‘It is too hot for muffins,’ Mrs Compton said.
‘Sausage rolls. May I tempt you? Douglas? Ladies? The sandwiches look good.’
Mrs Compton said, ‘No, nothing to eat. Just some tea.’ She sighed. She opened her handbag in a portentous manner which suggested that some life-saving piece of equipment might be inside, but which merely resulted in her producing her reading glasses.
‘A muffin, Robert, thank you… A cup of tea too, yes. Thank you.’
‘It’s too hot for muffins,’ Mrs Compton said again.
Antonia took a covert glance at her watch.
‘Let’s start, shall we?’ Commander Bridges said, smiling amiably over his cup. ‘The librarian’s report… Antonia, would you like to -’
‘The last report was rather inconclusive, I thought,’ Mrs Compton interjected. ‘Don’t you think?’
‘It was the meeting that was inconclusive,’ Mr Reece said.
‘I don’t understand what you mean, Robert.’
Antonia waited politely. The room was getting warmer by the minute. She could see the sun and the blue sky outside. Also the tree – an elm, not an oak. (She wished she didn’t keep seeing the oak at Twiston.) Shouldn’t they open one of the windows? Her eyes shut and opened. It wouldn’t do for her to doze off! For some reason she found herself thinking of the Vorodins and their plan. That carefully premeditated abduction. All very ingenious, but – plans sometimes went wrong, didn’t they? That was an interesting line of thought. What if the Vorodins had arrived and found that Sonya wasn’t there? Just imagine that that was what did happen. Now, where could Sonya have gone? Well, she had liked hiding -
‘Let’s start, shall we? Antonia, are you ready?’ Commander Bridges said.
‘Yes. Sorry.’
Antonia raced through her report. Every now and then she glanced up. Commander Bridges kept beaming at her. Mrs Compton was looking round the room and shaking her head. Mr Reece was eating a sausage roll with a great deal of concentration.
When she finished, Commander Bridges said, ‘Well done, Antonia. That was jolly thorough.’
‘I have a request,’ she said. ‘I do need more bookshelves and journal racks.’
‘How much money do you want?’ Mr Reece asked with a smile, brushing crumbs off his waistcoat with his napkin. ‘I think we could rustle up seventy or eighty pounds, can’t we, Douglas?’
‘Yes, yes. I think we can. Shelves are important.’
Mrs Compton heaved another sigh but raised no objection. Antonia felt herself relax.
The letting of the library to non-club members, to outsiders, for social functions, such as book readings and small wedding receptions, was discussed next. It was always a controversial point. The general feeling was against outsiders. Members, most of them diehard traditionalists, resented intrusions from the outside world intensely. But the fees the club charged were not to be sneezed at, Mr Reece pointed out – they provided them with a goodish income.
As for book donations…
‘I am totally against book donations. Totally. They are so…’ Mrs Compton – the widow of a Whitehall official – searched for a word. ‘A bit like a jumble sale, don’t you think? A lot of the books people donate are in an appalling state. No better than second-hand junk, really.’
‘No, not all the books -’ Antonia began.
‘I’ve seen them! Then there is the kind of books some people leave. Don’t you remember when the Gloucesters came – that VE Day? When the Duke picked up a book and it turned out to be -’ Mrs Compton broke off. ‘Don’t you remember?’
‘Arabella, that was ages ago,’ Mr Reece said.
‘It was I who had to write a letter of apology afterwards.’
The incident in question had taken place before Antonia’s time -
Suddenly she was reminded of that other letter. The letter written in Russian and signed V.V. What had Veronica written about, on her characteristic mauve paper with gilded edges? Would they ever know? Dufrette was unlikely to call them up and tell them what was in it. Dufrette didn’t want to have anything to do with them. They shouldn’t have let him take the letter, just like that. Could they have stopped him though? Would he have used the gun if they had tried?
But perhaps Hugh was right. Perhaps the letter didn’t contain anything of importance.
There, however, Antonia was wrong. The letter did contain important information.
It explained the motive for the murder.
21
A Demon in My View
It was the following Wednesday. Temperatures had been soaring since nine o‘clock in the morning, and by midday sweltering heat was coming through the open windows of the library. Air-conditioning would have made life bearable, Antonia reflected, but that had never been an option. The rather tight budget would never have allowed it. Besides, how many such days were there in an average English summer?
She drifted drowsily about the library, fanning herself with an ancient gold-edged dinner-party menu she had found inside a dog-eared copy of Thesiger’s Marsh Arabs, assembling a pile of stray magazines. Her feet felt heavy as lead. The usual racing papers. Country Life, National Geographic, Spectator. The Salisbury Review, inside which she had found the latest issue of Playboy. Antonia smiled. Well, she had found worse…
She remembered the luncheon menu they had had the day Sonya disappeared. Orange cocktails, iced, from a jug. Gulls’ eggs (two each). Fried salmon with rich sauce. Poussin with red wine. Charlotte russe. Coffee. Lady Mortlock had seen no reason why luncheon shouldn’t have been served. Only Lawrence Dufrette had refused to eat. Lena had got drunk. Major Nagle had had a tray sent up to his room…
The gardener’s radio was on once more. It was so loud, it might have been in the room, and she had no other choice but listen to it as she went about her job. She didn’t mind. She didn’t have the energy to mind anything in this heat.
Two o‘clock. The news. She squinted down at her watch. The hottest day on record. Just hearing the weather report made her sweat more. Was it as hot as in the marshes of Arabia?
Thesiger had been to the club once. She had seen him: very tall and unbent despite his great age, with a hawk-like nose, wearing his OE tie, a tweed jacket and twill trousers. Afterwards a club member had come up to her. It transpired he had been to prep school with Thesiger. ‘He was an odd fellow. We were nine or ten and awfully keen on Prester John. We were all identifying with David Crawford, the hero, you know. Only Thesiger identified with Laputa, the Zulu chief. An odd fellow. Wasn’t a bit surprised when I heard he had made his home at Maralai and become known to the locals as “Mzee Julu”.’
She didn’t fancy the idea of life at Maralai at all. Too hot. How I’d like to go north, to the Faroe islands, mist- laden Atlantic wonders, Antonia murmured dreamily. It stays cool up there. What had put the Faroe islands in her head? The National Geographic – the picture on the cover. There was an explanation for most things.
Various tasks kept presenting themselves. The cataloguing of the biographies section. An assessment as to what needed purchasing from Hatchards. She needed to phone the book binders as well. However, none of these tasks seemed very important or worthwhile in this weather. She decided to reduce her movements to a minimum and execute only very light chores, of the kind that didn’t involve any degree of physical exertion. That morning she had put on a short-sleeved cotton dress, though it didn’t seem to help much. It was a certain cool shade of blue, that was why she had chosen it – no, it was not lavender blue.
She considered again the matter of the obituary – what Hugh had told her on the phone earlier on. Anatole Vorodin, it transpired, had died back in 1988. Hugh had found his obituary.
No children.
It was suggestive, certainly. It had given them food for thought. Hugh had said that it might only mean that the Times obituary writer hadn’t done his research properly – or it might mean that the widow had suppressed certain facts… Yes, that was more likely. Cunning vixen, V. V!
