Antonia blinked. Had Lucasta committed four murders?
‘Don’t you believe a word of what he says. He is seriously ill.’
‘My darling Ria – I miss her so much!’ Leighton sobbed.
‘Toby – darling – please – do not distress yourself.’ Lucasta Leighton made an imploring gesture but the next moment she reeled back and leant against the wall. Her hand clutched at one of the chairs. Had she been overcome by nausea? Delayed shock? She needed to go to the hospital – have the gash cleaned and sterilized – stitched up – properly dressed – she must be given a tetanus jab – she might get blood poisoning.
Antonia was suddenly filled with dreadful pity for both of them. Love, she thought. The misery, the confusion and the horror of it. Oh God. The heart weeps.
‘I told Lucasta to wait outside. I rang the bell. Ria hadn’t changed one little bit,’ Lord Justice Leighton whispered. ‘Lovelier than ever. She got the shock of her life when she saw me. She didn’t recognize me – thought I was a stranger at first – stared as though I were Banquo’s ghost. Gasped. I wanted to kiss her but she wouldn’t let me. She thought I had died, you see. Turns out that Lucasta and my sister concocted a scheme between them – a ruse – while I was in hospital – last November.’
‘You nearly died!’ Lucasta cried. ‘It was her fault!’
‘I collapsed in the woods, but it wasn’t a heart attack – exhaustion, mainly – worry. I recovered fast enough. It was all Lucasta’s idea of course, that letter. Iris hasn’t got the brains. Cardinal Richelieu in a frock, that’s Lucasta. She put Iris up to it – made her write a letter to Ria saying I’d died.’
‘I did it for your sake. Your daughter’s letters were killing you. Your daughter had no right to treat you the way she did. She had it coming to her. She didn’t seem to realize that actions have consequences and extravagances have to be paid for in the end. She was degenerate. I couldn’t bear to watch you suffer!’
‘You were right, Major. I asked Ria to come back with me. She refused. We did have an argument. She said some awful things to me and I got angry. I took her by the shoulders – shook her – she slapped me – I pushed her back – against one of the bedposts, as it happened. I didn’t mean to. I thought I heard a crack – it was probably something else, but I – I thought she was dead. My sweet little Ria. My lovely girl. I got into a panic. I couldn’t feel her pulse.’
‘She had only passed out?’
Leighton bowed his head. ‘The same thing happened with me last November, oddly enough. I collapsed in the woods and my sister couldn’t find my pulse. She thought I was dead . . . I thought I’d killed Ria. I rushed out and told Lucasta. I wasn’t myself. I’d become bloody dependent on her, that’s the trouble. I asked her to go and check. I would never forgive myself for that, never. To think that I was wrong! Ria was alive! It was Lucasta who killed her! She strangled her.’ He covered his face with his hands.
‘I did it for you. Your lovely girl was a blot on the escutcheon. Rotten through and through. She did shameful things, outrageous thing, disgraceful things. And as though that were not enough, she set out to destroy you.’ Once more Lucasta was speaking in measured tones. ‘Can’t you see? I couldn’t let her go on. She’d have started writing to you again. She’d have resumed her torture tactics. I did what I did in good faith – finished her off – got rid of the rot. Please, darling – do try to understand!’
‘I shouldn’t have asked her to go and check, but I couldn’t stand on my feet. I was shaking. Had to sit down on the porch. I felt a constriction in my chest, as if my vital organs were being squeezed by some malignant hand. Lucasta then came back. It was a minute or two later. She looked extremely grave. She said – she said that Ria was dead all right.’ Leighton’s voice quavered. ‘I remember very little of what followed. We returned to the hotel. She gave me an injection . . . She does it quite adroitly . . . I never feel the needle . . . She’d done a nursing course, damn her . . . Suddenly I felt better – stronger – happier! She’d given me some bloody anti-depressant. Do you know what happened next?’
‘She told you it was all Roman Songhera’s fault and that he should be held responsible for your daughter’s death?’
‘Yes. She was right about that one. It was his fault. Roman Songhera – the high khan of Kilhar. He lured my little girl away to this dreadful God-forsaken place. Well, I agreed to everything Lucasta said. She talked about revenge and retribution. She said they would strap his legs, stick a bag over his head and crack his neck on a rope. But first we had to make sure people knew that he had killed Ria. It sounded good. It made sense of things. Lucasta seemed to have hit on the right course of action. I was broken with grief but I pulled myself together. I threw myself into it. Lucasta took care of every single detail. She masterminded the operation. She kept going out, buying things, making phone calls –’
‘Did you know she intended to kill Knight?’
‘No, not till she’d already done so. She brought his diary to the hotel. She told me what to do with it. I was going to become Knight.’ Leighton turned towards Antonia. ‘I told Lucasta about you, you know, that you’d be staying at Coconut Grove. She is a great fan of yours. She said at once – Why not make Antonia Darcy your agent of justice? She would be perfect for the job. We were on the same plane, you see. Your friend was holding forth about your all too vivid imagination.’
‘We guessed,’ Antonia said drily.
‘Lucasta’s got a genius for jiggery-pokery. As devious as the devil. She even thought of putting one of Roman’s cufflinks into Ria’s hand, didn’t you, my dear Lady Macbeth? To suggest struggle.’
‘Are you Antonia Darcy?’ Lucasta Leighton was looking across at Antonia. The front of her khaki suit was stiff with blood.
For a wild moment Antonia feared Lucasta might come up to her and shake her by the hand and tell her how much she admired her books, but she remained standing beside the wall, one hand pressed against her cheek, the other clutching the gilded back of the chair.
She didn’t take any of her ideas from one of my books, did she? Antonia felt at once chilled and fascinated by the thought.
‘I went through with all her plans. It seemed the right thing to do. I wasn’t myself. I was moving in a fog.’ Leighton was becoming rather breathless. ‘She put the bronzer on my face. Told me to keep my hand in a fist because of my missing finger. It was the kind of thing people would remember, she said.’
‘You didn’t adjust your watch,’ Antonia pointed out. ‘It was five hours behind. It was still British time.’
Lucasta made an exasperated sound. ‘You fool! I did tell you to set your watch!’
Could he have wanted to be caught? Antonia wondered. One of those inexplicable subconscious urges?
‘It was your wife who rang Coconut Grove, wasn’t it?’ Payne said. ‘When they called you to the phone?’
‘Of course it was her. Who else is there? Julian Knight needed to disappear. It was only later, when we came back to the hotel, that I realized what she had done – that she’d deceived me – that it was she and not I who killed Ria. She kept talking about Ria being strangled. There was a smile on her face when she thought I wasn’t looking – smug, gloating. It suddenly dawned on me then. She admitted it. She had to, to prevent me from giving away the whole show. I had started shouting, you see. I was beside myself.’
‘She killed your daughter and left you thinking you’d done it.’
‘Yes, Major Payne. That’s exactly what she did. I could have torn her limb from limb there and then, but I suddenly felt ill. Had to sit down, nearly collapsed. She likes it when that happens – then I am in her power. We were downstairs, in the hotel lounge. There was some dreadful woman there, listening – a platinum blonde of a certain age – brown as a nut – lots of gold chains round the neck. Lucasta was worried we’d be rumbled.’
Antonia found herself thinking of the ending of ‘The Cardboard Box’. Sherlock Holmes solemnly wondering about the mea
ning if it all. What object is served by this circle of violence and misery and fear?
‘I’ve never heard so much nonsense in my life. I’ll get the injection now,’ Lucasta Leighton said briskly. She seemed to have recovered. ‘Then I’ll make you a drink. Then – perhaps a nap?’
‘I will kill you if you come anywhere near me!’ Leighton reached out for his silver-topped cane and waved it in the air. ‘Where are you going?’ he cried as Major Payne took Antonia by the hand and led her out of the room. ‘Don’t leave me with her! Please – don’t go . . .’
They left them together in their gilded room, the woman with the ripped-out cheek and the man with a face like a death mask. The last thing they heard was Lucasta Leighton saying it would be perfectly all right, the tiniest prick, he wouldn’t feel a thing – then the sound of smashed glass, followed by a cry.
The door the colour of dried liver slammed behind them.
As they walked quickly past the cricketing groups and the Maharaja of Patiala smiled down at them from the wall, Payne said by way of a Parthian shot, ‘As punishments go, that’s much worse than the crocs, don’t you think?
Table of Contents
1 Lady Macbeth of Noon’s Folly
2 The Most Dangerous Game
3 Flowers for the Judge
4 The Bone Collector
5 Another Country
6 Belle de Jour
7 The Shadow
8 When a Stranger Calls
9 The Mysterious Commission
10 The Garden Party
11 Murder is Easy
12 The Public Enemy
13 Witness for the Prosecution
14 Never Come Back
15 Evil Under the Sun
16 The Knight’s Tale
17 Journey Into Fear
18 The Mirror Cracked
19 Indo-Chine
20 A Man Lay Dead
21 Murder as a Fine Art
22 The Holy Innocent
23 The Snow Queen
24 The Wrong Man
25 The Case of the Discontented Wife
26 The Science of Deduction
27 A Talent To Deceive
28 A Taste For Death
29 At Brown’s Hotel
30 Thou Art the Man
31 The Veiled One
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4.Little Victim Page 22