A Splash of Red

  The obvious suspect, leaving out of account Kevin John Athlone, was Sir Richard Lionnel ... yet, if the police doctor was right and Jemima's dating of the crucial TV programme was accurate - a reasonable assumption in both cases - there was another inconsistency here. Sir Richard Lionnel could hardly be the father of Chloe's child. The old question arose: if not Lionnel, then who?

  Chloe's own attitude to her pregnancy had been, to put it mildly, ambivalent. She had certainly not entrusted Jemima with the secret -but then Jemima, the latter reflected bitterly, had been destined for quite another role in Chloe's scheme of things than that of confidante. Yet Chloe had deliberately arranged to visit her elderly parents -unvisited for many months - in order to break the astonishing and perhaps shocking news. Failing to make the expedition on her way to France, because of Lionnel's date at number ten, she had then proceeded to summon her aged stepfather to London, having broken the news of her condition in advance on the telephone.

  What sort of meeting had Chloe envisaged between Mr Stover, in his seventies, bowed but dignified and still capable of fierceness, and her new lover, the Lion of Bloomsbury? Was old Mr Stover intended to arrive with some form of metaphorical shot-gun and force on the union? In short, was Chloe, in one of her intricate seemingly artless schemes, intending to palm off the baby on her new lover, using it as a weapon to persuade him to marry her?

  Certainly the summons of Mr Stover to the same building as Lionnel, indicated that some kind of confrontation had been planned. At the same time, these thoughts reminded Jemima how very much Lionnel had to lose from this revelation of Chloe's pregnancy - if he believed himself to be the father. According to Valentine, Lionnel feared any type of scandal at any time before the announcement of his new CARI appointment; the brooding Lady Lionnel, Valentine's Medea, could hardly be expected to take such news calmly. To say the least of it, Chloe's death had come at a convenient moment for her latest lover. Lionnel, like Kevin John himself, would do well to produce a cast-iron alibi for the lunchtime hour when the murder was committed.

  Jemima yawned. She felt it was very late, although it was in fact only ten o'clock according to her little gold watch. The ormolu clock on the mantelpiece told some fantasy time of midnight which belonged to another world where the Lion of Bloomsbury had lain down with his pretty lamb of a mistress. Tiger who, once Pompey had departed, had decided to crouch on Jemima's lap, had gone to sleep. Jemima used his inertia as an excuse to let her own curiosity roam once more back over the known facts. She knew from experience that this curiosity, once aroused, would not let her sleep until everything, at least within the confines of her own mind, was ordered.

  Fallen Child, Fallen Angel ... but Chloe if she had remained a child, had been no angel. .. Angel - yes - angel, that was the word which was important, 'My former angel' .. . Chloe's soft breathless voice, so penetrating despite its capacity to sound as if it were borne on the wind, came back to haunt her. 'My former angel who was ...' Yes, that was the clue which was teasing her. What was the identity of Chloe's former lover? Who was also, presumably, the true father of her child . . .

  Restlessly Jemima fingered the telephone, more because it was within her reach without disturbing Tiger than with any clear idea of who to telephone. Who on earth at this hour would provide her with the background information she sadly needed about the last months of Chloe's life? Valentine Brighton she ruled out; she had had his story already. But it was the thought of Valentine which drew her on to the subject of the ill-fated novel, and so, inexorably as it seemed to her afterwards, to the subject of Isabelle Mancini.

  At the time she felt it was pure inquisitive impulse which led her to dial Isabelle's home number for further interrogation of that transatlantic acolyte, Miss Laura Barrymore. That and the fact that Jemima, who had a good head for telephone numbers, remembered it from the morning. She was nevertheless startled when the telephone was answered immediately and by Isabelle Mancini herself.

  'Isabelle, I thought you were in Paris . . .'

  'Jemima, oh my God!' cried Isabelle, as though Jemima had not spoken. 'I've just heard the news. Oh my God!' she repeated. 'Oh my God!' Possibly she was crying or had been crying very recently.

  The richness of her French tones was unmistakable. It called to mind instantly not only her warm personality, but the full rich French figure which matched it, wide-hipped, generous-bosomed; even Isabelle's thick black bun, with its elegant silvery streaks, had a special wealth, a heaviness about it. For Jemima, the habitual floating grey of Isabelle's clothes - she wore no other colour - conveyed more warmth than other women's pinks and reds.

  But there was nothing warm about what she was now saying, only despair, a mixture of passion and despair.

  'I wanted to ke-e-el 'er,' Isabelle was saying. 'I came back from Paris to ke-e-el 'er. And now she's dead.' The rest of her words were swallowed up in prolonged and convulsive weeping.

  10

  A carnal encounter

  Isabelle's hysterical sobs suddenly stopped. It sounded as if the receiver had been taken away quite sharply from her. Another voice came over the wire - that of Laura Barrymore. In contrast to Isabelle, she sounded smoothly calm; it was as if she were spreading her own remarks like butter over Isabelle's previous utterances.

  'Isabelle is naturally very upset at hearing the news of Miss Fontaine's death. She's also not quite herself since she's been working so very hard in Paris. She had to come back early to get some rest. And she was of course quite unprepared to take your call at this late hour.' Through the politeness came a slight implication of reproach. 'I've been trying to get her to take a sedative—'

  'Who told her the news? I'd like to speak to her again.' Jemima knew how to inject a certain authority into her own voice.

  'I'm not sure—'

  Isabelle grabbed the telephone, her French accent more pronounced than usual: 'Valentine 'as told me. And 'e was told by the police. 'E's in 'is flat in Bloomsbury—' It was a word to which Isabelle brought her own special pronunciation. 'And so 'c telephones me. Just like zat. My 'eart, I think it stop. Because I 'ave come back from Paris expres, no Laura, cherie, don't stop me, eeet's true - to ke-e-el 'er—'

  ‘I thought you weren't coming back till Sunday - I spoke to Laura this morning.'

  In the background Jemima could hear the sound of some angry expostulations from the formerly cool Miss Barrymore. Isabelle resumed in a slightly less emotional tone: 'Silly child. No, not you, dulling, la petite Laure, e-e-diot child. She thinks I am telling you things which are dangerous. So swe-e-et. So loyal. No, no, dulling, what I am

  telling you is this. I came back at lunchtime specially to ke-e-el Chloe, she was a monster that one, wait till you 'ear, I wanted to choke her, strangle her for what she's done to me.' Dramatic pause and change of tone. 'And another thing, Jemima, Laura tells me an absurd story about Chloe going to the Camargue for us. For us? With Binnie? Who, by the way, is in Capri, with some terrr-r-rible pr-r-r-ince. More terr-r-r-ible even than her usual pr-r-r-inces. Chloe in the Camargue for us?' Isabelle wheezed with rich indignation. 'Had the child gone mad?' she repeated.

  'I suppose that would be quite out of the question.' Jemima sounded tentative. She was anxious not to cut off this helpful but sensitive source of information by an unfortunate word. But Isabelle by now was in full flood.

  'That book,' she was exclaiming. 'It was so 'or-r-r-ible, so disloyal, something precious laid out like that for all the world to see. I shall never, never agree, I said. Over my dead body. I pleaded with her. I wanted to ke-e-el her.' Isabelle's vehemence became strangled. 'Oh God, dulling, and now she's dead,' she concluded in the calmer of her two voices. It was impossible to know whether she had realized the significance of what she had said.

  Jemima decided to come out into the open. She assured Isabelle that she had not read the offensive book, knew of its existence only from Valentine, and furthermore no one would ever read it now. 'But, Isabelle, tell me one thing, Chloe's style was genera
lly so cool, so carefully ironic, hardly full-blooded, you know what the critics say about her, used to say. I'm rather puzzled you were quite so upset.'

  'Upset, what are you saying?' Isabelle's voice rose perilously. 'She used my letters, my own letters to her; foolish, foolish letters; there they were, written down for all the world to see, the letters of a foolish old woman.' Jemima tried to interrupt, but Isabelle was in full Gallic flood.

  'And Valentine, too, what did he do, the terr-r-r-aitor, he asked her to edit a whole book of letters, and so she laughed, that pretty laugh, she too a terr-r-raitor, and said she would put them, some of my letters in her anthology. Letters of an Unknown Woman—' At this point Laura evidently intervened again. Isabelle's voice, still audible despite the fact that either she or Laura was now masking the telephone, was fierce.

  'E-e-ediot child!' Jemima heard her say. It was the opposite to Isabelle's other famous cry: 'Swe-e-et boy (or girl)'. 'Non, non Laure no, of course not, why should I be such a fool, I? Not murder her, kee-e-el her, you understand me.' Isabelle was now speaking directly to Jemima. 'And when I come back I 'ear she is dead.' A pause. 'And then of course

  I am sorry.' Isabelle was sobbing again. 'Little Chloe dead. What fiend could have done that?'

  Jemima listened as Laura Barrymore recovered the telephone and in her politest manner attempted to enlist Jemima's help in securing the return of the aforesaid letters - a task she thought Jemima would be able to perform with some ease since they must, surely, remain in Adelaide Square. Miss Barrymore's tone implied that this small favour was something in the nature of passing on the name of a good hairdresser.

  Jemima decided to press home her advantage. Laura Barrymore was assuming that Jemima was still in Chloe's flat; Jemima did not disabuse her of the notion. She had brushed aside an earlier warm invitation from Isabelle to join them in their own cosy apartment without comment on her present whereabouts. She realized that she had something at least to trade in return for further information from Isabelle. Personally she saw no reason why Isabelle should not have her pathetic letters back - 'the letters of a foolish old woman' - as soon as possible, although Pompey might take another view as he conscientiously unravelled the webs spun by Chloe, the fallen child. Still, even if the police read them and analysed them (Pompey had probably removed them by now in any case) she, Jemima, might be instrumental in securing their discreet return at the appropriate moment.

  She assured Laura Barrymore to this effect, and in return was able to put one last question to Isabelle without having the Barrymore vigilance interrupt her.

  'I suppose poor Valentine is very upset about Chloe,' she ventured.

  'Oh, Chloe was so terr-r-rible to him. She behaved so badly to him,' Isabelle expostulated.

  'I'm beginning to think Chloe was terrible to all her lovers.'

  A Gallic exclamation. 'Lover, dulling, Valentine, no. A peck on the cheek, perhaps, no more. Too well br-r-red, too much of an ar-r-r-ristocrat.'

  'It doesn't necessarily follow,' murmured Jemima, with memories of certain encounters of her own in the past. Isabelle gave an unexpectedly bawdy chuckle. Jemima had forgotten her propensity for gossip; Isabelle had taken the allusion.

  'Ah, wicked Jemima. No, this was different. Valentine adored Chloe, he loved her in his own sad way, the way of a moth perhaps, fluttering towards the—' Isabelle paused before the cliche and rushed on - 'star. Yes, that was it. Kisses like a moth, don't you think, there is something so swee-e-eet about Valentine. But he was much too ar-r-r-ristocratic to think of marrying her, too frightened of la Maman, perhaps, and so he would torture himself hearing of her affaires. I tell you, she was ter-r-rible to him.'

  Privately Jemima considered that Valentine had sought his own fate; she had no great sympathy with emotional masochism herself. Still, it all made sense. Whoever Lover Unknown was, he was not Valentine Brighton; thus Valentine as the father of Chloe's child could be eliminated. All the same, Valentine's movements on this particular Saturday still needed further examination - had he for example an alibi for the crucial hour between one and two o'clock when the murder had taken place? It had been just after two o'clock when she found him slumped in the Reading Room, and the police were inclined to favour an earlier rather than a later time.

  Reassuring Isabelle that she would work on the problem of the letters, Jemima put down the telephone.

  Isabelle? Was it possible? Should she be added to her list of potential suspects? A lot depended on the time when Isabelle Mancini had actually returned to London from Paris. 'Lunchtime' was sufficiently vague to make anything possible and in this case covered a very important area of time. Isabelle's alibi if any - that was one for Pompey and his boys to iron out. The investigation of movements was easy for them, their speciality. But all these hysterical threats - how were they to be regarded? The character and probably the behaviour of Isabelle Mancini - that was in Jemima Shore's line of business. Jemima reflected wryly that the distinction between ke-e-elling and murder was not one that the man in the street or for that matter her friend Pompey would readily accept: but it was also true that the word 'ke-e-el' was frequently on Isabelle's lips in the most unlikely conjunctions, as all her friends would testify. The word testify brought Jemima up short. She hoped, most sincerely, that it would not come to that. There had been enough havoc already, wreaked by Chloe - or Chloe's death, whichever way you liked to look at it.

  Time to sleep. Jemima supposed that she must soon retire to the so-called office bedroom suite, where Sir Richard had displayed, without comment, an Empire bed, imperial eagles on the bedhead, upholstered in rich dark green; the walls were hung with the same material. The room seemed to show yet another decorative hand at work - a far more successful one. Its atmosphere was deliberately grand as well as masculine; Jemima felt her own intrusion into this room to be exotic enough as to be exciting - Chloe, had she too felt that?

  Jemima yawned again and wondered which of the three rooms if any represented Sir Richard's own taste; she hoped it was not the modern horror on the third floor.

  Here the balcony onto the square had a high concrete edge, making the front area of it dark and cavernous. It was time to push Tiger off her lap - he had endured the long telephone conversation without movement - and retire. The balcony windows were wide open, and for Tiger's sake, Jemima decided to leave them that way. She knew that a policeman was posted at the entrance to the building; Pompey had taken away the keys to Chloe's flat in his pocket.

  Tiger stretched, that long lazy movement which completely altered the shape of his cosy domestic body into that of a hunting animal, and then vanished into the shadows of the scaffolding, lit up from place to place by the street lights. Jemima heard the cat scurrying about making little sounds, scratching.

  For a moment she stood looking at the square, listening to the faint rustle of the wind in the trees. Then she leant over the concrete parapet. It was a comparatively short drop into the square itself; she could not actually sec the police sentinel, perhaps he was under the eave of the porch. It was typical of the meaningless modernity of this building that whereas the parapet of the penthouse was too low for absolute security, here on the first floor it was too high for comfort.

  Jemima looked idly into the shadows. The proximity of the scaffolding would have made a lesser woman nervous, but she herself had never been frightened of the dark, or indeed of solitude. She thought of her more highly strung friends - poor Chloe, for instance, had always been intolerably nervous when alone: perhaps that was the true explanation of her amazing promiscuity ... Chloe would have made anxious patterns out of these shadows and backed hastily away from the balcony for the safety of the lighted flat. In particular the shadows threw into relief one patch of greyness amid the scaffolding, very close to Jemima, which an over-imaginative person could well have fashioned into some lurking face.

  Jemima's own eye travelled casually downwards. On the floor of the balcony was a pair of shoes. They looked like white gym shoe
s. So convinced was she still that this was purely a trick of the light, that it took her several seconds to take in that she was actually gazing at a pair of white shoes, shoes with real feet inside them, with bare ankles rising from them into the darkness above. And it was several seconds more before she finally realized that someone was actually standing in those shadows, motionless, staring at her, face almost touching hers, and had been standing there all the time, face a grey moon, face level with her own.

  Jemima stood absolutely still in her turn. It was as though their two figures were engaged in playing a game of statues with each other. The hidden figure was the first to move.

  'How amusing it is meeting like this,' said Adam Adamson, stepping out into the light. 'You've seen me at last. I was wondering how long I could hold my breath. My heart was beating like a mad gong, I'm amazed you didn't hear it. I seem destined to give you delicious shocks, don't I? Now, goddess, we can have a good talk, without interruptions.'

  He bent down and patted Tiger.

  'You, me and, of course, Puss. Goddess as you may be, you have a great deal of explaining to do to a mere mortal like myself. Never mind, the night is young.'

  Putting a courteous but firm hand across Jemima's shoulder, Adam Adamson wheeled her into the lighted drawing room of the first-floor fiat.