absence. As it happened, it was Antonia who raised the question and subsequently the alarm. ‘Oh, she loves to hide, the naughty kotik,’ Lena said dismissively, at first quite unperturbed. She continued sipping from her glass. ‘She’s got herself into a cupboard somewhere, or under a bed, or behind a curtain. It is an annoying habit she has.’
So they looked inside all the cupboards and under all the beds and behind all the curtains, then everywhere else around the house. They checked all the rooms. Everybody – hosts, guests, servants, workmen – took part in the search, the only exception being Major Nagle.
Major Nagle remained in his room. He hadn’t left it for a moment, or so he said. When they knocked on his door, he was looking for his signet ring. His face was very red. He seemed more concerned about the loss of his ring than about the little girl who had vanished. Then they searched the garden. They walked around, calling out Sonya’s name
…
Antonia looked up. She was remembering the sick feeling at the pit of her stomach, the convulsive pounding of her heart against her ribs, the ringing sound in her ears, the dizziness, the sudden dryness in her throat, the nausea…
Sonya’s bracelet was discovered on the path leading down to the river, her daisy chain on a bush. It had come to Antonia as something of a shock to see the river. Only two hours earlier it had been smooth and calm and golden – now it was darker, olive-green and turbulent. The banks leading down to the water were rather steep, she had noticed for the first time, and they were overhung by trees, silver birches, a box elder, a copper beech. She looked across at the armies of reeds and rushes, sword-shaped and yellow-green in colour. She felt the cool rising off the water – also a ‘green’ smell, like moss. She shuddered.
‘Kotik! Kotik! Where are you? Mamma loves you so much. Mamma can’t live without her kotik!’ Lena lurched about on her high heels, wailing piteously. ‘Where are you? Come out – speak to Mamma!’ The next instant she screamed and pointed.
The small body was floating on the river surface, face up. It had got entangled in some tree roots that crept into the river across the bank. Lena, her red hair wild in the wind, the mascara running down her cheeks, collapsed in a heap on the ground. She beat her fists against the river bank, rattling her bracelets. She shook her head and rocked her body forward and backward, wailing, ‘Kotik, kotik!’ Then, casting her face heavenwards, she threw up her arms and cried, ‘Why, oh God? Why? Why? Why deprive me of the one thing I loved best in this world?’
Antonia had seen the Falconers exchange cynical looks. Dufrette stood some distance away, very still, and stared at the body in the river, his face deadly pale.
It was Antonia who said, ‘That’s not Sonya. It’s her doll. It’s only her doll.’
Lena raised her head. ‘But she couldn’t be parted from her doll! Don’t you see what happened? They both fell into the river! My kotik has drowned! She has been carried away by the current!’
Her face was dark and suffused, a mask of fury. She shook her forefinger at Antonia. ‘It was you! You showed her the way to the river! It is your fault! I saw you take my kotik down to the river. You killed her!’
At that point Lady Mortlock had gone back to the house and phoned the police.
When she went to bed that night, Antonia lay for quite a while unable to sleep, going over in her mind what she had read. Though there had been no witnesses, it was assumed that Sonya had left the house, wandered out into the garden and down to the river bank where she had slipped and tumbled into the river. The body had never been recovered but that wasn’t such an uncommon occurrence. The verdict had been one of tragic accident. It had been an open and shut case. The Dufrettes had been reprimanded for not providing their daughter with adequate care.
Reading her account had had a therapeutic effect on Antonia. It felt like a curtain lifting. She saw how preposterous it had been for her to feel guilty over Sonya’s death. Lena had been looking for scapegoats. First she had turned on Antonia, then on the Mortlocks. Lena had suggested that it had been their fault too – why hadn’t they put up any river-bank defences? Why wasn’t there protective netting? Lena had gone so far as to suggest she might take the Mortlocks to court.
Thinking about what she had written, Antonia suddenly experienced an odd feeling of dissatisfaction, a sense of there being something wrong, but by now she had started to feel sleepy.
It was interesting that it had all happened at a time when everybody had been inside – glued to the box. The whole of England, or so it had been reported in the papers. Fewer robberies had been committed that day, if statistics were anything to go by. Fewer crimes generally. It was assumed that criminals too had been watching the royal wedding. Conversely, Antonia thought, how easy it would have been to commit a crime on a day like that.
Had there been a crime at Twiston? The ring – watch out for that signet ring. That was Miss Pettigrew whispering in her ear. Antonia saw Major Nagle, taking a cigarette from his Asprey’s silver case. He said nothing but gave her a wink. A moment later a second voice spoke – it sounded like Lawrence Dufrette’s. ‘It seems to me, Mrs Rushton, that you lack the creative balance of imagination and reason. Ergo, you can never be a truly successful writer.’
Antonia knew she was dreaming now and yet she was filled with misgivings. Questions formed themselves in her mind, but they were the wrong kind of questions.
Would she ever be able to complete her novel? Would she ever be able to write again? Could she write at all?
8
Le Gout du Policier
As she arrived at the club the following morning, the reason for her dissatisfaction dawned on her. Her account of what had happened at Twiston was lively and vivid and it contained some good descriptions and entertaining dialogue. It was not her ability to write that was in question. No. There was a different reason for her dissatisfaction. Although she couldn’t put her finger on it, she knew that something was wrong – either with the way she had described one or more of the characters in the drama, or with her reporting of what they said. Some illogicality… Some discrepancy?
She was sure she wasn’t imagining it… What was it?
Not many people visited the library that morning and she received only one phone call. A good thing, for she was in such an abstracted state of mind that some club member was bound to notice and complain. She performed her chores mechanically, automaton-like, in a kind of daze. At one point she found herself lifting a pile of books from one of the donation boxes and placing them on her desk, then staring down at them in utter incomprehension. She had absolutely no idea what she should do with the books. Yes, she did. Stamp them, write down their titles, put them on the right shelves. She reached out for the library stamp. (In what way was the signet ring important?)
Eventually she heard the clock chime eleven. She took the folder out of her bag. The Drowning of Sonya Dufrette, she had written at the top. Well, she knew she wouldn’t rest until she found out what was wrong.
Martin brought her a tray with a pot of coffee, a cup and a plate of Lazzaroni biscuits. Pouring herself coffee, she started skimming through the pages once more. Was there any significance in the fact that Sonya and her doll had been dressed in identical dresses? She couldn’t see how there could be.
Sonya’s body had never been recovered. Sonya had vanished without a trace. That was one fact that was certain. Twenty years had passed but the body hadn’t turned up. If it had, she would have heard about it, she was sure. It would have been in the papers – or on TV – or someone would have mentioned it to her. People didn’t just vanish. They were either dead or assumed new identities or… or… No, there was nothing else. That was it. What would be the point of giving Sonya a new identity? But then, if she was dead, where was her body? Swallowed by some monstrous fish? Could the body have been weighed down and eased into the river? That would mean murder and there wasn’t a scrap of evidence pointing that way. On the other hand, the body might not be in the river at all. Sonya might have been killed somewhere else and the body buried.
The other night Antonia had thought in terms of violence. She had dreamt of blood. Now, why had she? She
