Put on by Cunning (13 page)

‘Oh dear, no,’ said Cory. ‘Down in the same old place.’ His eyes widened suddenly as if with inspiration. ‘I haven’t anyone to look after me. I don’t suppose . . .’

‘I’m retired, sir, and never had so much to do. I don’t have a moment for myself let alone other folks, so I’ll say bye-bye now and nice to see you after all this time.’

She scuttled off in the direction of De Beauvoir Square, looking at her watch like the White Rabbit as she went.

‘Who was that?’ said Burden.

‘She used to work for poor Manuel and Kathleen when they lived at Shaddough’s Hall Farm. I can’t think what she’s doing up here.’

The door, though closed, had been left on the latch. Wexford pushed it open and they went up the steep staircase. Natalie had come out on to the landing and was waiting for them at the top. Wexford had thought about her so much, had indeed become so obsessive about her, that since last seeing her he had created an image of her in his mind that was seductive, sinister, Mata Hari-like, corrupt, guileful and serpentine. Before the reality this chimera showed itself briefly for the absurd delusion it was and then dissolved. For here, standing before them, was a charming and pretty woman to whom none of these pejorative expressions could possibly apply. Her black hair hung loose to her shoulders, held back by a velvet Alice band. She wore the skirt Jane Zoffany had been altering and with it a simple white shirt and dark blue cardigan. It was very near a school uniform and there was something of the schoolgirl about her as she brought her face down to Cory’s and kissed him, saying with the slightest edge of reproach:

‘It’s good to see you, Uncle Philip. I only wish the circumstances were different.’

Cory drew his face away. He said in a kind of sharp chirp, ‘One must do one’s duty as a citizen.’

She laughed at that and patted his shoulder. They all went into a small and unpretentious living room from which a kitchen opened. It was all a far cry from Sterries. The furnishings looked as if they had come down to the Zoffanys from defunct relatives who hadn’t paid much for them when they were new. Nothing seemed to have been added by Natalie except a small shelf of paperbacks which could only be designated as non-Zoffany because none of them was science fiction.

There was an aroma of coffee and from the kitchen the sound, suggestive of some large hibernating creature snoring, that a percolator makes.

‘Do sit down,’ said Natalie, ‘Make yourselves at home. Excuse me while I see to the coffee.’ She seemed totally carefree and gave no sign of having noticed what Burden had brought into the flat. There’s no art, thought Wexford, to find the mind’s construction in the face.

The coffee, when it came, was good. ‘The secret’, said Natalie gaily, ‘is to put enough in.’ Uttering this cliché, she laughed. ‘I’m afraid the British don’t do that.’

She surely couldn’t be enjoying herself like this if she was not Natalie, if there was any chance of her failing the test ahead of her. He glanced at Burden whose eyes were on her, who seemed to be studying her appearance and was recalling perhaps newspaper photographs or actual glimpses of Camargue. Having taken a sip of his coffee into which he ladled three spoonfuls of sugar, Cory started at once on his questioning. He would have made a good quizmaster. Perhaps it was from him that Blaise had inherited his talents.

‘You and your parents went to live at Shaddough’s Hall Farm when you were five. Can you remember what I gave you for your sixth birthday?’

She didn’t hesitate. ‘A kitten. It was a grey one, a British Blue.’

‘Your cat had been run over and I gave you that one to replace it.’

‘We called it Panther.’

Cory had forgotten that. But Wexford could see that now he remembered and was shaken. He asked less confidently: ‘Where was the house?’

‘On the Pomfret to Cheriton road. You’ll have to do better than that, Uncle Philip. Anyone could have found out where Camargue lived.’

For answer he threw a question at her in French. Wexford wasn’t up to understanding it but he gave Cory full marks for ingenuity. There was more to this old man that at first met the eye. She answered in fluent French and Cory addressed her in what Wexford took to be Spanish. This was something he was sure Symonds, O’Brien and Ames had not thought of. But what a sound test it was. Momentarily he held his breath, for she was not answering, her face had that puzzled foolish look people have when spoken to in a language they know less thoroughly than they have claimed.

Cory repeated what he had said. Burden cleared his throat and moved a little in his chair. Wexford held himself perfectly still, waiting, knowing that every second which passed made it more and more likely that she had been discovered and exposed. And then, as Cory was about to speak for the third time, she broke into a flood of fast Spanish so that Cory himself was taken aback, uncomprehending apparently, until she explained more slowly what it was that she had said.

Wexford drank his coffee and she, looking at him mischievously, refilled his cup. On Burden she bestowed one of her sparkling smiles. Her long hair fell forward, Cleopatra-like, in two heavy tresses to frame her face. It was a young face, Wexford thought, even possibly too young for the age she professed to be. And wasn’t it also
too Spanish
? Natalie Camargue’s mother had been English, typically English, her father half-French. Would their daughter look quite so much like one of Goya’s women? None of the evidence, convincing though it was, was as yet conclusive. Why shouldn’t an imposter speak Spanish? If the substitution had taken place in Los Angeles she might even be Mexican. Why not know about the kitten and its name if she had been a friend of the true Natalie and had set out to absorb her childhood history?

‘What was the first instrument you learned to play?’ Cory was asking.

‘The recorder.’

‘How old were you when you began the violin?’

‘Eight.’

‘Who was your first master?’

‘I can’t remember,’ she said.

‘When you were fifteen you were living at Shaddough’s Hall Farm and you were on holiday from school. It was August. Your father had just come back from a tour of – America, I think.’

‘Canada.’

‘I do believe you’re right.’ Cory, having been determined almost from Wexford’s first words on the subject to consider her an impostor, grew more and more astonished as the interrogation went on. ‘You’re right, it was. God bless my soul. Do you remember my coming to dinner with your parents? I and my wife? Can you remember that evening?’

‘I think so. I hadn’t seen you for about a year.’

‘Before dinner I asked you to play something for me and you did and . . .’

She didn’t even allow him to finish.

‘I played Bach’s Chaconne from the D minor Partita.’

Cory was stunned into silence. He stared at her and then turned on Wexford an affronted look.

‘It was too difficult for me,’ she said lightly. ‘You clapped but I felt I’d made a mess of it.’ The expressions on the three men’s faces afforded her an amused satisfaction. ‘That’s proof enough, isn’t it? Shall we all have a drink to celebrate my reinstatement?’ She jumped up, took the tray and went into the kitchen, leaving the door open.

It was perhaps this open door and the sound of their hostess humming lightheartedly that stopped Cory from rounding on Wexford. Instead he raised his whiskery white eyebrows almost into his fluffy white hair and shook his head vigorously, a gesture that plainly said he felt he had been brought here on a wild-goose chase. If she wasn’t Natalie, Wexford thought, there was no way she could have known about that piece of music. It was impossible to imagine circumstances in which the true Natalie would have spoken of such a thing to the false. If she had done so it would presuppose her having recounted every occasion on which she had played to a friend, listing every friend and every piece of music, since it could never have been foreseen that this particular piece would be inquired about. That Cory would ask this question, a question that had no doubt come into his mind because of his reference to the Bach Chaconne on the previous day, could only have been guessed at by those who had been present at the time, himself, Burden and Blaise.

So one could almost agree with her and acclaim her reinstated as Camargue’s heir. She had passed the test no impostor could have passed. He looked at her wonderingly as she returned to the room, the contents of the tray now exchanged for a couple of bottles and an ice bucket. If she was, as she now seemed undoubtedly to be, Natalie Arno, how had Camargue possibly been deceived in the matter? This woman would never have mispronounced a word or a name in a foreign language known to her. And if Camargue had indeed accused her of doing so, it had been in her power to correct that misapprehension at once and to furnish him with absolute proof of who she was. For now Wexfordhad no doubt that if Camargue had asked her she would have recalled for him the minutest details of her infancy, of the family, of esoteric domestic customs which no one living but he and she could have known. But Camargue had been an old man, wandering in his wits as well as short-sighted and growing deaf. That tiresome woman Dinah Sternhold had wasted their time, repeating to him what was probably only one amongst several of a dotard’s paranoid delusions.

Burden looked as if he was ready to leave. He had reached down to grasp once more the handle of the violin case.

‘Would you play that piece of music for us now, Mrs Arno?’ Wexford said.

If she had noticed the violin, as she surely must have done, she had presumably supposed it the property of Cory and unconnected with herself, for with his question her manner changed. She had put the tray down and had been about to lift her hands from it, but her hands remained where they were and slightly stiffened. Her face was unaltered, but she was no longer quite in command of the situation and she was no longer amused.

‘No, I don’t think I would,’ she said.

‘You’ve given up the violin?’

‘No, I still play in an amateurish sort of way, but I’m out of practice.’

‘We’ll make allowances, Mrs Arno,’ said Wexford. ‘The inspector and I aren’t competent to judge, anyway.’ Burden gave him a look implying that
he
might be. ‘If you’ll play the violin so as to satisfy Mr Cory I will myself be satisfied that Sir Manuel had – made a mistake.’

She was silent. She sat still, looking down, considering. Then she put out her hand for the violin case and drew it towards her. But she seemed not quite to know how to open it, for she fumbled with the catch.

‘Here, let me,’ said Burden.

She got up and looked at the tray she had brought it. ‘I forgot the glasses. Excuse me.’

Burden lifted out the violin carefully, then the bow. The sight of it restored Cory’s temper and he touched one of the strings lightly with his finger. From the kitchen came a sudden tinkle of breaking glass, an exclamation, then a sound of water running.

‘You may as well put that instrument away again,’ said Wexford quietly.

She came and her face was white. ‘I broke a glass.’ Wrapped round her left hand was a bunch of wet tissues, rapidly reddening, and as she scooped the sodden mass away, Wexford saw a long thin cut, bright red across three fingertips.

It should have been the beginning, not the end. They should have been able to proceed with a prosecution for deception and an investigation of the murder of Sir Manuel Camargue. And Wexford, calling on Symonds, O’Brien and Ames with what he thought to be proof that Natalie Arno was not who she said she was, felt confident he had a case. She might speak French and Spanish, she might know the most abstruse details about the Camargues’ family life, but she couldn’t play the violin and that was the crux. She had not dared to refuse so she had deliberately cut her fingers on the tips where they must press the strings. Keneth Ames listened to all this with a vagueness bordering on indifference which would have alarmed Wexford if he hadn’t been used to the man’s manner. He seemed reluctant to disclose the address of Mrs Mary Woodhouse but finally did so when pressed.

She lived with her son and daughter-in-law, both of whom were out at work, in a council flat on the Pomfret housing estate. While Wexford talked to her, explaining gently but at some length what he suspected, she at first sat still and attentive, but when the purpose of his visit became clear to her, she pushed her brows together and stuck out her underlip and picked up the work on which she had been engaged before he arrived. This was some sort of bed cover, vast in size, of dead-white cotton crochet work. Mrs Woodhouse’s crochet hook flashed in and out as she expended her anger through her fingers.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, I don’t know what you mean.’ She repeated these sentences over and over whenever he paused for a reply. She was a small, sharp-featured old woman whose dark hair had faded to charcoal colour. ‘I went to see Mrs Arno because she asked me. Why shouldn’t I? I’ve got a sister living in Hackney that’s been a bit off-colour. I’ve been stopping with her and what with Mrs Arno living like only a stone’s throw away, it’s only natural I’d go and see her, isn’t it? I’ve known her since she was a kiddy, it was me brought her up as much as her mother.’

‘How many times have you seen her, Mrs Woodhouse?’

‘I don’t know what you mean. Hundreds of times, thousands of times. If you mean been to her place like this past week, just the twice. The time you saw me and two days previous. I’d like to know what you’re getting at.’

‘Were some of those “hundreds of times” last November and December, Mrs Woodhouse? Did Mrs Arno go and see you when she first arrived in this country?’

‘I’ll tell you when I first saw her. Two weeks back. When that solicitor, that Mr Ames, come here and asked me the same sort of nonsense you’re asking me. Only he knew when he was beaten.’ The crochet hook jerked faster and the ball of yarn bounced on Mary Woodhouse’s lap. ‘Had I any doubt Mrs Arno was Miss Natalie Camargue?’ She put a wealth of scorn into her voice. ‘Of course I hadn’t, not a shadow of doubt.’