The Hunt for Sonya Dufrette Read online

  Lady Mortlock was still recognizable as the imperious woman whose family history Antonia had been writing twenty years earlier, but only just. Her frame in a cream-coloured nightdress was shrunken, her face emaciated, the parchment-like skin stretched across the skull, the lips wasted and grey. Her eyes were like bullet-holes, almost invisible in their orbits, rimmed with startlingly vivid red. The eyelashes were gone, though she still had her brows. Her hair was white and wispy and it was covered with an old-fashioned black net. Lady Mortlock’s Roman nose seemed more prominent now - the only prominent thing about her. The hands that clutched at the book were brown with liver spots and claw-like.

  Antonia had expected the dazed-sheep look of the gaga old, but Lady Mortlock’s eyes were unnervingly alert. She looked a cross between a mummy that had been reanimated by some mad scientist and an ancient bird of prey.

  ‘No doubt you disapprove? You always disapproved of them, didn’t you? You never said anything but I could see you disapproved.’

  ‘Good afternoon, Lady Mortlock,’ Antonia said brightly, reminding herself that her work at the club had equipped her for dealing with the non sequiturs of old people. She felt sudden horror at the thought of shaking hands with Lady Mortlock. She imagined Lady Mortlock’s hand to feel like a loose set of bones tied inside a very dry suede bag. Mercifully, the old woman’s hands remained on her lap.

  ‘I mean my father’s books. This is one of them.’ Lady Mortlock tapped her glasses against the book on her lap. Her voice, surprisingly, was very much as Antonia remembered it - deep and autocratic, though there was a somewhat hollow ring to it now. ‘I saw you looking at it a minute ago. The Future of Eugenics. It was written in 1928. I don’t suppose many books are written on the subject nowadays, are they?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’

  ‘What is the future of eugenics? Never mind. Come and sit here, Antonia. Beside me.’ She pointed to a small armchair upholstered in maroon velvet. ‘Bea says it’s extremely comfortable and about such things Bea is usually right. That’s where she sits when I ask her to read to me. I am no good in the evenings. I go blind. Let me look at you,’ she said as Antonia sat down beside her. ‘Well, neither of us is getting any younger. You are far from repellent, but you have put on weight. You need to take more exercise. Have a massage once a month. Have your hair dyed blonde, now why don’t you? It would suit you, I think. I never did any of these things, mind. Despised women who did. Despised the flesh, rather refused to recognize it - with one notable exception.’ She paused. ‘You were in the sitting room, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’ Antonia shifted slightly in her chair.

  ‘You recognized her, didn’t you? Don’t deny it. Now she - she - has changed beyond recognition. She came to see me some time ago ... Change and decay ... Change and decay everywhere I see! You know Elizabeth Street?’ Lady Mortlock pointed a skeletal finger towards the window. ‘I bet you didn’t know it started as Eliza Street? Duchesses do their shopping there now but one hundred years ago it was a terribly disreputable place, with tarts plying their trade and earning a few pence from the river traffic. Now, that’s one change for the better, but I can’t think of many others.’

  ‘How are you?’ Antonia asked.

  ‘The mind goes first. Every minute, every second, brings me closer to the grave. I am constantly made aware of it. When I turned eighty -’ Lady Mortlock broke off with a frown. ‘How old am I now?’

  ‘Eighty-seven.’

  ‘When I turned eighty, I suddenly became extremely self-conscious about my age and the decline in my powers. I realized that intellectually I had started slipping. In consequence I tried to learn even more things than usual by heart, partly to prove to myself that I could do it, partly to ensure that I didn’t bore or irritate my visitors. I also insisted that I be given a course of vitamin B12 injections. Well, I have fewer visitors now and I no longer remember things. The injections continue, but I don’t think they have any effect, apart from making me feel rather sore and a bit nauseous. The very distant past sometimes comes back, crystal-clear, to taunt me mainly, but what I did ten minutes ago is lost in a fog. It’s no mere loss of memory. I believe I have fugues. Was it me who scratched the nurse woman? We don’t keep cats, so it must have been me.’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’

  ‘You don’t want to upset me. You think I might get a heart attack or something if you do.’ Lady Mortlock paused. ‘You did see the photographs in the sitting room, of course?’

  ‘I did.’ Antonia decided she might as well take the bull by the horns. ‘You knew Lena before she married Lawrence Dufrette.’

  ‘Was it ever suggested otherwise?’

  ‘Yes. You said that you had first met her when Lawrence introduced her as his young bride.’

  ‘Really? I believe you are right. I did. Lena came to see me, you know. I don’t remember when. Was it last year? Two years ago? It might have been last month. It doesn’t matter. She told me all manner of useless things. That she and Lawrence had separated, that she had had a fortune which she had frittered away and was now destitute, that Lawrence had been quite unable to keep his hands off that girl of theirs and how her mother’s heart had been broken, how much she missed Baltic herring on buttered brown bread, how ungrateful and mean someone called Vivian was -’

  Antonia frowned. ‘Sorry to interrupt you -’

  ‘Lena seemed to believe I would be interested. She looked dreadful. She’s got really fat. Her hair was sickly orange and she reeked of brandy. She kept snivelling, bemoaning her fate. She tried to hold my hand. She even attempted to kiss me. It all made me so grievously ill that Bea thought the end had come. Bea had no idea of course that my visitor and the girl in the photographs were in fact the same person. Well, in a manner of speaking they weren’t ... Do you dream, Antonia?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘I had a very peculiar dream the other night. The wake of a battu. Dead boars, at least fifty of them, all very young, laid out on the drive leading up to the house. Some of them still twitching. The house, I am sure, was Twiston. All lit by flambeaux held by beaters - while men in letter-box red outfits were cutting out the boars’ livers. It has to be done at the moment of death, you see, that’s when it becomes a delicacy. One of the men was Michael and he was extremely busy cutting away with an enormous carving knife. His hands were covered in blood ... He looked different from the others. He was got up in white robes, like some high priest ... Funny how badly Michael took it when that little girl drowned. One would have thought she was his daughter!’

  ‘Miss Garnett thinks the girl in the photographs is your daughter.’

  ‘Well, that was a fiction which was started by George. Michael’s son. In the name of decency and propriety, I imagine. George had guessed my secret, you see. George is the master of polite fictions. He used to be in the diplomatic corps. Insufferable prig. Can’t stand him. When he is here, I always put on a show. I act as though I were really demented.’ Lady Mortlock laughed - it came out as a cackle.

  ‘Was Lena one of your pupils?’

  ‘Most perceptive of you. Yes, she was one of my pupils. She was at Ashcroft from 1951 till 1956, I think. She was not the brightest of girls, but one of the prettiest. No - “pretty” is not right. Lena had a certain quality, I can’t quite explain it ... I taught her German. I allowed myself to become extremely fond of her. In academic terms she was little better than “satisfactory”. Do you know how I define “satisfactory”? “Neither laudable nor culpable.” None of it matters now. Long time ago.’ Lady Mortlock paused. ‘What else do you want to know? You are after something, aren’t you? You didn’t just wake up this morning and say to yourself, high time I looked up Hermione Mortlock, did you? You must have a good reason. Out with it.’

  Antonia began, ‘Yesterday was twenty years since Sonya’s disappearance -’

  ‘Whose disappearance?’

  ‘Sonya’s. Sonya Dufrette - Lena’s daughter.’
/>   ‘Oh yes. Lena’s daughter. I remember her. Shrimp of a girl.’ Lady Mortlock yawned, displaying dazzling white teeth of preternatural regularity, clearly the result of superior dentistry. ‘She drowned, didn’t she? She had some form of mental deficiency. She was damaged goods. Hardly surprising. Bad heredity on both sides. If she’d been allowed to grow up, she’d have been one of those slobbering child-like idiots.’

  ‘What do you mean “allowed”?’

  ‘That’s only a figure of speech, Antonia. I’d be extremely grateful if you refrained from snapping at me,’ Lady Mortlock said grandly. ‘I did tell Lena to reconsider when she told me she was pregnant - we were still on speaking terms then - and she promised she would, but didn’t. She said afterwards she had forgotten - that it would have been too much trouble, having an abortion. I wanted her to have an abortion. Among other things, that would have made her marriage to Lawrence less real ... Oh she was hopeless - hopeless!’

  Antonia opened her mouth but then decided against saying anything. Better let her speak on, she decided.

  ‘I did warn her of the possible consequences. Lawrence suffered from pathological folie de grandeur while hers was an addictive, irresponsible, rather reckless personality - and of course she was a Yusupov on the distaff side. It was a recipe for disaster. The marriage itself should never have taken place ... Sonya drowned, didn’t she? Michael cried his eyes out, the old fool. He kept calling out her name in his sleep ... In my opinion that was the best thing that could have happened in the circumstances. What good would it have been to anyone if the girl had lived on - if she had grown up? So much time and energy, not to mention money, are spent nowadays on the care of idiot children. It’s like growing weeds in a garden. That poor young woman, I remember, Sonya’s nanny, didn’t have time to breathe. What good was Sonya to anyone?’

  ‘Her father loved her.’

  ‘A little bit too well, perhaps? No, don’t ask me what I mean - please - too tedious for words! A bee in Lena’s bonnet, that’s all. I shouldn’t have mentioned it at all. Lolita love. Still, to be fair to her, Lena had to put up with an awful lot. Not only married to a madman, but with an idiot child. Small wonder she became so fat and took to drink ... Do you know? Every now and then I’d remember the sunny girl with skin as smooth and pale as pearls, the radiant smile and lithe limbs, and I’d feel warm - here.’ Lady Mortlock touched her shrivelled bosom. ‘Lena, you see, was the love of my life. My one folly. My only taste of the forbidden fruit. Lena made me happy in a way I’d never been happy before - or since.’

  ‘Didn’t Sir Michael suspect anything?’

  ‘About my vicio nifando? No. Nothing at all. Poor Michael. He who trained spies for a living wasn’t particularly perceptive in his private life. I took good care not to be discovered of course. Oh I hated the secrecy, the subterfuge, the pretence, but it was necessary. Duty and discipline, that was my motto. It wouldn’t have done for anyone to know. Remember that I was an extremely successful professional woman. It was under my headship that Ashcroft became a byword for academic excellence at a time when many other supposedly good schools were reeling under the pressures of post-war inflation and social change. There was Michael’s career to consider too. Dear me. It was so difficult. I remember reading Radclyffe Hall and feeling absolutely terrified. Are you familiar with The Well of Loneliness?’

  ‘I know what it’s about, but I haven’t read it.’

  ‘You needn’t sound so defensive ... Look at this. You might as well.’ Lady Mortlock took a folded sheet of paper from inside the book on her lap and handed it over to Antonia. ‘Read it. Read it aloud.’

  Antonia obeyed. The paper was yellow and brittle with age. ‘Dear Mine, my darling Mine -’

  ‘Hermione - Mione - Mine. It’s the name Lena had for me. I loved it when she said it. Go on, go on, don’t stop. Why did you stop?’

  ‘I do love you and want you and want to spend my life with you - more than anything in the world, and by this, I mean anything.’ Antonia looked up. ‘It’s unsigned.’

  ‘Lena wrote it. I let Bea think it’s one of Michael’s love letters. Well, Michael never wrote me any love letters. Michael was never interested in me in that way. Mercifully, he turned out to be what is known as “under-sexed”. I wouldn’t have survived the marriage otherwise!’ She cackled. ‘We did our own things. Sometimes, at weekends, he disappeared completely. He went bird-watching. Anyhow. Lena kept writing notes like that, reckless creature. She loved me too. I think she was sincere. At one point she did want us to move in together, but of course that was out of the question. It was the fifties. I could never have contemplated setting up house with another woman and leading the life of a social outcast. Never. Besides, it wouldn’t have worked. I loved Lena but I also saw how she would deteriorate with age. The seeds were already there ... By the way, it was she who seduced me, not the other way round. She was extremely knowledgeable about that sort of thing. You see, before I met her, she had been with both men and women. I was thirty-seven. Nothing like it had ever happened to me before. As a matter of fact, I rather despised women of that ilk. I remember when we went to see that play -’

  ‘Not The Reluctant Debutante?’

  ‘No. Of course not. Whatever gave you the idea? It was an underground play called The Monocled Countess. It had been inspired by Wedekind’s Lulu. The main protagonist was this tortured gentlewoman. A pathetic, tragic-comic sort of creature who sits at a rather louche cabaret and drowns her frustrated lusts in absinthe as she ogles the naked girlies who prance around her. We see her sitting at a table, on her own, with a carefully poised, long cigarette holder, a monocle and a mannish bob. That is how the play opens. After her heart is broken by a heartless little minx, she starts visiting Sapphic brothels. All of that was considered extremely risqué at the time. I don’t suppose anyone would bat an eyelid nowadays?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The performance took place in a cellar of sorts. Lena screamed with laughter throughout - she thought it all hilarious. I on the other hand could hardly contain my tears. Well, that was when I saw how different we were. The first cracks, as they say, had started appearing. Lena then introduced me to these two other women who lived together. Philippa and Diane. Philippa was the vanilla one; she had immaculately curled golden hair, tippety-tappety shoes, little white gloves and a skirt you could twirl yourself to death in. Diane was remarkably butch. Stocky, with a crew-cut, extremely baggy trousers and a striped blazer, with a sharkskin waistcoat underneath. She smoked untipped cigarettes and took snuff, I think. She took a wild fancy to me. She claimed I looked like the central figure in Jean Dupas’s picture Les Perruches. You know the tall, dark woman with the Roman nose who’s holding two rose bouquets?’

  Antonia frowned. ‘She is surrounded by nudes, isn’t she?’

  ‘Indeed she is - while she herself is wearing a long black, rather puritanical-looking dress. I thought it quite flattering, actually. Philippa on the other hand tried to teach me polari, the dyke argot. It’s all very different now, isn’t it? I mean women do whatever they please. They are already vicars and they hope to become bishops, and they have male strippers at their hen parties. As you can see, I’ve been keeping up with the Zeitgeist. Well, Antonia, it was good seeing you. Would you like to go now? I am very tired.’

  Antonia looked at her in desperation. ‘The day before Sonya disappeared you told me that Miss Haywood’s mother was very ill, in hospital,’ she said. ‘That was a lie. What was the purpose of it?’

  ‘Miss Haywood’s mother? What are you talking about?’

  Antonia persisted. ‘It happened the day before Sonya disappeared -’

  Suddenly Lady Mortlock gave a nod. ‘Oh yes. Yes. As a matter of fact I do remember our conversation. I did tell you that Miss Haywood’s mother was rushed to hospital. That’s correct.’

  Antonia wondered if Lady Mortlock had started playing some game with her. She leant forward. ‘She wasn’t. That was a lie.’

  Lady Mort
lock shrugged. ‘Well, my dear Antonia, if it was, I had no idea. That was what I was told by Lena.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. I think the lie originated with you,’ Antonia suggested boldly. I have nothing to lose, she thought.

  There was a moment’s pause. Lady Mortlock sat staring at her. ‘Are you by any chance thinking what I believe you are thinking? That I killed Sonya on account of her mental deficiency, because of my obsession with eugenics? That I ordered her to be drowned in the river, like some unwanted kitten? That perhaps I paid someone to do it?’

  ‘Well, did you?’

  ‘I can’t believe we are having this conversation. That’s the kind of thing that happens in detective stories of the more far-fetched kind. This is rather entertaining actually. Perhaps Guedalla was right when he said that detective stories are the normal recreation of noble minds. I am glad you didn’t leave when I told you to. I do feel better. Let’s see. I never left the drawing room that morning, not for a moment. Plenty of witnesses, including you. Consequently, it couldn’t have been me in person. Now then, could I have done it by proxy? Could I have commissioned one of my gardeners? Or perhaps that Major?’ She cackled. ‘What was his name? Eagle? Some such name. He was the only one without an alibi that morning - and he detested Lawrence.’

  ‘His name was Nagle.’

  ‘One of those seemingly unlikely murderous partnerships. Lady Mortlock and Major Nagle. You saw him kiss my hand when he arrived at Twiston for that party of course? You were in the hall at the time. Don’t you remember? Major Nagle raised my hand to his lips and held it there. It was an anachronistic, theatrical, rather foreign kind of gesture - Rudolph Valentino became famous for that sort of thing - not what one would associate with an English officer and gentleman. Why do you think Major Nagle did that? Didn’t it occur to you that he might be reassuring me that he’d carry out his pledge to me? That he wouldn’t fail me?’