Murder at the Villa Byzantine

16

Death and the Maiden

She dreamt of Tancred that night.

Tancred was sitting on the ground beside a very turbulent river. He had been wounded. There was a nasty gash in his arm. Wild plants grew all around him and a sword that was stained red lay on the ground beside him, glistening unpleasantly in the sun.

She knelt beside him. ‘Please, let me,’ she said gently. ‘This is the only way.’ She then placed her hand over the wound in his arm. The moment she did, the blood flow was reduced to a mere trickle; a second later it stopped altogether. She didn’t want to take any chances, so she kept her hand on the wound and eventually the gash closed and healed completely. There was no scar. No mark of any kind.

Tancred whispered, ‘Thank you, Catherine. I knew only you could do it.’

‘I am not in the least perturbed, I assure you, Inspector. Mr Vane told me that he’d given you my mobile number, so I have been expecting you to call. But I fear I can tell you very little. Very little indeed. Dear me! Such a terrible thing to happen! It only manages to prove the power of chaos theory. Poor Mr Vane. And that unfortunate woman!’

‘We understand you met Mrs Stella Markoff at Mr Vane’s house?’

‘I believe I did. Yes. We exchanged a few polite words, there was no more to it than that. A pleasant woman, I thought. A little intense and nervous, but I attributed that to the fact that she didn’t speak English very well. Or rather, she seemed to think she didn’t speak English very well. Not the same thing! Astra’s English was in fact excellent.’

‘Miss Hope-’

‘Now, I have met plenty of foreigners who imagine they speak good English, who have quite an inflated opinion of their command of the English language, without that being the case at all.’

‘Miss Hope, if you don’t mind-’

‘No, not Astra! How silly of me!’ She laughed exuberantly. ‘I meant Stella. Stars, you know. She struck me as a most amiable kind of woman – if a trifle naive in her views on royalty. A bit too romantic and idealistic, perhaps? She seemed to hold the belief that royalty was needed to create an illusion of heaven on earth, of a jewel-encrusted land, of a Valhalla, no less!’

‘Miss Hope, do you have any idea how long Mr Vane had known Mrs Markoff?’

‘How long? Well, I only know what Tancred – that is Mr Vane – has told me. What was it – a month? I think he said a month, yes. What was that? Did he ever discuss Stella with me? No. Never! Mr Vane doesn’t manifest the slightest inclination towards gossip.’

‘Was Mrs Markoff’s daughter ever mentioned?’

‘Oh dear. She did have a little girl, didn’t she?’

‘Not so little.’

‘That’s so tragic. A mother dying in her prime – and such a fine, healthy-looking woman – leaving a young daughter behind – in a foreign country! No, the daughter was never mentioned.’

‘Stella never referred to any problems she might have been having with her daughter?’

‘Goodness me, no. We met only briefly, I told you. Like ships that pass in the night. We were destined to remain strangers, Inspector. Were there problems? I am sorry to hear that. Poor woman. Well, she seemed to have a gentleman friend in London, so all couldn’t have been doom and gloom. She was actually planning to “tie the knot”, as they say – in the very near future. In fact, I was given to understand that the marriage was imminent.’

‘That day – the day Mrs Markoff was killed – you were expected sometime in the afternoon, only you didn’t turn up? Is that correct?’

‘That is correct, yes. I don’t know what would have happened if I had, as you put it, “turned up”. I am hopeless in extreme situations, completely futile, I fear. I tend to lose my head. Sorry – that was an unfortunate way of putting it.’ Miss Hope lowered her voice. ‘She was beheaded, wasn’t she? I can’t imagine myself becoming the victim of senseless slaughter, but then, who can? Can you? What kind of monster would want to do a thing like that? Not a Mussulman, I trust? They’ve been getting such bad press. It couldn’t have been an honour killing, could it? As it happens, I am by no means a stranger to death-’

‘What exactly do you mean by that?’

‘I am eighty-four now, Inspector. Whatever opinions there may be to the contrary, I have reached the kind of age that has little to recommend it. Most of my dear friends and acquaintances have departed from this world and I am far from convinced they are in a better place. Death is still working like a mole – and digs my grave at each remove. The poet Herbert, you know. My second cousin, would you believe it, died earlier this year and she was three years younger than me. She seemed robust enough, but those, in my experience, are the very ones who go like a snap of the fingers.’

‘I see what you mean… Well, that will be all, Miss Hope.’

‘Don’t you want to know why I didn’t “turn up” at Mr Vane’s house on the day Stella was killed? Aren’t details in criminal cases considered to be crucial? I read somewhere that it is the details that bind everything together.’

‘That will be all, Miss Hope-’

‘This is what happened, Inspector. I was about to leave my house and was all ready to go when I got a phone call from my great niece – a dear girl, though not as predictable as I would have wished her to be – she lives in Richmond-on-Thames, did I say? Now, this is a somewhat delicate matter, Inspector, so I’d be grateful if-’

‘That’s all right, Miss Hope. You don’t need to tell me about your niece. That will be all,’ he said in a firm voice. ‘I don’t suppose we’ll need to bother you again, but if we do think of anything-’

‘You will not hesitate to give me a ring? Yes, quite. Please do. Only too happy to assist the Law. Well, goodbye, Inspector.’

‘Goodbye- Wait a minute.’

She laughed. ‘You’ve already thought of something?’

‘How did you know that Mrs Markoff had a gentleman friend in England?’

‘How did I know? Goodness. Didn’t I say?’

‘No.’

‘I am sure I did.’

‘You didn’t.’

‘Well, it was like this. Stella seemed really excited that day – the day she came to Mr Vane’s house – when the two of us met. She kept glancing at her hand, twiddling her fingers. She was wearing an engagement ring, I noticed at once. My eyesight, I am glad to report, remains excellent. I was presumptuous enough to comment on the ring’s delicate beauty and elegance. That’s when she told me. She blushed like a girl and said that she was engaged to be married and that her fiance was in fact English.’

‘I see.’

‘I gave her my sincerest congratulations – which, when you come to think of it, in the light of what took place, makes the whole thing so terribly tragic.’

For a couple of moments she remained very still, looking down at the mobile phone in her hand. That had been a close shave. Never underestimate the police. A very little thing of course, a minor slip-up, but Inspector Davidson was clearly someone who paid attention to seemingly irrelevant details. What would have happened if she had failed to think fast, ‘on her feet’, as they said? Well, she could have pretended to be muddled. Miss Hope was an old lady and one expected old ladies to get muddled. She didn’t think he would have started harbouring any serious suspicions about her, would he?

No. An old lady of eighty-four, brandishing a sword?

She laughed at the idea.

Of course it would be a different matter altogether if, for some reason, he got it into his head that she was not an old lady. She didn’t think the inspector would go back to Tancred and start asking him questions – whether Tancred happened to overhear Miss Hope’s conversation with Stella concerning Stella’s engagement ring, forthcoming nuptials, husband-to-be, and so on.

Well, no such conversation had ever taken place.

She had made it up.

I don’t exist, she thought. I am the phantom lady.

(She hadn’t overdone the twittering, had she?)