Murder of Gonzago

‘She’d have none of it. She looked furious. She clenched her fists and raised them above her head and shook them, as if summoning to her all thunderbolts and lightnings … Well, if the worst had come to the worst, I’d have had to shut my eyes and think of — no, not of England — of Grenadin.’ Clarissa pulled a funny face indicative of rueful acceptance of her predicament.

‘Where is she?’

‘Aunt Hortense? I believe Mama is upstairs — Aunt Hortense and Mama are the same person, you see. How silly it sounds. I must get used to calling her Mama. She really cares about me. I’ve pledged never to be horrid to her. Mama wanted to have a word with Roderick. She seemed cross, oh so cross- Where are you going?’

34

The Beast Must Die

‘You don’t know who I am, do you?’

‘That looks like one of the guns from the gun room. You shouldn’t mess around with guns, you know. Highly dangerous. What if it’s loaded?’

‘It is loaded. The ammunition was in the desk. You don’t seem to change your habits. You never lock anything up. Same as at La Sorciere.’

‘You made a big mistake at La Sorciere. You risk making another mistake now.’

‘Let me be the judge of that.’

‘You should get a new pair of glasses, perhaps?’

‘I hate you,’ she said.

‘Those one hates live for ever.’

‘So you don’t know who I am?’

‘You are my Anima. That’s a psychological term denoting the denied female element of the male psyche. Denied but desired.’ Lord Remnant picked up his glass. ‘Of course I know who you are, you old fool. You are Miss Baedeker. You are Clarissa’s dotty old aunt.’

‘I am five years younger than you.’

‘I’d never have thought it possible.’ He shook his head. ‘Well, men age differently from women. May I suggest you leave my room at once? In the next hour or so I shall be frightfully busy. I don’t want to be discourteous, but I’ve got things to do. Unfinished business, you may say. It’s all rather delicate. Not for your tender ears. It may shock you. You’d probably say I had a genius for defilement.’

Hortense Tilling didn’t lower the gun. Her eyes behind the glasses looked at him steadily. ‘I thought you guessed that night. I thought you recognized me.’

‘Go away, Aunt Hortense.’ He waved his hands. ‘Shoo!’ Definitely a few stamps short of the first-class rate, he thought. Wouldn’t be able to tell a hawk from a handsaw, if one accepted that feat as an adequate criterion of sanity.

‘Look at me.’ She took off her glasses. There were tears in her eyes. ‘We met — years ago.’

‘No day is so dead as the day before yesterday,’ he said.

‘We met at the party at the Bruce-Daltons’. On the fifth of June.’

‘As a matter of fact, I used to know some people called Bruce-Dalton. I wonder if they are the same Bruce- Daltons. Do you mean we met at the Bruce-Daltons’? My memory is not what it used to be. Place in Blenheim Mews?’

‘Yes. You and I were at the party. I had no idea who you were. Who you really were. I believe you were wearing disguise. You pretended to be a foreigner. You introduced yourself as a Frenchman called Pierre La Russe.’

He took a gulp of malt. ‘One of my sobriquets, I imagine. Long time ago. No recollection of it at all. I’ll have to take your word for it.’

‘You asked me to dance. Then you brought me a drink. I don’t think I really liked you, but you were very persistent. I couldn’t shake you off. Then something happened. The room and everybody in it went fuzzy. Then I found I was in a cab with you.’

‘That seems to ring a bell, but only because that was the sort of thing that happened quite often at one time … You were a deb?’

‘I remember nothing after the cab. You spiked my drink, didn’t you?’

He shrugged. ‘I might have done. What if I did? It was the kind of thing I did every now and then. It doesn’t kill, you know. Just makes you soft and pliant. You must have been quite pretty. Pretty but obdurate. I wouldn’t have done it otherwise.’

‘You took me somewhere. I remember nothing. Nothing at all. I woke up late in the morning, feeling dreadful.’

‘Dreadful? Really? I believe it was jolly powerful stuff. Or maybe I overdosed you. Can’t remember the technical name now. Aide d’amour, that’s what I called it,’ Lord Remnant said thoughtfully. ‘Cost me a pretty penny, I think. I didn’t have that much money in those days, you know.’

‘Bastard,’ she said.

‘Hard to come by stuff like that in the sixties. No internet shopping in those days. No websites offering naughty meds. Why, in the name of Beelzebub, are you looking at me like that? So what if we spent a night together? We were young and impulsive. Must you make a song and dance about it?’

‘You stole my bracelet.’

‘Well, that’s the kind of thing I did. The action of a cad, I agree.’ He was getting impatient.

‘None of it was my fault,’ Hortense said, ‘but I have lived with a sense of guilt ever since. I have been blaming myself. The shame never left me.’

‘I’d rather you didn’t start expounding the complications of your psyche just now. I can’t help you, you know. I am no specialist. Have you considered going into therapy? Find yourself a good shrink? You may discover it is all a false memory.’

‘Monster,’ she said. ‘Beast.’

‘Get thee to a nunnery … How about religion? Why don’t you try religion?’

‘You deserve to die.’

‘You seem determined to utterly crush the optimistic streak in my nature.’ He gave a sigh.

‘You ruined my life. You ruined my daughter’s life.’

‘Don’t be so damned melodramatic. I don’t know your daughter.’

‘You don’t know what happened, do you?’ She spoke in a choked voice.

‘I must admit to being thoroughly fogged. It was all a long time ago. No day is so dead as the day before yesterday, I keep telling you.’ His eyes were on the gun in her hand.

‘I got pregnant,’ she said. ‘Nine months later I gave birth to a baby girl.’

‘Really? You mean I had a child?’

‘You have a child.’

‘It is alive? You didn’t have an abortion?’

‘No.’

‘Stupid and irresponsible.’ He shook his head. ‘Such compulsive urges to replicate are usually associated with cancer cells.’

‘I couldn’t bring myself to have an abortion. I was confused — frightened — I was at my wits’ end — I cried a lot — I felt great affection for my unborn child — I discovered I had a strong maternal instinct-’

‘I hate haranguing, Aunt Hortense, I really do, but self-analysis can actually cause an awful lot of damage to the psyche. I know Freud did it, but he had the advantage of, well, of being Freud.’ Lord Remnant wondered if he could disarm her if he pounced on her. He wasn’t as agile as he once was. ‘So we have a child? That’s a cause for celebration, don’t you think?’