The Death of Corinne (19 page)

25

The Unexpected Guest

They had come upon her in the hall, tending to Provost who gave every impression of being in a very bad way indeed. He was sitting on a spindle-legged gilt chair, staring before him. Lady Grylls had made him a cup of tea. She seemed to have emptied almost the whole contents of the silver sugar bowl into the tea; she kept urging him to drink it. The air was filled with the old-fashioned smell of valerian. There was a bottle of brandy on a salver on a small round table, also, inexplicably, a thermometer.

Provost was clad in the black-and-yellow striped waistcoat à la Maxim’s but his stiff gleaming-white collar had been removed and it too could be seen on the salver. Lady Grylls was wearing a dressing gown and she had also put an elaborate choker with a large ruby clasp around her neck. She was smoking another purple-filtered Balkan Sobranie cigarette. The morning light, filtered through the fanlight, filled the hall with the murky yellow tones of a sepia print and, Payne thought, it made it look rather like a scene out of some quaint Edwardian farce on the twin subjects of
noblesse oblige
and the feudal spirit. (
Lady
Grylls Pulls It Off
?
Baroness to the Rescue
?) The mundane conclusion of course was that murder made people act irrationally.

‘His legs buckled under him like one of those collapsible card tables. Good thing I was here to catch him as he fell . . . He can’t cope with things like that. He’s a weak man . . . Peverel’s here,’ Lady Grylls went on with evident distaste. ‘As though we haven’t got enough to think about.’

Payne’s brows went up. ‘Peverel? I thought he wasn’t coming back?’

‘Well, he has. He drove all the way down from London. Must have started at some unearthly hour. He’s in the dining room, drinking coffee. He looks like a funeral director, quite unlike himself. He seems to know about it already –’ Lady Grylls broke off. ‘Provost says Maginot has been shot – is that correct?’

‘Yes.’ Payne then told her to prepare for another shock. ‘Maître Maginot’s body isn’t the only one in the greenhouse, darling. Eleanor Merchant is there too – shot as well . . . It looks as though she killed Maginot and then committed suicide.’

‘You don’t mean that, do you, Hughie?’

He said he did. He swore he wasn’t making it up.

‘That’s a pretty kettle of fish,’ Lady Grylls said after a pause. ‘So
that
’
s
what Peverel meant when he said there were two of them. I thought I’d misheard. Goodness. That woman came all this way from America to shoot herself in my greenhouse. Incidentally, do you remember that awful weepy,
Love Story
? When was it made, can you tell me?’

Major Payne blinked. ‘Sorry, darling? What love story?’

‘
Love Story
. The film. When was it made?’

‘When was it –? Early seventies . . . 1970, at a guess. ‘

‘1970. I thought as much.’ Lady Grylls nodded. ‘In 1970 Corinne was twenty-two. I knew she was talking bosh. You see . . .’ She then told them about the extraordinary conversation she had had with Corinne the night before. ‘And she said that she remembered her mother’s voice! That was the other rum thing. It didn’t make sense. There was nothing memorable about Ruse’s voice, but Corinne spoke as though it had been something quite exceptional.’

Antonia and Payne found Peverel in the dining room, standing by the fireplace, a large white coffee cup in hand. He was wearing a black coat with a velvet collar and a long white silk scarf. He did look solemn and – not sad, exactly, Antonia thought, but preoccupied, in a pensive mood. ‘I thought you were the police,’ he said, glancing at the clock. ‘They are always late, aren’t they?’

It was then that the possible importance of something Lady Grylls had said dawned on Antonia. She asked, ‘How do you know what happened?’

He shrugged – took another sip of coffee. He was drinking it black. There was a faraway look in his eyes. For some reason Antonia had the idea that he was reflecting on the past.

‘How did you know there was a second body there?’ she persisted.

He gave a little smile. ‘That boy told me. Nicholas.’

There had been a brief pause and a scowl, as though he had had to think about it – or was Antonia imagining it?

‘I thought you had no intention of coming back,’ Payne said.

‘I discovered I’d left something behind. I came to collect it.’

‘What a bore for you. Must have been something very important. ‘

‘Oh, it is. It is.’ Peverel took another sip of coffee. ‘Terribly important.’ He gave no more details. ‘In your kind of detective story, Antonia,’ he went on, ‘the police always blunder in the dark, don’t they, and it is invariably the gifted amateur detective who gets to the truth?’

‘It’s a convention . . . Part of the game . . . One of the genre’s requirements.’ Antonia frowned: there had been an odd intensity about Peverel’s voice. ‘Readers still seem to like it, though of course everybody knows it’s got nothing to do with real life.’

‘Real life . . . Oh, how I wish –’ Peverel broke off. He put down the coffee cup and looked towards the window.

There was a pause. Antonia’s eyes remained fixed on him. How he wished – what? That the police did blunder in the dark not only in detective stories, but in real life as well – that the police never got to the truth?

Now that was interesting – extremely interesting.

(What
was
the truth?)

The next moment they heard a siren.

26

An Inspector Calls

The police took control of the situation briskly and efficiently. They told everybody to stay inside the house, they then cordoned off the greenhouse. Antonia watched them do it from the drawing-room window. She wondered how long it would be before the bodies were taken away in body bags. Some half an hour later a police inspector called Lyttleton came to the house and said he would like to take a statement from each one of them. Lady Grylls suggested he use her late husband’s study on the first floor.

The study was panelled in dark oak and across the windows there were crimson plush curtains. The small fireplace was suitable for burning coal and it was surrounded by painted tiles depicting a hunt: a lot of horsemen in scarlet coats frantically chasing after bushy-tailed foxes which appeared oddly nonchalant. An ancient leopard skin lay on the floor in front of the fireplace. The mahogany bookcase contained mainly game books bound in red morocco leather, garden catalogues and a number of stamp albums: as a young man the late Lord Grylls had been an ardent stamp collector.

The walls were adorned with several indifferent pastoral landscapes and two huge Wootton pieces. An oil portrait of Lord Grylls in the Robes and Star of the Order of the Garter hung above the fireplace. Lord Grylls’s pale puffy face, placid expression and blond hair put Antonia in mind of portraits of George IV’s brothers by Liotard. The desk was well worn and massive and it rather dwarfed Inspector Lyttleton who seemed to live up (or should it be ‘down’?) to his name.

Antonia was the last to be questioned. What was Miss Darcy’s occupation? She was a detective story writer! Really? Well, well. The inspector leant back in his chair and gazed at her with interest. He was in his late forties or early fifties and looked benevolent, though Antonia was convinced that was just an act. Had he read any of her books? he wondered. She had written only two, Antonia said. She was sitting beside a small table and she put her hands under it and held them on her lap – like a well-behaved child at a party, she thought nervously . . . What were her books called? She told him. No, he didn’t think he had read them. ‘I must make a note of your name,’ he said. ‘Crime writers usually get almost everything wrong, mind. Even those who do “research” . . . ‘ He gave a superior little smile and went on to say that in his experience those crime writers who did ‘research’ were the worst.

‘I never do any extensive research,’ Antonia said and was at once annoyed at herself for sounding defensive. She didn’t write police procedurals, forensic crime or historical crime, she started explaining. He cleared his throat. He did read the odd detective story every now and then, he said, when he was on holiday. Some detective stories were ‘clever’ – nothing like the way crime happened in real life of course. His wife now was a great fan of detective stories – she was always comparing him to fictional detectives. Wasn’t that silly? He shook his head.

Miss Darcy must find it very odd, being involved in a real-life murder case? Antonia agreed that it was very odd. She didn’t say it had happened to her once before. (He was bound to think that extremely odd and might become suspicious of her.) She then told Lyttleton what she knew about Corinne Coreille and the anonymous death threats constructed with letters cut out of the
International Herald
Tribune
. He knew all about them – Jonson had already shown him the death threats – as well as Eleanor Merchant’s letters. Antonia mentioned the phone calls that had been received at Chalfont. The last time she had seen Maître Maginot? The night before – on the stairs – Maître Maginot had been on her way down. The time? Some minutes after eleven o’clock.

The inspector was taking laborious notes in a little black notebook. No sergeant, Antonia suddenly thought. How odd. That was what happened in her previous detective novel. She had omitted the sergeant and had been criticized for it by one reviewer . . . Antonia detested police procedurals, thought them tedious in the extreme; in her novels she delayed the appearance of the police for as long as she could, till chapter twenty-five, say, or thereabouts, and then gave them the shortest of shrifts . . . Surely it was irregular for the inspector not to have a sergeant? She meant to ask him, but decided against it . . . She experienced a sense of unreality . . . It was almost as though they were characters in one of her novels . . . He reminded her of her late father a little . . .
Was
he real – or had he emerged from the depths of her mind?

She was feeling light-headed . . . She shut her eyes and rubbed at them. Delayed shock . . . Curb your imagination, she told herself.

She heard him clear his throat.

‘I am sorry!’

‘Aimless reverie or profitable reflection?’ Inspector Lyttleton smiled. He then asked her a question. When was the last time she had seen Corinne Coreille? The night before, at dinner. How had Corinne struck her? Antonia described Corinne’s manner as ‘quiet, subdued, neutral’. ‘The most remarkable thing about her was her passivity,’ she said. No, Corinne hadn’t looked particularly anxious. It was Maître Maginot who had shown signs of considerable agitation – especially after the phone call from the woman who had introduced herself as Tricia Swindon.

Inspector Lyttleton nodded. That call had been made by Eleanor Merchant, he ventured – they had examined her mobile phone; as a matter of fact Eleanor Merchant had made several calls to Chalfont Park. And there was a little mystery – Eleanor Merchant had received a phone call at ten minutes past eleven. ‘Who from?’ Antonia asked, greatly interested.

‘The caller’s number was unknown,’ Lyttleton answered. ‘We don’t think it has any bearing on what happened, but of course we are keeping an open mind.’

Had Antonia heard any suspicious noises during the night? She said no, pointing out that the gun had a silencer, at once regretting it for the inspector looked displeased. He said he wished they hadn’t gone inside the greenhouse at all! The shot that killed Maître Maginot had been fired at a very close range, Inspector Lyttleton said thoughtfully – Eleanor Merchant must have been standing beside the door as Corinne Coreille’s legal adviser entered the greenhouse. Eleanor might have been aware of Maître Maginot’s approach – it looked as though she had been waiting for her . . . Was it possible that Eleanor Merchant had taken Maître Maginot for Corinne? Physically the two women couldn’t have been more different – unless Eleanor was completely unfamiliar with Corinne’s appearance? No, that was not very likely, was it?

‘Well, Mrs Merchant seems to have had very serious health issues – judging by the pills we found in her bag. I mean her mental state –’ He cleared his throat. He implied Mrs Merchant’s mental state provided the only explanation necessary for what she had done.

Had Miss Darcy heard any other noises? Footsteps – raised voices – commotion of any kind – the roar of a car engine perhaps? No?

‘I didn’t hear a thing,’ Antonia said. How interesting that Maginot should have been shot at a close range, she thought. A picture rose before her eyes, of the two women locked in a mortal combat, lurching about against the backdrop of all those decaying plants, the gun between them . . . No, no – of course not – that wasn’t how it had happened . . . The gun – where
did
the gun come from?

‘I don’t suppose you can help having ideas?’ Inspector Lyttleton said with a smile.

Antonia admitted she couldn’t. There was a pause, then he changed tack. Why hadn’t they called the police earlier? Why a private detective and not the police? Antonia explained that that had been Maître Maginot’s idea. Maître Maginot had done it out of consideration for Corinne Coreille and her career – she had been afraid of adverse publicity. Adverse publicity, he muttered. So, in a way, Maître Maginot had brought it upon herself. He shook his head.

No one, Antonia emphasized, had imagined that Eleanor Merchant would be able to find Corinne’s whereabouts. He agreed – that was one of the most amazing aspects of the whole affair. He scrunched up his face.

However had Eleanor Merchant managed to get hold of Lady Grylls’s address?

27

The Killing Doll

How indeed?

That was a question – one of the questions – that had been bothering Antonia. How could Eleanor Merchant have known where to find Corinne Coreille, given Maître Maginot’s obsession with secrecy and security – considering how carefully she had orchestrated operation ‘Safe Haven’? Maître Maginot had explained that the reason for not taking any ‘entourage’ with them was to avoid attracting any attention at any stage of their journey.

No, Antonia had no idea where Corinne Coreille had disappeared or when she could have left the house. The oddity and reclusiveness of the French singer were touched upon, together with her memorable haunting voice. Surprisingly, it turned out Inspector Lyttleton was familiar with Corinne Coreille. He remembered the occasion well. He had seen her on TV in the early ’70s – the Ed Sullivan show – Corinne Coreille had sung in duet with Eartha Kitt – the two of them had been kitted out as comic vamps – feather boas and fishnet stockings – they had sat on top of a grand piano. ‘All white. The piano, the roses, the snow . . . It was a Christmas special. The pianist smoked a cigarette. They let people smoke on the box in those days.
C
’
est si bon
,’ Lyttleton hummed and wriggled his shoulders lightly. ‘Variety. I’ve always been fond of variety,’ he said.

Had Corinne Coreille perhaps panicked and run off in the early hours of the morning? That at once suggested that somehow she knew what had taken place in the greenhouse. What was Miss Darcy’s view? Antonia shrugged. It was possible. She felt reluctant to swap theories with him. Could Corinne have heard a noise from outside, gone to investigate and found the bodies? Possible again, Antonia said, though she thought it highly unlikely. Corinne would never have left the house in the dark, all by herself. If she had heard a suspicious noise, a cry, say, she would have sought Jonson out, the man they had hired to protect her. But Jonson had been asleep in his room, or so he claimed. He had heard nothing . . . Had Jonson told the truth? Such a likeable young man, but – Antonia reminded herself – one thing one should never do in a case of murder was to warm to likeable young men.

There was also the question of transport. It had been a cold and wet night. Corinne couldn’t simply have walked out of the house, carrying her bags. The house was on the outskirts of the village. There was a cab service in the village, but the police had already ascertained that no cab had been called from Chalfont Park at any point in the night or in the early hours of the morning. A search, Antonia understood, was under way.

Where
was
Corinne? She seemed to have vanished into thin air. Without a trace. The way the inspector said it, the way he paused and frowned and shook his head, suggested that he thought Corinne Coreille too might be dead. Suddenly, he asked Antonia if she knew anything about the doll that had been found on the stairs. Where had it come from? She stared at him. She knew nothing about a doll – what doll?

He produced a see-through plastic bag from his briefcase and handed it to her across the desk. The doll was inside the bag. ‘Don’t take it out,’ he warned her.

‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ Antonia said.

There were two large hatpins sticking out of the top of the doll’s head, two more had been run through its eyes, another two through its ears. A pin that was larger than the others stuck out of the doll’s mouth. Antonia shuddered. A voodoo doll? The next moment she realized with a start that it was a Corinne doll. Peverel had told them about it – and of course Eleanor Merchant had written about it in her first letter. The doll was about five inches long and it was instantly recognizable as Corinne. There was the fringe, the demure expression, the blue dress, the red bow. The eyes looked somewhat ‘Japanese’. Well, the doll had been made in Japan, to coincide with Corinne’s Osaka comeback concert.

The inspector had read Eleanor Merchant’s description of how she had set about sticking pins into a Corinne doll, turning it into a ‘pincushion’ and feeling ‘better’ as a result. Eleanor had asked Corinne whether ‘it hurt’.

It looked as though Eleanor Merchant had brought the doll with her, all the way from America. But Eleanor had died in the greenhouse. How had the Corinne doll landed on the main staircase at Chalfont? That was where Provost had stumbled on it in the morning . . . Could Eleanor Merchant have sneaked into the house at some point? It was Antonia who asked the question. Well, no door or window had been forced . . . Eleanor could have been let into the house by somebody, Antonia imagined. She might have had an accomplice.

The inspector said guardedly that they were not looking for anyone else. Of course the search for Corinne Coreille would continue.

Soon after the interview was over and Inspector Lyttle-ton left. Antonia had kept to the known, plain facts. She had made no mention of any of the fancy trimmings. Peverel’s involvement with Corinne over thirty years previously, the fact that Corinne Coreille had given birth to his child, the idea that Maginot was in fact Ruse, Corinne’s mother, the strong suspicion that had now become a certainty that Jonson knew more than he had told . . . Did any of these have any bearing on the two deaths? Antonia was set on continuing with her own inquiry . . . She hadn’t mentioned the kitten either, though the kitten was very much on her mind.

The kitten in the photograph . . .

She didn’t leave the study at once. She sat at Lord Grylls’s desk, in the revolving leather chair the inspector had occupied. She ran her hand across the desk surface . . . She liked the feel of the desk. It was the kind of desk she could write a novel on. She always wrote by hand first. She was funny about desks. Some desks simply didn’t feel right. There were desks that repelled her – stalled her creativity. Hadn’t Muriel Spark had a similar thing about pencils? Lady Grylls had asked her what she wanted for a wedding present – Antonia wondered whether she could ask for the desk?

Idly she reached out for one of Lord Grylls’s stamp albums and started leafing through it. A series of French stamps showing the face of Marianne in red, in white and in blue, drew her attention. Corinne’s face had been used as a model for Marianne in the ’70s. Once more she saw Corinne’s face, the way it had been in the photograph she had taken out of Jonson’s case – youthfully smooth –

But it wouldn’t have remained smooth if she had been stroking a kitten . . . Antonia nodded slowly . . . She had known all along there was something wrong about the photograph Jonson had brought with him to Chalfont Park. The kitten shouldn’t have been there. Her subconscious had registered the fact – but she had been distracted by the photograph of Peverel on Corinne’s dressing table.

Jonson of course knew. He hadn’t wanted them to see the photograph because he feared they might be able to deduce the truth.