Jemima Shore at the Sunny Grave (22 page)

But wait—No, for God’s sake—

“No!” screamed Leila involuntarily. She stopped. “No, Charlie, no,” she wanted to cry. “Not her …”

It was too late. Already the wine was coursing down the throat of Emily Nissaki, that pampered throat soon to be closed and silent for ever in death, as she flung back her handsome head with its abundant coils of dark hair, the relic of her Greek ancestry, smiling her thanks with her bold black sloe eyes fixed on Charlie Hopper who had handed her the drink.

Beside her, Magdalen, Countess of Belport, wondered when Charlie Hopper, or at least that hard-working, opera-mad wife of his, would bother to bring her a drink. After all she was the Chairman of the Festival. Hadn’t there been something about a special glass of wine? Yet Leila had been behaving so curiously lately, sulking really, she who had always been so grateful for everything. Could she possibly have found out about Charlie … Magdalen hoped to God she wasn’t planning to leave the Festival office or anything drastic like that. Leila was so clever, so inventive.

So when was that special glass of wine coming? The plonk in the theatre bar was famously disgusting, poisonous one might almost say, even if that face the lead singer was now pulling was surely slightly over the top even for a dramatic soprano.

The death of Emily Nissaki, popularly described as being on stage—the theatre bar was surely near enough to count as that—created a predictable sensation. There were those, it is true, who suggested that her macabre ending cast a false retrospective glamour on her actual talent. But then none of those critics had probably heard her sing in person: those few records so far released did not quite do her justice.
These same critics had not, for example, as Charlie Hopper had done, ecstatically followed Emily Nissaki round American opera houses—and to Venice—throughout her brief career; following that first
coup de foudre
meeting with her in Chicago.

Finally Charlie had secured, with some quiet manipulation, that “my lovely Countess” as he was wont to call her—a reference to that glorious night together following her performance in
Figaro
at La Fenice—should come to the Belport Festival. (Even if it had involved flattery beyond the call of duty to Magdalen Belport: still remarkable looking, if you like, and a good sort, but altogether too fond of making men into slaves. If Charlie was going to be a slave, it would be to an opera singer like Emily Nissaki, not to an idle rich woman.)

To the rest of the spectators, the way in which Leila Hopper, shortly before confessing her crime, cried out, “The wrong Countess!” made no sense. She then quoted the general exclamation at the end of
Figaro
of “Heavens! What do I see?” “The wrong Countess!”: what could that mean? She had known, surely she had known, of Charlie’s affair with Emily Nissaki—otherwise why poison her?

She must have known. It was Magdalen Belport for example who reported seeing Emily Nissaki and Charlie Hopper together in Venice.

“Not that I told Leila,” Magdalen added quickly. “In fact after Geoffrey’s gaffe I tried like mad to cover up for Charlie by pretending he was alone; whereas of course he was hanging round the neck of that wretched singer, Emily Whatnot. And then I backed him up with Leila to the hilt. Some cock and bull story about going to the opera. As if one didn’t have better things to do in Venice! Absolutely to the hilt.”

It was only Charlie himself, broken not only by the death
of Emily but also by the part he had unwittingly played in it, who knew exactly what his wife had meant by her frantic cry of “The wrong Countess!” And her use of those words from
Figaro
confirmed it to him. “Heavens! What do I see?” exclaimed all those on stage when the “right” Countess finally stepped out of the alcove to reveal herself. (Not that he could ever tell Magdalen Belport, unaware both of Leila’s suspicions and of the peril which had threatened her.)

“Take it to your lovely Countess”: how could Charlie have looked in any other direction than towards Emily Nissaki? And so in a sense Leila Hopper, self-confessed murderess Leila, did have her operatic revenge.

S
omething about the way the woman twisted her rings, took one off, swapped it round with another, transferred rings from finger to finger, hand to hand, surveyed the result and then began the nervous twisting all over again, reminded me of Margaret. But these rings, so far as I could see, were not the gleaming diamond clusters, glinting ruby half-hoops, heavy sapphire globules with which Margaret had been wont to play. These were plain white rings, ivory rings at best, but more likely plastic, gold rings which were so clearly not made of precious metal that they reminded one disagreeably of curtain rings.

The woman opposite me in the carnage continued to twist her rings. In that nervously repeated gesture was all the resemblance: for one thing this woman looked far older than Margaret must be now, last seen in all her pampered glory of fur and silk. However Margaret had aged—and she must of course have aged to some degree over the intervening years—she would have managed to age gracefully. And she could never have aged
downhill
as it were. I knew
exactly the kind of old—or rather middle-aged—woman Margaret would have become; you see them sometimes at parties, fragile, elegant and protected, still candles for all the male moths while the younger beauties sulk at their unexpected neglect. This woman, in a blackish overcoat and dirty boots, was near to a tramp: what was more, there were bruises on her face.

Then I looked again, at the woman still twisting her shoddy rings. I looked again and saw that the woman was Margaret. Margaret, my ex-wife.

I will not deny that I experienced one short, savage pang of sheer pleasure. After that pity and pity alone overwhelmed me. Had Margaret remained as svelte and beautiful as she had been under my besotted care, I should certainly have felt very differently, experiencing neither the pleasure nor the pity. I might have felt a brief stab of pain for the past on first sighting her; after that I would have tried to escape from the encounter. Certainly I should have tried to escape if she had been accompanied by Jason.

Jason: her second husband and my ex-partner, as I suppose I must call him. But I have never seen either of them following the divorce, I took care of that, and perhaps they did too; so to me he is still in my thoughts Jason, her lover and my partner. Just as she is still, somewhere in my thoughts, still Margaret, my Margaret and my wife. It was that thought which provoked the pity, that and her total physical degradation.

The bruises—who? Surely Jason was not responsible. I had accused my partner—my ex-partner—of many things in my mind over the last twenty years, but violence or even a tendency towards violence was not amongst them. As for poverty, our business affairs were no longer linked as they had been, but even I knew enough to realize that Jason
must remain an extremely rich man. Besides, this Margaret at whom I was gazing with pity was not only poor but had evidently been poor for some years. No sudden fall from wealth would account for the haggard, battered face, the cast-off clothing.

At that moment, Margaret looked up. Her eyes, her once beautiful eyes, met mine. To my horror, I found that my own filled with tears. But Margaret herself gazed back without expression, merely continuing that twisting, that eternal twisting of the rings.

“Meg,” I said.

The woman, Margaret, said nothing in reply; her gaze was in fact quite vacant as though she had not recognized me. Of course I had not recognized
her
at first. But then I, I am well preserved. Everyone says so. I have taken care of myself (having no one to take care of me). Or perhaps it would be more realistic to admit that I have always looked much as I do now, which is staid, middle-aged, and respectable. “Darling, you look like a man of 60 already,” had been one of Margaret’s favourite jibes. “Why can’t you go to a better tailor?” After a bit, I realized that this meant: why can’t you go to Jason’s tailor? And I stopped my pathetic, earnest attempts to please her sartorially. I think that cruel moment was when I knew that Margaret was going to leave me.

I stood up and crossed the carriage. I touched the woman on the shoulder.

“Margaret,” I said. “It’s me, Andrew.”

Margaret looked up at me; her fingers at the rings were suddenly still. Then I saw the white stick lying beside her, previously hidden by her black coat.

“Andrew?” she said rather doubtfully. “I thought I recognized your voice just now. But sometimes one hears
voices. You know how it is.” Then with more energy she added, “You
don’t
know how it is.”

“Meg,” I said tenderly, finding all the familiar protective yearning come back to me.

“Oh, Andrew,” she cried suddenly, feeling up towards my arm and anchoring her hand upon it. “Andrew, help me.” It was a voice of pleading and need that she had never used in all the years of our marriage, the teasing, critical Margaret gone for ever. “Please will you help me? You don’t know what happened to me—”

There and then in the carriage, I kissed her, stopped her speaking with my gentle kiss. There would be time for her to tell me these things. I held her bruised face in mine, marking how old she looked, the skin lined, the hair listless, and touched the hands adorned with their cheap rings, which had brought her back to me.

Her hands! The state of her hands alone chilled me when I thought of my Margaret’s soft white hands and pearly nails, hands which belonged as much to her manicurist (as I once lightly told her) as they did to me. I do not know what I would have done then. Taken her home, bathed her, kissed her again many times, always gently, to show that I could overlook the loss of her beauty, cared for her—

But at that point I found myself waking from this dream, this delicious dream (for it was certainly no nightmare). And I felt the warm hand of my wife Margaret, lying beside me on the pillow between us in our bed. I could feel the nobbles and sharpness of her rings, the many rings which she never took off, even at night. I would like to have wrenched off those rings from her fingers, before I killed her, twisting her own silk scarf round her neck, twisting it many times as she herself was wont to twist her jewellery. I would like her to have lain dead there with curtain rings and cheap plastic on her beautiful fingers.

But there was no time. So I killed her as she lay, still in her jewels, I killed her for her treachery and her adultery and her mockery and her twisting, twisting fingers which even in death would not give up their sparkling secrets. Margaret, now my dead wife.

A
NTONIA
F
RASER
’s seven previous mysteries featuring Jemima Shore—the latest is
The Cavalier Case
—have been translated into many languages, as has her previous collection of short stories,
Jemima Shore’s First Case
. They have also inspired two television series,
Quiet as a Nun
with Maria Aitken and
Jemima Shore Investigates
starring Patricia Hodge. Antonia Fraser is well known as a biographer, was President of English PEN from 1988–89, and is also a past Chairman of both the Society of Authors and the Crime-writers’ Association.