Murder of Gonzago Read online

  ‘What is it – drugs?’

  Clarissa’s eyes shifted towards the black-lacquered cabinet and fixed on the colourful figures embossed on its surface. The nausea and the faintness were returning. The palanquin in which an important-looking mandarin lounged shifted forward, the parasol held above his servants in shallow straw hats acquired a thin luminous band around its edges. The parasol started to revolve, at first hesitatingly and then faster … and faster. And, as though that were not enough, she then saw the mandarin wink at her!

  I am in a state of shock, she thought. I need a fix. I can’t go on without a fix. No, it wouldn’t do for her to faint. Not now.

  ‘It was drugs, yes. Roderick was part of several trade missions and advisory organizations that are suspected of being a cover for smuggling drugs from the Caribbean,’ she explained. ‘A couple of local gangs were after him as well, either for queering their pitch or for not “fulfilling his duties”. There were several very good reasons for him to want to fake his death.’

  ‘I do think you should call the police, Clarissa. The sooner the better. Or I could do it, if you like?’

  ‘No! It would be madness. What shall I say to the police? I don’t want to sleep with my husband, please despatch a rescue squad? Then the whole thing would be out in the open. He’s bound to tell them that I was his accomplice, that I aided and abetted him. He wouldn’t have been able to do any of it without me!’

  ‘He is a monster!’

  ‘He reminded me we were meant to be “one flesh”, that ours was an “indissoluble union”. He says he has the legal right to demand a thousand little intimacies from me, including the ultimate, and it is a wife’s duty to honour and obey her husband. We have been married in name only, it’s been bothering him an awful lot, but now he intends to change the status quo. Oh, you should have heard him. He stood ranting outside my door.’

  ‘So he never … you never …?’

  ‘No. It never happened. The marriage was never consummated.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I am sure.’ Suddenly Clarissa laughed.

  ‘Thank God,’ Hortense said. ‘Thank God.’

  ‘There were – difficulties. All I can say is that it suited me. I couldn’t stand him. I should never have married him. Well, he let me have lovers. I don’t want to talk about it. Sorry. All too sordid for words. After he killed Quin, he promised he would disappear.’

  ‘You are sure it was he who killed that man?’

  ‘Well, yes! He planned the whole thing. The codicil makes that abundantly clear. He said I’d have a lot of money and then I could do whatever I pleased, but here he is now, back at Remnant, suddenly keen on uniting his flesh with mine!’

  ‘Where are you at the moment?’

  ‘In the smallest of the four Chinese rooms. There are fifty-eight rooms at Remnant,’ Clarissa said wearily. ‘I thought I might have killed him, but he seems to have recovered. He was knocking on the door a minute ago, asking me to be kind. He is mad … He said I’d split his forehead and that he was bleeding, but he has forgiven me.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘In his bathroom, I imagine. He said he would have a bath. Perhaps he will drown in it. Or is that too much to hope? He said he wanted to be clean for me. He is mad,’ Clarissa repeated. ‘Oh God. What an impossible situation. He is supposed to be dead – and he is a murderer!’

  ‘You must leave Remnant at once!’

  ‘I can’t. He said I would regret it if I did leave. He means it. He said he’d send a letter to the police. Apparently he’s written an account of my involvement in the drug trade on Grenadin.’

  ‘Were you involved in the drug trade on Grenadin?’

  ‘In a way. All right. I didn’t do it for the money. There was a man I was in love with. Stanley – that’s Dr McLean – and I were lovers.’ Clarissa sighed. ‘Stanley was involved in drug peddling and he managed to get me interested. He persuaded me to invest capital in his venture. I wanted to help him. I was quite smitten with him … Are you sure you want to hear this?’

  ‘Yes. Do go on.’

  ‘That was before Syl came on the scene. Roderick was also involved with drugs, but, as it happened, with a rival gang. It sounds absurd, I know, but that’s the way it was. I thought Roderick didn’t know about me and Dr McLean but he does. He’s got papers and a tape.’

  ‘What tape?’

  ‘An audiotape. It seems he recorded one of our conversations on tape … It’s a damnably compromising kind of conversation. I said things I shouldn’t have said and so did Stanley. I am afraid we weren’t very careful.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘We refer to various people and organizations, all of which can be checked. Roderick said he could have me sent to jail for some considerable time … He would love to punish me, but if I did my wifely duties by him, he wouldn’t. He’s blackmailing me … I don’t know what to do, Aunt Hortense. I really don’t. I am trapped – literally – trapped.’

  Hurry, hurry, Hortense told herself. My daughter needs me!

  She locked her front door. Her hand shook a little.

  I must save her from the monster. I hope I am not too late.

  Payne was driving. Antonia had a map spread across her knees.

  A minute passed, then another …

  He spoke, ‘I hate it when my ideas overlap, but—’

  ‘What ideas?’

  ‘For some reason I can’t get Louise Hunter’s account of that last supper at La Sorcière out of my head. I keep thinking about Lord Remnant’s story. About the deflowered debs and all those stolen pieces of jewellery.’

  ‘What a coincidence,’ said Antonia. ‘I’ve been thinking about that too. Are we by any chance interested in one particular piece of jewellery?’

  ‘We are.’ Payne cast her a sidelong glance. ‘I believe Clarissa was wearing the bracelet during Gonzago. For a moment or two the camera lingered on it. OK. Let’s be absolutely sure about it. Perhaps you could ring your friend, the hungry Hunter, and check with her?’

  ‘I was just about to suggest it.’

  ‘Yet another instance of the near-telepathic link that exists between us.’

  ‘How tediously weird that makes us sound.’

  ‘No, not tediously weird – fascinating. You know exactly what question to put to Mrs Hunter?’

  ‘I will ask her to describe the bracelet Clarissa wore at dinner at La Sorcière on the fatal night.’

  She produced her mobile phone.

  ‘Mrs Hunter? This is Antonia Rushton speaking …’

  A moment later she put away her phone and said, ‘Louise remembers the bracelet vividly. It had a particularly distinctive design, a coiled serpent made of black pearls. She said Lord Remnant shuddered theatrically as he pointed to it.’

  Roderick, Lord Remnant, was enjoying what he thought of as his ‘second coming’.

  He was having a bath. It was an old-fashioned bath made of enamelled cast iron and painted an azure kind of blue, its rounded corners supported on black claw and ball feet that stood on chequered black and white marble slabs. The bath had big brass taps with porcelain insets that said ‘Hot’ and ‘Cold’.

  A minute or so earlier he had turned the taps on in the hope that the thundering water would drown the sounds of what he imagined was Clarissa sobbing. He liked the idea of her sobbing. It excited him. Suffering intrigued him immeasurably – though not while he was having a bath. There was a time and place for everything.

  He sat with water up to his chest, delighting in the fragrance of aromatic oils and therapeutic salts. A haze of steam was hovering above his head, like a halo. He was sipping from a tall glass full of hock and seltzer. He gazed at the picture on the wall that showed a mermaid lying on a fishmonger’s slab, a resigned expression on her greenish face. He imagined the mermaid looked a bit like Clarissa …

  Balnea, vina, Venus – how did it go on? Ages since he’d learnt Latin. Baths, wine and sex may wreck us up,
but they – um – make life worth living?

  Lord Remnant’s forehead was bandaged, but that didn’t seem to bother him. He hummed a little tune under his breath, ‘Said the don to his inamorata, won’t you let me past your garter?’

  The night before he had had a dream. He’d seen himself standing beside a gravestone made of black Carrara marble, tugging at the ivy that bound it like string, only to reveal his name and the dates of his birth and death carefully chiselled in.

  Ridiculous things, dreams. Some people thought dreams revealed the future. Well, he had nothing to fear. In a manner of speaking, he was already dead. He couldn’t die twice, could he?

  Laughing, Lord Remnant got out of the bath. He dried himself with the wonderfully soft towel, rubbed some sweet-smelling musk lotion into his body and put on his mulberry-coloured dressing gown with the frogged lapels.

  He stood in front of his mirror, examining his forehead. It hurt a little. They said that pain was the key to possession while pleasure was more likely to be illusory. The way she had conked him with that lamp! Having screamed herring-gull fashion first. It was like something out of a Feydeau farce, though he couldn’t say he found the episode particularly entertaining. Well, Clarissa was only postponing the inevitable.

  He was confident his wound would heal soon enough. He didn’t think he needed any stitches. What he needed was another drink. And of course he needed Clarissa.

  In that order.

  His jawline had lost some of its firmness, but otherwise he looked as youthful as ever. He held his head up like a guardsman on parade and attached the reddish-brown whiskers to his face with the help of the special glue that went with them. He then put on the reddish-brown wig.

  Making love in disguise – it would be like old times.

  Picking up the powder puff, which he had taken from Clarissa’s dressing table, he pressed it to his cheekbones, then ran it with affected coyness over the bridge of his nose. How smooth his skin looked. He was pleased with the result. He felt like a bride checking her veil in the last mirror before the aisle.

  Pouring himself a malt, he drank it neat.

  Clarissa was born under a treacherous star into a world that brimmed over with base energies. She wouldn’t try to run away, would she? He didn’t think she would. Well, she knew what would happen if she did run away.

  He licked his lips. That misbehaving forelock on Clarissa’s forehead! It drove him mad, thinking about it.

  His thoughts turned to more practical matters. He had already made enquiries, in his Quin persona and in an American accent, regarding the money left to him by the late Lord Remnant. He had called Saunders’s office and spoken to Saunders’s clerk, who had been most helpful. He had told him all he needed to know. The money would be in Mr Quin’s bank account some time next week.

  Did he have everything he needed? Quin’s cards – driving licence – passport. A little black-leather notebook had provided him with the details of Quin’s internet account. User name: Bitchbail. Password: Bully1. Memorable name: Meredith. Memorable place: Greenpeals.

  He also had Quin’s PIN. Obtaining the latter had been as easy as falling off your chair. At the time of the documentary, they had spent some time together. Quin had wanted to observe him; he had been anxious to get Lord Remnant’s speech patterns, mannerisms and so on right.

  Quin had had no idea that his host was observing him too. At one point, as Quin took money out of a cash machine, Lord Remnant stood behind him. He prided himself on his sharp eyesight as well as on his memory for figures. He’d seen and memorized Quin’s PIN: 4421.

  Quin hadn’t been in the least cautious, certainly not suspicious. Well, no reason for Quin to have been suspicious. It wasn’t as though he was consorting with the Artful Dodger, was it? His host was after all a noble lord.

  As for Quin’s email details, Lord Remnant had managed to get them in a similar manner, by simply sitting beside him at an internet café and, again, watching carefully as Quin logged on. The password had been rather prophetic: doppelganger2.

  It was all meant to happen, Lord Remnant thought.

  Since Quin’s death, Lord Remnant had answered several emails from Quin’s agent concerning offers for appearances in films. He had written back: Suffering from a crise de nerfs brought about by my inability to cope with the Spirit of the World. Will let you know if and when I am well again, which, I fear, may not be soon. In a subsequent message he had hinted at a more serious nervous breakdown.

  So far there had been no emails of what could be described as a personal nature. Quin seemed to be one of those rare individuals who possessed no relatives, no lovers and no friends. Quin had been God-sent.

  ‘To Quin.’ Lord Remnant raised the malt to his lips. He’d started finding Remnant oppressive. In fact he’d come to regard Remnant as the absolute abomination of desolation. Gerard was welcome to it. How funny that there should be two Earl Remnants at the moment, the twelfth and the thirteenth. Terribly amusing.

  He heard the creaking of a board outside his room, then he saw the door start opening slowly. What a pleasant surprise. Clarissa’s citadel of defence seemed to have crumbled. Clarissa had reconsidered. Clarissa knew which side of her brioche was buttered. Wise girl! Well, all he wanted from her was pleasant and pliant cooperation—

  The next moment his smile faded. He put down his glass.

  It wasn’t Clarissa who had entered his room.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  Then he saw the gun in her hand.

  33

  The Rescuers

  The principal ground-floor state room at Remnant had an air of desiccated luxury about it. It was also a quintessentially English room on the grand scale. There was the eighteenth-century Carlton House desk designed by Hepplewhite, the Axminster carpets that matched the date of the desk, the extremely rare Wedgwood Etruria vases on top of the breakfront bookcase, the Sèvres porcelain lyre clock ticking on the mantelpiece, the fire-shield made of a stuffed Himalayan pheasant with outspread wings, iridescent breast and plumed tiara, and, above all, there was the view across the park.

  Clarissa stood by the french windows, looking out. She was dressed in a beige twinset and pearls. On her wrist she wore the Keppel Clasp. That was what it was called, her mother had told her. Her mother, who was also her aunt. Clarissa frowned. She was finding the idea a little hard to swallow. Her left sleeve was rolled up to the elbow.

  It wasn’t raining but the skies were ominously overcast. Like all English springs, the one which had come to Remnant Regis seemed unable to make up its mind whether to be nice or nasty. Only half an hour earlier the sun had been shining with extravagant brilliance, but then a sudden darkness had descended and the temperature had plummeted dramatically.

  Clarissa looked down at the drop of blood drying on her forearm. She’d given herself a shot. She had needed a fix. She was in an impossible situation. She wouldn’t have been able to cope without a fix. She wouldn’t have been able to live another minute.

  She heard the sound of a car. Another car? The front door bell rang. Tradewell will get it, she told herself. No, he wouldn’t. Tradewell wasn’t there. She heard the bell again. She didn’t move. She shrugged. I am not at home.

  The door bell rang a third time. Go away, she murmured. You are wasting your time. When too much was happening and the future seemed uncertain, the best thing to do was to stay very still. She went on standing beside the windows, gazing at the sky.

  She was a little startled when the door opened and a man and a woman entered.

  ‘Lady Remnant?’ The man looked military, it was the way he held his arms. Greenish tweeds, a regimental tie. Rather nice, actually.

  She smiled. ‘Have we met?’ Her voice sounded as though it was coming from hundreds of miles away. She had to strain her ears.

  ‘You don’t know us. My name is Hugh Payne and this is my wife Antonia. The front door was open … Are you all right?’

  ‘Am I all right? I am no
t sure. Sweet of you to ask.’ Her hand touched the forelock on her forehead. They were staring at her bared forearm.

  ‘Have you had an accident?’ It was the woman who asked that. A very nice woman. Blue suited her. Maybe she should do her hair slightly differently. Kind eyes. Kind but sharp. Clever.

  ‘No, not really. It was something which I had to do. I had a terrible experience earlier on, but I am all right – now I am. At least I think so. Yes.’

  ‘Where is your husband?’

  ‘My husband? Let me see.’ Clarissa frowned. ‘He is upstairs. No, he is not upstairs. He is dead.’ She laughed. She covered her mouth. ‘Sorry. I forgot.’

  She believed that was a line in a play. My husband is not dead, he is upstairs. She laughed again. Everything seemed so unreal. She felt a bit confused. A bit woozy. She was perfectly aware of the existence of formulas to be employed in social situations, when dealing with people one had never met before, and she searched for them in vain. The right things to say seemed to dash round the corner and conceal themselves, rather cunningly, she thought, in the crowd of things which she knew she should not say. Well, it happened each time she had a fix, she’d noticed.

  No one was supposed to know her husband was alive. That was a fiction she had agreed to maintain. Roderick had sworn her to secrecy. Roderick had bribed her. And he had ordered her to bribe all the others. To buy their silence.

  As the Dowager Lady Remnant she would have pots of money in the bank, she would be the sole possessor of Grenadin and she would be able go out with any man she liked. All she needed to do in return was keep her mouth firmly shut, or zipped up, as he’d put it.

  As arrangements went, it hadn’t sounded bad at all. Roderick had promised to disappear under an assumed name, or rather under Peter Quin’s name. But now he wanted something from her – something that had not been part of the deal – that was the reason she had cranked herself up—