A Splash of Red (30 page)

'The fourth person who loved Chloe, was you, Isabelle. Yes, you did
love her. I suspect in your heart of hearts you love her still, for all her disloyalty, her treachery in using your letters in her novel, her cruel threat to publish those letters in the anthology Valentine Brighton commissioned. That's because you, with all your concentration on disloyalty, are loyalty itself - I think you gave your warm heart to her and never quite managed to withdraw it.

'For it was you, Isabelle, who gave me the clue to the true killer of Chloe Fontaine. That day in "The Little Athens", when we talked about Chloe's need for violence, even from those she loved. There was someone you mentioned - do you remember; a fifth person who loved her, but could not by temperament provide that violence? If only he had been able to give her something like that - the violence she craved, you said, "life would have taken a different turn for Chloe". Isabelle, do you remember? You were right. For that person, that lover, did in the end, provoked beyond all endurance, find the violence in him to proceed, the violence she wanted. And in so doing he killed her.'

'Valentine,' said Isabelle in a sad far-off voice, 'Valentine Brighton. Poor boy.'

19

Tell me who to kill'

'Yes, Valentine Brighton. Valentine: the lover in the gardens.' Peace, a strange resigned calm, had been restored. Jemima and Sir Richard between them had had to restrain Kevin John, who at her words had bounded out of his chair with surprising force considering his condition, fists doubled, his attitude expressing what he scarcely needed to put into words: 'Tell me who to kill.'

The knowledge, when it penetrated, that Chloe's murderer was beyond his personal vengeance, caused him further furiously expressed anguish. It was some time before all this turmoil subsided.

'I told you that this was a story of love. Love unrequited, love exploited. Valentine Brighton, inhibited, repressed, the only child of a dominating mother, fatherless from an early age, a classic text-book case perhaps; with a very low sex drive indeed, if any drive at all - that fact was far more important than whatever direction it took - from the first he was utterly fascinated by Chloe Fontaine. You saw the truth of that, Isabelle, with your own knowledge of love.

'Never mind all his little throwaway pretend-snobbish jokes, the ones that made us all wonder secretly whether they weren't for real, whether he wasn't at heart a great deal more snobbish than he admitted: "Mummy wouldn't like it, Chloe wouldn't go down well with th
e neighbours" and so forth. Mere
persiflage to disguise feelings which were all the more violent because he couldn't express them - physically, that is.

'In the meantime he makes do with his double role of confidant and publisher: confidant while Chloe goes to bed with half London, or so it seems to him, the outsider, the observer. But still in a sense he still possesses her, doesn't he? He's the o
nly one, for example, who knows
the truth about her liaison with you, Sir Richard, because he's so safe, or rather Chloe thinks he's so safe, which is rather a different matter.

'Chloe-watching, for that is what it was, became an obsession with him. And then a mania. For Chloe, courtesy of Sir Richard Lionnel and Lionnel Estates, actually came to live in Bloomsbury, the next-door square to his office, the actual square where he had his own small London flat. And this square, Adelaide Square, has gardens, thick shrubby deserted gardens, to which only residents have the key.

'Chloe's move to Bloomsbury gives new life to Valentine's passion. It brings death to Chloe.

'To begin with, Valentine can see so much more of her comings and goings; it's easy for example to observe the entrance to seventy-three Adelaide Square from the gardens; I know, I've done it - I saw you, Adam, on the afternoon of her murder
...
As an occupation, Chloe-watching was probably often difficult to resist for a lonely man on a hot summer's evening. I expect he always swore to himself he'd never do it again. We all plan, don't we, to resist our secret self-destructive pleasures the next time?' Jemima thought back to past loves of her own, married loves, telephone numbers dialled without hope or reason and answered, predictably, by wives; houses with lighted windows, and other windows even more hauntingly un-lighted, hopelessly regarded from a taxi at night
...

Jemima went on, wrenching her thoughts back: 'But Chloe too had the right to use these same gardens. A right on the whole, she didn't exercise - too busy elsewhere, a cynic might say. Until one fine day, one fine night rather, Chloe forgot the keys to number seventy-three
...
We shall never know the circumstances under which she forgot them, as a result of which she climbed into the square gardens (the key to the square was with the flat keys). She had the idea of sleeping out there, it was after all summer, and it was very hot. But it is tempting, is it not, to think she sought her own fate? Perhaps her story to me afterwards wasn't true; perhaps she didn't forget her keys - Chloe in that respect was the reverse of careless; perhaps after a dull evening out, she glimpsed Valentine lurking and the spirit of devilry took over; it's not important - and, I repeat, we shall never know. They're both dead now.'

'What is important is the fact that that night, that fine wild summer's night, evidently inspired something new in Valentine, extinguished some long-held fear, conquered some inhibition, lit the vital fire so long laid. And Valentine - the resident lover, the lover with the key, became the lover in the gardens.

'They had what Chloe afterwards called "a casual encounter" - a surprising one, short-lived, because she by this time was utterly determined to marry you, Sir Richard. It was also a carnal encounter. A very brief one. That short duration must have caused Valentine enough pain in itself, but cruellest of all was the fact that Chloe continued to tell him, her erstwhile lover for at least one passionate night, all about her plans for Richard Lionnel.

'It was at this point that Valentine's Chloe-watching took a desperate turn. First he discovered a route up to this flat by the fire escape, at the back of the building. Again, was this discovery choice or chance? He told me the latter. But it's not important. What is important is that he also found a loose brick in the back wall, or loose enough, Sir Richard, with due respect to Lionnel Estates, for him to prise it away.

'He did so. He probed further. He was confronted by a picture. Or rather the back of a picture whose front he knew well. This picture was called "A Splash of Red".' Kevin John gave a kind of groan.

'It hung in her bedroom. He'd often seen it, as we see it now.' Jemima uncrossed her dark legs in their scarlet sandals and walked unhurriedly towards the bedroom doors. She opened them in the same deliberate fashion. The painting stared down at them, the violence of the subject matter made more shocking by the fact that the bedroom itself was now empty - clean, white, virginal - except for the white-shrouded bed.

Isabelle shuddered. She said something which sounded like: 'R-r-repulsive.' She might have been referring to Valentine's behaviour.

Jemima continued: 'In this picture Valentine cut a hole. To put it bluntly, a spy-hole.' She did not look to see if Kevin John, or for that matter Richard Lionnel, winced. 'And so Chloe-watching took on another dimension. Did she know? In this case I think it unlikely, but once again, we'll never know.

'I'll pass over speculation and cut to Saturday, the fatal Saturday of her death. Several things happened on and around that day, leading up to her murder, and I'll try and put them in order, so that you, like me, can understand the tragic progression. On Friday evening Chloe installed me in the penthouse flat as caretaker and cat-sitter in her absence; this was primarily because Lionnel was worried that the Press would pick up his affair with Chloe, and she had the brilliant idea that I, of all people, being a member of the media, would be able to fend them off. I was of course quite innocent myself as to the true nature of her holiday. Then Chloe herself departed to spend the weekend - the weekend only - on the first floor while you, Sir Richard, took in your Downing Street meetings.

'In the meantime I received two telephone calls, or rather two
types
of telephone call: the first came from Chloe's parents, who had expected to see her in Folkestone and never received the letter putting off the visit. The second came from Valentine and I think were obsessional calls no longer directed necessarily towards Chloe, or even towards me who received them; they were the measure of the madness which was now enveloping him.

'Because, you see, Valentine had taken vengeance into h
is own hands and had tipped off
Lady Lionnel in Sussex about her husband's secret little holiday with the pretty lady writer. There can be no question that that information was passed on deliberately. Whereupon Lady Lionnel insisted on coming up to London to confront her husband. And Valentine, he too was in London. He was here, not to warn Chloe as he pretended to me, but to gloat. You, Sir Richard, tried to warn her. But Valentine, the watcher, wanted to observe in his twisted way, his darling, his loved one, receiving her come-uppance at the hands of the woman he had deliberately set upon her.

'Unfortunately it is now, quite independently, that Chloe has her inspiration about her parents. If the wife can stage a scene, so can the mistress. She's pinning everything on this holiday, but so far Sir Richard isn't rising to the bait - just invoking the name of his notoriously jealous wife. However, Chloe knows that her stepfather is still quite strong-minded enough in his late seventies to express himself forcibly on the subject of pregnancy and marriage to the highest in the land - in this case exemplified by you, Sir Richard. She had planned to tell you about her pregnancy while you're both abroad, but now this seems a better way to do it, more difficult for you to back out, a gambler's throw, perhaps, but then Chloe in her personal life was ever a gambler.'

Sir Richard did not react, merely drew on his black cigarette. Against the light his expression remained unreadable. Jemima passed swiftly on: 'Chloe has written to her parents with a view to a visit and breaking the news to them personally. But Sir Richard's weekend session at number ten changes all that. She puts off her trip to Folkestone. Then she telephones her parents to invite them to London instead and discovers to her horror that her second letter putting off her visit hasn't arrived. In fact her first letter, confirming her visit, has arrived only that morning. She hasn't thought about them for so long, or written or visited them - hasn't needed them, you might say - that the normally careful Chloe has failed to note their change of postal address. They're so worried that they've already telephoned me to check up. Still, the dramatic news that Chloe is pregnant overrides everything. Her mother's too frail, but her step-father agrees to come up on Saturday afternoon.'

Isabelle gave a gasp.

'Mais c
’
est incroyable,'
she exclaimed. 'She 'ated babies. Books not babies, 'ow many times 'ave I 'eard 'er say it?'

'Not this baby, Isabelle. Because she thought it would help her in her plan. But it's now that there's a hitch. One thing she doesn't know about - you, Kevin John, you who have erupted back into her life like the splash of red you are - only she doesn't know it yet.

'Kevin John, quite unknown to Chloe, had made an early-morning appearance in the penthouse and found me there. We'll draw a veil over that. He came back again at lunchtime. This was the fatal return. For this was the return which Valentine unexpectedly witnessed. Yes, Kevin John, he saw you. Through the hole in the picture. The hole he had made to spy on Chloe.'

A reference to his own picture did at least penetrate Kevin John's consciousness. His fists clenched again and he swivelled his blue eyes in that direction. Then he delivered a stream of obscenities about the late Lord Brighton, which left Sir Richard unmoved, caused Adam to yawn, and provoked Isabelle to murmur something Gallic and disgusted.

'You, Kevin John,' went on Jemima, 'the force of sexuality, of violence, all he could never be, all of which he confidently believed had been rejected from Chloe's life; Sir Richard - security - that he could understand. But your kind of rampant sexuality, never. It cracked something in him, to see you there, sent him mad. It was you who came back, Kevin John, just as the police thought, except you didn't kill her. You're so fatally at home, aren't you, or so he thought, with a razor in your hand. So she'd lied, lied all along, the one thing she never did to him, swore she never did. "I always tell the truth to Valentine, he can't resist that" - her own words to me.

'Never mind that Valentine wrongs Chloe. It's actually
your
razor, Sir Richard. She hasn't gone back to you, Kevin John. Far from it. She's not even present. Later, when she does return, she calls you a drunken slob, in effect throws you out. Valentine doesn't know that, for at this point he leaves, goes away, back into the gardens where you, Sir Richard, later spot him watching the house. Yes, it's Valentine Brighton you saw, Sir Richard, your country neighbour, the friend of your wife, the trouble-maker. From him, and his gossiping malicious mother, you flinch away.

'Valentine Brighton waits in the square gardens until he sees you, Kevin John, leaving. From something you said to me earlier, I think you may also have glimpsed him. But you thought he was harmless, "that's impossible" you told me—'