The Death of Corinne

1

A Murder is Announced

‘Somebody wants to kill her?’ said Antonia with a frown, her eyes on the photographs on the mantelpiece.

‘Well, she’s been receiving death threats through the post. She sounded absolutely terrified. I knew you would be interested, my dear. This is up your street, isn’t it?’ Lady Grylls wheezed and she adjusted herself in the large chintz chair to hand Major Payne his cup. ‘Quite up your street. Do have some cake. You investigated that extraordinary business of the lost child together, didn’t you? That’s how you met. Talk about whirlwind romances!’

‘I wouldn’t call it investigating. We just went nosing around, asking questions. We were curious,’ Antonia said lightly. It had been more than mere curiosity on her part, at least at the start. She had been racked with guilt. A totally irrational reaction, she had realized soon enough.

‘Do you think you might use all that as “copy”? Not necessarily for your next novel but one day?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Really? Not even if you changed all the names and the setting? Poor taste, I suppose. Pity. It’d make a marvellous book. One of those that keep you up all night. Why do extraordinary things happen to some people while others lead such perfectly dull lives? I know I may live to regret my fatal craving for the picturesque and yet I can’t help myself. The tea’s not too weak, is it, Hughie?’

‘It’s just right, Aunt Nellie,’ Major Payne reassured her.

Lady Grylls was his late mother’s sister. He had five other aunts, all of them alive, though in various stages of decrepitude. Lady Grylls was his favourite and, despite failing eyesight and a bad smoking habit, the one who was in the best of health and displayed the liveliest of spirits. He directed an affectionate glance at her across the tea table. Seventy-three if a day, pug-faced, compact and stocky, though with remarkably elegant ankles, she was clad in a tweed two-piece that was a bit too tight for her and bulged in unexpected places, a fact that didn’t seem to bother her in the least. She wore a single string of pearls around her neck. Her hair was bluish-grey and carefully coiffed and she wore thick bifocal glasses, which kept sliding down her nose.

There had been only the slightest hesitation on his and Antonia’s part when Lady Grylls had suggested that they spend the last leg of their honeymoon at Chalfont Park. After the faded glitter of Monte Carlo and Cap Ferrat – which hadn’t been as louche as they’d expected – Shropshire was just what they needed.

Chalfont Park was a moderately large house and in average working order, seventeenth-century in origin, eighteenth-century in atmosphere, gently Gothicized at the turn of the nineteenth by a Grylls who, one imagined, had got bored with the Palladian decorum around him, or found it too overpowering. After visiting the house in the thawing slush of 2nd March 1942 James Lees-Milne had described it in his diary as ‘pleasantly unstuffy – something tongue-in-cheek about it – not really suitable for the National Trust, due to the various alterations’.

Major Payne looked round the spacious drawing room with its shabby chintz sofas and chairs, occasional tables, 1930s cocktail cabinets and pictures in gilded frames on the walls, a Moorish Riff knife with an ornate handle and a long slender blade casually lying on the blood-red speckled marble mantelpiece, its point pressed against one of the two photographs of Corinne Coreille, his aunt’s French god-daughter. Payne smiled. It did seem the perfect setting for some old-fashioned detective drama. He knew Antonia didn’t like him saying things like that, so he didn’t.

‘Back to l’affaire CC,’ he went on. ’Why aren’t the police involved?’

‘Good question. They should be, shouldn’t they^? Well, when I asked Corinne, she got worked up. Said it would be bad for her career, the wrong kind of publicity, couldn’t I see? I don’t know what to make of it.’ Lady Grylls shook her head. ‘It’s so unreal, if you know what I mean. First Corinne’s call from Paris. Out of the blue. Her first call in years, saying someone wants to kill her! I had to pinch myself. Then, only a couple of minutes later, another phone call, would you believe it? This time from some private detective agency acting on Corinne’s behalf.’

‘French detectives?’

‘English. The call came from London. Corinne hadn’t so much as mentioned them! An elderly duffer’s voice. A Mr Jonson. Droning away. Mademoiselle Coreille had employed their services before. Mademoiselle Coreille was a highly valued client. By that,’ Lady Grylls added with a sardonic curl of her lip, ‘he must mean that the silly gel paid him a fortune in fees.’

How many people still said ‘gel’ instead of ‘girl’? Antonia wondered about the vagaries of upper-class pronunciation. ‘Could the whole thing be some elaborate hoax?’ she suggested. ‘Today is 1st April after all.’

‘April Fool, eh? Of course it is. That’s the kind of thing Peverel would do.’ Peverel was Lady Grylls’s other nephew, the one, she had told Antonia, of whom she was not fond. ‘Oh well, I’d be only too glad if it turned out to be a hoax. But somehow I don’t think it was. The poor gel sounded genuinely frightened.’

‘Hardly a gel,’ Major Payne said. ‘She is fifty-five. I am only two and a half years younger than her. Am I a boy to you?’

‘Of course you are, darling. You’ll always be a boy to me. Though I must admit it is easier with Corinne. You do look grown-up, you see, while she – I mean, look at her.’ Lady Grylls waved her hand towards the mantelpiece. ‘In one of those photos she is twenty-five, in the other forty-six. Can you tell which is which? I can’t. Not without looking at the dates on the back.’

‘She looks the same age in both,’ Antonia said. ‘No more than twenty-something.’

‘Precisely my point, my dear. Twenty-something. Extraordinary, isn’t it?’

‘Perhaps she’s had plastic surgery.’

‘I wouldn’t be in the least surprised. She might even have had it several times. They do, don’t they? Show business people. Entertainers. Singers and actors and suchlike. Especially those with trademark faces. Corinne’s trademark is her fringe, of course. She’s had her fringe since she was thirteen.’

‘When was the last time you saw her?’ Antonia asked.

‘The week after Rory’s funeral. Goodness, how time flies. We met in Paris. At a cafe overlooking the Jardin du Luxembourg. Thirteen years ago, that’s it. People stared at her the moment she entered. Started nudging each other. They recognized her at once, despite the fact she had enormous dark glasses on. Corinne had a minder tagging along after her – is that what you call them? Some pasty-faced woman in a trouser suit and a cloche hat, who sat discreetly at another table, ordered a brioche and coffee, and pretended she was on her own. It was a lovely day. Paris is at its best in spring. I needed to take my mind off things, you see. Rory had left his affairs in a mess. You couldn’t come, darling, could you?’ She turned to her nephew. ‘Or could you? I don’t mean Paris – your uncle’s funeral.’

‘I couldn’t. I was in Kabul.’

‘Oh yes. One of those hush-hush jobs. Tracking down drug traffickers, I suppose. Now of course it would be terrorists.’ Lady Grylls took a sip of tea. ‘Corinne nibbled at a meringue. What did we talk about? I think I moaned about Chalfont and servants. I told her about Rory’s funeral and she was sympathetic, but what she wanted to know – what she really wanted to know about were the floral tributes. She kept asking a lot of rather odd questions. Had there been delphiniums? Had there been orchids? What about tiger lilies?’

‘Is Corinne – odd?’ asked Antonia after a little pause.

‘Well, when she was a child she sniffed at a cat and nearly died of it. Came out in the most dreadful red blotches. And when she became famous she put two portraits of Napoleon on her bedroom wall, apparently. No one would have thought she had an authoritarian bone in her body! Well, she’s had an illustrious career and made pots of money – but that was all thanks to her clever impresario, I think. Mr Lark. All Corinne’s ever done is sing. She’s never had to do anything else. What was that cliche that’s always used to describe somebody like Corinne?’

‘She’s led a hothouse kind of existence?’ Payne suggested.

‘Completely out of touch with reality… People say that about the upper classes, don’t they, so tiresome – the Queen never using credit cards and wearing such ludicrous hats -’ Lady Grylls’s hands sketched an improbable shape above her head – ‘but heaven knows it’s performers, actors and singers and suchlike, that are the real oddballs. I mean, who’s more peculiar, tell me quickly – poor old Prince Charles or that very strange boy who can’t make up his mind whether he wants to be black or -’ Lady Grylls broke off. ‘You know the one. He’s had an awful lot of trouble. He denies it all of course.’

‘We know the one,’ Payne said. ‘Well, darling, I’d say both are equally peculiar… So, what’s happening exactly? Corinne’s coming to England in her jet and landing on your croquet lawn -’

‘They wouldn’t be able to find my croquet lawn even if they tried, it’s so terribly overgrown. Gardeners cost the earth. She didn’t mention a jet. She might have one, mind. She’s terribly rich. I wish I were as rich. Her sales in South Korea alone have made her a millionaire twice over – and that was back in 1981, I read somewhere

… She proposes to stay with me, yes. She seems to believe that Chalfont will make a good bolt-hole for her. She’s coming the day after tomorrow, 3rd April.’

‘For how long?’

‘She didn’t say! Till this thing blows over, I suppose, if that’s the right way of putting it. She didn’t even ask whether it would be convenient.’ Lady Grylls gave a mirthless guffaw. ‘She seems to be taking it for granted that it will be all right. She’s got houses all over the place – Florida, Geneva, a villa in Antibes, and I don’t know where else – yet she’s coming to Chalfont.’

Antonia murmured, ‘She clearly believes she will be safest here. A haven of peace in the midst of turmoil.’

Payne nodded. ‘Pax in bello.’

‘Pax in bello be blowed! Why should she believe any such thing? Yes, yes, she’s been here before, but she was only three or four then – her mamma brought her. She’s seen photographs of Chalfont, of course. What I mean is, the house is jolly isolated,’ Lady Grylls went on. ‘There’s no moat or wall – no barbed wire – nothing to deter intruders – no armed sentinels. If someone wanted to cut her throat or shoot her, there’d be no way of stopping them, would there?’

‘Perhaps she’ll bring her own bodyguards.’

Lady Grylls groaned. ‘Her entourage. What am I going to do about her entourage? She mentioned a Maitre Maginot. I am sure there will be others.’ Lady Grylls counted on her fingers. ‘Her personal maid, her make-up artist, her masseuse – um, what else is there?’

‘Fitness instructor – nutritionist?’ Antonia suggested.

‘Yes… Her personal chiropodist too, as likely as not – these people are so spoilt – or do I mean chiromancer?’ Lady Grylls frowned.

‘She probably has one of each.’

‘You are such a comfort, Hughie… Yes, the likes of Corinne usually travel with a retinue. I’m sure they’ll be an extremely disagreeable bunch… She never said how many!’

‘I don’t see why you should let that worry you, Aunt Nellie. Plenty of room here.’

‘Servants, darling. Servants.’ Lady Grylls shook her head. ‘The bane of my life. I have the most awful struggle, keeping this place together.’

‘There’s old Hortense. And Provost. And Nicholas.’

Hortense was the cook, Provost the butler, while Nicholas, Provost’s teenage son, was learning to be a footman.

Lady Grylls stared at her nephew owlishly. ‘As you say, Hughie, there’s old Hortense, Provost and Nicholas. Precisely my point. Chalfont’s getting more and more uncomfortable and harder to manage – I don’t suppose it’s only me entering a particularly morose and acrid dotage, is it? I find the draughts are getting worse, the hot-water system less reliable, the dogs less clean -’

Major Payne put down his cup. ‘You haven’t had dogs for ages, darling.’

‘Kept chewing the carpets, that’s why I had to get rid of them. Chalfont will be the end of me. We might have been able to pull it round while Rory was alive – there was still money in the kitty then – but he got this apoplectic look whenever I suggested renovation! I might have been saying, what a pity the jacquerie didn’t succeed, or do let’s join the Labour Party, or some such thing. Rory seemed to equate shabbiness with “good form”… You aren’t warm enough, are you?’ She cast a jaundiced glance at the ancient two-bar electric heater that hissed and crackled in front of the fireplace, giving off a slight odour of burning dust. Pointing towards the high ceiling with her forefinger, she observed that that was where all the heat went.

‘No doubt most country house owners are similarly handicapped,’ said Payne soothingly.

‘Don’t I know it! Why d’you think I avoid Adela de Quesne and that old stick Bobo Markham like the plague? All they do when they manage to get hold of me on the blower is moan about damp and dry rot and trespassing ramblers claiming the right to long-forgotten footpaths and how everything is at near-perdition point.’

Trying to catch her husband’s eye and failing, Antonia said they could always leave, if indeed there were going to be a lot of people coming.

‘Leave? Is that some sort of a joke, Antonia?’ Lady Grylls said sternly. ‘You can’t leave now. I need you here! Goodness. Peverel isn’t any good in a crisis… I don’t think such a thing as “trend-spotting” exists, do you? I am sure he made it up. The way he went on about it last night. Gave me a headache. Too bloody fond of the sound of his own voice.’

‘He promised he’d set his net scouts the task of finding out as much as possible about Corinne -’

‘Ha – net scouts! All bosh, if you ask me, my dear. I wouldn’t believe a word of what Peverel says. He can’t possibly issue commands to anybody simply by sitting in his room and pressing the buttons of his laptop, or whatever that thing’s called – can he?’

‘He probably can, darling,’ Payne said. ‘He can even find you a cheap gardener on the net -’

‘But you must try to be nice to him first,’ Antonia added with a smile.

Lady Grylls suddenly looked fascinated. ‘Goodness – you actually finish each other’s sentences. That doesn’t happen often, you know, that kind of affinity between husband and wife.’

‘How tedious that makes us sound.’

‘Not at all, my dear. A good marriage is not to be sneezed at, especially in this day and age. Yours is clearly one of those that’s been made in heaven. Second marriages are more successful than first ones, or so they say.’

‘We like it.’ Payne poured himself more tea. ‘Maitre Maginot – is that spelled like the line? Who is he anyway?’

‘It’s a she. Some terrible dragon of a woman, by the sound of it. A legal adviser-cum-mentor to Corinne. She seems to have taken over after Mr Lark died. I get the impression she hasn’t been with Corinne that long. She was there as Corinne talked to me, breathing down her neck. I could hear her hissing in the background, prompting. Corinne kept referring to her… Maitre Maginot considered Chalfont Park as a place of refuge une bonne idee. Maitre Maginot doubted whether the death threats were really serious, but wanted to avoid any unnecessary risks. Poor Corinne sounded like a schoolgirl – all timid and halting. Well, I suspect Maitre Maginot of monumental control-freakery. I’ve got to smoke. Where are my cigarettes?’ Lady Grylls peered round the table. ‘It doesn’t help that I am as blind as a bat.’

‘Your hearing should be exceptionally sharp then.’

‘It isn’t. That’s a popular myth… Thank you,’ she said as her nephew struck a match for her. ‘So glad you are a smoker, Hughie. Makes such a difference. Can’t stand it when Peverel looks down his nose each time I light up. What a self-righteous bore he is. Won’t you join me? Where’s that fragrant pipe of yours?’

Payne obligingly produced his pipe and started filling it out of his pouch. His aunt nodded in an approving manner. ‘Now the idea of Maitre Maginot doesn’t seem so repellent. I can see how people turn to drugs – can you?’ She blew smoke out of her nostrils. ‘Mr Jonson described Maitre Maginot as a femme formidable. Don’t you think it tiresome when people pepper their speech with frog?’

‘Terribly tiresome,’ Payne agreed. ‘Apart from being de trop. Unless they are French, that is. Then they can’t help it.’

‘From the way he pontificated, Jonson put me in mind of some sort of superior public schoolmaster – or a family solicitor. You know the type. Dry as a biscuit – omniscient godlike manner – the most annoying little cough. Absolute utter drears. I hope he won’t overstay his welcome. He said he wanted to look around. Does he imagine he might find Corinne’s madman at Chalfont, skulking behind an arras, clutching a knife? D’you think he suspects me of some sort of collusion?’

‘Well, he might have got it into his head the madman is your secret lover,’ Payne said. ‘Gentlewomen of a certain age are notorious for that sort of thing.’

‘Are they?’ Antonia frowned. Hugh did talk awful rot sometimes. ‘Do you mean gentlewomen of a certain age keep secret lovers or that they have a predilection for madmen?’ She was amazed to see Lady Grylls nod.

‘Apparently madmen make jolly good lovers. No inhibitions and oodles of untapped energy.’ Lady Grylls held her cigarette at what in her youth must have been considered a modish angle. ‘I did read about it somewhere.’

‘Might be a madwoman,’ Antonia said. ‘I mean the person behind the death threats.’ Madwomen were always greater fun than madmen – in books and films at least. More terrifying, for some reason… A Single White Male wouldn’t be quite the same thing as A Single White Female. The madwoman in the attic… The female of the species deadlier than the male -

‘More tea?’ Lady Grylls said and she rang for Provost.

Provost was a faded, sandy-haired man in his mid-forties. In the normal course of things he appeared wearing a comfortable cardigan but, presumably on account of Mr Jonson’s visit, he had changed into a black alpaca coat, stiff shirt, winged collar, black tie and striped trousers and looked every inch the stage butler. He was rather a gloomy individual; however, his face lit up the moment Lady Grylls spoke to him. A look of complicity passed between them. She murmured something that to Antonia’s ears sounded like, ‘On with the show!’ – causing Provost actually to smile. It was clear he adored her. Who said the feudal spirit was dead?

‘The Prince of Wales has Debo Devonshire. Provost has me. I am his confidante,’ Lady Grylls declared after he left the room. ‘He says only I understand him. Something in that.’

The tea was brought by Provost’s son Nicholas, a deadly pale, truculent-looking boy of sixteen, with spiked-up hair and a ‘sleeper’ in his right ear. He had left school the year before and come to live with his father. He had been caught sniffing glue and, apparently, was interested in magic. ’Pull up your trousers, Nicholas,’ Lady Grylls ordered in a stentorian voice. ‘Not at half mast when I am around, I’ve told you hundreds of times… How’s the invisible hat doing?’

‘It’s an invisibility cloak, actually,’ he said with a hurt air.

‘He’s mad about those ridiculous children’s books everybody seems to be reading on overcrowded trains,’ she explained later. ‘And he talks of something called “wackybaccy”… Poor souls. Is that some sort of spell?’

Payne cleared his throat. ‘Not quite.’

Provost, it turned out, was what was known as a ‘single parent’. Lady Grylls pronounced the phrase slowly and doubtfully as though it belonged to some foreign tongue. She went on to explain that Mrs Provost – Shirley – had also been in her employment, but she had left her husband six months earlier – for a black man, a bouncer called C.C.J. Hawkshaw, with whom she now lived in London’s Docklands.

‘They came on a visit last month. They meant well, no hard feelings and all that, but it was a mistake. Provost has clearly neither forgotten nor forgiven. He walked about handing round drinks, saying nothing, looking shell-shocked – acted as though he had no idea who they were. The boy ran off and shut himself in the potting shed and wouldn’t come out. I think I smelled pot, but I may be wrong. Nicholas did behave oddly afterwards. Poor souls,’ Lady Grylls said again.

‘Why don’t you raise their wages, if you pity them so much?’ Major Payne said as he stirred his tea.

‘Can’t afford to. Shirley was unrecognizable. She’s shaved her head and she and C.C.J. sported identical tattoos on their arms. It was fairly obvious she was preggers as well,’ Lady Grylls went on. ‘We always got on well – sex-mad, of course – and I thought her new consort a pet. His full name is Clive Junior, but for some reason he hates being called that. He wouldn’t say what the second C stands for either. He’s terribly sensitive about it.’

Antonia asked, ‘Hasn’t Corinne got any idea as to who might be sending her the death threats?’

‘If she has, she didn’t tell me. All she said was “anonymous notes”… So annoying, isn’t it? Who do you think it is, my dear? You are the expert.’

‘I am nothing of the sort.’ Antonia said.

‘Poor Corinne reminds me of the man who walks on a lonesome road in fear and dread,’ Lady Grylls said.

‘Because he knows a frightful fiend doth close behind him tread

…’ Payne murmured.

‘Is that The Ancient Mariner? Awfully gruesome… Hate poetical effusions.’ Lady Grylls paused. ‘Who could it be?’

Major Payne stroked his jaw with a thoughtful forefinger. ‘It could be someone from Corinne’s past.’

‘Corinne hasn’t got a past! Not in the sense I think you mean. All she’s ever done is sing. La chanson, c’est moi. That’s Corinne’s motto. She’s had it embroidered on her sofa cushions and handkerchiefs and things. I don’t think Corinne’s ever had time for a private life.’

‘Could the death threats have something to do with Corinne’s singing then?’ Antonia frowned. ‘No – that’s silly.’ We must talk about something else, she thought.

‘Shall we explore possibilities?’ Lady Grylls looked round. ‘Such fun. Do let’s.’