R.T. Raichev - Murder of Gonzago

There is equal pleasure, if of a different order, that comes from a novelist who uses events not to change characters, but to reveal them. If one style, hesitating, probing, mazy, is suited to one kind of novel, then a different style, lucid, terse and epigrammatic, fits another.

I have now tried everything, or almost everything. I have written in the plainest and most cliched, weary man-of-the-world manner, such as Somerset Maugham’s. I have attempted Hemingway’s short, simple sentences, clear as a mountain stream. I have written in the style of a vacuous viscount out of Wodehouse. I have produced writing that is impossible to understand because it is oblique without really being very suggestive. I also have had the temerity to try to write like Monsieur Proust — in long, stately sentences, magnificently tortuous and full of qualifications — a style like a lush if overgrown garden full of unexpected delights.

I have even started a modern version of one of those gloomy Greek dramas with the Eumenides lurking outside ready to make their entrance.

The only intolerable style is one that draws attention to itself and distracts from the matter.

For some reason I keep thinking of detective stories, maybe because of that bloody tape, though I don’t really see myself actually starting to write one. I hate the idea of formulas, which are as predictable as they are banal. In my opinion, detective stories of the ‘traditional’ kind do little more than repetitively tread their own sorry cliches.

The setting: a cosy English village, a luxuriously exotic villa on a private island, or some decaying castle not unlike Remnant. A plot that depends on a certain person ordering scrambled eggs in the middle of the day, then slipping on discarded mandarin peel as a yellow Rolls roars by and certain other seemingly irrelevant accidents all aligning miraculously at the end.

A highly unsympathetic victim, someone like my late brother, so that no reader should be tempted to weep for him. Suspects stumbling across the chessboard strictly according to the ‘rules of the game’. And finally the denouement in the library, which of course is a symbol of mankind’s futile search for mysteries. Why the library? Why not the stables or the wine cellar, the butler’s pantry or, for that matter, the bell tower?

Slowly welling from the point of his gold nib, dark blue ink dissolved the question mark, for there his pen had stuck.

‘Bother,’ Gerard Fenwick said mildly.

He had always found chronicles of cunningly contrived homicide disappointing, even when he was a boy. He remembered turning the last page of The Hound of the Baskervilles , thinking, what a rotten ending! The diabolical hound had been revealed as something little more diabolical than the original Dulux Dog. He had felt cheated!

He also recalled a novel by one of the so-called ‘queens of crime’, he’d forgotten which one. It had been short but ponderous beyond belief. He couldn’t imagine anyone enjoying the experience of entering such a necropolis of ‘fine’ prose — unless one sought some kind of extase par la souffrance .

The over-complicated plot had moved at a crippling crawl. There had been too many descriptions of mental processes, the vagaries of the weather and suchlike. In the end he had been quite unmoved to discover it was the unlikely duo of the ne’er-do-well stepbrother and the gruesome girl in the wheelchair who had killed the ghastly detective-story writer and then cut off his hands at the wrists.

At Remnant Castle Clarissa was woken by the ringing of her mobile phone.

She turned on the bedside light and reached out for her mobile. Four thirty. Who the hell-? Suddenly she felt sick. Was this it? Was this the call she had been expecting?

No . It was Stephan. Why wasn’t he asleep?

‘Mummy?’

‘What’s the matter, darling?’

‘Where have you been, Mummy? I’ve been trying to call you for a long time. I’ve been trying and trying. Where have you been?’

‘I’ve been terribly busy. Can’t we talk later on, darling? It’s — it’s some unearthly hour-’

‘It’s a question of life and death, Mummy.’

‘You sound as though you haven’t taken your medicine, Stephan.’ Clarissa made an effort to appear calm. ‘Dr Mandrake told me he would make sure your sleep is the sleep of angels. Don’t they see to it that you take your pills and potions?’ She did her best to keep the exasperation out of her voice.

He said he needed a smoke. Badly . He was desperate for a smoke. Couldn’t she smuggle some Maria-Juana into Sans Souci? Please, Mummy .

‘It would be extremely difficult, darling.’

‘Put some in your handbag. No one will search you.’

‘Impossible, darling.’

‘Please, Mummy.’

‘No, darling. Out of the question.’

‘Please.’

‘Out of the question.’

‘You sound like Highgrove. I hate her and I hate you. I will kill myself, see if I don’t. Then you’ll be sorry,’ Stephan said.

‘I want you to go to bed, darling,’ she said. Why weren’t they monitoring him? Why wasn’t anyone with him? She was paying them a bloody fortune!

‘If you don’t bring me some Maria-Juana, I will tell the police what I know,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell them what I saw. I saw you talking to the coachman.’

‘What coachman, darling?’

‘The black coachman who brought the coffin. The coffin with the Grimaud!’

‘Now listen to me, Stephan, I want you to go to bed-’

‘I am in bed. I saw you . You kept looking at your watch. You were expecting the coffin. Which means you know about the Grimaud. You know what I think? I think you arranged for the Grimaud to come to La Sorciere, so that it could kill Daddy R. Everybody thinks I killed Daddy R., but I didn’t. I’ve been remembering things, you see.’

She listened.

He had been in the garden. He had hidden in the bushes and watched from there. He told her what he had seen. He had seen the resplendent white hearse with the plumed horses carrying the white coffin with a surface as smooth as a mirror. The coffin had been lifted down by the coachman. A black giant, who handled the coffin single-handedly, with extreme care-

‘I saw you speak to the coachman, Mummy. You looked nervous. You kept looking round. Everybody else was in the house. They were with Daddy R., watching those boring home movies. It was obvious you were expecting the coach. But you forgot about me! I was in the garden.’

‘You seem to have got muddled up, darling,’ she said. She couldn’t think of anything else to say. ‘I believe you dreamt it.’

But he was right. She had been expecting the coach. She would have preferred something unobtrusive, less conspicuous. The plumed horses and other theatrical flourishes had all been Roderick’s idea.

She had instructed the coachman to leave the coffin inside the laundry room. The man had taken off his white topper. My condolences, madam . Quite absurd. She had given him a large tip. Perhaps the largest tip he had ever received in his entire life. She wasn’t worried the coachman would ever question why the coffin had been brought to La Sorciere or wonder about the reason it was placed inside the laundry. Lord Remnant’s eccentricities had been legendary.

No one else had witnessed the arrival of the coach but Stephan …

She had omitted to make sure Stephan was safely inside. One always tended to forget Stephan. Stephan so often moved in a zombified haze that one generally ignored him.

‘You must have dreamt it, darling,’ she said firmly. ‘It was one of your nightmares.’

‘I was curious, so I crept up to the laundry room and looked in through that tiny round window. I was curious about the coffin, you see. I wanted to take a proper look at it. The coach had left and you’d gone upstairs. I saw the coffin open and the Grimaud came out of it,’ Stephan said.