R Raichev - Murder at the Villa Byzantine

‘Thanks. OK. It was something my mother said. At first I didn’t pay attention, my mother often talked a lot of rubbish, but then it suddenly came to me – what this was all about. It was kinda interesting – kinda weird – kinda spooky. So I decided perhaps my mother hadn’t gone crazy, not completely crazy. I asked her to explain. At first she pretended she didn’t want to, but then she told me the whole story. She was sucking up to me, I guess.’

‘What did she say?’ Payne asked.

‘I see you are interested. You’ve done detective work, haven’t you?’

‘We specialize in strange cases,’ Payne said, deliberately important.

‘That’s tope. This is a strange case, make no mistake.’

‘What’s tope?’

‘Tope? Tope’s tope. OK, cool.’ She looked at Payne fixedly. ‘Perhaps I could teach you American slang sometime?’

‘I assume it’s one of those portmanteau words one finds in Lewis Carroll. Like brillig and mimsy… What’s tope a blend of? Dope and something else?’

‘Yeah, dope’s cool. I mean it means cool. The other word you want is tight, I guess, which also means cool. That’s how you get tope. It sounds so dumb explaining what tope means… Can I have another biscuit? Thanks. I love words, actually. I mean, totally. When I haven’t got anything better to do, I read the dictionary. When I’m not busy killing people.’ She smiled. ‘Do you know what “polymorphously perverse” means?’

‘Why have you taken against Melisande and Winifred?’

‘Actually I think Winifred is OK. Nothing against her. It’s the other one that bugs me. Melisande. She keeps bothering James, you see. She keeps ringing him and stuff. He says she used to boss him around. He hates her now. Melisande is dangerous. If you only knew how dangerous.’

‘In what way dangerous?’

‘I guess she is crazy. I need to protect myself.’ Moon produced the piece of piping once more.

‘Give me that,’ Payne ordered.

‘If you really want it, you will have to take it from me by force. Only kidding. Here you are.’ She handed him the lead piping. She was smiling. ‘You can keep it, if you like.’

Antonia stirred uneasily. What were they doing, talking to a girl like this? In their house – in the small hours of the morning? It was unwise and foolish, to say the least. Moon might come up with all sorts of scurrilous allegations later on – if, for some reason, she happened to take against them. She might say she’d been abducted, held captive, enslaved, beaten, abused. The papers were full of such stories…

Moon took a sip of coffee, sniffed and said, ‘I was planning to get into Kinderhook tonight.’

‘That’s called breaking and entering. It happens to be a criminal offence,’ Payne pointed out.

‘That handkerchief the police found,’ Antonia said. ‘You sure it wasn’t yours?’

‘You mean the hankie near my mother’s body? Of course it wasn’t mine. I’ve never used a hankie in my life.’ She sounded completely truthful. ‘The police are so dumb.’ Moon sniffed again and her hand went up to her nose.

‘Would you like a handkerchief?’ Antonia offered.

‘You’re trying to catch me out now, aren’t you?’ The girl grinned. ‘I’ve never used a handkerchief in my whole life.’

‘Hardly something you should be proud of. Here’s a tissue… As a matter of fact, we do think something funny might be going on at Kinderhook. We believe there’s a mysterious third sister,’ Antonia said on an impulse. ‘An elderly lady who looks like Melisande and Winifred. We’ve both seen her. But Melisande insists there are only two of them – that she has only one sister.’

A sudden rush of blood coloured the girl’s cheeks. ‘An old woman who looks like Melisande? So – so you’ve seen her? That means my mother was right! Was the old woman wearing glasses – what do you call those funny old-fashioned glasses that have no handles?’

‘Pince-nez?’ Payne frowned. ‘The old woman did wear some kind of glasses. I wasn’t near enough to see what they were… What do you mean, your mother was right? Right about what?’ His heart had started beating fast. Something told him this was the breakthrough. ‘Would you care to explain?’

Death and the Maiden

She dreamt of Tancred that night.

Tancred was sitting on the ground beside a very turbulent river. He had been wounded. There was a nasty gash in his arm. Wild plants grew all around him and a sword that was stained red lay on the ground beside him, glistening unpleasantly in the sun.

She knelt beside him. ‘Please, let me,’ she said gently. ‘This is the only way.’ She then placed her hand over the wound in his arm. The moment she did, the blood flow was reduced to a mere trickle; a second later it stopped altogether. She didn’t want to take any chances, so she kept her hand on the wound and eventually the gash closed and healed completely. There was no scar. No mark of any kind.

Tancred whispered, ‘Thank you, Catherine. I knew only you could do it.’

‘I am not in the least perturbed, I assure you, Inspector. Mr Vane told me that he’d given you my mobile number, so I have been expecting you to call. But I fear I can tell you very little. Very little indeed. Dear me! Such a terrible thing to happen! It only manages to prove the power of chaos theory. Poor Mr Vane. And that unfortunate woman!’

‘We understand you met Mrs Stella Markoff at Mr Vane’s house?’

‘I believe I did. Yes. We exchanged a few polite words, there was no more to it than that. A pleasant woman, I thought. A little intense and nervous, but I attributed that to the fact that she didn’t speak English very well. Or rather, she seemed to think she didn’t speak English very well. Not the same thing! Astra’s English was in fact excellent.’

‘Miss Hope-’

‘Now, I have met plenty of foreigners who imagine they speak good English, who have quite an inflated opinion of their command of the English language, without that being the case at all.’

‘Miss Hope, if you don’t mind-’

‘No, not Astra! How silly of me!’ She laughed exuberantly. ‘I meant Stella. Stars, you know. She struck me as a most amiable kind of woman – if a trifle naive in her views on royalty. A bit too romantic and idealistic, perhaps? She seemed to hold the belief that royalty was needed to create an illusion of heaven on earth, of a jewel-encrusted land, of a Valhalla, no less!’

‘Miss Hope, do you have any idea how long Mr Vane had known Mrs Markoff?’

‘How long? Well, I only know what Tancred – that is Mr Vane – has told me. What was it – a month? I think he said a month, yes. What was that? Did he ever discuss Stella with me? No. Never! Mr Vane doesn’t manifest the slightest inclination towards gossip.’

‘Was Mrs Markoff’s daughter ever mentioned?’

‘Oh dear. She did have a little girl, didn’t she?’

‘Not so little.’

‘That’s so tragic. A mother dying in her prime – and such a fine, healthy-looking woman – leaving a young daughter behind – in a foreign country! No, the daughter was never mentioned.’

‘Stella never referred to any problems she might have been having with her daughter?’

‘Goodness me, no. We met only briefly, I told you. Like ships that pass in the night. We were destined to remain strangers, Inspector. Were there problems? I am sorry to hear that. Poor woman. Well, she seemed to have a gentleman friend in London, so all couldn’t have been doom and gloom. She was actually planning to “tie the knot”, as they say – in the very near future. In fact, I was given to understand that the marriage was imminent.’

‘That day – the day Mrs Markoff was killed – you were expected sometime in the afternoon, only you didn’t turn up? Is that correct?’