The King of Diamonds (4 page)

Katya opened her mouth to speak but the words stuck in her throat. She felt sick and faint, and the room had started to revolve. Two great tears sliding slowly down her sunken cheeks bore silent witness to her inner distress.

Recovering from her initial shock, Vanessa crossed the room and put her arm around Katya, helping to hold her up.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked. ‘What can I get you?’

‘Water,’ Katya whispered. ‘Water.’

Vanessa couldn’t hear her the first time and had to listen hard before she understood what Katya was saying.

‘Yes, of course,’ she said, getting up and going over to the drinks tray on the sideboard, but as soon as her back was turned Katya collapsed to the floor, taking a small ornamental table with her. Vanessa couldn’t see any water and so she instinctively seized hold of a soda fountain, pulled down on the mother of pearl handle, and sprayed a jet of foaming water in the general direction of the girl’s mouth. After a moment Katya coughed and opened her eyes, but she hardly seemed to know where she was. Vanessa knelt down beside Katya, supporting the girl’s head in her hands. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, repeating her earlier question.

Katya could hear Vanessa’s voice, but it was very far away. She was sinking to the bottom of a deep, dark pool and knew that talking would soon be beyond her, and so, with one last superhuman effort, she launched herself upward through the thick black darkness and into the light of her uncle’s drawing room. She had come too far to stop now.

‘They’re . . .’

‘Yes?’ said Vanessa, putting her ear close to Katya’s mouth so that her cheek brushed the wet soda water on the girl’s upturned face.

‘They’re trying to kill me,’ said Katya in a rush. But the struggle to get out the words was too much. The sedative that Jana Claes had half-injected into her vein upstairs finally did its work, and Katya collapsed back into Vanessa’s arms, dead to the world.

Vanessa reached up and took a cushion off the sofa and placed it under the girl’s head, and then, letting go of Katya, she sat back on her haunches, wondering what the hell to do next. She’d come out for a pleasant romantic evening and had ended up within ten minutes of her arrival holding her lover’s niece in her arms while the girl accused nameless assailants of trying to kill her. Vanessa closed her eyes, trying to think. It was all just so crazy. She knew Titus – he was a good man. She couldn’t conceive of him as a murderer. And yet the girl had seemed so insistent, as if she would have done anything to tell Vanessa her message. ‘They’re trying to kill me,’ she had said. But who was
they
? Perhaps it wasn’t Titus at all, but his brother-in-law, Franz, whom the girl had been talking about. Franz and someone else. Certainly there was no blood relationship between Katya and Franz. Titus had told Vanessa very little of his family history, but she knew that Katya was the daughter of Titus’s sister, whereas Franz was the brother of Titus’s dead wife, about whom he never spoke.

Vanessa had met Franz Claes quite a few times during the last year and she had never warmed to the man. Titus didn’t like to drive, and sometimes Franz would act as chauffeur, driving him and Vanessa to restaurants in the back of Titus’s Bentley. She could make no criticism of his behaviour – Franz was always polite, and yet he never failed to make her feel uneasy when she was in his company. It wasn’t his wounds, or at least she hoped it wasn’t. Rather it was the way he avoided her eye and yet always seemed to be watching her. She’d noticed how he always kept everything razor sharp: his too short slicked-down, jet-black hair; the crease in his trousers; the polish on his shoes. Everything was defiantly masculine, except that he felt feminine somehow underneath. He gave Vanessa the creeps when she thought about him. Not that she had very much. Franz Claes had been at the periphery of her life up until now.

She needed to talk to Titus. That was what she needed to do. He’d make sense of all this for her. She thought about going to look for him, but she didn’t want to leave the girl on her own. Getting up, she went over to the door, opened it, and called out Titus’s name several times. But there was no response. It felt awkward shouting in someone else’s house, and she was just about to give up when she heard Titus’s voice on the stairs, although she couldn’t make out the words, and moments later he came into view. She went out into the hall to meet him.

As always, he looked entirely calm and self-possessed. There was not a wrinkle in his evening dress and he was coming down the stairs at his own pace, without rushing. The sight of her lover reassured Vanessa. Since the death of her teenage son, her only child, in a motorcycle accident three years earlier, Vanessa had convinced herself that the world was an entirely frightening, hostile place and that survival, not happiness, was the most that could be hoped for from life. Her husband hadn’t supported her at all with her grief. Bill Trave might be good at his job, but he was hopeless at expressing his emotions or helping his wife to cope with hers. He’d locked himself away in a dark, inaccessible place after Joe died, taking refuge in his police work. Every day he’d acted like their son had never existed, turning in on himself to hide his grief, until she couldn’t stand it any more. It was a crime – it was like killing their child all over again. Joe might only have been on the earth nineteen and a half years but they were the most important years of her life. He was her own personal miracle, wound about her heart forever, and she couldn’t forgive her husband for denying him. She’d left her husband eighteen months earlier because she’d had to. She’d have died otherwise. And all she’d expected from life once she was on her own was some small easing of her sense of oppression. But instead Titus had come along and lifted her right up off her feet. The happiness was difficult, of course: it made her feel guilty because of Joe and because of her husband, and it didn’t help that she’d met Titus because he’d been a witness in one of Bill’s cases. But Bill was going to hate whomever she took up with, and she deserved the chance of a little joy before age caught up with her. Her new life might not be perfect, but it was certainly better than the death in life she’d been experiencing before. And recently she had begun to embrace it with both hands. Titus made her feel safe, and he made her feel desirable when she had never expected to feel that way again. He made her feel that she mattered.

‘Are you all right, my dear?’ asked Titus, seeing the anxious expression on Vanessa’s face as she looked up at him from down below. ‘I’m sorry to have kept you so long.’

‘No, it’s not that. It’s your niece.’

‘Katya?’

‘Yes, she’s in there,’ said Vanessa, pointing toward the drawing room behind her. ‘She was in a bad way. I gave her some soda water but she passed out.’

For the first time since she had known him, Titus went ahead of Vanessa through a door. Katya was where Vanessa had left her over by the sofa, and, as far as Vanessa could see, she was still unconscious. It was better that way, Vanessa thought instinctively. The expression of terror had left the girl’s face and she looked quiet now, peaceful even.

Titus knelt beside his niece on the carpet and gently brushed her long, tousled fair hair back behind her head. Vanessa noticed the tenderness of his touch; she saw the intense worry and concern plainly written all over his face. It was obvious Titus didn’t mean his niece any harm. The idea was ludicrous, thought Vanessa, looking down at the two of them on the floor. Titus was Katya’s protector, not her enemy.

In one fluid movement he picked Katya up in his arms and got to his feet. Vanessa noticed how little effort this seemed to require. Katya was a waif of a person, light as a feather. Titus laid her down softly on the sofa, keeping the cushion under her head to act as a pillow.

‘Shouldn’t we call a doctor?’ asked Vanessa.

‘No, it’s not necessary. She has no fever. Come, you can see,’ said Titus, beckoning Vanessa over and placing her hand on his niece’s forehead. He was right. It felt cool, and she was breathing easily.

‘This has happened before,’ he went on after a moment. ‘It is too little sleep that is the problem. You English have a word for it.’

‘Insomnia?’

‘Yes, insomnia. It is terrible for my Katya. She goes for many hours without sleeping and it makes her crazy. This evening my sister-in-law . . . no, is that right? The sister of my brother-in-law is my sister-in-law? Yes?’

‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said Vanessa, smiling in spite of herself. He often spoke to her like this, like a student of English asking questions of a teacher, and she sometimes felt that that he was half-teasing her, that he knew the answers to his questions before he asked them. Like now for instance. But she didn’t mind. She knew that he was trying to calm her down, and she appreciated his thoughtfulness.

‘Thank you,’ he said with a small bow. ‘So this evening my sister-in-law, Jana, tried to give Katya a sedative to help her sleep, but Katya struggled and became very angry. It is not fair because Jana was only trying to help.’

Vanessa had never met Franz’s sister. Usually she and Titus met in town, and Jana had never come downstairs on the occasions when Vanessa had visited Blackwater Hall. In fact, looking back, Vanessa couldn’t remember Titus ever referring to his sister-in-law before. It had been like she didn’t exist. In other circumstances she would have liked to ask him more about Jana, but now wasn’t the time.

‘And yet it is not Katya’s fault either,’ said Titus, looking down sadly at his niece. ‘She has never recovered from poor Ethan’s death, you know.’

‘Yes, I was remembering that that’s when I last met her. It was here at the dinner party you gave after the trial.’

‘The night when I first met you. A night I will never forget,’ said Titus, bending over and kissing Vanessa’s hand. She smiled again, but went on with her thought.

‘She was so angry. That’s what I remember. Furious with that man, Swain, for what he had done.’

‘Yes, she wanted to kill him. Not that that would have brought Ethan back, of course. Having Swain convicted at the trial was the next best thing. But then, after it was over and Swain had got his sentence, she felt empty. There was nothing more to do and it was time for everyone to get on with their own lives again. But Katya couldn’t. She had no sense of direction – she was like a ship without a rudder. And so she went into Oxford and lost control of herself. This is a beautiful city, but like all cities it has a bad side, an underbelly!’

Titus stopped for a moment, savouring the word, as if pleased that he knew such an obscure piece of English vocabulary.

‘She went to places where a young girl should not go and she did things she should never have done,’ he went on after a moment. ‘She took drugs, Vanessa. Here, look.’ Gently, Titus lifted the sleeve on Katya’s left arm up to the shoulder and pointed to the needle marks dotting the skin above her elbow. ‘And that’s not all. She sold herself.’ Titus’s voice broke, and he put his hand up to his eyes.

‘I’m sorry, Titus. I had no idea. You don’t have to tell me this,’ said Vanessa. She felt appalled, horrified, by what Titus had had to bear.

‘I’m telling you because I want to,’ said Titus, reaching out and taking Vanessa’s hand. ‘Because I don’t want there to be any secrets between us. Because you matter to me, Vanessa. You know that, don’t you?’

Titus looked into Vanessa’s eyes, sensing her response. But then suddenly the connection between them was broken as she looked away over his shoulder with a grimace, and, turning round, he came face-to-face with Franz, standing behind him in the doorway.
Like my damned shadow,
he thought angrily. Franz was in the way as usual, spoiling everything, just when he had had that instinctive sense that the moment had at last arrived to make a declaration to Vanessa. But then he remembered Katya lying unconscious on the sofa and he felt the injustice of his reaction. Franz was right to interrupt them. The girl couldn’t stay here. She needed to be put to bed. There would be plenty of time for romance later.

‘I’m sorry, Franz. I didn’t see you,’ he said in an even voice. ‘I was just coming to find you to say that Katya was all right. Vanessa here has been kindly looking after her.’

Franz nodded toward Vanessa without saying anything. It was a formal gesture, like a military salute, empty of personal meaning.

‘I’ll take her up,’ he said, crossing over to Katya, but Titus put up his hand in an authoritative gesture before Franz could take hold of her.

‘No, Franz. This is a job for me, I think.’

Franz winced, stepping back as if he’d been struck. Vanessa wondered at his sensitivity but then guessed intuitively that he didn’t like being given orders in front of her.

Again Vanessa was struck by how light Katya seemed to be in Titus’s arms. It wasn’t just sleep the girl needed; it was food and drink. Vanessa knew it wasn’t her place to interfere but she felt she’d have to say something to Titus later when they were alone.

‘I’ll be back in a moment, my dear. Just as soon as I’ve got my Katya tucked up in bed,’ said Titus as he was going out of the door.

‘No problem,’ said Vanessa. ‘I’m fine here.’ But Titus was gone by the time she’d finished her sentence, and she found herself speaking instead to his brother-in-law, who stood facing her with his hand on the door handle.

He looked at her for a moment without speaking and then, bringing his feet together as if standing to attention, he bowed his head but not his back before turning around and leaving the room, pulling the door shut behind him. Vanessa half-expected to hear a key turning in the lock, but nothing happened, and she was left alone in a sudden strange silence.

A phrase she’d read years ago in some forgotten book floated unbidden into Vanessa’s mind: ‘Politeness is one of the most potent weapons in a civilized society.’ Franz Claes didn’t just make her feel uneasy, she realized. She actively disliked him as well.

Vanessa screwed up her eyes and shook her head, doing her best to clear all thoughts of Claes from her head. She preferred to think of Titus. She often found it difficult to summon an image, to accurately visualize a place or a person when they were not there in front of her, but with Titus it was different. He had impressed himself on her mind’s eye from the first, long before they had started seeing each other. Nobody could say that he wasn’t a fine figure of a man. An inch more than six foot from the top of his thick wavy silver hair down to his Italian leather shoes. Generally she had never been attracted to men with beards, but with Titus it was different. The carefully groomed beard and moustache were an extension of his beautiful hair, and she liked the rough texture of it under her fingers.

She didn’t know his exact age but she guessed him to be in his late fifties, and yet he was clearly physically very fit and never seemed tired or deflated. His bright blue eyes, perhaps his most attractive feature, were constantly alert, and sometimes it seemed as if they sparkled, lighting up his face.

He had beautiful taste. His clothes, his house, his possessions – everything was perfect. And yet worn and possessed with an effortlessness that Vanessa had never encountered before. He liked to show her things – between two high bookshelves in his study, for example, a tiny, terrifying painting of the Gorgon’s head by Caravaggio that gazed at her malevolently out of its dark frame, or in the drawing room a silver box embossed with Cyrillic letters and a royal crest in which the last tsar had kept his cufflinks.