The Death of Corinne Read online

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘She didn’t say! Till this thing blows over, I suppose, if that’s the right way of putting it. She didn’t even ask whether it would be convenient.’ Lady Grylls gave a mirthless guffaw. ‘She seems to be taking it for granted that it will be all right. She’s got houses all over the place – Florida, Geneva, a villa in Antibes, and I don’t know where else – yet she’s coming to Chalfont.’

  Antonia murmured, ‘She clearly believes she will be safest here. A haven of peace in the midst of turmoil.’

  Payne nodded. ‘Pax in bello.’

  ‘Pax in bello be blowed! Why should she believe any such thing? Yes, yes, she’s been here before, but she was only three or four then – her mamma brought her. She’s seen photographs of Chalfont, of course. What I mean is, the house is jolly isolated,’ Lady Grylls went on. ‘There’s no moat or wall – no barbed wire – nothing to deter intruders – no armed sentinels. If someone wanted to cut her throat or shoot her, there’d be no way of stopping them, would there?’

  ‘Perhaps she’ll bring her own bodyguards.’

  Lady Grylls groaned. ‘Her entourage. What am I going to do about her entourage? She mentioned a Maître Maginot. I am sure there will be others.’ Lady Grylls counted on her fingers. ‘Her personal maid, her make-up artist, her masseuse – um, what else is there?’

  ‘Fitness instructor – nutritionist?’ Antonia suggested.

  ‘Yes . . . Her personal chiropodist too, as likely as not – these people are so spoilt – or do I mean chiromancer?’ Lady Grylls frowned.

  ‘She probably has one of each.’

  ‘You are such a comfort, Hughie . . . Yes, the likes of Corinne usually travel with a retinue. I’m sure they’ll be an extremely disagreeable bunch . . . She never said how many!’

  ‘I don’t see why you should let that worry you, Aunt Nellie. Plenty of room here.’

  ‘Servants, darling. Servants.’ Lady Grylls shook her head. ‘The bane of my life. I have the most awful struggle, keeping this place together.’

  ‘There’s old Hortense. And Provost. And Nicholas.’

  Hortense was the cook, Provost the butler, while Nicholas, Provost’s teenage son, was learning to be a footman.

  Lady Grylls stared at her nephew owlishly. ‘As you say, Hughie, there’s old Hortense, Provost and Nicholas. Precisely my point. Chalfont’s getting more and more uncomfortable and harder to manage – I don’t suppose it’s only me entering a particularly morose and acrid dotage, is it? I find the draughts are getting worse, the hot-water system less reliable, the dogs less clean –’

  Major Payne put down his cup. ‘You haven’t had dogs for ages, darling.’

  ‘Kept chewing the carpets, that’s why I had to get rid of them. Chalfont will be the end of me. We might have been able to pull it round while Rory was alive – there was still money in the kitty then – but he got this apoplectic look whenever I suggested renovation! I might have been saying, what a pity the jacquerie didn’t succeed, or do let’s join the Labour Party, or some such thing. Rory seemed to equate shabbiness with “good form” . . . You aren’t warm enough, are you?’ She cast a jaundiced glance at the ancient two-bar electric heater that hissed and crackled in front of the fireplace, giving off a slight odour of burning dust. Pointing towards the high ceiling with her forefinger, she observed that that was where all the heat went.

  ‘No doubt most country house owners are similarly handicapped,’ said Payne soothingly.

  ‘Don’t I know it! Why d’you think I avoid Adela de Quesne and that old stick Bobo Markham like the plague? All they do when they manage to get hold of me on the blower is moan about damp and dry rot and trespassing ramblers claiming the right to long-forgotten footpaths and how everything is at near-perdition point.’

  Trying to catch her husband’s eye and failing, Antonia said they could always leave, if indeed there were going to be a lot of people coming.

  ‘Leave? Is that some sort of a joke, Antonia?’ Lady Grylls said sternly. ‘You can’t leave now. I need you here! Goodness. Peverel isn’t any good in a crisis . . . I don’t think such a thing as “trend-spotting” exists, do you? I am sure he made it up. The way he went on about it last night. Gave me a headache. Too bloody fond of the sound of his own voice.’

  ‘He promised he’d set his net scouts the task of finding out as much as possible about Corinne –’

  ‘Ha – net scouts! All bosh, if you ask me, my dear. I wouldn’t believe a word of what Peverel says. He can’t possibly issue commands to anybody simply by sitting in his room and pressing the buttons of his laptop, or whatever that thing’s called – can he?’

  ‘He probably can, darling,’ Payne said. ‘He can even find you a cheap gardener on the net –’

  ‘But you must try to be nice to him first,’ Antonia added with a smile.

  Lady Grylls suddenly looked fascinated. ‘Goodness – you actually finish each other’s sentences. That doesn’t happen often, you know, that kind of affinity between husband and wife.’

  ‘How tedious that makes us sound.’

  ‘Not at all, my dear. A good marriage is not to be sneezed at, especially in this day and age. Yours is clearly one of those that’s been made in heaven. Second marriages are more successful than first ones, or so they say.’

  ‘We like it.’ Payne poured himself more tea. ‘Maître Maginot – is that spelled like the line? Who is he anyway?’

  ‘It’s a she. Some terrible dragon of a woman, by the sound of it. A legal adviser-cum-mentor to Corinne. She seems to have taken over after Mr Lark died. I get the impression she hasn’t been with Corinne that long. She was there as Corinne talked to me, breathing down her neck. I could hear her hissing in the background, prompting. Corinne kept referring to her . . . Maître Maginot considered Chalfont Park as a place of refuge une bonne idé. Maître Maginot doubted whether the death threats were really serious, but wanted to avoid any unnecessary risks. Poor Corinne sounded like a schoolgirl – all timid and halting. Well, I suspect Maître Maginot of monumental control-freakery. I’ve got to smoke. Where are my cigarettes?’ Lady Grylls peered round the table. ‘It doesn’t help that I am as blind as a bat.’

  ‘Your hearing should be exceptionally sharp then.’

  ‘It isn’t. That’s a popular myth . . . Thank you,’ she said as her nephew struck a match for her. ‘So glad you are a smoker, Hughie. Makes such a difference. Can’t stand it when Peverel looks down his nose each time I light up. What a self-righteous bore he is. Won’t you join me? Where’s that fragrant pipe of yours?’

  Payne obligingly produced his pipe and started filling it out of his pouch. His aunt nodded in an approving manner. ‘Now the idea of Maître Maginot doesn’t seem so repellent. I can see how people turn to drugs – can you?’ She blew smoke out of her nostrils. ‘Mr Jonson described Maître Maginot as a femme formidable. Don’t you think it tiresome when people pepper their speech with frog?’

  ‘Terribly tiresome,’ Payne agreed. ‘Apart from being de trop. Unless they are French, that is. Then they can’t help it.’

  ‘From the way he pontificated, Jonson put me in mind of some sort of superior public schoolmaster – or a family solicitor. You know the type. Dry as a biscuit – omniscient godlike manner – the most annoying little cough. Absolute utter drears. I hope he won’t overstay his welcome. He said he wanted to look around. Does he imagine he might find Corinne’s madman at Chalfont, skulking behind an arras, clutching a knife? D’you think he suspects me of some sort of collusion?’

  ‘Well, he might have got it into his head the madman is your secret lover,’ Payne said. ‘Gentlewomen of a certain age are notorious for that sort of thing.’

  ‘Are they?’ Antonia frowned. Hugh did talk awful rot sometimes. ‘Do you mean gentlewomen of a certain age keep secret lovers or that they have a predilection for madmen?’ She was amazed to see Lady Grylls nod.

  ‘Apparently madmen make jolly good lovers. No inhibitions and oo
dles of untapped energy.’ Lady Grylls held her cigarette at what in her youth must have been considered a modish angle. ‘I did read about it somewhere.’

  ‘Might be a madwoman,’ Antonia said. ‘I mean the person behind the death threats.’ Madwomen were always greater fun than madmen – in books and films at least.

  More terrifying, for some reason . . . A Single White Male wouldn’t be quite the same thing as A Single White Female. The madwoman in the attic . . . The female of the species deadlier than the male – ‘More tea?’ Lady Grylls said and she rang for Provost.

  Provost was a faded, sandy-haired man in his mid-forties. In the normal course of things he appeared wearing a comfortable cardigan but, presumably on account of Mr Jonson’s visit, he had changed into a black alpaca coat, stiff shirt, winged collar, black tie and striped trousers and looked every inch the stage butler. He was rather a gloomy individual; however, his face lit up the moment Lady Grylls spoke to him. A look of complicity passed between them. She murmured something that to Antonia’s ears sounded like, ‘On with the show!’ – causing Provost actually to smile. It was clear he adored her. Who said the feudal spirit was dead?

  ‘The Prince of Wales has Debo Devonshire. Provost has me. I am his confidante,’ Lady Grylls declared after he left the room. ‘He says only I understand him. Something in that.’

  The tea was brought by Provost’s son Nicholas, a deadly pale, truculent-looking boy of sixteen, with spiked-up hair and a ‘sleeper’ in his right ear. He had left school the year before and come to live with his father. He had been caught sniffing glue and, apparently, was interested in magic. ‘Pull up your trousers, Nicholas,’ Lady Grylls ordered in a stentorian voice. ‘Not at half mast when I am around, I’ve told you hundreds of times . . . How’s the invisible hat doing?’

  ‘It’s an invisibility cloak, actually,’ he said with a hurt air.

  ‘He’s mad about those ridiculous children’s books everybody seems to be reading on overcrowded trains,’ she explained later. ‘And he talks of something called “wacky-baccy” . . . Poor souls. Is that some sort of spell?’

  Payne cleared his throat. ‘Not quite.’

  Provost, it turned out, was what was known as a ‘single parent’. Lady Grylls pronounced the phrase slowly and doubtfully as though it belonged to some foreign tongue. She went on to explain that Mrs Provost – Shirley – had also been in her employment, but she had left her husband six months earlier – for a black man, a bouncer called C.C.J. Hawkshaw, with whom she now lived in London’s Docklands.

  ‘They came on a visit last month. They meant well, no hard feelings and all that, but it was a mistake. Provost has clearly neither forgotten nor forgiven. He walked about handing round drinks, saying nothing, looking shell-shocked – acted as though he had no idea who they were. The boy ran off and shut himself in the potting shed and wouldn’t come out. I think I smelled pot, but I may be wrong. Nicholas did behave oddly afterwards. Poor souls,’ Lady Grylls said again.

  ‘Why don’t you raise their wages, if you pity them so much?’ Major Payne said as he stirred his tea.

  ‘Can’t afford to. Shirley was unrecognizable. She’s shaved her head and she and C.C.J. sported identical tattoos on their arms. It was fairly obvious she was preggers as well,’ Lady Grylls went on. ‘We always got on well – sex-mad, of course – and I thought her new consort a pet. His full name is Clive Junior, but for some reason he hates being called that. He wouldn’t say what the second C stands for either. He’s terribly sensitive about it.’

  Antonia asked, ‘Hasn’t Corinne got any idea as to who might be sending her the death threats?’

  ‘If she has, she didn’t tell me. All she said was “anonymous notes” . . . So annoying, isn’t it? Who do you think it is, my dear? You are the expert.’

  ‘I am nothing of the sort.’ Antonia said.

  ‘Poor Corinne reminds me of the man who walks on a lonesome road in fear and dread,’ Lady Grylls said.

  ‘Because he knows a frightful fiend doth close behind him tread . . .’ Payne murmured.

  ‘Is that The Ancient Mariner? Awfully gruesome . . . Hate poetical effusions.’ Lady Grylls paused. ‘Who could it be?’

  Major Payne stroked his jaw with a thoughtful fore-finger. ‘It could be someone from Corinne’s past.’

  ‘Corinne hasn’t got a past! Not in the sense I think you mean. All she’s ever done is sing. La chanson, c’est moi. That’s Corinne’s motto. She’s had it embroidered on her sofa cushions and handkerchiefs and things. I don’t think Corinne’s ever had time for a private life.’

  ‘Could the death threats have something to do with Corinne’s singing then?’ Antonia frowned. ‘No – that’s silly.’ We must talk about something else, she thought.

  ‘Shall we explore possibilities?’ Lady Grylls looked round. ‘Such fun. Do let’s.’

  2

  Look to the Lady

  ‘Well, the whole thing might turn out to be something silly and trivial,’ Antonia said after a pause. ‘The death threats may have been written by a fan whose request for an autograph Corinne ignored.’

  ‘Or it might be something really twisted and diabolical,’ said Payne. ‘The Machiavellian Maginot may have done it in order to tighten the screws on Corinne – to increase Corinne’s dependence on her?’

  ‘The Machiavellian Maginot, that’s right.’ Lady Grylls nodded approvingly over her cup of tea. ‘I like it when an unsympathetic character turns out to have done it. Maginot strikes me as exactly the type . . . Have you ever hated someone without ever having clapped eyes on them?’

  ‘Corinne might have written the letters herself,’ Antonia went on. ‘She might be obsessed with death, as her interest in funeral wreaths suggests . . . Some kind of death-wish. Or the death threats might be a publicity stunt – aimed to revive public interest in her – an ageing, self-dramatizing diva’s attention-seeking ploy.’

  ‘What a splendid idea,’ Lady Grylls said. ‘I adore ploys. Such fun, having you here. I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t come. I really don’t. I would have been bored to sobs.’

  ‘The death threats might turn out to be the work of a rival diva. Somebody who’s still jealous of Corinne,’ Payne suggested. ‘One of those legendary cat-fights that go back a long way?’

  ‘The dilemma . . . of the deadly diva?’ Lady Grylls shot a sly look at Antonia.

  Antonia bit her lip. We are being damned insensitive, she thought, treating this as though it were some sort of parlour game. We are providing entertainment for a bored baroness – like the court jesters of old . . . Corinne Coreille, despite all her oddities and great riches, was a human being, at the moment no doubt a terribly frightened one. Were they so incapable of understanding, empathy and simple compassion?

  ‘The death threats might turn out to be what is known as a “cry for help”,’ Major Payne was saying. ‘Corinne may be mired in misery – on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She may feel her career is on the skids – she may be convinced that she has reached the end of the line.’

  Lady Grylls said she was sure Antonia could make any of these theories work if she were writing Corinne’s story up in a book – the plot would be one of those complicated clockwork affairs with a hundred moving parts and interdependence absolute – she could, couldn’t she? Lady Grylls had always maintained that detective story writers were terribly clever.

  ‘Not necessarily. Anyone with basic writing skills, a devious mind and amateur knowledge of psychology can do it.’ Antonia hoped she didn’t sound too terse. She knew there was more to detective story writing than that but she was annoyed. They should talk about something else, really. ‘Who is Bobo Markham?’ she asked.

  Lady Grylls laughed. It was Major Payne who enlightened her.

  ‘Sir Robert Markham is a widowed baronet who considers himself a good catch. Markham Manor is on the other side of Chalfont Parva,’ he explained. ‘Old Markham’s been trying to get Aunt Nellie to marry him. He’s bee
n after you for a long time, hasn’t he, darling?’

  ‘Oh dear, yes . . . Heart of gold, but such an old bore. He’s nearly eighty,’ Lady Grylls said. ‘A man who continually asks a woman to marry him and can’t make her change her mind, is a man who secretly enjoys devotion to lost causes.’

  ‘He had a good war, apparently,’ Payne said. ‘He told me he excelled at Dunkirk.’

  ‘I daresay the Charge of the Light Brigade would have suited Bobo much better! I know I am being awfully unkind. I am not a good person. Bobo’s a splendid old boy, actually, but if I ever married again at my age, it would be to a younger man. Somebody of, say, sixty-four.’

  ‘Darling – a toy-boy,’ Payne murmured.

  ‘And he must on no account breed pigs.’

  ‘Does Sir Robert Markham breed pigs?’ Antonia was not in the least interested, but she was glad to have managed to steer the conversation in a different direction.

  ‘Listen to this. Corinne might be planning to get rid of the overbearing Maginot who has some hold over her.’ Payne paused thoughtfully. ‘It is Maginot who will die violently. Corinne is the killer and she has been making it appear as though she is the intended victim . . . It’s going to be one of those cases where it looks but only looks as though the killer has made a mistake.’

  ‘And I’d lay you long odds it’s Jonson who’s behind the death threats,’ Lady Grylls wheezed. ‘Jonson’s agency is going bankrupt. He needs money desperately.’ Lady Grylls pushed her glasses up her nose. ‘The first time Corinne employed him, she paid him a fortune in fees, so he sees her as the goose that lays golden eggs. He conceives of a scheme – he sends her threatening letters in the hope that she’ll employ his services – which she does!’

  There was a pause. Well, we seem to have exhausted all possibilities, Antonia reflected – and felt cheered by the thought. Whatever happened now, there’d be no surprises . . .

  ‘Do you and Corinne speak in French?’ she asked.

  ‘No – English. Corinne speaks English like one of us, on account of Ruse – I mean her mamma. Her mamma was English. Le falcon – her father – was French. That’s Franglais.’ Lady Grylls fumbled with the pack and lit another cigarette. ‘Le falcon,’ she repeated.