‘Where are you? What – what’s that noise?’ Morland glanced from Payne to Antonia. He looked like a trapped animal. ‘What do you mean, after you? Who is after you?’
The police, Antonia thought. The police were after her.
‘You aren’t driving, are you?’ Morland groaned. She was driving his car – the second car. Antonia went on filling in the gaps. The police were after her. It was all over. It should have happened sooner. Poor lovelorn Winifred needn’t have died.
‘I love you too – please stop the car – you may have an accident – you have nothing to fear!’ Morland cried, throwing all caution to the winds.
‘Actually, she has everything to fear,’ Payne said in a loud voice. ‘The game is up, Morland.’
Antonia wished Hugh didn’t use such melodramatic phrases.
‘Hello? Moon? Hello? Hello?’ Morland slumped down heavily on the sofa. He gazed wildly at Payne. ‘An owl? Did you say an owl?’ Some kind of realization seemed to have dawned on him. His face was grey, ashen. ‘But-’
It was the owl that had sent shivers down his spine the day before. He had remembered.
Moon had told him her mother had mentioned the owl to her, but Stella couldn’t have known about it! Vane had bought the owl the day Stella was killed. After she was killed. Vane had shown him the owl while they were sitting in the library at the Villa Byzantine.
Morland remembered the exact sequence of events. Vane had poured out two drinks, then gone up to the round table in the middle of the room and reached for one of the packages he had brought with him earlier on. The owl had been in a red cardboard box with golden stripes. There had been a blue star in the middle of the lid.
‘Bought it this morning. For Pupil Room. That’s what I call my study. Clever birds, owls. Symbolize the wisdom of the author-’
Vane had babbled on. He had been a little hysterical.
No, Stella couldn’t have seen the owl. At the time Vane opened the red box with the yellow stripes and the blue star, Stella had been dead. Her body had been lying in Vane’s drawing room. Yet Moon told him that her mother had mentioned Vane’s owl to her. Since her mother couldn’t have done any such thing, since Morland hadn’t told her about the owl either, there was only one conclusion to be drawn Moon had seen the owl with her own eyes.
She had been inside the Villa Byzantine. She had gone up to Vane’s study. To the so-called Pupil Room. She had actually picked up the owl and- Why in heaven’s name had she killed Winifred?
Morland covered his eyes with his hands. What sounded like a moan escaped his lips. He shook and swayed. The shock was so immense, he wondered if it would bludgeon him into some kind of unconsciousness. It’s all my fault, he thought.
He had been wrong to think her innocent. She had been to the Villa Byzantine not just once but twice… Stella… That morning… It had looked stormy… Stella had seemed preoccupied at breakfast… He had left… She and Moon had gone to the Villa Byzantine together. They must have done. Moon had driven her mother to the Villa Byzantine… In his old car. The uncool one…
Like Antonia before him, he went on filling in the gaps.
His old car – he should have got rid of it ages ago – his old jacket on the back seat – he shouldn’t have left it there – the letters in the pocket – damned careless of him – he’d asked Moon to stop writing to him, though he had to admit he had been thrilled by the things she wrote – so damned liberating – never happened to him before, that sort of thing – so flattering – the praise she heaped on him – he should have destroyed those letters – why hadn’t he destroyed the damned letters?
They watched his lips tremble, his face crumple.
Light of my loins, fire of my life – or rather the other way round. Sin and soul came into it, Payne did imagine.
Though it was doubtful whether Morland would have put it in any such Nabokovian terms.
36
I Confess
‘A folie a deux, eh?’ Lady Grylls suggested hopefully.
‘No, no, darling. They weren’t in it together,’ said Payne. ‘Nothing like Laurent and Therese Raquin or the Honeymoon Killers or Bonnie and Clyde or the Macbeths. Poor Morland had no idea what his teenage inamorata had done. When enlightenment finally came – when he realized that she had killed not only once but twice – he broke down and wept like a child.’
It was exactly three weeks later, another grey afternoon, and he and Antonia sat in Lady Grylls’ drawing room in St John’s Wood, having tea.
‘Stella signed her death warrant the moment she told Moon about Tancred Vane’s samurai sword,’ said Antonia. ‘She described the sword in some detail. She knew Moon would be interested. Stella had been anxious to “bond” with her daughter, you see.’
‘Moon decided she simply had to have the sword,’ said Payne. ‘Stella objected at first, saying it would be impossible to steal it and carry it back. Moon insisted that nothing could be easier. They would do it together.’
‘How do you know all this?’ Lady Grylls scowled. ‘Of course you are simply frantic with brains, but you couldn’t have deduced everything – could you?’
‘No, darling. We didn’t deduce everything. The girl confessed. The girl seems rather proud of what she has done. She is completely without remorse. A callous attention-seeking narcissist.’ Payne shook his head. ‘Once they arrested and handcuffed her, there was no stopping her. She wanted everybody to know what she had done.’
‘The police had been keeping an eye on her and they got her as she was driving at breakneck speed towards a scrapyard somewhere in East London,’ said Antonia. ‘Her intention, on her own admission, was to strip the car of its plates and abandon it there.’
‘Inspector Davidson let us listen to a recording of her recital – as a token of his gratitude.’
‘He did? Highly irregular,’ Lady Grylls said with relish.
‘Well, he was jolly grateful. It was Antonia, after all, who alerted him to some of the facts and she also gave him an idea or two.’ Payne reached out and patted his wife’s hand across the tea-table.
‘Tell me about the day of the murder.’ Lady Grylls held up her cup. ‘What happened exactly?’
‘Moon drove her mother to the Villa Byzantine in James Morland’s old car. Stella knew Vane wouldn’t be in. He had told her he was going to the British Library. She had managed to pinch one of the front door keys. She sat in the back of the car. Morland’s old jacket was lying on the seat beside her. At some point she seemed to pick up the jacket. Moon saw her bury her face in it.’
‘That’s how Stella found Moon’s letters?’
‘Yes. They were in a pocket of Morland’s jacket. Apparently they were rather frank love letters. Short – but uninhibited. There were about ten of them, I think the girl said. Morland had kept them all, stupid old fool.’
‘He is only a couple of years older than you,’ Antonia said.
‘He looks like the Ancient of Days compared to me.’ Payne waved a breezy hand. ‘Stella recognized her daughter’s handwriting at once. By the time the car drew to a halt outside the Villa Byzantine, she had worked herself up into a dreadful state.’
‘At first she said nothing – she must have been speechless with shock.’
‘Moon described her mother as looking like a “dazed zombie”. Stella unlocked the front door and they went into the drawing room,’ Payne went on. ‘Moon took the sword off the wall and unsheathed it. She delivered a couple of blows, decapitating one of Vane’s golden chrysanthemums as well as a curtain tassel. Clearly Morland was exaggerating her wrist injury!’
‘It was then that Stella started screaming,’ Antonia said, taking up the tale. ‘She stood in front of the fireplace waving the letters in the air like a flag. She demanded an explanation. Had Moon been sleeping with James? Were they really lovers? How long had it been going on?’
‘Moon told her mother to stop shouting, but Stella became even more agitated and vociferous. She said she
