4.Little Victim (21 page)

30

Thou Art the Man

The moment they entered the lift, a thought struck Antonia like a thunderbolt. ‘He will recognize me! We spent at least fifteen minutes together in the folly.’

‘Well, if he does realize the game is up the moment he claps eyes on us, he’s bound to give himself away at once. That’s what we want, isn’t it?’

They were walking down the corridor now. Framed photographs on the walls. Cricket teams. 1903 . . . 1928 . . . 1935 . . . The Cricket Club of India . . . Lord Willingdon, the cricket-loving Viceroy, resplendent in dress uniform, his epaulettes, medals and crosses lending him a faint air of light opera . . . The Maharaja of Patiala (1891–1938). A chunky man in thigh-high boots and a bulbous turban adorned with a peacock feather. Face the shape of a heraldic shield, an aquiline nose, the thickest horn-shaped moustaches she’d ever seen and the boldest and lustiest of stares. A lady-killer, if ever there was one. The type, Antonia reflected, Edwina Mountbatten, Charlotte’s maenad-mentrix, must have found irresistible.

Major Payne pointed to another photograph. ‘Yadavindra Singh. The best cricketer the Patiala dynasty ever produced. He was a crowd-pleasing batsman in the aristocratic style, given to short but spectacular innings with lots of fours and sixes and as little running between wickets as possible. He had a passion for botany.’

‘Can anyone be killed with a fruit knife?’ Antonia asked suddenly.

‘Of course they can. You must aim at the jugular or the nape.’

Number 45. A solid mahogany door the colour of dried liver. Antonia felt distaste bordering on revulsion.

‘Pull your pretty bonnet over your eyes and keep a step behind me,’ Payne whispered.

He knocked on the door twice.

As no one answered, he tried the door handle. The door opened and they entered the room.

There’d be a kind of poetic justice, Antonia thought, if they found him sprawled on the floor dead, either as a result of a massive heart attack or by his own hand.

It was an opulently decorated cherry-red room, which at the moment was sunk in gloom, an effect created by the coral-coloured curtains having been drawn across the windows and the balcony door. A fine black chinoiserie chest, late eighteenth-century, Payne imagined. Decorative gold-leaf garlands along the walls . . .

Lord Justice Leighton sat very still in a recently upholstered gilt and ormolu armchair with his back to the window. The phone, a 1940s model, was on a little table beside him, on his right. On his left stood a larger circular gilt-surround occasional table with a coffee cup on it and several medicine bottles. Against the table leant a silver-topped cane.

He didn’t say a word, just stared back at them. He might have been a wax effigy. The pale face brought to mind a death mask. He looked nothing like the Julian Knight who had talked to her in the folly, Antonia thought. A high domed forehead of the kind that might have been described as ‘noble’ – tufts of white hair – thin lips pulled down at the edges. The protuberant, bloodshot eyes were empty, devoid of expression. No – the eyes had a haunted look. (Gnawed away by guilty conscience? Tormented by his sense of loss?) He wore a light blue shirt, a cravat the colour of chartreuse, white trousers and white slip-on shoes. She’d never have recognized him, Antonia reflected, never.

‘Lord Justice Leighton?’ Major Payne had removed his panama.

The figure in the armchair stirred. ‘What is this about my daughter? What’s happened?’

Antonia was mesmerized by the look and sound of him. Breathing not good. Wheezes. Hands pink and mottled, like a monkey’s paws. Right hand across chest. Left hand on knee –

‘My name is Payne. Major Payne. I am from the British High Commission. This is my wife.’

The tortured eyes gazed at Antonia indifferently, without a flicker of recognition. (Was he pretending?)

‘Has anything happened to my daughter?’

What was that? Her heart started beating fast.
His little
finger was missing
. So that’s why he had held his hand in a fist throughout their conversation in the folly. She had assumed he was holding something, but he hadn’t – his hand had been empty. He knew a missing little finger would attract attention, that it would be noticed and remembered. So it was him!

‘I am afraid I am the bearer of bad news,’ Payne said.

‘What bad news?’

Antonia was put in mind of an Edwardian problem painting in the grand manner of, say, the Hon. John Collier – the kind of painting that spelled everything out with great clarity and attention to detail, leaving very little to the spectator’s imagination. It would be called . . . well,
Bad News
of course. It was the air of dated formality that she imagined hung about the three of them that had given Antonia the idea.

There was the upright grave-faced Major with his stiff upper lip, his greying blond hair sleeked back, clutching his white panama before him . . . The Major’s mem, immaculate in her pale yellow silk-and-linen dress and straw hat, whose black ribbon hinted subtly at the horror of the situation, her right hand cupped in a nervous gesture at her discreet cleavage . . . The distinguished-looking elderly gentleman leaning back in the red velvet-and-gilt armchair, his white hair ruffled, his mouth agape, his right hand pressed against his heart, his left pulling at his elegant cravat, as though he were choking –

‘Marigold Leighton is your daughter, isn’t she? I am afraid she is dead.’

‘No.’ Lord Justice Leighton made a stifled sound and covered his mouth. ‘Not dead. Can’t be.’

‘I am sorry, sir. She died yesterday. She was murdered.’ Payne was watching the former judge closely. ‘She was strangled.’

‘Strangled? Oh – oh, my God.’

‘We thought you should be informed about it as soon as possible. I am sorry.’

‘When – when did it happen?’ Leighton’s speech was a little slurred. Had he been sedated?

He was going through the motions but his heart was not in it. He spoke his lines in a tired, distracted manner.

He tried to appear shocked, grief-stricken, stirred to his depths, but it was a somewhat vague and perfunctory performance. Well, he had passed through it once already. He had been through hell, Antonia had no doubt, but that was yesterday; it was hard mustering up the right feelings at will, doing a repeat performance. He appeared exhausted – deflated – drained of energy – all passion spent. His eyes didn’t focus properly.

‘Your daughter’s body was discovered this morning.’

‘This morning? How – how did you know where to find me? How did you know I was here?’ Leighton looked confused. ‘Did the police get in touch with you?’

‘The police contacted your sister in England. Your sister told us that you were here, the name of your hotel and so on. She rang the British High Commission in Delhi.’

‘Iris contacted the British High Commission? But Iris has no idea – she doesn’t even know –’ Lord Justice Leighton broke off.

Payne pounced at once. ‘Your sister has no idea you are here, has she? Of course she hasn’t. You managed to keep your trip a secret from everyone! Well, we also contacted your wife at Noon’s Folly in Hertfordshire. It was she who told us the whole story,’ he went on improvising. ‘About all the letters you wrote to your daughter and how you came to Goa to try to persuade Ria to go back to England.’

‘You contacted . . . Lucasta? But you couldn’t have!’ Suddenly Lord Justice Leighton gave a thin reedy laugh. ‘What nonsense is this? You aren’t really from the High Commission, are you? Who
are
you?’

Antonia wondered whether Hugh would come up with some portentous phrase like ‘pawns of destiny’, but he didn’t.

‘We know exactly what you did yesterday morning,’ Payne said.

‘I’ve done nothing.’

‘You killed your daughter.’

Lord Justice Leighton’s hand went up to his forehead. ‘I didn’t kill my daughter. You are mad.’

‘This we believe to be the sequence of events. Do correct me if I get something wrong.’ Payne cleared his throat. ‘You went to Ria’s bungalow in Fernandez Avenue yesterday morning. She let you in. You told her you’d come to take her back to England. You had an argument. Things got out of hand. You lost your temper – you shook her – pushed her back on the four-poster bed. You were in her bedroom. Her head hit one of the bedposts and she passed out. Then – then you strangled her.’

Leighton rasped out, ‘I want you out of here now, or else I will call Reception and ask them to – to . . .’

‘You want to summon the law? Please go ahead.’ Payne waved at the telephone. ‘I am sure the local police would be very interested in talking to you. I hope you have a good alibi for yesterday morning?’

‘I don’t need an alibi. I don’t know what you are talking about. Please leave me alone. I am awfully tired. I am not well. I have a terrible headache. I get
three
kinds of headache.’ Leighton shut his eyes. ‘This one is the fabled winged headache with red and green feathers and gold-black claws that clutch and squeeze while its heavy wings beat faster and faster
and
faster. It’s causing me
agonies
. I sit in a dull haze and suddenly it comes. I have become an expert on headaches. I could write a monograph on headaches.’

‘You are acting crazy now.’ Payne clicked his tongue and shook his head. ‘I don’t think it will help you much.’

‘You won’t get a penny out of me. You are trying to blackmail me, aren’t you?’

‘Not at all. We are trying to establish the truth.’

‘There is nothing to establish.’

‘We are private detectives and we have been investigating your daughter’s murder.’

‘
You aren’t private detectives.’

‘As a matter of fact you have already met my wife. You couldn’t have forgotten my wife, surely? You met her only yesterday evening, at our employer’s Valentine party. You had a long conversation with her. In the folly. Before you disappeared . . . Something of an actor
manqué
, aren’t you?’

‘I’ve never seen this woman before,’ Lord Justice Leighton said firmly.

‘You entrusted me with the diary of the man you killed and then impersonated,’ Antonia said, taking the reddish-brown notebook out of her handbag and holding it aloft in her hand in a gesture that seemed vaguely threatening. How absurdly melodramatic. She might have been confronting Lady Isobel Vane of
East Lynne
notoriety.

The former judge fixed his boiled-gooseberry eyes on Payne. ‘Did you say your “employer”?’

‘That’s correct. We work for Roman Songhera. He commissioned us to find his fiancée’s killer. Which we now have.’

‘Nonsense. I don’t believe you.’

‘Come along, darling,’ Payne touched Antonia’s arms. ‘We mustn’t make Mr Songhera wait.’

‘
Wait
.’ Lord Leighton seemed to have come to a decision. ‘You are very much mistaken. I didn’t kill Ria, but –’

‘Yes?’

‘I will tell you who did. I’m damned if I let her get away with it.’

There was a smell in the room and now Antonia became aware of it for the first time. Not medicinal. Was that what eternal damnation smelled like? It was some stately scent and, funnily enough, it seemed familiar. Now, where . . .? Antonia frowned. Not such a long time ago – at Ria’s bungalow?
Yes
. In the hall, then in Ria’s bedroom. Antonia had thought it an unlikely choice for a young girl of Ria’s persuasion.

Did
he
use the scent? Antonia experienced a slightly creepy sensation. Lord Justice Leighton couldn’t be a transvestite, could he? She had also noticed a kimono and lady’s slippers beside the double bed, as well as a brooch in the shape of what looked like a triton, two diamanté hairpins and a jar of cold cream on the bedside table. A beaded scarf of the kind Moslem women wore lay on another chair.
The
veil
?
That was what he had worn when he killed Knight. Antonia cast round, trying to spot a woman’s wig somewhere. An immaculate hairdo. Where had she heard something about an immaculate hairdo? Split personality? A Norman Bates kind of solution?

She was aware of a draught. The door behind her seemed to have opened –