Murder At The Villa Byzantine Part 13

Antonia stood gazing idly at a framed photograph that was on the little round table beside the telephone.

'Oh, that's my brother! James Morland is my brother. Sorry. His phone number is the same as mine but for the last digit. Zero instead of nine. Yes. My number ends in nine, his in zero.' She rolled her eyes at Antonia. 'My brother lives next door. He is out at the moment. I will tell him to get in touch with you the moment he comes back.' She put down the receiver. 'So sorry. This happens all the time. I get phone calls from people who want to speak to James. Same number but for the last digit. Well, he's moving out next month, so I hope there won't be many more calls.'

'Moving out?'

'Yes. He's bought a place in Chelsea. A small Regency house. He's intent on playing father to Moon.' Julia Henderson sighed. 'He told me he wanted to devote himself to Moon's upbringing and education. He talks about hiring private tutors and so on. Apparently she is terribly clever. Did you find her clever?'

'As clever as a bag of ferrets. That's how my husband put it ... That's you in the photograph, isn't it?' Antonia pointed. 'I am always fascinated by people who take golf seriously. Especially women.'

'Oh dear. My Surrey past is catching up with me. Don't I look ridiculous in that little cap? Actually I don't take golf at all seriously. I don't know why I keep that silly photo there. I've been meaning to put it away.'

The photograph showed a somewhat younger Julia Henderson wearing a golfing outfit, holding a golf club aloft and beaming triumphantly at the camera.

Underneath her name in careful script was written: Ladies County Golf Champion 1999.

Up at the Villa.

Major Payne was immediately struck by how isolated the Villa Byzantine was, how secluded the lane along which he was walking. Its high banks, crowned by ma.s.sive overhanging trees and ferns, made it a dark tunnel by night and, he had no doubt, a sylvan unfrequented corridor by day.

He swung his rolled-up umbrella as he strode purposefully in the direction of the house. Around him autumn leaves were being whipped up, swirled and scattered by the wind- Skirling and whirling, the leaves are alive!

Driven by Death in a devilish dance!

He wished he weren't so well crammed with English literature! He had parked his car outside the tunnel. When the strange house loomed before him he whistled. He'd never seen anything like it before.

He stopped and stared.

He was put in mind of a fantastic growth he might have been standing in front of some giant poison mushroom!

Horizontal orange-red and yellow stripes heavy use of stucco arched windows a domed roof. He was put in mind of Edward James and his surreal piles Monkton House and Las Pozas. It was that kind of house. Surreal. Bizarre. The Villa Byzantine.

He thought of Sir Christopher Wren's epitaph Si monumentum requiris, circ.u.mspice. If you wish to recall me, look around you. Did the Villa Byzantine reveal anything about Tancred Vane?

A well-to-do bachelor of irreproachable if somewhat florid taste, leading a life of blameless bookishness. A collector of rare objects. The kind of chap who notices at once if his silver has become tarnished or his precious leather-bound volumes and rosewood tables too exposed to the glare of daylight.

Or would he turn out to be something more sinister? A connoisseur of the recherche, an aficionado of the fantastic? Like one of those bachelors in L. P. Hartley's short stories ...

As he walked towards the front door, Payne happened to glance up at one of the first-floor windows. He saw a white hand pull down a parchment-coloured blind with what he imagined to be a frantic gesture. A ring flashed in the sun- Payne rang the front door bell. A couple of moments later he rang again. The utter silence that met his ear had the quality of an animal's freezing in its burrow. He was aware of great tension or was the tension inside him? Eventually he heard cautious footsteps coming down the stairs, which creaked a little.

The door opened tentatively and a face appeared. A youngish man's face well-bred, if indeterminate, features receding chin flushed indecisive. What was that the chap was wearing? Not a bow-tie? Major Payne had an aversion to bow-ties. Instinctively distrusted bow-tie wearers.

'Mr Vane?'

'Yes?'

'My name is Payne.' Silly that their names should rhyme.

'Yes?'

'We haven't met, but I was wondering whether I could have a word with you?'

'What about?' Tancred Vane spoke in an abrupt manner, which, Major Payne felt at once, did not come naturally to him.

Tancred Vane's eyes travelled over the intruder's immaculately knotted regimental tie, his double-breasted blazer with its silver b.u.t.tons, his sharply creased trousers, and came to rest on his perfectly polished brogues- Payne saw his expression change soften. It was almost as though the royal biographer had expected somebody else somebody who looked as though they needed to be scared off- Major Payne said, 'We have what is sometimes called an "acquaintance in common". A foreign lady. Had. She is, alas, no longer with us.'

'What foreign lady?'

'A Bulgarian lady.'

'You don't mean you knew-?'

'The tragic Stella Markoff. Yes.'

The door opened a crack wider and now Payne could see the royal biographer's left as well as his right hand. He wasn't wearing any rings. The hand which had pulled down the blind hadn't been his.

Vane was not alone. Could she be with him?

Vane's face had turned a deeper shade of pink. The next moment he shot a glance over his shoulder.

'What what's this about?'

Vane's sotto voce clearly indicated he didn't want the person inside the house to hear what he was saying.

'I'd better put my cards on the table, Mr Vane. I believe it will make things simpler.' Payne lowered his voice. 'I am a private investigator.'

'You are a detective?' The biographer drew back a little.

'Yes. I would be grateful if you treated this as the most confidential of communications. A day or two before she was killed, Stella Markoff sought my professional advice,' Payne improvised. 'Mrs Markoff was extremely worried about a certain matter.'

'What matter?'

'It seems she met someone at your house-'

A sound came from inside the Villa Byzantine a floorboard had creaked.

'-an elderly lady who introduced herself as Miss Hope.'

'Miss Hope?'

'Yes. Is Miss Hope a friend of yours?'

'Why do you want to know?'

'Is she here, by any chance? She is here, isn't she?'

After a moment's reflection, Vane nodded, then put his forefinger across his lips, indicating that on no account should Payne go on. The royal biographer's face was now the colour of beetroot.

'I see.' Payne's upper lip was so stiff, it might have been injected with Novocaine.

He found himself reconstructing the scene that had taken place moments before he had rung the front door bell.

She had been looking out of the window. She had seen his approach. She had recognized him. She had panicked. She had pulled down the blind. She feared he would recognize her. She had begged Vane not to let him inside the house. She might have said Payne was dangerous that he was a criminal or a lunatic. That would account for Vane's initial hostility.

Major Payne decided to take the bull by the horns.

'I don't suppose you are familiar with the actress Melisande Chevret?'

Phantom Lady.

'I scribbled my phone number on a piece of paper and slipped it to him,' he told his aunt some forty-five minutes later as she was b.u.t.tering a second crumpet for him.

'Most enterprising of you. You think he'll ring you?'

'I believe so, yes.' Payne glanced at his watch. 'As soon as he gets rid of her. The moment I said "Melisande Chevret", his eyes rounded became as big as saucers. The name seemed to strike a chord at once. He gave several nods when I put an imaginary phone to my ear and mimed dialling a number.'

'How perfectly extraordinary. What d'you think has been going on, Hughie?'

Payne looked up at the ceiling. 'Weird things. Crazy things. Things no normal person would do. That is how Stella's daughter put it.'

'Surely, Hughie, you can't take anything that gel says seriously? From what you've told me, she's not to be trusted one little bit.'

'In this particular instance,' Payne said thoughtfully, 'I am prepared to give Moon a chance.'

'You don't think the gel chopped her mother's head off?'

'She might have done, but, as it happens, I don't think she did.'

'You suspect Miss Hope?'

'I suspect Miss Hope, though of course no such person as "Miss Hope" exists. I believe that Miss Hope is in fact the actress Melisande Chevret.'

'Heaven knows I am no expert, but I bet you'll find in the end that the gel did do it after all.'

'Well, you may be right, darling. It may be her, as you say. I am doing my best to keep an open mind. As a matter of fact, I haven't counted anybody out yet. Not even Tancred Vane. Or James Morland.'

'The garden of live flowers. I find I have started saying the first thing that pops into my head. Is that a sign of dotage?' Lady Grylls poured herself more tea. 'Are you comfortable in that chair? You don't think this room is too narrow?'

'No, not at all. It's comfortable. It's cosy.'

'I must admit I feel a little cramped up here, Hughie. I know I wanted a house in St John's Wood more than anything in the world, but now that I've got it, I find myself regretting my decision. Last night I dreamt I went to Chalfont again.'

'You aren't serious. After everything you said!'

'I find this place too small and stuffy, Hughie.'

'You used to find Chalfont too big and draughty.'

'Do you think it's perverse of me?'

'As a matter of fact I do, darling. Terribly perverse.'

'You don't think I could change my mind and buy Chalfont back?'

'No. Too late. The Russians won't have it. They'll laugh at you or shoot you. Given how hard you bargained and how you bullied them and how you drove them mad and everything. You got exactly the price you wanted.'

'They can have their filthy money back, down to the last rouble.'

'That would be a ridiculously large amount of roubles. Actually, they paid you in pounds. What garden of live flowers? Is that Genet? No, I'm thinking of Our Lady of the Flowers.'

'It's in Alice, actually. To find the Red Queen, Alice had to go in the most unlikely direction. It all happens in the garden of live flowers,' Lady Grylls explained, 'and that's how detectives in detective stories try to find the killer, I believe? I expect Antonia's making pots of money out of her books?'

'No, not pots.'

'What's Our Lady of the Flowers about?'

'Male prison romances. Not for your tender eyes.'

'Must make a note to ask Provost to get it out of the library for me. Now then, back to l'affaire Stella. Let me see whether I've got this right.' Lady Grylls pushed her gla.s.ses up her nose. 'The dead woman's daughter told you that her mother was convinced that the old nanny she met at the Villa Byzantine was no other than Melisande Chevret in disguise?'

'That is correct.' Payne bit into a crumpet.

'Stella believed that Melisande took James Morland's desertion jolly badly, that she tipped over the edge. Stella feared she might be in danger. Stella imagined that Melisande might steal one of Tancred Vane's treasured possessions or even kill Tancred Vane and make it look as though Stella had done it?'

'Yes. Or that she herself might be killed.'

Lady Grylls observed that the late Stella appeared to have been rather a paranoid sort of person.

'Maybe not so paranoid, darling. Stella did die a spectacular and rather gruesome death after all, don't forget.'

Idly Payne picked up a pen and started drawing something on one of the napkins. That handkerchief, he thought. How did the handkerchief fit into the new set-up? Did it fit in at all?

'How did Melisande manage to lure Stella to the Villa Byzantine?' Lady Grylls asked. 'Have you any ideas?'

'Um. She asks someone to phone Stella and pretend to be Vane. Some trusted friend from the acting fraternity an old flame or her ghastly agent Arthur ... Stella is asked to go to the Villa Byzantine. Melisande as Miss Hope has already ascertained that Vane would be out that morning. Melisande has already stolen one of his front door keys. She gets into the house, unhooks the sword and then waits for Stella?'

'Are you going to involve the police? Or are you and Antonia playing a lone hand?'

'The good old days of the solitary sleuth are over, alas. The police are already involved in any case.' Payne took a sip of tea. 'I've been trying to imagine the kind of guff Melisande as Miss Hope has been feeding Vane.'

'Tales of Balkan imbroglios, princely picnics and duels at dawn? D'you think she made everything up?'