The hunt for Sonya Dufrette

8

Le Gout du Policier

As she arrived at the club the following morning, the reason for her dissatisfaction dawned on her. Her account of what had happened at Twiston was lively and vivid and it contained some good descriptions and entertaining dialogue. It was not her ability to write that was in question. No. There was a different reason for her dissatisfaction. Although she couldn’t put her finger on it, she knew that something was wrong – either with the way she had described one or more of the characters in the drama, or with her reporting of what they said. Some illogicality… Some discrepancy?

She was sure she wasn’t imagining it… What was it?

Not many people visited the library that morning and she received only one phone call. A good thing, for she was in such an abstracted state of mind that some club member was bound to notice and complain. She performed her chores mechanically, automaton-like, in a kind of daze. At one point she found herself lifting a pile of books from one of the donation boxes and placing them on her desk, then staring down at them in utter incomprehension. She had absolutely no idea what she should do with the books. Yes, she did. Stamp them, write down their titles, put them on the right shelves. She reached out for the library stamp. (In what way was the signet ring important?)

Eventually she heard the clock chime eleven. She took the folder out of her bag. The Drowning of Sonya Dufrette, she had written at the top. Well, she knew she wouldn’t rest until she found out what was wrong.

Martin brought her a tray with a pot of coffee, a cup and a plate of Lazzaroni biscuits. Pouring herself coffee, she started skimming through the pages once more. Was there any significance in the fact that Sonya and her doll had been dressed in identical dresses? She couldn’t see how there could be.

Sonya’s body had never been recovered. Sonya had vanished without a trace. That was one fact that was certain. Twenty years had passed but the body hadn’t turned up. If it had, she would have heard about it, she was sure. It would have been in the papers – or on TV – or someone would have mentioned it to her. People didn’t just vanish. They were either dead or assumed new identities or… or… No, there was nothing else. That was it. What would be the point of giving Sonya a new identity? But then, if she was dead, where was her body? Swallowed by some monstrous fish? Could the body have been weighed down and eased into the river? That would mean murder and there wasn’t a scrap of evidence pointing that way. On the other hand, the body might not be in the river at all. Sonya might have been killed somewhere else and the body buried.

The other night Antonia had thought in terms of violence. She had dreamt of blood. Now, why had she? She believed there was a reason for it. Something must have suggested violence to her. Something she had seen without realizing its importance at the time – something she had heard? She didn’t think the idea had come to her just like that… Once more she saw Sonya’s face, as it had been when Dufrette had played with her in the garden – shrieking with laughter, her blue eyes very bright… No, not blue – brown. Her eyes had been brown. Antonia frowned. Was that of any importance? How extremely annoying she didn’t even know what she was looking for!

‘Who lent thee, child, this meditative guise?’

She looked up and her frown disappeared. She smiled at the wiry man with the twinkling blue eyes and greying blond hair. ‘Good morning, Major Payne… Is that Matthew Arnold?’

‘Indeed it is.’

It was Tuesday of course. He always came down to London on Tuesdays. She noted with approval his bottle-green jacket, his clean shirt and highly polished dark cap-toe shoes. Did anyone ‘do’ for him, now that his wife was dead? Well, army men were perfectly capable of doing for themselves.

‘Proofreading, I see.’ He pointed to the sheets on the desk.

‘No, no such luck. Raking up the past. This is something I wrote twenty years ago.’

‘Something you might turn into a novel?’

‘No, not really. Though there’s a puzzle there all right.’

She found Major Payne – the ‘intellectual Major’, as her son had dubbed him – gazing at her with such a blend of affection and solemnity that for an absurd moment she had the notion he might propose to her. It came to her as a relief – mingled, ludicrously, with disappointment – when he said, ‘I too have a puzzle for you. Shall we swap? I’ll tell you mine, you then tell me yours. Is it a deal?’

‘It’s a deal.’ She felt foolish, but what else could she have said? He could be so disarming.

‘Here goes. A man dies on 23rd January, yet is buried on 22nd January. How is that possible?’

‘Well…’ Antonia scowled. ‘If the man died in Fiji and the body was flown to Western Samoa for burial, the flight would cross the International Date Line from west to east, wouldn’t it, so the date would go back one day?’

‘Makes perfect sense,’ Major Payne said magnanimously. ‘This is a trick question, actually, so the simple answer is that he died at sea on the 23rd but his mortal remains weren’t recovered until a year later – next January, in fact. That’s when he was buried, on the 22nd. I told it to my aunt and she loved it.’

Antonia sighed. ‘I always go for the complicated.’

‘Well, your novel manages to combine both, a complicated plot and a trick that is wonderfully simple. It was such fun to read. Few people write stories like yours nowadays.’

‘Thank you for saying so, but I am sure you are wrong. Lots of people write better than me.’

‘I am not wrong. I am fed up with pretentious bores. Baronesses with missions who shall remain nameless.’

Antonia didn’t think it right to ask him to elaborate. How he managed to read so much she had no idea. She had imagined that all his energies would be channelled into the management of his Suffolk farm and the indoor cricket school he had established, which, he had told her, attracted teams from all over England to its six-a-side tournaments and other events. Besides, there were the social dos – dinner parties, polo tournaments – she imagined he’d be in great demand – amazing he hadn’t been snapped up yet – what had his late wife been like?

He was talking. ‘… and, really, your sentences are a joy to read.’

‘Don’t be idiotic.’

‘Do you know who said, “I like sentences that don’t budge though armies cross them”?’

Antonia was aware that he was looking down at her hands and she put them on her lap. ‘Monty?’ she suggested flippantly.

‘Virginia Woolf actually… So what’s your puzzle about?’ Major Payne twisted his head slightly to one side and screwed up his eyes at one of the sheets on the desk. ‘Lawrence Dufrette has the reputation of a maverick and is considered something of a loose cannon. I can read upside down, you see,’ he explained. ‘They taught us how to do it in the Secret Service. That was a longish while ago, but I haven’t yet lost the knack. Wait a minute.’ He tapped the sheet with a forefinger. ‘I used to know a Lawrence Dufrette. Must be the same chap. Name like that. Tall and stately – beak of a nose – wild glare. Like Wellington on amphetamines – or Heseltine, sans le nez, on speed?’

‘Yes.’ Antonia laughed.

‘Fancy. It’s a small world. Well, he’s written a book that’s totally bizarre. Under a pen name. I read the review in Fortean Times first – I do read an awful lot of tosh, mind. The reviewer gave away Dufrette’s real name, so I went and got hold of the book. I was curious. Needless to say it wasn’t reviewed anywhere else.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it is too bizarre.’

‘In what way bizarre? What is it about?’

Major Payne stroked his jaw with a forefinger. ‘Well, his theory is that the same interconnected bloodlines – the so-called Babylonian brotherhood – have controlled and dominated our planet for thousands of years. The President of the United States and members of the British royal family are part of it – many other world leaders as well. Mind-controlled human robots are used to pass messages between people outside the normal channels. The communications are dictated under a form of hypnosis brought about by means of a high voltage gun, which lowers blood sugar levels and makes the person more open to suggestion. It isn’t science fiction, but the history of the world according to Lawrence Dufrette. He claims in the introduction that he has researched the subject extensively.’

‘I wonder if he became completely deranged after Sonya’s death,’ Antonia said thoughtfully The next moment she cried, ‘Oh – he does list the Babylonian brotherhood in Who’s Who as one of his interests!’

‘That was his daughter, wasn’t it? Sonya. There was something wrong with her, correct?’

‘Yes. They thought she was autistic.’

‘She drowned, didn’t she?’

‘That was the verdict.’

He looked at her. ‘How well do you know Dufrette?’

‘We stayed at the same house twenty years ago. I thought I saw him yesterday – twice. Once outside White’s, then here, in the library. Sounds incredible, doesn’t it, but he seems to haunt me. I hope I am not going mad.‘

‘There is a definite link between madness and creativity,’ Payne said in grave tones. ‘It’s been scientifically proven. Writers are at a particular risk.’

‘Oh, thank you for warning me… Where did you meet Lawrence Dufrette?’

‘We were in the Secret Service together. Different departments. I had just joined. He. wasn’t at all popular. Had no friends, apart from old Mortlock, who was already on his way out. Mortlock had been to school with Dufrette pere… Lawrence Dufrette was abrasive, contemptuous and critical of everything and everybody. And that wasn’t a front concealing any cavernous uncertainties – he did genuinely believe he was better than everybody else.’

‘That was very much the impression he gave when I knew him.’

‘I do remember the first time I saw him. I went into his office to borrow a file. He was sitting at his desk, very still, staring straight ahead, his patrician profile tilted ever so slightly upward, as if he were listening to celestial harps lesser mortals couldn’t hear.’ Payne laughed. He looks ten years younger when he laughs, Antonia thought. ‘Then he saw me and looked enormously put out. His face twisted demoniacally… Apparently he had a great appetite for byzantine dealings and he engaged in elaborate plotting to eliminate his enemies

‘Do you know a Major Nagle?’ Antonia interrupted.

‘Nagle? I believe I have heard the name, but no, I don’t know him. I think he left the service altogether. I may be wrong… In what way is Nagle important?’

‘He was one of Dufrette’s enemies.’

‘Really? How interesting… Did you get on well with Dufrette? I do hope he was decent to you?’

‘As a matter of fact he was. When his daughter disappeared – presumed drowned in the river – his wife Lena became hysterical. She suggested it had been my fault, but he said nothing – nothing at all. When I told him how sorry I was, he shook my hand… I was there, you see, when it happened.’

‘What’s the puzzle exactly?’

‘I believe there is something wrong somewhere in my account of the events leading to Sonya’s drowning. I can’t say what it is but I know it’s there…’

There was a pause. ‘Do you think she was murdered?’ he asked.

Antonia blinked. ‘I don’t know. I have all sorts of ideas. Some really far-fetched ones. My suspicions keep shifting. A moment ago I even thought Lady Mortlock’s interest in eugenics might have had something to do with it!’

‘Elimination of the mental defectives, eh?’

‘That sort of thing, yes. Very silly, really. Out of the question. I don’t think Lady Mortlock cared for Sonya, but then she didn’t like children. She’d never had any.’ Antonia pushed the folder towards him slightly. ‘I’d be glad of your opinion. Do you think you could…’

Major Payne said with great alacrity that he would be delighted to read what she had written. He had le gout du policier, he was terribly clever at noticing things, but he had never before been involved in a real-life mystery. He could start now, couldn’t he?

‘I’ll order some coffee for you, shall I?’

‘Please do. They make damned good coffee here.’ Picking up the folder and without another word, he went up to one of the high-backed armchairs beside the fireplace and sat down. Antonia watched him take out his pipe, a straight-stemmed briar, which he proceeded to fill with tobacco from a leather pouch. He struck a match, puffed away and opened the folder.

The Sherlock Holmes touch. Le gout du policier. They both shared it. This is not a game, she reminded herself.

She hoped she was not making a fool of herself.