Morland had started walking towards the door. He halted and turned round. ‘What letters?’ There was a harsh, even ragged, edge to his voice.
‘Highly compromising letters written by Moon to you. Letters that made it obvious to Stella that her daughter and you were lovers. The letters were in the car.’
This was an audacious guess, but Antonia couldn’t resist it. She remembered Moon telling them how she’d got in trouble at school for writing letters to teachers she ‘liked’. Something did happen in the car, Antonia was certain of it. She didn’t believe Moon had simply chosen that particular time to regale her mother with details of her affair with James Morland.
‘What car are you talking about?’
‘Your car. Your second car.’
‘The uncool one,’ Major Payne put in. ‘The one you keep in the garage. Moon’s been driving it, hasn’t she?’
‘I believe you are both mad. You are a danger to civilized society. You shouldn’t be at large. You need psychiatric help,’ Morland said, but the bluster had gone.
His expression had changed at the mention of the letters. He was making a visible effort to pull himself together.
‘How did Winifred die?’ Morland asked after a pause. ‘Was she beheaded too?’
‘No. Her head was bashed in. It was a ferocious attack.’ Payne produced his pipe. ‘Somebody took a crack at her skull. Three cracks, to be precise. The blows were dealt with the doorstop from Tancred Vane’s study. A genuine Victorian article in the shape of an owl.’
‘You certainly had a good motive for wanting to be rid of Stella,’ began Antonia. ‘However-’
‘You are wrong if you think you can pin either murder on me,’ Morland said. ‘I killed no one. I am not a killer.’
‘We know you are not,’ said Payne. He started filling his pipe with tobacco from the tobacco jar. ‘On the morning Stella’s murder took place you were attending a board meeting. The police checked. You have an unbreakable alibi. And we don’t think it was you who followed Winifred to the Villa Byzantine either. Yours was not the hand that picked up the owl.’
Morland gazed glassily at him. He looked puzzled and oddly disturbed by Payne’s last words. ‘The owl?’
It was at that point that his mobile rang.
Once more Antonia bit her lip. One could always trust a mobile to add drama and suspense to an already fraught situation!
Morland took his mobile out of his pocket with a mechanical gesture.
‘Yes? Yes, it’s me-’ He swallowed. He didn’t make any effort to disguise his feelings. His expression changed.
Extreme tenderness mingled with fear.
It was Stella’s daughter, Antonia knew at once.
‘Where are you? What – what’s that noise?’ Morland glanced from Payne to Antonia. He looked like a trapped animal. ‘What do you mean, after you? Who is after you?’
The police, Antonia thought. The police were after her.
‘You aren’t driving, are you?’ Morland groaned. She was driving his car – the second car. Antonia went on filling in the gaps. The police were after her. It was all over. It should have happened sooner. Poor lovelorn Winifred needn’t have died.
‘I love you too – please stop the car – you may have an accident – you have nothing to fear!’ Morland cried, throwing all caution to the winds.
‘Actually, she has everything to fear,’ Payne said in a loud voice. ‘The game is up, Morland.’
Antonia wished Hugh didn’t use such melodramatic phrases.
‘Hello? Moon? Hello? Hello?’ Morland slumped down heavily on the sofa. He gazed wildly at Payne. ‘An owl? Did you say an owl?’ Some kind of realization seemed to have dawned on him. His face was grey, ashen. ‘But-’
It was the owl that had sent shivers down his spine the day before. He had remembered.
Moon had told him her mother had mentioned the owl to her, but Stella couldn’t have known about it! Vane had bought the owl the day Stella was killed. After she was killed. Vane had shown him the owl while they were sitting in the library at the Villa Byzantine.
Morland remembered the exact sequence of events. Vane had poured out two drinks, then gone up to the round table in the middle of the room and reached for one of the packages he had brought with him earlier on. The owl had been in a red cardboard box with golden stripes. There had been a blue star in the middle of the lid.
‘Bought it this morning. For Pupil Room. That’s what I call my study. Clever birds, owls. Symbolize the wisdom of the author-’
Vane had babbled on. He had been a little hysterical.
No, Stella couldn’t have seen the owl. At the time Vane opened the red box with the yellow stripes and the blue star, Stella had been dead. Her body had been lying in Vane’s drawing room. Yet Moon told him that her mother had mentioned Vane’s owl to her. Since her mother couldn’t have done any such thing, since Morland hadn’t told her about the owl either, there was only one conclusion to be drawn Moon had seen the owl with her own eyes.
She had been inside the Villa Byzantine. She had gone up to Vane’s study. To the so-called Pupil Room. She had actually picked up the owl and- Why in heaven’s name had she killed Winifred?
Morland covered his eyes with his hands. What sounded like a moan escaped his lips. He shook and swayed. The shock was so immense, he wondered if it would bludgeon him into some kind of unconsciousness. It’s all my fault, he thought.
He had been wrong to think her innocent. She had been to the Villa Byzantine not just once but twice… Stella… That morning… It had looked stormy… Stella had seemed preoccupied at breakfast… He had left… She and Moon had gone to the Villa Byzantine together. They must have done. Moon had driven her mother to the Villa Byzantine… In his old car. The uncool one…
Like Antonia before him, he went on filling in the gaps.
His old car – he should have got rid of it ages ago – his old jacket on the back seat – he shouldn’t have left it there – the letters in the pocket – damned careless of him – he’d asked Moon to stop writing to him, though he had to admit he had been thrilled by the things she wrote – so damned liberating – never happened to him before, that sort of thing – so flattering – the praise she heaped on him – he should have destroyed those letters – why hadn’t he destroyed the damned letters?
They watched his lips tremble, his face crumple.
Light of my loins, fire of my life – or rather the other way round. Sin and soul came into it, Payne did imagine.
Though it was doubtful whether Morland would have put it in any such Nabokovian terms.
36
I Confess
‘A folie a deux, eh?’ Lady Grylls suggested hopefully.
‘No, no, darling. They weren’t in it together,’ said Payne. ‘Nothing like Laurent and Therese Raquin or the Honeymoon Killers or Bonnie and Clyde or the Macbeths. Poor Morland had no idea what his teenage inamorata had done. When enlightenment finally came – when he realized that she had killed not only once but twice – he broke down and wept like a child.’
It was exactly three weeks later, another grey afternoon, and he and Antonia sat in Lady Grylls’ drawing room in St John’s Wood, having tea.
‘Stella signed her death warrant the moment she told Moon about Tancred Vane’s samurai sword,’ said Antonia. ‘She described the sword in some detail. She knew Moon would be interested. Stella had been anxious to “bond” with her daughter, you see.’
‘Moon decided she simply had to have the sword,’ said Payne. ‘Stella objected at first, saying it would be impossible to steal it and carry it back. Moon insisted that nothing could be easier. They would do it together.’
‘How do you know all this?’ Lady Grylls scowled. ‘Of course you are simply frantic with brains, but you couldn’t have deduced everything – could you?’
‘No, darling. We didn’t deduce everything. The girl confessed. The girl seems rather proud of what she has done. She is completely without remorse. A callous attention-seeking narcissist.’ Payne shook his head. ‘Once they arrested and handcuffed her, there was no stopping her. She wanted everybody to know what she had done.’