Vane’s sotto voce clearly indicated he didn’t want the person inside the house to hear what he was saying.
‘I’d better put my cards on the table, Mr Vane. I believe it will make things simpler.’ Payne lowered his voice. ‘I am a private investigator.’
‘You are a detective?’ The biographer drew back a little.
‘Yes. I would be grateful if you treated this as the most confidential of communications. A day or two before she was killed, Stella Markoff sought my professional advice,’ Payne improvised. ‘Mrs Markoff was extremely worried about a certain matter.’
‘What matter?’
‘It seems she met someone at your house—’
A sound came from inside the Villa Byzantine – a floorboard had creaked.
‘—an elderly lady who introduced herself as Miss Hope.’
‘Miss Hope?’
‘Yes. Is Miss Hope a friend of yours?’
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘Is she here, by any chance? She is here, isn’t she?’
After a moment’s reflection, Vane nodded, then put his forefinger across his lips, indicating that on no account should Payne go on. The royal biographer’s face was now the colour of beetroot.
‘I see.’ Payne’s upper lip was so stiff, it might have been injected with Novocaine.
He found himself reconstructing the scene that had taken place moments before he had rung the front door bell.
She had been looking out of the window. She had seen his approach. She had recognized him. She had panicked. She had pulled down the blind. She feared he would recognize her. She had begged Vane not to let him inside the house. She might have said Payne was dangerous – that he was a criminal or a lunatic. That would account for Vane’s initial hostility.
Major Payne decided to take the bull by the horns.
‘I don’t suppose you are familiar with the actress Melisande Chevret?’
22
Phantom Lady
‘I scribbled my phone number on a piece of paper and slipped it to him,’ he told his aunt some forty-five minutes later as she was buttering a second crumpet for him.
‘Most enterprising of you. You think he’ll ring you?’
‘I believe so, yes.’ Payne glanced at his watch. ‘As soon as he gets rid of her. The moment I said “Melisande Chevret”, his eyes rounded – became as big as saucers. The name seemed to strike a chord at once. He gave several nods when I put an imaginary phone to my ear and mimed dialling a number.’
‘How perfectly extraordinary. What d’you think has been going on, Hughie?’
Payne looked up at the ceiling. ‘Weird things. Crazy things. Things no normal person would do. That is how Stella’s daughter put it.’
‘Surely, Hughie, you can’t take anything that gel says seriously? From what you’ve told me, she’s not to be trusted one little bit.’
‘In this particular instance,’ Payne said thoughtfully, ‘I am prepared to give Moon a chance.’
‘You don’t think the gel chopped her mother’s head off?’
‘She might have done, but, as it happens, I don’t think she did.’
‘You suspect Miss Hope?’
‘I suspect Miss Hope, though of course no such person as “Miss Hope” exists. I believe that Miss Hope is in fact the actress Melisande Chevret.’
‘Heaven knows I am no expert, but I bet you’ll find in the end that the gel did do it after all.’
‘Well, you may be right, darling. It may be her, as you say. I am doing my best to keep an open mind. As a matter of fact, I haven’t counted anybody out yet. Not even Tancred Vane. Or James Morland.’
‘The garden of live flowers. I find I have started saying the first thing that pops into my head. Is that a sign of dotage?’ Lady Grylls poured herself more tea. ‘Are you comfortable in that chair? You don’t think this room is too narrow?’
‘No, not at all. It’s comfortable. It’s cosy.’
‘I must admit I feel a little cramped up here, Hughie. I know I wanted a house in St John’s Wood more than anything in the world, but now that I’ve got it, I find myself regretting my decision. Last night I dreamt I went to Chalfont again.’
‘You aren’t serious. After everything you said!’
‘I find this place too small and stuffy, Hughie.’
‘You used to find Chalfont too big and draughty.’
‘Do you think it’s perverse of me?’
‘As a matter of fact I do, darling. Terribly perverse.’
‘You don’t think I could change my mind and buy Chalfont back?’
‘No. Too late. The Russians won’t have it. They’ll laugh at you – or shoot you. Given how hard you bargained and how you bullied them and how you drove them mad and everything. You got exactly the price you wanted.’
‘They can have their filthy money back, down to the last rouble.’
‘That would be a ridiculously large amount of roubles. Actually, they paid you in pounds. What garden of live flowers? Is that Genet? No, I’m thinking of Our Lady of the Flowers.’
‘It’s in Alice, actually. To find the Red Queen, Alice had to go in the most unlikely direction. It all happens in the garden of live flowers,’ Lady Grylls explained, ‘and that’s how detectives in detective stories try to find the killer, I believe? I expect Antonia’s making pots of money out of her books?’
‘No, not pots.’
‘What’s Our Lady of the Flowers about?’
‘Male prison romances. Not for your tender eyes.’
‘Must make a note to ask Provost to get it out of the library for me. Now then, back to l’affaire Stella. Let me see whether I’ve got this right.’ Lady Grylls pushed her glasses up her nose. ‘The dead woman’s daughter told you that her mother was convinced that the old nanny she met at the Villa Byzantine was no other than Melisande Chevret in disguise?’
‘That is correct.’ Payne bit into a crumpet.
‘Stella believed that Melisande took James Morland’s desertion jolly badly, that she tipped over the edge. Stella feared she might be in danger. Stella imagined that Melisande might steal one of Tancred Vane’s treasured possessions – or even kill Tancred Vane – and make it look as though Stella had done it?’
‘Yes. Or that she herself might be killed.’
Lady Grylls observed that the late Stella appeared to have been rather a paranoid sort of person.
‘Maybe not so paranoid, darling. Stella did die a spectacular and rather gruesome death after all, don’t forget.’
Idly Payne picked up a pen and started drawing something on one of the napkins. That handkerchief, he thought. How did the handkerchief fit into the new set-up? Did it fit in at all?
‘How did Melisande manage to lure Stella to the Villa Byzantine?’ Lady Grylls asked. ‘Have you any ideas?’
‘Um. She asks someone to phone Stella and pretend to be Vane. Some trusted friend from the acting fraternity – an old flame – or her ghastly agent Arthur … Stella is asked to go to the Villa Byzantine. Melisande – as Miss Hope – has already ascertained that Vane would be out that morning. Melisande has already stolen one of his front door keys. She gets into the house, unhooks the sword and then waits for Stella?’
‘Are you going to involve the police? Or are you and Antonia playing a lone hand?’
‘The good old days of the solitary sleuth are over, alas. The police are already involved in any case.’ Payne took a sip of tea. ‘I’ve been trying to imagine the kind of guff Melisande – as Miss Hope – has been feeding Vane.’
‘Tales of Balkan imbroglios, princely picnics and duels at dawn? D’you think she made everything up?’
‘Well, she must have done. Perhaps not everything. She probably did research and got some of her facts from various royal biographies – but I expect her imagination has been central to the enterprise.’
‘She must be frightfully convincing. Or else this Tancred Vane is a complete sap. Is he a complete sap?’
‘Something of
the well-bred naïf about him. A pleasant enough chap, but not a terribly forceful personality. All right, a bit of a sap, perhaps … When I first met Melisande Chevret, I decided she couldn’t be a very good actress, mainly on account of her manner being so affectedly actressy, but clearly I was wrong. She must be terribly good after all.’
‘Something’s not right, Hughie. I don’t know exactly what I mean, but— Very well, let’s assume it was Melisande Chevret who killed Stella. Her aim was to eliminate Stella, and that she managed to achieve, correct?’
‘Correct.’
‘Why then, in the name of sanity, did she continue visiting the Vane fellow? What was the point? You said she was in his house today. We are now – what? Five days after the murder? She’s achieved her aim. She’s got rid of her love rival and so on. So why doesn’t “Miss Hope” simply disappear?’
Major Payne scrunched up his face. ‘One possible explanation is that she has gone completely mad and she has actually persuaded herself she is “Miss Hope” now. Is that too feeble? Or she might have started playing some other, more sinister, game. She might be intent on ruining Tancred Vane’s reputation as a royal biographer. She might have taken against him, for some reason.’
‘She’s got a sister, did you say? What’s the sister like? Equally cuckoo?’
‘Not at all. Winifred is the soul of well-bred reserve. A paragon of discretion and good sense. Nothing like Melisande. Well, something must be done about Melisande Chevret – before it is too late.’
‘You think she might run amok or something?’
‘She might. Morland told me she’d been trying desperately to win his affections back. He got me on the phone this morning. He said he was unable – as well as reluctant – to go back to Melisande. He said that whatever he’d felt for her once was no more. But apparently she keeps ringing him. He has now stopped answering her calls. He believes she is unhinged.’
‘You look worried.’
‘I am worried about Vane. Why hasn’t he phoned? I hope he’s all right.’ Major Payne looked at his watch. ‘If she gets it into her head that he suspects her of not being who she says—’
The next moment Major Payne’s mobile phone rang – but it wasn’t Tancred Vane.
23
Into the Mouth of Madness
One thing I am absolutely determined to do – the next time I go to the Villa Byzantine I will go as myself.
The time for masquerade and mimicry is over. The comedy must end. The truth shall set me free and keep my soul from going astray. It was idiotic of me to present myself as an octogenarian in the first place. Whatever possessed me? Couldn’t I think of something simpler? Well, I wanted to get instant access to Tancred and that was the best I could think of. I seem to be cursed with the kind of mind that has been described as tortuous.
I need to wash the lines off my face. I must stop walking with a stoop. I need to take off this ridiculous wig. Perhaps I could burn it? The action will symbolize my newly found freedom.
Serenity and peace are starting to sweep over me in great tidal waves, unleashed, I suspect, by the relief that Hugh Payne’s visit was nothing worse than ‘merely routine’.
What a charming pathway this is! Clumps of azalea and rhododendron planted to the right of it, with a few late-flowering roses. It looks as though the shrubs have perspired in the air. I stoop down and pick up a fallen petal. I crush it between my fingers, and I have there, in the hollow of my hand, the essence of a thousand scents, unbearable and sweet. My love appears to have enhanced my appreciation of Nature. What is it they say? A feeling for Nature is the privilege of cultivated minds not entirely absorbed in the material necessities of life.
Was Hugh Payne’s visit ‘merely routine’, though? Those were his words, as Tancred reported them to me, but he is frightfully brainy – that handsome Major with his faux buffo manner! Why were they whispering? I couldn’t hear a word of what they said. No, Tancred would never lie to me. I mustn’t be suspicious.
I must control my emotions or, like a firework, I may explode and be pulverized into a thousand sparks!
But what of the superficial, nay, pointless princely life on which Tancred has been expending so much time and energy? The so-called ‘biography’, with the writing of which I have been ‘assisting’ him?
An image floats into my head. The Communists making Prince Cyril dig his own grave, shooting him in the back of the head, then pushing him in. Something similarly drastic needs to be done about the book. That so-called biography. I couldn’t possibly allow poor Tancred to be discredited and become the laughing stock of the literary elite!
I was desperate for his attention, for his love, that’s the reason I did it. I acted irresponsibly, but what I have done, I shall undo.
I am sure Tancred will understand. I don’t suppose he will get cross with me. One doesn’t get cross with those one cares for.
Tancred cares for me as much as I care for him. He said so himself with his own lips. Tancred loves me. Tancred would never lie to me. Never. Never.
Tancred. Tancred. Tancred.
‘Why are you out of breath?’ Winifred said. ‘Where have you been?’
She stood looking at Melisande. Her sister’s face was pale and her hair was uncharacteristically dishevelled, wild, almost. Winifred had seen her sister with hair like that only once before, at the final curtain of a play that had been booed by the audience – some feeble forgotten French farce. Melisande had ripped off her wig even before she had reached her dressing room and burst into tears.
‘In paradise. Isn’t that what Irene tells Soames on her return from her tryst with Bosinney?’
They were standing outside their house, under a pale sky bruised with garish clouds.
‘You look – different,’ Winifred said.
Melisande explained that she had felt a little odd, so she had gone for a therapeutic ramble. She had wanted to get some fresh air. ‘I did some light shopping.’
‘Shall we go inside?’
‘I am afraid of going inside. It’s an unlucky house. That’s where I met Stella. The face of the grandfather clock reminds me of Papa Willard at his most censorious. My bed with that scarlet canopy might have been a catafalque, it is so creepily portentous. The window curtains keep moving even when all is still. And there is a smell.’
‘What kind of smell?’
‘Can’t say exactly. Not of rare and subtle flowers, to be sure. I believe it’s a metaphysical kind of smell. Horror and corruption stalk in the shadows. Where’s that from?’
‘The Duchess of Malfi?’
‘Arthur phoned to say he might get me a part in a new play that focuses on the dynamics between four women who reside in a brothel in the jungle, but I said no … I should never have become an actress. I could have been an air hostess – an MP’s secretary – or a magician’s assistant. I’d have been so much happier. Perhaps tonight I will sleep outside – in the garden! In one of those sinister sleeping bags we got for Christmas? They look like body bags. High time someone used them.’
Winifred pointed to her sister’s shopping bag and said brightly, ‘What did you buy?’
‘Oh, the usual organic rubbish. Watercress. Tofu. A vegetarian steak. Eggs that couldn’t have cost more if they’d been made of gold. Preposterous. What’s the point of a healthy diet? I do not intend to live to be a hundred. Life after thirty-eight is one long compromise.’
‘One of your buttons is missing.’
‘I wish I could be as balanced and splendid about my sorrows and disappointments as you have been about yours. I should have learnt to worship at the shrine of established routine. Plumping cushions and so on. I was wrong to think of myself as transcending mundane human laws.’
‘Let’s go inside and I will make you a cup of tea.’
‘What am I going to do with the rest of my life? I loathe looking at pictures. Books bore me, really. I can’t cook. Going to the theatre is out of the question. I only pretend to like gardening. What am
I going to do?’ Melisande suddenly clutched at her sister’s hand. ‘Please, help me, Win.’
‘This is all to do with James, isn’t it?’
Melisande’s eyes started filling with tears. ‘He turned off his mobile. I was in the middle of telling him something extremely important. I heard the roar of animals in the background and somebody laughing like a hyena. Then he turned off his mobile, just like that. I think he was at the zoo – with that girl, Stella’s daughter – who I suspect – I very strongly suspect – is his daughter. The whole thing is incredibly sordid. That girl chopped off her mother’s head.’
‘You can’t be sure—’
‘I can be. I have every intention of calling the police and telling them what I know. The things she said at my party. They should arrest the little bitch and put her in jail at once. No one but the daughter could have killed Stella. Who else is there?’
Winifred noticed that Melisande was wearing the jacket from her Chanel Boutique suit with domed buttons and gold studs, but the skirt came from some other suit, Winifred couldn’t tell which one. This sort of thing had never happened before. Her sister had always been so particular about what she wore.
‘Perhaps it was James who did it?’ Melisande said in a thoughtful voice. ‘Perhaps he and Stella were playing some game and it all went horribly wrong?’
‘What game?’
This is awful, Winifred thought. My sister has gone mad. What am I going to do? Who did one phone? Should I perhaps contact Antonia and Hugh? But how could they help?
‘Couples play games when they start experiencing difficulties. Neither of them could be described as being in their prime. Swords are notorious phallic symbols.’
‘Let’s go inside, shall we?’ Winifred held her sister gently by the arm. ‘I will make you a cup of tea and then you can have a lie-down.’
‘James is a pig. They should keep him in a pigsty, put a piggy ring through his piggy nose and feed him pigswill!’ Melisande broke into paroxysms of sobbing laughter. ‘Grunt-grunt. People will go to the zoo to look at him. Grunt-grunt. What a fat, pink and stupid pig, they will say. Hello, James. Isn’t it time you were converted into sausages?’
Murder at the Villa Byzantine: An Antonia Darcy and Major Payne Investigation Page 13