Murder at the Villa Byzantine

3

Wild Thing

‘The Return… of the King!’ Melisande delivered in mock-heroic tones. She mimed the placing of a crown on her head, assumed a solemn expression, then made a neighing sound and pretended to ride a horse. Her mood seemed to have improved considerably. Well, Antonia reflected, she was starting on her third Tomb Raider.

‘Shades of Tolkien… Does King Simeon ride? I suppose all kings ride. At one time it was considered a sine qua non in regal circles.’ Payne was getting bored. Perhaps they could bowl off soon? He stole a glance at his watch, then tried to catch Antonia’s eye.

‘Bravo!’ Arthur clapped his hands. ‘Bravo! How about an encore?’

They had been joined by a morose-faced man – Stanley Lennox, the playwright and author of Tallulah. He was accompanied by an anonymous blonde in tinted glasses.

‘Is there any water? I can’t drink anything but water,’ the blonde in the tinted glasses said.

‘I have a big surprise for Melisande tonight,’ Arthur whispered in Antonia’s ear.

‘You’ve got her a part?’

‘Yes! Coward. Don’t breathe a word. Not yet. She’ll be delighted. She’s been resting for – um – quite a bit. You aren’t an actress too, by any chance?’

‘I am not.’

‘Are you sure? You possess a certain indefinable something.’

Antonia smiled. ‘You don’t really mean that, do you?’

‘I do mean it.’ He lowered his voice. ‘I don’t say these things lightly.’

‘But the King is already in Bulgaria!’ Stella was heard crying triumphantly. ‘He was our Prime Minister, now he leads his own party.’

‘What’s the party called?’ Payne asked.

‘The King’s Party.’

‘How intoxicatingly witty,’ Melisande said. ‘How inordinately original. We must drink to the King’s Party.’

‘I believe the King styles himself Mr Saxe-something-or-other, doesn’t he?’ Morland said. He was smoking a cigar. ‘Quite a mouthful.’

‘Saxcoburggotski,’ Stella said. ‘His advisers persuaded him to take on a name that was the closest to a Bulgarian name. His family name is Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.’

‘Sexcoburggotski,’ Moon said, casting a meaningful glance at her mother, then at Morland.

‘Pleasant sort of chap,’ Morland said. ‘Or so everybody says. Unassuming, though of course he never lets anyone forget who he is. Not particularly effectual, perhaps. Too much of a gentleman. Bulgarians don’t seem to understand him.’

‘They used to execute kings.’ Moon squashed her empty Coke can, producing a crack that might have been a gunshot. ‘My mother used to believe all kings and queens were parasites. My mother was brainwashed by the Communists. She became a “pioneer” and kissed the red flag and then she became a Communist. And she married a Communist. My father was a Communist.’

‘We didn’t have much choice, Moon!’ Stella protested.

‘Now my mother is a Monarchist. My mother is a turncoat. Turncoats should be executed.’

‘Those were such difficult years. My parents struggled, how they struggled. If you wanted to have a successful career, a happy home life or travel abroad, you had to be a Communist. We had no choice! We had to do what we were told. We had to spy on our neighbours.’

‘So that’s where you learnt how to spy.’ Moon nodded. ‘My mother spies on me all the time.’

Moon’s American accent was explained by the fact that she had been attending high school in America, in the state of Pennsylvania. She had had to give it up because her mother’s funds had run out. ‘Stolen money goes fast totally, I guess,’ she said. She then turned to Payne and tried to get him interested in something called Hammers of Hell.

‘What’s that? Not a story by Chesterton? Some sort of an electronic game?’

‘Yep. The coolest game there ever was.’ It had been her American boyfriend who introduced her to it. Elimination by numbers as well as ingenious ways of killing your enemy seemed to be at the heart of the game and one had to be ‘like totally ruthless’ to achieve one’s goal. ‘I like beheadings best. I guess I am a bloodthirsty kind of person.’

Arthur said, ‘I read somewhere that the brain of a severed head continues functioning long enough for the executed person to see the body from which his head has been detached. Then the person dies of shock. It is a scientifically proven fact, or so it was claimed.’

Her father, Moon informed the company, was in jail in Bulgaria. For bribery, corruption, falsifying documents, money-laundering and general abuse of power. Only dumb people managed to get themselves sent to jail, she said firmly. ‘If I were to commit a crime, they would never catch me.’

‘I like your coat,’ Arthur said. ‘It could do with a wash, or is that how you like it?’

‘This is not a coat. It’s a shinel. I bought it on eBay for fifty dollars. This is real blood. I am not kidding. I don’t want it washed.’

‘I am told Liza Minnelli sold her Oscar on eBay.’ Arthur lowered his voice. ‘It seems she’s completely bonkers now.’

‘Do you really write murder mysteries? That’s so cool.’ Moon addressed herself to Antonia. ‘Like Mrs Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote?’

Antonia admitted she hadn’t seen a single episode of Murder, She Wrote.

‘Is there a lot of blood in your books?’

‘No, not much.’ Antonia gave an apologetic smile. What an alarming girl, she thought.

‘Blood is kinda interesting. Pure red liquid. Gallons and gallons of it. Our bodies are full of it. If you cut someone’s throat, blood will gush out like a fountain. It will be so powerful, you will have to jump away.’

‘Do you enjoy reading?’ Antonia asked politely.

‘I read all the time. When I was a kid, I used to be mad about the Marvel comics. I used to imagine I was Rina Logan, the daughter of Wolverine and Elektra. You know Rina Logan?’

Antonia said she didn’t. It occurred to her that most of her responses to Moon’s queries had been negative.

‘Rina Logan is an extremely dangerous character, kinda loopy, so many heroes avoid her. I used to believe I possessed a set of “psi-claws”, like Rina Logan. Psi-claws do damage on a mental rather than on a physical level,’ Moon explained.

‘I thought cyclones did damage on the physical level,’ Morland said as he helped himself to another cocktail and a handful of peanuts.

‘Psi-claws, not cyclones, James. Psi-claws. Have you never heard of psi-claws?’

‘What books do they do at American schools?’ Payne asked. ‘Nathaniel Hawthorne? Mark Twain? Arthur Miller? Have you read The Crucible?’

‘Yep. It’s about witches, isn’t it?’ Moon cast a meaningful glance in the direction of Winifred and at Melisande. ‘We read a story called “The New Mother”. At first I thought it would be dumb, kids’ stuff, but it was so cool. It’s about two innocent children who are encouraged in their naughty behaviour by this strange and charming young woman who may or may not be an evil spirit. The children’s mother threatens to leave them and send home a new mother – a mother with glass eyes and a wooden tail.’

Payne was intrigued. ‘And what happens?’

‘Not telling you! It’s by a woman called Lucy Lane Clifford. Get it and check it out, then you’ll see how it ends. It’s really weird stuff. Oh, do you know what they call Rina Logan?’

‘What do they call Rina Logan?’

‘Wild Thing.’ Moon made a snarling sound, which she accompanied by a clawing gesture in Payne’s direction.

Stella and her daughter had arrived in England some ten days earlier. The reason for the visit, Stella explained, was her collaboration with an English biographer, Tancred Vane. Tancred Vane was engaged on writing a ‘life’ of Prince Cyril, King Boris’ dissolute younger brother, who, after a misspent life, had been executed by the Communists in 1945.

Stella had answered an advertisement placed by Tancred Vane in the International Herald Tribune. Payne thought the biographer’s name rang a bell. It was a distinctive enough name. Obscure royalty seemed to be Vane’s speciality. Stella’s grandmother, it transpired, had operated the switchboard at the royal palace in Sofia during the war. An insatiable eavesdropper, she had become privy to a great number of secrets, which she had revealed in diaries and letters, some of which had survived and were now in Stella’s possession.

Moon said, ‘Tancred Vane wanted to give her fifty pounds for the letters and the diaries, but my mother wouldn’t sell them for less than five thousand.’

Stella’s face turned red and she said something in Bulgarian, which made Moon laugh.

‘I guess Tancred Vane is a crook. He’s the sort of guy who wants something for nothing. He looks kinda weird. Show them the photos!’ Moon tugged at her mother’s sleeve. ‘Come on, show them the photos. Let them see what a weird guy he is and what a weird house he lives in.’

‘I am in the grip of an intolerable restlessness. I believe I am unhappy.’ Melisande leant towards Payne. ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if something marvellously unexpected happened?’

‘Mr Vane is a very nice man. Very educated, very cultured.’ She had already paid Tancred Vane two visits, Stella said as she produced her mobile phone and squinted down at it. ‘I like to take photographs of interesting buildings and interesting people. My friends in Bulgaria will be very interested.’

‘What friends?’ Moon said. ‘You have no friends.’

‘This is Mr Vane’s house. It is called the Villa Byzantine. It is very interesting, isn’t it?’ Stella held up her mobile. ‘Very unusual. It is baroque, I think.’

‘Golly,’ Payne said. ‘No, not baroque. Where’s this monstrosity?’

‘In St John’s Wood.’

‘Really? I’ve got an aunt who lives in St John’s Wood.’

‘The house looks like a lunatic asylum,’ Moon said. ‘I bet this guy Tancred is a homicidal maniac. Or a necrophiliac. Be careful he doesn’t steal your grandmother’s diaries,’ she warned her mother.

‘And this,’ Stella said, ‘is Mr Vane.’

Melisande laughed. ‘Such an earnest look. Rather sweet, actually. What a pet. I bet he speaks hesitantly without finishing his sentences? Reminds me of someone I used to know-’

‘Mr Vane is a young man,’ Stella said with an odd emphasis.

Payne caught a look of unadulterated hatred on Melisande’s face.

Winifred’s expression on the other hand was hard to interpret. She looked as though she had had some kind of revelation. ‘Are these church bells?’ Her voice shook a little. ‘Can you hear them?’

The next time Major Payne heard the Villa Byzantine mentioned was precisely six weeks later – on the day of the first murder.