The Murder Of Gonzago

19

‘Don’t know what to make of Aunt Hortense,’ Major Payne said. ‘Would you say she was as cunning as the coiled cobra she used to wear round her wrist?’

‘I am not sure. That would be overrating her, I think.’

He started the engine. ‘Toute vérité n’est pas bonne à dire indeed… Does she really believe that telling half-truths or distorted truths is better than telling no truth at all? It’s pretty much the same thing, isn’t it? No – it’s worse!’

‘She was quivering like a twig in a gale,’ Antonia said thoughtfully. ‘Could she be the killer?’

‘Technically speaking she could be. She wasn’t in the room at the crucial time.’

‘She said she’d gone to the loo… She’d watched their rehearsals. That means she must have been familiar with the exact position of the body on the chaise longue and so on,’ Antonia mused. ‘She knew Lord Remnant would be in a direct line to the french windows. She was actually caught on camera drawing the silk curtains across the windows just before the sketch started. Did you notice?’

‘I most certainly did,’ said Payne. ‘You mean – she could have been making sure she wouldn’t be seen?’

‘Exactly. She could easily have popped out through a side door, run across the terrace and shot Lord R. through the curtains, dropped the gun and run back into the room. It would have taken a minute, if that.’

‘Yes. She might easily have got hold of the gun earlier on… She might have been hiding it in the folds of her dress, or inside her handbag.’

‘Stephan was on the terrace, wearing the Bottom head, but he was probably too cranked up to make sense of what was going on…’

‘Or he wasn’t there at all,’ said Payne. ‘By the time Hortense appeared on the terrace, he might have taken off the head and removed himself. Perhaps it was Aunt Hortense who put on the Bottom head? A somewhat bizarre touch, but that’s what she would do if she wanted to throw suspicion on Stephan.’

‘Would she have wanted to throw suspicion on her grandson? Involve him in a murder case?’

‘She might have instinctively assumed that the police would never be called, that Lord Remnant’s murder would never become a case.’

‘But what was her motive?’

‘Well, she hated Lord Remnant. She made that abundantly clear. She thought the world would be a better place without him. Lord Remnant said and did infuriating things. He called her Miss Baedeker. He hid her glasses.’

‘You wouldn’t kill someone because they hid your glasses, would you?’

‘He laughed when she said sorry to an armchair after bumping into it. Perhaps she couldn’t bear to watch him humiliating Clarissa?’

‘The mother love motive.’ Antonia nodded. ‘And what a powerful motive that can be… It’s possible, I suppose. She kept saying how much she loved her daughter…’

‘If this were a whodunnit, Miss Tilling would be the least likely suspect. The Addled Aunt. Bespectacled, garrulous, inconsequential and disarmingly scatty. Strictly for comic relief purposes.’

‘Actually, Hugh, she is not such a typical aunt figure. She is the Aunt with a Past.’

‘Yes. I keep wondering about her past… She looked damned attractive in that photo, with her come-hither smile and Keppel Clasp. Didn’t look like an aunt at all. She was a bad girl. Giving birth out of wedlock and so on. Comes from a line of bad girls, if the Keppel link is anything to go by. Mrs Keppel, Violet Trefusis, the former Mrs Parker Bowles. All of them bad girls.’

Antonia said, ‘I really doubt whether drug-riddled Stephan would have been able to focus well enough to plug his stepfather’s nape.’

‘The same objection could be raised about Hortense. If Hortense’s eyesight is so bad that she apologizes to armchairs, could she have got Lord Remnant so accurately in the head? It would have been like the man in the fairy tale who manages to shoot a fly in one eye.’

‘Unless she exaggerated her bad eyesight…’

There was a pause. ‘Lord Remnant had been receiving death threats,’ said Payne. ‘It may have been one or more of the locals who killed him, though would they have been able to get hold of his gun?’

‘The black major-domo might have given it to them.’

‘Indeed he might… Still, the murder was committed with Lord Remnant’s gun, which suggests it was an inside job.’

‘Louise Hunter may be afraid of taking any direct action. Do you think she would talk to us?’

‘She might. Let’s try to beard her as she has tea at the Matroni tearooms in Kensington, shall we?’ Payne suggested. ‘Or you could do it by yourself – less threatening, perhaps?’

‘I don’t know what she looks like. I never saw that videotape,’ Antonia reminded him.

‘She wore a helmet. She looked preposterous. Far from prepossessing.’

‘She is not very likely to be wearing a helmet when she has tea at Matroni, is she? I doubt a helmet is a permanent feature of her toilette.’

‘You will recognize her, I am sure. A large lady with vague hair and big feet.’

‘London is full of large ladies with big feet.’

‘True. Gosh, how depressing.’ Payne rubbed his chin. ‘Well, I could come with you, point her out discreetly, then withdraw. How about that? She has tea at Matroni every Thursday afternoon… What day is it tomorrow?’

‘Thursday.’

‘Is it really? Now, isn’t that lucky? We’ll do it tomorrow,’ said Payne. ‘I don’t think we should waste any time. We shall hunt down the Hunter! She is probably expecting someone to approach her anyhow.’

‘There is something else that struck me as curious,’ Antonia said thoughtfully. ‘Why was Clarissa so frightened when she imagined it was a man who was phoning her? Is Clarissa expecting a call from someone? Is that in any way important?’

After Stephan rang off, Louise Hunter remained sitting very still. She told herself it was all nonsense. It was one of Stephan’s drug-fuelled fantasies. He had been imagining things. Seeing things. He had been under the influence of heaven knew what lethal cocktail. The Grimaud was nothing but a preposterous superstition, a myth. The Grimaud didn’t exist…

Despite herself, Louise felt disturbed. She felt – chilled. She had heard about the Grimaud. She believed she had seen a crude drawing of the Grimaud somewhere. A terrifying-looking creature… Of course it didn’t exist. But Stephan had sounded so positive.

Should she have some ice-cream? She always had ice-cream when she was perplexed about something…

Three minutes later she resumed her seat, a tub of Häagen-Dazs in front of her. American ice-cream was the best. Yummy. Better than Italian ice-cream. Better than Belgian ice-cream. Louise was something of an expert on ice-cream. Midnight cookies was her favourite flavour.

Stephan claimed to have seen the Grimaud with his own eyes. And there was something else. Two things, in fact. Lord Remnant’s hands. The laugh Basil had heard in Lord Remnant’s dressing room. She couldn’t say why, but she believed all three were connected somehow… Though how exactly were they connected?

No, Basil wouldn’t listen to her. Basil found her annoying. Basil detested her. Through the binoculars she had seen him walk in the direction of Remnant Castle. She had caught a glimpse of his face. There had been a closed, cagey look about him – an air of – of suppressed yearning.

Basil was mad about Clarissa. That much was clear to her. Perhaps he was trying to engineer a meeting with Clarissa? How she hated Clarissa! Clarissa – with her sidling seductive walk – with that indescribably rampant look in her eyes-

Whore, Louise mouthed. Slut.

The tape. Had Gerard Fenwick received it? Had he watched it and, if he had, had he seen the gun showing through the window curtains? Most importantly, what was he going to do about it? Well, he would get in touch with Clarissa and ask her what it all meant. That would be the logical course of action, wouldn’t it?

Louise rather liked the idea of Clarissa being pushed into a tight corner and asked awkward questions.

My brother was killed, wasn’t he? You know who shot him, Clarissa, don’t you? You must know. I am sure you are behind it. However did you manage to get a death certificate signed by two doctors?

The tape was not the only thing Louise had sent. There was also the anonymous letter to Clarissa. She had cut the letters out of Country Life and the Field. Well, the more harassed and harried Clarissa felt, the better. People, women in particular, aged prematurely when they were kept in a state of anxiety. Women lost their allure fast. What was it Lady Wishfort said? Why, I am arrantly flayed; I look like an old peeled wall!

Arrantly flayed. She would love to see Clarissa arrantly flayed!

Things between her and Basil hadn’t always been as bad as they had become. Only a couple of months back they had talked. They had agreed there was nothing like the last days of summer – those beautiful hot days that had within them the seeds of their own fragility. She told him how much she enjoyed waking up to a mild pinkish dawn and watching the mist lifting from the garden. He said there was nothing like an autumn sun shining out of a cloudless blue sky, without glare and without brilliance-

Louise Hunter fumbled for her handkerchief. Odd thing, memories – rising at such unexpected moments, quite unsolicited – exploding on the surface like bubbles.

And then, without rhyme or reason, she remembered something else that had happened at La Sorcière.

It had been about an hour and a half after lunch. She and Hortense had happened to walk past the open door of Lord Remnant’s study. Louise had been talking about the farm. Friends of Hortense’s had apparently just bought a farm in South Africa.

They had caught sight of Lord Remnant sitting at his desk, a startlingly gleeful expression on his face. In his hands Lord Remnant had been holding-