Murder at the Villa Byzantine

7

Lethal Weapon

‘She was – beheaded?’

Major Payne felt his skin crawl – a vibration – a pale terror like the mist on an old-fashioned photographic plate.

‘Yes. I still can’t believe it. It’s incredible. It’s an abomination. An outrage. It makes no sense.’ Morland shook his head. ‘What kind of person would want to do a thing like that?’

‘What indeed… Let me get you another drink… You poor chap… Would you like something to eat? Sorry, I should have suggested it sooner. I’m not much good without Antonia, I’m afraid, but I could rustle up something – an omelette, perhaps?’

‘No. Nothing to eat. Thanks awfully, Payne, but I couldn’t touch a thing. I’d be sick if I did.’

‘Do go on, if you don’t mind… She was lying on the drawing-room floor at the Villa Byzantine? It was Tancred Vane who found her?’

‘Correct. She’d been to the Villa Byzantine twice before, you see. I know she rather liked it, but it’s a damned peculiar place-’

Villa Byzantine. Without the definite article, Major Payne reflected, it could be the name of a nightclub singer, a racehorse or a secret wartime operation. It was the kind of name that conjured up the intrigue and mystery of oriental adventures.

‘I thought it looked like a miniature Albert Hall,’ he said, remembering the photo on Stella’s mobile phone. ‘Is the interior awfully sumptuous?’

‘A Carrollian staircase. Lots of curios and draperies and antiques on every possible surface. Curved daggers and glass cases full of giant butterflies on the walls. Silver and crystal. A harmonium, if you please… Stella – her body – was in the drawing room – on the floor – between the french windows and the fireplace. Her head-’

‘Yes?’ Shouldn’t be ghoulish, Payne chided himself.

‘Her head was on the floor – near the window – it had almost rolled out of the window.’

‘The french windows were open?’

‘Yes… Such a bloodbath – it must have pumped out with great force from the neck. The rug in front of the fireplace was soaked with blood. There was some on the curtains too, I think, unless that was the pattern-’ Morland broke off. ‘Oh God – it was terrible – terrible!’

Payne wondered what he knew about beheadings. The Queen of Hearts in Alice – Salome kissing the head of John the Baptist – Islamic terrorists – Charles I – the Lord High Executioner in The Mikado – Polanski’s Macbeth – Marie Antoinette. Wasn’t there a detective novel by Ngaio Marsh called Off With His Head? About a beheading during some kind of rural dance? He seemed to remember a mildly comic German folklorist character called Mrs Bunz. Actually, Ngaio Marsh’s victims often came to gruesome ends…

Major Payne hated violent crime stories. Antonia’s never were. He had never been able to understand the great following bloodthirsty authors enjoyed. Patricia Cornwell – Mo Hayder – Val McDermid – all women, as it happened – but, he believed, it was the creepy Thomas Harris and his cannibal chronicles that had started the trend…

‘No signs of struggle, the inspector said. Nothing broken. None of Tancred Vane’s objets seemed to be missing either,’ Morland was saying. ‘They asked him to check.’

Royal biographers, Payne reflected, tended to be a rum lot. And hadn’t Tancred Vane wanted to buy Stella’s precious letters and diaries for fifty pounds? Moon had referred to Tancred Vane as ‘weird’ and a ‘crook’…

The obvious suspect of course was Moon. Moon had said that she liked beheadings. Moon had displayed an unhealthy obsession with blood. Moon had also boasted that if she were to commit a crime, she would never be caught…

‘What was the murder weapon exactly?’ Payne asked. ‘Sword of some kind?’

‘A samurai sword. Twelfth-century, I think. It was lying on the floor by the body. It had been hanging on the wall beside the fireplace. One of Vane’s most treasured possessions, apparently. A single chrysanthemum in a vase on a table had also been decapitated – as well as one of the curtain tassels.’

‘Really? How curious… One possible explanation is that the killer decided to test the sword’s sharpness before delivering the lethal blow,’ Payne mused aloud.

Had the killer played with the sword perhaps? Swoosh-swoosh. Again, the kind of thing a maladjusted demi-adult would do.

‘What’s Tancred Vane like?’

Morland frowned. ‘Youngish… mid-thirties, I imagine. I found him perfectly civil, though he was in a bad state. Shaking like a leaf… Extremely spruce… Wore a bow-tie… Described himself as a “scattergun collector, but one of the utmost discrimination”. Chinamen are his passion.’

‘Chinamen?’

‘Porcelain figurines. He collects them. Has a cabinet full of them in his library. All an inch high. Smooth, luminous, smiling – something inhuman and sinister about them. I found myself puzzling whether the ferocious pleasure in their expressions was really the oriental artist’s idea of unqualified good humour, or whether the Chinese were not, after all, rather a cruel breed.’

Payne wondered whether what he had just heard revealed something about Tancred Vane – or about Morland. Morland, judging by this latest observation, wasn’t such an uncomplicated chap after all… Ferocious pleasures, eh?

‘Vane produced some brandy. Good high-quality stuff. I needed it,’ Morland went on. ‘We sat in the library. He was white as a sheet. Kept tugging at his bow-tie. A bit hysterical. Insisted on showing me the owl he’d bought that morning.’

‘A real live owl?’

‘No, no, not a live one. A Victorian doorstop fashioned like an owl – wrought iron – he’d got it at some antique shop, he said. Rather a comic face. He said it reminded him of Miss Hope, that’s why he bought it. He kept saying mad things like that. He said he was terribly worried about Miss Hope. He kept looking at the clock. He said he expected Miss Hope to turn up at any moment.’

‘Who is Miss Hope?’

‘No idea. Never occurred to me to ask.’

‘Did she turn up?’

‘No. Not while I was there. She might have done later on.’

‘How did the police know where to contact you?’ Major Payne asked after a pause.

‘They checked the numbers on Stella’s mobile. The inspector asked if I was a friend of Mrs Stella Markoff. I thought at first Stella might have got lost – or that she’d had her handbag stolen or something. I explained that Stella and I were engaged to be married… The inspector then said that there’d been an accident… They sent a car to pick me up-’

‘Where is the Villa Byzantine exactly?’

‘St John’s Wood.’

‘My only remaining aunt lives in St John’s Wood. Bought a house there quite recently.’

Morland took another gulp of whisky. ‘I’ve been trying to remember something Tancred Vane said. I don’t think it matters one little bit, but for some reason I can’t get it out of my head. Oh yes. He had the idea that Miss Hope had recognized Stella.’

‘Stella had met Miss Hope before?’

‘That’s the impression Vane had. Or was it the other way round? No, can’t remember. Sorry, Payne, hate to waste your time. None of this could possibly be of the slightest importance. Don’t know why it keeps nagging at me. Hope I’m not going mad.’

‘Could Miss Hope have had something to do with Stella’s death?’

‘No, of course not. Ridiculous. Sorry I mentioned it. It – it all feels like a dream now. Poor Stella was killed by some maniac, wouldn’t you say? She was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or it might have been someone who’d been trying to burgle Vane’s house – and she intervened. That strikes me as the likeliest explanation.’

‘How did Stella come to be inside the Villa Byzantine?’

Morland sat very still, gazing into his glass. ‘All the police said was that she’d had an accident, that she’d been hurt. They didn’t tell me she was dead, Payne. They didn’t. Then – then they took me into the room and showed me the head. Just like that. Damned insensitive… Sorry, Payne, what was it you said?’

‘How did Stella come to be inside the Villa Byzantine?’

‘How? No idea. No idea at all. Some misunderstanding. At first I assumed she’d had a call from the biographer fellow. Tancred Vane always made his appointments with her by phone. Only this time he didn’t. He said he couldn’t possibly have wanted to see Stella this morning since he needed to go to the British Library rather urgently. He’d mentioned it to her-’

‘She knew he wouldn’t be in?’

‘That’s what he said. He left his house at about ten thirty. He had made arrangements for an interview with Miss Hope at three o’clock in the afternoon. He came back home about two thirty. He said he found the front door unlocked-’

‘Is he certain he’d locked it before leaving?’

‘No. He couldn’t swear to it. He admitted to being the absent-minded professor type. When he discovered Stella’s body lying in the drawing room, he got the shock of his life. Had to sit down. He then called the police. He referred to the police as “the Law” – I thought it odd – not many people say “the Law”, do they?’

‘I imagine not. Only as a joke, perhaps. The Law. That much-invoked abstraction,’ Payne murmured. ‘Where was Stella’s daughter while all of this was happening? At which point does she come into the picture?’

‘Moon was arrested on the underground. At Baker Street station, I believe. She’d been travelling without a ticket and apparently she was jolly rude when they challenged her. She refused to say who she was and had no papers on her. She was taken to the local police station where they found she answered the description which I’d given the police.’

‘You said she was their number one suspect. What grounds do the police have for suspecting Moon of her mother’s murder?’

‘When the police asked her if she knew where her mother was, she said her mother was dead. She later explained she only said it so they would leave her alone. She had no idea her mother was really dead.’

‘I see. That all?’

‘Not quite. A handkerchief was found lying beside Stella’s body. It was drenched in blood. The police believe that it is Stella’s blood. They haven’t had the blood analysed yet. The handkerchief has the initials MM embroidered on it.’ Morland shook his head. ‘They believe Moon dropped it there after she killed Stella. MM. Moon Markoff.’

‘Is it her handkerchief?’

‘Of course it isn’t. Moon has never been to the Villa Byzantine. She has no idea where the Villa Byzantine is!’

‘You can’t be certain of that.’

‘It’s just one of those idiotic coincidences that the initials on the blood-drenched handkerchief should be the same as Moon’s. You must see that. I can’t say I like Moon, but I believe in being fair. I’ve never seen Moon use a handkerchief, Payne. She hates handkerchiefs.’

Payne gave a little smile. ‘She thinks handkerchiefs are “uncool”?’

‘She thinks handkerchiefs are “dumb”. She only uses tissues.’ Morland spoke impatiently. ‘She likes things rough. You saw her. Can you imagine her holding a silk handkerchief to her nose?’

‘Did you actually see the handkerchief, Morland?’

‘I did. The inspector showed it to me. It’s their Exhibit A. It’s made of silk. Very fine silk. Gossamer thin. Impossibly “ladylike”. Moon would never use a hankie like that. Not her style, Payne.’

‘Was there any blood on her clothes when the police arrested her?’

‘No. Of course the police took her clothes away. They propose to run tests.’

‘She wasn’t wearing the blood-bespattered shinel?’

‘As it happens, she wasn’t.’

‘She may have got rid of her bloodied clothes and then bought new ones,’ Payne said thoughtfully.

‘They were the same clothes I bought her last week. Bomber jacket, jeans, sports top, trainers. She had been pestering her mother, saying all her clothes were rubbish. She said she needed new clothes. Poor Stella asked me if I would take Moon shopping, which I did. I took her to Oxford Street. Shop called Top Girl, some such name.’

‘Back to this morning – did you actually see Stella leave your flat?’

‘No. I saw her at breakfast, briefly, then had to rush off. Had an important board meeting to attend. Stella seemed all right. A bit quiet, perhaps. She said she had a headache. She was never at her best in the morning, but then who is? I never saw Moon.’

‘How did Moon spend her morning? Did she say?’

‘She said she left soon after her mother. At about eleven. She said she got on the tube and went to Tottenham Court Road. She wanted to look at the CDs at Virgin Megastores. Something like that.’

‘She might have followed her mother instead… All the way to the Villa Byzantine…’

‘If she’d wanted to kill her mother, she’d have done it in a different way. That’s what she said. Not with a samurai sword and most certainly not at the Villa Byzantine. She said she wasn’t a fool. Nor was she a psycho.’

‘I never thought she was a fool,’ Payne said.

There was a pause. Morland glanced at his watch. ‘Well, at least I’ll know I’ve done my best. Thank you very much for listening to me, Payne. Awfully decent of you.’

‘Try to get some sleep tonight.’

‘Perhaps – perhaps you could look into the matter? If that’s the right way of putting it?’ Morland rose to his feet. ‘You said you had an aunt in St John’s Wood, didn’t you? Sorry. That’s neither here nor there.’

‘I might look into it,’ said Payne cautiously, ‘though I can’t promise anything.’

‘I must admit I don’t have much faith in the Law. Nothing but a bunch of bureaucrats. Somebody did behead Stella and it wasn’t Moon,’ Morland said firmly. ‘I do hope you have a crack at finding the true culprit.’

After Morland had gone, Major Payne produced his pipe.

The true culprit, eh? He had to admit he enjoyed being flummoxed by intricate riddles, though perhaps this one wouldn’t prove so terribly intricate.

The idea of a teenage girl committing matricide, while indubitably shocking, was not unique. Teenagers delighted in delinquent demeanour. Teenagers enjoyed perpetrating outrages. They had their ears pierced and studs inserted into their tongues. They made no attempt to control their emotions. They tended to bear grudges. They ‘experimented’ with things, namely sex and drugs. They listened to the most appalling music imaginable – hardly music. Teenagers could be violent and indeed often were violent. He remembered the sense of danger he’d had the moment he’d clapped eyes on Stella’s daughter…

Well, Stella’s daughter seemed indicated – she was the most obvious suspect – but there were questions that needed answering.

Not so long ago Payne had bumped into the Prime Minister at a private gathering in Notting Hill and been told to expect an OBE – for elevating the powers of rational thinking to the point where they became positively shamanistic. The PM had spoken off the cuff and he hadn’t been entirely serious of course. (He and Payne had gone to the same school and, as it happened, they could both trace their ancestry back to William IV, so the waggishness had most certainly not been de trop.) Payne knew that if he did get an OBE, it would be principally in recognition of his intelligence work in Afghanistan in the eighties.

Reaching out for the tobacco jar, Payne started filling his pipe. Questions, yes. How did Stella enter the Villa Byzantine? Had the front door been left unlocked, perhaps? Had she been instructed to go in and wait? Could Tancred Vane have set a trap for her? Was the monogrammed blood-soaked handkerchief so conveniently left on the scene of the crime a bona fide clue or a plant? As a device – if this had been a detective story – it would have been considered awfully passe.

He struck a match and held it to his pipe. A samurai sword was the kind of weapon Stella’s daughter would have chosen. The girl was loopy. She seemed to identify with some highly dangerous comic strip character, who went about under the sobriquet of Wild Thing. Moon liked beheadings, she had said so herself. She clearly despised her mother. At Melisande’s party she had done her best to make Stella look a fool… Though, of course, so had Melisande…

What if the handkerchief was part of somebody’s plan? Perhaps the intention was to incriminate Moon and use her as a scapegoat? Well, in that case, Payne reflected, we are looking for somebody with no particular knowledge or understanding of young people. Someone elderly and hopelessly old-fashioned? The kind of person who didn’t see that a rough teenage girl would be unlikely to have an elegant silk handkerchief in her possession. A woman rather than a man – yes – a woman – an unmarried woman of a certain age? An elderly spinster…

That was an ingenious theory, actually. The culprit was an unmarried elderly lady who was behind the times and had no idea at all what Moon was like, only knew her initials. One could buy initialled handkerchiefs – or have them specially made. Had the murder of Stella Markoff been carefully premeditated, then?

But did such an unmarried elderly lady exist?

It couldn’t be the mysterious Miss Hope – could it?

Payne smiled at the idea.