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‘Winifred fears the game is up?’

‘Yes! She has no idea Stella has taken her for Melisande. Winifred believes that sooner or later Stella will tell Vane who she really is. She knows that a revelation like that will put paid to her “romance”. Something needs to be done about it. She needs to act fast. Stella has to be silenced. What’s the matter?’

‘The sword, Hugh. The samurai sword. Call me unimaginative, but I can’t see Winifred brandishing a sword. And why kill her in Tancred Vane’s drawing room? Tancred Vane is the love of Winifred’s life! To be with him is her dearest wish. She wouldn’t dream of causing him any upset. The very last thing she would want to do is desecrate his drawing room. You said his drawing room was a work of art. Think about it!’

There was a pause.

‘Perhaps that particular killing method was chosen with good reason… Perhaps the murder is not as irrational and grotesque as it looks, rather it was a mixture of planning and impulse, brutal, yet clever and ingenious.’ Payne drew a thoughtful forefinger across his jaw. ‘Winifred intended to throw suspicion on Stella’s daughter. A sword is the kind of weapon Moon would employ. Winifred had heard Moon eulogize the bloody delights of an electronic game called Hammers of Hell. Maybe that’s what gave her the idea?’

‘Maybe it was.’

‘You don’t seem too convinced. Incidentally, why did you undertake that trip to Earls Court today?’

‘I will tell you only if there is a follow-up. I expect a follow-up-’

‘Won’t you at least give me a hint what it’s about?’

‘That bill from the Corrida Hotel. For champagne and so on. You said it wasn’t yours. Well, I deduced it was James Morland’s. He must have dropped it when he visited you here.’

Payne stared. ‘You’re right. Good lord – yes. He did drop some papers the day he came – he wanted to show me the opera tickets. Hello – what’s up? No, don’t tell me. First things first. Let’s go to Kinderhook and talk to Miss Hope.’

29

The Rise and Fall of the British Nanny

It was only a short walk under the full moon – that patron of lovers and plotters, Major Payne murmured.

Kinderhook had the dignified and somewhat forbidding air of a cathedral. There was a patriarchal solemnity about it.

‘Will Winifred unwind all the wiles she wound?’

‘Don’t you ever get tired of spouting bons mots?’

‘I find it helps release the tension… This is actually a paraphrase of something Francis Thompson wrote in “The Mistress of Vision”.’

‘Are you tense?’

‘I believe I am.’ He patted his pocket, making Antonia wonder whether he had taken his old army revolver with him after all.

‘You don’t think she will try to hold us hostage or anything like that, do you?’

Winifred Willard’s part of the house was dark. They saw light only in Melisande’s windows. Perhaps the two sisters were together? That would complicate matters. Payne thought he had no other option but to ring Melisande’s front door bell.

The door opened almost at once and Winifred Willard stood on the threshold. She might have been waiting for them. The hall light was on and her ash-blonde chignon gleamed. She looked radiant, happy, years younger. Her cheeks were a little flushed. Her eyes were bright.

She was clad in a high-collared silk dress in dove grey that reached below her knees, four strings of pearls, each row separated by diamond buckles on either side of her neck, and pearl earrings. Her shoes were red, shiny, with silver buckles, the only vaguely eccentric touch about her get-up – it put Antonia incongruously in mind of Dorothy. Innocence and witchery? Perhaps not that incongruous after all.

‘Hugh! Antonia! What a lovely surprise!’ Winifred clapped her hands. ‘Would you like to come in?’ She opened the door wide.

Whatever Antonia had anticipated, it wasn’t such a spontaneous display of hospitality. Payne too was puzzled. Divided psyche, he thought. Or could it be a trap?

They went in.

‘Poor Melisande is laid low. That’s why I am here, playing the nurse. Melisande appears to have had a nervous breakdown of sorts.’

‘Oh, I am so sorry,’ Antonia said.

‘She will be fine. She’s had nervous breakdowns before. I must say it completely ruined my plans for the evening. My sister never seems to tire of imposing her temperamental vagaries and physical needs on me – even when she is prostrate and unconscious!’ Winifred laughed. ‘I am not as callous as I sound! Dr Olwyn gave her an injection. She is asleep at the moment, so you can’t see her.’

‘As a matter of fact we wanted to see you,’ Payne said.

‘Did you? How perfectly splendid. I was just having coffee. I am experimenting with a new blend. Would you like to join me? I’d be terribly interested in your opinion. I must say this is a most welcome diversion. I’d resigned myself to a solitary vigil. I am reading the latest Anita Brookner. Another masterly study of well-bred desolation,’ Winifred prattled on. ‘Isn’t it odd how some authors never vary? She must be getting on. Her outlook has remained remarkably unchanged-’

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?