A Splash of Red (32 page)

It seemed doubtful, at the time of Pompey's chat with Jemima, whether the murder of Chloe Fontaine would ever receive an official solution. This was partly due to the activities of Hope Lady Brighton, who on the one hand threatened dire penalties if her dead son's name was blackened on such slender evidence, and on the other made a series of heart-rending appeals as a grief-stricken mother. It was also due to the extreme reluctance of Mr Stover, on behalf of his wife, the dead woman's next of kin, to press for any form of revenge. The attitude of Valentine Brighton's mother, in which despair and authoritarianism were mingled in roughly equal parts, found an answering echo in Mr Stover's own breast.

There was a last interview with Jemima Shore, in which Mr Stover, grown suddenly much older and even smaller, began by sounding more bewildered than aggressive. But on the subject of the Press, for whom his full hatred was reserved, he still managed to express himself with something of his old strength. He for one was clearly immensely relieved that there would be no murder trial centred exclusively round the lives and loves of his stepdaughter.

'The things they wrote about Dollie!' he exclaimed to Jemima. 'Did they not think of her mother, her mother and me?' He broke down a little. 'Despite her change of name. Always made it quite clear who she was, when she was on television, and so forth, the relationship, told the neighbours, and now—'

'At least her books are selling well. At long last. And they're thinking of televising
Fallen Child.
She would have liked that,' put in Jemima.

It was a bald statement but true. Chloe's premature death, under hideous circumstances, had in a strange way bumped up her literary reputation. Dr Marigold Milton, whose moral enthusiasm in a good cause terrified her intellectual inferiors, pointed triumphantly to her long advocacy of Chloe's novels in a major piece in
Literature.
Other critics, honorably determined not to consider the scandal which surrounded her name, but their attention drawn to it nonetheless, found themselves pondering on Chloe's books as a whole for the first time. After all, her work, as well as her life, was over. In all this, the avidity of the public for further details concerning Chloe Fontaine was no disadvantage. In future, while her frozen body was freed at last into the obliteration of burial, her work would flourish.

'And we've got to know you,'
Mr
Stover spoke with perfect confidence. 'Her mother said that this morning before I left. The last
thing she said - "We've got to know Jemima Shore, haven't we, Dad?" She'd like to give you that picture, the wife, not sell it back to them as the gallery suggested. "Why don't we give it to Miss Shore," she said, "to remind her of Dollie?" '

'No, no,' Jemima interrupted hastily. 'The gallery is quite right. Sell it.' She had no wish to introduce 'A Splash of Red' into her own life.

'You'll visit us, I expect', Mr Stover continued remorselessly. 'When you're our way. We'll talk about memories - Dollie - Chloe, I mean.' It was one of the touching things about Mr Stover that latterly he had made a determined effort to refer to his stepdaughter by her literary name. 'You can tell us about what goes on in television, books, well it's all the same thing isn't it? She knew all about it, Chloe, our girl.'

Mr Stover went on: 'And if you ever wanted to make a programme about Dollie, Chloe, all of this, well, you would need us, wouldn't you?'

'I'll visit you,' said Jemima Shore gently. She said it with a slightly heavy heart because she knew she would keep her word. Dollie Stover might have left her parents coldly unvisited, but she, Jemima Shore, would keep in touch with them. A sense of duty and sadness would not let her neglect them.

In the meantime Tiger, the golden Lion of Bloomsbury transplanted to Holland Park, graceful, wild and ultimately unknowable, would remind her of Chloe Fontaine.