The Murder Of Gonzago

Roderick, Lord Remnant, was enjoying what he thought of as his ‘second coming’.

He was having a bath. It was an old-fashioned bath made of enamelled cast iron and painted an azure kind of blue, its rounded corners supported on black claw and ball feet that stood on chequered black and white marble slabs. The bath had big brass taps with porcelain insets that said ‘Hot’ and ‘Cold’.

A minute or so earlier he had turned the taps on in the hope that the thundering water would drown the sounds of what he imagined was Clarissa sobbing. He liked the idea of her sobbing. It excited him. Suffering intrigued him immeasurably – though not while he was having a bath. There was a time and place for everything.

He sat with water up to his chest, delighting in the fragrance of aromatic oils and therapeutic salts. A haze of steam was hovering above his head, like a halo. He was sipping from a tall glass full of hock and seltzer. He gazed at the picture on the wall that showed a mermaid lying on a fishmonger’s slab, a resigned expression on her greenish face. He imagined the mermaid looked a bit like Clarissa…

Balnea, vina, Venus – how did it go on? Ages since he’d learnt Latin. Baths, wine and sex may wreck us up, but they – um – make life worth living?

Lord Remnant’s forehead was bandaged, but that didn’t seem to bother him. He hummed a little tune under his breath, ‘Said the don to his inamorata, won’t you let me past your garter?’

The night before he had had a dream. He’d seen himself standing beside a gravestone made of black Carrara marble, tugging at the ivy that bound it like string, only to reveal his name and the dates of his birth and death carefully chiselled in.

Ridiculous things, dreams. Some people thought dreams revealed the future. Well, he had nothing to fear. In a manner of speaking, he was already dead. He couldn’t die twice, could he?

Laughing, Lord Remnant got out of the bath. He dried himself with the wonderfully soft towel, rubbed some sweet-smelling musk lotion into his body and put on his mulberry-coloured dressing gown with the frogged lapels.

He stood in front of his mirror, examining his forehead. It hurt a little. They said that pain was the key to possession while pleasure was more likely to be illusory. The way she had conked him with that lamp! Having screamed herring-gull fashion first. It was like something out of a Feydeau farce, though he couldn’t say he found the episode particularly entertaining. Well, Clarissa was only postponing the inevitable.

He was confident his wound would heal soon enough. He didn’t think he needed any stitches. What he needed was another drink. And of course he needed Clarissa.

In that order.

His jawline had lost some of its firmness, but otherwise he looked as youthful as ever. He held his head up like a guardsman on parade and attached the reddish-brown whiskers to his face with the help of the special glue that went with them. He then put on the reddish-brown wig.

Making love in disguise – it would be like old times.

Picking up the powder puff, which he had taken from Clarissa’s dressing table, he pressed it to his cheekbones, then ran it with affected coyness over the bridge of his nose. How smooth his skin looked. He was pleased with the result. He felt like a bride checking her veil in the last mirror before the aisle.

Pouring himself a malt, he drank it neat.

Clarissa was born under a treacherous star into a world that brimmed over with base energies. She wouldn’t try to run away, would she? He didn’t think she would. Well, she knew what would happen if she did run away.

He licked his lips. That misbehaving forelock on Clarissa’s forehead! It drove him mad, thinking about it.

His thoughts turned to more practical matters. He had already made enquiries, in his Quin persona and in an American accent, regarding the money left to him by the late Lord Remnant. He had called Saunders’s office and spoken to Saunders’s clerk, who had been most helpful. He had told him all he needed to know. The money would be in Mr Quin’s bank account some time next week.

Did he have everything he needed? Quin’s cards – driving licence – passport. A little black-leather notebook had provided him with the details of Quin’s internet account. User name: Bitchbail. Password: Bully1. Memorable name: Meredith. Memorable place: Greenpeals.

He also had Quin’s PIN. Obtaining the latter had been as easy as falling off your chair. At the time of the documentary, they had spent some time together. Quin had wanted to observe him; he had been anxious to get Lord Remnant’s speech patterns, mannerisms and so on right.

Quin had had no idea that his host was observing him too. At one point, as Quin took money out of a cash machine, Lord Remnant stood behind him. He prided himself on his sharp eyesight as well as on his memory for figures. He’d seen and memorized Quin’s PIN: 4421.

Quin hadn’t been in the least cautious, certainly not suspicious. Well, no reason for Quin to have been suspicious. It wasn’t as though he was consorting with the Artful Dodger, was it? His host was after all a noble lord.

As for Quin’s email details, Lord Remnant had managed to get them in a similar manner, by simply sitting beside him at an internet cafe and, again, watching carefully as Quin logged on. The password had been rather prophetic: doppelganger2.

It was all meant to happen, Lord Remnant thought.

Since Quin’s death, Lord Remnant had answered several emails from Quin’s agent concerning offers for appearances in films. He had written back: Suffering from a crise de nerfs brought about by my inability to cope with the Spirit of the World. Will let you know if and when I am well again, which, I fear, may not be soon. In a subsequent message he had hinted at a more serious nervous breakdown.

So far there had been no emails of what could be described as a personal nature. Quin seemed to be one of those rare individuals who possessed no relatives, no lovers and no friends. Quin had been God-sent.

‘To Quin.’ Lord Remnant raised the malt to his lips. He’d started finding Remnant oppressive. In fact he’d come to regard Remnant as the absolute abomination of desolation. Gerard was welcome to it. How funny that there should be two Earl Remnants at the moment, the twelfth and the thirteenth. Terribly amusing.

He heard the creaking of a board outside his room, then he saw the door start opening slowly. What a pleasant surprise. Clarissa’s citadel of defence seemed to have crumbled. Clarissa had reconsidered. Clarissa knew which side of her brioche was buttered. Wise girl! Well, all he wanted from her was pleasant and pliant cooperation-

The next moment his smile faded. He put down his glass.

It wasn’t Clarissa who had entered his room.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’

Then he saw the gun in her hand.

33

The Rescuers

The principal ground-floor state room at Remnant had an air of desiccated luxury about it. It was also a quintessentially English room on the grand scale. There was the eighteenth-century Carlton House desk designed by Hepplewhite, the Axminster carpets that matched the date of the desk, the extremely rare Wedgwood Etruria vases on top of the breakfront bookcase, the Sevres porcelain lyre clock ticking on the mantelpiece, the fire-shield made of a stuffed Himalayan pheasant with outspread wings, iridescent breast and plumed tiara, and, above all, there was the view across the park.

Clarissa stood by the french windows, looking out. She was dressed in a beige twinset and pearls. On her wrist she wore the Keppel Clasp. That was what it was called, her mother had told her. Her mother, who was also her aunt. Clarissa frowned. She was finding the idea a little hard to swallow. Her left sleeve was rolled up to the elbow.

It wasn’t raining but the skies were ominously overcast. Like all English springs, the one which had come to Remnant Regis seemed unable to make up its mind whether to be nice or nasty. Only half an hour earlier the sun had been shining with extravagant brilliance, but then a sudden darkness had descended and the temperature had