Assassins at Ospreys Read online

  Antonia indulged in some lurid hypotheses. The two women shared a dark secret. They had committed murder together – in the manner perhaps of Genet’s Les Bonnes? They had killed Beatrice’s rich old aunt or rich old uncle. (That would explain Bee’s fascination with murder mysteries.) Could Bee’s paralysis be hysterical in origin? Guilt-induced? No – she had broken her back in an accident that had occurred as they had been trying to escape justice. It was Ingrid who had been driving. They had changed their identities – were leading alternative lives. Or it might be something completely different. Ageing actresses living in isolation – ancient rivalries rearing up their ugly heads – no, not another Baby Jane plot! She could do better than that, surely. Maybe there was a man at the back of it somewhere, for whose affections they fought – their family doctor perhaps – or the boy who did their garden?

  ‘It’s getting terribly late, Bee,’ Antonia heard Ingrid say.

  ‘Late for what, darling? I am not at all tempted to go outside. It’s hot and horrid and utter ghastly drears out-side,’ Beatrice said petulantly. ‘You don’t want me to get sunstroke, do you?’

  ‘I’ve got your hat here.’

  ‘I hate that hat! It makes me look middle-aged.’

  ‘We haven’t seen all the bookshops,’ Ingrid said patiently. ‘That’s one reason we came, isn’t it? To see the bookshops.’

  ‘I am fed up with bookshops. Our house looks like a bookshop full of tiresome old tomes. It’s much more fun here, talking to Miss Darcy. I’ve thought of something.’ Suddenly Beatrice reached out for Antonia’s hand and held it tight. ‘You must say yes. Promise you will say yes.’

  ‘Yes to what?’ Antonia glanced round nervously to see if there were any witnesses to this spectacle. Her eyes met the gleeful gaze of one of her fellow crime writers, the floppy-haired Scot, whose edgy hard-drinking characters she had never been able to take to her heart.

  ‘Would you allow us to give you tea? It would give me such great pleasure,’ Beatrice Ardleigh said. ‘Honestly. We’ll have a proper conversation. There are hundreds of questions I want to ask you.’

  ‘Isn’t it going to be too much for you? Won’t you – get tired?’

  ‘Oh, rubbish. I am not as bad as you probably think. Watch –’ To Antonia’s utter astonishment, Beatrice rose to her feet, stepped away from the wheelchair and held up her hands. ‘Voilà. I couldn’t walk for quite a bit, but I am fine now. I allow myself to be perambulated about in this horrid chair only because Ingrid fusses so. She thinks I might stumble and collapse and die, don’t you, my sweet?’

  ‘It used to amuse you,’ Ingrid said.

  ‘I suppose it did – everybody so kind and solicitous – elderly gentlemen offering their services – special public lavatories and so on – but no more. It’s a bore.’ Beatrice resumed her seat. ‘Please, say yes, Miss Darcy. Do let’s have tea together.’

  Ingrid’s face looked like thunder. Ingrid was clearly not wild about the idea of entertaining to tea a detective story writer of dubious merit, but Beatrice had already started saying that they had discovered a wonderful old-world tea-place, just round the corner, where they served the best cream teas imaginable.

  In the end Antonia accepted. Les bonnes exercised a morbid fascination over her. She was curious about them. If somebody had told her at that point that by agreeing to have tea with Beatrice Ardleigh and Ingrid Delmar, she was setting in motion a chain of events that would end in her husband’s bringing about a man’s death by merely leaving his tobacco pouch behind, she wouldn’t have believed it.

  But that was what happened.

  2

  Death-watch

  They talked about death of course, or rather he did; it was inevitable in the circumstances that he should talk about death. He quoted the Bible – A vile disease has beset me and I will never get up from the place where I lie. He dwelt on his impending end. He had no fear and, now that she had come, no regrets. (‘Thank you, thank you, dear Bee,’ he reiterated.) God hadn’t brought about a miraculous healing, God hadn’t shrivelled up the tumours, but He had granted him that one wish, that he should see her. Who was he to question God’s wisdom? God was good. Now he could die in peace.

  Ralph Renshawe rambled on. He had made all the arrangements for his own funeral. He had interviewed the undertakers and ordered his coffin. (A plain one, made of unvarnished pine.) He had chosen the hymns and seen to the printing of the service sheets. (O Deus, ego amo te and suchlike.) He informed her what was going to happen to Ospreys. (The National Trust was going to take over, apparently.) Ospreys was in a state of disrepair – it was falling apart, but he didn’t think it mattered a hoot – not even if it were to sink into the ground like the House of Usher. (Only the other month a garden urn had been torn off its Coade stone pedestal and stolen. He wished the whole bloody place could be dismantled.)

  He referred to his vast fortune in dismissive terms. (He couldn’t take it with him. And even if he could, money would be of little use to him where he was going.) He groaned and grumbled about his nephew Robin. (Morally bankrupt – a terrible disappointment.) Listening to readings from St Thomas à Kempis on tape had been a great comfort. (A man calling himself a saint must be so disciplined that he is able to control his thoughts from evil. It was not enough merely to smile blandly as some thought.) He kept asking what month it was. (Was it really November? Already?)

  She was bored to tears but she let him talk. In fact she encouraged him. He was getting quite breathless now. He had started gasping. She liked that.

  He talked about the awful things men did to those they professed to love, about guilt, redemption, atonement, about forgiveness and simple human kindness. He meant him and her of course.

  ‘Thank you, Bee. Thank you for coming. Thank you for being here,’ he whispered. His eyes shut. He had tired himself. He was fading fast, that was what the nurse had said. The chemotherapy had made him lose all his hair as well as his lashes and eyebrows. His face was smooth, epicene; it looked neither female nor male. It was the colour of parchment; distorted, swollen, barely human. He felt nauseous and faint all the time and he had constant ringing in his ears. She could hardly contain her satisfied smile.

  The bloodless lips were moving once more. ‘I became a Catholic the very same day the test results came. I used to disapprove of everything they stood for. I mean the Catholic Church. I used to mock them. I used to say there was nothing to it but superstition, empty rituals, trickery and buggery. Yet, inexplicably, it was into a Catholic church that I stumbled that day – I fell to my knees and bowed my head low –’

  A priest visited him every day at Ospreys. It was some-body who had been recommended by Ralph Renshawe’s nephew, the infamous Robin. The nurse had let that slip out and then had begged her anxiously not to tell Mr Renshawe. The nurse, it seemed, had a soft spot for Master Robin.

  She had bumped into the priest at the front door. Father Lillie-Lysander, some such name. She didn’t think much of him. He was plump and sleek; he looked worldly, self-important, insincere. That had been her overwhelming impression. He had hardly glanced at her, either out of fear that her golden hair might lead him into temptation or because he wasn’t interested in women – probably the latter.

  ‘I cried. I couldn’t help myself. I thought I’d drown in tears. I wasn’t pitying myself,’ Ralph went on. ‘I was thinking of you, Bee. I didn’t care that I had only a short time to live. I honestly didn’t. I decided to write to you, to find you. I made up my mind I wouldn’t leave this world before I’d sought your forgiveness. I thought about that other unfortunate woman too – what was her name?’

  ‘Ingrid,’ she said after a pause. There was a strange expression on her face.

  ‘Ingrid? Dear Lord. Terrible thing to happen.’

  ‘Apocalyptic,’ she said.

  ‘I was to blame. All my fault. I wrecked your lives –’ He broke off. ‘It was such a warm night when it happened – the kind of night songs are written about. Starry, star
ry night,’ he sang out in a thin reedy voice. The next moment he started coughing.

  ‘Every so often I shut my eyes and recreate the episode in my mind. I rewind it, as though it were a film. I run it through again and again. Then I freeze the frame and look at it carefully. I examine every detail –’

  She was interrupted by a scream coming from outside and she turned her head sharply towards the french windows. Rooks. Rooks were circling above the vast, over-grown garden. She could see the wishing well and parts of the old stone wall with its deep arched embrasures, crumbling into ruin. When the National Trust took over, all that would change, she imagined. Ospreys would be open for the public. Or maybe the National Trust was going to keep things as they were? Some people liked the idea of picturesque decay.

  ‘It was 4th May,’ he whispered. ‘That’s when it happened.’

  ‘It was twenty minutes to midnight. There was the smell of lilacs in the air. The car windows were open. The radio was on. They were playing “Clair de Lune”. There was a moon – like a friendly face, smiling down at me. Lots of stars. I was full of hope. I felt ecstatic, yet serene. For the first time I had peace of mind. I was leaving my old life behind. I was thinking of my little golden-haired girl –’

  ‘Lilacs, yes . . . I remember the lilacs . . . The sweetest, the most intoxicating of smells, I always think, though not as intoxicating as your scent, Bee.’ The skeletal hand stirred and she froze, clenching her teeth, imagining he was about to touch her. ‘Ce Soir Je T’Aime. You still use it, I can tell. I haven’t entirely lost my sense of smell. We were talking – laughing. I’d said something that made you laugh. Then that other car appeared. It kept coming closer. I saw it as though in slow motion, wasn’t that odd? Am I being fanciful?’

  ‘You were drunk.’

  ‘The crash . . . I felt nothing. It felt like running into masses of cotton wool. I heard you moan, but when I flicked my lighter, you smiled at me. You said you didn’t think you were too badly hurt, only you couldn’t move your legs . . . I was without a scratch on me. You asked me to check on the other car. That other woman – Ingrid – was clutching at her stomach. She didn’t make a sound – just looked at me. Her eyes – merciful God – I’ll never forget those eyes. She held out her right hand when she saw me – as though asking why –’

  ‘She was pregnant.’

  ‘I had no idea. I learnt later. Her hand looked as though she had dipped it in blood – it was a birthmark of some sort –’ Ralph Renshawe broke off. ‘It was I who should have died. Or suffered some terrible mutilation. Only I didn’t. Father Lillie-Lysander says there was a reason to it, a higher purpose, why I didn’t die in the crash.’

  ‘You got off lightly.’

  ‘I got a fine. I had Biretta & Baal on my side – legal luminaries – crooks. I chose them carefully. I should have been sent to jail but wasn’t. Should have rotted in jail. My picture was in the papers. People recognized me and kept staring at me wherever I went, or so I imagined. I was annoyed by the attention. I imagined everybody disapproved, which of course they must have done. Your father wrote to me. He assumed I would take care of you. That, he suggested, was the decent thing to do, the act of a gentleman, but the mere idea filled me with horror.’

  ‘Daddy was a fool.’

  ‘I didn’t fancy at all the idea of being tied down to an invalid.’

  ‘You disappeared.’

  ‘I left England. Covered my tracks. I was afraid of some sort of retribution, I think. For quite a while I kept looking over my shoulder. For quite a while I was convinced that that woman – Ingrid – would come after me. Or that she’d hire someone to bump me off. I can only imagine what you went through – what it was like.’

  ‘Apocalyptic,’ she said. ‘Hell on earth.’

  ‘I am so sorry. Day after day, week after week, year after year, lying in that bed. Were you in a lot of pain?’

  ‘I was. Terrible pain.’ She thought she heard the nurse hovering outside the door and raised her voice. ‘My whole personality has changed as a result. People have the wrong idea of what I am really like. Everybody is convinced I am of a happy disposition – light-hearted, easy-going, frivolous, girlish. People comment on my joie de vivre. On my insatiable zest for life. They compliment me on my appearance. They ask me how I have managed to look so well, so healthy. The other day somebody called me a “good sport”. I seem to strike everybody as balanced and normal, but the truth is that I am all bitter and twisted inside. There is a monster lurking behind the mask.’

  ‘I am so glad that you have recovered, my dear, so glad. You have hardly changed at all. You look the same. The same pretty face. God is good. We must put all our trust in God.’ Most of her words had clearly been lost on him. A drop of saliva appeared at the corner of his mouth. He was drooling, like an idiot. He looked delirious. His hearing, like the rest of him, had been greatly reduced.

  Had the nurse heard her? The nurse had struck her as the kind that eavesdropped at keyholes. It might be useful – if she were ever to change her mind and revert to what she still thought of as Plan A. It was good to know she might still kill him and get away with it. She smiled – she might have been a character in one of Antonia Darcy’s detective novels!

  He was speaking. ‘I had no idea where you were. I had the letter sent to your old address. Thank God you got it . . . Thank God . . . I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t got in touch . . . Are your parents . . .?’

  ‘Dead,’ she said.

  ‘I am sorry. Your father thought I’d make you an excel-lent husband.’

  ‘Daddy was a fool.’

  ‘Father Lillie-Lysander tells me that I have been forgiven but I am not certain. Not certain at all. I made so many people unhappy . . . I went on wrecking lives . . . You . . . That other woman, Ingrid.’ Ralph Renshawe’s rheumy eyes had started filling with tears. ‘Judith – my late wife. Poor Judith. I gave her such a hard time. I married Judith soon after I arrived in Calgary – sweet girl – rather plain but incredibly rich – an heiress. I married her for her money and we moved to Florida. We had no children. A good thing too. Judith should have left her fortune to someone else – to a home for cats – she adored cats – or to her charities. Judith was a saint. I deserve nothing – nothing at all. She left all her money to me instead. Her fabulous fortune. Can you imagine?’

  ‘Fool,’ she said.

  ‘I did a lot of things I shouldn’t have done, Bee. Before I got ill, I kept a mistress,’ he went on. ‘She was extremely upset when I told her to leave. She had started seeing herself as the “Mistress of Ospreys”, I suppose. She threatened to kill me. She said she couldn’t live without me. She was a passionate, hot-blooded creature. She followed her instincts, never her mind. Her appetites were more than a match for mine. She originated from the Subcontinent, but was quite taken with our English ways. She changed her accent; her speech assumed the numinous purity of Home County intonation, which was a bit of a bore. Perhaps she was after my money, I don’t know. Are you cold?’ He suddenly looked at her gloved hands and sighed. ‘I am always cold. They say that the merest chill might be fatal.’

  He shut his eyes. He had wearied himself. He was dying slowly, by degrees; each minute brought him closer to the grave. In a funny way that was what had saved his life. Seeing him in this pitiable state had made her change her mind. I like that, she remembered thinking. She must try to stretch this out for as long as possible.

  Killing him would have been too easy – an act of mercy really, and mercy was not something she was prepared to give him. A speedy death? Oh no. This was better. Much better. Much more – enjoyable.

  Her eyes narrowed and she ran her tongue across her lips.

  Yes. Infinitely more satisfying.

  3

  A Connoisseur’s Case

  It had been a mysterious, rather oppressive kind of after-noon, all the familiar landmarks outside engulfed by an old-fashioned smog, either unrecognizable or completely vanished. Intrigued b
y the alien look of things, rather like characters out of Chesterton, Antonia and Hugh Payne decided to go for a short walk on Hampstead Heath. They heard the ghostly ringing of a church bell, disembodied yellowish lights flickered in the air and they appeared to be wading knee-deep in candyfloss. But for the unpleasant squishing of wet grass beneath their feet, Major Payne said, they might have been in some abandoned ancient land high above the clouds – in Valhalla itself! Neither of them could see the ground and they had to feel their way with their rolled-up umbrellas held out before them, blind-man fashion.

  When they returned home, they sat down to tea and crumpets before a blazing fire. The curtains were drawn across the windows and all the table lamps in the sitting room were on. The Rockingham teapot gleamed.

  ‘How about a game of Scrabble? And a brandy, I think.’ Major Payne crossed to the sideboard while Antonia took out the Scrabble.

  ‘No brandy for me, thank you.’ Antonia opened the Scrabble board and shook the green bag of letters.

  ‘This time,’ he said, ‘I intend to beat you.’

  ‘I intend to beat you. No Shakespearean words,’ she reminded him.

  It was a quarter to six and they had been playing for twenty minutes when the telephone rang.

  ‘Damn,’ Payne said. ‘Just when –’

  ‘I will get it.’ Antonia rose.

  Major Payne listened with half an ear to her part of the conversation while trying to think of a good word that could be formed with a P, a Q, an O, an I, an A, a G. and an N. He took a sip of brandy. Pin. Pig. Gin. Nip. Gap. He wouldn’t get much, dammit. Such rotten letters. Nog? Pan? Peanuts! Nap? Pang? He pulled at his lower lip. Well, he could have ‘quoin’, he supposed – but he would have to pinch Antonia’s U first. Could he replace it with his P? No – she was bound to notice, she always did. Antonia, like all professional wordsmiths, took Scrabble too seriously. Earlier on they had argued over the meaning of ‘zori’. He thought it meant a skunk-like beast out of Africa while Antonia insisted it was a Japanese straw sandal. The dictionary would have provided a solution, but he had no any idea where the damned thing had gone.