Murder At The Villa Byzantine Part 7

She remained adamant. 'Chop-chop.'

He sighed. She held the door open. She accompanied him to his room.

Tancred wondered whether a casual onlooker might not find their relationship a trifle on the odd side. Miss Hope had already suggested as a joke, no doubt that perhaps she could move into the Villa Byzantine and keep house for him. It was not inconceivable that a casual onlooker might get the idea that Miss Hope had a crush on him. He smiled. Ridiculous impossible at her age!

As he reached for his pyjamas, she turned round primly and faced the wardrobe. A minute later he lay in bed and she kissed his forehead lightly, then stepped back. Before she shut his bedroom door, she whispered through the crack, 'Goodnight, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing you to sleep.'

Vie de Chateau.

The story of how Miss Hope had become involved with the Bulgarian royal family in the early years of the war, how she and her parents had idled in the wilderness while the face of Europe was being changed, was quite remarkable, to say the least.

Tancred Vane found himself thinking about it, going over details, as he lay in bed in his darkened room, unable to sleep. It had been such a vivid account. He now felt the irresistible urge to listen to it again. He wanted, nay, longed, to hear Miss Hope's voice once more.

He had actually recorded her story on tape and the ca.s.sette recorder stood on his bedside table, so all he needed to do was to reach out, locate the b.u.t.ton and then press it voila.

'It was back in 1941. My father was appointed Head of Chancery at the British legation in Sofia. Mother had the gravest doubts about living in Bulgaria and so did I, if I have to be perfectly honest. A girl at school had told me Bulgarians were cannibals. She said Bulgarians were grim, gnome-like and extremely ferocious and that they liked nothing better than drinking blood. I think she must have been thinking of Borneoans.

'My poor mother dreaded becoming marooned in a strange country, among people with whom she'd find no common bond. She feared she might be made to feel like Keats' Ruth. That's my favourite poet, yes fancy you remembering! The sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home, she stood in tears amid the alien corn.

'Well, we'd been warned that life in these parts of the Balkans lacked the ch.o.r.eography and grace of Western civilization, that wealth was rare, and either impossibly ostentatious or hidden that no sponsoring of arts and letters or any form of cultivated living ever took place.

'Glory and prosperity were said to have eluded Bulgaria. Bucharest had acquired a pseudo-Parisian sheen and Athens a Levantine cosmopolitanism, which is better than no cosmopolitanism, but Sofia alongside Belgrade and Tirana never amounted to more than a dull, quasi-oriental provincial capital, lacking aristocracies of the blood or the spirit.

'The reports, however, turned out to be inaccurate and Sofia came as a most pleasant surprise. It was a thoroughly decent place, you might say. We were given a fine house made of yellow stone and hordes of servants. There was a marvellous well-tended garden with roses proliferating like a tapestry of Burne-Jones! We were befriended by the ruling elite, whose members, my mother discovered soon enough, had been educated in France, Germany and even in England. And immediately my parents started receiving invitations to the palace to luncheons, soirees, garden parties and charity galas.

'Well, in a couple of months, as you know, Bulgaria was to abandon its neutrality and join the war as Germany's ally. Consequently, all the British subjects living on Bulgarian territory would leave and the British legation would close but that time had not come yet.

'Officially at least, we were not yet the enemy.

'The third of August was the anniversary of King Boris' ascension to the throne. That was when the annual garden party took place at the royal palace in Sofia. My parents were certainly invited and on that occasion they decided to take me with them. I was just fifteen a very mature fifteen, I must emphasize.

'Dr Goebbels had come from Germany especially for the occasion. I have the most vivid recollection of him limping nimbly through the glittering throng. Although temperatures that day couldn't have been higher, an icy wind seemed to blow as he pa.s.sed me. It was as if an evil, solitary, cruel G.o.d had clambered down among the bustle of pleasure-seeking, cowardly, pitiful mortals!

'Prince Cyril had with him his maitresse-en-t.i.tre, a cabaret singer of Magyar extraction called Victoria Kalla.s.si, and their infant son Clement, known as Clemmie. To bring a b.a.s.t.a.r.d baby what they used to call a badling to the King's anniversary garden party was not the done thing of course, but Cyril enjoyed being outrageous. Cyril had a talent for getting away with things.

'That poor badling! He died five years later fell in Lake Garda and drowned, or so I heard. I vividly remember the swan-shaped white pram and his corpulent and rather peevish-looking Austrian nanny. Her name was Fraulein Guldenhove.

'The mistress, Victoria, was a tempestuous beauty. She had flashing eyes, raven-black hair and sculpted scarlet lips. Her complexion exuded a rose-and-amber glow. She wore a scarlet dress that day. Very tight in the waist. Elbow-length gloves but bare legs. She sported a diamond necklace that had once belonged to Princess Clementine, Prince Cyril's Bourbon grandmother.

'Someone the wife of the Austrian charge d'affaires, I think drew a parallel between Victoria and Sylvia Varescu, the heroine of The Czardas Queen. The Kalman operetta, you know. It's on the joint subject of misalliance and true love. It was enjoying a tremendous success at the local musical theatre at the time. It was, as they say, all the rage.

'Victoria was the proud owner of a bed that had once belonged to Napoleon's mistress Josephine, complete with fragrant linen and pillows of unparalleled softness. I liked to sit on that bed when she was not around but that was later, when I became their nanny. Sorry mustn't jump the gun!

'Prince Cyril strutted about in a white mess jacket. He wore the Grand Cross Collar and Badge that went with the Order of the Bath. The decoration had been awarded to his late father, King Ferdinand, by Edward VII. My mother took rather a shine to his well-trimmed moustache, much to my father's annoyance. My mother thought Cyril looked like a character out of The Chocolate Soldier. In my father's opinion he looked like a bounder.

'The presence of the badling poor little Clemmie was causing particular tension. The Queen, puritanical, Catholic, Italian-born Giovanna, had been driven to distraction by her brother-in-law's indiscretions. She cared an awful lot what Sofia high society might be saying. Rather suburban of her to mind, I remember my mother saying. Well, Sofia high society, like most enclosed high societies, had more than its fair share of busybodies, gossips and intriguers. I imagine little else was being discussed that day but the mistress and the badling.

'Giovanna sported a sort of redingote of pale moth-coloured chiffon with a pelisse covered in solid sequins, a big pearl and diamond necklace and tiara. She only needed a wand to fly to the top of a Christmas tree! But her expression was sour oh so sour not fairy-like at all! She was said to be controlling and manipulative and to demand absolute conformity to her narrow views.

'Hundred of photos were taken that day and they later appeared in various ill.u.s.trated Continental magazines. I cut them all out and pasted them in my sc.r.a.pbook. All gone now, alas, vanished without a trace!

'What was King Boris' reaction to the badling's presence? Well, in characteristic style he pretended he hadn't noticed anything amiss. He went on walking about rather stiffly, smiling, shaking hands, making small talk.

'The King was a thin, mild-mannered man with a high balding forehead, and, like his younger brother, he sported a well-trimmed dark moustache. He was a decent chap, but scarcely an entertaining one. His two much-publicized pa.s.sions were for steam trains and Bavarian cream, but he was best known for never telling people what he really thought.

'The King was dressed in a white general's uniform and had white gloves on. He was covered in glittering decorations and had a sheathed sabre at his right thigh. Good thing too otherwise he might have been mistaken for a bank manager taking it easy at some Continental spa!

'The palace was adorned with flags of all sizes. Brightly coloured tapestries hung from the windows and the balconies. There were flowers everywhere white freesias, lilies of the valley, parrot tulips, pansies, morning glory and roses. A hussar band played a pot-pourri of Viennese waltzes and polkas. Trays of chilled champagne were carried round by footmen in splendidly frogged silk coats and silver-buckled shoes.

'The food was scrumptious. I remember something called norde pole extra-special vanilla ice-cream on a pedestal of clear ice and an "architectural" cake with ramparts fashioned after the bastions of the palace of Darius! I remember the great glazed slabs jewelled with scarlet cherries glistening on fine porcelain plates ...

'The next day the Sofia papers were to describe the event in the most gushing of terms. "A scene of profuse hospitality and festivity ... a most elegant repast ... a brilliant display of loveliness, beauty and style".

'I believe it was the kind of saccharine prose that was churned out on every grand occasion of the time.'

Smiles of a Summer Day.

'It was a sweltering hot kind of day. The thermometer had climbed to eighty-six degrees! I don't think anyone was really surprised when Fraulein Guldenhove groaned, clutched at her bosom and pitched forward in a dead faint, like some felled oak. There was a commotion. People rushed towards her. I think someone pushed the pram, causing Clemmie to start crying.

'It was no ordinary crying, Tancred. You've never heard anything like it. The badling was bawling screaming his tiny head off. The badling was notoriously sensitive might have been a baby oyster, was how the Austrian military attache put it I believe he suffered from colic I mean the badling, not the Austrian military attache. Various flunkeys and ladies-in-waiting tried ineffectually to calm him down, but they only managed to make matters worse.

'I was standing nearby, sucking iced lemonade through a straw. I saw Clemmie's face turn the colour of a Seych.e.l.les sunset as he was pa.s.sed round like a parcel from one pair of arms to another. No one seemed to know what to do with him. They put him back into the pram, but then he started making a noise as though he were breathing his last gasping, gurgling, coughing, spluttering. Really, it was most alarming.

'The band had been playing the Merry Widow waltz. They hadn't stopped when Fraulein Guldenhove prostrated herself on the beautifully mown lawn, but now all the musicians leapt to their feet.

'Victoria had disappeared a couple of minutes previously. She was seen storming out of the garden and stomping towards the lodge where she and Clemmie lived, following some acerbic remark made to her by Giovanna. I can't say what remark exactly. The Queen always spoke in a low, flat voice, thinned by resentment.

'Poor Clemmie's face started turning a German-plum kind of blue. King Boris stood by, glumly contemplating the scene, tugging at his moustache, looking indecisive. (He frequently looked indecisive.) I surprised an expression of pure schadenfreude on Giovanna's face. Giovanna would have rejoiced if the badling had swallowed his tongue and choked to death!

'Prince Cyril's eyes were terribly bloodshot. He flew into a rage and started swearing in German. His moustache bristled. He cut a fearsome figure.

'It was at that point that I stepped forward. I stood beside the pram and picked Clemmie up. It was something I felt I had to do. What happened next was quite extraordinary. You have heard about horse whisperers, of course? Somebody told me afterwards I must have the same kind of "touch" where babies were concerned!

'Clemmie stopped crying at once.

'In a few seconds he was his normal colour once more. A smiling semicircle formed round me. Then the clapping started. Really, it was most embarra.s.sing. I hate fuss. Fraulein Guldenhove was still lying on the ground, moaning, wretched woman, but I fear she remained unheeded. In later years she was to write a colourful account of life at the palace. I believe it became quite a bestseller in Liechtenstein.

'What did I do next? Well, I took out my handkerchief and wiped Clemmie's face with it. Clemmie smiled back at me. He then began to coo. He waved his hands in the air and laughed! His fingers brushed my chin.

'That poor badling.

'Sorry, Tancred this always makes me a little emotional no, I'll be all right. Let me blow my nose- 'Prince Cyril marched up to me. (He must have been wearing stays because he creaked.) He shook my hand and patted my cheek with a gloved forefinger. He told me I was a gift from a kindly Providence. I had saved his son's life and words could not express his grat.i.tude. He then said that I should consider myself employed as his son's nanny. I was to take over from Fraulein Guldenhove without a second's delay. All boring formalities would be taken care of by his aide-de-camp, so I needn't worry about anything.

'He had always known English nannies were the best in the world, English nannies were legendary, it had been madness employing an Austrian one. That, he explained, had been his sister-in-law's tomfool idea. He should never have listened to Giovanna. "You are fired. No nanny should be so fat anyhow," he then barked at Fraulein Guldenhove, whom four people had just, with considerable difficulty, managed to pull up to her feet causing her to collapse on the ground once more!

'No, Tancred, it never occurred to me to say no ... Funny, isn't it?

'What did I do? Well, I felt thrilled, but I managed to keep my presence of mind. Don't forget that I'd been impeccably brought up. I curtsied and I addressed Prince Cyril very correctly as "Your Royal Highness". I then said I was greatly honoured but would His Royal Highness mind if I consulted my parents first?'

Tancred Vane had fallen asleep, but at some point during the afternoon he stirred and woke up with a start.

The room was dark and very quiet. The fluorescent hands of the bedside clock said six o'clock. He'd slept for quite a while. What was it that had awakened him? He lay still and listened. He heard furtive noises, the squeak of a pressed floorboard, dragging footsteps, a sc.r.a.ping sound, as though a stealthy hand had removed the metal owl doorstop from Pupil Room but he knew it was all his imagination.

Something was nagging away at the back of his mind. He had a vague sense of ... danger.

He had had a dream. He had seen Stella again. Stella was anxious to impart some information to him urgently to warn him time, for some reason, seemed to be very short. She kept pointing to her mouth and he saw that her lips had been sewn up crudely with black wire. She only managed to emit a series of inarticulate mumbling sounds. Realization then dawned on him. Stella had been silenced. Stella had been killed because she knew someone's guilty secret.

I am imagining things, Tancred Vane thought. It's just a silly dream. My nerves are in a bad state. I need to start taking exercise.

Stella Markoff had been extremely curious about Miss Hope. She had asked him questions. How old was Miss Hope? Had he known Miss Hope long? Where did Miss Hope live? What exactly was Miss Hope's connection with the Bulgarian royal family? He had had the distinct impression that Stella had met Miss Hope on some previous occasion or imagined she'd met her that she had recognized her.

But Miss Hope said she'd never before clapped her eyes on Stella!

Tancred Vane held his breath. He had remembered one of the questions Stella asked him that day. Did Mr Vane know a woman called-?

Now, what was the name? It was rather an unusual, rather an actressy, sort of name-

The She-Wolf.

Melisande Chevret had had a mental picture of James dropping on his knees, bowing before her and begging forgiveness. She had envisaged a pa.s.sionate reunion James covering her hands with kisses, then rising and burying his face in her bosom, mumbling that he was sorry, so terribly sorry, he had been mad to turn his back on her, he had no idea what had possessed him would she take pity on a miserable sinner? would she give him a second chance? would she have him back?

But of course nothing of the sort happened. James was stiff and formal and far from demonstrative. He shook hands with her, then, as an afterthought, gave her a peck on the cheek, near her left ear as far from her lips as possible.

She was wearing her immaculately cut pearl-grey peignoir with blue ribbon bindings along the edges, with several long gold chains strung from her neck. She had had a ma.s.sage and a facial in the morning and thought her face looked particularly smooth and luminous, like that of the Dresden shepherdess on her dressing table. She was whippet-thin now exactly the way she wanted to be. The ayurvedic diet seemed to have worked. No red meat and nothing but liquids after 6 p.m. She'd hated it, but now she looked at least fifteen years younger. Il faut souffrir pour etre belle.

She led the way into the drawing room and sat down on the sofa. She patted the place beside her and gave him her most seductive smile, but he chose to sit in one of the armchairs.

All right. Suit yourself, buster, she thought. Perhaps she was expecting too much. Perhaps it was too soon. It was only three days since Stella had been separated from her head. James was pale and tense and he too seemed to have lost weight. His habitual bulging orb seemed to have diminished somewhat. He kept avoiding her eye.

No, nothing to drink, he said thank you so much, but nothing to eat either. So much for her carefully prepared dinner a deux. (Asparagus soup, chicken in aspic, green salad, figs in strawberry sauce, Stilton, black coffee.) Why had she bothered? Why had he come? She pressed him to have a drink and eventually he said he would like a cup of tea. Tea! She'd always despised people who asked for a cup of tea, but this this was particularly bad.

James was wearing a black suit, black tie and black shoes. And black socks. For heaven's sake, she thought. All he lacked was a black armband! The disconsolate widower! He looked quite absurd. Maestro, the Death March, please, and don't spare the violins!

Melisande felt the urge to laugh aloud, blow a raspberry, neigh like a horse, but she managed to exercise self-control. She still believed she had a chance with him. Having handed him his cup of tea, she poured herself a large brandy. This was not how she had imagined their reunion, most certainly not the way she had contemplated the evening ahead.

'Kind of you to come when you clearly have so much on your mind, James,' she said softly. 'How have you been?'

'Not awfully well. I've been sleeping badly.'

'I am so terribly sorry. Have you seen your doctor?'

'I'm afraid I haven't had a chance. Too busy.'

'Poor darling. Would you like one of my sachets? They reduce you to the most delicious kind of coma and no headaches afterwards, just a pleasantly treacly sensation. I am quite addicted to them.'

'No, thanks.'

'Would you like me to ma.s.sage your poor neck and shoulders? It would release the tension. You know I can do it really well.'

'No, thanks.'

Melisande pursed her lips. She had only been trying to be helpful. Did he fear she might try to seduce him? He used to love it when she had ma.s.saged his neck and shoulders in the past, couldn't get enough of it, the greedy pig.

She thought the atmosphere in the room had become charged with wariness and potential conflict. I see the world through a shroud that is as clammy as it is dark. Who said that? One of those middle-aged women characters Winifred was urging her to play? Was it Carlotta in Song at Twilight?

She took a sip of brandy. Perhaps she should get roaring drunk?

'Have the police released the body?'

'No, not yet. I don't know when exactly that will be. They keep their cards very close to their chests. We've been trying to contact Stella's relatives in Bulgaria.'

'What a bore. Who's "we"?'

'Moon and I.'

'That awful girl.'

'She is very young.'

'Ghastly manners. Quite shocking. I don't believe she gives a fig for her mother, dead or alive. Where is she now?'

'At my sister's place in Kensington.'

'That's the flat next door to yours, isn't it? There is a communicating door, if I remember correctly. Poor Julia. How I pity her. What an ordeal. How is she coping?'

'It hasn't been too bad, actually.'

'Make sure the girl doesn't cut your throats as you sleep,' Melisande murmured.

'Sorry?' How ridiculous he looked, cupping his ear and thrusting his head forward.

'I said, make sure the girl gets enough sleep.' Melisande raised her voice. 'Sleep at that age is so very important, James.'

'I know it is.' He sighed. 'Moon's been under terrible strain. We've been trying to contact Stella's relatives in Bulgaria, but the whole communication business has been a nightmare.'

'Well, darling, what else can one expect when one goes exploring the unknown rather than exploiting the a.s.sured? If people fall below something called a certain standard, they are asking for trouble. No, I am not in the least angry with you, darling. It's just that I don't quite see why you should be going out of your way to accommodate that girl. It's more than clear it's affected your health. It breaks my heart to see you looking so ill.'