R. Raichev - The Murder Of Gonzago

‘But it wasn’t there when you looked at his hands after he died?’

‘No. It had disappeared! There was no wound. Not the slightest mark. The red scar was there all right at dinner! I was sitting next to Lord Remnant, you see.’ Louise scowled. ‘I don’t know how the two things fit together, but I have an idea they do. I mean, the giggle and the wound that was not there – and in some mad way, it all ties up with the Grimaud.’

‘Who or what is the Grimaud?’ Antonia asked gravely.

Louise told her. ‘Do you see? It doesn’t exist, it’s nothing but a superstition, yet Stephan insisted on having seen it arrive in a coffin! The Grimaud is believed to presage somebody’s death, or rather to bring it about… Well, Lord Remnant did die that night,’ she added thoughtfully.

‘When did the coffin arrive at the house?’

‘Some time in the afternoon, Stephan said. The coffin was brought by a hearse and was placed inside the laundry. Stephan went and looked through the window. He swears he saw the Grimaud crawl out of the coffin. Now, as a witness, Stephan is far from reliable, but he described the Grimaud in such vivid detail, it sent shivers down my spine!’

‘What does the Grimaud look like?’ This, Antonia decided, promises to become our most exotic case.

‘Shiny papier-mâché head, like a ventriloquist’s doll, nose so upturned as to resemble a pig’s snout, and it has three rows of teeth. Quite nightmarish. It was dressed in white tails and Stephan believes he caught a glimpse of a white topper sticking out of the coffin as well.’

‘Where were you at the time?’

‘All of us – with the exception of Stephan and Clarissa – were inside the house. Lord Remnant insisted on showing us some of their home movies. Recordings of various amateur theatricals. So tedious. Everybody dressed up as dentists or minor émigré royalty or organic vegetables or Christmas tree decorations- Was that funny, Mrs Rushton?’

‘No. Well, yes. Sorry.’

‘The Remnants led a life of indolent futility – of effortless nullity – and seemed to expect to be admired for it!’

‘Who do you think shot Lord Remnant? Do you have any ideas?’

‘I am absolutely sure Clarissa is in some way involved. Perhaps it was one of her lovers, at her instigation? Clarissa was reputed to be running the most spectacular galaxy of lovers. That black doctor, for example, who later came and signed the death certificate?’

‘You believe they were lovers?’

‘Of course they were lovers. Oh, how she looked at him, how she smiled at him! A smile that would have melted Iceland. The slow rotten smile of a slut. She is that sort of woman, Mrs Rushton. You should have heard the sounds she made when there were men around! Soft and syrupy-’

‘Am I right in thinking the gun came from Lord Remnant’s study?’

‘Yes. He kept it in the top drawer of his desk. The drawer was never locked. Everybody knew it was there… I saw him sitting at his desk, holding the gun, but that was in the morning, at about half past eleven. Hortense and I happened to be passing by the study – the door was open-’

Antonia frowned. ‘You saw-?’

‘He was smiling – he looked terribly pleased with himself. He was putting the silencer on the gun. At least I think it was a silencer. Hortense thought he was cleaning the gun, but I am sure she was wrong.’

Antonia couldn’t believe her ears. She pushed the plate with the pirog to one side. ‘Sorry – who was it you saw putting a silencer on the gun?’

‘Oh, didn’t I say? It was Lord Remnant.’

The novel I propose to write falls into a genre often described by the cognoscenti as ‘experimental’ and by more conventional readers as ‘puzzling’, Gerard Fenwick, thirteenth Earl Remnant, wrote in his diary. Its status as a novel will owe absolutely nothing to the traditional definition of the form. There will be no hero or heroine, but there will certainly be an anti-hero and an anti-heroine.

At first sight my novel will seem more like a random collection of episodes, though the perceptive reader will soon become aware of interconnections at both a material and a thematic level: characters met in one story will pop up in another; a version of an event we heard of from one angle is later renarrated from another.

A tiny silver guillotine will make an intermittent symbolic appearance, a persistent reminder of the aristocracy’s ultimate fate, until it eventually vanishes into thin air, only to reappear most amazingly in the hands of someone well versed in the gentle art of blackmail.

It will be a murder mystery of sorts.

The novel will start with the obituary in The Times of an utterly impossible peer of the realm, the most peerless of asses, say, an earl. The obituary will give ‘heart attack’ as the cause of death, but in point of fact the unsavoury nobleman would have died as a result of a gun wound in the occiput.

It has just occurred to me that modern-day murder holds as exact a state as a medieval monarch. The exits and entrances are all laid down according to the most formal of protocols. Investigating officer, surgeon, photographer, fingerprint experts, DNA experts and so on make their bow and play their appointed part. (Do readers like police procedurals? Terribly boring, surely?)

It’s the dead man’s brother who tells the story and one of the central themes of the book will be the difficulty, nay the impossibility, of telling of an honest story. The narrator, as the dear reader will discover soon enough, turns out to be dramatically unreliable.

It is the narrator who will be exposed as the killer at the end. Or has that been done before? The narrator is of a largely lunatic cast of mind, something of which he is only partially aware, but he contrives to write in a frighteningly lucid, pedantic sort of way, which imparts to his story the black comic feel of Nabokov’s Pale Fire-

Gerard looked up. There had been a knock on the door.

It was the club steward. ‘The young lady, sir. She said you were expecting her.’

The fellow had spoken in portentously hushed tones; it somehow suggested that his message might have a more sinister meaning than his words conveyed.

Gerard gave an amused smile. ‘Am I expecting a young lady?’

‘Yes, sir. A Miss Glover.’

‘Oh yes, of course. Do let her in… Dear Renée!’ Gerard took off his half-moon glasses and rose to his feet to greet the composed-looking young woman, whose dark hair was parted neatly in the middle and drawn back in two shining waves to form a knot.

‘Hello, Gerard. Hope this is not frightfully inconvenient?’

‘No, not at all, my dear.’ He kissed her cheek. He stood beaming at her. ‘How lovely to see you, Renée. A damsel with a dulcimer!’

‘Is that how you see me, as an Abyssinian maid?’

‘Only figuratively, my dear. I feel strangely inspired each time I see you. Inspiration is so terribly important to me. I am, after all, an artist, a writer. I do miss our tête-à-têtes, you know. You wouldn’t believe this, but I am at the planning stages of a novel.’

‘A new novel?’

‘One of those postmodern thingummybobs. Shall I ring and ask them to bring us some tea? The grub here is awfully good. Better than anything I get at home. Infinitely better. Hope this doesn’t sound too disloyal.’

‘No, thank you. I don’t want any tea.’

‘Won’t you sit down? That’s a very comfortable chair by the fireplace.’ He touched her elbow and pointed towards a high-backed chair, studded and covered in dark red leather. ‘Like a papal throne, isn’t it? Are you sure you don’t want any tea? You look a little pale, my dear. Is everything all right?’