‘I am sorry, James, but I have very little patience where that girl is concerned. I find her tiresome beyond endurance. She was outside the house this morning.’
‘Moon was outside your house? Are you sure it was her?’
‘Of course it was her! She was wearing that disgusting shinel.’
‘What was she doing?’
‘Standing and staring, James. Standing and staring. Indulging her penchant for meddlesome intrusion. Spying – writing things down, in what looked like a notebook – trying to intimidate us! She’s got a screw loose, that much is clear. We nearly called the police. Poor Win said it gave her the heebie-jeebies, looking at that girl, though I believe it was me Moon was after. She hates me.’
‘She must have been playing at detectives. She-’
‘She is a bitch, James. A manipulative bitch. She is twisting you round her little finger.’ Melisande smoothed her peignoir with her hand. ‘I am sorry, darling, but sometimes it is best to be brutally honest. Do you know what? I pray for you incessantly. You can move in here, if you like,’ she added casually, giving his earlobe a playful tweak. ‘How about it?’
‘Don’t do that, please.’ The way he drew back, she might have announced a leprous condition. ‘Thank you, but I’m afraid that – that will be quite impossible.’
‘Impossible? I suppose you need more time to recover?’
‘I think so. Yes. I need more time – and space. My own space.’
Melisande rose slowly to her feet. Her expression didn’t change, but the turmoil inside her frightened her. It was only with great difficulty that she resisted the temptation to claw his face or strangle him with his black tie. Examining her long red fingernails, she asked him if he wanted another cup of tea.
‘No, thank you.’
She sighed. ‘We seem to have been overtaken by events,’ she said obscurely. ‘How is the investigation progressing? They haven’t yet caught the killer, have they?’
‘Not as far as I know. There has been nothing in the papers or on TV. I have no idea what is going on.’
‘So they still don’t know who did it. You don’t think it’s the girl?’
‘What girl?’
‘The daughter, James. Stella’s girl. The offensive offspring. Moon. Didn’t you say the police found her hankie not far from her mother’s body and that it was dripping blood?’
‘The police thought it was her handkerchief, but they were wrong. It has the initials MM on it, but it is not her handkerchief. She’s not the only one with the initials MM. It could be anybody’s handkerchief.’
‘Indeed it could be.’ An icy calm descended upon Melisande. ‘It could be my friend Lady Mariota Madrigal’s – only she happens to be in Acapulco at the moment. It could also be Marcel Marceau’s, the French mime artist. Or is he dead? The handkerchief could also be yours, you know.’
‘I am not in the mood for jokes.’
‘Your second name is Morgan. You told me your parents used to call you Morgan when you were a boy and how much you hated it.’ She laughed. ‘Morgan Morland – sounds a bit silly, I agree, but it matches those initials perfectly.’
‘It’s a woman’s handkerchief.’
‘Well, darling, some men get a kick out of carrying feminine articles about their person. Lipsticks and powder compacts and bottles of nail varnish. Some men wear their girlfriends’ silk stockings wrapped tightly about their bodies. It’s called fetish, James. One meets more fetishists than farmers, according to statistics, socially, I mean, though of course, one doesn’t realize it – it isn’t something one sees written on their foreheads. Soft materials can be a particular turn-on-’
‘I am not in the mood for jokes,’ Morland said again.
‘I am absolutely, utterly, profoundly serious. What if I told you it was my handkerchief?’
‘It isn’t your handkerchief.’
‘My unwed and unweddable sister gave me such a peculiar look when I announced Stella’s death to her. Win didn’t seem to believe that it was you who’d phoned me and told me about it. I have an idea she’s been avoiding me.’
‘Why should she want to do that?’ Morland spoke absently. He looked at his watch.
‘I believe she is afraid of me. Perhaps she’s got it into her head it was I who killed Stella? Perhaps she thinks I am MM? My middle name, after all, is Mariah. Melisande Mariah.’
‘Your middle name is not Mariah. You have no middle name.’
‘You are right, I haven’t. But I have a good motive for Stella’s murder. Stella stole you away from me. I have been consumed by jealousy – devoured – tormented – crazed! My pride has been severely wounded. Perhaps I decided to get rid of her, so that I could have you back? Perhaps, unlike the cat in the adage, I didn’t let I dare not wait upon I would?’
‘What cat?’
Really, Melisande thought, he is rather stupid. He will never belong to the aristocracy of the mind, as Proust or somebody put it. And he is so fat and so pink. Heaven knows why I am so terribly keen on binding his faithless heart to mine. Of wanting to unite my destiny with his. This is quite the wrong kind of obsession.
‘Do you think I killed Stella, James?’
‘Of course I don’t. I need to go now.’ He stood up. ‘Thanks for the tea.’
‘Don’t mention it. The eager way you gulped it down, it might have been the elixir of life. Goodness, you do exude clerical severity. Must you wear black? That rather tedious police inspector wanted to know where I was on the fatal day and I said I was at home, but I wasn’t. Has it never occurred to you that good murderers are often good actors? Both species have a lot in common, haven’t you noticed?’
James started walking towards the door.
‘Vain, determined, egocentric – and they possess an enviable amount of sangfroid. Both species can bluff their way through the trickiest of situations. How many times have I forgotten my lines on stage and had to improvise – and no one the wiser?’
13
Three Sisters?
‘You would never believe this, my love,’ Major Payne said, handing Antonia a gin and tonic, ‘but while you’ve been away, I got myself embroiled in murder.’
‘I have had enough of murder to last me at least a month, thank you very much. I am not starting on a new book till after Christmas.’
‘I am serious.’
‘So am I. No murder till after Christmas.’
‘A murder took place on Tuesday. At the Villa Byzantine.’
‘One thing is certain. In America they take murder mysteries much more seriously than they do here. Even if they call them “cozies”. I wish they didn’t. I believe the intention of whoever coined the phrase was to domesticate the genre, but what he, or she, succeeded in doing was to trivialize it. I strongly suspect it was a she.’
‘Remember Morland? The chap we met at Kinderhook. He’s asked me for assistance-’
‘Nobody mixes a gin and tonic quite like you.’ Antonia gave him a searching glance. ‘You look thinner. You haven’t been eating properly, have you? Omelettes, I suppose? Did your aunt have you over for dinner? She promised she would look after you.’
‘It was Stella Markoff who was murdered. Didn’t you see any English papers?’
‘No, thank God.’
Payne sat down in the chair opposite Antonia. ‘Stella was beheaded at the Villa Byzantine.’
‘Was she? By a republican, no doubt. Or perhaps it was someone who resented being bored by lectures on the future of the Bulgarian monarchy?’
‘The Villa Byzantine is in St John’s Wood. It is an architectural oddity. Faux oriental,’ Payne persisted. ‘My aunt actually went and took a peek at it. She thought it perfectly gruesome – singularly suited to a beheading.’
