The Death of Corinne

13

Vendetta

The library, Major Payne reflected, was as he remembered it. It hadn’t changed one little bit. The oak panelling, the Gothic fan tracery ceiling by Wyatville, the sagging leather armchairs, the pictures of horses and dogs. Talking of the pictures, his aunt had said that there was nothing there she could not sell to a wandering sheikh for something as pathetic as a fifty-pound note. If a wandering sheikh had anything as pitiful as fifty-pound notes on his person, Major Payne had riposted – but he knew that that was a fanciful exaggeration. Some of the pictures were genuine Stubbses and Landseers. They all hung as they had done for some hundred and fifty years, on chains, from original gold lion masks.

Payne recalled the fascination the lion masks had held for him when, as a boy, he had been left to stay with his aunt and uncle. The smell hadn’t changed either. Ancient paper, dust, stale cigar smoke, musty pot pourri, leather. The windows were wet with rain and the wind howled in the Adam fireplace. The mantelpiece was decorated by a bronze of a hawkish Wellington on horseback and a bowl of chrysanthemums that had been defunct for quite some time – not from last autumn surely?

It was getting dark. He turned on two table lamps and stood looking at the rows and rows of books in dark mahogany cases built into the walls, the leather and vellum of their bindings cracked and scarred by age or neglect. Some books, on the other hand, looked as good as new. The Encyclopaedia Britannica – two sets of it, an Edwardian one and a 1960 edition, neither of them showing signs of ever having been opened. There were some uncut first editions, which must be valuable… Black Beauty, The Country House in our Heritage, Greyfriars Bobby, Where’s Master? by Caesar. Caesar was a dog, of course, one that had belonged to Edward VII. Caesar had walked immediately behind the gun carriage at the King’s funeral in 1910 and every now and then he had raised his head and howled disconsolately. That poignant passage, Payne remembered, had reduced him to tears when he had read the book as a boy. He had actually believed that it was Caesar who had written the book!

Detective novels: ancient green Penguins from the late ‘40s and early ’50s. Ronald Knox, John Wade, E.C. Bentley. Did anyone read them nowadays? Forgotten biographies. The Regent and his Daughter by Dormer Creston. A very prettily bound almanac of poems, circa 1835, with a lyre engraved on the cover. Maupassant’s complete short stories -

That was the book he had been looking for. A bee in my bonnet, he thought. ‘Oh hello,’ he said as Antonia entered.

‘Perhaps I could help your aunt tidy up the library. I don’t think I have yet lost my expertise,’ she said. Until a couple of months before, Antonia had worked as a librarian at the Military Club in St James’s Street in London, but after the success of her second detective novel she had given up her job to write full time.

‘You mean cataloguing and dusting and things?’ He went on to say it would be the kind of labour Hercules would have bridled at.

‘It would be a shame to allow all these books to go to rack and ruin.’ She was standing beside the huge round table. From among the piles of ancient communications from various wine societies and an assortment of seed and plant catalogues, she picked up a book and started leafing through it. ‘Listen to this… Nothing can be more unfair or more unjustifiable than a doubtful answer given under the plea of sparing the suitor’s feelings. It raises false hopes. It renders a man restless and unsettled -’

‘Golly. That’s exactly how I felt after I proposed to you and you said you’d have to think about it!’ Payne cried. ‘Restless and unsettled sums it up nicely. What book is that?’

‘A Victorian book on etiquette… Constable, 1895. I thought I might find Jonson and your aunt here. They are going round the house.’

‘Ah, the security checks… He looks as though he’s taking it all extremely seriously, doesn’t he?’

‘He does. What do you make of him?’ Antonia asked.

‘Of Jonson? Seems a decent enough chap.’ Payne cocked an eyebrow. ‘You disagree? What is it?’

‘I don’t know.’ Antonia paused. ‘He is immensely likeable, but I do believe there is something he isn’t telling. Several things, perhaps. It’s the way he talks about Corinne and Maitre Maginot – the way his voice and expression change.’

‘You don’t think it’s anything to do with Peverel?’

Antonia stared. ‘Peverel?’

‘Jonson said he’d met him in Paris. Which is where Corinne Coreille lives.’

‘Yes… Your aunt is convinced it was Peverel who took your sister to Corinne’s second concert. He denied it point blank.’

‘That was odd, wasn’t it?’

‘Very odd… What’s that book?’

‘Maupassant’s short stories.’ Payne was running his finger down the contents page. ‘The Merchant uses the name Saverini on her website.’

Antonia frowned. ‘What’s that got to do with Maupassant?’

‘In her third letter the Merchant writes that she’s been reading Maupassant’s contes. Well, the name Saverini struck a chord the moment I heard it.’ Payne started leafing through the book. ‘I remembered a short story by Maupassant with a character called Saverini in it. The widow Saverini… Here it is! It’s called “Vendetta”. I knew I was right!’

“‘Vendetta”?’

“‘Vendetta”. Rather suggestive, isn’t it? It did occur to me that the Merchant might be identifying with the widow Saverini. The widow Saverini’s son is murdered and she plots an elaborate revenge on the killer. She is single-minded, ruthless, methodical and, although it’s never spelled out for us, more than a little crazy. Maupassant clearly wants us to sympathize with her, which is jolly unsettling… Listen to this. Don’t worry, my boy, my poor child. I will avenge you. Do you hear me? It’s your mother’s promise, and your mother always keeps her word. You know that.’

‘Why are you putting on an Italian accent? I believe I’ve read it

… A dog comes into it, doesn’t it?’

‘It does. The widow Saverini proceeds to train her dog to attack an effigy made in the likeness of the killer, who is a local man. She roasts a sausage and sews it inside the effigy. She goads the dog into ripping the effigy apart. Then she does it all over again – another effigy, another sausage and so on – then again. Months pass… She starves the dog… The whole thing’s impossibly contrived and wildly improbable – but in a funny way, it’s also rather frightening.’

‘Obsession is always frightening.’

‘The story ends with the dog jumping on the killer and chewing open his throat. The widow Saverini then goes back home and for the first time since her son’s death, she has a good night’s sleep.’ Payne paused. ‘It does suggest that the Merchant has revenge on her mind. Why else call herself Saverini?’

‘Why indeed… Yes. She is a driven woman. I don’t quite see how she could possibly find out that Corinne was coming to England.’

‘I don’t see either. You heard what Jonson said – everybody’s been sworn to secrecy by Maitre Maginot and so on.’

‘That’s what Jonson said… What if -’ She broke off. ‘Just imagine…’

‘Imagine what?’

She shook her head. ‘No, nothing… Let’s stick to the known facts. Nothing’s happened yet and I hope it stays that way!’

‘I think I know what you mean,’ he said slowly.

‘No, you don’t. You can’t read my mind.’

‘I can -’

‘Where does your aunt keep her scrapbooks?’ Antonia had started looking around the library.

‘If memory serves me right, they used to be in that mahogany cabinet, over there, by the potted palm. That palm needs watering… What do you want the scrapbooks for?’

Antonia went up to the cabinet and opened it. There were two scrapbooks inside. She took them out. They were bound in faded maroon leather and had the dates stamped in gold on their spines, 1943-1949 and 1950-1960.

‘I want to check something,’ she said. ‘It’s nothing to do with any of this. At least I don’t see how it could be. Just an idea.’

‘A bee in your bonnet.’ Payne nodded in a gratified fashion. ‘Aunt Nellie was right. We are terribly alike. That’s why we got married. We’d have remained incomplete if we hadn’t.’

Antonia looked at him. ‘We don’t really finish each other’s sentences, do we? It’s been bothering me.’ Blowing the dust off its surface, she opened the first scrapbook and started leafing through it.

It wasn’t really surprising that Lady Grylls’s youthful tastes should be revealed as a mixture of high society gossip, scandal, matrimony – and crime.