Free Murder of Gonzago by R. T. Raichev Page B

to breathe.
    At one point the sight of Louise reclining in the window seat, looking like a bloated Buddha, or Jabba the Hutt, breathing like a suction pump, gazing at him yearningly, had caused his intense annoyance to mount into furious rage. He had decided to go out, to prevent a conflagration.
    Things seemed the same, yet they would never be the same. In a peculiar way Lord Remnant’s violent death had triggered something in his mind, something he had never suspected was there …
    He discovered he was walking in the direction of Remnant Regis and soon enough he saw the castle rising in the mist, not unlike some crouching primeval monster with spikes on its back – that was what the chimneys made it look like.
    Set in a kind of valley, next to a grey-watered artificial lake, Remnant Castle was surrounded by oaks, beeches and chestnuts of great size and strange growth. Long untrimmed branches dangled to the ground and creaked whenever the wind blew. There was a park on the other side, but it wasinvisible from where he stood. The lake was enshrouded in mists in most seasons, diaphanous and delicate in summer, thick and blighting in winter.
    He raised his binoculars to his eyes. Somebody was turning on the lights at Remnant. How was Clarissa coping? When he had spoken to her at the crematorium, he had offered his services. She had allowed him to hold her hand in his for at least half a minute. He would have held it longer, but Louise had been hovering in the background, making impatient noises, sighing heavily, damn her. Clarissa had thanked him and said she would call him if she needed anything. She had sounded as though she meant it. She had looked him straight in the eye.
    He wanted to see her. He longed to hear her voice. He could walk up to her front door and present himself. No, not yet. He shouldn’t act on an impulse. He was not the sort of man who took foolish and unnecessary risks – with one notable exception …
    The Hunters lived at Clarenden Farm, set among acres and acres of land less than a quarter of a mile from Remnant Castle. They had been neighbours of the Remnants for quite a bit, though he’d never imagined they’d become anything like friends. He had been surprised when Clarissa had asked them for drinks, then to dinner, then to tea, then for drinks again; and had finally issued the invitation for a visit to their very own island.
    Why had they been invited? They were not exactly Clarissa’s sort of people. Not as some kind of camouflage for Clarissa’s affair with the doctor, surely? That was what Louise had suggested. Louise was a nasty cat. He never ceased to marvel at the fascinating depths of his wife’s inexhaustible banality. Louise had gone out of her way to poison his mind against Clarissa. Louise was jealous. Terribly jealous. Well, there was nothing he could do about it.
    Would things be different now that Lord Remnant was dead? Perhaps Clarissa would phone and ask him over for a drink. She owed him a lot . That was what she had told him the night Lord Remnant died.
    What a night it had been …
    The air had seemed full of electricity. They had stood about and stared … It was he and Sylvester-Sale who had eventually carried the body up the stairs – not to the master bedroom, Clarissa had said, but to Lord Remnant’s dressing room next door. They had laid the body on some kind of couch.
    He had watched Dr Sylvester-Sale take off Lord Remnant’s cardboard nose, then his wig and the Gonzago beard. Lord Remnant’s eyes had been darkened with kohl – his cheeks covered in rouge – his mouth painted with purplish lipstick. The whole episode had had a nightmarish quality about it. They had kept the velvet cushion from the chaise longue downstairs under Lord Remnant’s head. The cushion had been damp with blood.
    They had moved the body from the murder scene. They hadn’t called the police. It seemed that different rules operated at La Sorcière. Clarissa’s rules. Clarissa had