I took the portfolio from Jeremy and locked it in his rental car. In due course the policemen pushed Aunt Penelope’s car back into the garage.They had to do it, since Rollo’s slippery friends had disappeared into the darkness and nobody could find them. Severine’s assistant produced a padlock, and the garage was locked. All this was done amid tremendous arguing in French, which at first I tried to translate to myself but then gave up.
There was a brief, strange lull, during which Severine’s assistant was explaining things to the cops, and nobody was paying any attention to Rollo or me. Rollo took advantage of this moment, reached out, and pulled me by the elbow to his side. He had by now risen from his seat and was still blowing smoke into the air, and into my face as he put his mouth near my ear to speak in a low, urgent murmur.
“Listen, my girl. Don’t trust that fellow Jeremy. Mother had him checked out by a private detective and believe me, he is
not
who you think he is.”
His tone surprised me, because, unbelievable as his words were, they had the odd ring of truth to them, which I could not ignore. I looked straight at Rollo now. His watery eyes with their pouches of fatigue beneath them looked genuinely distressed. “I’m only looking out for you. We Laidleys must take care of each other. He’s very charming with women, this fellow. But don’t let him charm you out of what’s rightfully yours.”
Jeremy looked up now, saw Rollo talking urgently to me, and strode over to us. “Is he bothering you?” Jeremy demanded.
At that moment his phone rang. It was Severine, and she was so agitated that even though I couldn’t make out the actual words, I could hear her voice chattering rapid-speed without pausing once to let Jeremy speak. But Jeremy didn’t look like he wanted to speak. His face suddenly went pale, and his eyes kind of glazed over. He listened for a long time.
Rollo was staring at us so hard that his gaze, like the beam of a headlight, compelled me to look up. He nodded significantly at me, as if he’d just been vindicated. I looked from him to Jeremy and back again. For the first time, I felt somehow afraid of them both, as if suddenly I was totally among strangers.
Everyone else had fallen silent, looking expectantly at Jeremy for some sign of what to do next. Jeremy spoke haltingly, in English mixed with French again, to Severine’s assistant, and handed him the phone so that Severine could talk to her guy. He spoke briefly, gave Jeremy back his phone, and moved quickly to inform the police of something. Then, very abruptly, everyone turned to their cars and looked as if the party was over and they were all going home.
“What happened?” I asked Jeremy. He didn’t answer me. He just reached into his car for my portfolio and suitcase, and handed them to Louis, Severine’s assistant.
“Can you drive Penny to the hotel?” he asked brusquely. Louis nodded.
Jeremy turned to me. “Listen, Penny,” he said rapidly, “I’ve got to talk to Severine. And get back to London on the first crate I can stow away on. But there’s no need to drag you into this all-night fiasco. You’re already booked on a flight back to London tomorrow. Rupert will pick you up in London, at the airport.We think it’s best if you stay at Aunt Penelope’s apartment until you hear from my office. Harold will call you and explain everything.”
“But—” I sputtered in disbelief.
“It’s better this way,” he said in a low tone.
“Jeremy!” I said, exasperated.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Penny, get in the car and be quiet,” he said tersely, in a tone I’d absolutely never heard him use, not once, not even when we were kids. It was an agonized voice, as if he’d just been stabbed in the gut and he was pleading with me not to make things worse. And then he turned and strode off angrily and got into his car.
I felt another hand at my elbow, this one tentative and respectful. It was Severine’s assistant, Louis.
“Come,” he said, with perfect gentle manners. “Theez way, please.”
I followed him into his little Renault. “What on earth is going on?” I demanded as he turned the car out of the driveway and we headed to the road.
“Rollo, he is going to contest the will,” Louis said in his polite, respectful voice.
“But Jeremy expected that,” I said. I peered at the kid. “What just happened back there?” I persisted. Louis tried to shrug and act dumb at first, but I kept looking him in the eye and repeated my question and I said finally, “Louis. I know you know. Now tell me.”
A look crossed his face as if he knew the jig was up. While we waited at a traffic signal at the edge of town, he turned to me with a very delicate, sympathetic expression.
“Zey are saying zat Jeremy is not a blood relative,” he said simply.
“That’s insane!” I exclaimed. Louis paused, as if waiting to see if I was going to splutter some more. When I didn’t, he proceeded with, “Zey say Jeremy’s father was another man, not Mr. Laidley.”
“That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard,” I said. “Rollo must be desperate. But even if it were true, what’s that got to do with the price of potato chips?”
“Pardon?” Louis asked, puzzled.
“I mean, what’s being a blood relative got to do with the inheritance?”
“Ah!” Louis said as he steered the car on the corniche road.“Well, French law, you see, it eez very, very complicated.When people fight over estates, ze blood relatives could, perhaps, have an advantage. Maybe a court will find that he cannot have so big a piece of the pie,
comprenez-vous
?”
“Shit, yeah, I get it,” I said, astounded. I gazed wildly out the window. Here we were again, zipping along at the edge of a prehistoric cliff in the dark. Unwillingly, I recalled Rollo’s insinuating tone, and his words about Jeremy took on new meaning.
“We are here,” Louis said, as he pulled up to a pleasant little hotel. He jumped out and saw me to the front desk to verify that they had my room.
“Don’t worry,” he assured me as he left me at the elevator. “Tomorrow it will all be explained to you.” The day’s events were catching up to me, and I was too exhausted to argue. Once I got into my room and saw the pretty bed with fluffy pillows, I gave in and fell asleep almost immediately.
Chapter Twelve
B
UT THE RETURN TRIP TO LONDON TURNED INTO AN ALL-DAY AFFAIR. The plane had to make an unscheduled stop in Paris because of mechanical “difficulties.” We were herded off the plane and had to hang around the terminal until they could find us another flight. Even after we boarded the new plane, it sat on the runway, queuing up behind others waiting for takeoff.
That gave me plenty of time to think. Could it really be that Uncle Peter was not Jeremy’s father? I remembered every single word Jeremy said about Uncle Peter being a difficult dad; and about “we Laidleys” being a cautious, stodgy bunch; and how Aunt Penelope cared about leaving her possessions to family members. I knew what it meant to Jeremy to be the protector of this family. And how he’d said that paternity was a bigger issue in France than England, but he said it in confident tones, as if he had nothing to worry about.
When we finally landed in London, I spotted Jeremy’s assistant, Rupert. He looked relieved and happy to bundle me off into his car.
“We heard about your flight being delayed,” he said, pleasantly but authoritatively. “Jeremy left instructions that I take you back to your aunt’s flat. Harold will call you—” He glanced at his watch, then said, “Well, he’s out dining with a client away from the office now. He’ll have to ring you tomorrow morning.”
By then I was fed up with the whole pack of lawyers that had been pushing me around, Jeremy included. “Where the hell is Jeremy?” I demanded. “What’s going on?”
Rupert said softly, “He didn’t come into the office today, but I’m sure he’ll call you as soon as he can.”
Something in his tone made me feel like I was being managed, and I didn’t like it. I rummaged in my bag and found my address book. My mother, in her infinite wisdom, had given me the address and phone number of Aunt Sheila “just in case” I needed help while abroad. My mother is the only one I know who has always been prepared for national emergencies, terrorist attacks, plague, nuclear war—you name it and she’s got a contingency plan for it. So I called Aunt Sheila on my mobile phone. She answered on the second ring.
“Aunt Sheila? It’s your niece, Penny. I was with Jeremy yesterday when he got some shocking news. I’m heading toward your apartment, and I’m coming up right now because I can’t go into further detail on the telephone. So please tell your doorman I’m on my way in.”
I was using my bossiest, most confident voice, which I am able to summon only on occasions when I feel bossy and confident, which are very rare. But I was tired of being bullied, lied to, and generally out-snootied. I wasn’t feeling automatically inferior anymore, and it must have been audible, because Aunt Sheila said in the most compliant and respectful voice I’d ever heard her use, “Of course, darling. Come right over. I’ll ring them downstairs to let you in.”
“Fine,” I said briskly, and hung up, then turned to Rupert, who gaped at me. I leaned forward and gave the driver Aunt Sheila’s address.
“There’s been a slight change of plans,” I said to Rupert, pleasantly but crisply. Rupert looked alarmed.
“But Jeremy wants—” he began. I gave him a dead-on, dead-eyed look.
“I’ll give you my mobile phone number,” I said. “If Jeremy wants to talk to me—which he isn’t doing right now—he can reach me day or night. So can anybody else who wants to explain this whole clambake to me.” I handed Rupert the number just as we pulled up in front of Jeremy’s mother’s apartment building.
“But—where shall I say I dropped you tonight?” he stammered.
“Have you got a key to Aunt Penelope’s place?” I asked. He quickly handed me a couple of beauties—a heavy gold one with an ornate curlicue at the end, which was for the main door, and another similar but lighter one for Aunt Penelope’s inside door.
“You
will
stay on there, won’t you?” Rupert asked pleadingly.“Jeremy says you can remain there as long as you like while you’re making your assessment of the belongings. And there will be papers to file for the English will tomorrow, which will need your signature.”
“Of course,” I said.“I’ll be there, as of later tonight.Thanks for the lift, Rupert,” I added, gently but firmly. “Tell Jeremy it’s rude to dash off like that, and if he wants to know more about what I’m up to, he can bloody well ask me himself. At any rate, tell him I expect to hear back from him, personally,
tout de suite
.”
Part Five
Chapter Thirteen
I
T WAS DARK OUTSIDE BY THE TIME I REACHED AUNT SHEILA’S APARTMENT. She came quickly to the door when I knocked. She was wearing a gold and red silk caftan, and flat little black and gold velvet slippers. Her blonde hair was pulled back at either side with black enamel hair combs, and she was smoking a cigarette. Her whole look seemed sort of Moroccan and made me think of rich heiresses in the mid-1960s jetting to North Africa to throw wild parties in crumbling palaces with marble pools, where their friends reclined on pillows and passed the hookah. But then, it is a hazard of my trade to instantly catalog and attribute time periods.
The curtains in her drawing room were pulled back this time, revealing a big window with a night-time view of the Thames. One could make out the venerable buildings from the lights around them, and the boats strung with lights like jeweled necklaces, silently gliding past.
“Penny, darling,” Aunt Sheila drawled, not quite looking at me directly.“Always lovely to see you, dear, and you sounded
so
upset that I simply
had
to climb out of bed.”
She was overdoing that nonchalant yet aggrieved tone, but she’d accomplished a lot with her brief speech, designed to make me feel like a rude buffalo for intruding on my elderly auntie. I was supposed to start stumbling through apologies and feeling foolish for insisting that we had something so important to talk about that it couldn’t wait till morning. And normally that’s exactly what I’d have done. But tonight I wasn’t so susceptible to games of manners.
“Jeremy got some pretty astounding news last night,” I said, not yet sinking into the chair she gestured for me to take. “And he got it from Rollo. So he dumped me off in France, and nobody will tell me what’s going on.”
She looked momentarily taken aback. “Would you like a drink, dear?” she asked.
“No,” I said rudely and deliberately. “What I’d like is a straight answer from somebody around here. Is it true that Uncle Peter was not Jeremy’s father?”
She seemed unsurprised by the question as she poured herself a little glass of gin, into which she dropped a tiny peel of lemon. She sipped it delicately, having placed her cigarette onto an ivory-colored elephant figurine which, it turned out, was an ashtray and a cigarette holder combined. You laid the cigarette across the back of the elephant, whose ears held it firmly in place. At the elephant’s feet was a little trough where the ashes collected.
“Yes,” she said quietly, tucking one leg under her as she sat sideways on the sofa across from my chair. “It
is
true.” This time I did sit down, and I gazed at her wonderingly.
“But Peter adopted Jeremy, perfectly legally,” she added.“I thought we’d arranged to keep those records private. I don’t know how Dorothy’s dreadful people got their hands on them.”
“Then—who’s his real father?” I blurted out.The whole situation was a strange dream that I was struggling to wake from. If I felt this way, I could imagine how Jeremy felt.
Aunt Sheila retrieved her cigarette from the elephant before answering me in a tone that was level and unoffended. Her gaze was deliberate and direct now, but her chin was raised just a trifle defiantly.
“His name was Anthony Principe,” she said calmly.“American, actually. His parents were Italian-American. I met him in the late sixties, when he came to London on his own.”