The Death of Corinne Page 7

  ‘They do seem to, yes. One chap calling himself Chiro-phile – Greek for “lover of hands” – has written several erotic poems on the subject of Corinne’s hands. He wants to “lay a little lick” on each individual knuckle . . . Another website – maintained by Sniffer – focuses on Corinne Coreille’s favourite scent.’

  ‘What is her favourite scent?’ Antonia asked.

  ‘Old-fashioned violets . . . Footspy, on the other hand, is intensely curious about the kind of shoes she wears. There are at least – let me see – twenty pages of photos of shoes. High heels, boots, sandals . . . It is alleged that these are all the shoes Corinne has worn over the last thirty years. Look.’

  ‘Goodness. Poor child. She does seem to attract oddballs.’

  ‘As usual, darling, you’ve hit the nail on the head . . . Now, must you smoke?’ Peverel sighed as his aunt lit a cigarette. ‘You know very well what Dr Morgan said.’

  ‘Spoilsport,’ Lady Grylls said somewhat childishly. ‘Or wet blanket, if you prefer.’

  ‘D’you mean me or Morgan?’

  ‘You. Morgan too. But you are worse than him.’

  ’Well, wet blanket would be the more appropriate expression,’ Peverel pointed out after a moment’s consideration. ‘Given your dangerous habit of leaving smouldering fags about.’

  ‘I do nothing of the sort.’ Lady Grylls blew out a smoke ring provocatively. She seemed to have decided not to lose her temper with him. ‘You are what the French call un empêcheur de danser en rond.’

  ‘Somebody who prevents others from dancing in a ring?’ Payne translated dubiously.

  ‘Dr Morgan said I should smoke less. A rule with which I have complied.’ Lady Grylls scowled at Peverel. ‘I used to smoke ten a day, now I am down to eight, so yah-boo sucks to you.’

  ‘Corinne’s kissing the Pope’s hand!’ Antonia exclaimed as she stood peering over Peverel’s shoulder. ‘Is that really the Pope or a look-alike?’

  It was the Pope himself, Peverel said. Corinne had sung ‘Ave Maria’ at the Vatican in 1985. (It was Peverel’s Italian scout who had provided the information.) Catholics regarded Corinne as some sort of a holy vierge figure and a candidate for sainthood. She was reputed to have healed a little girl of a particularly disfiguring birthmark by merely touching her. Once her singing career came to an end, she’d go into a nunnery, or so it was alleged. Corinne Coreille had made a much-publicized vow to serve God. An aunt of Corinne’s, her father’s sister, had been a Mother Superior at a convent near Lourdes. That must have fuelled the speculation.

  ‘And now, ladies and gentlemen – from the sublime to the ridiculous –’ Peverel held up another sheet for their inspection – ‘I Want To Be Corinne . . . A trannies’ website.’

  Antonia smiled. She could see how Corinne Coreille’s fringe, dramatic mascara-ed eyes, elaborate frocks, demure nun-like manner and stylized gestures made her an impersonator’s delight.

  ‘Corinne has become something of a gay icon,’ Peverel went on. ‘The reason, I suppose, is obvious. She never married – she’s led a reclusive and rather enigmatic existence – her appearance has never changed – she has stayed young and beautiful. Her speciality is the melodramatic, tear-drenched chanson on the subject of hopeless love. She’s been dubbed the French Judy Garland.’

  Corinne Coreille’s songs – one of Peverel’s four gay scouts had reported – were currently favoured listening in Old Compton Street in London, at some particularly flam-boyant locales in Berlin, in certain Tangier tavernas, as well as on the beaches of Mykonos. On a more elevated note, Corinne Coreille was said to have inspired Tennessee Williams’ last unfinished play, in which an alcoholic baseball player can make love to his wife only when listening to the songs of a mysterious French chanteuse whose parents have been devoured by African lions.

  ‘One young American apparently slashed his wrists as he lay in a hot bath while listening to Corinne sing “Mad About the Boy” in French,’ Peverel went on. ‘The dead boy’s mother – incidentally, his name was Griff – seems to have gone mad with grief.’

  ‘Really?’ Antonia looked up.

  ‘French farce meets Greek tragedy,’ Payne murmured. ‘Or am I being too awfully callous? Agamemnon did die in his bath, didn’t he?’

  ‘Lesbians admire Corinne for being sensual, pure and discreet,’ Peverel continued. ‘They insist she is one of them – a vanilla.’

  ‘I haven’t heard so much nonsense in my life,’ Lady Grylls said.

  ‘The suicide story – how did your scout get hold of it?’ Antonia asked.

  ‘There is a website that’s been constructed by the dead boy’s mother. It’s she who tells the gruesome tale in some detail. She writes under the nom de guerre of Saverini. She appears to be some super-rich heiress and quite demented to boot.’

  ‘Saverini?’ Major Payne frowned thoughtfully.

  ‘Saverini appears in several photos in which she is seen posing with her son. It is impossible to say what either of them really looks like since in each photo they wear some kind of elaborate fancy dress. They appear as mustachioed grenadiers, as eighteenth-century madams wearing powdered perukes and covered in patches, as little Lord Fauntleroy and the Earl of Dorincourt, as a pair of jolly sailors, as sinister nurses and as kneeling nuns.’

  ‘How perfectly ghastly,’ Lady Grylls said.

  ‘A fearful Freudian nightmare, I entirely agree. Saverini explains that she often has dinner à deux with the marble urn containing her dead son’s ashes. She expresses the opinion that Corinne Coreille’s CDs should be boycotted and that Corinne herself should be despatched to Devil’s Island. She also reports that her son has made attempts at contacting her . . . My cartridge was running out of ink, so I didn’t print any of it.’

  Lady Grylls shook her head. ‘Don’t tell me that anyone can put idiocies like that on the internet.’

  ‘Anyone can – and they do it all the time. Why don’t you try it sometime, darling? We are already connected. Who knows, you may even be able to get a good price for Chalfont on eBay.’ Peverel winked at his cousin. He reached out, took a piece of cake from the cake stand and started munching lazily. ‘Do you think I might have a cup of tea? Thank you, Antonia. You are the only one here who cares about me . . . Incidentally, Corinne Coreille also plays a part in the metrosexuality phenomenon.’

  ‘What is metrosexuality?’ Lady Grylls asked.

  ‘That, darling, is a subject you could introduce when you preside over the next session of your local Women’s Institute. Metrosexuality,’ Peverel explained, ‘is where straight men do things that are decidedly gay, like wearing salmon-pink shirts, putting on fake tan, having their eyebrows “done” and their nails buffed – as well as listening to songs from musicals and to Corinne Coreille. This last applies mostly, though not exclusively, to the Continent.’

  There was a pause. ‘That all?’ Payne said.

  Peverel took a sip of tea. ‘You want the extreme trivia as well? Corinne is allergic to cats. Detective stories frighten her. When she was a girl, she was passionate about playing poker with her grandmother. She displayed a distinct gambling streak, though in later life she was too busy to ever visit a casino. Her favourite toy was a glove puppet called Miss Mountjoy, a rather bossy governess-y character in a turban. Miss Mountjoy was forever telling people what to do or not to do.’

  ‘I remember Miss Mountjoy.’ Lady Grylls nodded. ‘I was staying with them in Paris once and Corinne followed me around the house with that damned puppet on her hand, saying, “You smoke too much. Smoking is bad for you. You must stop at once.” Earlier on Miss Mountjoy had told Ruse off for putting too much make-up on! Corinne was driving everybody potty. She was seven or eight. Long time ago.’

  So Corinne does have an authoritarian streak, Antonia thought. ‘What about her more recent activities?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, in 1990 Corinne Coreille started slowing down and then there was a sudden five-year hiatus, when she simply disappeared from view,’ P
everel said. ‘That was in 1997, a month after she had the Légion d’honneur bestowed on her.’

  ‘I imagine her disappearance unleashed more rumours?’ Payne said.

  ‘It did. Hope this is not getting too tedious. That she’d become a lay nun in Jerusalem, that she’d got married to a lion tamer, that she’d died and been buried secretly, that she’d opened a florist’s shop in Dieppe, that she’d married a transsexual illusionist, that she was paralysed after a car crash and could only breathe with an oxygen mask, that she’d renounced all her wealth and become a nurse in a leper colony in Zanzibar.’ Peverel paused. ‘Well, Corinne Coreille resurfaced with a triumphant concert in Osaka, Japan, last November. Here are some pictures from the concert.’

  ‘What did I tell you? Unchanged,’ Lady Grylls wheezed. ‘And she’s wearing a Chanel dress.’

  ‘Are you sure this is a recent picture?’ Major Payne asked his cousin.

  ‘Well, yes.’ Peverel tapped the sheet. ‘Telephoto 2002.’

  ‘She looks no more than twenty-eight, thirty at the most. Look at her jaw-line,’ Antonia said.

  ’One of my scouts does believe she’s had something major done at a Swiss clinic, though there’s been no con-firmation of plastic surgery.’

  ‘Excuse me, m’lady.’ Provost’s voice was heard from the doorway.

  ‘I’m running out of cigarettes,’ Lady Grylls said. ‘Provost, would you be good enough to tell that boy of yours to hop on his bike, pedal to the village and get me the usual?’

  ‘Very good, m’lady.’ Provost lingered. ‘Excuse me, m’lady. Mr Jonson has arrived.’

  9

  Towards Zero

  Having checked for any text messages from Griff, Eleanor Merchant switched off her mobile phone. It is only a question of time, she murmured.

  So Chalfont Park belonged to Lady Grylls . . . Eleanor slowly ran her tongue across her upper lip. She was thinking about the call she had made minutes before the train had arrived at Waterloo. It was Lady Grylls’s butler who had answered. It was good to know the exact set-up. Lady Grylls. Fancy Corinne having such grand friends. Wrong number, Eleanor had said and rung off. Well, the more she knew about Chalfont Park, the better. Forewarned is forearmed. She had heard her uncle, the General, say that on a great number of occasions. Eleanor had decided to conduct the whole thing like a military operation in a manner that would have made her uncle proud . . . Dear Uncle Nat. Ninety-six last fall but still going strong at his luxurious nursing home in Palm Beach.

  Suddenly Eleanor Merchant had the feeling of having lived that moment before. She experienced a strong sense of déjà vu . . . She was standing outside W.H. Smith’s at Waterloo, the grubby stole around her shoulders, her picture hat set at an even sharper angle, her yellow gloves on her hands, her brocade overnight bag at her side. She felt sure there was something French about her appearance. Well, when she had spoken to the butler earlier on, she nearly introduced herself as Madame la Duchesse de Saverini, an intimate friend of la chanteuse Corinne. That would have suggested that Corinne Coreille was on familiar terms with the highest echelons of French society, with personages whose ancestors went back to the halcyon pre-revolutionary days – to the ancien régime, no less! (Wasn’t The Laboratory’s subtitle L’ancien régime? Of course it was!)

  Eleanor had no doubt she’d have been terribly convincing as a French noblewoman, but she had had second thoughts about it. She needed to be careful. The library at Chalfont Park almost certainly contained a copy of the Almanach de Gotha, and they might have wanted to check on her. They would have seen it was a bogus title and then they would have called the police. Eleanor nodded to herself in a satisfied manner. What a fine logical mind she had! How could anyone have ever suggested there was anything wrong with her?

  Eleanor had a headache and just a touch of vertigo. Some twenty-five minutes before they had reached London, she had started counting telegraph posts and got to fifty-six. If I make it to sixty, Corinne will die, she had said to herself. As it happened, she failed to make it to sixty, but the physical effort of pinning her eyes on an object from a moving carriage, of swivelling her body round each time, had made her giddy.

  What was that in her hand? A plastic cup filled with something the English called coffee. Eleanor had no recollection of buying the coffee and she wondered whether she might have picked up somebody else’s abandoned cup. This is a risk I am going to take, she thought solemnly as she placed four Solpadols on her tongue and washed them down with the coffee. She must have bought the Solpadol at the pharmacy called Boots, though again she couldn’t remember doing so. Boots, boots, boots, she recited. Old Kipling, of course. She had always preferred English poetry to American, Master Poe and Miss Emily Dickinson being the only exception . . .

  There was something else she had to do. A map, yes. She was going to buy a map. She needed a map. She couldn’t proceed without a map. Then – a hotel. A hot bath followed by a little drink – a malt – no, nothing to eat – then a four-poster bed. A four-poster, Griff had said once, was the only bed worth sleeping in. Her original idea had been to get a room for the night at some unostentatious place in Bloomsbury, where she wouldn’t be noticed, but now that she had become la Duchesse de Saverini, nothing but the London Ritz would be good enough for her.

  I am a woman of many parts, Eleanor thought. As she entered W.H. Smith’s, she imagined she saw Griff standing beside one of the magazine racks, engrossed in a copy of Newsweek, but she was mistaken. It was somebody else – a stranger, but his hair, like Griff’s, was the colour of autumn leaves. How the poor boy started when she impulsively went up to him, placed her hand on his neck and tried to give him a kiss! Eleanor apologized at once and said she had taken him for her son.

  I am not a mad woman, I am a wounded woman, she thought. ‘The Ritz Hotel,’ she told the cab driver. She sounded like one of those stuffy English dowagers now. It was some half an hour later and a map of Shropshire lay on her lap. She held up an imaginary lorgnette to her eyes. That was how she would set off in search of Chalfont Parva tomorrow morning, after some toast and a refreshing cup of Earl Grey tea. It all felt like a real adventure! ‘Soon at King’s, a mere lozenge to give – and Corinne should have just thirty minutes to live,’ Eleanor quoted from The Laboratory, substituting ‘Corinne’ for ‘Pauline’.

  ‘I don’t suppose you know your Browning, my good man?’ Eleanor said to the cab driver. The portly be-turbanned Sikh looked at her in his mirror but said nothing. She clicked her tongue. ‘I thought not. I am so sorry I do not speak your beautiful language. I’d have loved to be able to recite Omar Khayyam in the original.’

  If only Griff could have been with her now – how much he’d have enjoyed himself! The mixture of histrionics and high society jinks, a night at the Ritz, the trawl through Merrie England, plus the whiff of danger and the prospect of a police chase would have been to his taste. She could hear Griff say something on the lines of, ‘I do admire the English police. So stern and hardboiled. Quite a thrill, the whole business.’

  Eleanor had a mental picture of the two of them, walking arm in arm in the formal gardens that surrounded Chalfont Park. She knew exactly what they would see. She thought she might be a bit psychic . . . Labyrinthine paths covered in sand as fine as gold dust that went courteously around and about. Geometric lawns that might have been designed by Pythagoras. Emerald-green bushes trimmed with clinical precision into cones, globes and pyramids. Maroon-veined marble balustrades. Slightly sinister statues in indecipherably enigmatic poses on colossal cubic plinths . . .

  As the cab paused at traffic lights, she saw the god Abraxas, with his evil chanticleer’s head, the arms and torso of a man and the tail of an entwined serpent, cross the road slowly. He turned round and looked at her fixedly. She pretended she hadn’t seen him. That, she had discovered, was the right way to act. The last thing she wanted was to encourage Abraxas!

  At least she’d had Griff cremated, not buried. She hadn’t been able to bear the t
hought of worms ravaging – feasting – on his poor body . . . Once more she saw the polished coffin sliding theatrically into the furnace . . . She missed Griff . . . If it had been possible, she’d have brought the urn with his ashes with her. On second thoughts, no, that would have been quite unnecessary.

  Griff, after all, was coming back soon. It was only a question of time.

  10

  Those Who Walk Away

  It was now five in the afternoon. Antonia had walked over to the french window and was standing there, looking out. The last week of March had been warm and sunny and the gardens at Chalfont were glowing squares of rich embroidery. She recalled Mrs Miniver’s extravagant words: a lavishly lovely spring. The ancient trees were rounded, cushiony and mustard-gold, the grass under the fruit trees was already scattered with petals. The chestnuts were still in tight bud, but were about to burst open. Underneath them on the ground she saw powdery-blue patches – dead beech leaves from last year, Antonia imagined – the sort of speckle an Impressionist painter would have made hay with. Clumps of pale orange crocuses and tiny scillas sparkling like blue gems were clustered around the base of the trees. As she glanced across the lawn, she saw an octagonal structure with glass panel walls – a greenhouse? Antonia felt like going out for a walk and picking some flowers for their bedroom, only she didn’t want to miss the private detective.

  ‘Where is he? I heard no car,’ Lady Grylls was saying. ‘I am not going deaf as well as blind, am I?’

  ‘Ah, the indignities of old age,’ Peverel murmured. ‘Blindness, deafness, muddle, fuddle.’ He turned to Payne. ‘D’you know what Aunt Nellie did last Christmas? Sent out-of-date printed cards that said, Season’s Greetings from Lord and Lady Grylls. Uncle Rory’s been dead these last thirteen years! I am sure you got one?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Payne lied loyally.

  ‘Needed to get rid of the blasted things,’ Lady Grylls said, unperturbed. ‘Hate waste.’

  Provost cleared his throat. ‘Mr Jonson is aware that he is a bit early and he was phoning on the off chance that you may agree to see him, m’lady, so he’s parked his car outside the gates. He called on his mobile phone, m’lady. He doesn’t mind waiting, he said.’