‘Needless to say, Tancred and I “clicked” at once. Our very first meeting felt as though it had been pre- ordained. It was exactly as I had imagined it would be. We sat facing each other and we talked and talked! We couldn’t keep the smiles off our faces. It felt as though he and I had known each other all our lives.’
There was a pause. Payne remembered something de Clerambault had written. That patients with this particular delusional disorder frequently cast a quasi-religious veil over their feelings. Patients were unlikely to seek help since they did not regard themselves as ill.
He cleared his throat. ‘Going back to what we were saying earlier on, do you think it at all possible that it was Miss Hope who killed Stella?’
Winifred remained thoughtful for a moment or two, then said quietly, ‘What would her motive have been?’
‘Perhaps Stella tumbled to her secret? Discovered she was an impostor?’
‘Yes… That is possible.’ Something like a shadow passed across Winifred Willard’s face and her expression changed a little. Her smile faded. She looked confused.
‘Did you know that a bloodstained handkerchief bearing the initials WW was found by Stella’s dead body?’
‘No. How extraordinary. I had no idea.’
‘Do you think it might be yours?’
Oh dear, Antonia thought.
‘I don’t think so.’ Winifred slowly rose from her seat. ‘I believe my sister is calling me. I am sorry. I will need to go upstairs. Would you mind frightfully if I said au revoir?’
Antonia and Payne stood up. Their visit was at an end. They hadn’t heard anyone call.
31
Divided We Stand
It was a bland golden morning, but oh so deceitful! At around eight o’clock the sky was as bright as a jewel and she stood in the back garden, holding up her hands to the sun, but then suddenly and without any warning a mist descended between her and the brilliant young red willow and chilled her to the bone. Quarter of an hour later the electric coffee pot gave her an electric shock, which for a minute or two staggered her considerably. Such an alarming kind of pain, she thought – a kind of abstract snakebite.
She heard Melisande moan in her room – what was she saying? Watch over her in the Labyrinth… Protect her from the Voices… Protect her from the Visions. Were those lines from a play or a prayer? For whose protection was her sister pleading? Had Melisande got it into her head that Winifred might be in danger? Had Melisande lost her mind completely?
The night before, Winifred had started putting her plan into action.
She had phoned Tancred and arranged to meet him at the British Library. He had sounded taken aback, poor boy, but he had agreed to it. She had pretended to be the Other – that ridiculous Miss Hope! She said she had something of vital importance to impart to him. A matter of life and death, no less. It was a melodramatic way of putting it and she had spoken breathlessly. It was not Miss Hope’s usual style, but then old ladies were notoriously unpredictable. Oh, how she hated Miss Hope! How she despised her. Well, today was going to be Miss Hope’s last outing. Yes.
Winifred Willard laughed happily. It wouldn’t be so very odd for a woman in her early eighties to disappear suddenly and without a trace, would it? Miss Hope might stumble into some black hole – the kind of place where bogus nannies vanished, perhaps? The Hole of Lost Hope?
Two hours later, still laughing, she walked out of the front door of Kinderhook.
The world is remorseless, vast, inexorable in its operations – and Tancred needs protection from it.
Her lips moved as she walked briskly down the street and hailed a taxi with her umbrella. He needs me, she whispered. He needs me. He needs me.
The thought gave her wings.
She was on her way to correct her mistake. Her one folly. It was imperative that she remove the one obstacle to their happiness. What she had done, she would undo.
‘St John’s Wood,’ she told the taxi driver. ‘Place called the Villa Byzantine. I’d be happy to direct you. Or perhaps you know it? It is the most striking house. Like something out of a fairy tale.’
At the conclusion of their last meeting, Tancred had told her that his editor had contacted a Professor Goldsworthy – an authority on European royalty in exile who apparently knew everything there was to know about the Bulgarian royal family and life at the palace in Sofia between the wars – and asked him to take a look at what Tancred had written so far. Tancred had said he would send all his notes to Professor Goldsworthy by the end of the week – electronically – as an attachment.
The news had come to Winifred as a shock. She realized that Goldsworthy would see at once that Miss Hope’s ‘reminiscences’ were nothing but brazen fabrications. Goldsworthy was sure to say that, to the best of his knowledge, no such person as ‘Miss Hope’ had ever existed. Poor Tancred would be made to look an incompetent fool. Even though it was all Miss Hope’s fault, some blame would invariably attach to him. His publishers – the immeasurably insignificant Fleur-de-Lis Press – might start questioning Tancred Vane’s integrity, the trustworthiness of his previous royal biographies. They might decide they didn’t want to commission any more books from him. Poor Tancred would be distraught, devastated. Royal biographies were his life!
No. She couldn’t allow any of that to happen. She needed to undo the damage. She would certainly make a clean breast of what she’d done – nothing but a full confession would do! She would explain to Tancred – humbly and apologetically – the exact reason she had acted the way she had – but she would do it in her own time. Not under duress. Not as a result of ‘exposure’. She would confess to Tancred after they had been married a month or two, perhaps. Yes. She was sure Tancred would understand. Of course he would understand. To love was to forgive.
Tancred loved her.
But the book – that so-called biography – had to disappear first.
She intended to make it look like an accident. One of those unaccountable calamities. Writing was known to disappear from computers without a trace. She had heard the most incredible stories. Viruses were often blamed for it. The Trojan Horse. The Bayley Bitch. She laughed. Such outlandish names!
She also intended to take the notebook in which Tancred had recorded everything she told him – all those preposterous stories she had made up! The notebook would also disappear without a trace. She would burn it, then scatter the ashes.
Winifred had no qualms about what she was going to do.
‘I think someone’s interested in you,’ the taxi driver said, his eyes on the mirror.
‘You are absolutely right. Someone is interested in me. I regard myself as an extremely fortunate woman,’ Winifred said happily. She didn’t quite hear what the driver said next – something about a car tailing them?
That was an odd little episode last night, she thought. She had to admit she didn’t quite know what to make of it. Hugh and Antonia were a highly civilized couple of the kind she and Tancred would be very soon. Hugh and Antonia seemed to suspect Miss Hope of beheading Stella. It was Hugh who had voiced the suspicion. Although Antonia had said nothing, it was clear her mind was working along the same lines.
One had only to look at them and one immediately knew how close they were, how alike. Two minds with but a single thought. Like her and Tancred. One didn’t often come across couples that moved in such perfect harmony. Perhaps when she and Tancred had been imparadised in one another’s arms, as Milton so aptly put it, they would become best friends with the Paynes? They had so much in common! They could visit the theatre together, then dine at Le Caprice or the Ivy. They would have the most interesting and stimulating conversations about literature and the arts and the crowned heads of Europe.
Hugh had such a straight nose and such steady blue eyes. She had noticed at once not only his fine features, but also the lineaments of intellectual power, even of nobility. She also liked the way he parted his hair. It was of course Hugh’s intelligence that had impressed her most. Hugh simply bristled with ideas. Not a common feature of
