The hunt for Sonya Dufrette

19

The End of the Affair?

That same evening they sat at Porter’s in Covent Garden, having a late supper. Antonia had allowed herself to be persuaded. She had felt too tired to argue or put up any opposition. Besides, she felt she owed it to Hugh. He had been a good sport. He had indulged her. He had encouraged her. Their ‘investigation’ was at an end. It was all over. She had got him involved in a wild-goose chase, a quest for a murder that never happened, but he didn’t seem to mind one little bit. He was a good sport.

‘Cheer up, Antonia,’ Major Payne said. After she gave a listless smile, he set her another puzzle. ‘A man stands beside a darkened window. He is desperately keen to open it, yet he knows that, if he did, it would kill him. Why?’

‘Um – the man suffers from a rare disease – a virtual allergy to sunlight? I believe it’s called xeroderma pigmentosum. I know it’s not that, Hugh. You might as well tell me.’

‘Well, the simple answer is that the man is claustrophobic. He is in a submarine. If he opens the window, water will rush in and he’ll drown.’

‘Why is the window darkened?’

‘That’s been put in to throw you off the scent… More wine?’ He picked up the bottle. It was an exceptionally good wine.

‘Yes please.’ She held up her glass. It was going to be her third.

He gave himself a refill too, then said, ‘Tabula rasa, eh? No murder.’ He raised his glass. ‘Let’s drink to it.’

‘Let’s.’

They drank, then Antonia began, ‘Why do I always go for the complicated? I do it every time. That’s why perhaps I can’t succeed as a crime writer. I always feel I need to go for complexity – for an abundance of red herrings – for intricate clues – for far-fetched motives – for ingenuity-gone-mad. I suppose I do it out of fear that my denouement, when it comes, would turn out to be too trite. I get myself into a state about the timing of the denouement as well. Is it too soon – too late? Oh, it’s agony. I hate myself for it. I lack confidence, that’s what it is.’

She paused and took another sip of wine. She was becoming garrulous. She was getting mixed up. Why had she started talking about her writing problems? Well, the wine was at last taking effect. Good. High time. That was better than feeling depressed and anticlimactic and empty and futile… How idiotically self-indulgent of her to be disappointed that there had been no murder, to feel ‘flat’ about the absence of a dramatic denouement, to mourn over the lack of a final twist in the tale. This is not a tale, she reminded herself.

‘Your confidence will go up with every novel you put under your belt,’ Major Payne was saying. ‘I refuse to believe your new novel is going badly.’

‘As a matter of fact it’s going nowhere.’ Antonia took another sip of wine. ‘I haven’t yet taken it out of the bottom drawer.’

‘Well, that’s because you’ve been busy, running about interviewing autocratic Lady Mortlock, exotic Lena, mad bad Lawrence Dufrette -’

‘Do they exist? Sometimes I wonder… You do make them sound like characters in a book.’ She frowned. ‘Were we really at a place called the Elsnor today?’

‘We were. Twice.’

‘True. Yes… I did imagine all sorts of deranged and awful things. I even thought Sonya might have been the victim of some sacrificial ritual performed by the Babylonian brotherhood! Do they perform sacrificial rituals?’

‘As a matter of fact they do. Young children and virgins, if Dufrette is to be believed, are in particular demand.’

Antonia shook her head. ‘All along – all along – the rather obvious solution has been staring me in the face. Neat, bloodless, convincing, not particularly original. Adoption. Pure and simple. All right, not pure and not simple, not this one, but nothing like the gothic horrors I imagined. Why didn’t I think that Sonya might have been taken, not for some hideous reason, but because she had been loved and wanted and cherished? I had at my disposal all the clues pointing in the right direction… Besides, the Vorodins weren’t there when it happened!’

‘Ah yes. That should have alerted you at once. That’s always highly suspicious, isn’t it? The perfect alibi. “Alibi”, after all, means “elsewhere”.’

‘Doing evil that good may come. That’s in the Bible, I think. That’s what Veronica must have believed she was doing… I rather liked Veronica. I thought she was genuinely caring, sweet and sensitive. Not at all spoilt by wealth. I am convinced she has been a good mother to Sonya. Better than Lena would ever have been. I hope Dufrette never finds them. He is a dangerous man. He called the Vorodins thieves. He said they stole his daughter.’

‘Which, at any rate, is not strictly true. The Vorodins didn’t steal Sonya. They paid vast sums for her,’ Payne pointed out. ‘By their own lights, they did the decent thing.’

‘Where do you think they are?’

‘In South America, somewhere, surrounded by servants and bodyguards and high-tech surveillance systems and the best resident doctors and nurses money can buy. You shouldn’t be depressed, really. This is a happy ending of sorts. There was no murder. That’s good news. Let’s drink to it.’

They drank to it. ‘What’s the matter now?’ Payne asked as Antonia sighed.

‘I’ve been leading you on a wild-goose chase -’

‘What absolute rot.’

‘Kind of you to say so, but I have wasted your time.’ Antonia vaguely wondered whether she wasn’t spouting all these negative statements so that he could contradict them and reassure her. If she had to be honest with herself, she rather enjoyed being reassured by him.

‘Nothing of the sort. I enjoyed every minute of it.’ Major Payne reached out and took her hand. She let him hold it. What the hell, she thought.

He went on, ‘The – what shall we call it? The hunt for Sonya Dufrette hasn’t been a failure. Au contraire. All right, we haven’t been able to discover Sonya’s whereabouts, but we did find out what happened. You had a hunch that there was something wrong and you were proved correct. A crime was committed, no matter how noble the motive for it. We did uncover greed, skulduggery, intricate scheming and deception. That’s an achievement. Truth has prevailed. That’s a cause for celebration and that’s what we are having now.’ He raised his glass again. ‘To Truth.’ He looked at her. ‘And to Beauty too.’

‘You are being silly now. Very silly. I am not really happy about it. In fact I wish we’d let sleeping dogs lie.’

He shook his head with exaggerated disapproval. ‘I am surprised at you, Antonia. Judging by your book, I was convinced that you were an uncompromising moralist.’

‘What I mean is, I am extremely uneasy about Dufrette – about what he might do next. He won’t give up until he has tracked down the Vorodins. And he won’t wait until Lena recovers – if she ever does – to get Veronica’s address. He will find another source of information soon enough. He said it himself. He looked absolutely determined.’

‘Yes.’ Payne ran a thoughtful forefinger along his jaw. ‘Absolutely, uncompromisingly, insanely determined. He looked like a man possessed by the spirit of a wolf hanged for manslaughter. Does that strike you as completely nonsensical? Why do these things sound so much better in one’s head? Am I right in thinking that it rather captures the essence of Lawrence?’

‘The hour of the wolf,’ Antonia said. ‘I hope it never comes… That’s when people die, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. According to Scandinavian mythology.’

‘He has a gun. He is prepared to use it,’ Antonia went on. ‘He not only wants his daughter back – he wants revenge. You did hear him say, “Paytime.” Lena, the nanny, Veronica – are they safe from him? I know this sounds wildly melodramatic, but then Dufrette is a melodramatic kind of person.’

‘True… He does seem to relish the role of the lone vigilante

… He didn’t like it one bit when you suggested that the police should be told. Crikey – he actually snarled at you!’

They had been standing inside the Elsnor lobby. Lawrence Dufrette had said he’d be very cross if they told the police. He had patted his pocket suggestively. He had expressed the hope that their paths wouldn’t cross again. He had said their meddling days were over, that they should make themselves scarce, that from that moment on he was in charge, that his hour had come. He had spoken in a low menacing voice. He had directed at Antonia a look full of antagonism and scorn and, yes, he had snarled at her. She had been shocked. She had thought they had been getting on really well. Of all the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde transformations!

‘Not a word of thanks either,’ Major Payne murmured. ‘To think that, but for us, he would never have known his daughter was alive.’

‘And he took that letter. We shouldn’t have let him. He will get someone to translate it for him… I wonder what was in it.’

‘It may be something totally irrelevant. Veronica saying, I took Sonya to Versailles yesterday. She enjoyed herself an awful lot. We wished you were here with us,’

‘I can’t imagine anyone wishing Lena were with them anywhere… Could they be in France?’

‘I don’t know. V.V. did use French writing paper, but that means nothing… Shall we order pudding and coffee? What would you like?’

‘A peche Melba with chocolate sauce,’ Antonia said recklessly. ‘How about informing the police?’

‘I don’t think it will make much difference.’ Payne took out his pipe. He went on, ‘You see, don’t you, that we can’t prove a thing? Dufrette will no doubt deny the existence of any letter point blank and express concern over the state of our respective minds. Miss Haywood may break down and confess fully, but there’s no guarantee. And I think it highly unlikely that Lena will ever admit to selling her daughter to the Vorodins.’

‘What if Lena did tell the truth about Dufrette and Sonya? What if some kind of sexual abuse did take place?’

‘Again, nothing that has the remotest chance of standing up in court. It was twenty years ago. A mentally deficient child too. Would Sonya – assuming she were ever tracked down – be able to testify? I rather doubt it.’ Payne lit his pipe.

There was another pause.

‘We could always report Dufrette for possessing a gun,’ Antonia said.

‘They are sure to discover that he has a licence for it.’

Antonia sighed.