Murder at the Villa Byzantine

29

The Rise and Fall of the British Nanny

It was only a short walk under the full moon – that patron of lovers and plotters, Major Payne murmured.

Kinderhook had the dignified and somewhat forbidding air of a cathedral. There was a patriarchal solemnity about it.

‘Will Winifred unwind all the wiles she wound?’

‘Don’t you ever get tired of spouting bons mots?’

‘I find it helps release the tension… This is actually a paraphrase of something Francis Thompson wrote in “The Mistress of Vision”.’

‘Are you tense?’

‘I believe I am.’ He patted his pocket, making Antonia wonder whether he had taken his old army revolver with him after all.

‘You don’t think she will try to hold us hostage or anything like that, do you?’

Winifred Willard’s part of the house was dark. They saw light only in Melisande’s windows. Perhaps the two sisters were together? That would complicate matters. Payne thought he had no other option but to ring Melisande’s front door bell.

The door opened almost at once and Winifred Willard stood on the threshold. She might have been waiting for them. The hall light was on and her ash-blonde chignon gleamed. She looked radiant, happy, years younger. Her cheeks were a little flushed. Her eyes were bright.

She was clad in a high-collared silk dress in dove grey that reached below her knees, four strings of pearls, each row separated by diamond buckles on either side of her neck, and pearl earrings. Her shoes were red, shiny, with silver buckles, the only vaguely eccentric touch about her get-up – it put Antonia incongruously in mind of Dorothy. Innocence and witchery? Perhaps not that incongruous after all.

‘Hugh! Antonia! What a lovely surprise!’ Winifred clapped her hands. ‘Would you like to come in?’ She opened the door wide.

Whatever Antonia had anticipated, it wasn’t such a spontaneous display of hospitality. Payne too was puzzled. Divided psyche, he thought. Or could it be a trap?

They went in.

‘Poor Melisande is laid low. That’s why I am here, playing the nurse. Melisande appears to have had a nervous breakdown of sorts.’

‘Oh, I am so sorry,’ Antonia said.

‘She will be fine. She’s had nervous breakdowns before. I must say it completely ruined my plans for the evening. My sister never seems to tire of imposing her temperamental vagaries and physical needs on me – even when she is prostrate and unconscious!’ Winifred laughed. ‘I am not as callous as I sound! Dr Olwyn gave her an injection. She is asleep at the moment, so you can’t see her.’

‘As a matter of fact we wanted to see you,’ Payne said.

‘Did you? How perfectly splendid. I was just having coffee. I am experimenting with a new blend. Would you like to join me? I’d be terribly interested in your opinion. I must say this is a most welcome diversion. I’d resigned myself to a solitary vigil. I am reading the latest Anita Brookner. Another masterly study of well-bred desolation,’ Winifred prattled on. ‘Isn’t it odd how some authors never vary? She must be getting on. Her outlook has remained remarkably unchanged-’

She led them into the shadowed half-light of the drawing room.

Three low-voltage table lamps. A thin wood fire crackling in the grate. Leaping shadows over the chintz furniture. The air was filled with wood smoke that was subtly tinged with an essence of tuberose and regale lilies.

A silver tray with a single coffee cup stood on the low coffee table beside a silver pot and a cream jug. Winifred asked them to sit down. ‘Coffee, yes? I could do with another cup. Won’t be a jiffy.’ She picked up the pot and walked jauntily out of the room.

‘I can’t think how she could possibly have anything to do with the murder,’ Antonia whispered.

‘She is driven by unconscious forces,’ Payne said calmly. ‘She doesn’t know who she is.’

When Winifred reappeared with the fresh pot of coffee and two more cups, he remarked in conversational tones, ‘How do you find the Villa Byzantine? Not too – florid?’

Antonia froze, her eyes fixing on the steaming pot in Winifred’s hand. Shock tactics. Hugh had decided on shock tactics. Would Winifred drop the pot and let it explode like a bomb on the floor? Or might she try to blind Hugh by splashing scalding coffee into his face?

Winifred did neither. She placed the pot carefully on the tray, then pushed the latter towards the centre of the table. Her hands were thin, with long sensitive fingers, and she wore a delicate diamond ring on her fourth finger. How could these hands-?

‘It’s an extraordinary place, isn’t it? Tancred inherited it from an elderly cousin of his who went to live in Morocco and died there.’ A little line appeared on her smooth forehead. ‘I suppose it is florid. Yes. You are quite right. The mot juste. Something of a white elephant too. I have been trying to persuade Tancred to sell it and buy a house somewhere around here. When we are married. I saw just the right place the other day – a Queen Anne house – not far from Keats House. Do you like Keats? A hundred swords will storm my heart, Love’s fev’rous citadel. This always makes me shiver. Some think Keats morbid. I can see why.’

‘A hundred swords,’ Antonia echoed.

‘Sugar? Cream, Hugh? If I remember correctly you have an unquenchable passion for cream,’ Winifred said with unexpected archness. She laughed her tinkling girlish laugh once more.

Bonkers, Payne thought. ‘You must be thinking of somebody else,’ he said pleasantly. ‘I drink coffee black. No sugar.’

Antonia looked at the book on the coffee table. It was not the Anita Brookner Winifred had told them she had been reading, but The Rise and Fall of the British Nanny by Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy. Was that where she had been getting her ideas for Miss Hope?

‘Black and unsweetened. That’s how real men drink their coffee, apparently. Brutes like it bitter. Sweet is for sissies. That’s what my poor sister says,’ Winifred prattled. ‘Melisande claims she knows everything about men, but, entre nous, she often talks nonsense.’

‘Thank you,’ Payne said, taking his cup from her hand. He took a tentative sip.

‘Antonia? Cream? No? No sugar? How about a drop of cognac, Hugh? No?’

Antonia wondered whether Winifred had put something in the coffee. Poison – or an overdose of some strong soporific substance. Though what would Winifred do with their bodies? Well, she could phone the police and say they had both collapsed shortly after they had arrived, so the poison would be something that simulated botulism symptoms. Winifred would have to go to their house first and prepare fish-paste sandwiches or whatever. How would she find contaminated fish-paste though? Not terribly practical. But then so was cutting somebody’s head off with a sword.

Antonia watched her closely for a flicker of sly malevolence or some other giveaway sign, but Winifred’s expression remained serene. Eerily serene. That’s what breaking bread with the Borgias must have felt like. I mustn’t imagine things, Antonia told herself firmly. But it was difficult – the situation was far from normal.

She tried to catch her husband’s eye. He gave a slight nod as though to say, the coffee’s OK. How could he be sure? Certain drugs had no taste at all.

‘Tancred adores cream, so do I. We are very naughty about it. But we must be careful. Not healthy, really. My sister wouldn’t approve. Melisande believes in “choreographing” one’s digestion.’ Winifred giggled. ‘The coffee is not too strong, I hope?’

‘No. It is fine. First-rate coffee.’ Payne cleared his throat. ‘I understand Vane is writing a biography of Prince Cyril of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha? Am I right in thinking the Coburgs used to provide studs for most of the royal houses of Europe? I find royal lives fascinating. The parallel existence, the exclusivity, the utter strangeness of it all – a life without the bother of British Gas, Thames Water, the Halifax or, for that matter, the Taxman!’

Winifred smiled appreciatively. ‘There was a time when people believed that royal families were needed to create an illusion of heaven on earth, of a jewel-encrusted land, of a Valhalla. A monarch was hailed as a representative of the majesty of history – a link in a chain that leads back to the Middle Ages that in turn connects to antiquity and beyond – to the beginning of recorded time when – when-’

‘When the first hero slew the dragon of disorder and established the rule of law?’ Payne suggested.

‘I couldn’t have put it better.’ Winifred shot her visitor an admiring glance.

‘There’s of course the distinctly unheroic view. Remember Huckleberry Finn? All kings is mostly rapscallions.’

As Winifred laughed exuberantly, Antonia suddenly realized what their hostess had said several moments earlier. ‘Did you say you were going to be married?’

‘Oh yes. We are. Sometime next spring. I would hate to be married in winter. Isn’t it funny that I should always have thought of myself as “not yet married”? I knew it would happen sooner or later. I didn’t mind waiting for Mr Right. You know what they say? Marry in haste, repent at leisure. Next April would be perfect.’

‘A week after Easter, perhaps?’

‘Yes!’ Winifred brought the palms of her hands together. ‘Tancred and I haven’t yet had a serious discussion about it, but we are going to, sometime this week. Tancred is so terribly busy at the moment, poor darling.’

Payne said, ‘I understand Prince Cyril is taking up all his time and energy.’

‘Don’t I know it! Talk of the limitations of human effort! I’ve been trying to impress it on him, but he wouldn’t listen.’ Winifred shook her head in an exasperated manner. ‘Things keep going wrong with that biography. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. It seems to be jinxed. Poor Tancred hasn’t collected as much information as he would have wished – and some of what he’s already got is not entirely reliable.’

‘In what way “not entirely reliable”?’

Winifred took another sip of coffee, cast a glance round the room as though to make sure no one was lurking in the shadows. ‘One of Tancred’s so-called “sources” may not be who she says she is. I have the strongest suspicions. I have had them for some time. A Miss Hope. Rather, a woman who calls herself Miss Hope. You mustn’t breathe a word!’

‘We wouldn’t dream of it,’ Payne promised.

‘Poor Tancred hasn’t got an inkling. He is too decent, too trusting, the most ethical person I have ever known – though I wish he didn’t assume everybody was like him! Tancred doesn’t seem to have a safety valve. I fear it will come as a terrible blow to him when all is revealed. As it happens, I am investigating the matter at the moment.’

‘You are?’

‘Yes. It is quite serious. Deception on a grand scale. Impersonation. Misrepresentation. Misinformation. You seem surprised! It’s as bad as that, yes.’ She gave a mirthless laugh. ‘I am determined to get to the very bottom of it. In fact, I have come to regard it as my duty.’

‘Have you made any interesting discoveries?’

‘I have. I believe I know now what this woman does. I also know how she does it. She – the soi-disante Miss Hope – has rented a room in a house in St John’s Wood. She arrives, carrying her disguise in a bag. She is a woman in her mid to late fifties. She emerges as elderly Miss Hope and totters her way to the Villa Byzantine. Her landlord is under the impression that she is an eccentric actress who is practising for a part! She tells Tancred all manner of preposterous stories. The mind boggles, really. For example, she has suggested that Prince Cyril and not Hitler might have been responsible for King Boris’ death! She has been hinting at fratricide!’

‘Golly.’

‘She is completely irresponsible. Once her visit is over, she returns to her rented room, removes her disguise and takes the tube back to wherever she lives. Somewhere around here, I believe. She spends her evenings poring over books which she’s got from the library – royal biographies and so on. But she has started slipping up. On one or two occasions she’s even omitted to remove her disguise.’

‘That’s how you knew, I imagine?’ The third sister, Antonia thought. She exchanged looks with Hugh.

Their hostess inclined her head. ‘Yes.’

‘Poor show,’ Payne harrumphed. ‘Jinxed, did you say? Something in that! Didn’t Vane’s other source get herself killed? The Bulgarian woman we met here last month, as a matter of fact? What was her name? Astra?’

‘Stella. She was James’ friend. That was awful, wasn’t it? She was beheaded. Poor Tancred’s drawing room might have been some sort of sacrificial ground! Incidentally, there was something about the inquest in today’s Times.’

‘Was there?’ Payne wondered whether Winifred could be trusted about anything she said. Winifred appeared highly suspicious of Miss Hope and was hoping to have her unmasked, but Winifred was Miss Hope. Was that what psychologists called disassociation? ‘What does The Times say about the inquest?’

‘Oh, nothing much. Only that it was going to take place on such-and-such a date. You are interested in murder, aren’t you? I suppose that’s why you went to the Villa Byzantine?’

‘Well, yes. Morland asked me to look into the matter… So Vane told you about my visit?’

‘Every little detail. We were on the phone for hours. Tancred tends to tell me everything. I am sure all that will change once we get married! Does your husband tell you everything?’ Winifred turned towards Antonia with an amused smile.

‘I don’t know. You’d better ask him.’

‘Hugh?’

‘Practically everything,’ said Payne solemnly. ‘I have no secrets from Antonia.’

‘How did you and Tancred meet?’ Antonia asked.

There was a crack as a log on the fire collapsed and went up in a gush of pale flame.