Empress Bianca (29 page)

That letter precipitated another round of correspondence, the upshot of which was the claim that neither Ferdie’s mother nor his sister had been joint-owners of Calorblanco Central America or of Banco Imperiale or Banco Mahfud. Their full and complete shareholding of the Piedraplata companies in Mexico, according to Juan Gilberto Macias’s account, was limited to the Piedraplata jewellery shops. All other Piedraplata assets, save Calorblanco Europa, were, he claimed, owned exclusively by Ferdie, according to the company records.

This, of course, was untrue, and Henry Spencer had a simple recommendation for Clara. ‘Sue. It’s the only way to establish joint ownership. We’ll put in a Statement of Claim that alleges Bianca and Philippe Mahfud have colluded to defraud you and your mother of your rightful inheritance. That has to be the way to proceed, but first I want to run it by Conkers Coningby. That’s Lord Ralph Coningby, second son of the Marquess of Bankshire. Capital man. Sound as the Lutine Bell. He’s the
man we must brief as your Silk. You know what a Silk is, don’t you? It’s a Queen’s Counsel. A senior barrister. He’s in Sir Alfred Kindersley’s Chambers. You’ll also need a junior. Senior barristers don’t function without them. He normally uses Adrian Clewth for matters of this kind. You can’t get better.’

To Clara Piedraplata d’Offolo, lacking in knowledge as she was, English justice seemed to be her best hope of regaining some of the family assets with which Bianca appeared intent on absconding. She also had another objective: to achieve something approximating justice for her murdered brother. In the process of a trial against Bianca and Philippe, she intended to make the point that her brother has been murdered precisely so that his widow and her lover could get their hands on his fortune. Exposure of the truth, Clara believed, would lead to who knew what final denouement.

Clara d’Offolo, of course, could not see into the future and could not imagine how she was being set up to be skinned alive financially. Three weeks after her initial conversation with Henry Spencer, full of hope for a just and successful outcome to her noble legal undertaking, she boarded a Swissair flight at Geneva Airport to keep an appointment with Conkers Coningby and Adrian Clewth in the presence of Henry Spencer in London at His Lordship’s chambers.

As Clara approached the chambers of Sir Alfred Kindersley QC in Brick Court, around the corner from Henry Spencer’s offices in New Court, and saw Lord Ralph Coningby’s name inscribed beside the oak door leading into the foyer, she even felt warm and cosy. There was something curiously, homely even, about all those figures of power and influence and ability in the English legal system being located in nearby buildings.

As Clara sat down in the large Victorian reception room, with the carved stone fireplace, waiting with Henry Spencer and Adrian Clewth for Conkers Coningby to receive them, she would have been alarmed at how closely located everyone was in the case of d’Offolo versus Piedraplata and Mahfud. However, Clara did not know that Bianca’s QC was none other than Lord Ralph Coningby’s Head of Chambers, Sir Alfred Kindersley himself.

Blithely unaware of what she was letting herself in for, Clara even allowed herself to enjoy a foretaste of victory as her legal team confidently
predicted a favourable outcome during the conference that she was of course paying through the nose for. Henry Spencer had come accompanied by one of his associate solicitors, being too grand to take notes himself, as well as a clerk, so she was paying four separate professionals and one employee for the labour that any one of them could have accomplished blindfolded. As Clara would later on state, her education in real life began that day.

Bianca meanwhile was also busy with her lawyers, signing the completion papers on the purchase of L’Alexandrine in the South of France.

L
’Alexandrine: April 1 1972. It was one of those bleak, cold and wintry afternoons that explain why so many of the International Set traditionally decamp from the South of France to the West Indies between November and April. Outside, there was a constant but light drizzle, unrelieved by a single burst of sun above the low-lying clouds. Julio and Pedro were sitting on the enclosed back veranda, their feet up on ottomans, smoking: the former Balkan Sobranie, the latter Moroccan Black. They were both dressed in the finery of the day, as befitted American college students: velveteen bellbottom trousers, ruffled shirts, string ties. Julio’s hair was fashionably long, as were his shapely chin-length sideburns, while Pedro’s was shoulder-length, his sideburns more reminiscent of a Victorian gentleman’s than a flower child’s.

Antonia joined them, flopping down wordlessly onto one of the vast over-stuffed chintz sofas that would become one of the hallmarks of their mother’s many houses. At fifteen, she was still young enough to be heavily influenced by her mother’s taste, although today she was being granted her liberty and was bedecked in typical English teenage fashion: a pale blue crushed velvet skirt with matching bolero and contrasting long-sleeved, high-necked ochre under-blouse from Biba, all set off by boots from Susan Small on London’s King’s Road, that had caused her mother to
comment: ‘Why can’t you young people have more elegance?’

As Antonia sat down, Julio offered her a cigarette from his distinctive black and gold packet. She shook her head. Suddenly Manolito burst into the room, running ahead of his nanny. As a foil to their current style, and an indication of the aristocratic heritage to which Bianca was now laying claim, he was dressed like Little Lord Fauntleroy: green velvet knickerbockers, green velvet jacket, white lace jabot, finest white muslin shirt, neatly tucked in vertical rows and shiny black patent leather shoes.

He jumped into Antonia’s lap, and she ruffled his hair, saying, ‘You made a very good ring-bearer, baby brother.’

‘I wish Mama had married Uncle Philippe instead,’ he said plaintively.

‘Don’t worry, baby brother,’ Pedro said. ‘This won’t last.’

‘I hope it doesn’t,’ Antonia agreed. ‘I can’t see what she sees in Ion. Uncle Philippe would be a much more appropriate stepfather.’

‘She daren’t marry Uncle Philippe. Not with Uncle Ferdie’s sister suing them both in the English courts claiming that they’ve made off with $200,000,000 of the Piedraplata family fortune.’

‘Why are you always so negative about Mama?’ Julio asked.

‘The truth obliges one to speak as one finds,’ Pedro said.

‘Come on. She’s not as bad as you make out.’

‘I’m not the one who says that Mama had Uncle Ferdie bumped off because he was going to divorce her, so why am I being held responsible for just repeating what everyone else is saying?’

‘You always go too far, Pedro, that’s your trouble.’

‘No, Julio, my trouble is I call a spade a spade, and your trouble is you want to bury your head in the sand and pretend that nothing’s happened.’

‘You’d better put that joint out before Mama comes down.’

‘It’s cool, man. I’ll light a few joss sticks. She won’t smell a thing.’

Pedro was taking one last toke when Ion Antonescu joined them on the veranda. He sniffed and then sniffed again.

‘Pedro,’ Antonia said, coming to Pedro’s rescue before their new stepfather could say anything, ‘I told you not to light those foul-smelling Turkish cigarettes. They really stink. Light some joss sticks…and choose jasmine.’

‘No, man, that’s too feminine. I’m gonna use sandalwood.’

‘Whatever they are, I’d suggest you light them before your mother comes down,’ Ion Antonescu said helpfully, trying to adopt a middle
course between complicity and authority. ‘There’s a strong scent of marijuana here, and you know how your mother deplores drug-taking.’

‘The guests will be here at seven, no?’ Julio said, deliberately changing the subject.

‘Yes.’

‘So how does it feel to be a married man?’ Julio asked jocularly.

Ion Antonescu pouted. He was a tall and handsome man with charming manners and the flaccid expression of the weak. Romanian by birth, French by nationality, homosexual by inclination and an art dealer by trade, Bianca had met him nine months previously, exactly two weeks to the day after she moved into L’Alexandrine. The occasion was a dinner party hosted by her immediate neighbours, the renowned American advertising guru Ruth Fargo Huron and her airline chief executive husband, Walter Huron, who had been only too relieved to have this effete but genuinely nice man squire his wife at social events for several years. No one at that dinner party, not even the Hurons themselves, would ever have expected that a walker of such renown could ever be of marital interest to any woman.

Bianca, however, was on the lookout for someone with whom she could enter into a
mariage blanc
. As Pedro had rightly surmised, she needed something to throw Clara and the many Mexican socialites who insisted that she had arranged Ferdie Piedraplata’s death off the scent. Ion Antonescu could not have appeared at a better time. Moreover, he and Bianca clicked, which was hardly surprising considering how worldly and gregarious they both were.

The day after their meeting, Bianca telephoned Ion and - killing two birds with one stone - asked him if he could advise her on purchasing art for L’Alexandrine. Naturally, he was agreeable. Two days later, over lunch in St Paul de Vence, the initial impression of compatibility was reinforced by a most companionable and enjoyable time. By the end of the meal Bianca was mixing business with pleasure - something she would do time and again in the years to come - by agreeing a commission rate that was mutually satisfactory: ten percent of the purchase price on any works she bought at auction upon his advice, ten percent on any works he obtained through other dealers on her behalf, but his full profit on any pictures or objets d’art he found on his own.

Having hooked her red herring with the prospect of large
commissions, Bianca immediately threw herself into the project that was then dearest to her heart: doing up L’Alexandrine. Within weeks, she and Ion were travelling to and from Geneva for art sales at Christie’s; to Paris for the auctions and to see dealers; to Rome, Florence, Copenhagen and Frankfurt. Ion was making money hand over fist, while Bianca was thrilled to acquire items she would never otherwise have had the acumen or knowledge to acquire for L’Alexandrine: much-needed pictures and trinkets, such as a Faberge Easter egg and four bejewelled picture frames, containing signed photographs of Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra; the Grand Duchess Xenia and the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna from a member of the former Imperial Family of Russia.

During this time, Ion came to know Bianca well. Whenever she popped over to France, she saw him on an almost daily basis. Although under constant pressure from Clara’s lawsuit against her and Philippe and not one to endure her suffering silently, she was nevertheless an excellent companion. Indeed, she was some of the best company Ion had ever had, and that was really saying something, as he was well used to glamorous and entertaining women. Day in, day out: she would recount the latest developments, sometimes with humour, sometimes poignantly but never dully. The common thread of her complaint was that Clara was crazed with grief and trying to blame Philippe and her for something that wasn’t their fault. ‘The idea of us running off with $200,000,000! How can anyone run off with that amount of money? Can you imagine how much it would
weigh?’
she would frequently joke.

From Ion’s point of view, Bianca Piedraplata was the ideal woman to have on his arm. She was beautiful, stylish, warm, witty and a big spender.

She was consummately glamorous, and her life had all the elements of grand theatre. Certainly, her forays into the law courts, while traumatic for her, were fascinating to him. Although Bianca’s complaints about how the lawsuit was ruining her life were constant, they were delivered with such verve and vivacity that they never became tiresome. Indeed, her demeanour always had such a dimension of theatricality, and the cast of characters in her life were so rich and so glamorous, that the saga became more - rather than less - entertaining for Ion the more he knew of what as going on.

Whenever Bianca wasn’t discussing the lawsuit, she remained equally interesting and was even more effervescent and charming. With her
captivating manner and the lavish and intoxicating way of life she was building with his help, Ion began to feel as if he were creating Nirvana in the South of France. As they grew closer, he found that he faced a choice: either wind down his other clients and friends when she was in town or incorporate her into his social life more than he had done so to date. So, gingerly at first, without knowing that Bianca had plans of her own where he was concerned, Ion asked her to various dinner parties and luncheon parties with other friends and clients and, in so doing, played right into her hands in both a personal and a social context. As these were precisely the people she wanted to meet, Bianca now found herself in the fortunate position of getting even more out of the relationship than she had wanted.

One evening, they were at Ruth Fargo Huron’s house for dinner when their hostess said, only half in jest: ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you two were enamoured of one another.’

Ruth’s comment provided Bianca with the perfect opening. She alluded to it on the way home. ‘I suppose I am enamoured of you in a nonsexual way,’ ‘she remarked. ‘You’re such wonderful company and such a decent guy that I feel utterly safe with you. In truth, you’re the only man I’d marry if I had to get married again.’

Ion blushed, cupped Bianca’s fingers, raised them to his lips and, in real aristocratic fashion, kissed the air immediately above them, lips brushing against hands being deemed a vulgar practice in aristocratic circles. The subject suitably introduced, Bianca was soon suggesting, ostensibly as a joke, that they enter into a
mariage blanc
. This sort of union, of course, had always been a respected feature of life in the highest social circles, and the banter between Bianca and Ion gradually progressed to the point where they started to speak about it seriously.

Meanwhile, Bianca’s relationship with Philippe had been going from strength to strength. Whenever she was in Mexico, he visited her every evening and spent the night with her until two o’clock, at which time he got out of bed and drove to his house. In New York, they also maintained a modicum of discretion, in case Clara had private detectives on their trail. Philippe booked a small apartment beneath Bianca’s at the Waldorf Towers, which he never used except to change his clothes. Those cautionary devices aside, they were solidly a couple and thought of themselves as such.

Philippe remained as besotted with Bianca as he had ever been. Her
feelings for him, meanwhile, had deepened thanks to their more fulfilling sex life and the tremendous wealth that he had engineered for her to acquire. Although she did not possess the passion for him that she once had for Bernardo, in her mind he was her man: her only man. The fact that their financial interests were uniquely tied up only served to preserve both her interest and her fortune, which was actually more than the $200,000,000 Pedro had claimed it to be. The figure that Bianca had positioned herself to inherit was nearer $270,000,000. Already, in the short space of time since Ferdie’s death, Philippe had increased it to well over $300,000,000. He, naturally, benefited from this, to the tune of some $15,000,000. He and Bianca were now partners in business as well as in bed and in crime. With Bianca’s money to invest, Philippe could finally give free rein to his business ideas, and in so doing he was discovering that he was as gifted financially as Ferdie had been, albeit without Ferdie’s flair for the unusual or the altruistic.

Life, of course, was not perfect. The complications caused by Clara’s lawsuit meant that Bianca and Philippe had to assume a level of subterfuge that Bianca had hoped to leave behind her forever now that she was a widow. Instead of which, she was being confronted with the need to divert suspicion and wagging tongues away from her relationship with Philippe by marrying a man who neither the English nor Mexicans could prove was the ‘beard’ he was. So she proposed to Ion, he accepted her, and together they planned their wedding.

Bianca had intended no irony when she chose April Fools’ Day for wedding to Ion Antonescu. It was simply the most convenient date. The children would be at home for the holidays. It was a good time for Philippe to be away from Mexico; and Ruth Fargo Huron had agreed to steal five days away from her advertising agency in New York to fly to Nice and act as matron of honour for her newest best friend.

Despite Bianca’s intentions, however, the occasion was so laden with paradox that it was almost satirical. The bride, still not confident enough of her social standing in the South of France to call the shots, behind her carapace of easygoing deference had allowed Ruth Fargo Huron to choose her own matron of honour’s dress. Ruth chose an Adolfo lace dress in beige too similar in colour, texture and style to Bianca’s dove-grey Valentino guipure suit for anyone to feel anything but acute embarrassment - especially Ruth Fargo Huron, who prided herself on her
impeccable social habits - when both bride and matron of honour appeared before family and friends for the civil ceremony at the local
Mairie
. That, however, was only the first of the day’s embarrassments. The sight of Bianca being ushered down the small pathway which served as the
Mairie
’s bridal aisle on the arm of her eldest surviving son, Julio, to meet Ion, who was standing beside his best man, Philippe, was too much for her second son. Pedro squirmed, bent his head towards his sister’s ear and whispered loudly enough to be overheard by the friends in the aisle behind them: ‘Uncle Philippe’s not only the best man. He’s the only man. You should’ve seen him coming out of Mama’s bedroom this morning. This whole thing’s too bizarre to cope with. I need a joint.’