The Hunt for Sonya Dufrette Read online

  ‘She hated Greeks. That’s what her mother said,’ Payne put in.

  ‘I know. That’s why I decided in the end that a Greek conspiracy was unlikely. Besides, it is boys mainly who are in demand. No Greek family would have had any use for a retarded girl ... Well, an abduction did take place,’ Dufrette said, ‘but it was what you’d call an “inside job” ... I should have guessed it was them at once, only I didn’t.’ He started counting on his fingers. ‘They were childless. They adored children. They doted on Sonya. They always gave her presents. They paid us regular visits, but after she “drowned” they vanished from our lives.’

  ‘My God,’ Antonia whispered as realization dawned on her.

  ‘They sent me a letter of condolence. It was an exceptionally nice letter. It moved me to tears. It was signed by both of them but I am sure it was she who wrote it ... It was something to the effect that I shouldn’t grieve - that I should have no doubt in my mind that Sonya was in paradise - that she was well and happy ... In a funny kind of way, she must have been telling the truth. One of their holiday homes was on the Seychelles. It was the kind of place tourist brochures tend to describe as a “paradise island”.’

  Antonia saw it in her mind’s eye. Clear blue-green water that caught the sun and dazzled in a thousand brilliant points like molten silver - unbroken horizons on a vast disc of paler blue sparkling with sunlight - a green belt of palm trees with wooded hills rising beyond them ... Antonia heard Sonya’s delighted laughter - the splashing of water - Veronica Vorodin’s voice saying, ‘Don’t go too far in, darling. Stay close to Mummy.’

  Major Payne cleared his throat. ‘You are talking about the Vorodins, right? The mega-rich Russian couple that turned out not to be the type that howls for pearls and caviar? They had been staying at Twiston, but left early on the morning of the 29th.’ He tapped the letter. ‘V.V. That’s Veronica Vorodin, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. Veronica engineered the whole thing. It was her. I am sure of it,’ Dufrette said. ‘She had brains as well as beauty. Anatole was a decent sort of chap but not particularly bright.’

  ‘Veronica held the belief that a mentally disabled child was a gift from God,’ Antonia said. ‘She told me that having a child like that would never let her forget her own humanity, that it would prevent her from getting spoilt by her wealth.’ Antonia paused. ‘She said she’d love a child like Sonya more than she would a normal one ... Could she have felt guilty on account of being rich? Could she have been looking for hardships - as some form of atonement?’

  Dufrette frowned. ‘Lena’s mother was like that. All the Yusupovs are a bit mad. Evgenia - Lena’s mother - was preposterously pious. She could have lived in Biarritz, but she became a nun instead. She chose to end her days at some slummy Franciscan convent. Apparently she did things she didn’t even have to do, like shaving her head and picking nettles with her bare hands.’ He paused. ‘The Vorodins’ letter of condolence was written on plain white paper with black borders - nothing like this one. As I said, it was addressed to me ... Only to me. It didn’t register at the time. I was moving in an impenetrable fog of grief. I mean, there was no mention of Lena. That’s where Veronica slipped up - do you see?’

  ‘Yes. You were the only one who needed comfort. Lena knew that Sonya wasn’t dead.’

  Payne said, ‘Let’s see what happened exactly. Veronica and Anatole took their departure early on the morning of the 29th. They said they had a plane to catch. One of them then phoned Twiston pretending to be the hospital where the nanny’s mother had been “rushed”.’

  ‘It must have been Veronica. She had been an actress, hadn’t she?’ Antonia looked at Dufrette.

  ‘Yes. Before she married Anatole. She was wonderful with voices. Could do anyone - Bonnie Tyler, Mrs Thatcher, Barbara Windsor. Had us in stitches. Joyce Gren fell, Penelope Keith.’

  Payne continued, ‘The Vorodins left, but came back later, when they knew you’d all be sitting in front of the box. They parked their car outside the gates. They found Sonya in the garden. Lena had made sure of that ... Sonya would have gone to them straight away, wouldn’t she?’

  ‘Oh yes. She knew them. She liked them, though of course she’d have gone to anyone.’ Dufrette gave a sad smile. ‘She was like a friendly puppy. She lacked any defence mechanism.’

  ‘I wonder if Veronica regarded what they were doing as some sort of rescue operation.’ At once Antonia wished she hadn’t spoken.

  ‘You mean - rescue Sonya from her pernicious parents? You are probably right. I was not a good father.’ Dufrette’s lower lip trembled. ‘If I had been, I’d have taken better care of Sonya.’ Suddenly his hands clenched in fists. ‘How could Veronica do a thing like that to me? She knew how much I loved Sonya! To - to make me think that Sonya had drowned. That was - cruel.’

  The sound of an ambulance siren came from the street outside. Payne asked, ‘Would you have agreed if they had asked you to allow Sonya to be adopted by them?’

  ‘No. Of course not. Out of the question. Never ... Lena sold our daughter,’ Dufrette’s voice shook. ‘She’s got a lot to answer for.’

  ‘They had to make it look like drowning,’ Antonia said. ‘They needed to make everybody believe that Sonya had drowned, that she was dead. If the police thought it was merely an abduction, they would have started a search for her. Sooner or later they’d have got to the truth.’

  ‘Would Sonya have needed a passport? She was seven,’ Major Payne mused aloud. ‘No. She would have been added to one of the passports of her new parents ... Where did they take her?’

  ‘To paradise,’ Dufrette said grimly. ‘Some faraway place, where no one knew them - where news of Sonya’s disappearance couldn’t have penetrated ... Lena. Yes. It all starts and ends with Lena. Lena knows ... She will lead me to them ... I’ll find them. Even if I have to travel to the end of the world, I will find them.’ Dufrette gripped his cane and rose slowly from his seat. A vein pulsed in his temple. He looks like an elderly hound of impeccable pedigree, Antonia thought.

  Reaching out for the letter, he put it into his pocket. ‘My little girl. I want my little girl,’ he whispered. ‘Lena must know ... A little talk, yes ... No preliminaries, no deviation from the subject. Just a few straightforward questions. There’ll be no cajoling and no entreaties. If I don’t get the answers I expect -’ He broke off. ‘Look what I have here.’

  He put his hand inside his jacket, paused dramatically, then produced a gun. He gave a smile, his wolfish smile.

  It was a small gun, no more than five inches long, but showy, trimmed in silver and mother of pearl. Antonia supposed it had come from an antique duelling set. It seemed in excellent condition. What was it - a Derringer? (She had done research on firearms for a possible novel not such a long time ago.)

  Major Payne too was looking at the gun with interest. ‘Is it loaded?’

  ‘Of course it is loaded.’ Lawrence Dufrette went on smiling. ‘What would be the point of carrying an empty gun?’

  He put the gun back into his pocket, paid the bill and started walking towards the exit. He had a preoccupied air about him. He seemed to have forgotten all about them.

  They followed him at a distance. Antonia wondered whether they should inform the police. There might be trouble. Unprepossessing as Lena was, Antonia felt it was wrong to allow Lawrence Dufrette to shoot her, which she believed he’d do if Lena refused to cooperate.

  ‘Lena couldn’t have recovered yet, could she?’ Antonia whispered.

  ‘Highly unlikely. Not even if somebody has managed to force ten Prairie Oysters and an industrial dose of Alka-Seltzer down her throat. No. She’s probably comatose. I would be, if I’d pumped so much brandy into my veins.’

  ‘She might be sleeping it off.’

  But it was much worse than that. As they walked across to the Elsnor, they heard the siren again and saw an ambulance leave. It had been parked outside the hotel. Several moments later they made enquiries at the reception desk and were told th
at Madame Lena had been taken away. Madame Lena had been found unconscious, lying behind the bar in a pool of her own vomit. She wasn’t going to recover soon, no. Her condition had actually been described as ‘life-threatening’. There was the likelihood that Madame Lena might not last the night.

  19

  The End of the Affair?

  That same evening they sat at Porter’s in Covent Garden, having a late supper. Antonia had allowed herself to be persuaded. She had felt too tired to argue or put up any opposition. Besides, she felt she owed it to Hugh. He had been a good sport. He had indulged her. He had encouraged her. Their ‘investigation’ was at an end. It was all over. She had got him involved in a wild-goose chase, a quest for a murder that never happened, but he didn’t seem to mind one little bit. He was a good sport.

  ‘Cheer up, Antonia,’ Major Payne said. After she gave a listless smile, he set her another puzzle. ‘A man stands beside a darkened window. He is desperately keen to open it, yet he knows that, if he did, it would kill him. Why?’

  ‘Um - the man suffers from a rare disease - a virtual allergy to sunlight? I believe it’s called xeroderma pigmentosum. I know it’s not that, Hugh. You might as well tell me.’

  ‘Well, the simple answer is that the man is claustrophobic. He is in a submarine. If he opens the window, water will rush in and he’ll drown.’

  ‘Why is the window darkened?’

  ‘That’s been put in to throw you off the scent ... More wine?’ He picked up the bottle. It was an exceptionally good wine.

  ‘Yes please.’ She held up her glass. It was going to be her third.

  He gave himself a refill too, then said, ‘Tabula rasa, eh? No murder.’ He raised his glass. ‘Let’s drink to it.’

  ‘Let’s.’

  They drank, then Antonia began, ‘Why do I always go for the complicated? I do it every time. That’s why perhaps I can’t succeed as a crime writer. I always feel I need to go for complexity - for an abundance of red herrings - for intricate clues - for far-fetched motives - for ingenuity-gone-mad. I suppose I do it out of fear that my denouement, when it comes, would turn out to be too trite. I get myself into a state about the timing of the denouement as well. Is it too soon - too late? Oh, it’s agony. I hate myself for it. I lack confidence, that’s what it is.’

  She paused and took another sip of wine. She was becoming garrulous. She was getting mixed up. Why had she started talking about her writing problems? Well, the wine was at last taking effect. Good. High time. That was better than feeling depressed and anticlimactic and empty and futile ... How idiotically self-indulgent of her to be disappointed that there had been no murder, to feel ‘flat’ about the absence of a dramatic denouement, to mourn over the lack of a final twist in the tale. This is not a tale, she reminded herself.

  ‘Your confidence will go up with every novel you put under your belt,’ Major Payne was saying. ‘I refuse to believe your new novel is going badly.’

  ‘As a matter of fact it’s going nowhere.’ Antonia took another sip of wine. ‘I haven’t yet taken it out of the bottom drawer.’

  ‘Well, that’s because you’ve been busy, running about interviewing autocratic Lady Mortlock, exotic Lena, mad bad Lawrence Dufrette -’

  ‘Do they exist? Sometimes I wonder ... You do make them sound like characters in a book.’ She frowned. ‘Were we really at a place called the Elsnor today?’

  ‘We were. Twice.’

  ‘True. Yes ... I did imagine all sorts of deranged and awful things. I even thought Sonya might have been the victim of some sacrificial ritual performed by the Babylonian brotherhood! Do they perform sacrificial rituals?’

  ‘As a matter of fact they do. Young children and virgins, if Dufrette is to be believed, are in particular demand.’

  Antonia shook her head. ‘All along - all along - the rather obvious solution has been staring me in the face. Neat, bloodless, convincing, not particularly original. Adoption. Pure and simple. All right, not pure and not simple, not this one, but nothing like the gothic horrors I imagined. Why didn’t I think that Sonya might have been taken, not for some hideous reason, but because she had been loved and wanted and cherished? I had at my disposal all the clues pointing in the right direction .... Besides, the Vorodins weren’t there when it happened!’

  ‘Ah yes. That should have alerted you at once. That’s always highly suspicious, isn’t it? The perfect alibi. “Alibi”, after all, means “elsewhere”.’

  ‘Doing evil that good may come. That’s in the Bible, I think. That’s what Veronica must have believed she was doing ... I rather liked Veronica. I thought she was genuinely caring, sweet and sensitive. Not at all spoilt by wealth. I am convinced she has been a good mother to Sonya. Better than Lena would ever have been. I hope Dufrette never finds them. He is a dangerous man. He called the Vorodins thieves. He said they stole his daughter.’

  ‘Which, at any rate, is not strictly true. The Vorodins didn’t steal Sonya. They paid vast sums for her,’ Payne pointed out. ‘By their own lights, they did the decent thing.’

  ‘Where do you think they are?’

  ‘In South America, somewhere, surrounded by servants and bodyguards and high-tech surveillance systems and the best resident doctors and nurses money can buy. You shouldn’t be depressed, really. This is a happy ending of sorts. There was no murder. That’s good news. Let’s drink to it.’

  They drank to it. ‘What’s the matter now?’ Payne asked as Antonia sighed.

  ‘I’ve been leading you on a wild-goose chase -’

  ‘What absolute rot.’

  ‘Kind of you to say so, but I have wasted your time.’ Antonia vaguely wondered whether she wasn’t spouting all these negative statements so that he could contradict them and reassure her. If she had to be honest with herself, she rather enjoyed being reassured by him.

  ‘Nothing of the sort. I enjoyed every minute of it.’ Major Payne reached out and took her hand. She let him hold it. What the hell, she thought.

  He went on, ‘The - what shall we call it? The hunt for Sonya Dufrette hasn’t been a failure. Au contraire. All right, we haven’t been able to discover Sonya’s whereabouts, but we did find out what happened. You had a hunch that there was something wrong and you were proved correct. A crime was committed, no matter how noble the motive for it. We did uncover greed, skulduggery, intricate scheming and deception. That’s an achievement. Truth has prevailed. That’s a cause for celebration and that’s what we are having now.’ He raised his glass again. ‘To Truth.’ He looked at her. ‘And to Beauty too.’

  ‘You are being silly now. Very silly. I am not really happy about it. In fact I wish we’d let sleeping dogs lie.’

  He shook his head with exaggerated disapproval. ‘I am surprised at you, Antonia. Judging by your book, I was convinced that you were an uncompromising moralist.’

  ‘What I mean is, I am extremely uneasy about Dufrette - about what he might do next. He won’t give up until he has tracked down the Vorodins. And he won’t wait until Lena recovers - if she ever does - to get Veronica’s address. He will find another source of information soon enough. He said it himself. He looked absolutely determined.’

  ‘Yes.’ Payne ran a thoughtful forefinger along his jaw. ‘Absolutely, uncompromisingly, insanely determined. He looked like a man possessed by the spirit of a wolf hanged for manslaughter. Does that strike you as completely nonsensical? Why do these things sound so much better in one’s head? Am I right in thinking that it rather captures the essence of Lawrence?’

  ‘The hour of the wolf,’ Antonia said. ‘I hope it never comes ... That’s when people die, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. According to Scandinavian mythology.’

  ‘He has a gun. He is prepared to use it,’ Antonia went on. ‘He not only wants his daughter back - he wants revenge. You did hear him say, “Paytime.” Lena, the nanny, Veronica - are they safe from him? I know this sounds wildly melodramatic, but then Dufrette is a melodramatic kind of person.’
r />   ‘True ... He does seem to relish the role of the lone vigilante ... He didn’t like it one bit when you suggested that the police should be told. Crikey - he actually snarled at you!’

  They had been standing inside the Elsnor lobby. Lawrence Dufrette had said he’d be very cross if they told the police. He had patted his pocket suggestively. He had expressed the hope that their paths wouldn’t cross again. He had said their meddling days were over, that they should make themselves scarce, that from that moment on he was in charge, that his hour had come. He had spoken in a low menacing voice. He had directed at Antonia a look full of antagonism and scorn and, yes, he had snarled at her. She had been shocked. She had thought they had been getting on really well. Of all the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde transformations!

  ‘Not a word of thanks either,’ Major Payne murmured. ‘To think that, but for us, he would never have known his daughter was alive.’

  ‘And he took that letter. We shouldn’t have let him. He will get someone to translate it for him ... I wonder what was in it.’

  ‘It may be something totally irrelevant. Veronica saying, I took Sonya to Versailles yesterday. She enjoyed herself an awful lot. We wished you were here with us,’

  ‘I can’t imagine anyone wishing Lena were with them anywhere ... Could they be in France?’

  ‘I don’t know. V.V. did use French writing paper, but that means nothing ... Shall we order pudding and coffee? What would you like?’

  ‘A pêche Melba with chocolate sauce,’ Antonia said recklessly. ‘How about informing the police?’

  ‘I don’t think it will make much difference.’ Payne took out his pipe. He went on, ‘You see, don’t you, that we can’t prove a thing? Dufrette will no doubt deny the existence of any letter point blank and express concern over the state of our respective minds. Miss Haywood may break down and confess fully, but there’s no guarantee. And I think it highly unlikely that Lena will ever admit to selling her daughter to the Vorodins.’