‘It seems you took on more than you could handle.’
‘You are right. It wasn’t terribly responsible of me, what I did. It was all my idea. Anatole had doubts – it was his pragmatic French side – but he went along with me. Some may say I am like those people who buy a puppy for Christmas and then, by the following Christmas, discover they can’t cope with it, but that’s not right. I did my best for Sonya. I had her for twenty years…’ Veronica pressed her handkerchief against her lips. ‘You’ll agree that’s a long time… Her health kept deteriorating. The pills and the injections she had to be given increased in number, in variety and in strength. That caused all sorts of side effects. Talking of irrational fancies! At one point Sonya became convinced that her head was full of water and that it contained a fish. The thought upset her dreadfully. She started banging her head against the wall, to let the fish out – ’
‘The bruise on her forehead?’
‘Yes. She kept hurting herself. You can’t imagine how distressing that was to watch – worse than the kicks and bites and blows I have had to suffer.’ Veronica raised her forearm and Antonia saw it was covered in scratch and bite marks. ‘I didn’t want to send her to an institution. I could have, but I didn’t have the heart. I didn’t want to let her out of my sight. I felt – perhaps misguidedly – that she was my responsibility. That I had to stick to it.’
‘Were you afraid someone might guess who she was?’
‘Well, yes, that too… I did provide her with the best nursing care available. Two private nurses. Extremely competent – discreet. Every so often she would start smashing her head against the wall. Two months ago she broke a mirror and cut herself really badly. Her eye was damaged. It was a miracle she didn’t go blind… Her condition wasn’t something she grew out of. That, you see, was what I’d been hoping and praying for and, ultimately, believing. That she would grow out of things. I failed to assess the situation accurately. It was extremely naive of me, I know. She didn’t grow out of things. She grew worse and worse and worse. She kept putting on weight, so it became extremely hard to restrain her physically. She grew obese – enormous – gross. You saw her.’
‘Lena used to call her kotik… Kitten…’
‘I know… Well, she became as big as an ox – and as strong. She had this insatiable appetite. She’d eat everything in sight if she came upon a table with food on it. She couldn’t stop herself. Then she would throw up. And she would scream and hurl things whenever we tried to prevent her from gorging herself. She developed a passion for sweets – mints in particular. She’d put in her mouth anything that looked like mints. Small buttons. Pearls. Once she tore apart one of my necklaces. Pills – we had to be really careful about pills.’
Rising abruptly and holding the handkerchief to her lips, Veronica went up to the sideboard and replenished her glass with more whisky, adding only a modicum of soda water from an old-fashioned siphon and dipping the silver tongs into the ice bucket. ‘Are you sure you don’t want a proper drink?’ She glanced at Antonia.
‘No, thank you… Sonya looked much older than twenty-seven.’
‘She aged prematurely. When she was seventeen she already looked about thirty. She changed out of all recognition. The docile affectionate kotik – the sweet doll-like little girl with the gentle smile – was no more. She couldn’t have disappeared more completely if she had been carried away by the river that day.’ Veronica resumed her seat on the sofa. ‘She turned into a monster. Grossly fat, pugnacious, violent. Sometimes we had to tie her up. Put her in a straitjacket of sorts. We had no choice. Lena didn’t believe me when I told her how bad it was.’
Veronica glanced at the letter which Antonia had left on the small table beside her chair. ‘Lena didn’t let you have the letter, just like that, did she? I expect she sold it to you?’
‘No. We stole it,’ Antonia said.
‘We? Oh. So somebody knows that you are here?’
‘Yes.’ Antonia didn’t elaborate. She knew it was absurd of her, but she felt safer now that she had suggested a ‘partner’ might be waiting to hear about her findings. There was something about Veronica – the mixture of the familiar and unfamiliar – the two persons in one – that made Antonia uncomfortable. She had to admit that she also felt a bit afraid.
She went on quickly, ‘You wrote to Lena that Sonya’s condition had deteriorated, that she was very ill, that she was not fit to be seen by anyone. You wrote that you found it unbearable, watching Sonya’s misery.’ She saw Veronica shut and open her eyes. ‘I don’t suppose Lena wanted to come to Twiston out of any maternal urges?’
‘No. What she was after was lucre – filthy lucre – more and more of it. For her I was the goose that lays the golden eggs. I had to take a firm line in the end. I made it absolutely clear that “no more” meant precisely that. We exchanged several letters. She kept phoning too, but Laura managed to deal with her very efficiently. She never thought of coming in person. Too lazy, I suppose. Or never sober enough. She did try to blackmail me in a half-hearted kind of way. She said she’d tell the police, but I knew it was just talk. Well, she wasn’t the only one -’ Veronica broke off. ‘Lena wouldn’t have dared go to the police. That would have meant giving herself away. Her involvement in the affair was after all fairly central. She’d have had to admit that she sold her daughter. How ugly that sounds.’
Antonia frowned. ‘What do you mean, she wasn’t the only one?’
‘Sorry?’ Veronica looked vague.
‘Did someone else try to blackmail you?’
There was a pause, then Veronica said, ‘All right. You know so much already, it won’t make the slightest difference. Yes. Someone else did try to blackmail us. You see, we were seen that morning -’
‘By Major Nagle?’ The real Nagle, Antonia thought.
‘Clever of you. Yes. That dreadful man saw us from his window, apparently. He said he saw me pick up Sonya and carry her towards the gates. We weren’t aware of it. He kept quiet about it for a long time. Nineteen years. That was his revenge on Lawrence, from what he let drop. He’d been gloating over Lawrence’s loss for the whole of nineteen years. He could have told the police at once but he didn’t. Dreadful man. He turned up on my doorstep in person last year. It was soon after we had moved into Twiston.’
‘How did he know you were at Twiston?’
‘The internet. Some stupid website. There were several of them, actually. I wasn’t aware of their existence then. That’s been dealt with now, though I wish – I do wish – I’ d done it sooner! It would have saved… a certain amount of trouble.’ Veronica’s eyes narrowed and she looked towards the fireplace. ‘Nagle knew all about me. He knew about Anatole’s death, that it was I who had bought Twiston. Some local enthusiast who was mad about Twiston’s history had set up a website devoted to it. Meddlesome fool. We caught him on the grounds once, trespassing. Set the dogs on him, but he did manage to take a couple of snapshots of me in the garden, which he added to the Twiston website. “Mrs Ralston-Scott, the new chatelaine.” That kind of nonsense.’
‘Nagle saw the photo?’
‘Yes. He recognized me.’ Aware of Antonia’s eyes on her, Veronica gave a wry smile. ‘I looked different then. More like what you remember, I suppose. I was still clinging to my youth. Well, I’ve been taught a lesson. Nagle, it turned out, had been looking up every possible source of information, trying to find my whereabouts. He had already put two and two together. He said he remembered how I used to gush about Twiston. He already had an idea he might find me here.’ She paused. ‘He needed money – badly. A lot of money. Now, as blackmailers went, he was the real thing. He was a menace – he presented a genuine threat.’