R Raichev - The hunt for Sonya Dufrette

‘Did he tell you what he had heard?’

‘He did. I don’t think he made it up. Lena’s exact words were, You’d better keep your mouth shut, my girl, or they will kill us both.’

‘Really?’ Payne sat very still. ‘Who’s “they”?’

Andrula shrugged. ‘I don’t know. He didn’t hear anything else. The extension went dead; there was something wrong with it. Anthos was convinced that it was something to do with spying, Lena being Russian and all that. I thought he was talking rubbish. I didn’t really let it worry me. I decided that Lena had probably gone mad with grief, that she didn’t know what she was talking about… But Chrissie did look terrible when I saw her later. I asked her what the matter was but she just shook her head.’

There was a pause. ‘How long after that did she win the pools?’ Payne asked.

‘That same week. After she got the money, Chrissie changed and for a while at least she seemed happy. She kept hugging me – kissing me – laughing and crying – tears of joy, she said. She apologized for behaving badly and then said she wanted to share her fortune with me -’ Andrula broke off. ‘It couldn’t have been Lena who gave her the money, could it? I don’t think the Dufrettes were really rich, Chrissie said they weren’t. So, if she didn’t win the pools, who gave her the money?’

‘Who indeed?’ Payne relit his pipe. “‘They”? Who’s “they”? The same “they” who had threatened to kill Lena and her? Interesting.’

‘What’s all this about? That poor child – merciful God, what did they do to the child? What was that other name you mentioned? You asked me if she had phoned? Lady Mortlock? You don’t think it was she who was behind it? Whatever that was?’

‘The idea did cross our minds. Well, it was Lady Mortlock who lied about you being very ill, in hospital,’ Payne said thoughtfully. ‘I wonder now… I very much wonder.’

The Monocled Countess

‘Miss Darcy, are you all right?’ Miss Garnett touched her arm.

‘Yes – I’m fine. Sorry.’

‘Would you like a slice of cake, or would you prefer a sandwich?’ Miss Garnett had already poured two cups of tea.

‘A sandwich – thank you very much.’

Antonia made an effort to concentrate as Miss Garnett talked about illustrious old families like the Actons, the Astors, the Mitfords, the Tennants and indeed the Jourdains – but her thoughts were elsewhere.

Lady Mortlock had never had a daughter. She had never had any children. She had never given birth. She had told a lie. Another lie. Three lies in total.

All the photographs in the room, each and every one of them, were of Lena Dufrette. Lena Sugarev-Drushinski, as she had been back in 1958. Lena and Lady Mortlock had been to see a play together, a play that had been outre if not scandalous. Lady Mortlock had gone out of her way to distance herself from Lena. She had pretended they were strangers -

There was a knock on the door and a youngish woman with a square face and the physique of a prize fighter appeared. Her arms, Antonia observed, were the size of small tree trunks. Two plasters had been stuck on her left arm where presumably Lady Mortlock had scratched her. She wore a smart uniform that looked a little bit too tight for her and trainers whose laces had been left undone. Norah, the nurse.

‘I am sorry to interrupt your repast, ladies, but there’s an important message from HQ,’ she said in tones of comic gravity.

‘Oh dear,’ Miss Garnett said. ‘Not another crisis, I hope?’

‘Nope. All’s quiet on the Western Front. Her Ladyship’s compliments and would Mrs Antonia Rushton care to go and see her now?’

‘Would Mrs Rushton…?’ Miss Garnett pushed her glasses up her nose. ‘Hermione actually said that?’

‘Yep. She wants to see her. Now.’

‘So Lady Mortlock knows I am here?’ Antonia put down her cup.

‘Oh yes. She knows all right. She recognized your voice and everything. She told me all about you, actually.’

Antonia blinked. ‘Really?’

‘She told me how you used to kill stoats.’ Norah laughed exuberantly. ‘Only kidding. In my kind of job, if one doesn’t crack jokes, one would go mad,’ she explained. ‘You agree, don’t you, Miss

‘That would be enough, Norah,’ Miss Garnett said and she turned to Antonia. ‘What do you think? You’d be quite safe, I am sure. Norah will be outside the door. On the other hand -’

‘Hurry up, Miss G. I suggest Mrs Rushton goes at once, otherwise Her Ladyship may change her mind. She may go back to where she was earlier on and that, I must tell you, wasn’t a good place.’

‘Don’t call her “Her Ladyship”, Norah.’

Antonia rose. ‘I’ll go. After all, that’s why I came.’

As they walked down the corridor, Norah popped a piece of chewing gum into her mouth and said, ‘These old bags are driving me mad. In some ways Miss G. is worse than Lady M. There it is. The lair of the beast.’ She opened a door. ‘I’ll be here.’ She pointed to a chair. ‘Give me a shout if she turns nasty. You’ve written your last will and testament of course? You’re insured? Only kidding.’

The bedroom was as large as the sitting room, its walls covered in wallpaper of Delft blue. The pattern was of snow-white cranes in vertiginous flight. There were no pictures on the walls, only a magnificent mirror encrusted with bees in ormolu. In the middle of the room stood a four-poster bed made of rosewood. Lady Mortlock sat bolt upright, propped up by satin pillows, clutching a pair of rimless reading glasses over what looked like a small black prayer book. Antonia was surprised – Lady Mortlock had always been scornful of religion. Well, people mellowed with age and last minute conversions were not unknown.

Lady Mortlock was still recognizable as the imperious woman whose family history Antonia had been writing twenty years earlier, but only just. Her frame in a cream-coloured nightdress was shrunken, her face emaciated, the parchment-like skin stretched across the skull, the lips wasted and grey. Her eyes were like bullet-holes, almost invisible in their orbits, rimmed with startlingly vivid red. The eyelashes were gone, though she still had her brows. Her hair was white and wispy and it was covered with an old-fashioned black net. Lady Mortlock’s Roman nose seemed more prominent now – the only prominent thing about her. The hands that clutched at the book were brown with liver spots and claw-like.

Antonia had expected the dazed-sheep look of the gaga old, but Lady Mortlock’s eyes were unnervingly alert. She looked a cross between a mummy that had been reanimated by some mad scientist and an ancient bird of prey.

‘No doubt you disapprove? You always disapproved of them, didn’t you? You never said anything but I could see you disapproved.’

‘Good afternoon, Lady Mortlock,’ Antonia said brightly, reminding herself that her work at the club had equipped her for dealing with the non sequiturs of old people. She felt sudden horror at the thought of shaking hands with Lady Mortlock. She imagined Lady Mortlock’s hand to feel like a loose set of bones tied inside a very dry suede bag. Mercifully, the old woman’s hands remained on her lap.

‘I mean my father’s books. This is one of them.’ Lady Mortlock tapped her glasses against the book on her lap. Her voice, surprisingly, was very much as Antonia remembered it – deep and autocratic, though there was a somewhat hollow ring to it now. ‘I saw you looking at it a minute ago. The Future of Eugenics. It was written in 1928. I don’t suppose many books are written on the subject nowadays, are they?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’