A Rather Lovely Inheritance (23 page)

And I reminded him that the intruder had clapped a glove that smelled like gasoline to my mouth, not unlike the one I’d seen in Jeremy’s glove compartment. He, actually, had as big a motive as Rollo to get the jewelry out of the apartment, if he’d suspected it was there . . .

I started out bravely enough, but ended up stuttering and stammering my half-baked theories. Jeremy saw how uncomfortable I was to think of him as a shady character, but somehow I pushed on, feeling that I had to confront him and size it all up. I figured I was on an airplane with loads of witnesses around, so he couldn’t exactly murder me on the spot.

But Jeremy didn’t look at all murderous. As it slowly dawned on him, he stared at me, then threw back his head and burst into laughter—great big choking guffaws that made the flight attendant glance our way and say brightly, “Everything all right here?”

“Dandy,” he gasped. He actually had to wipe tears from his eyes. “My poor dear Penny,” he said at last, when he could speak. “This whole affair is really taking a toll on you. I don’t blame you a bit. No, it is not some weird English custom, but perhaps it’s the one thing I have in common with Rollo. I’m glad he’s not my relative.That’s been the only good bit that came out of all this. I have no blood connection to him at all.”And he smirked, implying that I, of course, did.“And no, I did not break into your apartment looking for poor old Aunt Pen’s jewelry, though I may never forgive myself for not thinking of it. As for that cube, I wouldn’t even know how to use the wretched thing. I can’t tell a diamond from a rhinestone, anyway.”

His whole reaction was so natural and innocent, and it was so annoyingly like him to find it funny, that I lost any modicum of mistrust that I may have harbored in my heart.

“Okay, okay, quit laughing and forget it,” I said sulkily. He reached out to pat my hand, but at his touch we both melted a little, and he took mine in his and gave it a squeeze.

“I don’t blame you in the least,” he said ruefully. “Turns out I’m a total stranger to you.”

“Not total,” I said gently.The wound about all this bloodline stuff was still fresh. I could see that now. And I realized, then and there, that I was asking a lot of him to expect him to continue working on this case on our behalf. It would always be a thorn in his side, so of course he’d rather leave the whole thing with Harold. Now that I knew he wasn’t going to kill himself, I should let him be.

The flight back to London was quiet and uneventful. Jeremy seemed tired and not too eager to talk, but he did turn to me and observe,“You seem a bit disappointed, Penny Nichols. Were you hoping that the car would be worth millions of dollars and you’d be set for life?”

He looked amused. I was tired of people being amused by me, and since he’d been the one to reopen the subject, I plunged back in. “Actually, I was hoping we could weaken Rollo’s case by showing a judge that you weren’t the only one who inherited a big chunk of the estate,” I said.“That I got practically as much with something valuable, like the car or the earring. And that Aunt Penelope just didn’t want irresponsible Rollo to get more than he could handle.”

“Oh, I see.Those would have to be some rubies, to come near the price of that villa,” he said. “Look, Penny,” he added, “life just doesn’t work out so romantically. I’ve seen enough of these cases to tell you exactly how it will go. At best the will may stand as it is. At worst, Rollo may well screw me out of the whole lot, but if so, he’d surely have to split the villa with you, and you can sell it. Meanwhile, you’ll get a nice car in the bargain. If you don’t want to keep it, Denby will probably buy it from you. Your mum and you can sell the London flat for a good sum, and everyone will go on doing what they always do.You will make movies, and now that the whole office knows my lineage, they’ll probably hurl all the cowboy American clients my way, and I’ll retire respectable. Perhaps you and your children will send Mum and me a Christmas card every year, until one year somebody forgets. Okeh? It may not be happily ever after, but considering the way the world is, it’s not so bad.”

“Then how come you sound mad as hell?” I countered.

“I’ll get over it,” he said shortly, opening up the pink
Financial Times.

“Fine,” I said, reaching for the
Herald Tribune
. And that’s how we sat, side by side, pretending to read our newspapers. At least, I was pretending.The print just danced in front of my eyes. I was too keyed up to focus on any of it. Jeremy’s words were depressingly familiar. After all, this wasn’t the first time that a man was telling me that the world could never match up to my dreams, and the sooner I grew up and abandoned such hopes, and faced “reality” and all its ugliness, the better. Good old Paul had offered me just such a grim welcome-to-the-world speech, suggesting that I was too romantic and immature, clinging to my illusions of love and fate. Jeremy wasn’t as gleeful as Paul, but the message was basically the same.

When we landed in London, Jeremy hailed me a cab in his gallant way, kissed me on the cheek, and said gently, “I’m around if you need me, of course, but don’t be put off by Harold. He’s very capable, a good man, and he’ll always steer you right.”

“Jeremy,” I said, “I wish you wouldn’t go this alone.”

“Please, no psychotherapy,” he said. “I don’t believe in it.”

Then he waved for another cab, and we went our separate ways.

T
HE NEXT DAY I SEARCHED THE ENTIRE APARTMENT—EVEN IN ODD places, like loose floorboards and pantry tins—and I couldn’t find a single piece of Aunt Penelope’s beautiful jewelry. And then I remembered the letters and memorabilia in the hatbox. But there was no jewelry in there. Just a lot of notes addressed to the same man, “Simon Thorne.”The same name on the postcards that Denby found in the car.

The correspondence was composed mostly of short, handwritten notes on initial-embossed paper with frantic, handwritten messages that seemed dashed off as if in a tearing hurry—usually to plot some party or lunch meeting or dinner. On the order of,
Are you going to Mary’s dreadful weekend in Surrey? If you go, I’ll go
kind of thing. People used to get mail delivered twice a day; I imagined these flying back and forth across town.The postcards were more fun, sent from everywhere around the globe, from Rangoon to Nome; written in thick dried ink full of exclamation points and question marks and little witticisms like
, Befriended a penguin. Drank me under the table! Please send aspirin.
But there was one serious, comparatively longish letter from Simon, thanking Aunt Penelope for consoling him when his mother died.

“Simon Thorne,” I said aloud.The name sounded vaguely familiar, so I went back to the photo album that I’d left on the desk in the library.There he was, in the press clippings, as Aunt Penelope’s accompanist. Apparently he sang, too, and they’d had a little nightclub act, and the reviews were mainly positive.

“Their voices, though not the stuff of legends, are overall very pleasing,” one fusty reviewer wrote. “Their harmonies are perfectly matched, their point-counterpoint complementary and at times delightful. Mr. Simon Thorne, occasionally over-emotional, does infuse the male role with genuine feeling, and Miss Penelope Laidley’s trills, though at times thin, are able and lively.” They sang sweet, sad, romantic songs, and did some comic music-hall tunes and sketches.

I flipped through the pictures in the photo album to stare at the photographs of Simon and Aunt Penelope cavorting at the estate, where Simon was playing the piano and Aunt Penelope hovered nearby, with a cocktail glass in her hand and her mouth open as if she were singing with him. I peered more closely. She might, in fact, be wearing those very earrings, one of which Denby found in the car. And she wore them in her framed publicity photo, right here on the boudoir table. I believed there was also a necklace that matched them, which I’d seen in another picture—the one when she wore that Venetian costume with the puffy sleeves. I flipped through the album to verify it.

But there was no Venetian picture. It was gone. There was only a dark square testifying to where it had been, and those little corners that people stuck onto the pages of photo albums, which were used to hold the picture in place. Someone had stolen that photo, which showed not only the earrings but their matching necklace.

I didn’t want to bug Jeremy, but I couldn’t help it. I dialed his number and got his answering machine. I said,“Jeremy. Penny. I found out what the thief took. A photo. Of Aunt Penelope wearing that necklace. Has the appraiser told you what it’s worth yet? Call me.”

I went back to the photo album, and I stared at the picture of Simon. He and Great-Aunt Penelope were pals, clearly. He probably knew a lot of things about her. I wondered if he was still alive. There was a London phone book in the telephone table, and I actually found him listed. I hesitated a moment. But I couldn’t resist dialing. He answered on the second ring, and once he knew who I was, he told me to come right over.

S
IMON THORNE LIVED IN BLOOMSBURY, IN A CHARMING LITTLE SQUARE ringed with well-kept, homey old houses. It’s funny, but the English, who consider certain colors of flowers too garish for their gardens, will nonetheless go to hell with themselves when it comes to painting their front doors all kinds of startling colors. Bright reds, greens, blues. Simon’s was purple. And it wasn’t the only purple one, either. I rang the bell and gazed at the big fat doorknob plunked right in the center of the door instead of to the side where American door-knobs sit. He answered the door himself.

He was a fairly short man, but lean and lithe and powerful-looking. He moved with precise, elegant grace, like a panther. In his voice I could hear the years of cigarette smoking and gin drinking, but he was determinedly cheerful in that stiff-upper-lip, bright-as-a-button way, like a man who’d spent his life entertaining people and staying “up” even on days when he didn’t feel so chipper. He had alert, bright hazel eyes, a long narrow nose, and a slightly balding head, but what hair he had was well-clipped and cared for, brown and silver. He wore a green and gold silk brocade dressing gown with gold fringe tassels on the belt, but under the gown he wore a spic-and-span cream-colored shirt and good wool brown pants, green silk socks and soft slippers of dark brown leather. He had a paisley silk scarf around his throat.

“My dear girl,” he said when I arrived. “You are a Penny, all right.”

He cocked his head to one side and surveyed me critically. “Not quite the spitting-est of images of your great-auntie,” he commented. “She was a bit shorter than you, and her nose was different. I daresay you have a prettier, higher forehead, too. Still, the family resemblance is there. Not just the face, but the way you carry yourself. She had that habit of tripping along on her toes, not quite landing on the heels, and so do you. Did you study dance, my dear? Ah, I thought so.Yet you gave it up.” His voice assumed a theatrical, slightly sorrowful air, as if ending my girlhood dancing lessons had possibly robbed the world of a great dancer. At the same time, he was smiling, so that the tragedy had the gay, airy lightness of a soufflé.

He led me to his parlor, which was a bit like an old lady’s, with lace antimacassars on flowered upholstery, china figurines displayed on shelves, lamps with big heavy glass “teardrops” ringing the edge of the shades, and an upright piano tucked against the wall.

He told me with a grand wave of his hand that he owned the house but occupied the first floor only. All these years, he explained, he had been running a boardinghouse for actors, who were notoriously bad about paying their rent on time, if at all.“But I like to watch the new lads come and go,” he said. I nodded toward the polished piano in the corner.

“Do you still play?” I asked, then realized that, with all the fecklessness of youth, I was reminding an older person of how old he was, which elderly people really don’t want to hear. Despite his high energy, he was a bit delicate-looking, with a slight limp, and the brittle thinness of old age. But his mind was alert and playful, and he responded with a great gusty, theatrical sigh.

“Darling, it’s like sex and bicycle riding,” he said impishly. “Once you’ve learned to do it well, you never forget how, but there comes a time when you find that you do it a lot less often than you ever dreamed possible, until one day it seems like more trouble than it’s worth. Now do tell—what brings the progeny of my old singing partner here to see me? And pray what is that lovely gilt-wrapped thing you’re clutching in the palm of your hand? Is it a present?”

I had brought him a bottle of the nicest champagne I could afford. He clapped his hands with glee when he tore off the wrapper, and spent fifteen minutes filling a silver champagne bucket with cold water, salt and ice.

“It must be positively frigid when you drink it,” he advised me. “Never trust a fellow who serves you warm champagne. Two things you must never keep waiting: a hot lover and a cold champagne.What’s in that weather-beaten leather portfolio you’re carrying?”

I hauled out Aunt Penelope’s press clippings, and he let out a cry of recognition. I’d brought some of the photos, too. He put on his narrow reading glasses and gazed at each picture for a long time, as if staring into a mirror.

“Shades of my youth!” he cried. I had to wait for him to calm down before I could start asking him questions, but he was perfectly happy to answer all of them very patiently—especially once he announced that the champagne was cold enough to drink. He reverently poured out a glass for each of us in two antique cocktail glasses with gold stems that were made to resemble tree branches, with their leaves twining around the lower cup part of the glasses, as if they were goblets plucked from a magic shrub of golden leaves.

He drank the first glass happily, and probably would have corked the bottle and saved it frugally for the next time, like a man who doles out his pleasures to make them last because of straitened circumstances. But I encouraged him to have a second glass, because the atmosphere had become festive by then, and I am a sucker for a good storyteller. Simon loved a rapt audience, so we got on well. When he saw that I was interested in Aunt Penelope’s favorite London haunts, he gazed at my London map and showed me where they ate lunch, and where she’d visit her masseuse-cum-fortune-teller, and which theatres they’d performed in.