‘This year, m’lady?’
‘No. In my entire life.’
‘I couldn’t say, m’lady.’
‘Come on. Have a guess.’
‘A thousand, m’lady? Two thousand?’
‘Don’t be silly, Provost. Twenty-eight. One day I sat down and calculated. My doctor keeps telling me I need to exercise the old cerebellum, otherwise it will simply stop functioning. I may have omitted one or two, mind.’ She took a sip of sherry. ‘I will go to Roderick’s funeral, but I don’t think I will attend his memorial service. If there is a memorial service. I cannot imagine anything in Roderick’s life that deserves to be celebrated as such. I have an idea he won’t be much mourned.’
‘Perhaps not, m’lady, but it will be some time before Lord Remnant is forgotten.’
‘Roderick’s personality may have been more forcefully colourful than those of the bland and timid masses, but one does tend to forget people the moment they stop coming to dinner, Provost. Certain people one even forgets during dinner. It’s most disconcerting. You look across the table and you wonder, who the hell is that? You don’t think I am suffering from Old Timer’s, do you?’
‘Old Timer’s, m’lady?’
‘That’s what Mary Gaunt calls it, awfully funny. You know what I mean — the brain-melting disease. I seem to have forgotten its name, which is a bad enough sign.’
‘I don’t think you are suffering from Alzheimer’s, m’lady,’ Provost said.
Lady Grylls took another sip of sherry. She had known Roderick Remnant’s first wife, the tragic Deirdre, rather well. Deirdre had been at school with one of Lady Grylls’s younger cousins. Lady Grylls didn’t care much for Roderick Remnant’s second wife, who was the widow now. She had been younger than him, though no spring chicken, on the wrong side of forty, or so Lady Grylls believed, though forty-five was considered ‘young’ these days. ‘What was her name now?’
‘Clarissa, m’lady. Nee Vuillaumy.’
Lady Grylls cupped her ear. ‘Villainy? How terribly interesting. Suggestive, wouldn’t you say? Clarissa is apparently one of those women who don’t improve with age, only learn new ways of misbehaving themselves. She has a son, but he is not Roderick’s son.’
‘Lady Remnant has a son from a previous marriage, m’lady. The young man’s name is Stephan Farrar.’
‘Stephan, that’s right. I understand he takes drugs. Same as your boy used to do, only worse, much worse, I think. Gerard Fenwick is Roderick’s only brother. I used to be great chums with Felicity Fenwick’s mama. Gerard will be — what?’
‘The thirteenth earl. According to Debrett’s.’
‘It seems to me you know too much about the aristocracy, Provost, it’s positively unhealthy. You need to get yourself a girlfriend. Gerard writes, or tries to. Everybody nowadays seems terribly keen on becoming a writer. Can’t understand it myself. My niece-in-law writes detective stories, though she says her advances are staggeringly small. Felicity dabbles in interior decorating and sells furniture, I believe.’
‘The new Lady Remnant has a shop in South Kensington, m’lady.’
‘The extraordinary things you know, Provost. You should be on Mastermind. The Fenwicks are frightfully nice. As it happens, Hugh’s got his eye on Felicity’s Damascus chest, so it’s a small world. I have an idea neither Felicity nor Gerard cares for Roderick’s island. What was the island called? There was a TV documentary about it. Somewhere in the Caribbean.’
‘The Grenadin Island. One of the Valance group. Previously known as the St Philippe group.’
‘What fun that documentary was. I believe we watched it together, Provost, didn’t we? It made Roderick look quite mad. That high-pitched giggle! Those snow-white pyjamas! Never took them off. Had fifteen pairs, he said. Boasted about it. Would you boast about it if you had fifteen pairs of snow-white pyjamas, Provost?’
‘No, m’lady.’
‘The way he strutted about, fanning himself! He looked a bit like Alec Guinness playing Lawrence of the Caribbean in an Ealing comedy.’
‘It was not the most flattering of representations, m’lady.’
‘Far from it. Well, Roderick had only himself to blame, though I don’t think he was the sort of man who blamed himself for anything. The camera made a big thing of his outsize sombrero, his temper tantrums and his fan. How did he explain the fan now?’
‘Lord Remnant said that in another existence he must have been a geisha, m’lady.’
‘The Grenadier of Grenadin. That’s what the documentary was called, I believe? No doubt a reference to the fact that Roderick had been in the Guards as a young man. But why did they call it a meta-documentary? Have you any idea?’
‘I am afraid I haven’t, m’lady.’
‘I must say Roderick behaved terribly badly. At one point the camera showed him waving money at what was said to be a transvestite prostitute. He then kicked the documentary director in the shin and hit him on the head with his fan! Remember, Provost?’
‘I do remember, m’lady.’
‘That poor chap! It looked as though he was going to cry. Roderick said he had many abilities including irritability. That was terribly funny, though of course one could see what an impossible character he was.’
‘Lord Remnant gave every appearance of enjoying himself. He talked about his profligate lifestyle with considerable relish.’
Lord Remnant had boasted of spending forty million pounds on buying and developing property and throwing parties. He had admitted to blowing ten thousand on a special kind of tent which had been hand-made in Ceylon and delivered to Grenadin by helicopter.
‘Back in the seventies those parties were considered the epitome of glitz and glamour, Provost. Or what in the seventies passed for glitz and glamour. Roderick became known as the Jet Set Monarch. He was always photographed wearing a crown … I believe he was interested in witchcraft as well?’
‘Lord Remnant dabbled in voodoo or hoodoo, m’lady. Apparently he attempted to resurrect the dead.’
‘His idea of a party trick, I suppose. Well, it seems to be the right part of the world for that sort of thing.’
Provost cleared his throat. ‘Lord Remnant and his family were said to be under a curse, m’lady. It has been claimed that he built La Sorciere on top of a piece of West Indian holy ground, which he should never have done.’
‘The curse, yes. It all comes back to me now. Well, I don’t know. It’s true that Remnants have had all sorts of problems. Roderick never had any children. Poor wretched Deirdre became a kleptomaniac following her menopause, then she hanged herself most inexplicably. They say Clarissa has had as many lovers as there are Chinamen in China. I am sure you know all about Clarissa’s lovers, Provost?’
‘I am afraid not, m’lady,’ Provost said after a little pause.
‘The stepson is a drug fiend and he’s got a screw loose. Roderick has now died at the comparatively young age of sixty-eight and the title has passed to his younger brother who is a compulsive scribbler, though he can’t get anything published.’
‘Most distinguished families are said to have a curse. The Sassoons, the Tennants, the Kennedys, the Grimaldis-’
‘Sometimes, Provost, I wonder if a curse is not just a handy way of excusing generations of self-indulgence and general bad behaviour.’
‘Certain members of the Royal Family used to be regular visitors at La Sorciere, but then they suddenly and for no apparent reason stopped going.’
‘Is that to be blamed on the curse as well?’ Lady Grylls appeared amused. ‘You don’t have to speak of the Royal Family in such hushed tones, Provost. Ridiculous. I don’t suppose you still pray for the Royal Family, do you? You do? Goodness. Remnant parties were the stuff of legend. One had to be terribly amusing or good-looking or fascinating or outrageous to get an invitation to a Remnant party. Not any longer, it seems. Still, they appear to have been getting up to all sorts of silly things. The latest craze — there was something about it in the Mail. What was it? Miltonesque litanies?’