4.Little Victim (11 page)

‘We have. Well, one particular mystery. You’d never believe this but one of your young Turks –’ The next moment Mrs Depleche cried, ‘Hugh, watch out – Antonia!’

Antonia had swooned. There was a mighty crash as she clutched at a passing waiter and caused him to drop his tray laden with cocktail glasses on the alabaster terrace floor. Payne managed to catch her before she fell.

‘I did say she had to be careful with the sun,’ Mrs Depleche observed in triumphant tones. ‘She’s not used to it and she’s not wearing a hat. Clever women are frequently impractical. Bluestockings and so on. A hat’s an absolute must in this part of the world. Back in ’45 I used to wear a spine-pad at my back as well.’

16

The Knight’s Tale

‘That wasn’t a bad stunt. The very best in diversionary tactics. You should be on stage,’ Major Payne said, ‘You possess all the guile Eve passed on from the Serpent.’

‘Stop talking like a book,’ Antonia said.

‘Isn’t life rendered meaningful or sensible
only
within a literary culture? All right. Let me put it another way. What you did was, in the memorable words of Roman Songhera, jolly clever.’

‘I couldn’t think of anything else. Apart from throttling Mrs Depleche! Poor lovelorn Camillo would have been in mortal danger if Roman had learnt he and Ria had had an affair. Roman wouldn’t hesitate to have him killed too!’

‘We haven’t got any evidence yet that he’s killed
anyone
. . . We do seem to get ourselves let in for rather peculiar situations, don’t we?’ Payne went on ruefully.

It was some twenty minutes later and they were in their room. Antonia was sitting in her bed and, in case someone were suddenly to enter, she was holding an icepack to her forehead in the time-honoured manner of people affected by sunstroke. On her bedside table, in a broad silver dish, lay a much bigger cube of ice, which a servant had brought in. Payne was lounging in an armchair close by. He was in his shirtsleeves and was sipping his second cup of black coffee. His headache had gone and he was feeling a new man, he had declared.

‘You don’t think Mrs Depleche will start telling him the story again when she gets a second chance?’ Antonia asked anxiously.

‘Highly unlikely. She’s jolly scatty. She’s probably forgotten all about it.’

‘Where is she now?’

‘She was on the terrace, talking to the Gilmours.’ Payne had gone back to retrieve his pipe. ‘She was telling them how much she had fancied Jinnah, the founding father of Pakistan. Apparently she met him in 1943, in Hampstead of all places. He was quite Anglicized and sported Savile Row suits, heavily starched shirts and two-tone suede shoes. He had a Bentley and a chauffeur called Bradley and, as though that were not enough, he kept a West Highland terrier called Mop. He was embarrassingly unfamiliar with Islamic methods of prayer, or so Charlotte claimed.’ ‘I suppose I am being paranoid, but do you think Roman will ask her to finish her story?’

‘Highly unlikely. I don’t think he was paying any attention. He looked as though he had a lot on his mind.’

‘I noticed. Well, so he would – if he really did kill his girlfriend! Beneath all that veneer Roman is nothing more than a common or garden thug.’

‘Interestingly enough, the cult of the Thugees actually arose, came to fruition and flourished somewhere round here. It was a nineteenth-century cult of assassins who saw it as their holy mission to harvest bodies for the bloodthirsty goddess Kali . . . What’s the matter now?’

Antonia’s eyes were fixed on the lowboy with its lion-paw feet and brass handles shaped like snarling lions. She then looked across at the copy of Galland’s
Les Mille et Une
Nuits, Contes Arabes
– up at the rotating fan in the middle of the ceiling – down at the bowl of fruit on her highly polished bedside table.

‘Is there perhaps anything you see, but I don’t?’ Payne asked.

Stretching out her hand, Antonia ran her fingers over the plump purple figs resting in their green leaves, the pomegranate and the pineapple. ‘You don’t think the room’s bugged, do you?’

‘Beware of the mike in the pineapple . . . Shall I run the bath?’ Payne said languidly. ‘That’s what people do when they suspect somebody’s eavesdropping on them.’ He recrossed his legs and took another sip of coffee. ‘The room isn’t bugged.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I checked. That was one of the first things I did yesterday. You were having a bath. I know exactly where to look.’ Payne had at one time worked for the Intelligence Service.

‘Mrs Depleche said she was coming to the spooky part of the story. What was it Camillo found in Ria’s bungalow? I don’t think he found Ria’s body,’ Antonia mused. ‘Mrs Depleche wouldn’t have put it quite that way if he had.’

‘No. You are right. Camillo thought he was going mad. If I have to venture a guess, I’d say that he found . . .’

Antonia lowered the icepack. ‘Yes?’

‘He found
. . . nothing
. The room was empty. What struck him at once was that it did not look like Ria’s room at all. It was absolutely bare but for a desk beside the window, a filing cabinet in the corner and a calendar on the wall showing the now extinct New York Trade Center at night. On the desk there was a laptop and a calculator.’

‘Had Camillo entered the wrong bungalow?’

‘No. He had been to Ria’s bungalow before. That was where they had made love. Camillo stood and gaped. Suddenly a tall, middle-aged man appeared. He was clean-shaven, his grey hair in a boyish crewcut, and he looked benevolent as only an American preacher can. He wore an off-white suit and a bow tie. He was holding a steaming cup of coffee in his hand. He smiled and asked Camillo whether he had come for his tickets. He spoke with a pronounced American accent –’

‘What tickets?’

‘Plane tickets. The American gentleman said that Las Vegas was most certainly the kind of place for a fine young man like Camillo to have a dandy time in. Camillo had made the right choice. When Camillo, in something of a daze, asked where Ria was, or Miss Marigold Leighton, the man appeared greatly puzzled. He shook his head and said that he was sorry, but he knew no person of that name. No, sir. But this is her bungalow, Camillo cried. No, sir, the American said. This was his office – had been for the past six months – he was the head representative of Tramsfeld Travels. With a little courtly bow, he introduced himself as Tom Tramsfeld the Third. In actual fact he was one of Songhera’s agents.’

‘You are making this up, aren’t you?’

‘Of course I’m making it up. How could I possibly have known what Camillo saw? I haven’t spoken to the fellow yet.’

Antonia sighed. ‘We are wasting time, Hugh.’

‘It was Charlotte who put the idea into my head. She thought I too wrote. She was impressed by my turn of phrase. It made me wonder whether I could be as good with plot as well.’ Payne frowned. ‘My intention was to create a bizarre situation in a convincing enough manner. And I think I succeeded, wouldn’t you say? You were riveted.’

‘I was not riveted.’

‘You were riveted. You are annoyed now because you fell for it, admit it.’

‘
We are wasting time
.’

‘You do seriously believe that Knight saw a murder and, as a consequence, was removed and eliminated?’

‘As a matter of fact I do. He was extremely upset and I don’t think it was because he’d consumed a vast quantity of alcohol. I don’t think he was that drunk.’

‘You can never tell with alcoholics. They are adept at maintaining a semblance of sobriety when they are in fact solidly sloshed. Perhaps he played a practical joke on you?’

‘It wasn’t a practical joke!’

‘Very well. Let’s read Knight’s account, shall we?’

Antonia silently drew out the reddish-brown notebook from under her pillow.

‘Are you angry with me?’ Payne asked.

‘No. Only annoyed.’

He put down his coffee cup. ‘Would you like me to join you? Shall I slip into bed with you and put my arm around you? We could read the Knight’s Tale together. I could put on my pyjamas. Get cosy –’

‘I don’t want us to get cosy. I will read and you will listen and comment.’

‘Well, the Honourable Charlotte warned me. She said clever women were the devil. Perhaps she did have a point.’

‘I am sure the Honourable Charlotte knows all about clever women. I never particularly liked Chaucer. Do you remember
The Knight’s Tale
well?’

‘I do.’ Payne leant back and lit his pipe. ‘A tale of courtly love and chivalric rivalries.’

‘How sordid all this is. Julian Knight seems to have been working on several cases. A Mr Stanley of Stanley &Lommax – some kind of an Anglo-Indian import-export company – suspects his junior partner of appropriating funds and frequenting a gambling house. Mrs Agrawal – the wife of a local factory owner – believes her husband is the habitué of an all she-male bordello. Madame Scarpetta is convinced her husband is having an affair with a Mrs Gilmour.’ Antonia looked up. ‘I wonder if these are the same Gilmours who came to the party?’

‘Bound to be. I suppose there’s very little else to do in a place like this.’ Payne yawned. ‘Especially in the monsoon season. She-males. Good lord. Some people do live.’

The windows were open. A perfectly breathless evening had started descending outside, scented and warm. There were no stars, only a pink glow suggesting the sky had been permanently overheated. Antonia had expected an invasion of moths and the kind of horrid little things with hard bodies that dash themselves furiously at the lights – but, so far at least, none had appeared.

‘In each case Knight is paid to trail someone and report back.’ Antonia turned another page. ‘Squalid amours. More squalid amours
.
I mean
really
squalid. The mind boggles. How could people do things like that?’

‘Things like what?’ Payne sat up. ‘Do read it out. I’d like to hear all about the squalid amours.
’

‘Some pages are stained. Julian Knight seems to have spilled something.’ Antonia’s face twisted squeamishly as she sniffed at a page. ‘
Wine
.’

‘How fascinating.’ Payne sounded annoyed. ‘Red or white? Or is it pink champagne?’

‘Twelve, no, thirteen pages are devoted to Ria and her exploits . . .
Ria, 24, leaves home after quarrel with father.
Shanghai – Dubai – Goa.
She was first spotted in RS’s company on the sixteenth of November. She met Roman in Dubai
–
introduced to him by someone called “Mihail” – info provided by RS’s personal valet – four thousand rupees
. Old Leighton rather coy about exact nature of Ria’s
exotic perambulations
,
but valet’s account leaves nothing to
the imagination. Valet claims RS picked her up in foyer of the
Balmoral Hotel in Dubai City, where LON congregate –
’

‘What’s LON? No, don’t tell me. Ladies of the night?’

‘
Notorious picking ground
.
Any taste catered for
. Shall I race ahead?’

‘I’d rather you slowed down, actually. This is getting interesting.’

‘Oh, here it is! He’s dated it.
14th February. I may be dead
when you are reading this. Please do something. This morning
I witnessed the brutal killing of Marigold Leighton. You will find
the body at 19 Fernandez Avenue –
’

‘19 Fernandez Avenue?’ Payne wrote the address down on a pad.

‘
If something happens to me, let it be known that Roman
Songhera is a killer . . .
Well, that’s it.’ Antonia looked up. ‘He has signed it JK. He uses big block capitals throughout.’ She put the diary down. ‘What shall we do?’

There was a pause. ‘You are determined that we should do something? Well, as it happens, so am I.’ Payne stroked his jaw. ‘This is the course of action I propose. Pay a visit to 19 Fernandez Avenue and check if there’s really a body there. My guess is that there won’t be. Have a word with Camillo about his strange experience earlier today, though that can wait. Try to find Julian Knight. He might not be dead. It’s possible that he’s gone into hiding. Do we know where he lives?’

‘His name and address are on page one . . . 203Vindia Street, Kilhar.’ Antonia paused as Payne wrote the address down. ‘What’s the time now?’

‘Half past seven. It’s got dark.’

‘That’s good. We won’t be attracting attention.’ Antonia slipped out of bed.

‘We’ll get a cab. I wonder if all local taxi drivers are Songhera’s agents.’

‘There’ll be fireworks on the beach at nine.’

‘I hate fireworks,’ Payne said.

‘The whole thing is totally mad. Sometimes I wonder if there’s something wrong with us. We keep getting involved in bizarre situations.’ Antonia put on her shoes, then stood in front of the mirror and patted her hair. She reached out for the bottle of Penhaligon’s Bluebell, which she had brought with her from London. It was her favourite scent.