The Death of Corinne (18 page)

‘No idea, eh?’ Something isn’t right, Lady Grylls thought.

That was an understatement. Things were very wrong indeed. When Provost, after a fruitless search of the garden, eventually noticed that the door of the greenhouse was gaping open and went in, he found a dead body lying there.

She had been bleeding profusely from a wound in the throat. There was so much blood, it made him sick.

That and the shock.

23

Bodies

At several minutes after eight o’clock Antonia came down to breakfast, alone. (Hugh wanted to sleep in.) Apart from Nicholas, the dining room was empty. The boy was placing covered dishes on the sideboard. She wished him a good morning and received the usual indistinct reply. Nicholas looked as though he had had very little sleep the night before, though his hair was as spiky as ever. A long way from the powdered be-wigged footmen of yesteryear, Antonia reflected, amused.

She helped herself to scrambled eggs. She thought she could smell kippers. She frowned. Kippers were in some way important, though at the moment she couldn’t think how . . . The coffee was excellent. It was a wonderful morning: beautifully still, crisp and cold, the slanting sunbeams shining in streaks like the haloes of saints. An hour earlier she had stood at her bedroom window, watching the mist rise from the valley beyond the garden. The mist had gathered, rolled, crept up the field and within several minutes had gently lapped the house. Nothing had stirred. There had been a stillness. An absolute silence, in fact.

Later Antonia was to reflect that the weather had been like the dresses of Hitchcock’s heroines: dramatic and tempestuous in the neutral scenes, quiet and understated in the action sequences.

Suddenly she heard the front door bang, then the sound of running feet and Provost staggered in. He looked dread- fully pale and wild-eyed. He gestured towards the window, his mouth opening and closing.

Eventually he managed to speak. ‘She’s there – something terrible – in the greenhouse. Please, come with me – she is dead –’

‘Oh my God – Corinne?’ Antonia rose at once. No, that’s impossible, she thought.

As they crossed the hall, Provost muttered, ‘Police – ambulance – we must – she is dead – so much blood!’ He led the way out. Antonia and Nicholas followed. Unless she had imagined it, Nicholas had perked up as soon as the word ‘blood’ had been uttered. They moved rapidly across the broad swathe of lawn, through the wet grass that badly needed mowing, in the direction of the greenhouse.

They walked past a tiny ornamental pond with goldfish and rushes. The hedgerows had all burst into green. Her nostrils twitched at the strong earth smell, a smell of freshness of spring and flowers. A time of hope and reawakening . . . Pigeons were cooing somewhere. A couple of blackbirds flew up, flapping their wings, startled by a branch snapping. She didn’t quite know whether she was treading on air or land. Her hands were clenched in fists . . . Her thoughts were chaotic and inconsequential . . . There had been a grim and rather surreal inevitability about it all . . . Jonson had failed in his duty of protecting Corinne Coreille’s life . . . This kind of thing simply didn’t happen . . . It was a scene from her next novel . . . For some reason Provost had made it all up . . . Provost was the killer . . . No, the butler was never the killer . . . Why was she wearing such a smart twin-set and pearls? . . . Any moment now she would hear the director shout, ‘Cut!’ . . . That photograph . . . The photograph she had found in Jonson’s case . . . It showed Corinne sitting in front of her dressing table, making her face up . . . Well, there was something about that scene that was wrong . . .

No
kipper
, she thought. That was it. Jonson had said there was a kipper on a plate on the dressing table – but there wasn’t. He had made that up. He had blushed. He had been about to say something different – and she knew very well what, since she had spotted it.

The greenhouse was Gothic in structure and it had clearly seen better days. Once no doubt it had been the kind of place where Cecily and Gwendolen might have reclined among the greenery, sipped pale China tea and bantered, but no more. It had a bleak and disused air about it . . . Now it had become a house of death . . . The windows were blood-red with the rays of the early morning sun . . .

They went in.

The body lay very close by the greenhouse door and they nearly fell over it. Provost gave a warning cry. Nicholas whistled. Though Antonia had been prepared for it – though she had seen a dead body before – she started shaking as soon as her eyes fell on it.

‘But that’s Maître Maginot,’ she whispered. She felt rather nauseous but she also experienced sudden relief.

‘Yes, yes,’ Provost said. ‘The old Frenchwoman. That’s her. Oh my God.’

‘She’s been shot,’ Nicholas said, pointing a forefinger at Maître Maginot’s neck. He sounded gleeful, excited. ‘At close range. At
very
close range. I can tell. I’ve seen pictures of dead bodies on the internet. There’s a website. Violentdeath.com,’ he rambled.

‘You shouldn’t be looking at such pictures, Nicholas,’ Antonia reprimanded him. Her voice sounded high, absurdly schoolmistressy. Displacement activity, she thought. We are in a state of shock.

‘Why not?’ Nicholas challenged her. Then he sneezed. ‘I am allergic to plants,’ he mumbled.

‘What plants?’ Antonia felt the urge to laugh. I mustn’t get hysterical, she thought.

‘Don’t know which ones – it always happens when I come in here.’

Maître Maginot lay sprawled on her back, the black beret still incongruously on her head. The terrible deformed face under the beret was the colour of tallow, which, Antonia reflected, was also the colour of tripe. It might have been one of Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors wax effigies lying there . . . They drank tripe soup in France, didn’t they? The moment she thought that, Antonia feared she might disgrace herself and be sick. Maître Maginot’s face was frozen in a ferocious grimace: her eyes were bulging. Her lips were parted – her teeth bared –

The wound was a terrible gaping black hole in the side of Maître Maginot’s throat. It was evident she had bled profusely from it. Her clothes were saturated with blood and there was more blood on the ground around her. The blood was dry and was of a dark brownish hue. It was clear she had been dead for some time, several hours probably. Her mobile phone stuck out of a pocket in her breeches. A torch lay beside her right hand, which was gloved. Maître Maginot’s left hand was bare and Antonia found herself staring at it, at the scarlet nails.

She noticed something very curious – a freakish detail, one might call it. She knew that was important – she couldn’t say how – in the same way as the absence of the kipper from Corinne’s dressing table was important . . . Was she thinking straight? She hoped she wasn’t losing her mind!

‘We must call the police,’ she said.

‘Dad’s gone back to the house,’ Nicholas said. ‘He’s gonna do it.’

Antonia looked round the greenhouse. She saw lots of potted plants, empty pots and blue-and-white Chinese containers and censers. Garden tools. A garden bench, a bamboo table and a chair. A mobile phone lay on the floor beside the chair. A
second
mobile?

The next moment she felt Nicholas tugging at her arm. ‘Miss – look! There’s a leg over there.
Look
. Over there. It’s another body!’

Antonia started up, though not too violently. She was getting anaesthetized, she supposed. Her first thought was that the boy had imagined it, but when she followed his pointing finger, she saw he hadn’t. There was a leg there all right, exactly as he had said – a woman’s leg in a torn stocking – the foot in a flat shoe. The leg was sticking from behind two large potted palms. There was a woman’s body lying there all right. Nicholas started walking towards it, but sneezed twice in quick succession and went back. ‘
Fuck
,’ he said.

Antonia moved like one in a trance. Inside the greenhouse it was freezing cold, colder than outside. For obvious reasons, it made her think of a mortuary.
Morgue
, in French.
Les cadavres sont dans la morgue
. No French grammar book would include a sentence like that. She imagined that there was a metallic smell of blood in the air . . . She stumbled on something – the niblick. Maître Maginot had been brandishing the niblick the night before – when Antonia and Hugh had met her on the stairs. Maître Maginot had been on her way out – she had intended to check the grounds. She had been on her own – unwisely, as it turned out – it had cost her her life –

Antonia’s eyes were fixed on the leg in the flat shoe. Her next thoughts ran as follows: Corinne – so they got her after all – poor Corinne – Corinne and Ruse – mother and daughter – both dead – is there a new pattern emerging?

But it wasn’t Corinne Coreille’s body that lay behind the palms.

It was the body of a stranger: a middle-aged woman in an extremely dirty mink stole, wearing yellow gloves. She too lay on her back, in a pool of frozen blood, and, like Maître Maginot, she had been shot. Antonia gasped. This was much worse than the wound inflicted on Maginot! Part of the woman’s head, just above the right temple, was missing – it had been blasted off. The woman’s mouth was covered in bright red lipstick and it was gaping open. Her eyes were open too; they were round and glassy and staring. Rather foolish, Antonia thought. No, not foolish – demented.

The next moment Antonia noticed the gun. The gun was clutched in the woman’s right hand. She bent over and looked at it without touching. A Colt .357 Magnum. The gun’s muzzle was pointing upwards. It nearly touched the woman’s chin. It looked as though she had done it herself – as though she had blown her brains out on purpose, of her own free will, in one final act of desperation.

An expensive-looking handbag made of crocodile skin lay beside the body. It had burst open and most of its contents were scattered around. It seemed the woman had been searching for something in a frantic manner. (The gun?) Antonia saw banknotes and tissues, a handkerchief, a powder compact, a carving knife, a purse, some newspaper cuttings, a passport –

She heard Nicholas call out, ‘Is the gun there?’

‘Yes.’ The gun had a silencer, she noticed.

Antonia picked up the passport gingerly, holding it at the corner between her thumb and index finger. She knew she shouldn’t have done it, yet had been unable to help herself.

It was an American passport, as Antonia had known it would be. Opening it, she saw a folded plane ticket . . . Boston–Paris . . . One way . . . Hadn’t she intended to go back? The face that stared back at her from the photograph was interesting; it could even be called pretty, in a freakish kind of way – blonde hair swept back – light blue eyes open wide in a parody of earnestness – lips curved up in a knowing smile.

Antonia read the name without any particular surprise:
Eleanor Merchant
.

24

Vous Qui Passez Sans Me Voir

Jonson and Major Payne appeared at the door. Neither of them spoke. Jonson was fully dressed. Payne was wearing his trousers, pyjama top and dressing gown.

Antonia’s eyes fixed on Jonson. He looked unwell – troubled. His face was extremely pale and a little puffy, with dark circles round his eyes. His hair was uncombed. He seemed to have aged overnight. She saw him shut and open his eyes several times, then shake his head, the way people did when they imagined they might be dreaming. He then spoke and made it clear to the boy Nicholas that he wanted him out of the greenhouse that very minute. At first Nicholas pretended he hadn’t understood, but eventually he obeyed, though with sulky ill grace.

For several moments Hugh and Jonson stood silently, looking down at the bodies of the two women. The scene could be described as terrifying, yet with every second that elapsed, it seemed more and more unreal . . . Antonia was put in mind of the time they had done
The Duchess of Mal
fi
back at school and the fun they had had, splashing red paint about and over each other.

She showed them the passport.

It was Payne who broke the silence. ‘The Merchant. Incredible. So she did manage to get here after all!’

Jonson passed his hand over his face and Antonia heard him take a deep breath. ‘Yes . . . It is – incredible . . .’

‘It looks as though Maginot found the Merchant lurking here and the Merchant shot her,’ Payne said. ‘After which she proceeded to blow her own brains out . . . Maginot intended to check all the outbuildings last night, didn’t she?’ He turned towards Jonson. ‘Did you know Maginot was coming to the greenhouse?’

‘Not to the greenhouse, specifically. I knew she was checking the grounds. I did insist I do the outside and she the inside, but she said no.’ Jonson spoke haltingly. ‘She asked me to go around the house – check all the rooms . . . The lofts and the cellars . . . It – it should have been the other way round, but she wouldn’t be swayed – she got angry when I suggested it.’

‘She looked exalted,’ Payne murmured. ‘Unstoppable. Bursting with confidence. Dangerously bellicose –’

‘
Vive la guerre
,’ Antonia said.

‘Quite – the way she brandished Uncle Rory’s niblick. Not that it helped her –’

Antonia reflected that no one was pretending to be in any way saddened by the deaths. Shocked and unsettled and sickened, yes, but no more than that. They had never known Eleanor Merchant, but the picture that had emerged from her letters gave one a strong dose of the shudders. Maître Maginot, while alive, hadn’t invited any warm feelings either. Contrary to what John Donne wrote, not every death diminishes us – there are deaths that simply don’t, Antonia thought.

She saw her husband’s eyes travel from the gun clutched in Eleanor Merchant’s hand to the torch that lay beside Eleanor’s body. He then looked at Maître Maginot’s body and back at Eleanor’s. He seemed to be trying to estimate the distance between the two bodies. He cleared his throat. ‘Yes, it does look as though Maginot discovered the skulking Merchant, who panicked, whipped out her gun and shot her. I don’t suppose the Merchant had any idea as to who it was she had shot –’

‘Stop calling her the Merchant,’ Antonia said. She was annoyed by his flippancy. They didn’t have to stand around with bowed heads and whisper and put on a show of respect they did not feel, but it was poor taste, making someone who had died a horribly violent death appear ridiculous.

‘I stand corrected . . . We can assume that Mrs Eleanor Merchant went to the body and flashed her torch on it. I don’t suppose Maginot’s face meant much to her, but one thing Mrs Eleanor Merchant must have become aware of at once – namely, that she’d never be able to get Corinne now, not after what she’d done. She must have realized she’d lost the game. So – she turns the gun on herself and pulls the trigger. She probably meant to kill herself all along, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Well, she bought only a one-way ticket . . . Her son had killed himself . . . A suicidal streak might have been in her blood,’ Antonia said thoughtfully. She found she was standing by the bamboo table. There was a book on it:
Who
’
s Who in EastEnders
, also a magazine:
Vogue
.

‘What did you do last night?’ Payne asked Jonson. ‘I mean, after you checked the bedrooms?’

Jonson said that he had gone to bed. He had fallen asleep almost at once. He had been dog-tired. Jonson spoke haltingly. ‘It was about midnight. Maître Maginot said she’d call me on her mobile if she noticed anything suspicious, only she didn’t, so – so I assumed everything was fine and that she’d come back to the house and gone to bed herself. I heard no noise. Nothing. No shots.’

‘No one would have heard any shots. The gun’s got a silencer,’ Payne said.

‘I never thought Eleanor Merchant could be anywhere near the house.’ Jonson shook his head. ‘I didn’t think she could be in England . . . I didn’t think it possible . . .’

There was a pause. ‘That phone call last night,’ Payne said. ‘The American woman who rang while we were having coffee. She introduced herself as a – chat-show hostess? She wanted to talk to Corinne. What did Provost say her name was?’

‘Thora – no, Tricia – Tricia Swindon,’ Jonson said. ‘Some such name.’

‘And she rang off as soon as she heard Maginot’s voice? That must have been Eleanor Merchant.’

A muffled noise was heard from the doorway. Nicholas was standing there furtively, looking in, his hand cupped over his nose.

‘I told you to go away,’ Jonson called out to him. The boy disappeared, this time for good. They saw him through the window, walking across the lawn towards the house. Jonson said, ‘It must have been Eleanor Merchant who phoned, yes. On her mobile. Heaven knows what she’d been hoping to achieve.’

‘She probably didn’t know herself,’ Payne said astutely.

Antonia was looking down at the cover of the magazine, at the picture of the super-thin model and the Siamese cat. For some reason she found herself thinking of the photo she had found in Jonson’s case once more . . . Corinne Coreille had been snapped sitting at her dressing table – she had taken time off from applying her make-up to stroke a kitten . . . A kitten, yes. A live kitten. The kitten seemed to have jumped on the table . . . There was no kipper on the table – Jonson had made that up. He had been about to say ‘kitten’ but had changed his mind . . . Nicholas on the other hand kept sneezing because he was allergic to plants . . . Now, why did she think there was a connection between the two? An association of ideas . . .

Antonia frowned. Something was stirring at the back of her mind. A memory was about to surface – it was something both Lady Grylls and Peverel had mentioned . . . Hope I am not getting unhinged, she thought, casting a glance at Eleanor Merchant’s body and immediately looking away.

‘That kitten in the photograph,’ she said aloud. ‘Where did it come from?’

Jonson stared at her. He looked like a man who was waking up from a dream. ‘It was a stray – one of the gardeners had found it and brought it into the house. Mademoiselle Coreille apparently took a fancy to it.’ He spoke mechanically. ‘I understand Maître Maginot and Mademoiselle Coreille had an argument about it. Maître Maginot objected strongly –’ He broke off. ‘How do you know there’s a kitten in the photograph?’

‘You told us,’ Antonia said.

‘I didn’t –’ Suddenly Jonson looked terrified.

‘Oh, but you did.’ I can bluff too, Antonia thought, though she felt rather sorry for him. ‘Kipper’, he had said to avoid saying ‘kitten’. A silly lie – he’d been unable to think of another word. He was a poor liar.

‘We must be getting back to the house,’ Payne said, looking at his watch. ‘I expect the police will be here any moment now and they will be cross if they find the three of us cooped up with the bodies.’

‘Yes,’ Jonson said. ‘Yes.’ Without another word, he turned round and left the greenhouse.

‘I touched Eleanor’s passport,’ Antonia said.

‘You shouldn’t have,’ Payne said.

‘I held it very lightly – by the corners.’

‘It doesn’t matter. You’ve as good as signed it with your full name. There’s no escape from the old DNA. If the police decided the Merchant didn’t do it after all, you’d be their next prime suspect, d’you realize?’

Antonia cast one last glance at the bodies. The good ended happily and the bad ended unhappily, she thought absurdly.

‘What was Corinne’s reaction to the news?’ Antonia asked a few moments later as they were walking across the lawn towards the house.

‘I don’t know if she’s been told anything yet. Somehow, I don’t expect her to have hysterics – do you?’

‘No . . .’

‘You’d never believe this, but it’s like in that damned French song Antonia was talking about yesterday morning. The one she heard in a dream,’ Lady Grylls said as soon as she saw them. ‘What was it called? “Vous Qui Passez Sans Me Voir”.’

‘What do you mean, darling?’ Payne frowned.

‘Corinne’s disappeared – and no one’s seen her go. She is nowhere to be found. Her bags have gone too.’