coiffed and she wore thick bifocal glasses, which kept sliding down her nose.
There had been only the slightest hesitation on his and Antonia’s part when Lady Grylls had suggested that they spend the last leg of their honeymoon at Chalfont Park. After the faded glitter of Monte Carlo and Cap Ferrat – which hadn’t been as louche as they’d expected – Shropshire was just what they needed.
Chalfont Park was a moderately large house and in average working order, seventeenth-century in origin, eighteenth-century in atmosphere, gently Gothicized at the turn of the nineteenth by a Grylls who, one imagined, had got bored with the Palladian decorum around him, or found it too overpowering. After visiting the house in the thawing slush of 2nd March 1942 James Lees-Milne had described it in his diary as ‘pleasantly unstuffy – something tongue-in-cheek about it – not really suitable for the National Trust, due to the various alterations’.
Major Payne looked round the spacious drawing room with its shabby chintz sofas and chairs, occasional tables, 1930s cocktail cabinets and pictures in gilded frames on the walls, a Moorish Riff knife with an ornate handle and a long slender blade casually lying on the blood-red speckled marble mantelpiece, its point pressed against one of the two photographs of Corinne Coreille, his aunt’s French god-daughter. Payne smiled. It did seem the perfect setting for some old-fashioned detective drama. He knew Antonia didn’t like him saying things like that, so he didn’t.
‘Back to l’affaire CC,’ he went on. ’Why aren’t the police involved?’
‘Good question. They should be, shouldn’t they^? Well, when I asked Corinne, she got worked up. Said it would be bad for her career, the wrong kind of publicity, couldn’t I see? I don’t know what to make of it.’ Lady Grylls shook her head. ‘It’s so unreal, if you know what I mean. First Corinne’s call from Paris. Out of the blue. Her first call in years, saying someone wants to kill her! I had to pinch myself. Then, only a couple of minutes later, another phone call, would you believe it? This time from some private detective agency acting on Corinne’s behalf.’
‘French detectives?’
‘English. The call came from London. Corinne hadn’t so much as mentioned them! An elderly duffer’s voice. A Mr Jonson. Droning away. Mademoiselle Coreille had employed their services before. Mademoiselle Coreille was a highly valued client. By that,’ Lady Grylls added with a sardonic curl of her lip, ‘he must mean that the silly gel paid him a fortune in fees.’
How many people still said ‘gel’ instead of ‘girl’? Antonia wondered about the vagaries of upper-class pronunciation. ‘Could the whole thing be some elaborate hoax?’ she suggested. ‘Today is 1st April after all.’
‘April Fool, eh? Of course it is. That’s the kind of thing Peverel would do.’ Peverel was Lady Grylls’s other nephew, the one, she had told Antonia, of whom she was not fond. ‘Oh well, I’d be only too glad if it turned out to be a hoax. But somehow I don’t think it was. The poor gel sounded genuinely frightened.’
‘Hardly a gel,’ Major Payne said. ‘She is fifty-five. I am only two and a half years younger than her. Am I a boy to you?’
‘Of course you are, darling. You’ll always be a boy to me. Though I must admit it is easier with Corinne. You do look grown-up, you see, while she – I mean, look at her.’ Lady Grylls waved her hand towards the mantelpiece. ‘In one of those photos she is twenty-five, in the other forty-six. Can you tell which is which? I can’t. Not without looking at the dates on the back.’
‘She looks the same age in both,’ Antonia said. ‘No more than twenty-something.’
‘Precisely my point, my dear. Twenty-something. Extraordinary, isn’t it?’
‘Perhaps she’s had plastic surgery.’
‘I wouldn’t be in the least surprised. She might even have had it several times. They do, don’t they? Show business people. Entertainers. Singers and actors and suchlike. Especially those with trademark faces. Corinne’s trademark is her fringe, of course. She’s had her fringe since she was thirteen.’
‘When was the last time you saw her?’ Antonia asked.
‘The week after Rory’s funeral. Goodness, how time flies. We met in Paris. At a cafe overlooking the Jardin du Luxembourg. Thirteen years ago, that’s it. People stared at her the moment she entered. Started nudging each other. They recognized her at once, despite the fact she had enormous dark glasses on. Corinne had a minder tagging along after her – is that what you call them? Some pasty-faced woman in a trouser suit and a cloche hat, who sat discreetly at another table, ordered a brioche and coffee, and pretended she was on her own. It was a lovely day. Paris is at its best in spring. I needed to take my mind off things, you see. Rory had left his affairs in a mess. You couldn’t come, darling, could you?’ She turned to her nephew. ‘Or could you? I don’t mean Paris – your uncle’s funeral.’
‘I couldn’t. I was in Kabul.’
‘Oh yes. One of those hush-hush jobs. Tracking down drug traffickers, I suppose. Now of course it would be terrorists.’ Lady Grylls took a sip of tea. ‘Corinne nibbled at a meringue. What did we talk about? I think I moaned about Chalfont and servants. I told her about Rory’s funeral and she was sympathetic, but what she wanted to know – what she really wanted to know about were the floral tributes. She kept asking a lot of rather odd questions. Had there been delphiniums? Had there been orchids? What about tiger lilies?’
‘Is Corinne – odd?’ asked Antonia after a little pause.
‘Well, when she was a child she sniffed at a cat and nearly died of it. Came out in the most dreadful red blotches. And when she became famous she put two portraits of Napoleon on her bedroom wall, apparently. No one would have thought she had an authoritarian bone in her body! Well, she’s had an illustrious career and made pots of money – but that was all thanks to her clever impresario, I think. Mr Lark. All Corinne’s ever done is sing. She’s never had to do anything else. What was that cliche that’s always used to describe somebody like Corinne?’
‘She’s led a hothouse kind of existence?’ Payne suggested.
‘Completely out of touch with reality… People say that about the upper classes, don’t they, so tiresome – the Queen never using credit cards and wearing such ludicrous hats -’ Lady Grylls’s hands sketched an improbable shape above her head – ‘but heaven knows it’s performers, actors and singers and suchlike, that are the real oddballs. I mean, who’s more peculiar, tell me quickly – poor old Prince Charles or that very strange boy who can’t make up his mind whether he wants to be black or -’ Lady Grylls broke off. ‘You know the one. He’s had an awful lot of trouble. He denies it all of course.’
‘We know the one,’ Payne said. ‘Well, darling, I’d say both are equally peculiar… So, what’s happening exactly? Corinne’s coming to England in her jet and landing on your croquet lawn -’
‘They wouldn’t be able to find my croquet lawn even if they tried, it’s so terribly overgrown. Gardeners cost the earth. She didn’t mention a jet. She might have one, mind. She’s terribly rich. I wish I were as rich. Her sales in South Korea alone have made her a millionaire twice over – and that was back in 1981, I read somewhere
… She proposes to stay with me, yes. She seems to believe that Chalfont will make a good bolt-hole for her. She’s coming the day after tomorrow, 3rd April.’
‘For how long?’
‘She didn’t say! Till this thing blows over, I suppose, if that’s the right way of putting it. She didn’t even ask whether it would be convenient.’ Lady Grylls gave a mirthless guffaw. ‘She seems to be taking it for granted that it will be all right. She’s got houses all over the place – Florida, Geneva, a villa in Antibes, and I don’t know where else – yet she’s coming to Chalfont.’
Antonia murmured, ‘She clearly believes she will be safest here. A haven of peace in the midst of turmoil.’
Payne nodded. ‘Pax in bello.’
‘Pax in bello be blowed! Why should she believe any such thing? Yes, yes, she’s been here before, but she was only three or four then – her mamma brought her. She’s seen photographs of Chalfont, of course. What I mean is, the house is jolly isolated,’ Lady Grylls went on. ‘There’s no moat or wall – no barbed wire – nothing to deter intruders – no armed sentinels. If someone wanted to cut her throat or shoot her, there’d be no way of stopping them, would there?’
‘Perhaps she’ll bring her own bodyguards.’
Lady Grylls groaned. ‘Her entourage. What am I going to do about her entourage? She mentioned a Maitre Maginot. I am sure there will be others.’ Lady Grylls counted on her fingers. ‘Her personal maid, her make-up artist, her masseuse – um, what else is there?’
‘Fitness instructor – nutritionist?’ Antonia suggested.
‘Yes… Her personal chiropodist too, as likely as not – these people are so spoilt – or do I mean chiromancer?’ Lady Grylls frowned.
‘She probably has one of each.’
