when they dream of home, as somebody put it. Lovely gardens – with one exception. There is a tree there. An oak which is extremely ancient – over three hundred years old. It has illustrious origins – planted by James I and all that. It has a plaque on it that says so. It is dead of course. It is ugly. It looks like some malignant growth. It was highly thought of by the previous owners – they provided it with a cement base, if you please. It is entirely hollow inside, you see.’
That was Mrs Ralston-Scott talking. The name came to Antonia at once. She was fully awake now and listening intently. She sat up and was surprised how quickly she had emerged from her stupor. She had spoken to Mrs Ralston-Scott on the phone only the week before, when she rang up to ask for Lady Mortlock’s telephone number.
‘The hollow seems to hold incredible attraction for all sorts of beasts and they tend to leap inside the tree. Squirrels and stray cats and once I thought I saw a rat as big as a kitten! My own dogs – I have two spaniels – seem to have developed that unfortunate habit too. I have got to detest that damned tree as much as – well, as much as one can detest a tree.’ (The audience laughed.) ‘There is a smell coming from inside the hollow, which makes walking in the garden on a balmy summer’s evening not such a pleasant experience after all. The long and the short of it – I don’t know whether you dear people are the right ones to consult about it – you’d probably be opposed to the idea, but I want and mean to get rid of the tree. I intend to have it sawn down…’
Antonia’s eye caught a movement. The paper had slipped from the man’s hands. His face was turned towards the open window, from where the voice on the radio was coming. He sat completely still, as though suddenly turned to stone. He appeared to be listening intently to Mrs Ralston-Scott’s voice. He seemed mesmerized by what he was hearing – or could it be that he was feeling ill? His face looked very odd indeed. It had turned Puce. His mouth was open. Antonia wondered whether the heat had got to him at last, whether he might have suffered sunstroke, or was on the verge of some form of cardiac arrest. His eyes were bulging monstrously, bringing to mind the frog Footman in Alice, imparting to his face the aspect of someone who’s had a shock. Someone in mortal fear or in the thrall of some unimaginable horror. Though, again, Antonia reflected, it might be her imagination playing tricks on her. Do not rely on fanciful conclusions before you have first validated them with facts. She had read that somewhere. Yes, quite.
The man seemed to find it hard to breathe. Something was the matter with him.
‘So that’s my dilemma,’ Mrs Ralston-Scott concluded. ‘To cut or not to cut. Unless you can suggest…’
Antonia didn’t hear the rest. The man had given a groan and lurched forward. She saw him rise from his chair. He pushed his hand into his pocket and took out his car keys. His mouth was shut now and he seemed to have managed to get a grip on himself. He started walking towards the door but halted in front of Antonia’s desk, quite close by – she could have reached out and touched him. She smelled his aftershave – old-fashioned lavender water. Again, he didn’t see her. He shot out his cuffs. As he mopped his forehead with his handkerchief and straightened his tie, Antonia recognized him. Or thought she did. It was the odd juxtaposition of enormous ham-like fists and beautifully tended fingernails that did it. As she told Hugh later, she was forever on the lookout for quirky details.
The last time she had seen him was twenty years ago, on 29th July, to be precise. Then he had been in a state of some considerable agitation caused by the loss of his signet ring.
The man was Major Nagle.
22
The Hollow
It took her several moments to recover from the night- marish jolt. She waited until he had lumbered out of the door, then, acting on an impulse, got up, walked round her desk and followed him. The heaviness had left her and she suddenly found herself overtaken by a strange, dreamlike lightness. Her head too had cleared.
That Major Nagle should have appeared precisely when he did and given her the chance to observe him was an extraordinary coincidence, she reflected, but then coincidences did happen. The pieces of the puzzle rearranged themselves in her mind. She remembered things which she should have thought of earlier on, but hadn‘t, though her subconscious had not been inactive. She had after all heard Miss Pettigrew’s voice rather early on, urging her to watch out for the ring.
Dufrette’s row with Major Nagle and the latter’s subsequent humiliation on the fatal morning. The suggestion Dufrette had made that Nagle was something of a sadist and that he had driven his wife to madness and suicide. Nagle’s distress and anger. Nagle had wanted to leave at once but Sir Michael had managed to persuade him to stay on. Nagle had then spent the whole morning in his room. He had been the only member of the house party whose movements hadn’t been accounted for. Nagle’s great agitation over the loss of his signet ring -
In a flash Antonia saw what must have happened. The abduction plan had been concocted all right. The Vorodins paid Lena and the nanny. The date was fixed – 29th July, the day of the royal wedding, when they could be fairly sure there would be no witnesses. All of that did happen. The Vorodins left early in the morning. The phone call removing the nanny from the scene was put through. Lena then made sure that Sonya would be in the garden.
Only something took place before the Vorodins came back.
The plan went wrong.
What they hadn’t counted on was that Major Nagle would walk out of the house and go into the garden, still simmering with fury, harbouring murderous grudges about Dufrette. Antonia remembered Dufrette’s words. If looks could kill. Did Nagle mean to kill Sonya? Antonia remembered him staring down at them from his window. She had felt disturbed by that stock-still figure whose face she couldn’t see. Well, maybe he did mean to kill. Or maybe not.
Perhaps Nagle went out, needing a walk to calm his jangled nerves, to clear his head and collect his thoughts. As he strode about the garden, he came upon Dufrette’s daughter. At this – seeing what he must have regarded as an extension of his foe – all the pent-up resentment burst out of him and he hit her…
Or it might have been an accident. Sonya might have stood in the middle of the path and got in his way – proffering him the flowers she had picked as likely as not. Maybe he pushed her roughly aside with his ham-like hand. Thoughts of Dufrette might have made him exercise undue force. Sonya, frail and doll-like, fell back and hit her head against a stone – on one of the decorative rocks? Nagle walked on but after a few steps looked back over his shoulder. Seeing the girl lying immobile, he wheeled round and retraced his steps. He touched her arm or cheek – shook her. She didn’t stir. He saw blood oozing out of a wound in her temple or the back of her head. Realizing she was dead, Nagle panicked. He had killed her! Had he been seen? No, no one. What should he do with the body? He couldn’t leave it there! His eyes then fell on the tree, the ancient oak with the gaping hollow, on which men in overalls had been working earlier on. He saw the cement mixer beside the tree.
Everybody in the house knew the tree was being provided with a cement base. Nagle had a brainwave. Picking up the tiny body, he carried it to the oak and lowered it inside the hollow, into the still unset cement. Then he got busy, pouring more cement over the body. He succeeded in immuring Sonya inside the hollow – but lost his ring in the process. Nagle’s signet ring fell off his finger and remained under the layers of cement, with the body. Nagle realized that only when it was too late. By then the place was swarming with police. Hence his agitation, which Antonia well remembered. And there he was now, twenty years on, hearing the voice of Mrs Ralston-Scott, Twiston’s current chatelaine, talking of her intention to have the oak sawn down. The realization that the cutting of the tree would inevitably result in the discovery not only of Sonya’s body, but of his signet ring as well, must have hit him hard – which explained his shocked expression.
Walking out of the club, Antonia stood on the steps in the shimmering heat, looking round, trying to locate Major Nagle. The next moment she saw him further down the street, entering his car, a battered Ford. She saw him start the engine. In some desperation she cast round looking for means of transport. There was only one thought in her mind – follow him, don’t let him out of your sight.
As luck would have it, a taxi drew up and an elderly gentleman accompanied by a younger one got out. Antonia signalled to the driver and ran up to the taxi. She got into the passenger seat and said in a breathless voice, ‘Follow that car. Quick!’ Sweat was pouring down her face.
Not even in her wildest imagination had she seen herself in a situation like that. The driver stared at her. ‘He
