A Rather Lovely Inheritance (25 page)

And suddenly I thought of the map in Aunt Penelope’s car, and the little toy soldier I’d found on the floor. Something you might use to distract a child so he wouldn’t notice the grave danger he was in on a long road-trip getaway during a war.

I had quietly hauled out my little chart of my family tree, and while Simon was talking, I began adding a branch down the middle for Aunt Penelope. It looked like this:

I paused, but I had to ask. “What became of the little boy, Domenico?”

Simon shook his head. “Oh, the American woman found out that she couldn’t have another child with her new American husband, so she tracked down Domenico to reclaim him and drag him back to the States. She had the money, clout, and bloodline to do so, I suppose, but certainly it wasn’t fair to poor Penelope. Just broke her heart all over again, like losing Giulio. Penelope tried to keep in direct contact with Giulio’s boy, but the Americans sent back all her letters to him unopened. Beasts. Anyway, we never saw Domenico again.

“But Penelope had her spies, and she found out that Giulio’s little boy had grown up. Domenico married, and he ran a little grocery store with his wife, and he had a son of his own.”

“What was the name of Domenico’s son?” I asked.

“Now you’re
really
pushing my old gray matter,” Simon told me, screwing his eyes shut, recalling the name like a fortune-teller peering into the past. “Wait . . . wait . . . it’s coming . . . yes. Domenico’s son was called—Anthony. He actually came to live in London, and he fell in love with an English girl. But the poor boy.Then it was
his
turn for a war.Vietnam this time. Boys like him always say they won’t go, but in the end they go. Point of honor and all that, can’t let their country down. At least Tony managed to survive long enough to come back to England before he died, but all the same, his little English girlfriend was left stranded with
his
son.You see the way history really works, don’t you, dear? Men keep siring babies and getting killed in wars, and the women and children have to pick up the pieces.”

I was scribbling rapidly to keep up with Simon, adding more names down the middle:

I paused, waiting for the name of Anthony’s son. Simon wagged his finger at me.

“Well, your auntie was a good soul, never forget that. Cleverer and more beautiful than anyone I’ve seen before or since. And she knew how to make a move, and when to make a move. She simply couldn’t sit still when she heard that Giulio’s great-grandchild was living in some wretched one-room flat in London, with a working mama.The English girl who worked in the theatrical agency . . . her name was . . . Sheila . . . she’d had a falling-out with her own fine family, you see, and they wanted her to put the baby up for adoption, but when she refused they just cut her off.”

He drew his finger across his neck. “Penelope found out about it, and came up with the right solution, of course. She always did, with that fine mind of hers.”

I had a strange sensation, as if the world had stopped spinning and everything was absolutely still, as if even the furniture was holding its breath, as I was. I was trying very hard to ask the right questions in the right way so that Simon wouldn’t suddenly wake up from his dream of the past and stop talking, when he was right at the point of telling me something I just had to know, yet, almost like
déjà vu
, had surely heard before.

“So, what did Aunt Penelope do about it?” I asked quietly.

Simon straightened up.“I was never so proud of her,” he said.“She just had that light, deft touch of bringing people together without looking as if she were half trying. It’s what made her such a brilliant hostess, and it never served her better. She had a little garden party, and her sister Beryl was there with
her
son, Peter. Well, Penelope invited Tony’s girlfriend, Sheila, and even loaned her a marvelous tea gown; and she got Sheila together with that dull nephew of hers, Peter; and there they were, getting to know each other over iced tea cakes. And soon enough, Peter proposed. Even so, Penelope had to have a little sit-down talk with Sheila, to convince her that it was in the baby’s best interest to accept Peter’s proposal, and that Tony’s child would be raised with all the advantages of a proper English gentleman . . .”

He saw the look on my face then, and his eyes narrowed and his voice trailed off warily.

“My dear girl, what a peculiar shade of pale green you’ve turned,” he said. “Are you about to become ill? You mustn’t do it here. This carpet was given me by an Arab prince—”

He stopped joking when I didn’t laugh. I’d been with him all the way, but now I was doing a little remembering of my own. He noticed that I was writing, but he politely refrained from trying to peer at the chart.

“What is it, darling?” he said gently.“Tell Uncle Simon and maybe he can help.”

I recovered just slightly, enough to say quietly, “I think—I think I know him.Who you’re talking about.”

“ ‘He who I am talking about?’ ” he repeated, puzzled.

“The great-grandson of Aunt Penelope’s driver. I think I know his name,” I said in a whisper.

“Wait, don’t tell me. I, unlike most people, am very good with names,” he said, as if trying to calm me down by making a game of it. “Let’s see, let’s see . . . the handsome Giulio Principe first; then his poor little boy, Domenico; then Domenico’s American son, Tony, who came to London and was smitten with an English girl—and they had a son who I heard of, but never met, called . . .” He paused. He glanced away, and it took him several seconds to remember.

I’d already drawn the lines, which unexpectedly veered toward Aunt Sheila, connecting her with Anthony.Which then, astoundingly, connected with the last name on the chart:

Then Simon remembered the name of Anthony’s son, snapped his fingers, and turned back to me triumphantly. When he did, we both spoke at the same time.

“Jeremy,” we said together.

Y
OU WOULD THINK THAT HAVING SET MYSELF ON A HISTORY-DETECTIVE path researching my own family—I mean, this wasn’t just comfortable dusty stuff about Cleopatra or the Borgias or Pocahontas—you would think that as a sober young woman who’s stumbled onto, if not family skeletons in the closet, at least a few buried bones—well, you would think it would make me so utterly professional, so seriously focused, that I would abandon any previous vanities and keep my nose to the trail like a good bloodhound.

Well, I didn’t. And there were two reasons why. Both involved the blinking light on my new answering machine the next morning, indicating phone calls that had come in while I’d gone out for my coffee. First there was a message from Erik, my boss. He sounded breathless.

“Penny darling, it’s red-alert time,” he announced. “Paul’s been nosing around trying to find out what you’re up to. Naturally we fudged for you, said you stayed on in London to do ultra-valuable research. But that little twit producer, Sheri, who was following us around in Cannes, blabbed about your inheritance. Paul didn’t say anything, but you could just
see
the wheels turning. So, a word to the wise.As for us, we’re still in Spain, so you don’t have to call back. Love and kisses, darling. P.S., Are you rich yet? Hope so.”

I didn’t feel the usual apprehensive pang in my gut; Paul’s image was fading fast in my mind. “Hell with Paul. I’m not a scared rabbit anymore,” I said aloud.The next phone call was from Jeremy, returning the message I’d left for him last night. He spoke in a short, dismissive business tone that I figured he used on clients that he was telling to go to hell.

“Penny. It’s Jeremy,” he said, sounding irritated that I wasn’t there. “Look. Severine called and said the earring isn’t especially valuable.

I mean it’s not rubies. It’s made of
paste
,” he said, punching the word with scorn. “So that’s that,” he added flatly. “As for the stolen photo, well, let Rollo go chasing after fake rubies. Serves him right. Look, I have to go out of town for a few days. Harold will keep you apprised of any new developments.” Then, as if he realized what a skunk he was being, he added briefly, “Be well. Good-bye.”

He might just as well have added, “So buzz off, you dumbo with your crazy theories.” I was understanding him better, though; I knew that I’d instilled some hope in his heart by suggesting that we would turn up something—the jewelry—that would erode Rollo’s claim to the villa.When you convince other people to believe in some dopey theory of yours promising that the sun will come out and everything will be fine, and later, when it doesn’t and it isn’t . . . they will turn on you, because you made a fool of them for having false hopes. Well, I would send Harold my assessment of Aunt Penelope’s London possessions, which totalled a bit higher than Rupert’s . . .and that would be that.

However, I did have this new bombshell information about Great-Aunt Penelope’s lover and Jeremy’s own bloodlines, for God’s sake. So I immediately telephoned him back, and of course all I got was his answering machine.

“Jeremy. Penny,” I said.“I found out something important that you should know about. So call me when you return.” I didn’t mean to be cryptic, but it wasn’t the sort of information you could leave in a machine message. Trying to be clear yet discreet is impossible, so you just hang up.

Only, the nice thing about talking to someone’s answering machine from a place as lovely as Aunt Penelope’s apartment was that I felt like a movie star, sadly but dramatically hanging up a pretty telephone on a theatrical-looking boudoir table-and-mirror, all framed in white and gold. Even being upset in this environment was an improvement over my previous life, where the rat-trap surroundings only reinforced one’s sense of doom. Here, in this glamorous bedroom of a fabulous London house, I could sigh over my troubles like a heroine who’s still pretty sure that things will turn out all right in the end.

“Paste,” I repeated to myself, sighing theatrically like Simon.Then I had a shock. Right next to Great-Aunt Penelope’s gilt-framed movie-star photo, I saw my own face, reflected and framed in the gold-and-white mirror.There we were, side by side, about the same age, but she looked glamorous and carefree, and I looked like a hunched-over, disheveled, frowning, pale, poor comparison as I squinted at the sparkling earrings in the photo, trying to see that they weren’t diamonds after all—hence my furrowed brow. And believe me, it wasn’t a pretty sight.

I’d been feeling like a movie star because of my charming surroundings, but in reality I looked more like a scullery maid who’s just scuttled the ashes and paused to catch her breath by sneakily sitting at her ladyship’s table. The lack of sleep, the dehydration from too much airplane travel, the months of cramped, crunched-up muscles from close work—it was all catching up with me. In my twenties, one night’s sleep usually banished any telltale signs of the previous day. But now, there I was, eyes all squinty, hair all flat, dark sleepless circles under the eyes, mouth pressed together in grim concentration, brow all furrowed, clothes all wrinkled from travel, like yesterday’s newspaper.