The hunt for Sonya Dufrette chc-1 Read online

  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 that 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 alo
ng – 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.’

  ‘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 peche 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.’

  ‘What if Lena did tell the truth about Dufrette and Sonya? What if some kind of sexual abuse did take place?’

  ‘Again, nothing that has the remotest chance of standing up in court. It was twenty years ago. A mentally deficient child too. Would Sonya – assuming she were ever tracked down – be able to testify? I rather doubt it.’ Payne lit his pipe.

  There was another pause.

  ‘We could always report Dufrette for possessing a gun,’ Antonia said.

  ‘They are sure to discover that he has a licence for it.’

  Antonia sighed.

  20

  Interlude

  The next day Major Payne was called away to his farm in Suffolk, rather urgently, as a sudden crisis had arisen. His manager had been involved in a car crash, not a fatal one, but he was to spend at least a month in hospital, consequently Payne needed to take over the reins. He asked Antonia to go with him and, although she was tempted, she said it would be impossible. She couldn’t afford to take any more days off so soon after coming back from her holiday. They agreed to keep in touch either by e-mail or by phone.

  ‘Do let me know if something crops up,’ he said.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Something might. I have a funny feeling… Somehow I don’t think this is the end of the affair,’ he said. ‘For one thing we haven’t found Sonya Dufrette.’

  She let him kiss her goodbye.

  As it happened, she was very busy herself. It was the day for her monthly report to the club committee and she discovered she hadn’t done it. What with the flurry of recent activities, it had completely slipped her mind. She had only remembered the report as she woke up in the morning, and had jumped out of bed in a panic. She did manage to complete it in less than an hour, though it was far from satisfactory – or s
o she feared. Her only hope was that it wouldn’t be scrutinized too closely. That’s what she told Hugh, who phoned her at half-past eleven that same morning to see how she was getting on. He was insouciant about it. ‘Bluff your way through. They aren’t a particularly efficient bunch, from what I have heard.’ He meant the club committee. She agreed – they weren’t. ‘What’s that music?’ he asked. ‘Are you having a knees-up in the library^? ’

  ‘It’s the gardener’s radio. History of flamenco.’

  At three o‘clock in the afternoon she went up the wide sweep of the staircase. She walked along the corridor, beautifully carpeted and decorated with taste but besmirched by a superfluity of signs and directions. The club was a notorious maze and, without the signs, newcomers would get lost and wander around until rescued by club members or staff. Antonia knew the place like the back of her hand, so the signs only annoyed her.

  The committee meetings were invariably held in a huge gilded room with long curtained windows that looked over an enclosed formal garden. The walls were decorated with portraits of Nelson, Wellington and George V in his Sailor King uniform. Above the fireplace there was an obscure painting of the Battle of Balaclava.

  Antonia was the first to arrive. It always happened that way. The committee weren’t famous for their punctuality. For a couple of moments she amused herself idly, standing beside the portrait of George V, bringing her face very close to it and seeing the intricately, even finickily, rendered blue uniform and perfectly trimmed beard disintegrate into a fuzzy, meaningless blur of brushstrokes. She then headed for the rickety, baize-covered card table, around which were ranged some ill-assorted chairs of good quality. She sat on one of the two Sheratons and, inconsequentially, remembered that last time she had sat on the Louis Quinze.

  She opened her folder in front of her. Random thoughts kept revolving inside her head. The true nature and personality of Lawrence Dufrette. (How dangerous was he?) The need for a pair of shoes to go with the dark blue suit she was wearing. (Would Hugh like them?) The possible whereabouts of Veronica and Sonya. (What new names might Sonya have been given?) Hugh’s whereabouts at that very moment. (Could he be attending some tea-party organized by one of his numerous well-wishers with the sole purpose of introducing him to some highly eligible local widow? She sincerely hoped not.)