R Raichev - Murder at the Villa Byzantine

She led them into the shadowed half-light of the drawing room.

Three low-voltage table lamps. A thin wood fire crackling in the grate. Leaping shadows over the chintz furniture. The air was filled with wood smoke that was subtly tinged with an essence of tuberose and regale lilies.

A silver tray with a single coffee cup stood on the low coffee table beside a silver pot and a cream jug. Winifred asked them to sit down. ‘Coffee, yes? I could do with another cup. Won’t be a jiffy.’ She picked up the pot and walked jauntily out of the room.

‘I can’t think how she could possibly have anything to do with the murder,’ Antonia whispered.

‘She is driven by unconscious forces,’ Payne said calmly. ‘She doesn’t know who she is.’

When Winifred reappeared with the fresh pot of coffee and two more cups, he remarked in conversational tones, ‘How do you find the Villa Byzantine? Not too – florid?’

Antonia froze, her eyes fixing on the steaming pot in Winifred’s hand. Shock tactics. Hugh had decided on shock tactics. Would Winifred drop the pot and let it explode like a bomb on the floor? Or might she try to blind Hugh by splashing scalding coffee into his face?

Winifred did neither. She placed the pot carefully on the tray, then pushed the latter towards the centre of the table. Her hands were thin, with long sensitive fingers, and she wore a delicate diamond ring on her fourth finger. How could these hands-?

‘It’s an extraordinary place, isn’t it? Tancred inherited it from an elderly cousin of his who went to live in Morocco and died there.’ A little line appeared on her smooth forehead. ‘I suppose it is florid. Yes. You are quite right. The mot juste. Something of a white elephant too. I have been trying to persuade Tancred to sell it and buy a house somewhere around here. When we are married. I saw just the right place the other day – a Queen Anne house – not far from Keats House. Do you like Keats? A hundred swords will storm my heart, Love’s fev’rous citadel. This always makes me shiver. Some think Keats morbid. I can see why.’

‘A hundred swords,’ Antonia echoed.

‘Sugar? Cream, Hugh? If I remember correctly you have an unquenchable passion for cream,’ Winifred said with unexpected archness. She laughed her tinkling girlish laugh once more.

Bonkers, Payne thought. ‘You must be thinking of somebody else,’ he said pleasantly. ‘I drink coffee black. No sugar.’

Antonia looked at the book on the coffee table. It was not the Anita Brookner Winifred had told them she had been reading, but The Rise and Fall of the British Nanny by Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy. Was that where she had been getting her ideas for Miss Hope?

‘Black and unsweetened. That’s how real men drink their coffee, apparently. Brutes like it bitter. Sweet is for sissies. That’s what my poor sister says,’ Winifred prattled. ‘Melisande claims she knows everything about men, but, entre nous, she often talks nonsense.’

‘Thank you,’ Payne said, taking his cup from her hand. He took a tentative sip.

‘Antonia? Cream? No? No sugar? How about a drop of cognac, Hugh? No?’

Antonia wondered whether Winifred had put something in the coffee. Poison – or an overdose of some strong soporific substance. Though what would Winifred do with their bodies? Well, she could phone the police and say they had both collapsed shortly after they had arrived, so the poison would be something that simulated botulism symptoms. Winifred would have to go to their house first and prepare fish-paste sandwiches or whatever. How would she find contaminated fish-paste though? Not terribly practical. But then so was cutting somebody’s head off with a sword.

Antonia watched her closely for a flicker of sly malevolence or some other giveaway sign, but Winifred’s expression remained serene. Eerily serene. That’s what breaking bread with the Borgias must have felt like. I mustn’t imagine things, Antonia told herself firmly. But it was difficult – the situation was far from normal.

She tried to catch her husband’s eye. He gave a slight nod as though to say, the coffee’s OK. How could he be sure? Certain drugs had no taste at all.

‘Tancred adores cream, so do I. We are very naughty about it. But we must be careful. Not healthy, really. My sister wouldn’t approve. Melisande believes in “choreographing” one’s digestion.’ Winifred giggled. ‘The coffee is not too strong, I hope?’

‘No. It is fine. First-rate coffee.’ Payne cleared his throat. ‘I understand Vane is writing a biography of Prince Cyril of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha? Am I right in thinking the Coburgs used to provide studs for most of the royal houses of Europe? I find royal lives fascinating. The parallel existence, the exclusivity, the utter strangeness of it all – a life without the bother of British Gas, Thames Water, the Halifax or, for that matter, the Taxman!’

Winifred smiled appreciatively. ‘There was a time when people believed that royal families were needed to create an illusion of heaven on earth, of a jewel-encrusted land, of a Valhalla. A monarch was hailed as a representative of the majesty of history – a link in a chain that leads back to the Middle Ages that in turn connects to antiquity and beyond – to the beginning of recorded time when – when-’

‘When the first hero slew the dragon of disorder and established the rule of law?’ Payne suggested.

‘I couldn’t have put it better.’ Winifred shot her visitor an admiring glance.

‘There’s of course the distinctly unheroic view. Remember Huckleberry Finn? All kings is mostly rapscallions.’

As Winifred laughed exuberantly, Antonia suddenly realized what their hostess had said several moments earlier. ‘Did you say you were going to be married?’

‘Oh yes. We are. Sometime next spring. I would hate to be married in winter. Isn’t it funny that I should always have thought of myself as “not yet married”? I knew it would happen sooner or later. I didn’t mind waiting for Mr Right. You know what they say? Marry in haste, repent at leisure. Next April would be perfect.’

‘A week after Easter, perhaps?’

‘Yes!’ Winifred brought the palms of her hands together. ‘Tancred and I haven’t yet had a serious discussion about it, but we are going to, sometime this week. Tancred is so terribly busy at the moment, poor darling.’

Payne said, ‘I understand Prince Cyril is taking up all his time and energy.’

‘Don’t I know it! Talk of the limitations of human effort! I’ve been trying to impress it on him, but he wouldn’t listen.’ Winifred shook her head in an exasperated manner. ‘Things keep going wrong with that biography. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. It seems to be jinxed. Poor Tancred hasn’t collected as much information as he would have wished – and some of what he’s already got is not entirely reliable.’

‘In what way “not entirely reliable”?’

Winifred took another sip of coffee, cast a glance round the room as though to make sure no one was lurking in the shadows. ‘One of Tancred’s so-called “sources” may not be who she says she is. I have the strongest suspicions. I have had them for some time. A Miss Hope. Rather, a woman who calls herself Miss Hope. You mustn’t breathe a word!’

‘We wouldn’t dream of it,’ Payne promised.

‘Poor Tancred hasn’t got an inkling. He is too decent, too trusting, the most ethical person I have ever known – though I wish he didn’t assume everybody was like him! Tancred doesn’t seem to have a safety valve. I fear it will come as a terrible blow to him when all is revealed. As it happens, I am investigating the matter at the moment.’

‘You are?’

‘Yes. It is quite serious. Deception on a grand scale. Impersonation. Misrepresentation. Misinformation. You seem surprised! It’s as bad as that, yes.’ She gave a mirthless laugh. ‘I am determined to get to the very bottom of it. In fact, I have come to regard it as my duty.’