‘You missed my coup. I managed to reduce old Nagle to a quivering jelly by making public a jolly murky episode from his very private life. He didn’t like it – what with Michael and Bill Kavanagh and the Falconers and Sheikh Umair listening. Bill’s the greatest gossip the FO has ever known!’
Dufrette gave a delighted croak. ‘I thought Nagle was about to explode. If looks could kill! Well, I do tend to acquire interesting information about people. In this particular instance, I ran into someone at my club, a chap whose late stepsister turned out to have been the first Mrs Nagle. He was of the opinion that Nagle was a monster. I said, what a coincidence, I was of that opinion too. That broke the ice. It turned out that the day before her death his stepsister had confided in him – told him what treatment she had been receiving at Nagle’s hands. Well, after a couple of scotches he spilled the beans. Nagle had been having an affair and he’d been flaunting it in front of his wife. Twice he made sure she found him and his mistress in bed together. Mrs Nagle then committed suicide. Hurled herself under a train. She’d had a history of mental illness of one kind or another, but there is no doubt that it was Nagle who drove her to it. He as good as killed her. Something of a sadist, old Nagle. He’s married his mistress since but it seems things are far from blissful. Nagle enjoys treating his women roughly, especially at bedtime, if you know what I mean – but that’s another story.’
It was at that point that a ghostly tinkling sound had been heard and Sonya walked into the dining room in her somnambulist manner, carrying a doll that was almost as big as her. Both girl and doll wore similar dresses: white and gold, with tiny bells at the waist – one of Lena’s dafter ideas, Antonia imagined. Sonya reached out and took Antonia’s hand. She started pulling her towards the open french windows that led into the garden. Antonia looked at Dufrette and received an approving nod. ‘It’s a lovely day, Mrs Rushton. Go and pick some flowers, why don’t you? She likes that.’
They walked out into the garden and Antonia made a daisy chain, which she placed on Sonya’s golden head. She pointed things out to her: a comic magpie, a busy squirrel, a strutting wood pigeon, but Sonya paid little attention – she was cooing to her doll. Happening to glance up at the house, Antonia saw Major Nagle standing stock-still at his open window, smoking. It was one of the south windows from which the garden layout of symmetrical beds, stone gate plinths and ironwork could be seen at its best, but she didn’t think Nagle was admiring the view. His eyes seemed fixed on them. Feeling somewhat disturbed, Antonia had steered the way briskly down a path leading to the river bank. Sonya had prattled the while, incomprehensible baby talk, directed exclusively at her doll. Beside the river it had felt pleasantly cool.
Antonia raised her brow again. Could Major Nagle -? No, no guesses – too early.
They had spent no more than a minute on the river bank, watching the dragonflies circle and the skitterbugs skate across the smoothish green surface of the river, before making their way back to the garden. There they stopped for another minute and Sonya picked some more flowers while Antonia watched the men in blue overalls pour cement into the hollow of the ancient oak. They were talking about Sir Michael’s weakness for ‘large ladies’. They had seen the Rubens in his study, apparently, and were making ribald jokes about it.
‘Will a cement base prevent the tree from decaying?’ she asked. The men shrugged and one of them said that the boss – he meant Sir Michael – certainly seemed to think that was the right thing to do. The man was clearly amused by Sir Michael calling the tree a ‘historical monument’ for he chuckled each time he uttered the phrase. Antonia and Sonya had then returned to the house.
And then?
She had let go of Sonya’s hand only when they reached the hall. That was the last time Antonia had seen Sonya. She had heard Lena say, ‘Run along, darling, Mamma’s terribly busy at the moment.’ She had not turned round to see where Sonya had gone but had walked into the sitting room in search of orange juice – she had been extremely thirsty.
Had Sonya, left unattended, wandered out of the front door and back into the garden? The door had certainly been open. Later Lena told the police that she had no recollection, that she hadn’t seen where Sonya had gone, but she was pretty sure it hadn’t been up the great staircase.
(Criminal negligence, Miss Pettigrew had called it.)
In the wake of the Nagle-Dufrette contretemps, the house party had been subdued. Sir Michael tried cheering them up by playing numbers from Fred Astaire’s film Royal Wedding, with a reminder that the broadcast was about to begin in a quarter of an hour. Would they care to take their seats? Everybody – with the exception of Major Nagle – was there and they complied.
The sitting room was the size of a barn, filled with comfortable chairs and sofas, with ancestral portraits hanging from claret-coloured ropes with tassels against beige neutral silk walls. There was a giant TV set, as well as strategically positioned small tables with plates of sandwiches, bowls of smoked almonds and peanuts and stands containing canapes of various kinds. There were bottles of gin, whisky and brandy on two side tables, old-fashioned siphons, also two coffee percolators and a tea urn. Through the window Antonia had observed the men in blue overalls walking briskly in the direction of the servants’ hall, where, she knew, there was another TV set. Sir Michael was as considerate an employer as he was gracious a host. She remembered the whirring of an ancient electric fan in one corner of the room.
‘One of your wives is at St Paul’s, isn’t that so, old boy?‘ Bill Kavanagh had addressed Sheikh Umair.
‘Indeed she is. It was Her Majesty the Queen Mother who provided the pass. The Queen Mother is a very old and valued friend. We both have a passion for horses. My wife is exceedingly fond of weddings. I am not, I must confess. You will probably argue that it has something to do with the fact that I have already attended several of my very own.’
‘A certain sense of ennui sets in after a while, eh?’
Lynch-Marquis said with a sigh he knew the feeling well – though he had been married only once.
Dufrette perched on the arm of a chair close to the television set and shook his forefinger at the festive crowds filling Ludgate Hill. ‘Look at them – just look at them! The singing, chattering fools in their ridiculous Union Jack hats! What they really should be doing on a day like this is storming the palace, like the Russkies did in
1917.’
And he hadn’t stopped there. It soon became apparent that Lawrence Dufrette had taken it upon himself to provide his hosts and fellow guests with a running commentary on the event. Everything he said was noted for its anti-monarchist bias. How he had transmogrified from an ardent royalist to a rabid enemy of the Crown was a mystery, though Lady Mortlock hinted that it had something to do with a snub he had received from the Duke of Kent, that mildest of royals, during a shooting party in 1969. Dufrette, it appeared, did not forgive easily.
‘I am no great admirer of my wife’s fellow Russkies as a rule, but I take my hat off to them for shooting the Tsar and the Tsarina and their brood like a bunch of dogs.’
‘Why do you always say such awful things?’ Lena had been sipping a Bloody Mary, but she put down her glass and crossed herself. ‘That was the greatest calamity to befall Russia. There is a church there now, on the very spot the Romanovs’ blood was spilled. Do you know what it is called?’ She paused significantly and looked round. ‘It is called the Church of the Spilt Blood.’