‘What French song?’
‘Marinés, argentés, leurs petits corps décapités.’
‘I don’t believe there is such a song. Too macabre.’
‘It goes back to the early days of the French Revolution, I think. Mayfair wouldn’t be such a bad place to die,’ Lady Grylls went on in a reflective voice, ‘if one absolutely had to. It would be better than most places, in fact. All these lovely houses and wonderfully tended gardens, with the Ritz just round the corner.’
‘I believe I’ve got the Hamlet quotation,’ said Payne. ‘The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets.’
‘Romans saw no virtue in moderation and very little in virtue. Nor for that matter did Remnants. Roderick’s great-grandfather, the ninth earl, was sent to a French military academy, but apparently he preferred to mount his campaigns in wanton female company. He frequented les maisons de tolérance.’
‘Not brothels?’
‘I am afraid so. The ninth earl was not famous for his self-control. His own sisters as well as his young and pretty aunt were said not to have been exempt from his gallantry, though perhaps “gallantry” is not the right word- Why are we stopping?
‘Journey’s end, darling.’ Payne was taking off his driving gloves.
‘So glad we’ve arrived in one piece,’ said Lady Grylls. ‘Belgrave Square looks perfectly splendid after the rain.’
6
A maid opened the door and let Lady Grylls and Major Payne in. As they walked across the hall, Payne paused to glance at the photographs in silver frames.
The drawing room, with its high ceiling and Adam chimneypiece, was furnished with restrained good taste. Half a dozen early-nineteenth-century paintings of dogs hung on sashes against walnut panelling that had been glazed in three shades of pistachio green. The moment they entered, the carriage clock on the mantelshelf chimed eleven.
Felicity Remnant, a placid-looking woman in hound’s-tooth tweeds and two strings of pearls, rose from the sofa. She had a preoccupied air about her. She seemed unable to tear her eyes from the frozen black-and-white image on the TV screen.
Putting the remote control on the low coffee table, she turned to her visitors.
‘So good of you to come.’ She and Lady Grylls exchanged kisses. ‘Gerard is sorry he can’t be here, but he’s had to go to Remnant. Meetings with solicitors and all sorts of other people. As you can well imagine, my brother-in-law’s death has pitched us into a wholly new life with a lot of incredibly tedious responsibilities. It’s complete madness.’
‘Felicity, my dear, I don’t think you have met Hugh, have you? Hugh is my favourite nephew. The only one of my living relatives who understands me.’
Payne gave a little bow. ‘Lady Remnant. How do you do?’
‘How do you do? I have heard an awful lot about you, Hugh, and I must say I am intrigued.’
‘So good of you to let me look at your Damascus chest.’
‘I understand you are renowned for your stratospheric IQ and uncanny gift for divining guilty secrets. Can you really do the Sherlock Holmes trick of guessing facts about people in a seemingly legerdemain manner?’
‘I believe I can.’
‘Frequently with spectacular success, or so I have heard?’
‘Usually with spectacular success. Usually rather than frequently,’ said Payne in a meditative voice. ‘I wouldn’t call it a trick but a knack. And it isn’t exactly guessing, it’s deducing.’
‘How terribly tantalizing. I wonder if you could deduce anything about me?’
‘You’d like me to tell you things about yourself which no one but you could possibly know?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Wouldn’t you think it presumptuous of me?’
‘Not a bit of it.’
‘You may find what I am going to say annoying.’
‘I am sure I won’t,’ she reassured him.
Major Payne’s eyes narrowed. ‘Well, you have been careful to cultivate a perfectly plausible patina of respectability and an instantly recognizable type of Englishness. You speak and dress and do your hair the way your mother and grandmother spoke and dressed and did theirs, but underneath lurks a highly unconventional woman.’
Lady Grylls beamed. ‘Isn’t he wonderful?’
‘In what way unconventional?’ Felicity asked.
‘Once you were something of a wild girl. You had a passion for rock-and-roll. You are a dab hand with a gun. You have a quirky sense of humour. You used to have a tattoo, which you sported pretty prominently.’ Payne drew his forefinger across his jaw. ‘You have a Lithuanian maid and you smoke Cuban cigars.’
‘Not Trichinopoly ones?’ Felicity’s brows went up ironically.
‘No. Cuban. As a child, you were scared of pom-pom dahlias. Your second boyfriend was a strategy analyst at a government-sponsored institution called Stonehenge Madagascar.’
‘I suppose you recognized Goda’s accent, but how on earth did you know about the gun?’
‘Who or what is Trichinopoly?’ Lady Grylls asked.
‘Place in southern India. Location of a famous battle… A silver-framed photograph in the hall shows you and your husband wearing combat gear and handling guns in a most expert manner.’
‘You are certainly good at noticing things. But you can’t be sure that’s my husband. It may be my lover. Or my dentist. I may have been entertaining my dentist, so there.’
‘No,’ Payne said firmly. ‘It’s your husband Gerard Fenwick, who is now the thirteenth Earl Remnant. I believe I was introduced to him once. I never forget a face. It was at a dinner at the Military Club, I think, or perhaps Brooks’s. Can’t remember which one exactly.’
‘Gentlemen’s clubs are all the same,’ she said acidly. ‘How did you know about the rock-and-roll?’
Payne pointed to a shelf above the TV set. ‘Those videotapes. Glastonbury 1971, 1972 and 1973. They can’t possibly be your son’s – I understand he is still at school – too young. Besides, it is all DVDs nowadays. Or are you going to tell me they belong to your husband?’
Felicity looked a little annoyed. ‘Perhaps they do.’
‘No, they don’t,’ Lady Grylls wheezed. ‘They are all yours, my dear. I remember your mama being frightfully worried about you when you were eighteen. About the shiny black leather you used to wrap yourself in! There were pictures of you in Tatler, I remember. Sorry. Shouldn’t butt in. This is Hugh’s show.’
‘You have had a small tattoo removed from just above your wrist. The scar is infinitesimal, practically invisible to untrained eyes. I believe you had the operation done about twenty-five years ago. Was that when you first got married?’
‘It was. I didn’t want my mother-in-law to have a fit. My mother-in-law was the most disapproving woman who ever lived.’ Felicity’s expression did not change. ‘OK. You are right about my wild youth. I was something of what is known as a “rock chick”. But you are wrong about the cigars. It is my husband who smokes cigars. That’s why the house reeks of them.’
‘There is fresh cigar smoke in this room. You have tried to get rid of it by opening the window, but you haven’t been entirely successful. Besides,’ Payne went on, ‘there is a bit of a cigar leaf stuck to the thumb of your right hand.’
‘Is there? Oh yes, how tiresome. Very well. I help myself to Gerard’s cigars every now and then. I don’t think he notices. That’s my one guilty secret.’
‘Only one?’ Lady Grylls laughed.
Felicity frowned. ‘What about my quirky sense of humour? And what about the pom-pom dahlias? However did you deduce that?’
‘You have created a persona that is too good to be entirely true. It is clear you get a kick out of misleading the world. Then there are the dogs in those pictures.’ Payne pointed. ‘They seem to have been chosen for no other reason than their exceptional ugliness. I don’t think you care for dogs much, do you?’