The Death of Corinne

25

The Unexpected Guest

They had come upon her in the hall, tending to Provost who gave every impression of being in a very bad way indeed. He was sitting on a spindle-legged gilt chair, staring before him. Lady Grylls had made him a cup of tea. She seemed to have emptied almost the whole contents of the silver sugar bowl into the tea; she kept urging him to drink it. The air was filled with the old-fashioned smell of valerian. There was a bottle of brandy on a salver on a small round table, also, inexplicably, a thermometer.

Provost was clad in the black-and-yellow striped waistcoat a la Maxim’s but his stiff gleaming-white collar had been removed and it too could be seen on the salver. Lady Grylls was wearing a dressing gown and she had also put an elaborate choker with a large ruby clasp around her neck. She was smoking another purple-filtered Balkan Sobranie cigarette. The morning light, filtered through the fanlight, filled the hall with the murky yellow tones of a sepia print and, Payne thought, it made it look rather like a scene out of some quaint Edwardian farce on the twin subjects of noblesse oblige and the feudal spirit. (Lady Grylls Pulls It Off? Baroness to the Rescue?) The mundane conclusion of course was that murder made people act irrationally.

‘His legs buckled under him like one of those collapsible card tables. Good thing I was here to catch him as he fell… He can’t cope with things like that. He’s a weak man… Peverel’s here,’ Lady Grylls went on with evident distaste. ‘As though we haven’t got enough to think about.’

Payne’s brows went up. ‘Peverel? I thought he wasn’t coming back?’

‘Well, he has. He drove all the way down from London. Must have started at some unearthly hour. He’s in the dining room, drinking coffee. He looks like a funeral director, quite unlike himself. He seems to know about it already -’ Lady Grylls broke off. ‘Provost says Maginot has been shot – is that correct?’

‘Yes.’ Payne then told her to prepare for another shock. ‘Maitre Maginot’s body isn’t the only one in the greenhouse, darling. Eleanor Merchant is there too – shot as well… It looks as though she killed Maginot and then committed suicide.’

‘You don’t mean that, do you, Hughie?’

He said he did. He swore he wasn’t making it up.

‘That’s a pretty kettle of fish,’ Lady Grylls said after a pause. ‘So that’s what Peverel meant when he said there were two of them. I thought I’d misheard. Goodness. That woman came all this way from America to shoot herself in my greenhouse. Incidentally, do you remember that awful weepy, Love Story? When was it made, can you tell me?’

Major Payne blinked. ‘Sorry, darling? What love story?’

‘Love Story. The film. When was it made?’

‘When was it -? Early seventies… 1970, at a guess. ’

‘1970. I thought as much.’ Lady Grylls nodded. ‘In 1970 Corinne was twenty-two. I knew she was talking bosh. You see…’ She then told them about the extraordinary conversation she had had with Corinne the night before. ‘And she said that she remembered her mother’s voice! That was the other rum thing. It didn’t make sense. There was nothing memorable about Ruse’s voice, but Corinne spoke as though it had been something quite exceptional.’

Antonia and Payne found Peverel in the dining room, standing by the fireplace, a large white coffee cup in hand. He was wearing a black coat with a velvet collar and a long white silk scarf. He did look solemn and – not sad, exactly, Antonia thought, but preoccupied, in a pensive mood. ‘I thought you were the police,’ he said, glancing at the clock. ‘They are always late, aren’t they?’

It was then that the possible importance of something Lady Grylls had said dawned on Antonia. She asked, ‘How do you know what happened?’

He shrugged – took another sip of coffee. He was drinking it black. There was a faraway look in his eyes. For some reason Antonia had the idea that he was reflecting on the past.

‘How did you know there was a second body there?’ she persisted.

He gave a little smile. ‘That boy told me. Nicholas.’

There had been a brief pause and a scowl, as though he had had to think about it – or was Antonia imagining it?

‘I thought you had no intention of coming back,’ Payne said.

‘I discovered I’d left something behind. I came to collect it.’

‘What a bore for you. Must have been something very important. ’

‘Oh, it is. It is.’ Peverel took another sip of coffee. ‘Terribly important.’ He gave no more details. ‘In your kind of detective story, Antonia,’ he went on, ‘the police always blunder in the dark, don’t they, and it is invariably the gifted amateur detective who gets to the truth?’

‘It’s a convention… Part of the game… One of the genre’s requirements.’ Antonia frowned: there had been an odd intensity about Peverel’s voice. ‘Readers still seem to like it, though of course everybody knows it’s got nothing to do with real life.’

‘Real life… Oh, how I wish -’ Peverel broke off. He put down the coffee cup and looked towards the window.

There was a pause. Antonia’s eyes remained fixed on him. How he wished – what? That the police did blunder in the dark not only in detective stories, but in real life as well – that the police never got to the truth?

Now that was interesting – extremely interesting.

(What was the truth?)

The next moment they heard a siren.