The Murder Of Gonzago

30

Clarissa woke with a start. It was terribly early, she could tell. Her heart was thumping wildly in her chest. I am on my own, she thought.

As she further drifted into consciousness, she heard the wind outside, alternately moaning and howling, hurling itself against the window panes like some demented monster intent on breaking in and devouring her.

She had had a dream. She’d seen a mouse on the floor, obviously ill, huddled and shivering, so in order to give it a quick death, she picked it up by the tail and threw it into a puddle of water. She’d heard a voice. Don’t you see that the water is not deep enough? The wretched thing won’t drown; it will just go on swimming about. So she picked the mouse out of the puddle, but as she did so the mouse twisted round and bit her finger. She heard the voice again. That mouse has a disease and now you will get it.

Thinking about it, she felt nauseous, ill. She looked down at her fingers. The only too familiar feeling of impending disaster was upon her, the sense of being poised on the very edge of chaos, the conviction that she’d never be free from the tentacles of her impossible predicament-

What time was it? Half past three? Christ.

Reaching out for the silver-plated radio on her bedside table, she turned it on. She liked listening to the BBC World Service. It soothed her…

But she found it hard to concentrate. Her ordeal, she reminded herself, was only just starting. Should she take one of her pills?

Clarissa began to pray to God. She spoke the words aloud.

She promised never to have another affair as long as she lived. She would never dine at the Ritz again. She was going to take proper care of Stephan. She would devote the rest of her life to Stephan. She wouldn’t wear lipstick in the morning. She would never wear stilettos again. She would be nice to Aunt Hortense-

‘How to murder someone and get away with it… You see, in Keldorp I shared living quarters with a little man called Harrison-’

What was that? Sounded like some creepy radio drama. Should she change the station? Quite interesting, actually-

She listened.

‘Harrison was one of the most boring people I have ever met. Except on one subject. Murder. I don’t mean he killed anyone himself. He was fascinated by the theory of it. He must have read every book ever printed on the subject. One night he told me he’d worked out the perfect murder. It all depended on one thing. The murderer had to have an accomplice. Someone he could trust absolutely. Someone who wanted – who needed – to kill as much as he did-’

Wanted to kill as much as he did… No, that didn’t quite apply to her. She had aided and abetted the killer, true, but that was after the murder had been committed.

The fact was, she had had no idea there was going to be a murder. If she had known Stephan had got hold of Roderick’s gun, she would have done something about it – she would have taken the gun away from him. Of course she would have.

An idea began advancing from the shadows of Clarissa’s mind slowly, gradually, like a figure emerging from a dark cave…

The codicil. The five million pounds to Peter Quin. The codicil suggested that the murder might have been carefully thought through, premeditated, planned in detail. Why hadn’t she thought of it before? It suggested that it wasn’t Stephan, poor thing, who had committed the murder, but her monster of a husband…

Yes.

She gasped. She saw it very clearly now. Roderick had lured Peter Quin to La Sorcière with the sole intention of killing him. She had believed it was Stephan who killed Quin, mistaking him for Roderick, and Roderick had encouraged her to continue thinking it because it had suited his book…

That night she had agreed to everything he told her to do; she had nodded and said yes; she had been dazed, confused, in a state of shock. Roderick told her that the idea had just occurred to him as he stood looking down at Quin’s dead body – but that had been a lie.

She had been blind – yes, blind!

Roderick had meant things to happen that way all along.

She heard the voice on the radio announce the end of the play and she rose, propping herself on her elbow. She reached out for her pale pink kimono. She put it on and sat up in bed. She was extremely cold. Her teeth chattered. The heating wasn’t working properly – but it wasn’t only the heating – she felt a chill – a particular kind of chill – there had been a sound as well-

The next moment she knew.

He was at Remnant.

She saw her bedroom door open. She had locked it, but he clearly had a key. She should have barricaded herself in. Why did all the good ideas come when it was too late?

He removed his homburg with a flourish.

‘Peter Quin at your service, m’lady,’ he said with a courtly bow. ‘I don’t think I woke you up, did I? My dear Clarissa, you look ravissante. It is with such a delectable sight that the Devil must have tempted Our Saviour. I have lived in the grip of a deep obsessive frustration,’ he went on. ‘You are the only one who can bring me out of it. I have been thinking about you an awful lot, you know.’

Clarissa had pulled the sheets up to her chin. She was so terrified, she could hardly move.

‘Aren’t you glad to see me?’

‘I need to dress,’ she managed to say. ‘It is very early.’

‘It is the right time, my dear. I know this on the highest authority. You don’t need to dress. Au contraire.’

‘I need to dress. Would you leave the room for a bit?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Please.’

‘Your cheek is white, but I have every intention of changing that lily to a rose.’

‘No – please-’

‘Arise battalions and conquer,’ he hummed. He took a step towards her.

‘Don’t – please-’

‘Don’t – please,’ he mimicked. He laughed. ‘Too many pleases please me not.’ He felt exhilarated. He might have been given a shot of helium. The next moment he became serious. ‘We’ve got unfinished business, Clarissa. You couldn’t have forgotten? Women usually remember things like that.’

‘What are you talking about? You’re mad.’

He pouted. ‘I do hope this will not turn into another mortification of vain regrets.’

‘Go away!’

‘I feel it my duty to make up for the lack of post-nuptial euphoria. There was a problem then, but there’s no problem now. The problem’s been resolved. I’ve been taking something. Pretty powerful stuff, my dear.’ He licked his lips. ‘Take off those stupid clothes. Come on, be a good girl. I want you to do it with a slow, twisting movement. I want to see them in a tangle on the floor – there.’ He pointed.

‘No!’

‘You are being discourteous to an inconceivable degree. Or are you afraid that, like a dewdrop, you might disintegrate at the slightest touch?’

‘Get out of my room!’

‘When you were with the good doctor, you were not in the least inhibited. Thou hast committed fornication – but that was in another country.’

‘Go away!’

‘I have seen you, you know. The two of you together. I had a camera installed in your boudoir. I have watched the two of you – together. You had no idea? I can’t help thinking Freud got it all wrong somehow,’ he went on thoughtfully. ‘Those all-too-respectable bourgeois women of Vienna who lay on his couch and spouted tales of being seduced or raped by their fathers-’

‘Don’t come near me!’

‘The presumptuous fellow told them they were fantasizing, expressing their suppressed desires, but what proof was there they were fantasies? What if the women were telling the truth? I can’t quite tell what put fathers and daughters in my mind. Was it the disparity in our respective ages?’

‘Get out! Leave me alone!’

He took another step towards the bed. ‘I have the right to expect a submission of sorts. In fact, I would insist on it. I know I am old enough to be your father, my dear, but I also happen to be your husband.’

‘My God, what’s that on your shoulders?’ Clarissa gasped.

‘D’you mean my wings? Don’t you like them? Real feathers, you know.’ Lord Remnant hitched up his shoulders and the black wings opened and closed.

Clarissa screamed.