The Hunt for Sonya Dufrette Read online

  Sonya’s bracelet was discovered on the path leading down to the river, her daisy chain on a bush. It had come to Antonia as something of a shock to see the river. Only two hours earlier it had been smooth and calm and golden - now it was darker, olive-green and turbulent. The banks leading down to the water were rather steep, she had noticed for the first time, and they were overhung by trees, silver birches, a box elder, a copper beech. She looked across at the armies of reeds and rushes, sword-shaped and yellow-green in colour. She felt the cool rising off the water - also a ‘green’ smell, like moss. She shuddered.

  ‘Kotik! Kotik! Where are you? Mamma loves you so much. Mamma can’t live without her kotik!’ Lena lurched about on her high heels, wailing piteously. ‘Where are you? Come out - speak to Mamma!’ The next instant she screamed and pointed.

  The small body was floating on the river surface, face up. It had got entangled in some tree roots that crept into the river across the bank. Lena, her red hair wild in the wind, the mascara running down her cheeks, collapsed in a heap on the ground. She beat her fists against the river bank, rattling her bracelets. She shook her head and rocked her body forward and backward, wailing, ‘Kotik, kotik!’ Then, casting her face heavenwards, she threw up her arms and cried, ‘Why, oh God? Why? Why? Why deprive me of the one thing I loved best in this world?’

  Antonia had seen the Falconers exchange cynical looks. Dufrette stood some distance away, very still, and stared at the body in the river, his face deadly pale.

  It was Antonia who said, ‘That’s not Sonya. It’s her doll. It’s only her doll.’

  Lena raised her head. ‘But she couldn’t be parted from her doll! Don’t you see what happened? They both fell into the river! My kotik has drowned! She has been carried away by the current!’

  Her face was dark and suffused, a mask of fury. She shook her forefinger at Antonia. ‘It was you! You showed her the way to the river! It is your fault! I saw you take my kotik down to the river. You killed her!’

  At that point Lady Mortlock had gone back to the house and phoned the police.

  When she went to bed that night, Antonia lay for quite a while unable to sleep, going over in her mind what she had read. Though there had been no witnesses, it was assumed that Sonya had left the house, wandered out into the garden and down to the river bank where she had slipped and tumbled into the river. The body had never been recovered but that wasn’t such an uncommon occurrence. The verdict had been one of tragic accident. It had been an open and shut case. The Dufrettes had been reprimanded for not providing their daughter with adequate care.

  Reading her account had had a therapeutic effect on Antonia. It felt like a curtain lifting. She saw how preposterous it had been for her to feel guilty over Sonya’s death. Lena had been looking for scapegoats. First she had turned on Antonia, then on the Mortlocks. Lena had suggested that it had been their fault too - why hadn’t they put up any river-bank defences? Why wasn’t there protective netting? Lena had gone so far as to suggest she might take the Mortlocks to court.

  Thinking about what she had written, Antonia suddenly experienced an odd feeling of dissatisfaction, a sense of there being something wrong, but by now she had started to feel sleepy.

  It was interesting that it had all happened at a time when everybody had been inside - glued to the box. The whole of England, or so it had been reported in the papers. Fewer robberies had been committed that day, if statistics were anything to go by. Fewer crimes generally. It was assumed that criminals too had been watching the royal wedding. Conversely, Antonia thought, how easy it would have been to commit a crime on a day like that.

  Had there been a crime at Twiston? The ring - watch out for that signet ring. That was Miss Pettigrew whispering in her ear. Antonia saw Major Nagle, taking a cigarette from his Asprey’s silver case. He said nothing but gave her a wink. A moment later a second voice spoke - it sounded like Lawrence Dufrette’s. ‘It seems to me, Mrs Rushton, that you lack the creative balance of imagination and reason. Ergo, you can never be a truly successful writer.’

  Antonia knew she was dreaming now and yet she was filled with misgivings. Questions formed themselves in her mind, but they were the wrong kind of questions.

  Would she ever be able to complete her novel? Would she ever be able to write again? Could she write at all?

  8

  Le Goût du Policier

  As she arrived at the club the following morning, the reason for her dissatisfaction dawned on her. Her account of what had happened at Twiston was lively and vivid and it contained some good descriptions and entertaining dialogue. It was not her ability to write that was in question. No. There was a different reason for her dissatisfaction. Although she couldn’t put her finger on it, she knew that something was wrong - either with the way she had described one or more of the characters in the drama, or with her reporting of what they said. Some illogicality . . . Some discrepancy?

  She was sure she wasn’t imagining it ... What was it?

  Not many people visited the library that morning and she received only one phone call. A good thing, for she was in such an abstracted state of mind that some club member was bound to notice and complain. She performed her chores mechanically, automaton-like, in a kind of daze. At one point she found herself lifting a pile of books from one of the donation boxes and placing them on her desk, then staring down at them in utter incomprehension. She had absolutely no idea what she should do with the books. Yes, she did. Stamp them, write down their titles, put them on the right shelves. She reached out for the library stamp. (In what way was the signet ring important?)

  Eventually she heard the clock chime eleven. She took the folder out of her bag. The Drowning of Sonya Dufrette, she had written at the top. Well, she knew she wouldn’t rest until she found out what was wrong.

  Martin brought her a tray with a pot of coffee, a cup and a plate of Lazzaroni biscuits. Pouring herself coffee, she started skimming through the pages once more. Was there any significance in the fact that Sonya and her doll had been dressed in identical dresses? She couldn’t see how there could be.

  Sonya’s body had never been recovered. Sonya had vanished without a trace. That was one fact that was certain. Twenty years had passed but the body hadn’t turned up. If it had, she would have heard about it, she was sure. It would have been in the papers - or on TV - or someone would have mentioned it to her. People didn’t just vanish. They were either dead or assumed new identities or ... or ... No, there was nothing else. That was it. What would be the point of giving Sonya a new identity? But then, if she was dead, where was her body? Swallowed by some monstrous fish? Could the body have been weighed down and eased into the river? That would mean murder and there wasn’t a scrap of evidence pointing that way. On the other hand, the body might not be in the river at all. Sonya might have been killed somewhere else and the body buried.

  The other night Antonia had thought in terms of violence. She had dreamt of blood. Now, why had she? She believed there was a reason for it. Something must have suggested violence to her. Something she had seen without realizing its importance at the time - something she had heard? She didn’t think the idea had come to her just like that . . . Once more she saw Sonya’s face, as it had been when Dufrette had played with her in the garden - shrieking with laughter, her blue eyes very bright . . . No, not blue - brown. Her eyes had been brown. Antonia frowned. Was that of any importance? How extremely annoying she didn’t even know what she was looking for!

  ‘Who lent thee, child, this meditative guise?’

  She looked up and her frown disappeared. She smiled at the wiry man with the twinkling blue eyes and greying blond hair. ‘Good morning, Major Payne . . . Is that Matthew Arnold?’

  ‘Indeed it is.’

  It was Tuesday of course. He always came down to London on Tuesdays. She noted with approval his bottle-green jacket, his clean shirt and highly polished dark cap-toe shoes. Did anyone ‘do’ for him, now that his wife was dead? Well, arm
y men were perfectly capable of doing for themselves.

  ‘Proofreading, I see.’ He pointed to the sheets on the desk.

  ‘No, no such luck. Raking up the past. This is something I wrote twenty years ago.’

  ‘Something you might turn into a novel?’

  ‘No, not really. Though there’s a puzzle there all right.’

  She found Major Payne - the ‘intellectual Major’, as her son had dubbed him - gazing at her with such a blend of affection and solemnity that for an absurd moment she had the notion he might propose to her. It came to her as a relief - mingled, ludicrously, with disappointment - when he said, ‘I too have a puzzle for you. Shall we swap? I’ll tell you mine, you then tell me yours. Is it a deal?’

  ‘It’s a deal.’ She felt foolish, but what else could she have said? He could be so disarming.

  ‘Here goes. A man dies on 23rd January, yet is buried on 22nd January. How is that possible?’

  ‘Well . . .’ Antonia scowled. ‘If the man died in Fiji and the body was flown to Western Samoa for burial, the flight would cross the International Date Line from west to east, wouldn’t it, so the date would go back one day?’

  ‘Makes perfect sense,’ Major Payne said magnanimously. ‘This is a trick question, actually, so the simple answer is that he died at sea on the 23rd but his mortal remains weren’t recovered until a year later - next January, in fact. That’s when he was buried, on the 22nd. I told it to my aunt and she loved it.’

  Antonia sighed. ‘I always go for the complicated.’

  ‘Well, your novel manages to combine both, a complicated plot and a trick that is wonderfully simple. It was such fun to read. Few people write stories like yours nowadays.’

  ‘Thank you for saying so, but I am sure you are wrong. Lots of people write better than me.’

  ‘I am not wrong. I am fed up with pretentious bores. Baronesses with missions who shall remain nameless.’

  Antonia didn’t think it right to ask him to elaborate. How he managed to read so much she had no idea. She had imagined that all his energies would be channelled into the management of his Suffolk farm and the indoor cricket school he had established, which, he had told her, attracted teams from all over England to its six-a-side tournaments and other events. Besides, there were the social dos - dinner parties, polo tournaments - she imagined he’d be in great demand - amazing he hadn’t been snapped up yet - what had his late wife been like?

  He was talking. ‘. . . and, really, your sentences are a joy to read.’

  ‘Don’t be idiotic.’

  ‘Do you know who said, “I like sentences that don’t budge though armies cross them”?’

  Antonia was aware that he was looking down at her hands and she put them on her lap. ‘Monty?’ she suggested flippantly.

  ‘Virginia Woolf actually . . . So what’s your puzzle about?’ Major Payne twisted his head slightly to one side and screwed up his eyes at one of the sheets on the desk. ‘Lawrence Dufrette has the reputation of a maverick and is considered something of a loose cannon. I can read upside down, you see,’ he explained. ‘They taught us how to do it in the Secret Service. That was a longish while ago, but I haven’t yet lost the knack. Wait a minute.’ He tapped the sheet with a forefinger. ‘I used to know a Lawrence Dufrette. Must be the same chap. Name like that. Tall and stately - beak of a nose - wild glare. Like Wellington on amphetamines - or Heseltine, sans le nez, on speed?’

  ‘Yes.’ Antonia laughed.

  ‘Fancy. It’s a small world. Well, he’s written a book that’s totally bizarre. Under a pen name. I read the review in Fortean Times first - I do read an awful lot of tosh, mind. The reviewer gave away Dufrette’s real name, so I went and got hold of the book. I was curious. Needless to say it wasn’t reviewed anywhere else.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it is too bizarre.’

  ‘In what way bizarre? What is it about?’

  Major Payne stroked his jaw with a forefinger. ‘Well, his theory is that the same interconnected bloodlines - the so-called Babylonian brotherhood - have controlled and dominated our planet for thousands of years. The President of the United States and members of the British royal family are part of it - many other world leaders as well. Mind-controlled human robots are used to pass messages between people outside the normal channels. The communications are dictated under a form of hypnosis brought about by means of a high voltage gun, which lowers blood sugar levels and makes the person more open to suggestion. It isn’t science fiction, but the history of the world according to Lawrence Dufrette. He claims in the introduction that he has researched the subject extensively.’

  ‘I wonder if he became completely deranged after Sonya’s death,’ Antonia said thoughtfully The next moment she cried, ‘Oh - he does list the Babylonian brotherhood in Who’s Who as one of his interests!’

  ‘That was his daughter, wasn’t it? Sonya. There was something wrong with her, correct?’

  ‘Yes. They thought she was autistic.’

  ‘She drowned, didn’t she?’

  ‘That was the verdict.’

  He looked at her. ‘How well do you know Dufrette?’

  ‘We stayed at the same house twenty years ago. I thought I saw him yesterday - twice. Once outside White’s, then here, in the library. Sounds incredible, doesn’t it, but he seems to haunt me. I hope I am not going mad.‘

  ‘There is a definite link between madness and creativity,’ Payne said in grave tones. ‘It’s been scientifically proven. Writers are at a particular risk.’

  ‘Oh, thank you for warning me ... Where did you meet Lawrence Dufrette?’

  ‘We were in the Secret Service together. Different departments. I had just joined. He.wasn’t at all popular. Had no friends, apart from old Mortlock, who was already on his way out. Mortlock had been to school with Dufrette père ... Lawrence Dufrette was abrasive, contemptuous and critical of everything and everybody. And that wasn’t a front concealing any cavernous uncertainties - he did genuinely believe he was better than everybody else.’

  ‘That was very much the impression he gave when I knew him.’

  ‘I do remember the first time I saw him. I went into his office to borrow a file. He was sitting at his desk, very still, staring straight ahead, his patrician profile tilted ever so slightly upward, as if he were listening to celestial harps lesser mortals couldn’t hear.’ Payne laughed. He looks ten years younger when he laughs, Antonia thought. ‘Then he saw me and looked enormously put out. His face twisted demoniacally . . . Apparently he had a great appetite for byzantine dealings and he engaged in elaborate plotting to eliminate his enemies

  ‘Do you know a Major Nagle?’ Antonia interrupted.

  ‘Nagle? I believe I have heard the name, but no, I don’t know him. I think he left the service altogether. I may be wrong . . . In what way is Nagle important?’

  ‘He was one of Dufrette’s enemies.’

  ‘Really? How interesting . . . Did you get on well with Dufrette? I do hope he was decent to you?’

  ‘As a matter of fact he was. When his daughter disappeared - presumed drowned in the river - his wife Lena became hysterical. She suggested it had been my fault, but he said nothing - nothing at all. When I told him how sorry I was, he shook my hand . . . I was there, you see, when it happened.’

  ‘What’s the puzzle exactly?’

  ‘I believe there is something wrong somewhere in my account of the events leading to Sonya’s drowning. I can’t say what it is but I know it’s there . . .’

  There was a pause. ‘Do you think she was murdered?’ he asked.

  Antonia blinked. ‘I don’t know. I have all sorts of ideas. Some really far-fetched ones. My suspicions keep shifting. A moment ago I even thought Lady Mortlock’s interest in eugenics might have had something to do with it!’

  ‘Elimination of the mental defectives, eh?’

  ‘That sort of thing, yes. Very silly, really. Out of the question. I don’t think Lady Mortlock cared f
or Sonya, but then she didn’t like children. She’d never had any.’ Antonia pushed the folder towards him slightly. ‘I’d be glad of your opinion. Do you think you could . . .’

  Major Payne said with great alacrity that he would be delighted to read what she had written. He had le goût du policier, he was terribly clever at noticing things, but he had never before been involved in a real-life mystery. He could start now, couldn’t he?

  ‘I’ll order some coffee for you, shall I?’

  ‘Please do. They make damned good coffee here.’ Picking up the folder and without another word, he went up to one of the high-backed armchairs beside the fireplace and sat down. Antonia watched him take out his pipe, a straight-stemmed briar, which he proceeded to fill with tobacco from a leather pouch. He struck a match, puffed away and opened the folder.

  The Sherlock Holmes touch. Le goût du policier. They both shared it. This is not a game, she reminded herself.

  She hoped she was not making a fool of herself.

  9

  An Awkward Lie

  The telephone call she had received at half-past nine that morning had been from Mrs Cathcart, Colonel Haslett’s archivist friend, and it concerned the Gresham papers. Mrs Cathcart was going to collect the papers in person; she was coming later in the day, if that would be convenient. She had spoken in a high precise voice. In a cab, she had added with an odd emphasis - she might as well have said she was coming in a chariot. Would Miss Darcy be good enough to have the Gresham papers ready for her? Well packed? Antonia had assured her that she would.

  The Gresham papers formed a correspondence dating back to the late 1890s, and were contained in two wooden boxes painted periwinkle blue, stashed away under Antonia’s table. The letters she had examined lay on a side table in sorted heaps according to sender. The idea had been for her to read gradually through the whole lot and organize and catalogue it, so that the contents could clearly be seen and assessed, and anything of importance noted. Then they could decide what to do with it. Except now it was Mrs Cathcart who was going to decide.