'Is that me you mean?' Kevin John was bellowing.
'Yes, my good man, indeed I mean you. Quite the brute, aren't you, with your great fists and muscles, and your obscenities, quite the murdering type, I would have said myself. Do you really think she found that kind of thing attractive just because you're some kind of stud, she, Chloe? Why she loathed it, loathed the memory of all your repulsive violence, the beatings, to say nothing of your endless sexual boasting, she used to tell me about it—'
The virulence with which Sir Richard Lionnel spoke was so unexpected, so outside his usual calm diction, that Jemima was still too startled to react, while Sir Richard continued in the same tone of rising venom: 'I wouldn't be a bit surprised if you didn't do her in after all, poor little thing; anyway it's clear she wouldn't have died, we wouldn't all be in this appalling mess, if it wasn't for your blundering return, you disgusting drunken oaf - take your hands off me—'
Isabelle screamed loudly, but stood immobile in the sitting room wringing her hands. Adam leapt lithely off the floor and darted forward, but even so did not reach the balcony until too late. Jemima too rushed forward. She also was too late.
For Kevin John, at Sir Richard's last words, first hurled the bottle over the balcony, its crash only just audible over the fracas which followed, and then flung himself at the tycoon.
'Murdering type, am I? We'll see about that.' The rest of his words were more or less lost, although afterwards Isabelle was prepared to swear that he had said something like: 'I didn't kill her but I will kill you.' Jemima was less certain.
In the end all any of them knew for certain was that Sir Richard, taken off guard, standing against the concrete parapet which fronted the balcony - that Lionnel fancy, the parapet just slightly too low for safety - was forced back against it, onto it, over it, still with Kevin John shouting and shouting while at his throat. And quite suddenly Lionnel was no longer there. Kevin John was there. Standing, panting, great fists now hanging at his sides. But the substantial figure of Sir Richard Lionnel had vanished.
A strange sound reached their ears as he disappeared, not so much a scream, as a huge sigh or a cry, perhaps merely the sound of his body rushing through the air. The noise of its landing far below was almost extinguished by the hysterical screams of Isabelle Mancini. Nevertheless the disseminated thud indicated that, far below, something heavy had met its end.
20
The last word
'A murdering type', commented Pompey with satisfaction afterwards, when Kevin John Athlone had been charged with the wilful murder of Sir Richard Lionnel - this time there was to be no bail. Even Punch Fredericks did not suggest it. In view of this Pompey was really quite restrained in his private comments on solicitors, who believed in bail-for-everyone - even murderers, and the consequences of their rashness.
'A murdering type. Didn't I say so all along?' It was an echo of the dead man's last - fatally provoking - words.
'But he didn't kill Chloe Fontaine,' retorted Jemima. 'Didn't I say that all along?' Charges against Kevin John for this crime had been withdrawn, a fact which had passed almost unnoticed in the Press, in view of the welter of publicity which had surrounded the death of Sir Richard Lionnel, the Lion of Bloomsbury, hurled - as the Press liked to put it - from the top of his own notorious building.
'How about that for a victory for the feminine instinct?' Jemima added.
'Ah, my dear, always let a woman have the last word.' Pompey shook his head sagely. 'That's what twenty happy years with Mrs Portsmouth has taught me. Above all, never argue about her instincts. Shall we settle for the fact that we were both right?'
'You do have your murderer,' Jemima pointed out. 'Or rather, your alleged murderer. If not precisely for the crime you were investigating.'
'Very true. And I must tell you that sometimes in the watches of the night I wish we did not - or rather I wish we did not have this particular crime. What with enquiries from number ten, very polite mind you, just interested, and Lady Lionnel, now there's a terror for you, and the dead man's secretary or whatever she calls herself, another
terror, and sister, by the way, of your friend the squatter - I don't know what the world is coming to. Give me the Dowager Lady Brighton every time. She may be a terror, but she's a lady too.'
It seemed doubtful, at the time of Pompey's chat with Jemima, whether the murder of Chloe Fontaine would ever receive an official solution. This was partly due to the activities of Hope Lady Brighton, who on the one hand threatened dire penalties if her dead son's name was blackened on such slender evidence, and on the other made a series of heart-rending appeals as a grief-stricken mother. It was also due to the extreme reluctance of Mr Stover, on behalf of his wife, the dead woman's next of kin, to press for any form of revenge. The attitude of Valentine Brighton's mother, in which despair and authoritarianism were mingled in roughly equal parts, found an answering echo in Mr Stover's own breast.
There was a last interview with Jemima Shore, in which Mr Stover, grown suddenly much older and even smaller, began by sounding more bewildered than aggressive. But on the subject of the Press, for whom his full hatred was reserved, he still managed to express himself with something of his old strength. He for one was clearly immensely relieved that there would be no murder trial centred exclusively round the lives and loves of his stepdaughter.
'The things they wrote about Dollie!' he exclaimed to Jemima. 'Did they not think of her mother, her mother and me?' He broke down a little. 'Despite her change of name. Always made it quite clear who she was, when she was on television, and so forth, the relationship, told the neighbours, and now—'
'At least her books are selling well. At long last. And they're thinking of televising Fallen Child. She would have liked that,' put in Jemima.
It was a bald statement but true. Chloe's premature death, under hideous circumstances, had in a strange way bumped up her literary reputation. Dr Marigold Milton, whose moral enthusiasm in a good cause terrified her intellectual inferiors, pointed triumphantly to her long advocacy of Chloe's novels in a major piece in Literature. Other critics, honorably determined not to consider the scandal which surrounded her name, but their attention drawn to it nonetheless, found themselves pondering on Chloe's books as a whole for the first time. After all, her work, as well as her life, was over. In all this, the avidity of the public for further details concerning Chloe Fontaine was no disadvantage. In future, while her frozen body was freed at last into the obliteration of burial, her work would flourish.
'And we've got to know you,' Mr Stover spoke with perfect confidence. 'Her mother said that this morning before I left. The last thing she said - "We've got to know Jemima Shore, haven't we, Dad?" She'd like to give you that picture, the wife, not sell it back to them as the gallery suggested. "Why don't we give it to Miss Shore," she said, "to remind her of Dollie?" '
'No, no,' Jemima interrupted hastily. 'The gallery is quite right. Sell it.' She had no wish to introduce 'A Splash of Red' into her own life.
'You'll visit us, I expect', Mr Stover continued remorselessly. 'When you're our way. We'll talk about memories - Dollie - Chloe, I mean.' It was one of the touching things about Mr Stover that latterly he had made a determined effort to refer to his stepdaughter by her literary name. 'You can tell us about what goes on in television, books, well it's all the same thing isn't it? She knew all about it, Chloe, our girl.'
Mr Stover went on: 'And if you ever wanted to make a programme about Dollie, Chloe, all of this, well, you would need us, wouldn't you?'
'I'll visit you,' said Jemima Shore gently. She said it with a slightly heavy heart because she knew she would keep her word. Dollie Stover might have left her parents coldly unvisited, but she, Jemima Shore, would keep in touch with them. A sense of duty and sadness would not let her neglect them.
In the meantime Tiger, the golden Lion of Bloomsbury transplanted to Holland Park, graceful, wild and ultimately unknowable, would remind her of Chloe Fontaine.
Antonia Fraser, A Splash of Red
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