The Death of Corinne

27

The Killing Doll

How indeed?

That was a question – one of the questions – that had been bothering Antonia. How could Eleanor Merchant have known where to find Corinne Coreille, given Maitre Maginot’s obsession with secrecy and security – considering how carefully she had orchestrated operation ‘Safe Haven’? Maitre Maginot had explained that the reason for not taking any ‘entourage’ with them was to avoid attracting any attention at any stage of their journey.

No, Antonia had no idea where Corinne Coreille had disappeared or when she could have left the house. The oddity and reclusiveness of the French singer were touched upon, together with her memorable haunting voice. Surprisingly, it turned out Inspector Lyttleton was familiar with Corinne Coreille. He remembered the occasion well. He had seen her on TV in the early ‘70s – the Ed Sullivan show – Corinne Coreille had sung in duet with Eartha Kitt – the two of them had been kitted out as comic vamps – feather boas and fishnet stockings – they had sat on top of a grand piano. ’All white. The piano, the roses, the snow… It was a Christmas special. The pianist smoked a cigarette. They let people smoke on the box in those days. C‘est si bon,’ Lyttleton hummed and wriggled his shoulders lightly. ‘Variety. I’ve always been fond of variety,’ he said.

Had Corinne Coreille perhaps panicked and run off in the early hours of the morning? That at once suggested that somehow she knew what had taken place in the greenhouse. What was Miss Darcy’s view? Antonia shrugged. It was possible. She felt reluctant to swap theories with him. Could Corinne have heard a noise from outside, gone to investigate and found the bodies? Possible again, Antonia said, though she thought it highly unlikely. Corinne would never have left the house in the dark, all by herself. If she had heard a suspicious noise, a cry, say, she would have sought Jonson out, the man they had hired to protect her. But Jonson had been asleep in his room, or so he claimed. He had heard nothing… Had Jonson told the truth? Such a likeable young man, but – Antonia reminded herself – one thing one should never do in a case of murder was to warm to likeable young men.

There was also the question of transport. It had been a cold and wet night. Corinne couldn’t simply have walked out of the house, carrying her bags. The house was on the outskirts of the village. There was a cab service in the village, but the police had already ascertained that no cab had been called from Chalfont Park at any point in the night or in the early hours of the morning. A search, Antonia understood, was under way.

Where was Corinne? She seemed to have vanished into thin air. Without a trace. The way the inspector said it, the way he paused and frowned and shook his head, suggested that he thought Corinne Coreille too might be dead. Suddenly, he asked Antonia if she knew anything about the doll that had been found on the stairs. Where had it come from? She stared at him. She knew nothing about a doll – what doll?

He produced a see-through plastic bag from his briefcase and handed it to her across the desk. The doll was inside the bag. ‘Don’t take it out,’ he warned her.

‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ Antonia said.

There were two large hatpins sticking out of the top of the doll’s head, two more had been run through its eyes, another two through its ears. A pin that was larger than the others stuck out of the doll’s mouth. Antonia shuddered. A voodoo doll? The next moment she realized with a start that it was a Corinne doll. Peverel had told them about it – and of course Eleanor Merchant had written about it in her first letter. The doll was about five inches long and it was instantly recognizable as Corinne. There was the fringe, the demure expression, the blue dress, the red bow. The eyes looked somewhat ‘Japanese’. Well, the doll had been made in Japan, to coincide with Corinne’s Osaka comeback concert.

The inspector had read Eleanor Merchant’s description of how she had set about sticking pins into a Corinne doll, turning it into a ‘pincushion’ and feeling ‘better’ as a result. Eleanor had asked Corinne whether ‘it hurt’.

It looked as though Eleanor Merchant had brought the doll with her, all the way from America. But Eleanor had died in the greenhouse. How had the Corinne doll landed on the main staircase at Chalfont? That was where Provost had stumbled on it in the morning… Could Eleanor Merchant have sneaked into the house at some point? It was Antonia who asked the question. Well, no door or window had been forced… Eleanor could have been let into the house by somebody, Antonia imagined. She might have had an accomplice.

The inspector said guardedly that they were not looking for anyone else. Of course the search for Corinne Coreille would continue.

Soon after the interview was over and Inspector Lyttleton left. Antonia had kept to the known, plain facts. She had made no mention of any of the fancy trimmings. Peverel’s involvement with Corinne over thirty years previously, the fact that Corinne Coreille had given birth to his child, the idea that Maginot was in fact Ruse, Corinne’s mother, the strong suspicion that had now become a certainty that Jonson knew more than he had told… Did any of these have any bearing on the two deaths? Antonia was set on continuing with her own inquiry… She hadn’t mentioned the kitten either, though the kitten was very much on her mind.

The kitten in the photograph…

She didn’t leave the study at once. She sat at Lord Grylls’s desk, in the revolving leather chair the inspector had occupied. She ran her hand across the desk surface… She liked the feel of the desk. It was the kind of desk she could write a novel on. She always wrote by hand first. She was funny about desks. Some desks simply didn’t feel right. There were desks that repelled her – stalled her creativity. Hadn’t Muriel Spark had a similar thing about pencils? Lady Grylls had asked her what she wanted for a wedding present – Antonia wondered whether she could ask for the desk?

Idly she reached out for one of Lord Grylls’s stamp albums and started leafing through it. A series of French stamps showing the face of Marianne in red, in white and in blue, drew her attention. Corinne’s face had been used as a model for Marianne in the ’70s. Once more she saw Corinne’s face, the way it had been in the photograph she had taken out of Jonson’s case – youthfully smooth -

But it wouldn’t have remained smooth if she had been stroking a kitten… Antonia nodded slowly… She had known all along there was something wrong about the photograph Jonson had brought with him to Chalfont Park. The kitten shouldn’t have been there. Her subconscious had registered the fact – but she had been distracted by the photograph of Peverel on Corinne’s dressing table.

Jonson of course knew. He hadn’t wanted them to see the photograph because he feared they might be able to deduce the truth.