I spot Mr Eresby’s mobile on the drawing-room table. I pick it up and check if there are any messages. No, nothing.
Just as I step out of the front door, a shaft of sunlight dazzles me and I am impelled to cover my eyes with my hand. Someone seems to have opened a car door. For a moment the blood rushes from my head and I have the completely irrational feeling that this is somehow a bad omen.
I feel like running back into the house and holding Olga in my arms, holding her as tight as I can. The impulse is powerful, but I manage to fight it down.
I decide not to hire a cab. I am going to walk. I need to collect my thoughts.
I glance round Sloane Square and note its solidity and grace, its charm and unostentatiously plutocratic decorum. The trees glow with cupreous tints. A woman is walking two Pekinese dogs on bejewelled leashes. They move at a stately pace. Although the day is warm, there is a mink stole draped round her shoulders. Her expressionless face is of the well-bred equine variety. Her pearl choker brings to mind a horse collar. The sight amuses me and I smile.
I head for Symons Street. I know I must hurry but I don’t. I take my time. For some reason I do not feel like reaching my destination. I need to think and as I do, my mood changes. I stop smiling. I feel a cold hand clutching at my heart.
A vision slowly rises before my eyes.
I see Olga in Mr Eresby’s arms – they are kissing passionately – it is their wedding night – they are in the double-poster bed in Mr Eresby’s bedroom – they are making love –
I almost come to a halt. My heart is beating fast, too fast. Why, I believe I am jealous! Yes. The realisation frightens me. The truth is I hate the idea of sharing Olga with Mr Eresby. I try to be rational about it. I remind myself that one cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs, also that jealousy could be fatal since it is capable of destroying every careful plan Olga and I have made.
I make a conscious effort to steer my mind in a different direction. I think of the woman with the little boy at the Sylvie & Bruno Nursery School. Miss Frayle addressed the woman as ‘Miss Darcy’. I have an idea I have seen that woman before. Like royalty, I rarely forget a face. I have seen her, yes. The exact place suddenly comes to me. Hatchards, in Piccadilly. It was three months ago. Yes. I had popped in to buy two books for Lady Collingwood. (The Chalet School and Madame de …)
A moment later I remember more. Her name is Antonia Darcy and she writes detective novels. When I last saw her, she was sitting at a small desk and signing copies of her latest book.
I have an uneasy feeling about her … I can’t say why … I saw her looking down at me, from the top of the stairs … Well, so what? A cat can look at a king!
I used to read detective novels a great deal as a boy. I remember that I always tended to despise the police and side with the criminal. I identified with the criminal. I always thought it more fun. Didn’t someone say that only as a criminal could one achieve ultimate freedom?
I believe Antonia Darcy writes traditional whodunits. I don’t like whodunits. The artificiality and various contrivances of such stories irritate me. What I relish are crime stories in which you know who the culprit is from the very start and where the action is one long, unpredictable, frequently demented loop that keeps you on the edge of your seat and where all focus is on the villain.
I try to imagine how Antonia Darcy might see the situation I have engineered, how she would be likely to sketch it out in her plotting notebook, if of course she keeps one.
Two colluding lovers set out to dupe the heir to a vast fortune. The plan is to get the girl to marry the heir and subsequently kill him – but not before he has made a will leaving his money to her. The lovers will then marry and share the fortune. The male part of the conspiracy is the heir’s valet who has managed to pull the wool over everybody’s eyes by affecting animosity towards his master’s girlfriend.
Something on those lines.
Perhaps Antonia Darcy will introduce a counterplot, or rather a complication, one that runs alongside the main murder plot … Mr Eresby asks his valet to kill Olga Klimt, not realising that the valet and Olga Klimt are intent on killing him.
I am smiling once more, remembering that this actually happened.
Poor innocent Mr Eresby!
How will he die? It will be a sudden kind of death, I think. There will be an accident, a freak accident, maybe. Mr Eresby will slip and smash the back of his head against the edge of the marble bath. Or he will fall in front of a speeding car. Or he may try to fix a faulty fuse by means of a stepladder and –
So many possibilities!
A vastness and variety of vistas.