The Curious Incident at Claridge's

by R. T. Raichev

  ‘You don’t think you should inform the police?’

  ‘No. Not yet. If it turned out to be a mare’s nest, as it well might, I’d be in trouble. Lady Tradescant could take me to court, you know. I could be charged with intrusion into privacy, libel and God knows what else.’

  ‘We have this unfortunate thing about uncovering intrigue.’ Antonia sighed. ‘We aren’t really suited to frequent what is known as “normal society”.’

  ‘Jolly well put. We despise normal society. We cock a snook at it.’

  ‘No, we don’t. Not really.’

  ‘We excel ourselves in rather bizarre imaginings,’ said Pyane. ‘Bizarre imaginings have become an integral part of our daily existence. Most of our best friends suspect us of snooping on them.’

  ‘We haven’t got any best friends, Hugh.’

  ‘Well, we’ve got each other.’ Major Payne kissed her. ‘I wonder what Jesty’s doing.’

  ‘Do you suppose he is up to something?’

  ‘I rather think he might be. He isn’t the type to let go, or so everybody says.’ Payne walked across to the telephone and lifted the receiver, while consulting the sheet in his hand.

  Antonia’s heart started beating faster. She was aware of a current of suspense generating itself in the room …

  ‘There are two numbers given on the Mayholme Manor website—a switchboard and the Master’s. This is the switchboard now.’ Payne shook his head. ‘Nobody answers … No signal, actually … How curious … Let me try again … No, nothing … Dead silence.’

  ‘Try the Master.’

  There was a pause. ‘How odd—again, no signal.’

  ‘No signal?’

  ‘No. Both lines are dead.’ Major Payne put down the receiver. ‘Well, that’s that. I am sure there is a perfectly innocent reason for it. I’ll try again tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Tomorrow might be too late.’ Antonia bit her lip. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to say that.’

  ‘To imagine the worst is somehow to guard against it really happening,’ Payne said sententiously. ‘Things are hardly ever as bad as you think they will be but often very bad when you anticipate nothing much. Haven’t you noticed?’

  6

  Blackmail

  Her phone rang at ten minutes to midnight.

  Putting down her glass of whisky, she picked up the receiver.

  ‘Lady Tradescant?’

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘I sincerely hope you will allow me to call you “Penelope”?’

  ‘Who is that?’

  ‘An admirer. My name would mean nothing to you. You don’t know me, though our eyes did meet today, for a split second.’

  ‘I am afraid I don’t know what you are talking about.’

  ‘I am sure you do. You have a lovely voice. I haven’t been able to get you out of my mind, you know.’

  ‘How do you know my name?’

  ‘I heard your husband address you. Earlier today. This afternoon, to be precise. At Claridge’s.’

  He heard her draw in her breath sharply. The girlie was losing her poise, eh? ‘You have nothing to fear from me,’ he said slowly.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean. How did you find my phone number?’

  ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way.’

  ‘How did you know that that was my husband?’

  Captain Jesty smiled. He had started enjoying his power over her. It acted as an aphrodisiac. Not that he needed an aphrodisiac. He reached out for the bottle and poured himself another glass of champagne.

  ‘Questions, questions. How did I know? Let me see. Well, I made some inquiries. I have my spies at Claridge’s. I hope you won’t think it boastful of me, but I enjoy a certain popularity, mainly thanks to the generous baksheesh and racing tips I bestow on some of the waiters. It was one of them who carried out some checks for me. A most enterprising little chap. You have a Claridge’s account, correct? You have provided an address and a phone number. A highly desirable address, I must say. You enjoy life among the fleshpots? Hello? Are you still there?’

  ‘I am still here,’ she said.

  ‘You and your husband—who is thirty-six years your senior—have been to Claridge’s for tea and dinner a number of times. You are both well known to the staff and, as it transpires, the object of some wide-eyed fascination. People love outrageous age disparities between spouses, since it is invariably linked to big money. Look at the unfortunate Anna Nicole Smith. What else do I know?’ Jesty sipped champagne. ‘You are a former Harper’s model. Your origins are veiled in mystery. You appear to have been to a decent school, but you have always been something of a wild girl. You get bored easily. You have lived in sin with a racing driver, an actor and a footballer—before you bagged the eighteenth baronet.’

  ‘The waiters couldn’t have told you all that.’

  ‘No, of course not. The waiters, as you so prosaically put it, have their limitations. But they provided me with leads—started me off on my quest. I did my own research after I got back home. These days there is very little one cannot find.’

  ‘The internet,’ she said after a pause.

  ‘Your maiden name is St Loup—rather Proustian, what? You have some French blood, apparently. Unless you made it all up—to impress the eighteenth baronet? Penelope St Loup—dashed euphonic—dashed memorable. Pictures of you going back to your modelling days are available on the net. In all of them, without exception, you look stunning. As a matter of fact,’ Jesty went on, ‘I am looking at one of your pictures at this very moment. I downloaded it, printed it and I intend to have it pinned above my pillow tonight. If you only knew what I’d like to—’

  Penelope interrupted. ‘Which of the two are you? The fair-haired one or the one with the moustache?’

  ‘Now you are talking. I rather like your matter-of-fact tone. I am the one with the moustache. The dashing one.’ Jesty frowned. ‘Damned unfortunate that the fair-haired one—I mean, that particular brother officer of mine—turned up when he did. The chap’s a major pain.’ He laughed at his joke. ‘You didn’t get that, did you? No, you couldn’t have.’

  ‘I didn’t get what?’

  ‘Never mind. Even more unfortunate that I told him what I saw you do. Damn. Should have kept my mouth shut.’

  ‘What exactly did you see me do?’

  Jesty’s eyes opened wide. ‘Swap the capsules, of course. What else? Poison for medicine, correct?’

  ‘Aren’t you being a little presumptuous?’

  ‘I don’t think so. What else could it have been? Powdered monkey glands? Bicarbonate of soda? You wouldn’t still be talking to me if you weren’t a little afraid of me. You’d have rung off by now. You’d have threatened me with the police. Or maybe you have started playing some game of your own? Well, I like games.’

  She said, ‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you you’d got the wrong end of the stick altogether?’

  ‘I wouldn’t. You looked guilty as hell. But I would very much like to hear your version of events. You have such a lovely voice. I have fallen for you in a bloody big way. I want us to meet. Tonight, if possible? I am not famous for my patience.’

  ‘N-not tonight.’

  Jesty smiled again. The girlie was weakening. ‘Perhaps not. I suppose you are expecting to hear the terrible news any moment? Your husband is dead, must be. Unless he forgot to take the capsule? That would be a bore, wouldn’t it? You must be on tenterhooks. You poor girl. I will take good care of you, I promise. Tomorrow then, it’s got to be tomorrow. We could have lunch somewhere smart. I am mad about you.’ He poured more champagne into his glass. ‘Don’t tell me you would rather wait till after your husband’s funeral.’

  7

  Beneath a Waning Moon

  Quarter past midnight. Somebody walking on my grave, Bettina Tradescant thought. She looked up from her computer screen. Something, she knew, was about to happen—or had already happened.

  Bettina inserted a cigarette into a short jet-black holde
r. She lit the cigarette. She wore a perfectly pressed white shirt buttoned to the top, collar studs and black trousers with a knife-edge crease. About ten minutes earlier she had worn a jacket with a fur-trimmed collar, which seemed to raise her shoulders, and a skirt that reached below the calf and created the effect of elegant but painful attenuation. Since coming back home, she had already worn five different outfits, among them a drum majorette ensemble in white and gold and a silver off-the-shoulder evening dress. At one point she had put on a pale blue toque with a bunch of pink and yellow primulas. She was a compulsive dresser and restless experimenter, forever searching for the right sartorial coup. She had once had a real obsession with all things feathery; no less a man than designer Valentino had told her that he could find her in London by just following the trail of feathers. She found the past a never-ending source of inspiration. At the moment she sported an Edwardian coiffure: hair piled high on her head to form a bird’s nest—that was a wig, one of ten. Not even her bitterest enemy—she had a real knack for making enemies—would have dared call her a ‘clichéd fashionista’.

  Bettina suffered from insomnia. She called it her tango nocturne. She couldn’t remember when it was the last time she had managed to have a proper snooze. There were people who went off the moment their heads hit the pillow. How she envied them. Her nerves were not in a good state. Her thoughts kept turning to her brother. It always happened at this time of night. Random memories as usual. Seymour teasing her mercilessly when they were children, calling her silly names—Seymour pushing her into the pond at Tradescant Hall—Seymour dressing up as her, doing a perfect imitation of her as a party piece, making their parents’ guests scream with laughter while she had sat crying in her room.

  (She would love to be able to dress up as Seymour—but that would mean she’d have to shave all her hair—Seymour was getting to be as bald as a coot!)

  Seymour had always treated her with senseless malignancy. He’d always managed to reduce her to cowering and sullen states. Always, always, always.

  Seymour was very much like the woods in Titus Andronicus—ruthless, dreadful, deaf and dull. Well, if he hadn’t been such a colossal scrooge, if he had given her the money she needed so badly, she might have been able to forgive and forget. What Bettina wanted more than anything in the world was enough capital for her to start her own fashion magazine. Seymour could well afford it. He had after all received the bulk of their late father’s estate and his was a vast wealth. More than four thousand acres of Shropshire. He didn’t seem to be doing anything with it, apart from making donations to his ‘retreat’. It wasn’t as though he was pampering poor Penelope …

  Bettina looked down at the ring on her fourth finger and sighed. If only it were the authentic one and not a mere copy. She was mad about jewellery—though not as mad as Papa had been. She gave a twisted smile. Goodness—those photos of Papa! Mama had destroyed most of them. Papa had had quite a thing about jewellery. A veritable fetish. Papa could have given the ring to her but he hadn’t—he’d given it to Seymour—like everything else.

  Bettina sighed. ‘My darling Wallis,’ she said and kissed the ring. ‘You knew how to do things.’ But of course the ring was not the real Wallis. She sighed again.

  Bettina glanced up at the computer screen, at what she had written:

  Greys, pinks and lace are set to dominate women’s wardrobes this season. We may even see the retro trends of the 1930s and 1940s. Buttoned skirts and exaggerated silhouettes will make a comeback. Minimal to smaller prints will be in vogue and a lot of geometry. Yellow gold and diamonds will continue to dominate … Long hair with cascading waves and soft curls … The Veronica Lake look …

  Bettina stubbed out the cigarette. She couldn’t concentrate. That morning, at some unearthly hour, an anonymous voice on the phone had told her she was no longer a person, she was a concept, which, unless she’d dreamt it, had been rather flattering. (Her reading Bernard-Henri Lévy might have had something to do with it.) Then Penelope had rung to say Mowbray had pitched herself from the top of their house and the police were coming. Bettina had been in a meeting, so she hadn’t been able to ask any questions. Penelope had sounded extremely upset. The poor sweet girl. What she had had to put up with! Being married to Seymour must be the ultimate nightmare. It was a good thing Penelope had—distractions. The idea of a cuckolded Seymour cheered Bettina up. She had tried to ring Penelope later on, but there had been no answer. Perhaps Penelope was with somebody …

  She yawned and, as she did so, happened to glance back at the computer screen. She saw Seymour’s face staring back at her, the mouth extended prodigiously in an agonized scream. Seymour appeared in great pain.

  Bettina leant back in her chair and sat very still. People who didn’t understand that sort of thing would have blamed her imagination—they might even say she was slightly mad. Some fools, she felt sure, might even have argued that it was her own face she had seen—wasn’t a yawn very much like a silent sort of scream?

  Well, her brother’s toucan beak of a nose was very much like hers and they had generally similar casts of features. Not so surprising given that they were fraternal twins. And as it often happened with twins, there existed between them a powerful psychic link, which, since it always made her shiver first, Bettina had come to call the ‘chill’. Only Bettina took the chill seriously. Her brother did seem aware of something, but he tended to attribute it dismissively to indigestion. She could have done without the psychic link—life was complicated enough as it was—but there was nothing she could do about it.

  Their faces were far from prepossessing, though Bettina had always managed to render her ugliness as strikingly picturesque as possible. She pinched the bags under her eyes, pulled a droll grimace, then tugged at her right cheek. She might have plastic surgery when she turned seventy, which was in November. Plastic surgery would destroy the likeness once and for all. It would also, she hoped, make her appear twenty years younger.

  Twenty-five to one. Bettina shivered. She invariably felt the chill each time something bad befell her brother—it had happened not so long ago, on the afternoon he had been rushed to hospital with his foot infection. The initial prognosis had been bad. Her brother’s condition had been described as ‘serious’. She had really hoped and prayed then he might die of blood poisoning.

  She clutched at her bosom. She gasped. The chill had cut through her, worse than ever before! Seymour, she felt sure, was either gravely ill, was breathing his last, or indeed was already dead.

  ‘Arise, Sir Nicholas,’ said the blonde girl and she laid her hairbrush with great gravity upon his left shoulder.

  ‘It is “Sir Tradescant”, actually,’ the dark girl corrected her. She put her arm around Nicholas Tradescant’s neck.

  ‘It’s Sir Nicholas!’

  ‘No, it’s Sir Tradescant!’ The dark girl kissed him. ‘Isn’t that right, Nicky?’

  ‘Wait a sec. Don’t tell her, Nicky. Listen to this. Let Nicky marry whoever’s got it right. How about it? Well?’ They both turned eagerly towards him.

  ‘It’s Sir Nicholas,’ he said a little wearily. ‘Or rather would be. Heaven knows if I’d live to see the day.’

  ‘Of course you would, my darling.’ The dark girl kissed him again.

  ‘My father seems determined to live for ever.’

  ‘No one can live for ever. It’s not as though your father is a vampire, is it? He is an old man.’

  ‘Not that old.’

  ‘Perhaps we could bump him off for you? We could, couldn’t we?’ The dark girl addressed the blonde one. They giggled.

  ‘Think of the headlines,’ the blonde girl said. ‘Homicidal Hookers.’

  ‘Don’t say “hookers”—so common. There won’t be any headlines. We’ll be so clever about it, we’ll never get caught!’

  ‘Sir Nicholas. I was right! I know all about the gentry.’ The blonde girl nodded. ‘I can even speak like them.’

  ‘No, you can’t,’ the dark girl s
aid. ‘You only think you can.’

  ‘I would make a much better Lady Tradescant than you.’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t.’

  ‘Girls,’ Nicholas Tradescant said in a warning voice.

  ‘Are you going to marry her now, Nicky?’

  ‘Of course he will marry me. Everybody knows that gentlemen prefer blondes.’

  ‘But marry brunettes! There’s a book about it, so there.’

  Nicholas Tradescant gave a sigh. ‘Actually, I am already married, you know that perfectly well.’

  ‘Yes, but you said you felt like divorcing your wife. The ’orrible Olivia. I can’t believe you haven’t divorced her yet. I really can’t.’

  ‘It’s not as easy as you might think,’ he murmured.

  ‘Why not?’

  The blonde girl said, ‘She’s been nagging at you, making you miserable about all sorts of things. She’s already ordered writing paper with Sir Nicholas at the top, hasn’t she? You told us about it last time. She’s so desperate to become “Lady Tradescant”. She’s been making you dine with people you don’t like. Lords and ladies and barons and dukes.’

  ‘With the gentry,’ the dark girl said. She gave a dreamy sigh.

  ‘The gentry are dull, aren’t they?’

  He nodded. ‘I am afraid they are, rather. Where we live at least.’

  ‘The gentry,’ the dark girl repeated wistfully. ‘You live with the gentry. I’d love to live with the gentry. I wouldn’t mind them being dull.’

  ‘Nicky can’t stand the gentry. That’s why you are with us now, aren’t you, Nicky? We give you a good time.’ The blonde girl cast an anxious glance at him. ‘We give you a good time, don’t we, Nicky?’

  ‘You certainly do.’