R Raichev - The hunt for Sonya Dufrette

‘Do you mean Lady Mortlock?’

‘Who else? I don’t know what’s got into her, I really don’t. She was perfectly calm only a few minutes ago.’ They were standing in the hall and she turned to Antonia. ‘I wonder if she heard me speaking to you on the phone, whether it had something to do with you? Sometimes Hermione gets agitated about the oddest things. I have given up trying to fathom out the way her mind works, what’s left of it. Do let me take you to the sitting room. You must pretend not to see the mess. This way. As I said, she was perfectly fine, calm and sensible. She was telling me about a dream she had had last night…’

The sitting room was light and spacious, but overheated and in a state of some disarray.

‘It was something about going down in a sinking ship. A ship that had been torpedoed – sometimes Hermione comes up with the most extraordinary details. She saw herself shut inside a small compartment behind a watertight door, slowly being overcome by a high-pressure gush through a shell-hole.’

‘How terrible,’ Antonia said.

‘I suppose it is. She dreams a lot. She can’t sleep at all well, but when she does, dreams a lot. Nightmares, mainly, poor soul. Sometimes she wakes up screaming… Look at the mess, just look at it. She does have tantrums, mind – fits of rage – but never before on such a scale. I can’t think what -’ Miss Garnett broke off again. ‘I’m not dripping blood, am I? No. Good. That’s Norah,’ she said as a voice was heard somewhere in the background. Although the words were blurred and indistinct, the voice sounded as though it were addressing a child.

Antonia smiled. ‘She sounds extremely competent.’

Miss Garnett’s lips tightened slightly. ‘Norah can be trying sometimes. She does take liberties, but, yes, I must say she is fully qualified to deal with difficult cases. She has worked both at an old people’s home and at a psychiatric hospital. Hermione attacked her the other day – scratched her arm badly – reminded me her nails needed trimming. We hardly get any visitors these days, and I am not really surprised. Hermione is so unpredictable. Most of her friends are dead anyhow. Do sit down.’ Miss Garnett motioned Antonia towards a high primrose-yellow leather-upholstered sofa. ‘Hermione’s in bed now. She isn’t normally, not at this hour, but that’s where we take her when she’s been a bad girl. Teach her a lesson. She needs to understand that’s not the way to behave.’

‘Plato and Nietzsche.’ Antonia picked up two books from the floor.

‘She aimed them at Norah’s head but missed,’ Miss Garnett explained. ‘No one would have thought she used to read Plato’s Dialogues, if they’d been able to see her earlier on! Nor Thus Spake Zarathustra… She read them in Greek and in German, respectively, you know. Oh, if you had seen her earlier on – clawing and hissing and kicking and scratching! A proper beldame straight out of Macbeth! Knocking things over – throwing them around. Anything she could lay her hands on…’

An embroidered stool had been overturned. The floor was littered with more books, bric-a-brac, some of it reduced to smithereens. A vase too had been smashed and the flowers that had been inside it, large crimson roses, strewed the carpet like splashes of blood.

‘No, don’t touch it. I’ll do it… It took the two of us to restrain her.’ Miss Garnett picked up the roses. ‘It’s most unfortunate that she should have got like this just when you were expected. I’ll go and make the tea now. I could do with a break. I have made some smoked salmon sandwiches; there are meringues and a date-and-walnut cake. Would that be all right?’

‘Sounds wonderful. Thank you.’

‘I won’t be a jiffy.’ Miss Garnett went out.

Antonia gazed round the room. From the urn and scrolls she deduced the fireplace to be Adam. There was a small but very beautiful writing desk of the Davenport kind. There were two armchairs, primrose yellow, like the sofa. Three striking period chairs, Hepplewhite, which she felt sure she had seen at Twiston, were ranged against the wall. Some good pictures, one possibly a Sargent. There was a pencil drawing of a triumphant-looking phoenix rising from the flames, with a motto underneath. Antonia expected it to be something on the lines of ‘Sorrows Pass and Hope Abides’ but, disconcertingly, it turned out to be ’Survival of the Fittest‘.

It was only then that she noticed the photographs, which was surprising given that almost every surface in the room was filled with them. The mantelpiece, the bookcase, the two small tables, the window sills… Two photographs lay on the floor amidst shards of glass. They were all black and white.

Leaning over, Antonia picked up one of the photographs gingerly and looked at it.

A girl… She thought the face was familiar somehow… Perhaps she was mistaken… No, it couldn’t be…

Her heart started beating fast. Rising to her feet, she started examining the rest of the framed photographs. Each and every one of them showed the same beautiful girl with short dark hair and a carefree smile, who looked no more than twenty. The photographs had been taken against the backdrop of Venice’s gondolas, canals and churches. The girl’s rather chic clothes suggested the late 1950s…

Antonia examined the girl’s face closely. No, she thought – it can’t be.

‘Oh, that’s so sad.’ Miss Garnett’s voice was heard from the doorway. ‘That’s Hermione’s daughter. Venice 1958. The last holiday they had together.’

‘But -’ Antonia bit her lip. Turning round, she watched Miss Garnett place a laden tea tray on the low table in front of the sofa.

‘Hermione’s daughter died tragically young. Hermione adored her. She never got over it. Oh, but I am sure you know all that.’ Miss Garnett picked up the teapot. ‘Shall I be mother?’

Andrula Haywood’s eyes were full of tears. She wiped them with the back of her hand. ‘Yes, I am Chrissie’s mother. You thought I was Chrissie?’

‘Chrissie?’ Major Payne echoed.

‘She was christened Chrisothemis, but she never liked her name. It’s a beautiful name but she was embarrassed by it. She was very self-conscious about being Greek. She wanted to be English, like her father. I don’t know why since he wasn’t much good. He left us when Chrissie was four. I don’t know where he is. Sorry – I don’t know why I am telling you this.’

‘Butterflies… Of course… Sorry, Mrs Haywood.’ Chrysalis. That was what Antonia must have been thinking about. ‘Do go on.’

Her hand went up to her forehead and she looked at him as though she doubted he was quite real. ‘Who are you? Is your name really Pain?’

‘It is. WithaYand an E at the end… Major Payne.’

‘You are a soldier?’

‘Well, yes. In a manner of speaking. I mean I’ve never done any proper soldiering – plenty of administrative jobs – intelligence service and so on. My son is a soldier. He is in the Guards.’

‘Keith, my husband, was a soldier. He was stationed in Cyprus. In 1960. That’s where we met. I was very young. I was a hospital nurse. I fell in love with him. I was very much in love with him, but it was a mistake to marry him.’

‘Where is your daughter?’ Payne asked after a pause.

She bowed her head. ‘I don’t know. The last time I heard from Chrissie, she was in Australia. That was four months ago. She was in New Zealand before that. She is restless. She is not happy. She keeps moving. She can’t settle down. She has money – she’s made some wise investments, I think – but she is not happy. She hasn’t married. She doesn’t keep in touch.’ Andrula Haywood sighed. ‘Twiston… Was that what the house was called? Were you there when it happened? I mean when – when that poor child drowned?’