‘I was on the terrace and I remember wearing Bottom’s head, but it was too hot, so I took the head off. It was very quiet. There was a full moon. It was the colour of blood oranges and it had taken its place, like something in a stage set, above and to the right of La Sorciere … I stood by the french window and peeped in. They were starting the play. Daddy R. was alive then. He and Mummy were wearing crowns and looked really silly. Daddy R. had a beard and a false nose.’
‘A false nose! Fancy!’
‘It was too hot, not a breath of wind, so I went to the pool. It is always cooler by the pool. I felt like having some Maria-Juana, I really wanted some, so I rang Karen and told her to bring me some. I’d already had some cocoa, but that was earlier on, much earlier on.’
‘Cocoa? Did you really? A nice hot cup of cocoa?’
‘No, not that kind of cocoa, Highgrove. I mean cocoa.’ He held up his pockmarked arm.
‘Dear me! Please, don’t do that, Stephan.’ She covered her eyes with her hand. ‘It gives me the heebie-jeebies.’
He laughed. ‘I sat by the pool and waited. Then Karen came and we lit up.’
‘Who was Karen? Do remind me.’
‘My girlfriend. Sort of. Her skin is as black as the coal Tradewell puts in the fireplaces at Remnant. I like that. When it’s dark, she is practically invisible. I don’t like English girls. English girls are pink and they look like shrimps, or they are fat, and they can’t kiss properly. Anyway, we kissed a bit, then we lit up. I don’t remember what happened after that, but Karen stayed with me all the time and she only ran away when Aunt Tense and Gloves appeared, you see.’
‘You remember them coming?’
‘No — but Aunt Tense told me about it the next day. I phoned Karen earlier on, actually, because it bothered me. I mean the time factor. I asked her if I ever went somewhere and she said no. I then asked her if she ever left my side and she said, no, she didn’t. Not till she’d heard footsteps.’
‘You phoned Jamaica on your mobile? Isn’t that expensive?’
‘I phoned the Grenadin Island. That’s not Jamaica. Mummy told me I could talk on my mobile as much as I pleased. We are awfully rich, you know. Daddy R. used to feed his dog with caviar. He loved his dog, but then one day he got angry with him and shot him. Anyway, Karen says she was with me all the time. She said I never went anywhere. She’d have known if I had. She wouldn’t lie, why would she? There’s also the gun.’
‘What’s so special about the gun?’
‘It was the gun from Daddy R.’s desk, Highgrove. I mean Gloves said that. That’s Renee. Now, I remember I meant to take the gun, I can’t remember why exactly, but I sneaked up to Daddy R.’s study and opened the drawer and the gun wasn’t there! That was earlier on. While everybody was getting into costume. Do you see what that means?’
‘What, dear?’
‘It means it couldn’t have been me. I couldn’t have shot Daddy R. It was somebody else. They thought it was me because I hated Daddy R., because I’d already tried to shoot him, but it wasn’t.’ Stephan frowned again. ‘As a matter of fact, I think I know who killed him.’
‘Who is it? Who killed Daddy R.?’ Nurse Highgrove stood beside the door, looking at him. There was an odd expression in the boy’s eyes. She knew it was all nonsense; the doctor had warned her to expect a lot of nonsense, yet she had to admit there was something in the way Stephan spoke, something about his wide staring eyes, that she found compelling.
‘It’s too scary. You’ll probably think I’m making it all up. It’s too scary,’ he repeated. ‘You’ll get the heebie-jeebies,’ he warned her.
‘I won’t.’
‘You’d never believe it. You’ll say I’m making it up. Would you let me have a smoke if I told you?’
‘No. Smoking is not allowed.’
‘Please.’
‘Out of the question.’
He sighed. ‘All right. It was the Grimaud. It was the Grimaud who killed Daddy R.’
19
‘Don’t know what to make of Aunt Hortense,’ Major Payne said. ‘Would you say she was as cunning as the coiled cobra she used to wear round her wrist?’
‘I am not sure. That would be overrating her, I think.’
He started the engine. ‘Toute verite n’est pas bonne a dire indeed … Does she really believe that telling half-truths or distorted truths is better than telling no truth at all? It’s pretty much the same thing, isn’t it? No — it’s worse!’
‘She was quivering like a twig in a gale,’ Antonia said thoughtfully. ‘Could she be the killer?’
‘Technically speaking she could be. She wasn’t in the room at the crucial time.’
‘She said she’d gone to the loo … She’d watched their rehearsals. That means she must have been familiar with the exact position of the body on the chaise longue and so on,’ Antonia mused. ‘She knew Lord Remnant would be in a direct line to the french windows. She was actually caught on camera drawing the silk curtains across the windows just before the sketch started. Did you notice?’
‘I most certainly did,’ said Payne. ‘You mean — she could have been making sure she wouldn’t be seen?’
‘Exactly. She could easily have popped out through a side door, run across the terrace and shot Lord R. through the curtains, dropped the gun and run back into the room. It would have taken a minute, if that.’
‘Yes. She might easily have got hold of the gun earlier on … She might have been hiding it in the folds of her dress, or inside her handbag.’
‘Stephan was on the terrace, wearing the Bottom head, but he was probably too cranked up to make sense of what was going on …’
‘Or he wasn’t there at all,’ said Payne. ‘By the time Hortense appeared on the terrace, he might have taken off the head and removed himself. Perhaps it was Aunt Hortense who put on the Bottom head? A somewhat bizarre touch, but that’s what she would do if she wanted to throw suspicion on Stephan.’
‘Would she have wanted to throw suspicion on her grandson? Involve him in a murder case?’
‘She might have instinctively assumed that the police would never be called, that Lord Remnant’s murder would never become a case.’
‘But what was her motive?’
‘Well, she hated Lord Remnant. She made that abundantly clear. She thought the world would be a better place without him. Lord Remnant said and did infuriating things. He called her Miss Baedeker. He hid her glasses.’
‘You wouldn’t kill someone because they hid your glasses, would you?’
‘He laughed when she said sorry to an armchair after bumping into it. Perhaps she couldn’t bear to watch him humiliating Clarissa?’
‘The mother love motive.’ Antonia nodded. ‘And what a powerful motive that can be … It’s possible, I suppose. She kept saying how much she loved her daughter …’
‘If this were a whodunnit, Miss Tilling would be the least likely suspect. The Addled Aunt. Bespectacled, garrulous, inconsequential and disarmingly scatty. Strictly for comic relief purposes.’
‘Actually, Hugh, she is not such a typical aunt figure. She is the Aunt with a Past.’
‘Yes. I keep wondering about her past … She looked damned attractive in that photo, with her come-hither smile and Keppel Clasp. Didn’t look like an aunt at all. She was a bad girl. Giving birth out of wedlock and so on. Comes from a line of bad girls, if the Keppel link is anything to go by. Mrs Keppel, Violet Trefusis, the former Mrs Parker Bowles. All of them bad girls.’
Antonia said, ‘I really doubt whether drug-riddled Stephan would have been able to focus well enough to plug his stepfather’s nape.’
‘The same objection could be raised about Hortense. If Hortense’s eyesight is so bad that she apologizes to armchairs, could she have got Lord Remnant so accurately in the head? It would have been like the man in the fairy tale who manages to shoot a fly in one eye.’