The Murder Of Gonzago

24

The novel I propose to write falls into a genre often described by the cognoscenti as ‘experimental’ and by more conventional readers as ‘puzzling’, Gerard Fenwick, thirteenth Earl Remnant, wrote in his diary. Its status as a novel will owe absolutely nothing to the traditional definition of the form. There will be no hero or heroine, but there will certainly be an anti-hero and an anti-heroine.

At first sight my novel will seem more like a random collection of episodes, though the perceptive reader will soon become aware of interconnections at both a material and a thematic level: characters met in one story will pop up in another; a version of an event we heard of from one angle is later renarrated from another.

A tiny silver guillotine will make an intermittent symbolic appearance, a persistent reminder of the aristocracy’s ultimate fate, until it eventually vanishes into thin air, only to reappear most amazingly in the hands of someone well versed in the gentle art of blackmail.

It will be a murder mystery of sorts.

The novel will start with the obituary in The Times of an utterly impossible peer of the realm, the most peerless of asses, say, an earl. The obituary will give ‘heart attack’ as the cause of death, but in point of fact the unsavoury nobleman would have died as a result of a gun wound in the occiput.

It has just occurred to me that modern-day murder holds as exact a state as a medieval monarch. The exits and entrances are all laid down according to the most formal of protocols. Investigating officer, surgeon, photographer, fingerprint experts, DNA experts and so on make their bow and play their appointed part. (Do readers like police procedurals? Terribly boring, surely?)

It’s the dead man’s brother who tells the story and one of the central themes of the book will be the difficulty, nay the impossibility, of telling of an honest story. The narrator, as the dear reader will discover soon enough, turns out to be dramatically unreliable.

It is the narrator who will be exposed as the killer at the end. Or has that been done before? The narrator is of a largely lunatic cast of mind, something of which he is only partially aware, but he contrives to write in a frighteningly lucid, pedantic sort of way, which imparts to his story the black comic feel of Nabokov’s Pale Fire-

Gerard looked up. There had been a knock on the door.

It was the club steward. ‘The young lady, sir. She said you were expecting her.’

The fellow had spoken in portentously hushed tones; it somehow suggested that his message might have a more sinister meaning than his words conveyed.

Gerard gave an amused smile. ‘Am I expecting a young lady?’

‘Yes, sir. A Miss Glover.’

‘Oh yes, of course. Do let her in… Dear Renée!’ Gerard took off his half-moon glasses and rose to his feet to greet the composed-looking young woman, whose dark hair was parted neatly in the middle and drawn back in two shining waves to form a knot.

‘Hello, Gerard. Hope this is not frightfully inconvenient?’

‘No, not at all, my dear.’ He kissed her cheek. He stood beaming at her. ‘How lovely to see you, Renée. A damsel with a dulcimer!’

‘Is that how you see me, as an Abyssinian maid?’

‘Only figuratively, my dear. I feel strangely inspired each time I see you. Inspiration is so terribly important to me. I am, after all, an artist, a writer. I do miss our tête-à-têtes, you know. You wouldn’t believe this, but I am at the planning stages of a novel.’

‘A new novel?’

‘One of those postmodern thingummybobs. Shall I ring and ask them to bring us some tea? The grub here is awfully good. Better than anything I get at home. Infinitely better. Hope this doesn’t sound too disloyal.’

‘No, thank you. I don’t want any tea.’

‘Won’t you sit down? That’s a very comfortable chair by the fireplace.’ He touched her elbow and pointed towards a high-backed chair, studded and covered in dark red leather. ‘Like a papal throne, isn’t it? Are you sure you don’t want any tea? You look a little pale, my dear. Is everything all right?’

‘Yes… I am fine, thank you, Gerard.’

‘There are tiny dark smudges, like thumbprints, beneath your eyes, if you don’t mind my saying so… Oddly becoming…’

‘I didn’t sleep very well last night, that’s all.’

‘I am so sorry. I don’t want to appear curious or interfering, my dear, but it seems to me there’s something you are keeping back – or is that my writer’s imagination? How did you know I would be at the club?’

‘Your maid told me. I rang your house first.’

‘How clever of you! You were always an enterprising girl. Felicity made the biggest mistake in her life when she gave you the sack, don’t you think?’

‘It isn’t for me to say. No doubt she thought she was doing the right thing.’

‘Felicity can be a bore. I do hope you are profitably employed, my dear. You continue to do jobs for Clarissa, don’t you?’

‘No, not any longer. Not since Grenadin.’

‘Really? That’s some time ago now, isn’t it? Shame. Any particular reason? You haven’t fallen out with Clarissa, have you? I know she can be difficult. How are things at Remnant, I wonder? Are the servants happy?’

‘I don’t think they are. Clarissa doesn’t want anyone at Remnant at the moment. She has dismissed all the servants. I bumped into Tradewell the other day. He was very upset about it. Practically in tears.’

‘Dismissed all the servants?’ Gerard stared at her. ‘What an extraordinary thing to do. Did he say why?’

‘She didn’t give them any explanation.’

‘You don’t think it would help if I had a word with her? About reinstating you and so on?’

‘No, thank you, Gerard.’

‘Is there anything at all I can do for you, my dear? I could give you money, you know, as much as you want. That wouldn’t be a problem.’

‘You are extremely kind, but no, I am sure I can manage.’

‘It’s awfully sweet of you to come and see me, my dear. I was terribly fond of you, you know. Still am. I feared our paths might never cross again. I thought you were furious with us.’

‘I am not. Not with you.’

‘You won’t mind my smoking one of my cigars, will you? It will bring back the good old times when we had our regular pow-wows.’ He reached for his cigar case. ‘A cigar can be as potently Proustian as the madeleine of memory. That sounds quite good, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes. You do say clever things, Gerard.’

‘You strike me as a bit tense, Renée. What is it? A drink, perhaps? I’ve got some first-class malt. You were never averse to malt. Or would you like some brandy?’

‘No, thank you, Gerard.’

‘You keep saying, No, thank you, Gerard. Don’t think I like it… Hope you won’t mind me biting off the end? Most uncouth, I know, but I happen to have lost- Good lord, that looks like my lost cigar cutter!’ Gerard stared at the metal object that lay across the palm of Renée’s outstretched hand. She had risen to her feet. ‘I could swear that is my cigar cutter!’

‘It is your cigar cutter.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. It’s got your initials on it. GF.’

‘How peculiar. Yes, you are perfectly correct. Thank you so much, my dear. I’m awfully glad to be reunited with it. I must confess I was absurdly attached to my cigar cutter.’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘It’s emotionally starved people who get obsessed with trinkets and objets, isn’t it?’ He inserted the tip of his cigar inside the cutter. ‘Wherever did you find the damned thing?’

She looked at him. ‘Can’t you remember where you lost it?’

‘I can’t. I’d been racking my brain, to no avail. Haven’t the foggiest. Where was it?’

‘I found it at La Sorcière. On the terrace outside the french windows.’

‘At La Sorcière? That’s my late brother’s place on Grenadin. On the terrace, did you say?’ He struck a match and put it to his cigar.

‘Yes. I found it on the night your brother was killed. The cigar cutter was lying not far from the gun.’ She paused. ‘The gun your brother was shot with.’

‘Shouldn’t one say, the gun with which your brother was shot? Or am I being pedantic?’

‘You came to Grenadin that night, didn’t you?’ Renée said quietly.

‘You think I did?’

‘I know you did. I smelt cigar smoke. Funnily enough I thought of you at once.’

‘Is that so? What was that famous scene – it’s in a book – now, what was it?’ Gerard tapped his fingers across his forehead. ‘No, don’t tell me! Jane Eyre? Yes! Jane catches the whiff of Rochester’s cigar and she says, I know it well. She is clearly thrilled. Well, Victorians knew how to convey eroticism.’

‘Gerard-’

‘Both Rochester and Jane are in the garden at Thornfield. The cigar smoke mingles with sweet-briar and southern-wood, jasmine, pink, and rose. With the heroine giddy on these scents, only one outcome is possible, Charlotte Brontë makes that abundantly clear. So you believe I was at La Sorcière on the fatal night, do you?’

‘I do. At the crematorium I saw you scratch your hand. I remembered you saying once you’d never live somewhere like Grenadin because of the blood-sucking mosquitoes.’

He glanced down at his hand. ‘Gone now. You think that was a mosquito bite? What if I told you I suffer from an allergy related to eggs? What if I told you that my wife filches my cigars and actually smokes them? Perhaps it was Felicity who was in Grenadin on the fatal night?’

‘Where were you on the fatal night?’

‘In Scotland. Fishing. Felicity was in London. Or so she said. We haven’t got much in common, I fear. I used to be fond of her, but we’ve drifted apart. Happens often in marriages, or so I am told. Well, either of us could have gone to Grenadin, I suppose, without the other one knowing. It isn’t as inconceivable as if, say, that stuffed mongoose over there’ – he pointed with his cigar – ‘should suddenly wag its tail and say hello, is it?’

‘Why should Felicity want to kill your brother?’

‘Same reason as me, my dear. Money. Felicity’s awfully keen on expanding her antiques business. Besides, she’s always found Roderick a trial, ever since he insisted on shooting an apple off her head… You don’t really think it was me who plugged Roderick in the head, do you?’

‘How do you know he was shot in the head?’

‘I watched that videotape… One can actually see the gun protruding from between the window curtains!’

‘What tape are you talking about?’

‘Someone sent us a tape. A recording of the dumbshow you put on at La Sorcière… I knew what it was at once. The Murder of Gonzago. Fratricide is a jolly interesting subject. Old Hamlet was, by all accounts, a pussycat and he didn’t really deserve the earful of poison he got.’

‘Your brother phoned you the day before he died. Basil Hunter mentioned it to me. Your brother was quite horrible to you – he told you to go and kill him – he told you that was the only way to get hold of his money… You aren’t going to deny that such a conversation took place, are you?’

‘No, I am not. Perfectly true.’ Gerard nodded. ‘Roderick was frightfully rude to me. I’d been badgering him for money, but then Papa did say on his deathbed we must help each other. Roderick had an awful lot of money and yet he refused to finance the Dilettanti Droug Press, or rather he kept saying he would think about it. He was frightfully rude to me on the phone.’

‘Were you upset?’

‘Of course I was upset. I must admit I got angry too. Furious. I felt – well, I felt like killing him.’ Gerard regarded the burning end of his cigar. There was a pause. ‘They can’t prove if someone’s been to a foreign country, can they?’

‘They can.’

‘They’d have one’s details at the airport, I suppose… It’s all computers now, isn’t it? Then there are the stamps in one’s passport and so on. Unless one has used a false passport? Apparently an awful lot of people travel on false passports, I read somewhere.’

‘You would have been caught on CCTV cameras,’ Renée said a trifle wearily. ‘They are everywhere.’

‘Are they? Damn. No privacy these days. What if I’d changed my appearance?’

‘Gerard, this could be serious-’

‘I could have worn a false moustache… It’s the kind of thing that happens in detective stories… As a matter of fact, detective stories could be vehicles for all kinds of ideas, so perhaps I shouldn’t sneer at them,’ he went on in a meditative voice. ‘And nobody could stop me if I decided to write sentences like “His sleuthorial instincts were stimulated.” I mean I could experiment in all kinds of ways… Incidentally, did you tell anyone where and when you came across my cigar cutter?’

‘No. No one knows about it.’

‘I am glad.’ Suddenly he laughed. ‘So if I were to kill you now, the secret, as they say, would die with you!’

‘I feel so awful, I wouldn’t mind dying,’ Renée Glover whispered.