The Killing of Olga Klimt (5 page)

‘Olga Klimt?’

‘Olga Klimt. She was wearing a name tag – all three girls were. Charlie couldn’t hide the fact he fancied her madly. Couldn’t keep his eyes off her. Hands ditto. Joanie actually heard him asking Olga Klimt for her phone number. When later that night poor Joanie asked for an explanation, he denied being smitten, but from then on nothing was the same again. The long and the short of it is that he’s ditched her since and has been seeing Olga Klimt instead.’

‘What is she – Russian?’

‘Of Baltic extraction. Latvian or Lithuanian or something. I haven’t seen her but apparently she’s something pretty special to look at. A beauty of luminous, shimmering fairness, with
a figure to match, Joanie described her as. Charlie has severed all links with Joanie. And not a word of explanation! At first she couldn’t believe it and she kept ringing him but he never answered his mobile phone. And d’you know what happened when she tried his landline?’

‘It was Bedaux who answered?’

Lord Collingwood shot Major Payne a glance full of surprised admiration. Payne might have suddenly produced a rabbit from his coffee cup.

‘What a clever chap you are! Yes! Each time she phoned it was Bedaux she got, and each time he said the same thing in his stuffiest voice, “Mr Eresby is out.” The stage butler, you know. Well, Joan’s jolly determined. She had a key to the house but when she went round, she discovered the lock had been changed. She rang the front-door bell but got no response. She said she stood outside the front door for ages. At one point she glanced up and she saw Bedaux standing at a first-floor window, gazing down at her. She said he had a little smile on his lips. Not a nice smile. Well, it confirmed what she’d suspected all along – that Bedaux was behind it. That it was Bedaux who was pulling the strings.’

‘What happened next?’

‘Well, she started to follow Charlie and Olga whenever she got the chance, once all the way to the Royal Albert Hall. “Stalked” them, I believe is the technical term? A confrontation or what-have-you took place at the Albert Hall, in the first interval of whatever it was they’d been watching. Joanie made a frightful scene. She said she couldn’t help herself. She told Olga she’d kill her. Charlie threatened to call the police. Well, Joanie phoned me as soon as she got back home that evening, that’s when I heard the whole sorry tale. She wasn’t crying or anything. She sounded icily calm. She said she intended to kill Olga Klimt. Now, isn’t that extraordinary?’

‘People who publicly declare they are going to kill someone, rarely do it.’ Payne raised his coffee cup to his lips.

‘Joanie is an odd girl. She’s unlike most people,’ Lord Collingwood said thoughtfully. ‘I got to know her quite well. She used to be my secretary, did I say? Bright as a button. Determined. She is convinced Bedaux and Olga Klimt are acting in cahoots and that they are out to get Charlie’s money or some such thing. She holds Bedaux responsible for having engineered the whole thing – for corrupting Charlie, or rather for detecting his weakness for sluts and satisfying it.’

‘She thinks it was Bedaux who pushed Olga into Charlie’s arms?’

‘She’s convinced of it. She referred to Bedaux as “no more than a glorified pimp” and she regards Charlie as his innocent victim. Well, when we talked that night, she still believed she had a chance with Charlie. She begged me to have a word with him, which I did – against my better judgement. I managed to speak to him on the phone the following day.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I told Charlie I had received information from an impeccable source, to the effect that his man and the Lithuanian siren were in some kind of transgressional partnership. I said he might actually be in danger.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He sneered. He said that my impeccable informant had been talking through his hat. Bedaux had nothing to do with Olga.
Bedaux strongly disapproved of his affair with Olga
. Then he said he had every intention of marrying Olga and neither I nor his mother could do anything about it, so there.’

‘He intends to marry her? Does Lady Collingwood know about it?’

‘No, of course not. My mother is eighty-eight and her health is a delicate balance between cautious living and complex
medication – oh, you mean Deirdre? Ha, ha. That’s terribly funny. I did mention it to her, yes. Ha, ha. Deirdre wasn’t at all perturbed.’ Lord Collingwood took a sip of coffee. ‘Far from it. She said Charlie was a big boy now and perfectly capable of making decisions for himself. She said she would rather set off for Valhalla in a flaming longship than interfere in the lives of her children.’

‘I didn’t know Deirdre had other children.’

‘She hasn’t got other children. Charlie’s her only son. My wife’s a delightful woman, Payne, perfectly splendid, but she does talk rot. Well, I got back to Joan and told her I’d drawn a blank. She then suggested I try to buy Olga off. Or scare her off. Make her leave England. Joanie seemed convinced that with Olga out of the way, the scales would fall from Charlie’s eyes, the spell would be broken and he would return to her. Failing that she said she would have no other option but to kill Olga.’

‘Did she sound serious?’

‘I don’t know. I tried to laugh it off. Told her not to be a chump. I think she was in a terrible mental state for quite a bit. Some women take being jilted badly. And she was jilted at the altar, as good as. Jilted women tend to brood and they go into black despair and turn bitter and eccentric and so on. Remember Miss Havisham?’

‘But Joan got over it?’

‘Yes, yes. It all happened some time ago. She has moved on since, found someone else. Some other young chap. I haven’t yet met this Olga Klimt, yet I keep wondering about her.’ Lord Collingwood cleared his throat. ‘She’s caught my imagination. Been meaning to go and take a look at her, actually. Curious to see what a young temptress looks like. Or would that be risky? Girls like Olga Klimt can get one into trouble, can’t they?’

‘They most certainly can.’ Payne smiled. ‘Do you know where she lives?’

‘As a matter of fact, I do. Place in Fulham. Philomel Cottage, Ruby Road. Property used to belong to me, actually, but then Deirdre insisted I let Charlie have it. He bought it off me. I understand Olga’s been set up there. It’s in Fulham. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a luminous, shimmering kind of beauty, have you, Payne?’

‘I am not sure. I may have done.’

This, Major Payne decided, was an imbroglio worthy of Antonia’s pen.

I walk across Sloane Square. The clear white stucco facade of Mr Eresby’s house is as unbroken and unyielding as the heat. The front door has been left unlocked, as I imagined it would be. I go into the hall, which is spacious and painted white. I stand looking round. All the furniture is white. Perhaps I could persuade Mr Eresby to change the colour scheme? White rooms are invariably so chic in the eyes of those who don’t have to clean them.

No sign of any disturbance. The small Vermeer is still on the wall. The Ming vase is on the console table.

I see my somewhat distorted reflection in the round convex mirror. On an impulse I stick out my tongue, open my eyes wide and twist my face into a demented grimace. I have no idea why I do it.

Who
is
the real Bedaux, you may wonder? Not a bad chef, a man of taste, an adroit flower arranger and of course, a first-class valet and all-purpose domestic, who can keep a large house spotless with the wave of a duster. Bedaux’s exterior is cunningly conventional; what it hides are tremendous reserves of ruthlessness, of ice, of steel and of enterprise. You would scarcely believe me if I told you about the powers I exercise over some people …

I imagine I catch a sound from the direction of the drawing room. A tinkling kind of sound? I stand and listen. No, it’s nothing.

I remind myself that I need to collect my mobile phone as well as Mr Eresby’s phone but then I hear the tinkling again and I freeze. There
is
someone in the house. A burglar? The odious Joan Selwyn? No, unlikely to be her. It can’t be the police, can it? I
have
been playing with fire …

I pick up a stick with a heavy bronze handle in the shape of a leopard’s head and tiptoe to the drawing room. I hold the stick aloft.

The door is ajar –

I see Olga.

She is sitting on the sofa, drinking Tia Maria from a tall glass. The tinkling sound again. She has been in the kitchen and helped herself to ice.

The drawing room, in case you are interested, is not over-furnished; rather the effect I have aimed at is one of luxurious restraint.

‘The front door is open. You leave the front door open! Why is the front door open?’ Olga speaks in the silly peremptory voice she assumes with me when she believes Mr Eresby is within earshot. ‘I sit here and I wait. I wait for light years. I try to phone Charlie, one, two, three times, but Charlie doesn’t answer!’

‘He doesn’t have his mobile with him.’

‘Where is Charlie?’

‘He is not here.
Relax
.’ I regard her with my head on one side. I am really glad to see her. I feel that very rare, very special kind of warmth rising in my chest. I lean over, hold her face between my hands and kiss her on the mouth. ‘Why have you come?’

‘You tell me to come, you don’t remember? To come and tell Charlie it is all a game, a test!’ She sounds sulkily impatient.

‘I told you to come tomorrow, you silly goose.’ I find it difficult to keep the affection out of my voice. ‘But it’s good you are here. The reconciliation may as well take place today. I have decided to truncate his ordeal.’

Anyone looking less like a goose I cannot imagine. Olga has short silvery-blonde hair, a wide sensuous mouth, high cheekbones and amber-coloured eyes – she is beautiful in a wild and rather animal kind of way. Strangely enough, she also brings to mind a dryad.

‘Where is Charlie?’

‘At the Sylvie & Bruno Nursery School. I left him in the capable hands of Miss Fenella Frayle.’

‘What nursery? Who is this Miss Fenella? What is this foolishness? You joke, yes?’

I explain what has happened.

‘He faints? Really? He is so upset when I tell him I don’t want to see him that he faints? So he loves me?’

‘He is mad about you.’

‘He can’t live without me.’ She sighs luxuriantly.

‘Operation Hard-to-Get has been an unqualified success, my darling. You can throw yourself into his arms without any reservation now.’ I speak slowly, enunciating every word with care. ‘You are now in a position to dictate your terms. He will be so relieved, he will probably insist on marrying you on the spot, or tomorrow at the latest.’ I sit next to her on the sofa. Once more I kiss her lips, then I kiss her throat, then her lips again. Olga’s lips are soft and pliant. ‘Marriage or nothing, remember,’ I murmur.

‘He will be so happy when I tell him it is all a game, that I am only testing his feelings!’

‘He will be ecstatic. In the circumstances, it would be unwise
for us to prolong his ordeal. He said he couldn’t bear the misery. He is in a bad way. We may have overestimated his stamina.’

‘Poor Charlie.’ Olga takes a sip of Tia Maria. ‘You mean he is ill? Very ill?’

‘I told you he fainted in the street right outside that nursery school. He had to be helped to Miss Frayle’s sofa. His legs gave way. He is suffering pangs and agonies because you told him you didn’t want to see him again.’

She shrugs. ‘I only tell him what you tell me to tell him.’

‘How elegantly you express yourself. Don’t worry. You are a good child.’ I pat her cheek. Although her passport says she is twenty, Olga is in actual fact only seventeen and three months. I found her birth certificate among the papers she brought with her from Lithuania.

‘What else does Charlie say?’

‘Well, he said his heart was broken and that he wanted to die. Oh yes, he also asked me to kill you.’ I put my hands round her throat playfully.

‘He wants you to kill me? Really? I like it. It is exciting, I think. But he is not serious, no?’

I look up at the ceiling. ‘I don’t know. He was extremely upset when he said it.’

‘He loves me so much, he wants me to die … It is poetic, I think … It is pity I don’t love him … Charlie is nice and I like him but I do not
love
him. Love is special … I love Mr Bedaux. Does Mr Bedaux love me?’

‘You know he does.’

We kiss again. Would it surprise you to know that Olga is the first woman I have ever kissed?

She grips my hand. ‘Tell me your first name.
Please
. What is your first name?’

‘I haven’t got a first name.’

‘You joke, yes? What is your first name?’

‘I will tell you some other time.’

I pull away. Well, business first. I look at the clock.

‘Please, don’t go,’ she says. ‘Stay with me.’

‘We mustn’t prolong Mr Eresby’s agony. If we do, his brain may suffer some permanent damage.’

‘It is your fault if he suffers damage! It is your idea, this stupid game! You say, make him suffer, make him cry, make his life hell, then, at right moment, at right psychological moment, go back to him, say it is all a game and ask him to marry you. This is what you say, isn’t it?’ She pronounces the ‘p’ in psychological.

‘That’s what I said, yes, but now it is time to end Mr Eresby’s ordeal. We don’t want the bridegroom to die of a broken heart, do we?’

‘No. Charlie mustn’t die before he marries me and before he makes a will.’ She sits up. ‘This is the plan. This is the plot. Our plot. He must leave all his money to me first. But I must become his wife first. And I must be good to him.
Then
he can die.’

‘That is correct. Clever girl.’ I rise. ‘I must go now. I promise to bring him back to you as soon as I can. We’ll take a cab. You wait here and when he comes in, you rush to him and embrace him. I will pretend not to mind. You kiss him with all the passion you can muster.’

‘I know how to kiss.’

‘You most certainly do.’

‘Will he forgive me? Perhaps he doesn’t forgive me? Perhaps he tells me, you play games with me, go away, you are a bad girl, I don’t want to see you again?’