The Killing of Olga Klimt (26 page)

‘Oh, I thought that was dahlias!’

They had started crossing the garden. Lady Collingwood’s progress was somewhat hampered by her high heels.

The conservatory door was closed but not locked.

Inside it was warm and humid and the smell of fresh earth pervaded the air.

The neatness of the plants and the flowers was almost oppressive, Antonia thought. Some of the plants looked as if they had been not only washed but ironed as well, while others gave the impression of being made of wax. Perhaps they
were
made of wax?

Half hidden among the palms and the rhododendrons stood a black marble sculpture: a tall angel, with stark staring glass eyes, which were as bright as the bleached blue of an ancient mariner’s eyes. The angel’s gaze was turned heavenwards. A flock of brilliantly coloured butterflies fluttered above the angel’s head, purple and turquoise, vermilion and fuchsia pink …

‘Are they
real
?’ Antonia asked.

‘Oh yes. Rupert cultivates them. Rupert prides himself on his aesthetic sense. He has them specially ordered – he raises them from cocoons, you know.’

The next moment Lady Collingwood gave a little cry and pointed.

It was a gruesome sight that met their eyes.

‘I always knew something like this would happen,’ she said.

Lord Collingwood was hanging from a palm tree. His face was blue. He appeared to have used his red silk braces to form a hangman’s noose. A garden chair lay on the ground where he had kicked it away.

A line of poetry floated into Antonia’s head.

His hanging face, like a devil’s,

sick of sin –

Payne proceeded to cut the body down with shears he found on a garden table. He attempted artificial respiration, but it was too late.

There was a letter sticking out of the breast pocket of Lord Collingwood’s smoking jacket.

It was addressed to Major Payne.

I am arrested as I leave the Holyrood Hotel. It appears my movements have been monitored. Rather imprudently I resist. I struggle and my nose gets bloodied in the process. For a moment mist and darkness come over me. My arms get twisted behind my back and I am handcuffed, then the brutes caution me.

The whole distressing episode takes place only moments after Lady Collingwood has rung me to say that she has managed to bump off her husband and that she has been so clever about it that no one will ever think of suspecting her. I believe she is only showing off, trying to impress me. She said she had felt my presence beside her all along.

I wonder if Lady Collingwood can provide me with a good solicitor …

Antonia stood looking over Hugh’s shoulder.

The letter rustled between his fingers.

How unsatisfactory this would be as a murder motive in a book, she thought. One could explain anything and everything with madness. Which, in her opinion, wasn’t exactly fair play.

Well, life sometimes was stranger than fiction.

My dear Payne,

You may have been able to work things out for yourself, I don’t know. But, in case you haven’t, here in short is the ‘Final Solution’. (Pun intended.)

Joan was planning to have children with her new man, which would have meant extending the Collingwood line into the next generation. I couldn’t possibly allow that. I am sure you are the only person in the world who will understand.

There is madness in our family. An inexorable rust gnawing at the gilded structure. Bad blood, if you prefer simple English. I have had little peace, thinking about it. I have been aware of the problem for quite some time now and I have been through hell.

I am also afflicted. There have been all sorts of signs and manifestations. I am given to bouts of irrational introspection, to melancholy meanderings followed either by great anger or by the deepest stupefaction. I hear voices. I see visions. I have time lapses. I experience states of confusion, what I believe are called ‘fugues’? A woman who is Deirdre’s spitting image keeps appearing to me in a dream.

Joan displayed some of the signs of my family’s madness. I could see it in her eyes, in the way she frowned, in the way she held her head, in her smile – not that she smiled often. Even if Joan had become conscious of the fact, there would have been absolutely nothing she could have done about it. Like me, she was doomed. She had my blood running through her veins. She was after all my daughter.

I have no doubt in my mind that what I did was the right thing. I released Joan from the burden she would inevitably have had to bear.

Most of my people were mad, I realise now. All sorts of small things, seemingly insignificant details come back to me, like the way my father sometimes wore his kilt – back to front. Nobody seemed to mind, it was deemed little more than an endearing
eccentricity. I didn’t think anything of it myself when I was a boy. It is only recently that my eyes have been ‘opened’.

You see, don’t you, Payne? The Collingwood line simply has to disappear. The police would have got me sooner or later – my movements must have been ‘captured’ on all those blasted CCTV cameras you see everywhere in London these days. I would have been arrested, then ‘assessed’ and then shut away. That’s the fate of mental defectives. I can’t possibly allow that. I am a proud man. When I die, there will be no more Collingwoods. I have quite an
idée fixe
about the whole thing, which is perhaps further evidence of my deteriorating mind? I am mad and yet I also seem able to stand outside of myself and view my actions with a degree of detachment, which only adds to my torment.

What about doctors, you may ask, what about the miracles of modern medicine? Well, modern medicine has been unable to help me. As a matter of fact, I have already undergone a trepanation. Nobody knows about it. I wouldn’t want it bandied about, so, please, keep this particular piece of information under your hat.

The operation was conducted not such a long time ago by that damned woman who looks like Deirdre. She took something out of my head. She assured me the operation had been an unqualified success. She said I would be ‘fine’.

Did I become more normal than I had been? I don’t think so. As a matter of fact, I have been feeling much worse since. Which only proves my point about the inadequacy of medical science.

But you will want to know more about the murder. Well, this is how I set about it. I told Joan I wanted her to help me retrieve a compromising paper from Olga Klimt’s house. I said we might have to search for it. I invented a friend and said the paper belonged to him. I said he had been a client of Olga Klimt’s and that I was keen on saving his reputation. She demurred, but I managed to persuade her to go to Philomel Cottage. I gave her a front-door key. As it happens, I am in possession of several keys.
I was after all the previous owner. I told her to go first and unlock the door.

I caught up with her as she was about to enter the hall. I meant to stab her after we’d got inside but she happened to glance over her shoulder and she saw the knife. I was compelled to do it on the spot, you see.

I wish I could have explained I was doing her a favour, that she should be grateful to me, but of course it was quite impossible in the circumstances. I don’t suppose she would have understood anyhow.

What did I feel when I saw my daughter pitch forward? A sense of fulfilment, that’s what. The ecstasy of achievement that is only realised in dreams. A kind of an apotheosis.

I didn’t look back. I hailed a cab and went home.

The knife is actually an ancient Venetian stiletto that I had been using as a paper knife. Its blade is deadly and it is slim enough to fit inside my brolly. You can find it buried among the orchids.

What else is there? You said you hated the idea of loose ends. Oh yes. That draft. The new will. Once I made up my mind that Joan should die, I produced a draft for a new will and made it look as though I intended to leave all my money and property to her. That was my way of ensuring that I wouldn’t become a suspect. I mean, what kind of a papa kills his daughter after making her his sole legatee? That was clever of me, you must admit. I knew Deirdre would get to see the draft sooner or later. Deirdre, as I believe I told you, is notorious for her forays into my study.

Choosing Philomel Cottage was part of the smokescreen I set out to create. I wanted to give the impression Olga Klimt was the intended victim and that Joan was killed by mistake. Joan had dyed her hair blond for some reason, to make herself more alluring to Billy, if not to Charlie, I suppose. That’s what gave me the idea.

I wonder if you have managed to work out that Joan couldn’t have received a phone call while we sat at Richoux’s? That was my
one slip but then I couldn’t have known she had left her mobile at Sieg Mortimer’s flat. He told me you took special interest in the damned thing. No one rang her. There was no mysterious caller. No one asked her to go to Philomel Cottage at five-thirty – apart from me, that is.

I contacted Olga Klimt and told her to go to see Charlie. I rang her on the Philomel Cottage landline since I had no idea what her mobile number was. I knew she would immediately try to call Charlie, as I’d got her worried, so I immediately rang him on his mobile and pretended I was someone from his bank. I muffled my voice. I kept his phone busy for a couple of minutes – till Olga got to the Tube where I knew there would be no network.

As I sit writing this, I am convinced that Deirdre and Bedaux are plotting my demise. Earlier on they were next door, in Deirdre’s boudoir. It is outrageous that she should have let that villain into the house. Well, they won’t be able to bump me off now, I won’t give them the pleasure as I intend to do it myself, so there.

I have actually left all my money to you and Collingwood Castle to the National Trust. I have already contacted my solicitors, the will’s been witnessed, so this time the whole legal side of it is as it should be.

If, for some reason, you are not happy about this arrangement, perhaps you could choose to use the money to have our old beloved haunt, the Military Club, restored to its former glory? To the days when it stood – in the words of those bloody Socialists – for ‘everything reactionary and establishmentarian’? Please, have the dilatory waiter sacked. And make sure the coffee continues excellent. I would be most grateful.

It is time for me to go. My only regret is that my trip to Scotland will have to be postponed indefinitely.

Goodbye, Payne.
Ave Caesar
– and all that kind of rot.

Yours, Collingwood.

R.T. RAICHEV is a writer and researcher who grew up in Bulgaria and wrote his university dissertation on English crime fiction. He has lived in London since 1989, and
The Killing of Olga Klimt
is the ninth book in his popular Antonia Darcy and Major Payne mystery series.

The Hunt for Sonya Dufrette

Assassins at Ospreys

The Death of Corinne

The Little Victim

The Curious Incident at Claridge’s

Murder at the Villa Byzantine

The Murder of Gonzago

The Riddle of Sphinx Island

This is a work of fiction.

All the characters are imaginary and bear no relation to any living person.

R.T. Raichev

First published in 2014

The Mystery Press is an imprint of The History Press

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This ebook edition first published in 2014

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