A Splash of Red

by Antonia Fraser

  It did not affect matters that on this occasion Chloe had tried to turn her pregnancy to good account as part of her intrigue to get Sir Richard Lionnel - hitherto childless - to marry her. Chloe had gone to her death without knowing how that particular plot was always doomed to fail. She died, with her stepfather on his way to London as a kind of angry witness to the confrontation. Jemima was glad that at least all three parties had been spared that dreadful moment when Chloe would have been denounced as a liar, and furthermore a promiscuous one. Lionnel had to live with the knowledge now; he clearly did not find it easy. Yes, dangerous abandon had certainly been what Chloe had displayed.

  Dangerous abandon - the thought suddenly struck Jemima that if Adam was Chloe's former angel, that left the identity of her casual -carnal? - acquaintance from the square gardens still unknown. Was there some mystery to be unravelled there? Or was the whole episode of that nocturnal spree as unimportant to the world now as it had been to Chloe at the time?

  That certainly was the point of view taken by Pompey. He was in a joyous mood. He had rounded off a hardworking Friday, which began with the formal charging of Kevin John with murder at the police station, by having 'a jar with the lads', as he put it, of a mildly celebratory nature. And he seemed to regard his visit to Jemima as a further postponement of his return to Mrs Portsmouth and the intellectual principles of gardening.

  'The lover in the gardens!' he exclaimed, shaking his head repeatedly like a mechanical toy - a fox perhaps, in a man's suit - which had just been wound up. 'Sounds like a Sunday newspaper headline to me. No my dear, Athlone did it. No question about that now. His second statement was a great deal more to the point, as well it might be. You see, your squatter friend made a statement saying he had seen him leaving the building between one-thirty and two; looked out from the third-floor balcony where he happened to be, not minding his own business, still it's convenient for us that he was. Described him exactly. Not only does he have his own little alibi for that period, as I told you, but his story was confirmed by a very different kind of witness.

  'One Flora Elizabeth Powell, fifty-eight, spinster, who came into the station in response to our enquiries and made a voluntary statement. No, my dear, not a hysterical spinster, just a hard-working citizen, employed in a local caff on the early shift who was on her way home, some time after one-fifteen when she knocked off work in Great Russell Street and two-five pin when she noticed a local clock in Hammersmith, where she lives, and reaches by tube, when she saw him coming out of a house in Adelaide Square. Can pinpoint the house of course: "It's the lovely modern block, isn't it? Which the Queen Mother declared open the other day. I saw the crowds. I couldn't quite get to see her, but my friend said she looked lovely." Never mind the fact that the crowds she saw were demonstrators against the building.' Pompey chuckled. 'And the Queen Mother was at University College round the corner. Flora Elizabeth is our witness all right. Very particular about the blue T-shirt. Better still, she remembers seeing someone in a white shirt - that's the squatter of course - on the upper balcony. Came out with it on her own accord; couldn't have made that up; didn't know we were interested, you see. Remarked that she was happy to think the building declared open by the Queen Mother was already occupied, not like that Centre Point, since it might have worried the Queen Mother to know -but I'll spare you the rest.'

  Pompey chuckled again. 'What does feminine instinct say to all that?'

  'My feminine instinct has nothing to say. It never does. It just nags at me in the watches of the night. I don't doubt you. I don't doubt either of them for that matter - my squatter and your spinster can hardly be in league to fool us,' said Jemima rather wearily. 'It's just that I like the loose ends being tied up. The identity of the lover in the gardens - I love the headline, by the way - continues to intrigue me, although I dare say you're right and it's not important. Tell me at any rate, before I read it in the newspapers of the trial, about Athlone's second statement.'

  'He admitted it. To being there, that is. Still utterly denied killing her. But that's par for the course.' Pompey shook gently, as if confirmed once again in his low - but not necessarily contemptuous - view of human nature. 'He came back at lunchtime - to apologize to you. Felt he'd behaved like a cad - well he had, hadn't he? All that violence towards a woman,' said Pompey in stern parenthesis. 'He was surprised to find the penthouse door open with the keys in the lock.'

  ‘Open?’

  'Exactly. Listen, this is his statement, not mine. In he goes. No one there - not you, and not at this point, his ex-mistress, Chloe Fontaine. He decides, believe it or not, to have another go at finding a razor.'

  'I do believe that!' exclaimed Jemima. 'That razor was obsessing him. He left Dixie in the pub saying he was going to find a razor.'

  'Believe that if you like. It's immaterial to our case. But a rational woman like you, Jemima - in the daylight hours' - a gallant shake -'may find the rest of it a little more difficult to accept. Athlone finds a razor - right?'

  'The same razor, we assume, which is later found beside Chloe's bed—'

  'Exactly. In some drawer or other. His prints were all over the bathroom and bedroom anyway - except in those areas wiped clean by the murderer - as a result of the morning's search for that same razor. He decides to shave. And not before time— This was clearly the reproving voice of Pompey speaking. 'But he's still pretty angry, he's drunk a good deal of whisky, feeling not only angry but violent as he himself tells us. At this point his eye lights on the picture - "The Red Paintpot", whatever it's called. He decides suddenly that she, the deceased that is, is not worthy of "my effing work of genius". His exact words.' Pompey paused. 'Except he didn't say effing.'

  'So, listen to this.' Pompey's tone was now more portentous. 'He takes a kitchen knife, yes, the same knife we assume to be the murder weapon - for he remembers deliberately choosing the biggest of the knives available. He goes back into the bedroom. He proposes to massacre the aforesaid work of art. Again his own words. He is going to slash it to effing pieces and throw them over the balcony to feed the lions of Bloomsbury.'

  Pompey leaned back. He gave the impression of being rather pleased with his imitation of Kevin John, which did not however in Jemima's opinion contain any of the sheer craziness of the original; there was too much devilry, too little dash in Pompey's delivery.

  'But before he can carry out this felonious plan - it's not his property' - Pompey shook - 'although it's not exactly like desecrating the Mona Lisa, is it, not exactly - he's disturbed.'

  'Disturbed? By whom?'

  'By her, of course. The recently deceased Miss Chloe Fontaine. I'm anticipating her state somewhat, it's fair to say. So there he is, razor in one hand and effing great kitchen knife, to borrow his phrase, in the other.'

  'And there she is,' cried Jemima, 'in a white petticoat, I suppose. It reminds me of that nursery riddle:

  Ninny nanny petticoat

  In a white petticoat

  The longer she goes

  The shorter she grows.

  The answer's a candle by the way. Appropriate to Chloe, a flame, snuffed out. But why, Pompey, why?'

  'Now that's very sharp of you, Jemima,' said Pompey approvingly. 'Because that's the first thing he said to us about her. "The C-blank" ' -cough - ' "wasn't even dressed." He objected particularly, you know, to her parading round the building in her petticoat. Thought it unseemly, or as he put it, effing disgusting'.

  'And then?'

  'He says they had a flaming row. I can't recall the precise colourful phrase he used to describe it. She, the deceased, absolutely refused to explain her presence in the penthouse beyond telling him, Athlone that is, that she had borrowed the first-floor flat from "a friend" - identity not revealed - in order to have some working peace for this anthology she's supposed to be editing. She had returned to the top floor to fetch some forgotten necessity for her work like a notebook; cat slips out; she goes to rescue cat, leaving keys in the door. They're her own keys, having
given you, Jemima, the second set.'

  'Pretty thin story,' commented Jemima gloomily. 'Except for the bit about the cat. That's probably true. Tiger did that to me. A restless type, I fear, like his former owner. If the cat went down to the basement, that would give Kevin John time to get up the staircase without passing Chloe on the way.'

  'Athlone thought the story was pretty thin, too.' Pompey sounded equally gloomy. 'He wasn't too interested in the subject of the cat, one way or the other; but he was interested in the identity of the helpful "friend" who had lent her the first-floor flat. Thought it was certain to be male, and a lover.

  'Hence the row,' he went on. 'She tells him to get out of the flat. Taxes him with following her about, harassing her, when everything is over between them. He accuses her of having a rendezvous upstairs and wants to know when and with whom. Then she really insults him, goes for him, past present and to come. Never loved him in the first place, you know what ladies can be like' - cough. 'Anyway at those words, it all changes. He drops the knife. He just leaves. Leaves her there.'

  Jemima let out her breath. Pompey went implacably on: 'After that he sticks to his original statement. Had a few more drinks. Decided much later to drop in the flowers. For you or her, that's not quite clear.

  Probably for you: he'd promised you flowers. Admits to being pretty drunk by now. Climbs the scaffolding, deposits the pot plant. Opens the door from inside - it's shut but not doubled locked. Bangs on the first-floor door. No answer. Goes on down to the hall. There he collapses. Has some vague idea of waiting for her to come back, or emerge from the first-floor flat. He may trap her new lover. That's not quite clear. Collapses anyway. The next thing he knows, you're standing over him.'

  'And he never looks in the bedroom? On that second visit?' 'So he says. We, of course,' said Pompey gently, 'think he killed her on the first.'

  On Saturday evening, Jemima found it took more determination than she had expected to mount the stairs to the penthouse flat again. Yet it had to be done, before she could shake the dust of No. 73 from her feet. She opened the door of the office suite. The stairs stretched upwards as though pointing to her duty; seeing how they curved out of sight towards the top floor gave her an odd presentiment that the end of the Chloe story was likewise still hidden. Yet the clues which pointed to any killer other than Kevin John were so extremely slender that only instinct - and natural obstinacy - prevented Jemima from abandoning her consideration of the case altogether, in favour of Pompey's rational certainties. Pompey for example was convinced that Kevin John had returned via the scaffolding only in order to clear away all incriminating traces of his earlier presence - which was certainly more logical than his own explanation.

  Jemima let herself into the penthouse flat, using both keys. She was not a nervous person; nevertheless the atmosphere seemed to her not so much silent as sepulchral. That was the right word: the penthouse was now like a tomb for all Chloe's hopes and works and plans and lies and plots.

  The murder charge arising from Chloe's death meant that no burial order had yet been given for her poor little body, once the giver and receiver of many strange pleasures, lacerated first by her murderer, then by the pathologists. Frozen in death, it remained waiting for the possible trial of her murderer. In the meantime would there be some kind of memorial service?

  The obvious arranger of all such matters would have been Chloe's publisher, Valentine, especially since Chloe had no literary agent, preferring to trust herself entirely to what she had termed Valentine's 'aristocratic but mercenary mercies - still, in his own way, he can be an angel you know - I hardly need more mercenary mercies from an agent'. But Valentine was dead.

  In the meantime this flat, until it was dismantled by the combined offices of Miss Katy Aaronson and the Stovers - certainly more the former than the latter - remained Chloe's true sepulchre.

  The images of Chloe were everywhere. Lying flat on their backs, faces of Chloe, under her parasol, on her swing, the provocative Fallen Child pictures, stared up at the white ceiling from the jackets of her books. They were ranged round the pale carpet. Had the police stacked them so? Presumably. Other belongings were neatly piled and sorted. Everything was immaculate. The comparison to the hideous dust and mayhem which had possessed the flat a week ago was inevitable; Jemima did not find it particularly comforting. But she had to admit that the police had cleaned up after themselves most professionally.

  The flat, if clean, was airless. Putting off the moment when she must open the white louvred double doors to the bedroom - for that gesture reminded her too clearly of the past horror - Jemima concentrated on pushing back the balcony windows. They were not locked; but the lock itself was not conspicuous and whoever shut them - the police? Katy Aaronson? - might have thought they were self-locking.

  Something soft and furry caressed her legs. Tiger, on his noiseless pads, had followed her up the stairs. He put his golden paws up on the scaffolding to the left of the balcony, and sniffed delicately. Jemima rejoiced constantly in the inquisitive tendencies of cats; it reminded her that her own curiosity was in the natural order of things.

  Then she observed that the earth in the pots containing the grey-leaved plants and white-flowering geraniums which had pleased Chloe's bleached sense of decoration, was quite hard and dry. What happened to plants when people died? These had been sufficiently loved by Chloe for her to bring them from Fulham to Bloomsbury. Jemima could not imagine the Stovers conveying such plants back to Folkestone, any more than they had welcomed the intrusion of Tiger. She pictured Mr Stover's large crimson roses - Ena Harkness perhaps - bristling at the arrival of these sophisticated urban cousins.

  As for Jemima's own taste in such things, she recognized it to be prettier but somewhat less tasteful - pale pink roses in her case, New Dawn and Albertine, ran riot in huge dark green tubs on her own balcony, with purple pansies and gypsophila, daffodils and blue hyacinths in the spring. She certainly felt no impulse to adopt Chloe's primly matched plants, but the Rousseau-like savage Tiger was a different matter. In the end, it was the abandoned side of Chloe's nature which magnetized her.

  As if to emphasize his freedom from constraint, Tiger was now bounding about the balcony and tossing a leaf, a pretended mouse, in his paws; it was a game at once playful and sinister.

  The plants in comparison, if not exactly wilted, looked depressingly arid. Jemima sighed. Whatever their ultimate fate it was not her nature to leave them unwatered. One way of getting herself through those bedroom doors was to fling them open, march through and fetch a watering-can from the bathroom - she had a memory of something rather charming and painted, a kind of Marie Antoinette of a watering-can, in the corner there.

  Then she would organize her own belongings into a suitcase. It was now about nine o'clock. The air over Adelaide Square was sultry. Scarcely a rustle disturbed the mighty trees. It had been about that hour of the evening that she had looked in vain across the square for Chloe's departing figure. Oppressed by the memory, Jemima turned away and, striding firmly across the thick sitting-room carpet, flung open the bedroom doors.

  Then she heard herself scream, and that scream was succeeded by another, and another, and another. The sound seemed to come from outside, so that she was still listening for further screams, even while she stood panting, and now silent.

  On Chloe's white bed, motionless beneath his own violent red picture, vast bulging blue eyes staring fixedly towards her, lay Kevin John Athlone.

  16

  Straw into gold

  An instant later, the vast blue eyes shut. Relieved of their intense stare, Jemima lost her panic and moved gingerly forward. A rumbling noise -yes, it was really a snore - greeted her astonished ears. Kevin John Athlone, whom she had imagined for one feverish moment to be dead, was actually sleeping. The fixed stare which had greeted her corresponded to nothing so much as a coma, an unseeing coma.

  It was an appalling thought, but had he actually escaped from Brixton?

  He was we
aring a white shirt, two or three buttons undone; a black tie, carelessly half unknotted, still slung round his neck; light grey trousers which belonged to a suit because a matching grey jacket was roughly slung over the back of a nearby cane peacock chair. In the top pocket of the jacket, incongruously neatly folded, was a white handkerchief. Black shoes, demonstrably polished, were disposed near the bed. Kevin John's feet, sticking out across the bed like those of the corpse he somewhat resembled, were still covered in dark socks.

  The formality of the sleeping man's attire struck Jemima forcibly since she had not seen him previously in anything save jeans, T-shirts, and the most rugged polo-necked jerseys. She presumed they were the same clothes in which he had been remanded at the Magistrates' Court: Crispin Creed was probably responsible for them. In the photograph printed in the evening paper Kevin John had looked heavily handsome, like some debauched film star leaving the divorce courts for the third time. In the flesh he looked younger.

  Jemima looked at the sleeping figure with more irritation than horror. Her vague intellectual feelings of the necessity of justice towards an innocent man had quite melted away in his physical presence. And even the first feeling of dread at her predicament if he had escaped from prison, was less strong than her sheer annoyance at the sight of this great snoring bull, lying so inconveniently prone before her.