‘It was twenty minutes to midnight. There was the smell of lilacs in the air. The car windows were open. The radio was on. They were playing “Clair de Lune”. There was a moon – like a friendly face, smiling down at me. Lots of stars. I was full of hope. I felt ecstatic, yet serene. For the first time I had peace of mind. I was leaving my old life behind. I was thinking of my little golden-haired girl -’
‘Lilacs, yes… I remember the lilacs… The sweetest, the most intoxicating of smells, I always think, though not as intoxicating as your scent, Bee.’ The skeletal hand stirred and she froze, clenching her teeth, imagining he was about to touch her. ‘Ce Soir Je T’Aime. You still use it, I can tell. I haven’t entirely lost my sense of smell. We were talking – laughing. I’d said something that made you laugh. Then that other car appeared. It kept coming closer. I saw it as though in slow motion, wasn’t that odd? Am I being fanciful?’
‘You were drunk.’
‘The crash… I felt nothing. It felt like running into masses of cotton wool. I heard you moan, but when I flicked my lighter, you smiled at me. You said you didn’t think you were too badly hurt, only you couldn’t move your legs… I was without a scratch on me. You asked me to check on the other car. That other woman – Ingrid – was clutching at her stomach. She didn’t make a sound – just looked at me. Her eyes – merciful God – I’ll never forget those eyes. She held out her right hand when she saw me – as though asking why -’
‘She was pregnant.’
‘I had no idea. I learnt later. Her hand looked as though she had dipped it in blood – it was a birthmark of some sort -’ Ralph Renshawe broke off. ‘It was I who should have died. Or suffered some terrible mutilation. Only I didn’t. Father Lillie-Lysander says there was a reason to it, a higher purpose, why I didn’t die in the crash.’
‘You got off lightly.’
‘I got a fine. I had Biretta amp; Baal on my side – legal luminaries – crooks. I chose them carefully. I should have been sent to jail but wasn’t. Should have rotted in jail. My picture was in the papers. People recognized me and kept staring at me wherever I went, or so I imagined. I was annoyed by the attention. I imagined everybody disapproved, which of course they must have done. Your father wrote to me. He assumed I would take care of you. That, he suggested, was the decent thing to do, the act of a gentleman, but the mere idea filled me with horror.’
‘Daddy was a fool.’
‘I didn’t fancy at all the idea of being tied down to an invalid.’
‘You disappeared.’
‘I left England. Covered my tracks. I was afraid of some sort of retribution, I think. For quite a while I kept looking over my shoulder. For quite a while I was convinced that that woman – Ingrid – would come after me. Or that she’d hire someone to bump me off. I can only imagine what you went through – what it was like.’
‘Apocalyptic,’ she said. ‘Hell on earth.’
‘I am so sorry. Day after day, week after week, year after year, lying in that bed. Were you in a lot of pain?’
‘I was. Terrible pain.’ She thought she heard the nurse hovering outside the door and raised her voice. ‘My whole personality has changed as a result. People have the wrong idea of what I am really like. Everybody is convinced I am of a happy disposition – light-hearted, easy-going, frivolous, girlish. People comment on my joie de vivre. On my insatiable zest for life. They compliment me on my appearance. They ask me how I have managed to look so well, so healthy. The other day somebody called me a “good sport”. I seem to strike everybody as balanced and normal, but the truth is that I am all bitter and twisted inside. There is a monster lurking behind the mask.’
‘I am so glad that you have recovered, my dear, so glad. You have hardly changed at all. You look the same. The same pretty face. God is good. We must put all our trust in God.’ Most of her words had clearly been lost on him. A drop of saliva appeared at the corner of his mouth. He was drooling, like an idiot. He looked delirious. His hearing, like the rest of him, had been greatly reduced.
Had the nurse heard her? The nurse had struck her as the kind that eavesdropped at keyholes. It might be useful – if she were ever to change her mind and revert to what she still thought of as Plan A. It was good to know she might still kill him and get away with it. She smiled – she might have been a character in one of Antonia Darcy’s detective novels!
He was speaking. ‘I had no idea where you were. I had the letter sent to your old address. Thank God you got it… Thank God… I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t got in touch… Are your parents…?’
‘Dead,’ she said.
‘I am sorry. Your father thought I’d make you an excel-lent husband.’
‘Daddy was a fool.’
‘Father Lillie-Lysander tells me that I have been forgiven but I am not certain. Not certain at all. I made so many people unhappy.. . I went on wrecking lives… You… That other woman, Ingrid.’ Ralph Renshawe’s rheumy eyes had started filling with tears. ‘Judith – my late wife. Poor Judith. I gave her such a hard time. I married Judith soon after I arrived in Calgary – sweet girl – rather plain but incredibly rich – an heiress. I married her for her money and we moved to Florida. We had no children. A good thing too. Judith should have left her fortune to someone else – to a home for cats – she adored cats – or to her charities. Judith was a saint. I deserve nothing – nothing at all. She left all her money to me instead. Her fabulous fortune. Can you imagine?’
‘Fool,’ she said.
‘I did a lot of things I shouldn’t have done, Bee. Before I got ill, I kept a mistress,’ he went on. ‘She was extremely upset when I told her to leave. She had started seeing herself as the “Mistress of Ospreys”, I suppose. She threatened to kill me. She said she couldn’t live without me. She was a passionate, hot-blooded creature. She followed her instincts, never her mind. Her appetites were more than a match for mine. She originated from the Subcontinent, but was quite taken with our English ways. She changed her accent; her speech assumed the numinous purity of Home County intonation, which was a bit of a bore. Perhaps she was after my money, I don’t know. Are you cold?’ He suddenly looked at her gloved hands and sighed. ‘I am always cold. They say that the merest chill might be fatal.’
He shut his eyes. He had wearied himself. He was dying slowly, by degrees; each minute brought him closer to the grave. In a funny way that was what had saved his life. Seeing him in this pitiable state had made her change her mind. I like that, she remembered thinking. She must try to stretch this out for as long as possible.
Killing him would have been too easy – an act of mercy really, and mercy was not something she was prepared to give him. A speedy death? Oh no. This was better. Much better. Much more – enjoyable.
Her eyes narrowed and she ran her tongue across her lips.
Yes. Infinitely more satisfying.
3
A Connoisseur’s Case
It had been a mysterious, rather oppressive kind of after-noon, all the familiar landmarks outside engulfed by an old-fashioned smog, either unrecognizable or completely vanished. Intrigued by the alien look of things, rather like characters out of Chesterton, Antonia and Hugh Payne decided to go for a short walk on Hampstead Heath. They heard the ghostly ringing of a church bell, disembodied yellowish lights flickered in the air and they appeared to be wading knee-deep in candyfloss. But for the unpleasant squishing of wet grass beneath their feet, Major Payne said, they might have been in some abandoned ancient land high above the clouds – in Valhalla itself! Neither of them could see the ground and they had to feel their way with their rolled-up umbrellas held out before them, blind-man fashion.
When they returned home, they sat down to tea and crumpets before a blazing fire. The curtains were drawn across the windows and all the table lamps in the sitting room were on. The Rockingham teapot gleamed.