‘Listen to this. Corinne might be planning to get rid of the overbearing Maginot who has some hold over her.’ Payne paused thoughtfully. ‘It is Maginot who will die violently. Corinne is the killer and she has been making it appear as though she is the intended victim… It’s going to be one of those cases where it looks but only looks as though the killer has made a mistake.’
‘And I’d lay you long odds it’s Jonson who’s behind the death threats,’ Lady Grylls wheezed. ‘Jonson’s agency is going bankrupt. He needs money desperately.’ Lady Grylls pushed her glasses up her nose. ‘The first time Corinne employed him, she paid him a fortune in fees, so he sees her as the goose that lays golden eggs. He conceives of a scheme – he sends her threatening letters in the hope that she’ll employ his services – which she does!’
There was a pause. Well, we seem to have exhausted all possibilities, Antonia reflected – and felt cheered by the thought. Whatever happened now, there’d be no surprises…
‘Do you and Corinne speak in French?’ she asked.
‘No – English. Corinne speaks English like one of us, on account of Ruse – I mean her mamma. Her mamma was English. Le falcon – her father – was French. That’s Franglais.’ Lady Grylls fumbled with the pack and lit another cigarette. ‘Le falcon,’ she repeated.
There was another pause. An unaccountable change had come over Lady Grylls, Antonia noticed with surprise. Lady Grylls had ceased looking jolly. There was a faraway expression on her face. Her eyes had narrowed – her lips trembled slightly. Antonia was visited by an idea -
There was one fantastical possibility they hadn’t considered. Had they perhaps been persuaded to look at the case… the wrong way up?
Lady Grylls sat smoking in silence. Her eyes seemed to be fixed on the mantelpiece – was she looking at the photos of Corinne – or at the Riff knife whose point was pressed against one of them? Hugh said something, but she didn’t seem to hear.
Antonia tried to arrange her ideas logically. They had been told that Corinne Coreille was coming because she believed Chalfont would provide her with a safe haven from an unknown enemy – but they only had Lady Grylls’s word for it. They hadn’t been there when Lady Grylls took the phone call from Paris. What if that story was a fabrication? What if it was Lady Grylls who had phoned Corinne Coreille and invited her to Chalfont? What if Lady Grylls had made up the story of the death threats? What if Corinne were to die before the truth came out?
Was it possible that Lady Grylls was… laying a trap? Her eyesight might not be as bad as she claimed… Lady Grylls, by her own admission and contrary to all appearances, was not a nice person. She could be ruthless all right. Antonia remembered Hugh telling her how at some shooting party his aunt had gone round with one of those sticks with a hammer at the end, clouting half-dead pheasants on the head, finishing them off… Lady Grylls adored ploys… She must be acting in cahoots with Maitre Maginot, whom she professed to detest without ever having seen her… Extravagant animosity between two characters was always suspect… That might be a mere charade, an essential part of the deadly deception that was being played out… Antonia nodded to herself. What about Mr Jonson, the private detective? Well, he would simply… fail to materialize. Yes… Mr Jonson did not exist. They hadn’t witnessed that phone call either. Mr Jonson was a figment of Lady Grylls’s imagination – the kind of corroborative detail that gives verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative… Lady Grylls had prepared the ground and was now getting ready to go for the kill.
What reason could Lady Grylls possibly have to want to kill her god-daughter, though? Well, the reason went back a long way… It was something to do with Corinne’s parents… Yes. Corinne’s death would be the price for something absolutely terrible her parents had done to Lady Grylls – or to a member of Lady Grylls’s family… Corinne’s father in particular seemed to be implicated. That was when the change had come over Lady Grylls. Le falcon, she had reiterated. Corinne’s father had been French. A nation of dashing lovers, the French – reputed to be the best lovers in the world. A popular myth, no doubt, but Antonia found herself changing tack… Lady Grylls and le falcon had had an affair. More than that – they had been secretly married. Corinne was… not Lady Grylls’s god-daughter, but her daughter… That was quite an ingenious theory, actually, though it needed to be thought through carefully… Lady Grylls kept complaining of a lack of funds. Corinne, on the other hand, was as rich as Croesus. When Corinne died, Lady Grylls – as her mother – would inherit Corinne’s millions – and then she would be in a position to have Chalfont Park renovated!
This is not a detective story, Antonia reminded herself. Really, I should be ashamed of myself.
3
The Secret Adversary
Eleanor Merchant sat in the dining car of the Eurostar, bound for London. They had left Paris some forty-five minutes before. She had taken the letters out of her bag, she couldn’t say exactly why, and arranged them fan-like on the little table in front of her. She had kept copies of every single letter – two copies – she was most particular about that kind of thing. She had written three times to Corinne Coreille and now six letters lay on the table. Although things had moved on and a confrontation was to take place soon, indeed seemed imminent, she was still curious as to why she had not received any answers. Corinne Coreille’s silence had hurt her. It was after all common courtesy to reply to personal messages.
Earlier on Eleanor had had an argument with the waiter. He had brought her a tarte au citron, but she had asked for a tarte au chocolat! He had had the temerity to suggest that she had made a mistake, the arrogant puppy – that her memory might be failing her. A mistake! Her memory was of the fly-paper variety – she had told him as much. He had appeared unconvinced. He looked the kind Griff might have taken a fancy to, so she refrained from displaying the froideur and sharp edges of the iceberg that had sunk the Titanic. (Why did they have only French waiters on the Eurostar? There should have been English ones as well. They wouldn’t have been that good-looking for one thing, and then she’d have been able to speak her mind.)
The reason for taking out the letters came to her. She wanted to prove that she had the phenomenal ability to recite extended texts from memory – without taking one little peek. Yes. Eleanor had re-read her letters a great number of times and she knew them by heart, word for word… Placing both her hands across the first letter, palms down, rather in the manner of one attending a spiritualist seance, she stared out of the window at the rapidly shifting landscape and started speaking.
‘Dear Miss Coreille – it was your voice my son was listening to as he lay dying. His blood had turned the translucent water in his bath scarlet.’ Since she had no travelling companion whom she might have been addressing, people passing by her table shot her startled glances. ‘You were the only one there. He had chosen you and you alone to share his last moments on earth. It was I who discovered him, you see.’
Eleanor felt like calling the waiter and asking him to check and see for himself that she hadn’t made a single mistake, but decided against it. He might get the wrong idea. The common herd, she had noticed, was wont to jump to conclusions. She sighed and shook her head. Perhaps she should do it sotto voce – or, better, in her head? I will be my own witness, Eleanor thought with a sad little smile. That, alas, was often the way these days.
She had flown over from Boston to New York. Alma, her niece, was getting married and it might have been the society wedding of the year, but Griff’s death spoilt things somewhat. Alma was extremely sore about it. Alma believed that Griff (short for Griffiths) had timed his suicide very carefully, out of sheer spite. That, she told Eleanor, was the kind of thing he would do, in keeping with the immature, theatrical, rather exhibitionistic side of his character. Griff was what Corinne Coreille would no doubt call un enfant terrible. Alma seemed to be equally cross with Eleanor, insinuating that somehow it had been her fault, the way Griff had turned out; Alma had implied that Griff had had an unhealthy upbringing, that Eleanor had been a terrible parent – the mother from hell.