R Raichev - The Death of Corinne

‘Stop calling her the Merchant,’ Antonia said. She was annoyed by his flippancy. They didn’t have to stand around with bowed heads and whisper and put on a show of respect they did not feel, but it was poor taste, making someone who had died a horribly violent death appear ridiculous.

‘I stand corrected… We can assume that Mrs Eleanor Merchant went to the body and flashed her torch on it. I don’t suppose Maginot’s face meant much to her, but one thing Mrs Eleanor Merchant must have become aware of at once – namely, that she’d never be able to get Corinne now, not after what she’d done. She must have realized she’d lost the game. So – she turns the gun on herself and pulls the trigger. She probably meant to kill herself all along, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Well, she bought only a one-way ticket… Her son had killed himself… A suicidal streak might have been in her blood,’ Antonia said thoughtfully. She found she was standing by the bamboo table. There was a book on it: Who’s Who in EastEnders, also a magazine: Vogue.

‘What did you do last night?’ Payne asked Jonson. ‘I mean, after you checked the bedrooms?’

Jonson said that he had gone to bed. He had fallen asleep almost at once. He had been dog-tired. Jonson spoke haltingly. ‘It was about midnight. Maitre Maginot said she’d call me on her mobile if she noticed anything suspicious, only she didn’t, so – so I assumed everything was fine and that she’d come back to the house and gone to bed herself. I heard no noise. Nothing. No shots.’

‘No one would have heard any shots. The gun’s got a silencer,’ Payne said.

‘I never thought Eleanor Merchant could be anywhere near the house.’ Jonson shook his head. ‘I didn’t think she could be in England

… I didn’t think it possible…’

There was a pause. ‘That phone call last night,’ Payne said. ‘The American woman who rang while we were having coffee. She introduced herself as a – chat-show hostess? She wanted to talk to Corinne. What did Provost say her name was?’

‘Thora – no, Tricia – Tricia Swindon,’ Jonson said. ‘Some such name.’

‘And she rang off as soon as she heard Maginot’s voice? That must have been Eleanor Merchant.’

A muffled noise was heard from the doorway. Nicholas was standing there furtively, looking in, his hand cupped over his nose.

‘I told you to go away,’ Jonson called out to him. The boy disappeared, this time for good. They saw him through the window, walking across the lawn towards the house. Jonson said, ‘It must have been Eleanor Merchant who phoned, yes. On her mobile. Heaven knows what she’d been hoping to achieve.’

‘She probably didn’t know herself,’ Payne said astutely.

Antonia was looking down at the cover of the magazine, at the picture of the super-thin model and the Siamese cat. For some reason she found herself thinking of the photo she had found in Jonson’s case once more… Corinne Coreille had been snapped sitting at her dressing table – she had taken time off from applying her make-up to stroke a kitten… A kitten, yes. A live kitten. The kitten seemed to have jumped on the table… There was no kipper on the table – Jonson had made that up. He had been about to say ‘kitten’ but had changed his mind… Nicholas on the other hand kept sneezing because he was allergic to plants… Now, why did she think there was a connection between the two? An association of ideas…

Antonia frowned. Something was stirring at the back of her mind. A memory was about to surface – it was something both Lady Grylls and Peverel had mentioned… Hope I am not getting unhinged, she thought, casting a glance at Eleanor Merchant’s body and immediately looking away.

‘That kitten in the photograph,’ she said aloud. ‘Where did it come from?’

Jonson stared at her. He looked like a man who was waking up from a dream. ‘It was a stray – one of the gardeners had found it and brought it into the house. Mademoiselle Coreille apparently took a fancy to it.’ He spoke mechanically. ‘I understand Maitre Maginot and Mademoiselle Coreille had an argument about it. Maitre Maginot objected strongly -’ He broke off. ‘How do you know there’s a kitten in the photograph?’

‘You told us,’ Antonia said.

‘I didn’t -’ Suddenly Jonson looked terrified.

‘Oh, but you did.’ I can bluff too, Antonia thought, though she felt rather sorry for him. ‘Kipper’, he had said to avoid saying ‘kitten’. A silly lie – he’d been unable to think of another word. He was a poor liar.

‘We must be getting back to the house,’ Payne said, looking at his watch. ‘I expect the police will be here any moment now and they will be cross if they find the three of us cooped up with the bodies.’

‘Yes,’ Jonson said. ‘Yes.’ Without another word, he turned round and left the greenhouse.

‘I touched Eleanor’s passport,’ Antonia said.

‘You shouldn’t have,’ Payne said.

‘I held it very lightly – by the corners.’

‘It doesn’t matter. You’ve as good as signed it with your full name. There’s no escape from the old DNA. If the police decided the Merchant didn’t do it after all, you’d be their next prime suspect, d’you realize?’

Antonia cast one last glance at the bodies. The good ended happily and the bad ended unhappily, she thought absurdly.

‘What was Corinne’s reaction to the news?’ Antonia asked a few moments later as they were walking across the lawn towards the house.

‘I don’t know if she’s been told anything yet. Somehow, I don’t expect her to have hysterics – do you?’

‘No…’

‘You’d never believe this, but it’s like in that damned French song Antonia was talking about yesterday morning. The one she heard in a dream,’ Lady Grylls said as soon as she saw them. ‘What was it called? “Vous Qui Passez Sans Me Voir”.’

‘What do you mean, darling?’ Payne frowned.

‘Corinne’s disappeared – and no one’s seen her go. She is nowhere to be found. Her bags have gone too.’

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 a 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?’