Then they stood outside the closed door.
It was the bedroom, as they knew it would be.
Antonia’s hand had gone up to her throat. What kind of stormy petrels were they? Wherever they went, murder and mayhem seemed to follow. It had been said that certain events attract certain people, but it might be the other way round – certain people attracted certain events . . .
The bedroom, however, was empty. There was no sign of Ria, dead or alive. Perversely, Antonia felt a twinge of disappointment.
Standing side by side, they took stock of their surroundings.
A rosewood four-poster bed carved to perfection. Two pale cream satin chairs. A rather striking antique dressing table. The clock that stood on the table was all pink enamel and gilt amoretti, and beside it lay a book whose cover bore the picture of an imperious beauty with almond-shaped eyes. The Dream of the Red Chamber. Antonia could never resist the sight of a book, so she picked it up and read the blurb. The story of an ernai – the pinnacle of Chinese courtesans – who had become a favoured consort of the Chinese Emperor and been so richly rewarded for her services that she managed to provide financial support for three generations of her family.
Well, Ria didn’t need to support any of her family. The Leightons, Antonia imagined, were extremely well off. Why exactly did girls like Ria become prostitutes? That should be the real mystery.
‘That’s the devil of a lot of mirrors!’ Payne was looking at the ceiling. ‘Wouldn’t you like to have mirrors like that on our bedroom ceiling in Hampstead?’
‘No,’ said Antonia.
He frowned. ‘Why has the bed been pushed to one side? A whacking big four-poster . . .’
‘The maid – while hoovering?’ Antonia ran her finger across a side table and discovered it was covered in dust. ‘No. The room hasn’t been cleaned today.’
Payne opened the wardrobe and peered inside. ‘Haute couture. Prada stilettos. Some rather outlandish outfits. Gosh. Quite outrageous, in fact. Enough to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window. Designed to beguile and entice rather than to clothe. Wouldn’t you like to take a peek?’
‘Not particularly.’
‘What a little Puritan you are.’
‘I am not a little Puritan. All right, let me see.’ She joined him beside the wardrobe. ‘Wow.’
‘You don’t have to humour me.’
Ria couldn’t still be plying her trade behind Roman’s back, could she? Antonia wondered aloud if perhaps Ria had kept these garments as mementoes of her colourful past career. ‘Garments’ being a courtesy title since the idea behind them was clearly to reveal.
‘Perhaps Songhera likes her to dress up,’ Payne said.
Antonia’s attention was drawn to a black bustier, which had been ripped apart. The clothes of the dead won’t wear long – they fret for the person who owned them. So claimed another ancient superstition. ‘We’d have some serious explaining to do if Ria suddenly came back,’ she said.
‘Pray that Songhera doesn’t suddenly turn up!’
The bed was unmade. ‘Silk sheets . . . The wasteful extravagance of it all . . . Is she a brunette?’ Payne had detached a black hair from one of the two pillows.
‘No idea. It might be Roman’s.’
‘Too long.’
‘His hair might be long under the turban. Sikhs keep their hair long, don’t they? Is he a Sikh? Or a Hindu?’
‘He is an ass. The Asinine Assassin. That’s the play Ionesco never wrote,’ Payne said. ‘The Honourable Charlotte should be more discriminating in her choice of friends, really. A woman of her standing shouldn’t be consorting with thugs.’
Antonia examined each one of the bed’s four pillars. ‘No blood. Well, Julian Knight said there wasn’t any blood.’
‘There wouldn’t be if her neck was broken or if she suffered an internal haemorrhage.’
‘Solid wood – extremely hard. Would it be enough to cause death, though? I suppose it all depends on Roman’s strength and the fragility of Ria’s skull,’ Antonia mused. ‘Julian Knight said he heard a crack.’
‘Couldn’t she have been merely concussed? She might have come to eventually and walked off.’
‘Julian Knight was positive that she was killed. Her eyes remained open, apparently. It was Roman who closed them.’
Major Payne stood examining the array of objects that lay on the right-hand bedside table. A pair of pendant earrings, a make-up kit, a bottle of nail varnish remover, a Penguin paperback. Andersen’s Fairy Tales. How interesting. One always assumed hookers were pragmatic, hard-boiled and cynical. He couldn’t quite envisage Ria reading fairy tales at bedtime. Hard to imagine her identifying with, say, the ultra-fastidious princess who had been given a sleepless night by a pea placed under a pile of mattresses.
What was that? A single sheet of mauve-coloured writing paper lying across the pillow. He picked it up and smoothed it out. It was a letter. He glanced at the bottom first, then read it through.
‘How normal and reassuring that she should have an affectionate aunt called Iris who lives in Cambridgeshire,’ he observed. ‘Ria’s father died last November . . . He died of a pulmonary embolism . . . The funeral was a “grand affair” . . . They didn’t get on,’ Payne looked up. ‘Maybe her father’s the reason she turned out the way she did? Martinets’ children frequently develop dissident personalities, haven’t you noticed?’
‘Should we be touching things like that?’
‘We should have been wearing gloves, you are absolutely right. Too late now. You don’t suppose we will be arrested on suspicion of murder, do you?’ He didn’t seem particularly concerned. ‘That might provide you with spectacular publicity for your new novel.’
‘We may be doing the local police a grave injustice. It would serve us right if they suddenly burst into the room and ordered us to hold our hands up.’
‘Is the aunt Ria’s only next of kin? Did Ria have no mother? Was she an only child? How frustrating not to know anything about her previous life.’ Payne pulled out the bedside table drawer. ‘Hello. What have we got here?’
‘What’s that?’
He had taken out a bundle of letters held together with two elastic rubber bands. Detaching the top one, he read out, ‘Noon’s Folly Cottage, Noon’s Folly, nr Ayot St Lawrence, Hertfordshire. Noon’s Folly. How quaint. D’you think “noon” is a corruption of “nun”? One can imagine a nun committing a folly . . . My dearest girl, I love you more than words can express. A love letter, by Jove. Your loving father. Well, not quite. What’s the matter now?’
‘I do feel uncomfortable about reading people’s letters.’
‘Decent folk don’t do that sort of thing? You are right, they don’t. Well, it’s a low job searching people’s rooms and we are low hounds to do it, but the circumstances, you must admit, are quite exceptional. It’s not as though we are motivated by vulgar curiosity.’ Payne went on examining the letters. ‘Your loving father . . . I would give anything to have you back . . . Your loving father . . . Don’t you think you’ve been punishing me for too long? Have I been sentenced to a life of misery and pain? Please, my child, come back. Your loving father.’ Payne looked up. ‘All the letters are from her father.’
‘So I gathered. Poor man. He probably died of a broken heart.’
‘He writes like a man possessed . . . Does anyone still live at Noon’s Folly, I wonder? There’s a phone number. Who knows? It may be up to us to break the awful news to Ria’s next of kin.’
‘We don’t know yet if she is really dead.’
‘Actually I would be interested in reading all the letters. We may get a better picture of Ria.’ Payne stuffed the bundle into his pocket.
‘If a British citizen were to die in Goa, the British High Commission would be notified first, correct? Then the High Commission would contact the relatives in England,’ Antonia said thoughtfully. ‘But what happens if a British citizen disappears and no one realizes they have? We’ve got no evidence Ria
’s dead, so that consideration may be a bit premature –’ She broke off. ‘What are you doing?’
Payne was kneeling beside the four-poster. He appeared to be examining one of its four legs. ‘Did you say premature? I wouldn’t say premature, no.’
‘What do you mean?’
He rose slowly to his feet. He was holding something between his thumb and forefinger. ‘Prepare for a shock.’ He showed her his finding.
‘White hairs?’ Antonia squinted. ‘They look the same as the ones on the hook!’
‘They are the same. They were stuck to the very base of the leg – where it had pressed into the carpet.’
‘There is no carpet. The floor is bare.’
‘The carpet’s been removed. They needed the carpet.’
Payne stood looking at Antonia. ‘Don’t you see?’ ‘Oh, my God. Is that how they . . .’ Payne went into a silent pantomime. He pretended to be rolling up a carpet. He slung it across his right shoulder, then, staggering under its imaginary weight, lumbered in the direction of the bedroom door. Straightening up, he spoke: ‘My guess is there were two of them. As they started crossing the hall, one end of the carpet pushed against the mirror, causing it to fall and smash on the floor. One of them trod on the petits fours which Camillo had dropped on the floor earlier on. I imagine they were acting on Songhera’s orders.’
‘Yes. He told them to go and collect the body. They placed the body on the carpet and rolled her up in it . . . So Roman did kill her!’
‘Did they take her to the croc farm, I wonder?’
A vision rose before Antonia’s eyes. Something they had seen earlier in the afternoon – at Coconut Grove – in the hall – two men in overalls being waved by the turbaned concierge towards the swinging doors. The men had shouted in an agitated manner. They had been carrying two carpets –
One of the carpets had been Persian – the other white and with a deep pile.
The Persian carpet was clearly a decoy. To distract attention from the white one.
‘No, not to the croc farm. They took the body to Coconut Grove,’ Antonia said. ‘Remember the men with the carpets?’
Payne stared at her. ‘Men with carpets? By Jove, yes! Songhera’s goons!’
‘That’s what Roman must have told them to do. She is there now, Hugh. At Coconut Grove. She is there now.’
‘Yes. Unless we’re making complete fools of ourselves and she’s having the time of her life with a new boyfriend somewhere. No, I don’t think we are. She isn’t having the time of her life.’ Payne’s expression was grim. ‘She’s inside the deep freeze. Next to the ice cream and the caviar. They wouldn’t be taking risks in this hot weather.’
19
Indo-Chine
‘One ignores the ancient and dangerous power of carnal love at one’s peril. Think the Oresteia. Think Othello. Think Carmen. The betrayed lover’s psyche must be a terrible place.’ Major Payne shook his head. ‘One finds nothing there but wild primitive irrationality, blind misery and obsessive craziness. Songhera chose to walk down an ancient and well-trodden path. He’s not the first and, sadly, he won’t be the last. Rage – violence – grief – overpowering sense of loss – howling emptiness. The sequence is always the same, depressingly predictable.’
‘He did howl. That’s what Julian Knight said.’
‘Sex has laid waste to empires and launched a thousand ships.’ Payne frowned. ‘Didn’t Elizabethan slang make “die” a synonym of climax? The power that founds dynasties is a strong voodoo.’
They had walked to the end of the road and were standing there looking out for taxis.
‘Roman must have got wise as to Ria’s affair with Camillo,’ Antonia murmured.
‘Or with somebody else. She seems to have been that sort of girl. You saw those outfits.’
A taxi appeared and Payne held up his hand.
‘203 Vindia Street,’ he told the driver. ‘We might as well go the whole hog and see if we can find Knight.’
‘Do you think we shall?’
‘No. What’s the time?’
‘Half past eight. We’ll be late for the fireworks.’
‘The fireworks can go to hell,’ said Payne. ‘I have no idea what we’ll do if we get saddled with two dead bodies. No idea at all. Apart from deriving the subliminal satisfaction that comes with being proven right.’
203 Vindia Street was a dingy building whose landlord, an elderly Chinese called Tang, spoke good English but seemed distracted. Tang held a long clay pipe in his hand and kept his thumb inside its bowl. He had run out of tobacco, he informed them, and there was no tobacco at the local shop or indeed at any other shop. Life in Kilhar was not easy. Tang shook his head. He would have to wait for a whole week now till he could have a smoke. No, he hadn’t seen Mr Knight since early morning. He had seen Mr Knight in the street outside the house – Tang hitched up his right shoulder and gave a fair imitation of Julian Knight’s gliding walk. It had been some time after eight o’clock. Mr Knight had been muttering to himself. He had appeared greatly preoccupied and hadn’t responded to Tang’s ‘good morning’.
No, Mr Knight hadn’t come back at any point of the day. Tang had sat with his friend, Mr Pereira, in the shop opposite the house, so he wouldn’t have missed Mr Knight. Tang was absolutely sure of his facts. How was he going to manage without any tobacco? He was quite addicted to tobacco. What was that? Tang cupped his ear. The lady and the gentleman wanted to look round Mr Knight’s flat? Tang seemed very much surprised by the request. Why should they want to do that?
‘I am Julian’s cousin,’ Payne explained briskly. ‘I just wanted to see how Julian lives. Is that so unusual?’
Cousin? From England? Tang pushed his forefinger into the pipe’s empty bowl and frowned. Yes, it was unusual. Mr Knight had never been visited by members of his family before. Never. Only strangers visited him. And no one so far had asked to be shown Mr Knight’s flat. Tang didn’t know. Mr Knight might not like it.
‘You come with us,’ Payne said. ‘You unlock the flat door and stand by. You watch us like the proverbial hawk. My wife and I just want to take a dekko. We won’t be a minute. Incidentally, would you like to try my baccy?’ He produced his tobacco pouch with a casual gesture. ‘It’s frightfully good.’
‘You have tobacco?’ Tang blinked.
‘Three Nuns. Would you like to try it?’ Payne unzipped the pouch and proffered it to Tang.
‘You smoke pipe?’
‘I most certainly do.’
‘Three nuns? English tobacco?’ Tang took a pinchful, sniffed at it, nodded and beamed. ‘Smells good. Very good. I can have a smoke now?’
They watched Tang stuff his pipe. Payne handed him a Bryant & May box of matches. He gave Antonia a covert wink. For some reason she was put in mind of the First World War. British soldiers handing over cigarettes to enemy Hun ones on Christmas Day, during a temporary truce.
There was a pause. They awaited Tang’s verdict. ‘Good tobacco.’ Tang nodded again between puffs and smiled. ‘Very good tobacco. English nuns smoke a pipe, yes?’
‘At some convents I imagine they do, though they risk the Mother Superior’s birch,’ Payne said gravely. ‘I’ve got another packet in my suitcase. Sealed for freshness,’ he added in casual tones.
The Chinaman looked at him. ‘You have more English tobacco? The same three nuns?’
‘The very same.’ Would Mr Tang accept the tobacco, Payne went on, as a friendly gift from one pipe smoker to another? He would be happy to deliver the packet in person the following morning. He held the firm belief, Major Payne said, that pipe smokers the world over, irrespective of creed or political persuasion, should support each other. * * * Julian Knight’s flat was the tiniest of bedsits. The interior was dark and drab, the predominant colour a kind of grubby beige. A musty smell hung on the hot, motionless air. The mess, Antonia thought as she stood looking round, was incredible, shocking. How could anyone live like that? Everywhere there were empty bottles. Wine, vodka, rum,
whisky, gin, schnapps, orange peel liqueur, something called Kingfisher. Wine glasses, tumblers, sherry glasses and cups, some of them covered in mould, stood on every surface. A cockroach was trying desperately to climb out of a globular brandy glass. Antonia’s face twisted squeamishly. Tins. Tattered cricket almanacs. A broken oil lamp. More bottles. A Carpenters LP: This Masquerade. A statuette of the Virgin and Child. A great number of cheap paperbacks. Antonia picked one up, holding it gingerly between her thumb and forefinger. Amorous Nurses. She opened it at random. Dr Hamilton was gorgeous and efficient, a surgical whizz and the most handsome man she’d ever seen.
Antonia glanced at the rest of the books. She would have expected a former policeman to read real-life crime or unsolved mysteries, if not detective stories, but all the paperbacks, astonishingly, proved to be American hospital romances. The Tenderness of Doctors. Not parodies, were they? He Healed Her Heart. No. They all seemed to be in dead earnest. One cover showed an intestinal-looking tree festooned with hospital equipment. If I carried this book round, everybody would be asking me what it was about, Antonia thought. One must be really desperate to read stuff like that.
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