Playing the Game

  “May we see him?” Annette looked at the doctor hopefully.

  “He is in intensive care, but you can look in on him for a moment. If you’ll both come with me.”

  Annette and Malcolm followed the doctor, and when they were shown into the IC unit Annette was immediately struck by Marius’s pallor. He was asleep and he looked very ill to her, and she turned to the doctor. “Could he die?” she asked.

  “We’re not going to let such a thing happen, Mrs. Remmington. We’re always very hopeful here.”

  “When should we come back?” Malcolm said. “Later this afternoon or tonight?”

  “I think you should come back at six o’clock. He needs to stay quiet for the rest of the day. I think it’s best to let him sleep at the moment. And he’s in good hands here.”

  “Thank you very much, Dr. Chambers,” Annette said, and Malcolm repeated her words.

  “What do you think, Malcolm? Is he going to get better or not?”

  “I think so. He’s always been strong, very healthy. Did you know he had high blood pressure?”

  “No, he never told me, and if I had known I would have made him take those pills.”

  “I know you would.”

  As they walked out of the hospital and got into the car, Malcolm said, “Listen, Annette, I need to talk to you about something. Can we go somewhere for a cup of coffee?”

  “What’s the matter? Is there something wrong?”

  “I think I should say something has been wrong for a very long time, but I will let you be the judge of that when I’ve spoken to you at length.”

  “You sound very serious, Malcolm. Is it anything to do with Laurie? Or you and Laurie? Or your business?”

  “None of those things.”

  “So it’s about me then, is that it?” She gave him a pointed look, then frowned, looked down at her hands, thinking.

  “It’s not exactly about you, or I should say it’s partially about you, but it’s mostly about Marius.”

  “About his health?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Is it about that woman Elizabeth Grayson?”

  Malcolm glanced at her swiftly, thinking how astute she was. She was already wondering how true the story was about a breakfast meeting to discuss a painting, just as he had done.

  “No, it’s not about her. Not at the moment anyway.”

  “I am now completely mystified, and also intrigued. Come on, explain. Please.”

  “It’s about a lot of things Jack has stumbled upon, that’s the best way of putting it. Let me absolutely assure you he wasn’t out looking for information.”

  “But he found some disreputable things about Marius, is that what you’re trying to say?”

  “That’s only part of it.”

  “I trust Jack implicitly, Malcolm. I know he’s a perfectly good man. And he would never intentionally hurt me, or anyone. So where shall we go for our chat? Obviously not to my apartment because Elaine’s there. I prefer not to go to Laurie’s because she’s there. And Esther is in my office and Maeve in yours.” She grimaced. “I know you want us to be very private, so that no one hears a thing except me. And Jack. That is what you want me to do, isn’t it? You want me to go with you to Jack’s flat.”

  “If you would, yes. It was my idea, not his, and we were actually planning to talk to you today, before Marius collapsed.” He gave Jack’s address to the driver, thinking how damned clever Annette was.

  She nodded her agreement and looked out the window, her mind turning. This was not going to be good, she knew that instinctively. Jack had found out something by accident and needed her to know. She couldn’t help wondering what he had found out about her.

  Malcolm had phoned Jack from the car, and he was waiting for them when they arrived at the flat in Primrose Hill.

  He greeted them with his usual geniality, but Annette noticed at once how tired he looked, with dark rings under his eyes.

  “I know Marius is in hospital, Annette,” Jack said immediately. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “He has an aortic dissection,” she replied. “It’s a tear in the major artery leaving the heart, and it’s very serious, life-threatening.”

  “My God!” Jack exclaimed. “That’s bad.”

  “It is, yes,” she agreed, and went on. “I know you have stumbled on something about Marius and it’s obviously important. Would you please tell me, Jack. I really do want to know. Everything.”

  “I wasn’t looking for dirt,” Jack said quickly, “I really wasn’t. You must believe that.”

  “I do.” She went and sat down in a chair, and so did Malcolm.

  Jack remained standing for a few moments, and explained. “Last week, when I was in France, I went up to have dinner with Lucy’s aunt, Claudine Villiers, at her new villa on the grounds of Lucy’s farm above Beaulieu. I’d never seen her art collection because it was in storage while she was building the villa. She had inherited it from her partner of forty years, after he died. But this fabulous collection, including works by Cézanne, Matisse, and Modigliani, all turned out to be forgeries.”

  Sitting down, he told her the entire story, leaving out nothing. When he had finished Annette simply nodded and sat back in the chair, looking profoundly sad.

  Malcolm asked, “Did Marius own part of the Pegasus Gallery, or don’t you know, Annette?”

  “I think he did. I vaguely remember the name coming up once or twice.”

  “Jack discovered something else, Annette, but he is somewhat reluctant to tell you. However, I do believe you must know the truth. Only by knowing everything will you ever be able to straighten your life out and move on.”

  “I understand, and you’re right. Is it about me, Jack? Or Marius?”

  “Not you, no. Last Tuesday morning I went over to La Réserve for breakfast. I was going through the bar and I heard a loud mobile ringing. I looked out at the garden on my right, and I saw Marius with a red-headed woman in a very intimate embrace.” He stopped, staring at her, worried about her, worried how she would take it.

  She understood this without him saying a word, and murmured, “Tell me the rest, Jack. It’s really all right, I’m not upset.”

  “That’s it, actually. I quickly left the bar. But I did manage to find out that the woman’s name was Elizabeth Lang, and also that they had checked out that morning after breakfast.”

  “I see. Lang rings a bell. I researched Clarissa Normandy the other day, and discovered that her maiden name was Lang. And that she came from Gloucestershire. What an odd coincidence that is, don’t you think?”

  Jack exclaimed, “The doorman at La Réserve told me that Elizabeth Lang was a painter. Wait a minute.” Jack jumped up and went over to his landline. He dialed his aunt, and when she answered, he said, “Hello, Aunt Helen. Listen, something just struck me. The artist who was Marius’s girlfriend, the one you mentioned yesterday. Was she called Clarissa Normandy?”

  “Why yes, Jack, she was,” his aunt replied. “However did you come up with this name?” His aunt sounded delighted that he had called her with this news.

  “Something just clicked in my head. You wouldn’t know if she had a sister by any chance, would you?”

  “I believe she did. I remember Marius once complaining that they had been lumbered with her over the weekend. She was younger than Clarissa, and he resented having to play babysitter. He was also angry with the girls’ aunt, Glenda Joules. He told us this at a dinner your mother gave later that week. You certainly sparked my memory. I suddenly recall that both those girls had bright red hair. Goodness, Jack, you’re taking me back years and years, to my lovely youth.”

  “Thanks, Aunt Helen. Got to go. Talk to you later.”

  Once he had hung up Jack repeated Helen’s conversation, and then added, “Elizabeth Lang is a redhead. And now the circle begins to join up, doesn’t it? Just imagine, Glenda Joules is their aunt. Glenda Joules of Knowle Court, I’ve no doubt at all.”

  “Neither have I,?
?? Annette said. “I always knew there was something suspicious about that housekeeper. She knows more than she’s telling.”

  Jack sat down again. “If Marius was selling forgeries in the seventies, he could still be selling them now. It occurred to me that Clarissa might have worked for him then, and later when she was engaged to Sir Alec. Perhaps Elizabeth Lang is painting for him these days.”

  Malcolm said, “That makes sense, but would he have been selling them lately? I mean, why? He’s rich.”

  “If he did sell forgeries, whether it was then or now, it’s a criminal act,” Annette said, her voice subdued. “He could go to jail.”

  “But only if someone tells the police, and who’s going to do that?” Jack asked, looking at both of them.

  “None of us,” Malcolm answered.

  “There’s one other thing I need to tell you, Annette. I discovered through Claudine that my father was a friend of Marius’s in those days. In the seventies. He was a well-known journalist. I’m talking about my biological father. His name was Nigel Clayton and—”

  “Oh, my God!” Annette exclaimed, aghast, staring at Jack. “Your father was Nigel Clayton?” She sounded disbelieving and afraid.

  “Yes, why?” He was looking at her intently, startled by her tone, her sudden shrillness, and saw at once that she had turned deathly white. He also noticed that she had begun to shake so badly she was clutching the arms of the chair.

  “Annette, Annette, whatever is it? What’s wrong? Why are you reacting like this? Tell me.” Jack got up, went to her. “You’re so terribly upset, whatever is it?”

  “Your father . . . he was the man who took me to La Réserve, he was my romantic interlude . . .”

  Jack knelt down, just stared at her, dumbfounded.

  Annette closed her eyes, unable to look at him. Jack was Nigel Clayton’s son. The only other man she had ever loved. Or thought she had loved all those years ago . . . when she was eighteen. Oh, my God!

  The decades fell away.

  The horror of that awful night held her in its grip. She was there in the bedroom of the house in Notting Hill with Nigel, quarreling with him, struggling with him as he tried to force her to the bed.

  “Nigel, let me go, I don’t want this. I don’t want to stay the night!” she cried, endeavoring to pull away. He tightened his grip, his hands like a vise on her arm. And as she looked into his face she was afraid. His eyes blazed with anger, and his mouth was contorted. She knew he’d been drinking before she arrived; drink made him cruel, and sometimes violent.

  Grasping the arm of a chair, she pulled away from him, and as he continued to hold her she kicked his ankle, and he yelled and let go of her.

  Fleeing the bedroom, she ran down the corridor and made it to the landing before he caught up to her, grabbed hold of her once more. Shouting that she was ungrateful, he slapped her across the face with some force.

  Crying out in pain, and trembling with fear, she tried to punch him in the arm, but the blow hit the air. Her fear spiraled, and with every ounce of her strength she struggled, fought him, suddenly freed herself.

  As she moved toward the staircase he lunged at her, lost his balance, and fell down the stairs, landing with a thud at the bottom in the middle of the marble-floored hall.

  Her screams echoed in the silence of the house.

  She ran down the staircase to the hallway, where he lay, not moving at all. There was blood close to his head, and in his light-brown hair. Kneeling down, she took hold of his hand, found his pulse. It was extremely faint, hardly a pulse at all. And he was very still.

  She knelt there for a few minutes, tears in her eyes, and she was certain he was going to die any minute. Standing up, she looked around, not knowing what to do. She was suddenly terrified, filled with panic. She would be blamed for his death. She knew she would be. She began to shake uncontrollably, sobbing. . . .

  She opened her eyes and looked at Jack.

  Malcolm went to the drinks tray in the kitchen and poured a brandy, brought it back to her. She was still shaking and looked as if she was about to pass out. But she wouldn’t accept the drink, and muttered, “Oh, God. Oh, God.”

  Annette continued to stare at Jack, tears rolling down her face. “I killed him,” she said. “I didn’t mean to kill him. We had a fight, he fell down the stairs. It was an accident. Oh, Jack—”

  Without saying a word, Jack jumped up, grabbed hold of her, and pulled her to her feet. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close. “No, you didn’t kill him, Annette. You didn’t. I believe I know what happened, I really do. It wasn’t you. Please believe me, darling, it wasn’t you. You didn’t kill my father.”

  She began to sob and he held her until she became calmer, and then he led her to the sofa, sat with her, still endeavoring to calm her.

  Malcolm said, “I don’t know about you, Jack, but I need a cup of coffee.” He rose, went into the kitchen, and filled a mug, his head reeling.

  When he came out of the kitchen, Annette had stopped sobbing, and he said to her, “You told Marius, didn’t you? That’s what he’s had over you all these years, isn’t it? You thought you’d killed Nigel, and you told him, because you’d nowhere else to turn. He was the only person who could protect you, and he did, I’ll say that for him. But it was a form of blackmail, Annette, you must understand that.”

  “We quarreled, and Nigel hit me, and I saw red. Because I’d been abused by men throughout my childhood. I struggled with him and he slipped, fell down the stairs.”

  “And then what happened?” Jack asked quietly, holding her hand.

  “I ran down the stairs. There was only a faint pulse. I was terrified. I was going to call for an ambulance, but I phoned Marius first. He told me to leave the house. He said that he would call the ambulance. And so I left.”

  “And the next day he told you Nigel was dead, didn’t he?” Jack said.

  Annette nodded. “Yes, he did.”

  “Let me tell you something I just heard this weekend. My aunt told me that she and my mother had gone to the Notting Hill house to get some of her possessions. They were the ones who found Nigel and called the ambulance. But my aunt confided something else to me on Saturday. And it’s this. As she stood waiting for my mother to open the front door, she glanced down the street. She saw Marius getting into a cab. She recognized his silver hair, his profile, knew it was him.”

  “What are you saying, Jack?” Annette said, much calmer now.

  “That when you left, Marius arrived. But he didn’t call an ambulance. He more than likely hit my father on his head and killed him. My aunt said one of the doctors mentioned blunt force trauma really being the cause of death.”

  “Wasn’t there an inquest?” Malcolm said.

  “My aunt told me the jury brought in a verdict of accidental death.”

  Annette appeared to be truly shocked. “But Marius always let me believe I’d killed Nigel.” She leaned back against the sofa and closed her eyes wearily, her face as white as bleached bone.

  “My aunt will verify this, darling,” Jack murmured, taking hold of her hand again.

  “Whatever are we going to do?” Malcolm said, staring at Jack, a worried expression on his face.

  “I hope nothing,” Jack responded. “Marius is in the hospital with a life-threatening condition and could easily die. So what else is there to do but nothing?”

  The three of them sat drinking coffee for a while. Annette and Malcolm were endeavoring to absorb the shock of Marius’s collapse and wondering about the outcome, and Annette was also trying to come to terms with the revelation about Nigel being Jack’s father.

  Jack was sifting through his prior knowledge of the past, which had come to him from his mother, until he had talked with his aunt the other day. Now the story was almost complete.

  He glanced across at Annette, and realizing she was much calmer, more collected, he said, “Did you know a young woman in those days called Hilda Crump?”

  Annette was
silent for a moment or two, and then nodded slowly. She cleared her throat and said, “I am Hilda Crump, Jack. That’s my real name.”

  Jack gaped at Annette and so did Malcolm. The two men exchanged glances, but neither of them said a word. Malcolm drank some of his coffee, and Jack stood up, walked across the room, stood looking out the window for a few minutes, needing to absorb everything she had said.

  It hardly seemed credible that this superbly elegant and beautiful woman who sat behind him on the sofa was Hilda Crump, whom his mother had described as a trollop or, conversely, a ragamuffin. But then he could not give credence to his mother any longer. His aunt had proved her to be a liar.

  “Now I understand,” Jack said, turning around, looking at her.

  “What do you mean?” Annette whispered, sounding exhausted.

  “My mother blamed Hilda Crump for the breakup of her marriage. Is that the truth?”

  “No, it’s not!” she exclaimed, sitting up on the sofa, a flicker of sudden anger in her eyes. “They were already separated, she had started divorce proceedings when I met him with Marius. I worked for Marius at the Remmington Gallery, and Nigel was always hanging around. Nigel . . . well, he sort of went after me. I fell for him, Jack. Then when he asked me to go to Beaulieu with him, to La Réserve, I couldn’t resist. I thought I was in love with him. But I soon discovered that he became a bully, a bit nasty when he was drunk. I couldn’t accept that. . . . I was abused when I was a child, and I always reacted if a man treated me badly.”

  She paused for a moment, as if remembering it all, her face taut, full of pain. She finished slowly, “That night when he died he’d been drinking earlier, and had become nasty. . . . I fought him off. You know the rest.”

  “I do.” Jack looked off into the distance, as if seeing something unique, visible only to himself. And in a sense he was. He was envisioning Annette rushing to Marius for protection, a Marius most probably in love with her also, and full of jealousy. . . . Perhaps he saw a chance to rid himself of a rival? For a moment Jack thought he was being far-fetched, overly imaginative, and then he changed his mind. People did terrible things in the name of love, even resorted to murder.