military men, she reflected, certainly not of majors. The only thing that bristled in the majors she had once known was their moustaches! Winifred laughed and pretended to cough when she saw the driver glance at her curiously.
Hugh was very much the gentleman scholar type. She could see his finely boned head bent over an outsize edition of the OED, a magnifying glass in his hand, though he would look equally good on the moor. On the moor he would be clad in a Victorian shooting jacket in heavy blue and grey tweed, belted and with four patch pockets with the flaps buttoned down, a light blue shirt, red tie (the only vaguely rakish element in his attire), dark grey corduroy trousers and black gloves. Hugh would be surrounded by adoring dogs and of course he would be smoking his pipe.
Well, if she had not already been spoken for, she might have fallen for Hugh. Winifred smiled. Cliches had a comic charm of their own!
Would Tancred be jealous if he suspected her of falling for another man? Tancred seemed always so terribly preoccupied with his literary efforts, forever in a world of his own, but Winifred felt certain he would become jealous if she were to give him cause to be – not that she ever would!
She remembered how, on entering the Villa Byzantine for the very first time, she had stood inside the hall that smelled so sweetly of beeswax, rose petals and lavender, how she had spread out her arms and thought, I have arrived.
As a matter of fact, Hugh and Antonia were right to suspect Miss Hope of having killed Stella. Winifred nodded to herself. She wouldn’t put anything past that faded spinster with her phoney pince-nez and her Ivy Compton-Burnett hairnet.
Miss Hope was already guilty of deception on a grand scale. Miss Hope’s accounts of life at the royal palace in Sofia were nothing but a figment of her warped imagination. A farrago of lies. Miss Hope had blended fact and fiction – like the story of Prince Cyril’s affair with a cabaret singer. Well, Cyril had had an affair with a cabaret singer called Victoria – one of many – but he had never actually had her living in a lodge in the grounds of his brother’s palace.
There had been no lodge, as Tancred had so cleverly discovered. And of course Prince Cyril had never had a son called Clement – or Clemmie, as Miss Hope insisted on referring to him. Prince Cyril had never played with a samurai sword, nor had he been an Edgar Wallace aficionado. Miss Hope had made all that up. Miss Hope was nothing but a delirious fabulist, a serial liar.
Winifred had given the matter very careful consideration and reached the conclusion that it wouldn’t be inappropriate if it was Miss Hope herself who undid the damage she had done. The architect who constructs a poor edifice should do the demolition job herself. Why should Winifred do somebody else’s dirty work?
Besides, Miss Hope needed to be punished. Yes. Miss Hope had become too big for her boots. Miss Hope was turning into a proper nuisance. Miss Hope seemed to have got it into her head that Tancred was in love with her. Call me Catherine, indeed!
Winifred looked into the mirror. Miss Hope’s carefully arranged white hair was as stiff as a wig, her hairnet was in place, the lines on either side of her mouth were deeper than ever before, which suggested that not only age but her sins as well had finally caught up with her, only this time she was wearing her gold-rimmed half-moon glasses, not the pince-nez with the black ribbon.
Winifred was going to make sure that Miss Hope did the right thing. She would watch over her like the proverbial hawk. Miss Hope was tricky. There were indications that Miss Hope didn’t like the idea of reaping what she had sown. That must be the reason for her looking so down in the mouth. Miss Hope was feeling humiliated and she resented it. Oh, how she resented it!
Miss Hope might be tempted to cause greater destruction than she needed, out of sheer spite. Smash Tancred’s computer with her umbrella – reduce Tancred’s Chinamen to smithereens – splash ink all over Tancred’s gold-and-green study – rip his curtains apart, even! It would be the final flick of the serpent’s tail.
Desecrating Tancred’s den, the lovely Pupil Room, would be an act of wanton malevolence, but Winifred wouldn’t put anything past Miss Hope. No, I mustn’t take any chances with her, Winifred thought. She didn’t care for the malicious glint in Miss Hope’s eye. There was also something sly and calculating about Miss Hope’s expression. Did the old witch believe she could outwit her?
Did Miss Hope kill the preposterous Stella and then plant Winifred’s handkerchief beside the body? That was a definite possibility. Miss Hope must hate Winifred as much as she hated Miss Hope. That hadn’t always been the case, though. Winifred frowned. She had a vague notion that a link of some kind existed between them…
Winifred found herself thinking of the day Stella died. It had been a Tuesday. She couldn’t say what she had done that day. Her memory was a complete blank. The only thing she remembered was returning all the manuscripts her publishers had asked her to read and evaluate with a note saying she was too busy, dealing with an important private matter.
(Could she have been at the Villa Byzantine that day?)
‘Where did you say the house was, madam?’ Winifred heard the taxi driver’s voice. ‘What number?’
‘Further down the road… I don’t think there is a number… Yes, that’s it. You can stop here. It’s only a short distance.’
‘Is that a tunnel? Blimey. Wouldn’t you like me to drive you to the house?’
‘No, thank you, my good man. There’s nothing I enjoy better than a bracing walk,’ she said crisply. ‘It’s such fine weather.’
‘Looks like rain,’ he muttered.
‘I have my trusty old umbrella with me.’
‘There may be a storm.’
‘So kind of you to care, but I am not in the least afraid of storms.’
She paid him and got out. What an impudent fellow! She glanced up with narrowed eyes. The skies glared down at her like the polished interior of an angry oyster shell. ‘The many-splendoured weather of an English day,’ she heard Miss Hope murmur.
Winifred remained silent. She hadn’t liked the way the driver had been looking at her. She feared he might decide to linger and spy on her… Follow her even… No – he was gone… Thank God!
She entered the tunnel. Above her, sinister yews spread their sombre branches like the roof-span of a crypt. She thought, I must be very careful now. I am dealing with a woman who is as unpredictable as she is unbalanced.
Halfway down the tunnel of trees she heard what sounded like the slamming of a car door somewhere.
32
The Exterminating Angel
A lugubrious El Greco horizon suffused with inky rain – a sudden flash of lightning darting across the sky, then a second one. The driver had mentioned a storm. It’s the kind of setting that lends itself to melodrama, she thought.
Under the low-hanging clouds the Villa Byzantine loomed, gloom-shrouded and desolate. More yews – thick and black and forbidding. Why did she keep noticing yews? Yews were said to be symbols of death.
An earlier splash of rain had soaked the fallen leaves into a paste of dark slush under her feet. Miss Hope exclaimed, ‘Oh dear, look at me. Up to my eyes in mud. People will think I have been playing catch-as-catch-can with pigs!’
Winifred Willard didn’t say a word. She stood by the front door, opened her handbag and took out the key. She had managed to have a replica made of one of Tancred’s keys – she’d never told him, but she didn’t think he would mind. No, of course he wouldn’t.
She unlocked the door and went in. She stood in the hall and breathed in the sweet smell of lavender, beeswax and pot-pourri. She smiled again, remembering those fifties American films. Honey, I’m home! It was always the husband who said it, the wife was invariably in the kitchen, baking a cake.
There was a clap of thunder. All the window panes rattled. Although it was only morning, the hall was dark. She didn’t really like this house. It had a certain – atmosphere. She wouldn’t have called it a happy house. No. The
