I walk across Sloane Square. The clear white stucco facade of Mr Eresby’s house is as unbroken and unyielding as the heat. The front door has been left unlocked, as I imagined it would be. I go into the hall, which is spacious and painted white. I stand looking round. All the furniture is white. Perhaps I could persuade Mr Eresby to change the colour scheme? White rooms are invariably so chic in the eyes of those who don’t have to clean them.
No sign of any disturbance. The small Vermeer is still on the wall. The Ming vase is on the console table.
I see my somewhat distorted reflection in the round convex mirror. On an impulse I stick out my tongue, open my eyes wide and twist my face into a demented grimace. I have no idea why I do it.
Who is the real Bedaux, you may wonder? Not a bad chef, a man of taste, an adroit flower arranger and of course, a first-class valet and all-purpose domestic, who can keep a large house spotless with the wave of a duster. Bedaux’s exterior is cunningly conventional; what it hides are tremendous reserves of ruthlessness, of ice, of steel and of enterprise. You would scarcely believe me if I told you about the powers I exercise over some people …
I imagine I catch a sound from the direction of the drawing room. A tinkling kind of sound? I stand and listen. No, it’s nothing.
I remind myself that I need to collect my mobile phone as well as Mr Eresby’s phone but then I hear the tinkling again and I freeze. There is someone in the house. A burglar? The odious Joan Selwyn? No, unlikely to be her. It can’t be the police, can it? I have been playing with fire …
I pick up a stick with a heavy bronze handle in the shape of a leopard’s head and tiptoe to the drawing room. I hold the stick aloft.
The door is ajar –
I see Olga.
She is sitting on the sofa, drinking Tia Maria from a tall glass. The tinkling sound again. She has been in the kitchen and helped herself to ice.
The drawing room, in case you are interested, is not over-furnished; rather the effect I have aimed at is one of luxurious restraint.
‘The front door is open. You leave the front door open! Why is the front door open?’ Olga speaks in the silly peremptory voice she assumes with me when she believes Mr Eresby is within earshot. ‘I sit here and I wait. I wait for light years. I try to phone Charlie, one, two, three times, but Charlie doesn’t answer!’
‘He doesn’t have his mobile with him.’
‘Where is Charlie?’
‘He is not here. Relax.’ I regard her with my head on one side. I am really glad to see her. I feel that very rare, very special kind of warmth rising in my chest. I lean over, hold her face between my hands and kiss her on the mouth. ‘Why have you come?’
‘You tell me to come, you don’t remember? To come and tell Charlie it is all a game, a test!’ She sounds sulkily impatient.
‘I told you to come tomorrow, you silly goose.’ I find it difficult to keep the affection out of my voice. ‘But it’s good you are here. The reconciliation may as well take place today. I have decided to truncate his ordeal.’
Anyone looking less like a goose I cannot imagine. Olga has short silvery-blonde hair, a wide sensuous mouth, high cheekbones and amber-coloured eyes – she is beautiful in a wild and rather animal kind of way. Strangely enough, she also brings to mind a dryad.
‘Where is Charlie?’
‘At the Sylvie & Bruno Nursery School. I left him in the capable hands of Miss Fenella Frayle.’
‘What nursery? Who is this Miss Fenella? What is this foolishness? You joke, yes?’
I explain what has happened.
‘He faints? Really? He is so upset when I tell him I don’t want to see him that he faints? So he loves me?’
‘He is mad about you.’
‘He can’t live without me.’ She sighs luxuriantly.
‘Operation Hard-to-Get has been an unqualified success, my darling. You can throw yourself into his arms without any reservation now.’ I speak slowly, enunciating every word with care. ‘You are now in a position to dictate your terms. He will be so relieved, he will probably insist on marrying you on the spot, or tomorrow at the latest.’ I sit next to her on the sofa. Once more I kiss her lips, then I kiss her throat, then her lips again. Olga’s lips are soft and pliant. ‘Marriage or nothing, remember,’ I murmur.
‘He will be so happy when I tell him it is all a game, that I am only testing his feelings!’
‘He will be ecstatic. In the circumstances, it would be unwise for us to prolong his ordeal. He said he couldn’t bear the misery. He is in a bad way. We may have overestimated his stamina.’
‘Poor Charlie.’ Olga takes a sip of Tia Maria. ‘You mean he is ill? Very ill?’
‘I told you he fainted in the street right outside that nursery school. He had to be helped to Miss Frayle’s sofa. His legs gave way. He is suffering pangs and agonies because you told him you didn’t want to see him again.’
She shrugs. ‘I only tell him what you tell me to tell him.’
‘How elegantly you express yourself. Don’t worry. You are a good child.’ I pat her cheek. Although her passport says she is twenty, Olga is in actual fact only seventeen and three months. I found her birth certificate among the papers she brought with her from Lithuania.
‘What else does Charlie say?’
‘Well, he said his heart was broken and that he wanted to die. Oh yes, he also asked me to kill you.’ I put my hands round her throat playfully.
‘He wants you to kill me? Really? I like it. It is exciting, I think. But he is not serious, no?’
I look up at the ceiling. ‘I don’t know. He was extremely upset when he said it.’
‘He loves me so much, he wants me to die … It is poetic, I think … It is pity I don’t love him … Charlie is nice and I like him but I do not love him. Love is special … I love Mr Bedaux. Does Mr Bedaux love me?’
‘You know he does.’
We kiss again. Would it surprise you to know that Olga is the first woman I have ever kissed?
She grips my hand. ‘Tell me your first name. Please. What is your first name?’
‘I haven’t got a first name.’
‘You joke, yes? What is your first name?’
‘I will tell you some other time.’
I pull away. Well, business first. I look at the clock.
‘Please, don’t go,’ she says. ‘Stay with me.’
‘We mustn’t prolong Mr Eresby’s agony. If we do, his brain may suffer some permanent damage.’
‘It is your fault if he suffers damage! It is your idea, this stupid game! You say, make him suffer, make him cry, make his life hell, then, at right moment, at right psychological moment, go back to him, say it is all a game and ask him to marry you. This is what you say, isn’t it?’ She pronounces the ‘p’ in psychological.
‘That’s what I said, yes, but now it is time to end Mr Eresby’s ordeal. We don’t want the bridegroom to die of a broken heart, do we?’
‘No. Charlie mustn’t die before he marries me and before he makes a will.’ She sits up. ‘This is the plan. This is the plot. Our plot. He must leave all his money to me first. But I must become his wife first. And I must be good to him. Then he can die.’
‘That is correct. Clever girl.’ I rise. ‘I must go now. I promise to bring him back to you as soon as I can. We’ll take a cab. You wait here and when he comes in, you rush to him and embrace him. I will pretend not to mind. You kiss him with all the passion you can muster.’
‘I know how to kiss.’
‘You most certainly do.’
‘Will he forgive me? Perhaps he doesn’t forgive me? Perhaps he tells me, you play games with me, go away, you are a bad girl, I don’t want to see you again?’
‘He will forgive you. He is mad about you.’
She stretches out her hands towards me. ‘Mr Bedaux, you make everything so simple, so easy! I love you so much. You know? I always like older men, always. You and I get married when Charlie dies, yes? And then we will be together for ever.’
‘After a decent interval has passed, we’ll get married, yes … We’ll go abroad … To a place no one knows us … Somewhere warm, near the sea … Perhaps an island … But remember, we must be very, very careful …’