The Scarlet Thread (25 page)

Three days after the inquest, copies of the newspaper report and the death certificate, wrapped around a small cigar box, were delivered to Aldo Fabrizzi by special messenger. He read the clipping, studied the certificate and, last of all, opened the little box. Inside was the real proof from the Falconis that the debt of honor had been paid.

He filed the death certificate. He was a practical man. Clara would need it when she remarried someday. He kept the wedding ring and threw the rest away. He looked at the ring and was satisfied. Clara had bought it herself, ordered the inscription. He had been irritated because she insisted on buying it at Tiffany's instead of using a local jeweler. The initials, the date, were as he had seen them. He indulged in a quiet moment of satisfaction. Vengeance was sweet indeed. Then he went to find Clara. “He's paid for what he did to you. You can be proud again.”

He hadn't expected her to react as she did. She looked at the ring and then collapsed, screaming in hysteria. It shocked and terrified him. For a few moments he thought she had gone out of her mind. They got a doctor, who sedated her and ordered a nurse to stay with her. Aldo's wife, Luisa, raved and accused him of driving their daughter mad with grief.

At first Aldo was distraught. He had relied upon Clara's healthy hatred to sustain her. Instead he realized the intensity of her love. But he was tough, even with the child he loved. She would calm down. She would accept in her heart what she had agreed to in her head. He waited, and after a few days he went in to see her. She looked ill, with deep black pits under her eyes.

He took her hand and held it. “
Cara mia
, it's time you got up. You have to live your life and start again.”

“Tell me something, Papa.”

“Yes,
carissima?
”

“Was he alone?”

“Yes. He was alone. There was no one with him.”

She turned her head away. He squeezed her hand. He felt a response.

“I thought there was a woman.”

Aldo and his wife had thought so too, after their long discussions. He said, “It seems there wasn't. But it doesn't matter. What's done is done. He shamed you and me and his own family. He's paid the price. But you're the one I'm thinking of—you should be glad, Clara. You should be glad you're free and justice has been done.” He spoke tenderly yet firmly to her in the Italian they always used when they were alone.

“If there was no woman, then I can live with it,” she said.

He nodded. He understood his daughter. He bent down and kissed her cheek. Now she would get better. He went out of the room to tell his wife.

“It's your brother,” Angela called out.

Steven was in the hall with his son, decorating the Christmas tree. Hugh Drummond was fiddling with the string of colored lights. Snow had fallen outside. It was going to be a proper Christmas. Parcels wrapped in bright paper were stacked under the tree. They'd been back from France only ten days.

Steven handed her the box of glittering plastic balls. “You take over, darling.” He went into the sitting room and closed the door. “Piero?”

He listened for a few moments. His brother spoke in dialect. “Fabrizzi bought the accident story. Your ring clinched it. The old bastard came to see Papa and embraced him and said he shared his sorrow.” He spoke in English. “Yeah, in those words. I could've kicked his balls in. Clara had to have the doctor. No, she's okay now. Grieving, he said. Like fuck, I said to Lucia. So no worries, Steven. You're in the clear. And us too. How's everything going? You got the place in France tied up yet?”

“I signed the contract a week ago. Never tangle with a French lawyer; I nearly went crazy. But it's fixed, and all I have to do is pay on completion. I wish you could see it, Piero. It's going to be one hell of a casino when I've finished.”

“Maybe one day I'll bring Lucia and the kids on a trip to Europe.… We might stop in.”

“I'd like that,” Steven said. “The family's well?”

“They're fine. Mama's got a cold. You know how she is in the winter. I told Papa I'd be speaking to you. He sent messages.”

Steven didn't ask what they were. He knew his father. He wouldn't forgive his defection. Piero was trying to make it easy.

“Send them love from me,” he said. “You're staying home for Christmas?”

“No, we're going down to Florida. Mama needs some sun. What about you?”

“We'll stay with Angela's father. She's well, and the boy's great. He keeps growing taller, Piero. I wish you could see him too.”

“Like I said, brother. One day maybe.”

“A Merry Christmas,” Steven wished him. “And thanks for what you've done for me. If you hadn't stood by me, I couldn't have made the choice.”

“So long as it's what you want,” Piero answered.

“It's what I want,” Steven told him. “I miss the family like hell. But I wouldn't change anything. I'll keep in touch.”

He rang off. It was settled. The Fabrizzis believed he was dead. There'd be no war between his father and them. Clara would find another man, get married. The book of his old life was closed for good.

It was a strange feeling of finality. He didn't go back to the hall and the Christmas tree. He threw some logs on the fire. It was a cold house by his standards. He had no experience of an English Christmas. It would be very different from the noisy, crowded gathering back home.

“Steven?”

He looked up and saw his son standing there.

“Aren't you coming back? We've nearly finished.”

“I'm coming,” he said. His heart lifted again. He put an arm around the boy's shoulders. “When I'm married to your mother,” he said, “I'd like you to do something.”

“What?” The young mirror image smiled up at him. He was shorter than Steven by only a few inches.

“Call me Father.”

“Do I have to wait till you and Mum are married?”

“Not if you don't want,” Steven answered.

“All right then, Dad. Let's go and do the lights before Grandpa blows a fuse again.”

They were married in London. It was a registry office, and Steven had filled it with flowers. The registrar said he was sure other couples would enjoy them afterward. Hugh Drummond and Charlie were there, and so was David Wickham. Angela had insisted on inviting him. He'd been so understanding when she had let him down. Steven didn't like pansies, and he was cool when they were introduced. Wickham had given them an expensive wedding present: a cut-crystal decanter and six cognac snifters. Angela was delighted, and Steven was annoyed. He didn't mind Angela's inviting the doctor who'd been in love with her. He was the kind of rival Steven tolerated easily—solid, older, as romantic as a brick wall.

She looked very beautiful and very happy. She'd chosen yellow, a bright spring color for a dismal January day. She carried a little posy of yellow and white flowers and wore a hat with a brief silk veil. He suddenly remembered the hat with the feather she'd worn at that lunch in New York. The day that had changed his life. He tried to forget the pain his decisions had since caused and concentrate only on the happiness that Angela now made possible for him. He held her hand, and together they went through the ceremony, thanking the registrar afterward.

David Wickham congratulated them and then kissed Angela lightly on the cheek. “Lots of happiness, my dear,” he said. “Such a jolly wedding service. I
hate
churches … so gloomy.”

Steven could have kicked him.

Then their son was embracing them and Angela's father was patting him on the back and they were out and on their way to a wedding lunch. They had chosen the Savoy again, where Steven had booked a private room. It was, as Wickham kept on saying, a very jolly lunch, with lots of champagne and splendid food, even a wedding cake with two tiny figures on top.

It was their son who surprised them all by getting up and proposing the toast. His face was rather flushed from champagne and excitement. “Here's to Mum and my new father,” he said loudly.

“Long life and happiness,” Hugh Drummond prompted him.

He repeated it, raising his glass to them both. “Long life and happiness, Mum and Dad.”

Angela's eyes filled for a moment. She said, “Thank you, darling,” and everyone rose to their feet and drank to her and Steven. She had never imagined she could be so happy.

Ralph Maxton had a merry Christmas. Lawrence had finally agreed to the price. One million francs. Maxton had taken two percent commission on the deposit. He decided to celebrate. He booked himself into the Hôtel de Paris—one of the cheaper rooms admittedly, but then the hotel was full. He was persona non grata at the casino, but he didn't care. He was glad to be back in his old haunt and visibly prospering. He asked one of his women friends to join him. Not the one who had shown settling-down symptoms when she lent him money. His companion was as footloose as he was, a woman who depended upon lovers and gambling and so far had done very well with both. She claimed to be Lebanese and traded on her exotic looks. Ralph thought French with a dash of Moroccan was more likely. She had a delightful sense of fun and a flamboyant attitude he found amusing. Sometimes, when she splashed champagne over herself and invited him to try the vintage, shrieking with laughter as they lay on the bed, he imagined his father's reaction.

For Christmas, Ralph bought her an expensive Hermès bag. She accepted it, pouted because it wasn't jewelry, and then whispered mischievously that she had something for him too. They were sitting in the crowded cocktail bar, and even Maxton was a little drunk.

“What?” he demanded. “What's my present then?”

She slid her hand under the table. “Me.” She giggled. “And you know what that normally costs.” They both laughed immoderately at the joke. “Thank God that old fart Bernard is back with his wife,” she went on. She took a cigarette out of a gold Boucheron case and handed Ralph the matching lighter. He held it steady with some difficulty.

Bernard was old, and a fart. Maxton knew him and thought it a fair description. Madeleine fleeced him mercilessly when he came to Monte Carlo. He couldn't keep away from the baccarat table or from her. He said she made him feel a young man again. Ralph believed that too.

“Ah, Ralphie, my darling, what a pity you're not really rich. Then I could move in with you.”

“How do you know I'm not?” he asked her.

“Because you'd have a suite, my darling, not that little fart hole on the top floor! You know the only thing I can't stand about this hotel?” She didn't wait for him to answer. “That!” She pointed to the woman with her back to them, sitting with a bottle of champagne on ice, playing patience. “Every time I see her, my stomach turns. Why does she show herself, Ralphie? Why doesn't she hide? I would, if I looked like that.”

“She lives here,” he told her. “She's lived here for years. It's a strange story. She used to come here with her husband, twenty years ago. He was very, very rich. Rumor said he'd played the black market for the Germans during the occupation. Anyway, he died and she used to come here during the season alone. She was a damned good-looking woman. I often saw her about. She'd pick up the odd man now and then, but she didn't go in for waiters or bellboys. Her name's Pauline Duvalier. She lived in a villa up by Beaulieu. She was robbed one day and beaten till they nearly killed her. That's all they could do, apparently, to mend her face.”

“What a horror!” Madeleine exclaimed. “I feel quite a
frisson
. Let's have some more champagne.”

Maxton continued: “She sold the villa and came here. She has a permanent suite, and she never leaves the hotel. She's become a sort of landmark, one of the Monte Carlo legends.”

“If I owned this place I wouldn't keep her,” Madeleine declared. “It must put people off. I'd tell her to go.”

Maxton allowed himself a cynical smile. For all her charm and gaiety, she was a heartless creature. He patted her hand and said, “When God made you, darling, he missed out on only one ingredient.”

She demanded to know what she lacked.

“Nothing,” he retracted. He felt sober suddenly, and he didn't want to. “Here's our champagne. Drink up, darling, and then you can give me your present.”

It wasn't all pleasure and self-indulgence. Maxton made contacts among the casino employees. Knowing that their movements and associates were checked by the casino detectives, he rang up his old boss and asked to meet him. On neutral ground, of course.

They had a drink together. The older man had heard Maxton was back and in funds. “You seem to be doing well,” he remarked.

“I am. No thanks to you. I couldn't get a job anywhere along the coast.”

The other shrugged. “Well, Ralph, you knew the rules. You can't blame us.”

“Oh, no hard feelings. I know you people play quite rough when anyone oversteps the mark. That's why I've asked you here. I want to put my cards on the table. If you'll pardon the metaphor.”

No smile. No lightness of touch. No education either. Stop treating these people as if they'd gone to Winchester like you, he chided himself. Little arrogant touches like that had made him secret enemies in the past.

“I'm here because I've been asked to open and manage a new casino.”

“The one in Antibes?” They had heard about it as soon as the first approach to the lawyers had been made. They heard everything concerned with gambling on the coast.

“The one in Antibes,” he confirmed.

“And who's the buyer? We were told it was a consortium from West Germany.”

“I can't divulge that,” Maxton said. “It's confidential. And for all my faults, Maurice, I never gave away anything to anyone. Which is probably why I've got the job. No, the reason I'm here is to try and recruit some staff.”