How did these people find the energy to muster up so much enthusiasm about crushed snails? ‘Oleanders,’ the voice went on, ‘are like children. They need very special care. Keep them indoors longer in spring…’
Like children… The silly things people said. Children were much more special, much more precious than oleanders. Even children like Sonya, whom Lady Mortlock had described as ‘damaged goods’… Sonya should have been kept indoors. Nothing would have happened if she had been kept indoors. Antonia flexed her hand gently, trying to get rid of the pins and needles. Her eyes opened and closed again.
No children… Was the selling and subsequent abduction of Sonya Dufrette the only theory that fitted the facts? Well, yes – it was. What other reason could there have been for such large sums of money to be handed out to Lena Dufrette and the nanny? There were also the initials at the bottom of that letter. V.V. Lawrence Dufrette was sure that Veronica had masterminded the taking of Sonya.
No – there was no doubt that Sonya was spirited away from Twiston and adopted by the Vorodins. She was given a new name and a new identity. She was passed off as the Vorodins’ daughter and they went to live at some place where no one knew them – the Bahamas, maybe, where Anatole Vorodin was eventually to die in a paragliding accident.
Still, let’s assume, Antonia reasoned in her dreamlike state, that ‘no children’ meant precisely that. That the ultimate happy ending wasn’t a happy ending after all. It was possible, wasn’t it, that, at some point between the royal wedding on 29th July 1981 and Anatole Vorodin’s death on 2nd March 1988, Sonya Dufrette herself died – either as a result of an accident or through illness. But wouldn’t the obituary then have said, ’His daughter predeceased him‘? Well, not necessarily – not if Veronica Vorodin had withheld the information that there was a daughter in the first place.
Antonia heard the door open and somebody enter the library. A heavy, lumbering tread. Opening her eyes a fraction she saw the stocky figure of a man in a checked hacking jacket. She watched him take The Times and the racing paper from the mahogany table and ease himself into an armchair. Mid-sixties? Sandy hair sleeked back, jowly square face with bulldog features, brick-coloured, a reddish nose, a drinker’s nose, she imagined; a small moustache, extremely pouchy eyes of the ‘fried-egg’ variety. He kept mopping his brow with a large handkerchief. What big hands he had! Enormous pink hands, like hams -
Did he have a ring on? No – she couldn’t see a ring. Why was she interested in his ring? Well, it wasn’t her who was interested in it but Miss Pettigrew. Miss Pettigrew had an idee fixe about a ring. Antonia smiled. Watch out for the ring. How ridiculous. If she didn’t feel so lethargic, she would laugh aloud. She was allowing bizarre intrusions of irra- tionality to enter the detection business!
Was she dreaming? No. The man was real. He was there all right. She heard the paper rustle in his hands. She could hear his noisy breathing. She went on observing him from under half-closed eyelids. Striped tie – school or regiment, she couldn’t tell. It had been loosened. Small wonder! How did he survive in that jacket? She didn’t think she had seen him before. He was an instantly recognizable military type. Not a very nice person, she didn’t think. She might be doing him a grave injustice, mind. Appearances could be deceptive… His bottom lip protruded like the jaw of some belligerent freshwater fish. He was scowling. Not an attractive face – not by a long chalk. A somewhat haunted look about him – or was she being fanciful again? She saw him drop The Times and pick up the racing paper.
He wasn’t aware of her presence. Well, she hadn’t stirred. She had pushed her chair back and was sitting in the shadow of the arch formed by the staircase where she imagined it felt cooler…
The discussion on the radio was still going on, how funny. They had been talking all this time, these indefatigable gardeners. ‘I live in Cornwall and this is a piece of my lawn with a brown-headed weed in it. If you’d care to take a look – I have tried a number of weedkillers…’
Fancy bringing a weed into the studio! Gardeners’ Question Time. That was the name of the programme. Of course. She never listened to it, if she could help it, didn’t see the point of it, really. She wasn’t interested in gardening. Antonia felt her eyelids drooping. It was as though she had been staring at a ticking hypnotist’s watch that had been going back and forth. Click-clack, click-clack… She could hear the watch very clearly now.
Click-clack.
No. That was the sound of the gardener’s secateurs coming from the garden. He must be standing somewhere close to the window. Only the other day she had considered that listening to the radio was rather out of place in the club environment, but at that particular moment nothing could be more appropriate. Had the gardener drawn closer, so that he could get some gardening tips? Yes. Tips from the gardening experts. How to kill children – no, weeds. She meant weeds of course
…
Antonia couldn’t tell how much time had elapsed. Two minutes – five? She woke up with a start, her heart beating fast, a metallic taste in her mouth. She had dreamt that she was at Twiston once more, walking about the garden in the afternoon glare, shading her eyes with her hand, looking for Sonya, calling out her name, steeling herself for what she might find…
Somebody was talking about Twiston at that very moment.
Her eyes opened wide. The man was still there in the chair, but it wasn’t him. Of course not. It was a voice on the radio. A woman’s voice. Very musical. Familiar somehow…
‘… outside Richmond-on-Thames. We bought it last year. A splendid place. The kind of place exiles think of when they dream of home, as somebody put it. Lovely gardens – with one exception. There is a tree there. An oak which is extremely ancient – over three hundred years old. It has illustrious origins – planted by James I and all that. It has a plaque on it that says so. It is dead of course. It is ugly. It looks like some malignant growth. It was highly thought of by the previous owners – they provided it with a cement base, if you please. It is entirely hollow inside, you see.’
That was Mrs Ralston-Scott talking. The name came to Antonia at once. She was fully awake now and listening intently. She sat up and was surprised how quickly she had emerged from her stupor. She had spoken to Mrs Ralston-Scott on the phone only the week before, when she rang up to ask for Lady Mortlock’s telephone number.
‘The hollow seems to hold incredible attraction for all sorts of beasts and they tend to leap inside the tree. Squirrels and stray cats and once I thought I saw a rat as big as a kitten! My own dogs – I have two spaniels – seem to have developed that unfortunate habit too. I have got to detest that damned tree as much as – well, as much as one can detest a tree.’ (The audience laughed.) ‘There is a smell coming from inside the hollow, which makes walking in the garden on a balmy summer’s evening not such a pleasant experience after all. The long and the short of it – I don’t know whether you dear people are the right ones to consult about it – you’d probably be opposed to the idea, but I want and mean to get rid of the tree. I intend to have it sawn down…’
Antonia’s eye caught a movement. The paper had slipped from the man’s hands. His face was turned towards the open window, from where the voice on the radio was coming. He sat completely still, as though suddenly turned to stone. He appeared to be listening intently to Mrs Ralston-Scott’s voice. He seemed mesmerized by what he was hearing – or could it be that he was feeling ill? His face looked very odd indeed. It had turned Puce. His mouth was open. Antonia wondered whether the heat had got to him at last, whether he might have suffered sunstroke, or was on the verge of some form of cardiac arrest. His eyes were bulging monstrously, bringing to mind the frog Footman in Alice, imparting to his face the aspect of someone who’s had a shock. Someone in mortal fear or in the thrall of some unimaginable horror. Though, again, Antonia reflected, it might be her imagination playing tricks on her. Do not rely on fanciful conclusions before you have first validated them with facts. She had read that somewhere. Yes, quite.