Murder of Gonzago

‘No, of course not. Wouldn’t dream of it. Tradewell has. A damned silly thing to do, but then Tradewell hasn’t been himself. I’ve been humouring him.’

As though on cue, the door opened and Tradewell brought them coffee. The Remnant butler’s expression was lugubrious. His eyes were bloodshot and his lower lip trembled. He wore black. His master — his real master this time — had been cremated only a couple of days earlier. At the funeral Tradewell had created something of a stir by falling on his knees and praying with his hands clasped above his head.

Antonia was intrigued by the coffee cups — round in shape, made of thin eighteenth-century china and decorated with blue and gold phoenixes floating up from the fires beneath them.

Needless to say, the coffee was excellent.

‘Such things happen in bad dreams, from which one awakens in panic and terror,’ Payne went on. ‘At dinner that night Hortense found herself sitting opposite the man who had raped her forty-five years before, who had made her pregnant and — as though that were not enough — who, by a terrible trick of fate, had married her daughter.’

‘Who was also his daughter,’ said Antonia.

‘My brother married his own daughter,’ Gerard said meditatively. ‘Well, that’s the kind of thing Roderick would do. He was always a most peculiar fellow.’

‘Hortense told us that it was her brother-in-law who fathered Clarissa,’ Antonia said. ‘That was a lie.’

‘Clarissa is in the rather curious position of being an earl’s daughter and an earl’s relict,’ said Payne. ‘So she could be addressed as Lady Clarissa — as well as Lady Remnant.’

‘You are absolutely right, Payne. How funny. D’you think someone should give the Debrett’s people a tinkle?’

‘We believe the shock proved too great for Hortense.’ Antonia took a sip of coffee. ‘While we were waiting for the police, she told us what she felt. Horror — revulsion — outrage — an overpowering desire for revenge. She experienced a great sense of urgency, she said. Her daughter’s marriage. It was all wrong. Really wrong. It mustn’t be allowed to continue.’

‘Earlier that same day Hortense had seen Lord Remnant put the silencer on the gun,’ said Payne. ‘She knew he kept the gun in his desk. The moment she realized who he was, she left the dinner table, went up to his study and took the gun. The best time to kill him, she decided, was during the dumbshow. She admitted she had no misgivings about framing Stephan. She knew Clarissa would never allow the police to get involved. Clarissa believed Stephan had killed Quin, mistaking him for his stepfather.’

‘But it was Hortense who made that mistake,’ said Antonia.

‘We believe Lord Remnant guessed that Hortense was planning to kill him. He saw the look on her face at dinner. The shock and the dismay and the pure horror. He watched her dash out of the room like a bat out of hell. Later he discovered his gun had disappeared from his desk.’

‘He didn’t realize who she was?’

‘No, Fenwick, he didn’t. He never recognized her. He simply assumed she hated him because he had made her feel a fool. He thought her a mad old woman. He was not in the least perturbed. Well, your brother enjoyed playing games with people. He had a penchant for psychological experiments-’

‘He decided to turn Hortense’s hatred of him to his own advantage,’ said Antonia.

‘Let me get this thing clear. My brother had been planning to kill Peter Quin, but now he decided to step back and let her do his dirty work for him?’

‘Yes. He let her kill Peter Quin.’

‘That, I imagine, was the reason he felt so amused later on, as he lay doggo in his bathroom,’ said Payne. ‘The irony of the situation must have titillated him. It made him giggle.’

‘Hortense told us some of the truth when we first talked to her,’ Antonia said. ‘She admitted to being out of the room at the crucial time, so we suspected her in a vague kind of way from the very start. She said she had gone to the loo.’

‘What she in fact did was run out on the terrace, shoot the man she believed was Lord Remnant, drop the gun, then return to the drawing room,’ said Payne.

‘You are forgetting the Bottom head,’ Antonia said. ‘Before she did the shooting, she held up the Bottom head for a moment, hoping it would be seen by someone in the room. She admitted she wanted to make people believe Stephan was the killer. She knew the police would never be involved, she said.’

‘She makes a jolly interesting psychological study, don’t you think?’ Gerard Fenwick glanced at Antonia, then at Payne.

‘Absolutely fascinating,’ said Antonia.

‘I am sure Freud has written something about this sort of behaviour … We’ve got a book somewhere. There it is!’ Gerard Fenwick pointed. ‘The Loss of Reality in Neurosis and Psychosis — next to Diagnosing Depression in Donkeys.’

‘The second act of the drama took place here, at Remnant Castle. It was also the final act,’ Payne said. ‘Hortense phoned Clarissa to ask how she was and Clarissa blurted out the truth about the dead man not being really dead. Clarissa made it clear it was Peter Quin who had died.’

‘She also revealed that her husband was at Remnant,’ said Antonia. ‘She told Hortense that her husband was blackmailing her.’

‘Most importantly, Clarissa told Hortense that the marriage hadn’t been consummated, but that Lord Remnant was eager to exercise his marital rights. This decided Hortense. She came to Remnant Castle determined not to allow your brother to go to bed with Clarissa. Incest was something she simply could not allow, she said.’

‘Did you say you found the wretched woman with a smoking gun in her hand? But how the deuce did you know which room was my brother’s? The place is a bloody labyrinth. Even I get confused sometimes.’

‘It was the gunshot that sent us in the right direction.’

‘What did she do when she saw you? She didn’t try to shoot you, did she?’

‘No. She handed over the gun, then sat down and chatted to us. She sat perched forward, knees together, head bowed, the palms of her hands flat together with the fingers pointing away from her, like a nun praying.’

‘She was only too willing to fill in the gaps for us. I made her a cup of tea,’ Antonia said. ‘It was all rather cosy. When she had told us the whole story, she asked Hugh to call the police.’

Major Payne was looking out of the open window. The lawns were freshly mown, the shrubs clipped and a bevy of footmen could be seen rubbing away at the ancient statuary. Spring seemed to have come at last, with a vengeance, and little ripples of heat mist danced above the stone-flagged terrace.

‘I see you have been busy, Fenwick,’ he said.

‘One must do one’s bit. Noblesse oblige and all that kind of rot. This place used to be a veritable House of Usher, too macabre for words, but it all looks awfully pretty now, doesn’t it, in an Arcadian kind of way?’

‘Indeed it does … What are the advantages of being an earl, if you don’t mind my asking?’

‘The advantages, Payne? Are there advantages? Well, it’s easier to get a table in a restaurant. Or a seat at the Coronation, I imagine. I’d enjoy that. Though heaven knows when that’s going to be.’

‘Are there any disadvantages?’

‘Of course there are. Some people seem to think that if one’s an earl, one is an absolute bloody fool. That’s perhaps why I haven’t been able to get any publisher interested in my stuff. They are all socialists, aren’t they? The irony is that I am something of a socialist m’self.’

‘No, not all of them,’ Antonia said. ‘Incidentally, those extracts you let me read earlier on show great promise. Only you should try to complete things, you know.’

‘I am afraid I’m not frightfully disciplined.’ Gerard Fenwick sighed. ‘Well, my next effort will be something in your line, Antonia, and I have every intention of completing it. A detective story, which will also be a multi-layered psychodrama … I found your deductions frightfully stimulating. I say, would you like one of my cigars, Payne?’

‘I would. Davidoff Grand Cru?’

‘Yes, they are awfully good.’

‘Thank you, Fenwick. I mean Remnant.’