sounded as though she meant it. They had been gazing into each other’s eyes. Colville’s fingertips caressed the camera. That interval of white thigh between Bee’s black stocking and knickers alone was enough to drive him out of his mind…

His love for Bee was no ordinary love. The fire of his passion was a burning forest, spreading fast, leaping rivers, consuming landscapes. Telling her that had been a mistake, he now realized. He shouldn’t have put it quite in those terms.

Darling, do you know what? You are becoming too possessive – too Swannish. No, not ‘swinish’, you chump! Swannish. Like in Swann and Odette? Remember? Eaten by jealousy. Girls don’t really like burning forests. It scares them, so beware.

Bee had uttered these words with one of her light laughs, but it made him wonder. Beware of what? Was she trying to warn him, to prepare him for what she had already made up her mind to do? So that it shouldn’t be too great a shock?

Too many heartbreaks and too many betrayals bleed a man dry and they lead to the secluded passions of the voyeur. Bee had said that too – apropos of nothing in particular – the silly nonsense she talked sometimes! Colville frowned. She couldn’t know, could she, that sometimes, when she was not there, he liked to sneak upstairs and go repeatedly through the soft dresses and perfumed gossamer underclothes in her bedroom drawers and wardrobe. He liked nothing better than to hold them to his face and breathe in their intoxicating aroma…

Colville knew his limitations. He was a dull dog. He wasn’t really clever. He wasn’t amusing or in any way interesting. He didn’t say things that were witty or droll. He didn’t read Proust, though he suspected Bee’s knowledge of Swann and Odette was derived from the film, that lush costume drama they had watched together last month, rather from the book… He wasn’t much to look at. Well, he was – middle-aged. Payne wasn’t exactly a youth either, but he seemed to have a certain something he, Colville, clearly lacked. Payne had the slightly pointed ears and the half wistful, half malicious look of a faun.

Colville glanced at the clock. Where was Bee now? Not knowing was worse than knowing the worst! He had thought of following her, of jumping into his car and driving after her at a distance, all the way to her final destination, of lurking outside the motel room door and catching her in the act – but had fought down the impulse. What if she saw him in her rear-view mirror? What if she was going to her hairdresser’s after all? She would never forgive him. She would be dismayed – furious! If only he had known she was going out in her car, he would have poured sugar in the petrol tank – that would have made driving impossible, though of course it would have destroyed the car engine completely. Too late now!

Swann in Love. Bee had ordered the DVD specially and had watched it a dozen of times already. She clearly identified with the courtesan Odette. That poor chap Swann – tormented by unrelenting sexual desire – crazed by jealousy – constantly pleading – forever declaring his ungovernable love – allowing his craving for Odette to turn his life upside down… Was he really like Swann?

The cuckolded husband, that most pathetic and comical of figures. In farces and low comedies cuckolded husbands did absurd, idiotic things like hiding inside wardrobes, lurking behind screens and curtains, or lying on their stomachs under beds. They groaned and gritted their teeth as they watched their wives strip naked and make love with their secret lovers. Upon being discovered, cuckolded husbands jabbered and croaked and shook their fists in impotent rage, thus making audiences laugh like drains – sometimes they lost their trousers. Why was it that audiences always sided with the lover and never with the husband?

Colville passed his hand across his face. Bee had a tat-too above her instep. Two intertwined snakes – that was what it looked like at first sight, that was what she said, but Colville strongly suspected it was the letters B and R intricately interwoven together. Bee and Ralph. She had been very much in love with Renshawe. She had admitted as much. Perhaps she was still in love with him? So amusing, she kept saying. He had made her laugh.

Why wouldn’t she allow him to take a closer look at her leg? Colville had the idea of drugging Bee and inspecting the tattoo properly… He had acquired a most powerful soporific specially for the purpose… Perhaps he could do it tonight?

Colville hadn’t slept at all well the night before, he was feeling like a boiled owl, so now his eyelids drooped and he nodded off. At once he dreamt that Bee had entered the room and sat beside him on the sofa. She looked different somehow. She had a tiara studded with diamonds on her golden head and wore elbow-length gloves. She looked like a royal princess. Her manner was formal and distant to start with but then she gave him a rather suggestive look and put her head downwards towards him, as if expecting him to kiss her on the ear. He could smell her scent. (Ce Soir Je T’Aime.) They hadn’t exchanged a word and there was a great tension between them, which he recognized as sexual in nature. Her head went lower. He said, ‘I am sorry, ma’am, but I can’t hear very well what you are saying.’ At this she replied: ‘That’s because I’m wearing a kilt.’ She was in fact wearing a rather glamorous silvery evening dress with a deep decolletage – Colville woke up with a start. His heart was beating wildly. The sofa beside him was empty. His nerves were pulled taut as marionette strings, his mood one of wretched despair.

He heard the stairs creak.

Was Bee back? No – it was Ingrid, coming down. Ingrid – he’d completely forgotten about Ingrid. As though he hadn’t enough worries! What should be done about Ingrid? He had a friend who was a policeman, a Scotland Yard inspector, no less, and Colville had a good mind to contact him and explain the situation. Arthur would listen to him. He looked at the telephone. He sighed. It would cause Bee great distress if he did call Arthur – especially if Arthur decided to take action. (What action? Ingrid hadn’t actually committed any criminal act as such. Arthur would probably suggest he contact a psychiatrist.) Bee seemed to think that ‘things would be all right’, that ‘it would blow over’ – that Ingrid would ‘come to her senses’. Bee could be so naive!

The stairs creaked again. Ingrid was in the hall now.

‘Honestly,’ he heard her murmur to herself, sounding exactly like Beatrice. She’d got her verbal tricks to perfection!

Colville felt nauseous.

He heard the front door open and close. He rose from the sofa. Catching his reflection in the mirror above the fireplace, he winced: his grey hair stood on end, his cheeks were the colour of cranberry sauce, his eyes were round, his expression wild – he had a shell-shocked air about him – as if he had stepped out of an explosion! And he looked ridiculous, hugging that cushion. Why should Bee want to stay with him? He couldn’t think of one good reason.

He ran to the window and stood beside it, concealed behind the curtain. My God, he thought, and again – My God. If he didn’t know Beatrice had already left the house, if he hadn’t his own eyes as witnesses, he’d have sworn it was Beatrice he was seeing. It was the same as the other day. No – worse!

Look and be afraid. He stared at Ingrid – the way Rikki-Tikki-Tavi had at the oscillating body of the black cobra with the glinting red eyes and the spread hood.

There she was in all her splendiferous splendour! Wearing one of Beatrice’s old suits with padded shoulders and the initials BA embroidered in gold on one of the chest pockets. She had gloves on. Her face glowed – her eyes were dark with mascara – had she used Beatrice’s make-up? And what was that she was wearing round her neck? Anger and dismay surged through him. Not the Taj Mahal necklace? Bee’s Taj Mahal necklace – it had been his engagement present to Bee! How dared this unspeakable creature take it! She’d been in Bee’s room, dipping her dirty paws inside Bee’s jewel case!

There was a beatific smile on Ingrid’s face – she was walking slowly – she appeared to be humming a little tune to herself – and somehow that was much more frightening than an expression of malevolent determination might have been. Ingrid was walking in the direction of the bus stop. There was a spring in her step.

Something had to be done about it. This obscene charade had to stop. (The Taj Mahal necklace – she had no right!) Colville held desperately on to his wits as a man holds on to his hat while crossing a desolate moor in a whirlwind.

He needed to convince Arthur how serious the situation really was.

Ingrid consulted her watch and saw it was 9.10. There was a bus in five minutes. Well, she’d be at Ospreys by 9.35 at the latest. She had thought the whole thing through very carefully. She had managed to pinch Bee’s mobile earlier in the morning – it had been lying on the hall table. She was going to phone the nurse and get her out of the way – say that somebody was lying on the ground outside the park gates, bleeding, in need of urgent attention – some-thing on those lines. (When afterwards the police checked the incoming calls on the Ospreys phone, Bee’s number would come up.) She’d then walk briskly round the house and enter Ralph’s room through the french windows. They were bound to have been left open in this weather but she’d pick up a stone and smash them if they weren’t. She’d have finished by 9.45. She wasn’t going to stand on ceremony. The priest wasn’t coming until ten o’clock, that was what he had said on the phone. She liked the challenge. Who’d get to Ralph first? Nothing like a challenge to set the adrenalin going. Suspense followed by thrills. It was like one of Antonia Darcy’s ridiculous plots. Life imitating art? Well, hardly art -

Had she got the knife? Now where -?

Ingrid halted and her gloved fingers started rummaging frantically inside her bag.

Colville discovered he was still holding the Polaroid cam-era. On an impulse he raised it to his eyes and snapped – an instant photograph came out… Ingrid seemed to be looking for something in her bag. He pressed the button again and another photograph started emerging. He rehearsed what he was going to tell Arthur.

This woman has lived with my wife for thirty years… She has started dressing up as my wife… She makes herself look exactly like her… She wears a blonde wig… She puts on my wife’s jewels… She’s completely off her rocker… She hates me. She hates my wife too… She is jealous. She disapproves of our marriage… She is extremely dangerous -.

It sounded feeble and absurd, put like that, the ram-blings of an idiot, but how else could he describe the situation? And wouldn’t Arthur get the wrong idea about Bee? What sort of person shares a house with a mad-woman for thirty years? The question of the exact nature of Bee’s relationship with Ingrid was bound to come up… He had wondered himself… Had they been -? Bee had told him not to be silly – but she had also admitted she preferred Ingrid’s massage techniques to his!

Well, he would need to explain about the accident and about Ralph Renshawe. He must calm down first – pull himself together – rehearse very carefully what he was going to say – make a few notes perhaps? No, there was no time for notes -.

He looked down at the two photos and smiled grimly. He had proof now. As clear as daylight. The date: 26.11.05 – and the time: 09.12 a.m. This would show Arthur that he wasn’t getting into a flap over nothing! Still, even if Arthur took his story seriously and did do something about it, how long would it take before the police got cracking? They were notoriously slack these days, or so he had often heard. Something had to be done… There was no time to waste. Ingrid was clearly on her way to Ospreys. That was where she had been going all this time – dressed up as Beatrice. He blinked – had that been the gleam of a blade? He felt the blood draining from his face. Merciful heavens. Did she have a knife in her bag? They should be able to arrest her for that, surely?

The next moment Ingrid’s intentions became clear to him.

The knife was for Ralph Renshawe…

Something had to be done… White and dazed, his heart thudding, Colville stumbled towards the telephone.