Read The Killing of Olga Klimt for Free Online Page B

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.

5
TRUE LOVE
    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