Murder At The Villa Byzantine Part 10

'You've got stubble. You haven't shaved, have you?'

'It's three in the morning.'

As he walked towards the kitchen, Payne wondered if there was something particularly valuable in the drawing room that was small enough for her to pinch and drop into the shinel's no doubt bottomless pockets. One of Antonia's amber cats the tiny but exceedingly precious Wedgwood vase or perhaps his great uncle's silver snuff box?

Five past three. Payne didn't care for the appraising look she had given him. The girl's gaze seemed to hold a certain suggestive element ... He was old enough to be her grandfather ... He shouldn't have let her in ... Most unwise. Might make all sorts of claims afterwards. Must try to get rid of her as soon as possible. Put her into a cab and despatch her back to Kensington ... The tube closed at half past midnight ... How long had the girl been standing in their street?

Heaven knew when he'd be able to get back to bed, if at all ... He heard Antonia's voice coming from the drawing room. She'd come down and was talking to Moon.

Placing the three steaming cups and the tin of Fortnum & Mason's chocolate biscuits on the tray, he carried it gingerly to the drawing room.

Suddenly he was possessed by the not entirely rational conviction that Moon could not have murdered her mother, that suspecting her was a waste of time, that it was somewhere else they should be looking for the killer ...

Feast at Midnight.

'Moon's been outside since half past two,' Antonia said brightly. She was wearing her blue dressing gown.

'Dangerous, being out so late,' Payne said, placing the tray on the low table between the sofa and Moon's chair. He stole a glance at the mantelpiece: his great uncle's snuff box was still there. 'A girl, on her own ... London can be a dangerous place ... How old are you exactly?'

'Fifteen and three months. D'you think I am very young?'

'I do. Morland said you were sixteen and a half.'

'Who's Morland? Do you call James Morland? That's funny! He is such a fool.' She laughed. 'He's fat. He needs to exercise. I hate fat men. He hates me. James and my mother were locked in a lewd and lascivious cohabitation ...'

Payne glanced at the clock. 'Weren't you afraid to be out so late?'

'Nope.' Moon picked up her cup. 'G.o.d hasn't given me the spirit of fear, but of love and power and a sound mind. That's what they said at my boyfriend's church in Pennsylvania ... My ex-boyfriend ... See what I've got here.' She pushed her hand inside her shinel and drew out a piece of lead piping.

'An offensive weapon, eh?' Payne's eyebrow went up. 'If the police were to find it on you, you'd be in trouble.'

'It's for self-defence. It's dangerous to be out so late, you said that yourself. I'm already in trouble. The police think I killed my mother. I'm always in trouble.' Moon sighed. 'They kicked me out of my first school because they caught me bunning a zoot. Then I was kicked out of my second school.'

'Why was that?'

'That was because I used to write letters to teachers I liked. I know it makes me look like a psycho, but I'm totally normal. The police think I killed my mother. They never actually said it I guess it's totally against the law to make accusations without any proof.'

'And what was your midnight vigil in aid of?' Payne sat down on the sofa beside Antonia.

'I'll tell you, but you must promise not to tell the two witches.'

'If by witches you mean Melisande and Winifred, that's not a very nice way to talk. They were very kind to you,' Antonia said.

'You drank all their c.o.ke and ate most of their sandwiches and cake,' Payne put in.

'You are right. I guess I'm not a very nice person. But there are things you don't know.'

'Oh? What things?' Antonia asked. She took a sip of coffee.

'Weird things. Crazy things. Things no normal person would think of doing.'

'Really? As bad as that?' Payne said. 'This sounds terribly interesting.'

Moon nodded and smiled. She clearly enjoyed being the centre of attention. 'Yep. I know it is interesting. You'd never believe it if I told you what I know. Anyhow, I need to check something first. At the moment I have no real evidence, but I will get some very soon.'

Was she showing off dramatizing herself? In all fairness, Payne reflected, Moon's behaviour was infinitely better than it had been at the party.

'I have a very good reason for doing what I do,' Moon went on. 'If you think I like to hang around outside people's houses in the middle of the night and snoop, you are wrong. Anyway. I'll tell you about it some other time. Not now.'

Payne said, 'Is the "check" you mentioned in any way connected with your mother's death?'

'Of course it's connected. Why else should I want to put my life in danger?' Moon sniffed.

'Have a biscuit.'

'Thanks. OK. It was something my mother said. At first I didn't pay attention, my mother often talked a lot of rubbish, but then it suddenly came to me what this was all about. It was kinda interesting kinda weird kinda spooky. So I decided perhaps my mother hadn't gone crazy, not completely crazy. I asked her to explain. At first she pretended she didn't want to, but then she told me the whole story. She was sucking up to me, I guess.'

'What did she say?' Payne asked.

'I see you are interested. You've done detective work, haven't you?'

'We specialize in strange cases,' Payne said, deliberately important.

'That's tope. This is a strange case, make no mistake.'

'What's tope?'

'Tope? Tope's tope. OK, cool.' She looked at Payne fixedly. 'Perhaps I could teach you American slang sometime?'

'I a.s.sume it's one of those portmanteau words one finds in Lewis Carroll. Like brillig and mimsy ... What's tope a blend of? Dope and something else?'

'Yeah, dope's cool. I mean it means cool. The other word you want is tight, I guess, which also means cool. That's how you get tope. It sounds so dumb explaining what tope means ... Can I have another biscuit? Thanks. I love words, actually. I mean, totally. When I haven't got anything better to do, I read the dictionary. When I'm not busy killing people.' She smiled. 'Do you know what "polymorphously perverse" means?'

'Why have you taken against Melisande and Winifred?'

'Actually I think Winifred is OK. Nothing against her. It's the other one that bugs me. Melisande. She keeps bothering James, you see. She keeps ringing him and stuff. He says she used to boss him around. He hates her now. Melisande is dangerous. If you only knew how dangerous.'

'In what way dangerous?'

'I guess she is crazy. I need to protect myself.' Moon produced the piece of piping once more.

'Give me that,' Payne ordered.

'If you really want it, you will have to take it from me by force. Only kidding. Here you are.' She handed him the lead piping. She was smiling. 'You can keep it, if you like.'

Antonia stirred uneasily. What were they doing, talking to a girl like this? In their house in the small hours of the morning? It was unwise and foolish, to say the least. Moon might come up with all sorts of scurrilous allegations later on if, for some reason, she happened to take against them. She might say she'd been abducted, held captive, enslaved, beaten, abused. The papers were full of such stories ...

Moon took a sip of coffee, sniffed and said, 'I was planning to get into Kinderhook tonight.'

'That's called breaking and entering. It happens to be a criminal offence,' Payne pointed out.

'That handkerchief the police found,' Antonia said. 'You sure it wasn't yours?'

'You mean the hankie near my mother's body? Of course it wasn't mine. I've never used a hankie in my life.' She sounded completely truthful. 'The police are so dumb.' Moon sniffed again and her hand went up to her nose.

'Would you like a handkerchief?' Antonia offered.

'You're trying to catch me out now, aren't you?' The girl grinned. 'I've never used a handkerchief in my whole life.'

'Hardly something you should be proud of. Here's a tissue ... As a matter of fact, we do think something funny might be going on at Kinderhook. We believe there's a mysterious third sister,' Antonia said on an impulse. 'An elderly lady who looks like Melisande and Winifred. We've both seen her. But Melisande insists there are only two of them that she has only one sister.'

A sudden rush of blood coloured the girl's cheeks. 'An old woman who looks like Melisande? So so you've seen her? That means my mother was right! Was the old woman wearing gla.s.ses what do you call those funny old-fashioned gla.s.ses that have no handles?'

'Pince-nez?' Payne frowned. 'The old woman did wear some kind of gla.s.ses. I wasn't near enough to see what they were ... What do you mean, your mother was right? Right about what?' His heart had started beating fast. Something told him this was the breakthrough. 'Would you care to explain?'

Death and the Maiden.

She dreamt of Tancred that night.

Tancred was sitting on the ground beside a very turbulent river. He had been wounded. There was a nasty gash in his arm. Wild plants grew all around him and a sword that was stained red lay on the ground beside him, glistening unpleasantly in the sun.

She knelt beside him. 'Please, let me,' she said gently. 'This is the only way.' She then placed her hand over the wound in his arm. The moment she did, the blood flow was reduced to a mere trickle; a second later it stopped altogether. She didn't want to take any chances, so she kept her hand on the wound and eventually the gash closed and healed completely. There was no scar. No mark of any kind.

Tancred whispered, 'Thank you, Catherine. I knew only you could do it.'

'I am not in the least perturbed, I a.s.sure you, Inspector. Mr Vane told me that he'd given you my mobile number, so I have been expecting you to call. But I fear I can tell you very little. Very little indeed. Dear me! Such a terrible thing to happen! It only manages to prove the power of chaos theory. Poor Mr Vane. And that unfortunate woman!'

'We understand you met Mrs Stella Markoff at Mr Vane's house?'

'I believe I did. Yes. We exchanged a few polite words, there was no more to it than that. A pleasant woman, I thought. A little intense and nervous, but I attributed that to the fact that she didn't speak English very well. Or rather, she seemed to think she didn't speak English very well. Not the same thing! Astra's English was in fact excellent.'

'Miss Hope-'

'Now, I have met plenty of foreigners who imagine they speak good English, who have quite an inflated opinion of their command of the English language, without that being the case at all.'

'Miss Hope, if you don't mind-'

'No, not Astra! How silly of me!' She laughed exuberantly. 'I meant Stella. Stars, you know. She struck me as a most amiable kind of woman if a trifle naive in her views on royalty. A bit too romantic and idealistic, perhaps? She seemed to hold the belief that royalty was needed to create an illusion of heaven on earth, of a jewel-encrusted land, of a Valhalla, no less!'

'Miss Hope, do you have any idea how long Mr Vane had known Mrs Markoff?'

'How long? Well, I only know what Tancred that is Mr Vane has told me. What was it a month? I think he said a month, yes. What was that? Did he ever discuss Stella with me? No. Never! Mr Vane doesn't manifest the slightest inclination towards gossip.'

'Was Mrs Markoff's daughter ever mentioned?'

'Oh dear. She did have a little girl, didn't she?'

'Not so little.'

'That's so tragic. A mother dying in her prime and such a fine, healthy-looking woman leaving a young daughter behind in a foreign country! No, the daughter was never mentioned.'

'Stella never referred to any problems she might have been having with her daughter?'

'Goodness me, no. We met only briefly, I told you. Like ships that pa.s.s in the night. We were destined to remain strangers, Inspector. Were there problems? I am sorry to hear that. Poor woman. Well, she seemed to have a gentleman friend in London, so all couldn't have been doom and gloom. She was actually planning to "tie the knot", as they say in the very near future. In fact, I was given to understand that the marriage was imminent.'

'That day the day Mrs Markoff was killed you were expected sometime in the afternoon, only you didn't turn up? Is that correct?'

'That is correct, yes. I don't know what would have happened if I had, as you put it, "turned up". I am hopeless in extreme situations, completely futile, I fear. I tend to lose my head. Sorry that was an unfortunate way of putting it.' Miss Hope lowered her voice. 'She was beheaded, wasn't she? I can't imagine myself becoming the victim of senseless slaughter, but then, who can? Can you? What kind of monster would want to do a thing like that? Not a Mussulman, I trust? They've been getting such bad press. It couldn't have been an honour killing, could it? As it happens, I am by no means a stranger to death-'

'What exactly do you mean by that?'

'I am eighty-four now, Inspector. Whatever opinions there may be to the contrary, I have reached the kind of age that has little to recommend it. Most of my dear friends and acquaintances have departed from this world and I am far from convinced they are in a better place. Death is still working like a mole and digs my grave at each remove. The poet Herbert, you know. My second cousin, would you believe it, died earlier this year and she was three years younger than me. She seemed robust enough, but those, in my experience, are the very ones who go like a snap of the fingers.'

'I see what you mean ... Well, that will be all, Miss Hope.'

'Don't you want to know why I didn't "turn up" at Mr Vane's house on the day Stella was killed? Aren't details in criminal cases considered to be crucial? I read somewhere that it is the details that bind everything together.'

'That will be all, Miss Hope-'

'This is what happened, Inspector. I was about to leave my house and was all ready to go when I got a phone call from my great niece a dear girl, though not as predictable as I would have wished her to be she lives in Richmond-on-Thames, did I say? Now, this is a somewhat delicate matter, Inspector, so I'd be grateful if-'

'That's all right, Miss Hope. You don't need to tell me about your niece. That will be all,' he said in a firm voice. 'I don't suppose we'll need to bother you again, but if we do think of anything-'

'You will not hesitate to give me a ring? Yes, quite. Please do. Only too happy to a.s.sist the Law. Well, goodbye, Inspector.'

'Goodbye- Wait a minute.'

She laughed. 'You've already thought of something?'

'How did you know that Mrs Markoff had a gentleman friend in England?'

'How did I know? Goodness. Didn't I say?'

'No.'

'I am sure I did.'

'You didn't.'

'Well, it was like this. Stella seemed really excited that day the day she came to Mr Vane's house when the two of us met. She kept glancing at her hand, twiddling her fingers. She was wearing an engagement ring, I noticed at once. My eyesight, I am glad to report, remains excellent. I was presumptuous enough to comment on the ring's delicate beauty and elegance. That's when she told me. She blushed like a girl and said that she was engaged to be married and that her fiance was in fact English.'