‘Whose idea was it to record the performance with a video camera?’
‘Clarissa’s. Clarissa has a passion for home movies. Poor girl, she always wanted to be an actress. She is enormously talented. She’s got a real flair for all things theatrical. It was Clarissa who chose the background music. “The Bilbao Song”, and that was followed by “Le Roi d’Aquitaine”. It’s the kind of music that creates a peculiarly unsettling, highcamp sort of mood, which was precisely what she wanted.’
‘So Lord Remnant was shot in the back of the head,’ said Payne. ‘How big was the revolver?’
‘It was absurdly small. It looked like a toy. No one in the room heard the shot. The gun had a silencer. Louise said she heard a popping sound, but she imagined it was one of the sound effects in “The Bilbao Song”, which had a kind of a drumbeat to it. No one saw the gun sticking out from between the window curtains either, or so they said.’
‘You were not in the room when the shot was fired?’ Payne tried to sound as casual as possible.
‘I wasn’t. I’d dashed to the loo. When I came back, it was all over. Lord Remnant lay dead. Everyone had frozen. They might have been stuffed with sawdust. I was beset by the kind of primeval panic that brings about mass hysteria, pogroms and stampedes, but that came later, much later, after I’d returned to England. At first they thought that he’d had a heart attack, he’d complained of chest pains earlier on, but then Dr Sylvester-Sale discovered the hole.’
‘The hole in the back of Lord Remnant’s head?’
‘Yes. A very tiny hole, apparently. Later on we found the gun outside on the terrace. It was lying beside the head.’
‘Bottom’s head?’
‘Yes. We’d seen the shadow outlined against the curtains earlier on … The shadow kept appearing and disappearing. We knew Stephan was lurking outside the windows. Perhaps we should have kept a closer eye on him, but we didn’t.’
Antonia asked if anyone had seen the gun before.
‘As a matter of fact we all had, my dear. It belonged to Lord Remnant. It was very small and beautifully crafted. Lord Remnant had kept several guns in the house since the trouble with the locals. He’d been receiving death threats because he’d had a lot of families evicted from his land. He’d had a lot of houses demolished and so on. He was very unpopular. He was universally loathed.’
‘Death threats?’ Payne echoed.
‘Yes. Some gruesomely graphic ones. They were always pinned on the sundial in the garden, Clarissa said. It seems most of the locals had it in for Lord Remnant. They hated his guts … Clarissa kept finding voodoo dolls made in the likeness of Lord Remnant scattered about the estate — stuck with hundreds of needles! She thought at first they were baby porcupines! The irony is that in the end, it was the enemy within who killed Lord Remnant. His stepson.’
17
‘Such a sweet, gentle boy. So clever and he could be really funny.’ Hortense sighed. ‘But he became a demon when provoked … He is prey to the extremes of mood that seem to agonize all drug addicts. He had already tried to shoot his stepfather with that very same gun.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes! It happened earlier that day. Stephan detested his stepfather. Only the week before he’d stabbed Lord Remnant in the hand with a quill pen! It left a nasty red scar between his thumb and index finger.’
‘Why did Stephan try to shoot Lord Remnant?’ Antonia asked.
‘Well, it seems the earl caught Stephan red-handed in his study, trying to steal an extremely valuable porcelain dragon of the Ming dynasty. Stephan said he needed money badly. He said he needed a fix. He was quite open about it. Stephan liked to talk about his addiction. When Lord Remnant took a step towards him, Stephan opened the top desk drawer and pulled out the gun.’
‘He clearly knew it was there.’
‘He did know it, Major Payne. He brandished the gun in Lord Remnant’s face, then he aimed it at his head. The gun, as it happened, was empty, but Stephan kept pressing the trigger. Eventually, Lord Remnant and Augustine — that’s the black major-domo — managed to disarm him. Lord Remnant told us the story himself, with great relish.’
‘Where did Lord Remnant keep his ammunition?’
‘In that same drawer. Several boxes of it. In some ways, he was a very stupid man — impetuous — careless — reckless — so you may say that he was to blame for his own death. He should have kept the ammunition under lock and key, only he didn’t. It was almost as though he had a death wish!’
‘Lord Remnant was shot only moments after the doctor pretended to pour poison in his ear,’ said Payne thoughtfully.
‘I believe that is so. It was SS — that’s what we all called Dr Sylvester-Sale — who examined the body and told us Lord Remnant had been shot. We knew at once who had done it. We all knew it was Stephan.’
Antonia said, ‘You didn’t think it could have been someone else?’
‘We didn’t. At least no one offered any other theory. Who else could it have been? I personally don’t believe it was one of the locals. Clarissa then asked SS and Basil Hunter to take Lord Remnant’s body upstairs, to his dressing room.’
‘No question of an ambulance and the police being called?’
‘No. Clarissa said there would be no point in calling an ambulance since her husband was irreversibly dead. She said the local police were an absolute nightmare, a criminal bunch, a posse of desperadoes. She warned us we’d all be in big trouble if the police got involved. Lord Remnant had already managed to upset the local police chief in some way. Clarissa said we’d all be put in jail.’
‘No one tried to argue with her?’
‘Louise did, unsuccessfully. Clarissa managed to scare us off. She said she had a plan, which she described as foolproof. She assured us everything was going to be all right. She insisted her main concern was for Stephan’s welfare. She said Stephan would die if he were to be locked away in a Caribbean jail, which was the worst thing that could happen to anyone. I do believe she genuinely loves Stephan. So we never called the police.’
‘All highly irregular.’
‘We were perfectly aware it was all highly irregular, Major Payne, but we had no choice, really. Clarissa then told me to go and get Stephan. She wanted him inside the house.’
‘I don’t suppose you’ve told Stephan you are his grandmother?’
‘No, of course not. He has no idea — but we get on. For some reason he has taken to me … Renee came with me. She is wonderful, simply wonderful, always so composed. We found him sitting calmly by the swimming pool, dropping pebbles. It was obvious he had been smoking pot. We could smell it. He came like a lamb. He could hardly walk. I took him to his room and put him to bed. Several minutes later Dr McLean arrived. Clarissa had called him.’
‘A local doctor?’
‘Yes. A black doctor, whom, it became clear, Clarissa knew very well indeed. She got both doctors — SS and McLean — together in Lord Remnant’s study. The long and the short of it is that a death certificate was eventually produced giving the cause of death as ‘heart attack’. It bore the signatures of the two doctors. Later that night Clarissa called us to the study-’
‘All together?’
‘No. One by one. When my turn came, she took my hand and said she relied on my discretion. She then gave me a cheque. She knew I had a passion for cruises, she said. She told me to treat myself to a cruise. The money she was giving me was enough for ten cruises.’
There was a pause. ‘Did she give the others cheques as well?’
‘I believe she did. I assume so. I never discussed it with anyone. Well, that’s it, really. We all acted in cahoots. I am not in the least sorry Lord Remnant was killed. He was asking for it.’ Hortense sounded defiant. ‘But I am not as strong as I imagined I was. I have been suffering terrible pangs of conscience.’