R Raichev - The hunt for Sonya Dufrette

Suddenly, something she had just said jarred. The mid-fifties? He must have misheard…

‘No. It used to be my old house. My neighbours happened to be moving out, so I bought their house as well. What’s your interest in the church? You aren’t thinking of making me an offer, are you?’ She smiled.

It was then that Payne had his happy inspiration. He cleared his throat. ‘You had the church built twenty years ago, didn’t you?’

She looked at him with a little frown. ‘That’s correct.’

He leant slightly forward. ‘You had a windfall. A big sum of money, but you weren’t happy because of the way the money had been acquired.’ His eyes never for a moment left her face. ‘So, to appease your conscience, you built a church. It was a form of – atonement.’

There was a pause. Her face had gone pale, the lines running down from her nostrils to the ends of her mouth deepened, but she remained composed. ‘As a matter of fact you are right, in every detail. How do you know all this? Have you come here to tell me my fortune? This is remarkable, but you must know that I do not approve of fortune-telling.’ Her dark eyes fixed on his regimental tie and she smiled once more, a faint smile. ‘You don’t look like a fortune-teller. Who are you?’

‘You don’t know me. My name is Payne.’

She drew in her breath. ‘Pain? Well, if you must know, that’s what I’ve been feeling all these years – here.’ She touched her heart. Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Pain. That’s what I’ve had to live with. Sorry…’ She shook her head and wiped her eyes.

‘I’d like to know what exactly happened on 29th July 1981.’ Major Payne delivered this boldly, in measured tones, watching for her reaction. He felt sorry for her but he didn’t want to lose the momentum. ‘Who was it that paid you to pretend your mother was ill and leave Twiston in the morning? Who telephoned you?’

‘Twiston?’ She frowned, a look of utter incomprehension on her face. ‘What is Twiston?’

(Was she pretending? She must be.)

‘What did they do with little Sonya Dufrette?’

‘Sonya -?’ She broke off and he saw her expression start changing. It was very peculiar. Her mouth opened slightly. Her eyes stared back at him. She looked startled – shocked. She looked as though she had had some sort of revelation, one that had confirmed her worst fears, that was how Payne was to describe it later to Antonia. He couldn’t understand.

She whispered, ‘Is – is that what happened? Someone phoned her in the morning and – and said I was ill? Is that what happened?’

What was the woman playing at? ‘Miss Haywood, it was you somebody phoned -’

This time she corrected him. ‘Mrs Haywood.’

It was only then that realization dawned on him. Smyrna in the mid-fifties – the accent – her age. (She looked in her early sixties because, well, because she was in her early sixties.) It all made perfect sense now. He had been an ass.

‘Good Lord,’ Major Payne said. ‘What an absurd misunderstanding. You are her mother.’

Mothers and Daughters

Reaching the end of Elizabeth Street, the main shopping quarter of Belgravia, Antonia stopped and took stock of her surroundings. The blocks of mansion flats off Eaton Square were solid in nature, giving evidence of having been built to last, though their Georgian facades were extremely pleasing to the eye too. Wasn’t it somewhere here that Lord Lucan had had a flat? Antonia found Coburg Court Mansions soon enough and she entered a rather magnificent hall with a mosaic floor, potted palms, geometrical lights and sun-ray pattern mirrors on the walls. A man who looked like a Field Marshal, but who was actually a commissionaire, greeted her portentously. ‘Lady Mortlock? Third floor, flat number five. Does Miss Garnett know you are paying them a visit? She does?’ He opened the lift door for her with a dignified gesture.

Antonia navigated a maze of carpeted corridors, went up a flight of stairs, before she eventually stood uncertainly outside Lady Mortlock’s flat.

Her heart thumped in her chest. She didn’t know quite what to expect. When she rang to arrange the visit, the telephone had been answered by an energetic voice, a Miss Garnett, the companion, as it became clear. Emboldened by her amiable tone, Antonia explained that she had been a good friend of the Mortlocks once, adding for good measure that she had been writing Lady Mortlock’s family history.

‘But of course,’ Miss Garnett breathed. ‘The Jourdains of Twiston. I have read it, all one hundred and five pages. Wonderful stuff. Pity you never managed to complete it. I’d be delighted to meet you. I love chronicles of old dynastic families. I’ve just finished reading Knole and the Sackvilles.’

Antonia murmured humbly, something to the effect that her book could hardly be compared to Vita Sackville-West‘s, but Miss Garnett would have none of it. Antonia, she said, wrote superbly. The Sackville-Wests, she went on in vehement tones, didn’t really deserve a book – they were mediocre spendthrifts and selfish incompetents while the Jourdains were a highly talented clan who had given the world inventors, thinkers, polymaths, intellectuals and educationalists. Pausing, Miss Garnett continued on a more mundane note, ’Hermione seems to be in tolerably good spirits today, and she’s been quite alert. She may even recognize you, though there’s no guarantee. She’s taking a bath at the moment, but if you could come at four, or four thirty, I’d be happy to give you tea. One more thing – isn’t your name Rushton?‘

‘It was. That’s my husband’s name,’ explained Antonia. ‘I am divorced now.’

‘That accounts for it,’ said Miss Garnett cheerfully.

Replaying the conversation in her head, Antonia decided she rather liked the sound of Miss Garnett and that she had nothing to fear. The front door was made of solid mahogany and it bore the old-fashioned notice Please Knock and Ring. Antonia did both and as she rang the bell, a light came on over the door. Nothing happened though. Several moments passed and she rang again. What was keeping Miss Garnett from opening the door? Antonia suddenly panicked. Why had she come? What was she hoping to find out? Lady Mortlock was a very old woman, bedridden and incapacitated, whose once first-class brain had all but gone. Did she really believe she could expose Lady Mortlock as a liar, as the mastermind behind the abduction and killing of a child?

Antonia took a step backwards and was on the point of turning round and leaving when she heard a flurry of footsteps followed by a rattling of a door-chain and locks. The door opened.

‘Miss Darcy? So sorry to keep you waiting^! I am Bea Garnett. How do you do?’ Lady Mortlock’s companion sounded a bit out of breath, but she held out her hand and shook Antonia’s vigorously.

‘How do you do,’ Antonia said.

Early sixties, stoutish, a round, remarkably smooth face, apple cheeks, at the moment extremely flushed, horn-rimmed glasses halfway down her nose, grey hair done up in a neat bun, pearl earrings and two strings of pearls around her neck. She wore a crepe de Chine dress of floral pattern.

‘Do come in. We’ve had a bit of a – I suppose you’d call it a rumpus.’ Miss Garnett was looking down at her left hand. She had a handkerchief wrapped around it.

‘Is everything all right?’ Antonia saw that the handkerchief was stained deep red.

‘I’ve cut myself. It’s nothing. Just a scratch. Some damned piece of glass. So treacherous. We’ve had a bit of an upset, that’s all. Norah’s got it all well under control now. I wouldn’t have been able to cope on my own. Too old. I suppose I am a bit shaken up… Don’t you believe it if somebody told you octogenarian ladies are frail and gentle. This one’s a devil.’ Miss Garnett gave a mirthless laugh and pushed the glasses up her nose.