The Hunt for Sonya Dufrette Read online

  The argument. For some reason she kept thinking about the argument. It had taken place at breakfast on the morning of the 29th. Lawrence Dufrette and Major Nagle had been no strangers to one another. For a while they had worked together in the same department. Neither man could stand the other, it had soon become apparent to everyone. (Sir Michael should never have asked the two of them together. What could he have been thinking of?) The reason for the animosity? ‘Some sort of rivalry, the usual office in-fighting,’ Lady Mortlock had said dismissively. ‘That, and Lawrence’s tendency to poke his nose into other people’s affairs.’

  Nagle, it transpired, had asked to be transferred to another department because of Dufrette. It had been as bad as that. The argument had started as a result of Dufrette making some disparaging remark about the royal family and Nagle countering it. Dufrette didn’t like to be contradicted and he had said something very personal and extremely inflammatory - something about Nagle’s wife?

  After finishing her soup and feeding the cats, Antonia went back to the sitting room. Should she spend some time on her novel? Standing beside her desk, she looked down at the bottom drawer, which was now closed. She hadn’t made any progress with her novel. She did need to work out the details of the rather complicated plot; it was at a stage when everything appeared hopelessly absurd . . . No, the drowning of Sonya Dufrette first.

  She resumed reading.

  It had been a most unsettled morning - the morning of the royal wedding. It had started promisingly enough. At eight o‘clock Antonia had been woken up by birdsong and had drawn her curtains made of rich, pea-green moire silk, fringed with applique galloon three inches broad, upheld by stout clasps of gold foliage and draped and tasselled festoons, to see the sun shining from a cloudless blue sky. From her window she could see the river. The sun’s slanting rays had turned it into a stream of shimmering molten gold. A light rain had fallen during the night and the air was brighter and fresher than the day before, with the sweet scent of roses and honeysuckle wafting in from the garden. Somewhere a sprinkler hissed. She felt happy and at peace, but also exhilarated. She reflected sentimentally on the sweet young girl who would one day be Queen and remembered the eve of her own wedding. She thought wistfully of Richard, wishing more than ever that he was with her at that moment . . .

  Things started to go wrong when Miss Haywood left Twiston with the speed of lightning, in a cab. Antonia heard the story when the maid who had received the phone call, a kindly-looking middle-aged woman, brought her tea. ‘Poor girl. Her mother was rushed to hospital an hour ago. Suspected kidney failure. They phoned her from the hospital. At half-past seven! Came as a shock to the poor girl. Apparently her mother was fit as a fiddle the last time she saw her. Today of all days. Terrible.’

  Miss Haywood wasn’t the only one who left. So did the Vorodins, in their car. At least their departure was pre-planned ; they were flying to the USA later in the day.

  The row between Major Nagle and Lawrence Dufrette occurred at quarter to nine and resulted in Major Nagle declaring that he wasn’t staying under the same roof as Dufrette a moment longer. Nagle rushed out of the dining room and reappeared several minutes later, his face the colour of beetroot, a suitcase in one hand, his car keys in the other. It took Sir Michael all his diplomatic skills to persuade him to stay. Nagle did stay, though he spent the whole morning in his room, ‘covered in shame’, as an unrepentant Dufrette gloatingly told Antonia, who had only just sat down at the breakfast table.

  ‘You missed my coup. I managed to reduce old Nagle to a quivering jelly by making public a jolly murky episode from his very private life. He didn’t like it - what with Michael and Bill Kavanagh and the Falconers and Sheikh Umair listening. Bill’s the greatest gossip the FO has ever known!’

  Dufrette gave a delighted croak. ‘I thought Nagle was about to explode. If looks could kill! Well, I do tend to acquire interesting information about people. In this particular instance, I ran into someone at my club, a chap whose late stepsister turned out to have been the first Mrs Nagle. He was of the opinion that Nagle was a monster. I said, what a coincidence, I was of that opinion too. That broke the ice. It turned out that the day before her death his stepsister had confided in him - told him what treatment she had been receiving at Nagle’s hands. Well, after a couple of scotches he spilled the beans. Nagle had been having an affair and he’d been flaunting it in front of his wife. Twice he made sure she found him and his mistress in bed together. Mrs Nagle then committed suicide. Hurled herself under a train. She’d had a history of mental illness of one kind or another, but there is no doubt that it was Nagle who drove her to it. He as good as killed her. Something of a sadist, old Nagle. He’s married his mistress since but it seems things are far from blissful. Nagle enjoys treating his women roughly, especially at bedtime, if you know what I mean - but that’s another story.’

  It was at that point that a ghostly tinkling sound had been heard and Sonya walked into the dining room in her somnambulist manner, carrying a doll that was almost as big as her. Both girl and doll wore similar dresses: white and gold, with tiny bells at the waist - one of Lena’s dafter ideas, Antonia imagined. Sonya reached out and took Antonia’s hand. She started pulling her towards the open french windows that led into the garden. Antonia looked at Dufrette and received an approving nod. ‘It’s a lovely day, Mrs Rushton. Go and pick some flowers, why don’t you? She likes that.’

  They walked out into the garden and Antonia made a daisy chain, which she placed on Sonya’s golden head. She pointed things out to her: a comic magpie, a busy squirrel, a strutting wood pigeon, but Sonya paid little attention - she was cooing to her doll. Happening to glance up at the house, Antonia saw Major Nagle standing stock-still at his open window, smoking. It was one of the south windows from which the garden layout of symmetrical beds, stone gate plinths and ironwork could be seen at its best, but she didn’t think Nagle was admiring the view. His eyes seemed fixed on them. Feeling somewhat disturbed, Antonia had steered the way briskly down a path leading to the river bank. Sonya had prattled the while, incomprehensible baby talk, directed exclusively at her doll. Beside the river it had felt pleasantly cool.

  Antonia raised her brow again. Could Major Nagle -? No, no guesses - too early.

  They had spent no more than a minute on the river bank, watching the dragonflies circle and the skitterbugs skate across the smoothish green surface of the river, before making their way back to the garden. There they stopped for another minute and Sonya picked some more flowers while Antonia watched the men in blue overalls pour cement into the hollow of the ancient oak. They were talking about Sir Michael’s weakness for ‘large ladies’. They had seen the Rubens in his study, apparently, and were making ribald jokes about it.

  ‘Will a cement base prevent the tree from decaying?’ she asked. The men shrugged and one of them said that the boss - he meant Sir Michael - certainly seemed to think that was the right thing to do. The man was clearly amused by Sir Michael calling the tree a ‘historical monument’ for he chuckled each time he uttered the phrase. Antonia and Sonya had then returned to the house.

  And then?

  She had let go of Sonya’s hand only when they reached the hall. That was the last time Antonia had seen Sonya. She had heard Lena say, ‘Run along, darling, Mamma’s terribly busy at the moment.’ She had not turned round to see where Sonya had gone but had walked into the sitting room in search of orange juice - she had been extremely thirsty.

  Had Sonya, left unattended, wandered out of the front door and back into the garden? The door had certainly been open. Later Lena told the police that she had no recollection, that she hadn’t seen where Sonya had gone, but she was pretty sure it hadn’t been up the great staircase.

  (Criminal negligence, Miss Pettigrew had called it.)

  In the wake of the Nagle-Dufrette contretemps, the house party had been subdued. Sir Michael tried cheering them up by playing numbers from Fred Astaire’s film Royal Wedding, with a re
minder that the broadcast was about to begin in a quarter of an hour. Would they care to take their seats? Everybody - with the exception of Major Nagle - was there and they complied.

  The sitting room was the size of a barn, filled with comfortable chairs and sofas, with ancestral portraits hanging from claret-coloured ropes with tassels against beige neutral silk walls. There was a giant TV set, as well as strategically positioned small tables with plates of sandwiches, bowls of smoked almonds and peanuts and stands containing canapes of various kinds. There were bottles of gin, whisky and brandy on two side tables, old-fashioned siphons, also two coffee percolators and a tea urn. Through the window Antonia had observed the men in blue overalls walking briskly in the direction of the servants’ hall, where, she knew, there was another TV set. Sir Michael was as considerate an employer as he was gracious a host. She remembered the whirring of an ancient electric fan in one corner of the room.

  ‘One of your wives is at St Paul’s, isn’t that so, old boy?‘ Bill Kavanagh had addressed Sheikh Umair.

  ‘Indeed she is. It was Her Majesty the Queen Mother who provided the pass. The Queen Mother is a very old and valued friend. We both have a passion for horses. My wife is exceedingly fond of weddings. I am not, I must confess. You will probably argue that it has something to do with the fact that I have already attended several of my very own.’

  ‘A certain sense of ennui sets in after a while, eh?’

  Lynch-Marquis said with a sigh he knew the feeling well - though he had been married only once.

  Dufrette perched on the arm of a chair close to the television set and shook his forefinger at the festive crowds filling Ludgate Hill. ‘Look at them - just look at them! The singing, chattering fools in their ridiculous Union Jack hats! What they really should be doing on a day like this is storming the palace, like the Russkies did in 1917.’

  And he hadn’t stopped there. It soon became apparent that Lawrence Dufrette had taken it upon himself to provide his hosts and fellow guests with a running commentary on the event. Everything he said was noted for its anti-monarchist bias. How he had transmogrified from an ardent royalist to a rabid enemy of the Crown was a mystery, though Lady Mortlock hinted that it had something to do with a snub he had received from the Duke of Kent, that mildest of royals, during a shooting party in 1969. Dufrette, it appeared, did not forgive easily.

  ‘I am no great admirer of my wife’s fellow Russkies as a rule, but I take my hat off to them for shooting the Tsar and the Tsarina and their brood like a bunch of dogs.’

  ‘Why do you always say such awful things?’ Lena had been sipping a Bloody Mary, but she put down her glass and crossed herself. ‘That was the greatest calamity to befall Russia. There is a church there now, on the very spot the Romanovs’ blood was spilled. Do you know what it is called?’ She paused significantly and looked round. ‘It is called the Church of the Spilt Blood.’

  ‘Oh, how remarkably original!’

  ‘Pilgrims trekked hundreds of miles on foot to Yekaterinburg for the consecration. They carried crosses and icons. They burnt so much incense that day, the sun disappeared in the fumes. They saw that as an omen.’

  ‘It’s been said that if people treat their royalty badly, a kind of curse is visited on them,’ Mrs Falconer - a tall woman in a tomato-coloured dress with high winged shoulders - said. ‘D’you think that’s true?‘

  ‘True enough about the Russians.’ Lynch-Marquis nodded. ‘The French too. They guillotined the King and Queen and tortured the Dauphin, and look at them - not a single decent government since!’

  ‘Serves them jolly well right,’ Bill Kavanagh said. ‘Let’s drink to it.’

  Mrs Lynch-Marquis said tentatively, ‘We killed our King too . . .’

  ‘Ah, Charles the Cavalier, with his zeal for his creed, his expensive demands and silk underwear!’ Dufrette croaked. ‘Cromwell did a damned good job.’

  ‘Have we got a decent government?’ Mrs Falconer asked.

  The night before, Antonia had heard Dufrette refer to the ‘Gräfin of Grantham’, or it might have been the ‘Griffon of Grantham’, or even the ‘Gryphon of Grantham’, so she expected another disparaging comment, but what this perverse person said now was, ‘Of course we have. Ma Thatcher is a goddess and I will personally shoot anyone who dares suggest otherwise.’

  Lena pointed to the TV screen. ‘Is the glass coach bullet-proof? Is it made of fortified glass? What if somebody decides to shoot at dear sweet Diana? There might be a sniper hiding somewhere! The IRA -’

  ‘That would be the day!’

  ‘So young, so fresh, so beautiful.’ Lena dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief. ‘So innocent-looking. Do you know who Diana reminds me of? She reminds me of me.’

  Dufrette said with a smile that she must be thinking of somebody else. She had never been innocent. Young and beautiful yes, about two hundred and fifty-five years ago. Innocent - never. ‘Shall I remind you what one of your party tricks used to be? Better not - we are after all in polite society.’

  ‘Do you know what I want to do, Lawrence? I want to throw my glass at you and smash your face,’ Lena slurred.

  ‘You are most likely to miss, my sweet, but do you know what will happen if you do a crazy thing like that? I will strangle you with the curtain cord.’

  Sheikh Umair had been looking immensely bored, but at this last lively exchange he perked up. Antonia saw his hooded eyes fix speculatively on the window curtains. The rest of them, being terribly English and well bred, pretended nothing untoward had happened.

  ‘Drink, anyone?’ Sir Michael called out. Antonia saw his faded brown eyes fix anxiously on Lena. He seemed to be the only one who took her seriously.

  ‘When you die, Lawrence, I shall dance on your grave,’ Lena declared. ‘Then I shall dig you up and feed you to the dogs.’

  Antonia remembered thinking that it all put Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in the shade.

  ‘Poor Johnny looks dreadful,’ Sir Michael had said as a beaming, if painfully slow Earl Spencer led his daughter up the steps of St Paul’s and along the aisle.

  ‘Go back, you slippered pantaloon! Shoo! Shoo! Go back before it is too late! You don’t know what you are letting your daughter in for! Go back, I say!’ Dufrette flapped his hands. He could be very funny, Antonia had to admit, though his particular brand of humour wasn’t to everybody’s taste - if Lady Mortlock’s face was anything to go by.

  ‘That silly goose. Just look at her. Observe how she simpers in her doomed glory. She has no idea. The Wind sors will eat her alive. Shoo! Back! Back, I say!’

  ‘Why don’t you have a drink, Dufrette?’ Sir Michael suggested in a mild attempt at deflection.

  ‘Ivory silk . . . That’s so beautiful.’ Lena brushed away a tear.

  Bill Kavanagh said, ‘I used to know Raine Spencer very well at one time - before she married Johnny. When she was married to Dartmouth. Remarkable woman. Shame the Spencer children never got to appreciate her properly.’

  ‘Just imagine . . .’ Lawrence Dufrette raised his voice. ‘Just imagine that instead of landing two earls, Raine had married and divorced the following: Lord Rayne, Prince Georg of Saxe-Gotha, the King of Spain, Baron Kommer, Dr Johnny Gaynor, Tommy Nutter and Sir Robin Day, she’d have been called - now you need to pay very close attention - Raine Rayne Gotha Spain Kommer Gaynor Nutter Day. . .’

  That was met with some appreciative laughter, Only Lady Mortlock’s expression remained morose while Sheikh Umair merely looked puzzled.

  How long had it taken him to work that one out? Antonia wondered. It wasn’t exactly spur-of-the-moment wit. He must have prepared it well in advance.

  ‘What a drip Charlie boy looks.’ Dufrette had spoken again. ‘And there’s Mrs P-B. How she must be wishing it was her walking up the aisle!’

  ‘That was never terribly likely, was it?’ Mrs Lynch-Marquis said.

  ‘Not terribly likely, no,’ Mrs Falconer agreed.

  ‘If he had lived in my coun
try,’ Sheikh Umair pointed out, ‘the Prince of Wales would have been able to marry them both. There would have been no problem at all.’

  ‘I always understood Camilla was a cracking bird,’ Mr Lynch-Marquis said. ‘Parker-Bowles is a lucky fellow.’

  ‘The question is, does she curtsey before she jumps into bed? Does she call him “sir”? It’s a well-documented fact that her great-grandmama did.’ Dufrette gave a histrionic little cough. ‘Of course, as the redoubtable Mrs Keppel herself put it, things were done so much better in her day.’

  7

  Death by Drowning

  It was about an hour and a half later, when the broadcast was over, that they had become aware of Sonya’s absence. As it happened, it was Antonia who raised the question and subsequently the alarm. ‘Oh, she loves to hide, the naughty kotik,’ Lena said dismissively, at first quite unperturbed. She continued sipping from her glass. ‘She’s got herself into a cupboard somewhere, or under a bed, or behind a curtain. It is an annoying habit she has.’

  So they looked inside all the cupboards and under all the beds and behind all the curtains, then everywhere else around the house. They checked all the rooms. Everybody - hosts, guests, servants, workmen - took part in the search, the only exception being Major Nagle.

  Major Nagle remained in his room. He hadn’t left it for a moment, or so he said. When they knocked on his door, he was looking for his signet ring. His face was very red. He seemed more concerned about the loss of his ring than about the little girl who had vanished. Then they searched the garden. They walked around, calling out Sonya’s name . . .

  Antonia looked up. She was remembering the sick feeling at the pit of her stomach, the convulsive pounding of her heart against her ribs, the ringing sound in her ears, the dizziness, the sudden dryness in her throat, the nausea . . .