‘We didn’t,’ Antonia said. ‘They are mother and daughter all right.’
‘But – but then that means –’
‘Yes.’
‘It can’t be. No, no, no. Out of the question –’ Payne broke off. ‘Well, it must be. Maginot – is Corinne? Or rather – was?’
29
Beauty and the Beast
‘Correct. That’s why Jonson suddenly relaxed. Jonson knows their secret and for some reason he is extremely protective of it. At first he thought the cat was out of the bag, but then realized that we’d been thinking of the wrong mother and daughter. Not of Corinne and her daughter, but of Ruse and Corinne.’
Payne said, ‘We skipped a generation.’
‘Corinne’s little finger is as long as her index finger. Peverel told us about it – that bizarre detail has been mentioned on one of the websites devoted to her. I noticed it in the greenhouse this morning, when I stood looking at Maginot’s body. Then there’s Corinne’s odd penchant for authoritarian figures. Napoleon – Miss Mountjoy. Corinne did enjoy playing the nagging dragon.’
‘Yes . . . It might be said that from the very start there was a Maître Maginot lodged somewhere deep inside her consciousness – screaming to be let out.’
‘Both Miss Mountjoy and Maître Maginot wore turbans and they liked to boss people round.’ Antonia smiled.
There was a pause. ‘Maginot looked nothing like Corinne. Too tall – too heavy. Could she have changed so much over such a short period of time? Her voice was rasping and crow-like – her face the face of a gargoyle – and she looked much older than fifty-five . . . On second thoughts,’ Major Payne continued musing aloud, ‘platform shoes would take care of the height – and people can age prematurely, through illness or stress or the wrong diet. Maginot did like her drink. Besides, she’d had a stroke. That too would have altered her appearance . . . Would it change it beyond all recognition, though?’
‘Maybe not – but something else certainly would. Do you remember where Corinne was believed to have gone – at the time she disappeared from view?’
Payne held the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger. ‘To Switzerland? One of Peverel’s scouts was of the opinion that she’d had something major done . . . Good lord! You don’t mean –’
‘I remember reading a hair-raising article once, about what happens if your body proves intolerant to surgical intrusions. The silicone that has been implanted in your face starts moving, your eyes swell shut, your head balloons to the size of the Taj Mahal, then you get gangrene, which in turn may lead to “skin death” or necrosis . . . If you don’t die, you never look the same.’
‘Plastic surgery that goes wrong . . .’
‘Here’s a theory,’ Antonia said. ‘For some thirty years Corinne Coreille has been able to have a most successful singing career. Through regular diet, exercise and the latest in beauty care, she has managed to remain “young” – unchanged. She has contrived to preserve a certain memorable image. She has had at least one face-lift, various nips and tucks. However, age does catch up with her, eventually. She is forty-nine now and one day she discovers she doesn’t look right any more – or perhaps the realization has slowly been creeping up on her?’
‘Yes. She can’t imagine going on stage, stepping out under the spotlight, looking haggard, her face collapsed.’ Payne pulled a demented grimace. ‘She cancels one concert, then another. None of the intensive beauty treatments seems able to erase time’s satanic footprints. She grows desperate – decides on a radical solution. She’d have something major. A total image reconstruction. Nothing less would do. She disappears from view. She books herself into a superior Swiss clinic, from which she is confident she will emerge spectacularly rejuvenated from under the knife, thirty years younger – a girl once more!’
‘Only she doesn’t.’
‘She doesn’t . . . The surgery goes spectacularly wrong – some dreadful infection sets in – she nearly dies. Well, the doctors save her – she recovers – but she loses her face. It is patched up – however, she can no longer be recognized as Corinne Coreille. She looks like Godzilla. Something has gone terribly wrong with her vocal chords too, maybe as a result of the shock. The famous voice – the beautiful voice that had once charmed General de Gaulle – is no more – gone! Corinne Coreille has suffered a permanent extinction de voix.’ Payne started relighting his pipe and he waved his hand as though to say, ‘Over to you.’
He’s enjoying this as much as I am, Antonia thought. She took up the tale. ‘Corinne spends the next five years in the wilderness. She suffers severe depression, has a nervous breakdown, starts hitting the bottle, puts on weight. She becomes a hermit, leads a twilight existence, which for her, after so many years in the spotlight, is a living death. She ages – now she looks ten years older. Maybe she assumes a different name. She realizes that she is finished. She is haunted by the thought – tormented – crazed by it. Her mind becomes somewhat unhinged. Then – then something unexpected happens –’
Payne put up his finger. ‘Corinne meets her daughter. She hasn’t seen her for quite a while, maybe she’s never seen her as a grown-up woman at all, so when they stand face to face, she is struck by the remarkable resemblance her daughter bears to her young self. Then she hears her daughter sing. She is stunned – she can’t believe her ears – that unique voice, the Corinne Coreille voice – her voice, as it was in her prime! She has the uncanny feeling that she is hearing one of her own early recordings –’
‘Actually Corinne saw her daughter on video. It was the nuns who recorded the tape,’ they heard someone say. ‘Two flighty soeurs who had got tipsy on absinthe. It showed Monique dressed up as Corinne, singing one of Corinne’s songs. The title of the song, prophetically enough, was “Je Reviens”.’
Peverel had entered the library without either of them hearing him.
30
A Star is Born
They looked at him in silence. They had no idea how long he had stood there.
‘You might as well know the exact details. Corinne hadn’t been in touch with her daughter for sixteen years,’ Peverel went on. ‘She was a terrible mother. She should never have had children. She was monstrously egocentric – dangerously self-obsessed.’
He spoke with great bitterness and ferocious passion. Antonia had never imagined Peverel capable of any strong emotions. He looked even paler than when they had seen him last.
‘She wasn’t like that to start with, when I first knew her. Of course not,’ Peverel continued. ‘She was a very confused child, true, but she had sweetness and gentleness as well as the capacity of giving and receiving love. Well, all that evaporated over the years, thanks mainly to her Svengali – the great Mr Lark. It was he who turned Corinne into this stylized, exquisite, equivocal creature. He stunted her emotional development quite on purpose – like those bonsai trees that forever remain the wrong size – like the feet of Chinese women of noble birth that were kept bound so that they could remain small and dainty! That was what the audience seemed to want, that’s what he gave them. More and more of the same.’
‘La petite fille with the upturned nose and the big bows and ruffles?’ Payne murmured.
‘Yes. Papa Lark made sure Corinne didn’t grow up. He stopped her from seeing me. I believe that made her unhappy – I am sure she loved me – but she did give me up and accepted her lot, eventually. She did as Papa Lark decreed. I am sure it was under his dictation that she wrote the letter informing me that our daughter had died.’
‘How did you know that it wasn’t true?’
‘One of the nuns told me. Sister Felicia.’
‘So I was right,’ Antonia said. ‘Corinne’s daughter was brought up by nuns.’
‘Yes . . . She was sent to the convent outside Lourdes, where Corinne’s aunt was Mother Superior at the time.’
Sister Felicia had discovered some papers in her Mother Superior’s desk after her death, Peverel explained. There was a birth certi
ficate – also letters sent to Corinne’s aunt by Mr Lark. Mr Lark had written that on no account should Peverel be contacted and told that his daughter was alive. Mr Lark had made the convent a number of generous donations . . . The Mother Superior had complied with his wishes and she had preserved Corinne’s guilty secret for more than quarter of a century, but now that she was dead, Sister Felicia saw no reason why the truth shouldn’t be told. Sister Felicia had managed to find Peverel’s address and written to him. ‘She was a good and decent soul,’ Peverel said.
‘Was Monique a nun?’
‘No. She had never taken a vow or anything of that sort, but she lived and worked at the convent. She worked on the administration side – a secretarial job. She seemed to be content. Sister Felicia wrote to me two years ago, on the day after Monique’s thirtieth birthday. She also told Monique about me. She believed a great wrong had been perpetrated and she had made it her mission to set it right.’ Peverel paused. ‘I went to France to see Monique. Sister Felicia met me at the station and she took me to the convent – in an incredibly battered Citroën . . . Monique and I got on extremely well. She was very shy and reserved to start with, but she relaxed eventually. She clearly loved the idea of having a father.’ Peverel smiled. ‘She even asked me for a photograph!’
‘The photograph on her dressing table?’ Antonia said.
‘Yes . . . You do seem to know an awful lot . . . I didn’t let my bitterness about Corinne spill out. Monique hardly knew her famous mother. She bore a striking resemblance to Corinne, only she was blonde. She could also sing like her. She had the same voice. You were right about that too . . . As it happens, Sister Felicia and Sister Fortunata had just recorded the video – Monique made up as Corinne. The resemblance was uncanny. The nuns were in their early sixties and they were both great fans of Corinne Coreille. No one else knew what they had done . . . I understand they have died since. Pity. I liked them enormously. They played the tape for me – danced to it. They were totally eccentric. Terribly sweet.’
‘You said they sent a copy of the tape to Corinne too?’
‘Yes – care of her record company. In fact they asked me to post it. We wondered about the effect the tape would have on Corinne. It was sixteen years since Corinne had last seen Monique. Monique had been fourteen then – a gawky, awkward teenager. I learnt that Corinne had been sending money to Monique regularly, so she couldn’t be faulted on that count.’
‘So you have known about the impersonation all along?’
‘No – not all along. Monique only told me this morning. Corinne had sworn her to absolute secrecy. Corinne, you see, went to the convent as soon as she saw the video. Under an assumed name, though no one would have recognized her anyhow. She passed herself off as an aunt of Monique’s. She asked Monique to do a repeat act. Make herself up as Corinne, put on the wig and so on, and perform once more. She was stunned by the result and, I expect, she had her brainwave there and then. That same day she took Monique to Paris with her.’
‘Corinne saw in Monique her chance for revival?’
‘Yes, Antonia. The chance to re-create herself – to make a spectacular comeback – to resume her singing career afresh. Corinne had been getting invitations for concerts from all over the world but had been turning them down. Her secret had been well kept – miraculously, there hadn’t been a single rumour about her failed plastic surgery, so no one knew. Corinne wasted no time and started coaching Monique – she taught her her gestures, mannerisms, tastes, everything! Before the trip to England she told her all Monique needed to know about Aunt Nellie – about Hugh as well – where and when they had met, about his sister Amanda and so on . . . As it happened, Monique proved an excellent student – she became her mother.’
‘It’s a most fantastic thing – relinquishing one’s identity and living somebody else’s life. Becoming one’s mother!’ Payne exclaimed. ‘Not many people would agree to it.’
‘No. Well, Monique was tempted. That’s what she said. She had always wanted to perform. She had dreamt of singing in public, on a stage, in front of an audience, but had been pathologically shy, too shy to do anything about it. She had led an extremely sheltered life, a most secluded provincial existence. She lacked the confidence. She was gauche. What her mother offered her was not merely a chance to sing on stage, but a shortcut to fame – something Monique had never thought possible, never contemplated, not in her wildest dreams! So she jumped at the opportunity. She knew she had a very good voice but she had always thought of it as old-fashioned –’
‘Le goût de papa?’ suggested Payne.
’You may put it that way. That she sounded exactly like her mother, Monique regarded as something of a disadvantage. She had never imagined she would be able to make a career as herself – not a major one at any rate. It was one thing to have your voice noticed at matins, another to be an international star. But as the celebrated Corinne Coreille she would be able to do it – start as world famous – as legendary! There would be no need for her to establish herself – she would emerge fully formed.’
‘Like a butterfly out of a chrysalis.’
‘She’d sing to audiences that knew her – that were there to adore her – audiences that had been waiting for her – wondering what had happened to her – longing for her voice. She said it was a very peculiar feeling she had in Japan – standing under what amounted to a floral shower, being applauded for her voice, which was also not her voice. The only real problem had been her youth, the fact that she was twenty-two years younger than Corinne, but there were such things as wigs and make-up.’
There was a pause. ‘When did she tell you all this?’ Antonia asked.
‘Last night, or rather in the small hours of this morning. She phoned me on her mobile. We talked for at least an hour. She needed to talk desperately. She was frightened, terrified. The death threats, the anxiety that she might get something wrong at dinner, then her mother getting killed. She couldn’t face being interrogated by the police. Besides, there was something wrong with her make-up. Either that, or it was because her hands were shaking too much. She was in a state of panic. She couldn’t go through with it.’ Peverel paused. ‘That’s why I came. I had to. In case any suspicion fell on her. In case the police attributed her disappearance to guilty conscience. I wanted to see what line the police would take. I suppose I’d have told them the whole story if they got it into their heads that Monique had anything to do with the two deaths –’
‘And hasn’t she?’ Major Payne said quietly.
Peverel ignored this. ‘I also wanted to see how serious Andrew Jonson’s intentions were. They are thinking of getting married. Oh, you didn’t know that, did you? You seem surprised. I thought you knew everything,’ Peverel said with a return of his sardonic manner.
31
A Family Plot?
‘Ah, there you are,’ Lady Grylls said, entering the library. She was holding a glass of brandy in her hand. ‘I’ve been looking for you. We are going to have hot onion soup and ham sandwiches in the dining room. I’ve scrapped the original menu, for obvious reasons. All will be ready in about half an hour, I am told. Hortense is coping extremely well, all things considered. But there’s something else I meant to tell you – now what was it?’ She raised the brandy to her lips and took a swig.
Peverel said, ‘Really, darling, at your age, the consequences of a midday binge could be catastrophic.’
‘Oh yes.’ Lady Grylls turned to Antonia. ‘There’s been a rather sensational development, though I suppose you’ll disagree. I mean, it’s never the person who’s seen leaving the scene of the crime at the crucial time, is it?’
Antonia decided to humour her. ‘You don’t mean somebody’s been seen leaving the scene of the crime at the crucial time?’
‘Yes, my dear. A stranger. That makes the possibility of him being the murderer even more remote, doesn’t it? I can tell from your expressions that you’ve been juggling with conjectures, so you might as well consider this on
e as well.’ Lady Grylls paused. ‘The boy Nicholas – Provost’s son – is certain he’s seen the killer. Of course he didn’t know at the time it was the killer . . . He doesn’t want to talk to the police about it because, you see, he doesn’t trust the police.’
‘Nicholas believes he has seen the killer?’
‘That’s exactly what I said. Yes.’ Lady Grylls raised the brandy glass to her lips once more. ‘Man in a car. Looking bleached.’
Peverel said pointedly, ‘Conspicuous consumption.’ It wasn’t clear whether he meant Nicholas and drugs or his aunt and alcohol. Antonia suspected it was the latter.
‘Darling, shouldn’t you start at the beginning?’ Major Payne said gently.
‘Last night Nicholas left early. We hadn’t finished dinner yet. I didn’t mind. I thought Provost was perfectly capable of coping on his own. Anyhow, last night Nicholas said he was going to this disco in the village. It’s organized by the youth club, apparently. He went on his bike. As he was coming back, at about half past two, he saw a car coming out of the gates and he nearly crashed into it. He fell off his bike and the car slowed down but didn’t stop. There was a full moon. Nicholas saw the driver very clearly. The driver turned his head and gave him a look. It was a young man.’
‘A young man?’
‘That’s right. A pale thin young man, with short cropped hair that was very fair, almost bleached white. Ghostly pale. Liquid eyes that gleamed in the moonlight like a cat’s. Somewhat effeminate – “girlie” was the way Nicholas put it –’ Lady Grylls broke off. ‘I’m afraid I don’t feel frightfully well. It’s been a ghastly morning. Absolutely dreadful. Just a minute ago Bobo Markham phoned and said he’s got two new pigs and would we all like to go and see them!’
Payne suggested that she sit down. He led his aunt to one of the grandfather armchairs. ‘Her glass – take it away,’ Peverel whispered.
The Death of Corinne Page 19