The Hunt for Sonya Dufrette (15 page)

‘Hermione - Mione - Mine. It’s the name Lena had for me. I loved it when she said it. Go on, go on, don’t stop. Why did you stop?’

‘I do love you and want you and want to spend my life with you - more than anything in the world, and by this, I mean anything.’
Antonia looked up. ‘It’s unsigned.’

‘Lena wrote it. I let Bea think it’s one of Michael’s love letters. Well, Michael never wrote me any love letters. Michael was never interested in me in that way. Mercifully, he turned out to be what is known as “under-sexed”. I wouldn’t have survived the marriage otherwise!’ She cackled. ‘We did our own things. Sometimes, at weekends, he disappeared completely. He went bird-watching. Anyhow. Lena kept writing notes like that, reckless creature. She loved me too. I think she was sincere. At one point she did want us to move in together, but of course that was out of the question. It was the fifties. I could never have contemplated setting up house with another woman and leading the life of a social outcast. Never. Besides, it wouldn’t have worked. I loved Lena but I also saw how she would deteriorate with age. The seeds were already there ... By the way, it was
she
who seduced me, not the other way round. She was extremely knowledgeable about that sort of thing. You see, before I met her, she had been with both men
and
women. I was thirty-seven. Nothing like it had ever happened to me before. As a matter of fact, I rather despised women of that ilk. I remember when we went to see that play -’

‘Not
The Reluctant Debutante?’

‘No. Of course not. Whatever gave you the idea? It was an underground play called
The Monocled Countess.
It had been inspired by Wedekind’s
Lulu.
The main protagonist was this tortured gentlewoman. A pathetic, tragic-comic sort of creature who sits at a rather louche cabaret and drowns her frustrated lusts in absinthe as she ogles the naked girlies who prance around her. We see her sitting at a table, on her own, with a carefully poised, long cigarette holder, a monocle and a mannish bob. That is how the play opens. After her heart is broken by a heartless little minx, she starts visiting Sapphic brothels. All of that was considered extremely risqué at the time. I don’t suppose anyone would bat an eyelid nowadays?’

‘No.’

‘The performance took place in a cellar of sorts. Lena screamed with laughter throughout - she thought it all hilarious. I on the other hand could hardly contain my tears. Well, that was when I saw how different we were. The first cracks, as they say, had started appearing. Lena then introduced me to these two other women who lived together. Philippa and Diane. Philippa was the vanilla one; she had immaculately curled golden hair, tippety-tappety shoes, little white gloves and a skirt you could twirl yourself to death in. Diane was remarkably butch. Stocky, with a crew-cut,
extremely
baggy trousers and a striped blazer, with a sharkskin waistcoat underneath. She smoked untipped cigarettes and took snuff, I think. She took a wild fancy to me. She claimed I looked like the central figure in Jean Dupas’s picture
Les Perruches.
You know the tall, dark woman with the Roman nose who’s holding two rose bouquets?’

Antonia frowned. ‘She is surrounded by nudes, isn’t she?’

‘Indeed she is - while she herself is wearing a long black, rather puritanical-looking dress. I thought it quite flattering, actually. Philippa on the other hand tried to teach me
polari,
the dyke argot. It’s all very different now, isn’t it? I mean women do whatever they please. They are already vicars and they hope to become bishops, and they have male strippers at their hen parties. As you can see, I’ve been keeping up with the Zeitgeist. Well, Antonia, it was good seeing you. Would you like to go now? I am very tired.’

Antonia looked at her in desperation. ‘The day before Sonya disappeared you told me that Miss Haywood’s mother was very ill, in hospital,’ she said. ‘That was a lie. What was the purpose of it?’

‘Miss Haywood’s mother? What are you talking about?’

Antonia persisted. ‘It happened the day before Sonya disappeared -’

Suddenly Lady Mortlock gave a nod. ‘Oh yes. Yes. As a matter of fact I do remember our conversation. I did tell you that Miss Haywood’s mother was rushed to hospital. That’s correct.’

Antonia wondered if Lady Mortlock had started playing some game with her. She leant forward. ‘She wasn’t. That was a lie.’

Lady Mortlock shrugged. ‘Well, my dear Antonia, if it was, I had no idea. That was what I was told by Lena.’

‘I don’t believe you. I think the lie originated with you,’ Antonia suggested boldly. I have nothing to lose, she thought.

There was a moment’s pause. Lady Mortlock sat staring at her. ‘Are you by any chance thinking what I believe you are thinking? That I killed Sonya on account of her mental deficiency, because of my obsession with eugenics? That I ordered her to be drowned in the river, like some unwanted kitten? That perhaps I paid someone to do it?’

‘Well, did you?’

‘I can’t believe we are having this conversation. That’s the kind of thing that happens in detective stories of the more far-fetched kind. This is rather entertaining actually. Perhaps Guedalla was right when he said that detective stories are the normal recreation of noble minds. I am glad you didn’t leave when I told you to. I do feel better. Let’s see. I never left the drawing room that morning, not for a moment. Plenty of witnesses, including you. Consequently, it couldn’t have been me in person. Now then, could I have done it by proxy? Could I have commissioned one of my gardeners? Or perhaps that Major?’ She cackled. ‘What was his name? Eagle? Some such name. He was the only one without an alibi that morning - and he detested Lawrence.’

‘His name was Nagle.’

‘One of those seemingly unlikely murderous partnerships.
Lady Mortlock and Major Nagle.
You saw him kiss my hand when he arrived at Twiston for that party of course? You were in the hall at the time. Don’t you remember? Major Nagle raised my hand to his lips and held it there. It was an anachronistic, theatrical, rather foreign kind of gesture - Rudolph Valentino became famous for that sort of thing -
not
what one would associate with an English officer and gentleman. Why do you think Major Nagle did that? Didn’t it occur to you that he might be reassuring me that he’d carry out his pledge to me? That he wouldn’t fail me?’

‘No - no, I don’t remember.’

‘Perhaps the Major and I were members of some crazy neo-Nazi cult? Perhaps we were at the centre of some
Herrenvolk
plot to purge the world of its imbecile infants?’

Actually that is not such a bad idea for a story, Antonia thought. It could certainly be made to work. If people could believe that Diana and Dodi were alive, having faked their deaths, they could believe
anything.

Lady Mortlock might have read her mind because she sighed and said, ‘Well, I credited you with greater intelligence than that, Antonia. I am disappointed in you.’

15

‘They’

‘Well, Antonia - I hope you don’t mind me calling you Antonia?’ Major Payne said. ‘Miss Darcy sounds forbidding somehow, don’t you think?’

‘I don’t see why it should.’

‘Shades of
Pride and Prejudice
and that pompous ass Darcy, whom I never managed to like, not even after his transformation. And wasn’t there a Miss Darcy - a snobbish sister, who was even worse?’

‘No. That was Bingley’s sister. Miss Darcy was rather nice,’ Antonia said. ‘If I remember correctly, she is described as having “no equal for beauty, elegance and accomplishments”.’

‘Oh yes.
And
for the affection she inspires.’ He looked at her in a way which made it clear he considered that an attribute she herself possessed in abundance.

It was half past eleven the following morning and they were in the club library, comparing notes over coffee. At least they had been comparing notes before they went off at a tangent. Antonia wasn’t sure whether she should feel annoyed or flattered by his attentions which seemed to be becoming more ardent. She blamed herself for encouraging him, by first telling him of the rather annoying phone call she had received from her former husband the night before, then teasing him about the dog Apollo and the cat Daphne. Major Payne had got hold of her hand and said he wouldn’t let go of it unless she told him how she had learnt about it.

Antonia could have named Colonel Haslett as her informant at once, but had delayed for at least a quarter of a minute, during which time her hand had remained in his. She had made several futile attempts to pull it from his grip, which had only led to him tightening it. She hadn’t tried hard enough. She had enjoyed the experience and now had a ridiculously guilty feeling about it. That, she told herself, was
not
how responsible people in their fifties behaved. They had acted like silly teenagers. What would have happened if somebody had come in and seen them, engaged in a playful skirmish across her desk? Dallying in the library!

Antonia felt hot and a little faint. She found she was panicking. She wasn’t ready for a relationship, let alone marriage. It is too soon to allow another man into my life, she thought.

The day was warm and the library windows were open. From outside there came the smell of freshly mown grass - which, again, forcibly, reminded her of that fateful day at Twiston - also the sounds of Radio 4. The gardener was a young university student and he had his transistor radio on. As it happened, he was listening to a programme called
Hopes and Desires,
the first of a series of comedies about unconscious yearnings.

‘Well, if you are not happy with Miss Darcy, you can address me as Mrs Rushton.’ Which, Antonia pointed out with greater severity than she intended, happened to be her married name.

He sighed. ‘I’d rather call you Antonia and I hope you will call me Hugh one day. Well, we are making progress. The moving finger,’ he went on quickly, unless that be misconstrued, ‘is now firmly fixed on Lena ... Lena didn’t really care about her daughter. Lena fed Lady Mortlock the canard about Miss Haywood’s mother being ill in hospital. Lena phoned the nanny - shortly after Sonya disappeared. She didn’t sound at all like a mother mourning the death of her child. She warned the nanny against talking. Her exact words were,
You’d better keep
your
mouth shut, my girl, or they will kill us both.
We do assume, don’t we, that Lena was part of whatever conspiracy there was? That she knew exactly what happened?’

‘We do.’

‘But we don’t believe Lady Mortlock was the mastermind behind the conspiracy?’

‘No. I don’t really think Lady Mortlock had anything to do with Sonya’s disappearance. The only reason she told lies was because she didn’t want it to be known that she had had an affair with Lena.’

‘You don’t think that she and Major Nagle -’

‘No. The
Herrenvolk
conspiracy was not meant to be taken seriously. She was making fun of me.’

‘Was she though?’

‘Of course she was.’

‘It might have been one of those double bluffs,’ Payne reflected. ‘Maybe there
was
a conspiracy but she named Major Nagle because it made it all seem so absurd? Maybe she wanted you to dismiss the idea out of hand - which you did. What if she
was
telling the truth? Wait. What if her real partner was somebody else - somebody who was very close to her? What if her partner was her husband - or should I say her
so-called husband?’

‘Sir Michael?’

‘Sir Michael. Why did the Mortlocks stay together? From what Lady M. told you, theirs was clearly a marriage in name only - a
mariage blanc.
What if they were together exclusively for ideological reasons? What if they were confederates? No one would have thought it of Sir Michael, but he was actually a Freemason and apparently he belonged to a number of other esoteric societies, somebody in the department told me once.’

‘His obituary mentioned it too,’ she murmured, remembering.

‘There you are. He might have been a bad blood nut as well - he might even have been more fanatical than her!’ Payne paused. ‘Are you sure Sir Michael didn’t leave the room that morning while you were all watching the royal wedding?’

‘No ... Actually, he did. Yes. I forgot to mention it in my account, I know. But he wasn’t the only one. People did go out - the Falconers, Mrs Lynch-Marquis - for no more than a couple of minutes at a time and by themselves. The usual. There were two downstairs lavatories. Sir Michael couldn’t have been out for more than five minutes, I think. He went to the kitchen to have a word with the men who were providing the oak with a base. He had remembered something. It seemed to be urgent.’

‘How can you be sure he went to the kitchen? No, of course you aren’t sure. It’s not as though you followed him.’

‘Five minutes wouldn’t have been enough for him to go down to the river and drown Sonya.’

‘Who says Sonya drowned? He might have killed her somewhere else and hidden the body.’

Antonia smiled. ‘I could just about get away with it if I were to put this in a book -’

‘All right - but, my dear girl, the fact remains that some sort of conspiracy
was
at work. We know for a fact that somebody - the mysterious and rather sinister “they” - did buy the nanny’s silence.’

‘And not only the nanny’s,‘ Antonia said, her eyes suddenly bright. She went on slowly, ’Lady Mortlock said that Lena had had a fortune, but that
she had frittered it away.
Lena told her about it when she went to see her.‘

‘Did she now? How very interesting.’ Payne stroked his jaw with a forefinger. ‘And Lena wasn’t talking about the Yusupov millions?’

‘No. The Yusupov millions are the stuff of legends, but they had been spent by the time Lena was born.’

‘It might have been a fantasy of course - a figment of Lena’s drunken dreaming.’

‘What if it wasn’t?’

‘If it wasn’t ... Well, then it would mean that in the not too distant past, say in the last twenty years, Lena had been in possession of a lot of money.’ Payne paused. ‘Where did the money come from? Who gave it to her?’