The Death of Corinne by R.T. Raichev

Author:R.T. Raichev
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2009-09-01T16:00:00+00:00

17

The Fool of Love

Antonia entered the billiard room, doing her best to appear as calm and normal as possible. She watched her husband play a shot and miss rather an easy cannon off the red. Major Payne made an impatient gesture and grumbled that it was too damned hot in the room, didn’t they think? Impossible to concentrate. His face was very red and he had an expression like thunder. Antonia guessed that he had been losing game after game to Jonson . . . Hugh was not a particularly gracious loser. The squabbles they had over Scrabble! He seemed bent on revenge. Both men were in their shirtsleeves, facing each other across the billiard table, holding up their cues, scowling – like duellists en garde, Antonia thought.

Lady Grylls was sunk in one of the two dark leather button-backed chairs by the fireplace. She had a black silk Chinese shawl embroidered with dragons around her shoulders. She was eating chocolates out of a circular box embellished with mauve orchids and lavender silk ribbons, sipping brandy from a balloon glass and smoking through a long jet-black holder. A gold ribbed cigarette case with pavé sapphires lay on the round table beside her chair. She had a stately and somewhat decadent air about her – rather as if she taught etiquette on a pirate ship, Antonia thought.

Lady Grylls had been telling her nephew and Jonson how she could have become Princess Philip of Greece. That was back in 1946, the year before Philip had married the Queen. Lady Grylls hadn’t been married either – she’d been a mere Hon. They had met during an extremely dull shooting party. Philip had been jolly keen, but she hadn’t reciprocated his ardour. Still, she had been fascinated by his turbulent family history and strange genetic heritage. His grandfather had been assassinated, his father exiled, his mother had become a nun and had then been consigned to a lunatic asylum, at least one of his sisters had married a Nazi. ‘When we met again a couple of years ago he thought I was somebody else.’ Lady Grylls sighed.

It was quarter past eleven. They had been having coffee – a tray with three ultra-thin porcelain cups, red with gold borders, and a silver pot stood on a side table. Antonia had heard Lady Grylls describe the new brand of coffee her suppliers sent her as ‘rich and dark as the Aga Khan’, which, she gathered, had been a non-PC advertising slogan from Lady Grylls’s youth.

‘Hugh, I’d like a word.’ Antonia tried to smile. ‘I do apologize, but it’s important.’

‘Ah, the little secrets of the newly-weds . . . A chocolate, my dear? The violet creams are particularly heavenly.’ Lady Grylls proffered the box but Antonia declined. ‘You are on a diet, admit it!’ Lady Grylls cried gleefully.

Payne put down his cue. ‘I’ll be back in a jiffy. I haven’t finished with you yet,’ he told Jonson. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked Antonia.

‘Wait,’ she mouthed.

Up in their room she said, ‘I found it.

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