Winifred was going to make sure that Miss Hope did the right thing. She would watch over her like the proverbial hawk. Miss Hope was tricky. There were indications that Miss Hope didn’t like the idea of reaping what she had sown. That must be the reason for her looking so down in the mouth. Miss Hope was feeling humiliated and she resented it. Oh, how she resented it!
Miss Hope might be tempted to cause greater destruction than she needed, out of sheer spite. Smash Tancred’s computer with her umbrella – reduce Tancred’s Chinamen to smithereens – splash ink all over Tancred’s gold-and-green study – rip his curtains apart, even! It would be the final flick of the serpent’s tail.
Desecrating Tancred’s den, the lovely Pupil Room, would be an act of wanton malevolence, but Winifred wouldn’t put anything past Miss Hope. No, I mustn’t take any chances with her, Winifred thought. She didn’t care for the malicious glint in Miss Hope’s eye. There was also something sly and calculating about Miss Hope’s expression. Did the old witch believe she could outwit her?
Did Miss Hope kill the preposterous Stella and then plant Winifred’s handkerchief beside the body? That was a definite possibility. Miss Hope must hate Winifred as much as she hated Miss Hope. That hadn’t always been the case, though. Winifred frowned. She had a vague notion that a link of some kind existed between them…
Winifred found herself thinking of the day Stella died. It had been a Tuesday. She couldn’t say what she had done that day. Her memory was a complete blank. The only thing she remembered was returning all the manuscripts her publishers had asked her to read and evaluate with a note saying she was too busy, dealing with an important private matter.
(Could she have been at the Villa Byzantine that day?)
‘Where did you say the house was, madam?’ Winifred heard the taxi driver’s voice. ‘What number?’
‘Further down the road… I don’t think there is a number… Yes, that’s it. You can stop here. It’s only a short distance.’
‘Is that a tunnel? Blimey. Wouldn’t you like me to drive you to the house?’
‘No, thank you, my good man. There’s nothing I enjoy better than a bracing walk,’ she said crisply. ‘It’s such fine weather.’
‘Looks like rain,’ he muttered.
‘I have my trusty old umbrella with me.’
‘There may be a storm.’
‘So kind of you to care, but I am not in the least afraid of storms.’
She paid him and got out. What an impudent fellow! She glanced up with narrowed eyes. The skies glared down at her like the polished interior of an angry oyster shell. ‘The many-splendoured weather of an English day,’ she heard Miss Hope murmur.
Winifred remained silent. She hadn’t liked the way the driver had been looking at her. She feared he might decide to linger and spy on her… Follow her even… No – he was gone… Thank God!
She entered the tunnel. Above her, sinister yews spread their sombre branches like the roof-span of a crypt. She thought, I must be very careful now. I am dealing with a woman who is as unpredictable as she is unbalanced.
Halfway down the tunnel of trees she heard what sounded like the slamming of a car door somewhere.
32
The Exterminating Angel
A lugubrious El Greco horizon suffused with inky rain – a sudden flash of lightning darting across the sky, then a second one. The driver had mentioned a storm. It’s the kind of setting that lends itself to melodrama, she thought.
Under the low-hanging clouds the Villa Byzantine loomed, gloom-shrouded and desolate. More yews – thick and black and forbidding. Why did she keep noticing yews? Yews were said to be symbols of death.
An earlier splash of rain had soaked the fallen leaves into a paste of dark slush under her feet. Miss Hope exclaimed, ‘Oh dear, look at me. Up to my eyes in mud. People will think I have been playing catch-as-catch-can with pigs!’
Winifred Willard didn’t say a word. She stood by the front door, opened her handbag and took out the key. She had managed to have a replica made of one of Tancred’s keys – she’d never told him, but she didn’t think he would mind. No, of course he wouldn’t.
She unlocked the door and went in. She stood in the hall and breathed in the sweet smell of lavender, beeswax and pot-pourri. She smiled again, remembering those fifties American films. Honey, I’m home! It was always the husband who said it, the wife was invariably in the kitchen, baking a cake.
There was a clap of thunder. All the window panes rattled. Although it was only morning, the hall was dark. She didn’t really like this house. It had a certain – atmosphere. She wouldn’t have called it a happy house. No. The sooner Tancred got rid of it, the better.
‘Now this is what I want you to do. Please listen very carefully. I would be extremely grateful if you didn’t interrupt.’
Winifred had spoken with strange incisiveness. Happening to glance into the tall silver-framed mirror on the wall, she noted that Miss Hope’s face was now quite expressionless.
‘Would you stop for a moment, please?’
But Miss Hope didn’t stop. She pretended she hadn’t heard. It was clear that Miss Hope resented being told what to do. She was stubborn as a mule. They started going up the stairs.
The front door opened noiselessly and was shut at once.
(If she had glanced back over her shoulder Winifred would have seen the killer, but she didn’t.)
The killer stood in the shadow of the grandfather clock and listened as Winifred Willard proceeded to give instructions to Miss Hope.
‘Everything must disappear. Some of it is bona fide, which is a shame. I am sure you know that Tancred did have other sources of information, you were not the only one. I am talking about reliable sources, but it is all mixed up with your lies – so it is no good.’
(Talking to herself, the killer thought.)
‘Tancred will be so upset,’ Miss Hope bleated. ‘Can’t we keep some of it?’
‘I am afraid we can’t. There is no way round it,’ Winifred said. ‘Allow one rotten apple in – and the whole barrel is contaminated.’
‘Tancred will be devastated.’
‘Tancred will understand. It will be a shock at first, but he will understand. I will explain everything to him. What good are bogus biographies to anybody?’
‘Some people would read anything. Books with titles like Reheated Cabbage and Pregnant Widows.’
‘Should such people be encouraged?’ I don’t know why I am talking to her, Winifred thought.
‘Tancred will have a nervous breakdown.’
‘He won’t. Tancred is a young man. He is strong and resilient.’
The door to Pupil Room was open. The owl doorstop was in place, preventing the door from shutting. The doorstop was in the shape of an owl whose solemn bespectacled face, it suddenly struck Winifred, looked uncannily like that of Miss Hope.
Pupil Room was sunk in gloom. The curtains were half-drawn across the windows. The moment she entered, a flash of lightning lit the study with searchlight brilliance and while it lingered, dimming and brightening, for a split second too bright to look at, the inevitable thunder rolled and cracked.
Winifred crossed to the desk and switched on a brassbase table lamp. She glanced at the book that lay on the desk. Waiting for Princess Margaret. An anti-memoir, Tancred had called it. Flawed but fascinating. Winifred’s eyes strayed to the petunias in the small vase – they were quite dead now. Tancred’s ‘domestic help’ was far from efficient. Winifred pursed her lips. When they were married, she’d give the slouch the sack.
Her eyes passed over a sepia photograph showing Hitler shaking King Boris’ hand. Tancred believed the photograph had been taken in 1943, at the start of the fatal visit. Boris had died soon after his return from Germany. There had been rumour and endless speculation that Hitler had had something to do with the death…