How hot it was. Antonia wished she could concentrate better.
With the exception of Playboy, which she intended to dispose of discreetly later on, she laid the magazines out on the mahogany table in the middle of the room, taking great care to line them up neatly.
She watered the wilting aspidistras and rubber plants, then stood beside the window, looking out. Everything was very still. Not a whiff of wind. No birdsong. No buzzing of insects. The sky was a fierce, burning white, the trees ferocious shades of rusty red and sulphur yellow. A mist of sorts hung on the air – a greyish gauze through which there shone the merciless golden globe of the sun. It hurt her eyes to look at it. At the far end of the garden, the student gardener was deadheading the roses. He was in his shirtsleeves, wearing a straw hat and dark glasses and appeared quite unperturbed. He looked up and waved at her. She waved back. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. The gardener’s transistor radio was on a trestle table underneath the window, which explained why she could hear the transmission so loud and clear.
‘No children,’ she said aloud. ‘They had no children. His wife survives him but they had no children.’
Hugh’s phone call had come an hour or so before. He had been on the internet, apparently, looking up entries under ‘Vorodin’, ‘Vorodins’, ‘Veronica Vorodin’ and ’Anatole Vorodin‘. There were several entries, he said, but each time he clicked on them, he got a notice saying, ’This file no longer exists,‘ or ’The page cannot be found.‘ Or ’The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed or be temporarily unavailable.‘
The only exception had been an obituary from The Times, announcing the death on 2nd March 1988 in a paragliding accident in the Bahamas of Anatole Vorodin, Veronica’s husband.
Born 1943, in Geneva. Of Russian-French extraction. The son of Vladislav Vorodin and Marie-Josephe de Roustang. (Of the de Roustang dentistry equipment dynasty.) Educated privately, at the Sorbonne and Yale. In 1961 produced a single entitled ‘Rich Rovers in Rio’, now largely forgotten. Played the piano at the Algonquin in New York, and at some Paris jazz clubs, but his musical career never took off. Got a bit part in Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, but never made it as an actor either. Renowned for his and his wife’s philanthropic work and children’s charities. Hobbies included paragliding, yachting and collecting first editions of Flash Gordon comics. It was the obit’s last line, Hugh said, that was of possible interest.
He is survived by his wife Veronica. They had no children.
The erasure of Sonya. That was how Hugh had put it. What did Antonia make of it? Well, Veronica could easily have managed to provide imprecise information. She had done it out of caution. She had been afraid she might be discovered, so she had made a decision. Sonya – even if her name had been changed to something else – would receive no mention as their daughter. Had Veronica made sure that every file that mentioned the Vorodin name was removed from the net? Antonia believed it could be done. Still, she felt somewhat disconcerted by the news.
She sat down at her desk. Her swivel chair felt extremely comfortable. Should she ring Martin and ask him to bring her a cup of coffee or a glass of icy lemonade? No. Too much effort. Her hand felt numb. The Radio 4 news bulletin was over and some lively debate about oleanders was now taking place. Oleanders? Had she heard correctly? ‘Can you advise me how to make them flower? I’ve tried everything – even crushed snails, which, we were told, make a wonderful fertilizer.’
How did these people find the energy to muster up so much enthusiasm about crushed snails? ‘Oleanders,’ the voice went on, ‘are like children. They need very special care. Keep them indoors longer in spring…’
Like children… The silly things people said. Children were much more special, much more precious than oleanders. Even children like Sonya, whom Lady Mortlock had described as ‘damaged goods’… Sonya should have been kept indoors. Nothing would have happened if she had been kept indoors. Antonia flexed her hand gently, trying to get rid of the pins and needles. Her eyes opened and closed again.
No children… Was the selling and subsequent abduction of Sonya Dufrette the only theory that fitted the facts? Well, yes – it was. What other reason could there have been for such large sums of money to be handed out to Lena Dufrette and the nanny? There were also the initials at the bottom of that letter. V.V. Lawrence Dufrette was sure that Veronica had masterminded the taking of Sonya.
No – there was no doubt that Sonya was spirited away from Twiston and adopted by the Vorodins. She was given a new name and a new identity. She was passed off as the Vorodins’ daughter and they went to live at some place where no one knew them – the Bahamas, maybe, where Anatole Vorodin was eventually to die in a paragliding accident.
Still, let’s assume, Antonia reasoned in her dreamlike state, that ‘no children’ meant precisely that. That the ultimate happy ending wasn’t a happy ending after all. It was possible, wasn’t it, that, at some point between the royal wedding on 29th July 1981 and Anatole Vorodin’s death on 2nd March 1988, Sonya Dufrette herself died – either as a result of an accident or through illness. But wouldn’t the obituary then have said, ’His daughter predeceased him‘? Well, not necessarily – not if Veronica Vorodin had withheld the information that there was a daughter in the first place.
Antonia heard the door open and somebody enter the library. A heavy, lumbering tread. Opening her eyes a fraction she saw the stocky figure of a man in a checked hacking jacket. She watched him take The Times and the racing paper from the mahogany table and ease himself into an armchair. Mid-sixties? Sandy hair sleeked back, jowly square face with bulldog features, brick-coloured, a reddish nose, a drinker’s nose, she imagined; a small moustache, extremely pouchy eyes of the ‘fried-egg’ variety. He kept mopping his brow with a large handkerchief. What big hands he had! Enormous pink hands, like hams -
Did he have a ring on? No – she couldn’t see a ring. Why was she interested in his ring? Well, it wasn’t her who was interested in it but Miss Pettigrew. Miss Pettigrew had an idee fixe about a ring. Antonia smiled. Watch out for the ring. How ridiculous. If she didn’t feel so lethargic, she would laugh aloud. She was allowing bizarre intrusions of irra- tionality to enter the detection business!
Was she dreaming? No. The man was real. He was there all right. She heard the paper rustle in his hands. She could hear his noisy breathing. She went on observing him from under half-closed eyelids. Striped tie – school or regiment, she couldn’t tell. It had been loosened. Small wonder! How did he survive in that jacket? She didn’t think she had seen him before. He was an instantly recognizable military type. Not a very nice person, she didn’t think. She might be doing him a grave injustice, mind. Appearances could be deceptive… His bottom lip protruded like the jaw of some belligerent freshwater fish. He was scowling. Not an attractive face – not by a long chalk. A somewhat haunted look about him – or was she being fanciful again? She saw him drop The Times and pick up the racing paper.
He wasn’t aware of her presence. Well, she hadn’t stirred. She had pushed her chair back and was sitting in the shadow of the arch formed by the staircase where she imagined it felt cooler…
The discussion on the radio was still going on, how funny. They had been talking all this time, these indefatigable gardeners. ‘I live in Cornwall and this is a piece of my lawn with a brown-headed weed in it. If you’d care to take a look – I have tried a number of weedkillers…’
Fancy bringing a weed into the studio! Gardeners’ Question Time. That was the name of the programme. Of course. She never listened to it, if she could help it, didn’t see the point of it, really. She wasn’t interested in gardening. Antonia felt her eyelids drooping. It was as though she had been staring at a ticking hypnotist’s watch that had been going back and forth. Click-clack, click-clack… She could hear the watch very clearly now.
Click-clack.
No. That was the sound of the gardener’s secateurs coming from the garden. He must be standing somewhere close to the window. Only the other day she had considered that listening to the radio was rather out of place in the club environment, but at that particular moment nothing could be more appropriate. Had the gardener drawn closer, so that he could get some gardening tips? Yes. Tips from the gardening experts. How to kill children – no, weeds. She meant weeds of course
…
Antonia couldn’t tell how much time had elapsed. Two minutes – five? She woke up with a start, her heart beating fast, a metallic taste in her mouth. She had dreamt that she was at Twiston once more, walking about the garden in the afternoon glare, shading her eyes with her hand, looking for Sonya, calling out her name, steeling herself for what she might find…
Somebody was talking about Twiston at that very moment.
Her eyes opened wide. The man was still there in the chair, but it wasn’t him. Of course not. It was a voice on the radio. A woman’s voice. Very musical. Familiar somehow…
‘… outside Richmond-on-Thames. We bought it last year. A splendid place. The kind of place exiles think of
