Ingrid blew her nose. She had a job to do, things to see to. Important things. Matters of life and death.
Bee was going to be punished in a very special kind of way. Bee would be made to suffer for a crime she had not committed. Ingrid nodded to herself and ran her tongue across her lips. Bee was going to be held responsible for the violent murder of Ralph Renshawe. That, Ingrid reflected, would be so much better than killing Bee – or cutting off Bee’s lower lip and thus rendering her pretty mouth unkissable.
Back to Plan A then, as originally conceived. In her bag Ingrid carried Bee’s address book. It was covered with Beatrice’s fingerprints and of course it had Beatrice’s name written on the front page. Ingrid had wrapped the address book up in a clean silk handkerchief and she had been careful not to leave any of her own fingerprints on it. She also carried an exceptionally sharp small knife with a silver handle. Bee had used it to sharpen a pencil. Bee’s fingerprints were all over the knife. It was Bee’s scent the police would smell in the room. Ce Soir Je T’Aime. Ingrid had dabbed several drops of it behind her ears.
This should provide the police with enough evidence.
She would start with the eyes. She wanted to hear Ralph Renshawe squeal like a hare caught in a trap. She’d leave him one eye so that he could see what was happening to the rest of him. Her only concern was that he might get a heart attack and die after the first cut, but that was some-thing she couldn’t do much about.
Despite the increasing heat, Ingrid did not take off her gloves but she saw the birthmark across the palm of her right hand very clearly in her mind. The blood-red naevus. Had she always been meant to be a killer, like Cain?
She must wear her gloves all the time. She mustn’t leave any of her own fingerprints. She smiled grimly. She had all the instincts of the successful criminal. She was perfectly capable of committing the perfect murder. She remembered how, in the month Bee got married, she managed to get hold of some cyanide, which she handled very care-fully with rubber gloves. Several lumps she used to destroy the wasps’ nest in the garden, but the rest of the cyanide she put in a phial and kept at the back of her cupboard. She had toyed with the idea of poisoning the interloper. Well, she’d been unwilling to share Bee with anyone then, least of all with that big lumbering fool.
When Bee was charged with the murder of Ralph Renshawe and put away, the interloper would have a nervous breakdown. The interloper was so besotted with his beloved beautiful Bee, he wouldn’t be able to live with-out her. His existence would become insupportable, so he would probably kill himself.
No loose ends. It would be like one of those meticulously worked-out endings Antonia Darcy specialized in. Ingrid had read Antonia Darcy’s first novel, at Bee’s recommendation, and had hated it. Ingenious yes, work of genius, most decidedly no. Ingrid had no doubt that each one of Antonia Darcy’s books was a mere commercially motivated replica of its predecessor. Variations on a tried, if tired, lucrative theme. Well-bred characters sitting beside cosy fires, drinking tea, deliberating who-dunit ad nauseam.
The rook was still there, perched on the well’s edge, looking at her, his head tilted to one side. Mighty God Rook, she whispered and she gave a slight bow. She had no doubt Mighty God Rook knew what was going on in her head. Mighty God Rook approved of what she was about to do.
Ingrid felt filled with superhuman strength and energy, with the kind of ‘fuel’ that sent rockets blasting across the stratosphere. She started walking fast – broke into a run. She raised her arms a little, like the wings of a bird poised for flight.
Ospreys’ steeply pitched roof, the gables and pointed arches danced before her eyes. The sun above seemed to grow larger – an enormous orange of tawny gold. She was heading for the back of the house, for the french windows that led into Ralph’s room. She wouldn’t have minded entering the normal way, through the front door, but wanted to avoid any possible opposition from the nurse who might say that Ralph was too ill to see her. Well, Ingrid could easily deal with ten nurses if she had to, but she didn’t want to waste another minute – The next moment she stopped short in her tracks. ‘Fair is foul and foul is fair,’ she heard someone say.
What a relief it was that he didn’t have to go to Ospreys after all. Even in normal circumstances Benjamin Saunders was averse to leaving London and his well-established routine. He had never been able to understand his wife’s passion for the country, let alone share it. Most of his wife’s smart friends seemed to live in the country. All the husbands seemed to play golf. Annabel had been talking admiringly about somebody’s husband ‘fitting in ten holes between tea and dinner’. Annabel had been trying to persuade him to take up golf. How little she knew him! Still, Ralph Renshawe was a highly valued client and it would-n’t have done to displease him – even though he was dying, his word was a command. If the appointment hadn’t been cancelled, Saunders would have gone to Ospreys without fail.
He was sitting at his desk, writing with a silver-topped pen. He was a tall distinguished-looking man of sixty-three, with a long straight nose, prim mouth and a lugubrious expression, wearing an immaculate striped suit and silk tie of a restrained pattern. He had loosened his top shirt button, his only concession to the heat wave. On the wall behind him hung framed traditional cartoons by ‘Spy’ of Victorian legal panjandrums. As one of his clients had observed, Saunders wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Spy cartoon himself.
The phone call had been received at eight o’clock that morning, just as he had been making reluctant preparations to leave for Oxford. It had been Nurse Wilkes, Ralph Renshawe’s nurse. Ralph wouldn’t be able to see him this morning and would Mr Saunders mind not coming to Ospreys? She was phoning from a hospital in Oxford. There had been a crisis the night before, but everything was under control now. Ralph had suddenly taken a turn for the worse and she had had to call an ambulance.
She had been sure Ralph wouldn’t make it, but it had proved a false alarm, Nurse Wilkes went on cheerfully. Ralph was in his hospital bed, on a drip – but he was making a super recovery. Ralph was in good spirits too, revived by the vitamin injections they had given him. He had been allowed to sit up for a bit and the first thing he insisted on doing was make a phone call to Beatrice, that was Miss Beatrice Ardleigh, Ralph’s lady friend – wasn’t that nice? Well, the way things were going, she thought they would be back at Ospreys later that afternoon and could Mr Saunders come to Ospreys with the papers tomorrow morning at eleven?
Benjamin Saunders frowned. Miss Beatrice Ardleigh – who was she? Someone from Ralph Renshawe’s mysterious past? He had the feeling that the reason Ralph Renshawe wanted to see him was something to do with her… Another woman… Would she be as much trouble as Madame Niratpattanasai?
12
The Heiress
‘Is – is that Antonia?’
‘Oh! Bee! How are you? Is – is everything OK?’ Antonia felt genuine relief to hear Beatrice Ardleigh’s voice.
‘Yes, everything is fine. Nothing happened.’
‘I am so glad!’
‘Well, we didn’t sleep awfully well, but that was my fault entirely – my nerves. I am sensitive as an oyster. Poor Len was up and down, all through the night, bringing me pills and drinks and things. No, we haven’t seen Ingrid. We heard her crying in her room – it was about two in the morning, I think. Broke my heart! But Len didn’t let me speak to her. He can be extremely difficult. I did want to go and give her a hug. I honestly did.’