The Rich Shall Inherit (50 page)

1900, FRANCE

Captain Noiret’s old house was at the smarter end of the Canabière in Marseilles, conveniently located between the harbor and the hotels, and POPPY’S culled its clientele from both. But there were no wild, drunken sailors fresh from a long voyage and raring to go—the seven-foot, three-hundred-pound bouncer with the face of an ex-pugilist and fists like hams saw to that. A man couldn’t get into Poppy’s without a personal recommendation, and even then Poppy would run a critical eye up and down him before she grudgingly permitted him anywhere near her precious “girls.”

It had been to protect Netta and the girls that Poppy had come up with the idea; and because she couldn’t bear to see Netta squander her money as fast as it had come on parties and presents and what she called “the good life.” The truth was that Netta had never known a good life; she had never considered either yesterday or tomorrow; she’d always lived for the present—the only way she knew how. The Captain had been her one chance to escape, and when his money was gone it would be back to life on the squalid streets.

The idea of running her own “house” had intrigued Netta, but all it had meant to Poppy was relief that at least her friend would be off the freezing winter streets and would no longer have to sell herself to dangerous drunken strangers in doorways. She knew Netta would never change, but at least now she wouldn’t die of consumption like Jeanne, or end up in a pauper’s grave—worse than a nobody. What Poppy hadn’t realized was that inadvertently
she
would become a “madam.”

Netta had chosen the girls, ruthlessly rejecting those she considered too old or too predatory. “This is going to be a high-class establishment,” she told them haughtily, “I want a girl who’s clever enough to give a man a good time for his money, not just a quick tumble. We’re aiming to build up a regular clientele of ‘gentlemen’ and we need girls who are so pretty and so exciting, the customers won’t be able to wait to come back.”

Poppy had busied herself decorating the house, trying not to think about the acts that were going to take place in the bedrooms she was making so attractive. Hanging prim lace curtains at the windows, she’d thought wistfully of her youthful dreams of true love and the soaring, wonderful feeling of being lifted on eagle’s wings that she’d always imagined making love would feel like; and now here she was selling sex in all its forms—none of which she knew anything about. Swagging great brass four-poster beds with deep blue velvet, she thought about the men who would lie in them, and she hoped they would be kind men, and gentle. Running a tentative hand over the black satin sheets Netta had insisted on, she tried to imagine what it would feel like to be a girl in the arms of a stranger, sharing her body for money. And placing rose-shaded lamps beside the beds, she hoped, naively, that maybe some of the girls might find happiness and love here.

Netta installed an enormous bar in the salon—like the one she was so fond of at Victor’s café—but Poppy had persuaded her that it should be in mahogany instead of workmanlike zinc. They stocked its mirrored shelves with every kind of liquor and spirits plus, at Poppy’s instigation, a selection of expensive champagnes. “Our customers will never be able to afford it,” Netta protested, but Poppy simply added a hefty mark-up to the price and told Netta that if they couldn’t afford it, they wouldn’t be allowed through the door.

In an effort to make it all look more “elegant” and less like a bordello, Poppy hung the walls in burgundy silk and installed massive gilt-framed prints and etchings of classical subjects, but try as she might, she couldn’t stop Netta from placing an oil painting of a reclining and very voluptuous nude over the bar. She filled the shelves with books on every subject, even though Netta told her, laughing, that men wouldn’t be coming here to read. She bought deep, comfortable sofas and chairs, she placed an enormous urn of fresh flowers on the bar and scattered a selection of the day’s newspapers on the small tables. She hired two maids—one to clean and tidy the bedrooms after each
customer, and one to prepare and serve delicious little canapes to tempt their appetites. And when Netta brought home an armload of flimsy negligees for the girls to wear in the salon to facilitate the customers’ choices, Poppy just stared at them, scandalized. “They may wear those in the bedroom,” she said firmly, “but in the salon they’ll be fashionably dressed young ladies.” And she’d chosen their clothes personally, insisting that they would look just as alluring in a silk dress, with a pretty necklace and earrings and their hair immaculately coiffed, as they would half naked in a peignoir.

“This way they’ll feel like pretty girls, not whores,” she told Netta bluntly, “and it’ll make all the difference in the attitude of the men, you’ll see.”

On opening night they waited nervously for their first customers. Netta was behind the bar and the girls, unaccustomedly elegant in their finery, were sipping champagne and trying to look nonchalant. Wearing a demure gray velvet dress buttoned to the neck, with her red hair pulled back severely from her young, unpainted face, Poppy waited anxiously in the hall, wondering what on earth she would say to the “customers” and praying she wouldn’t blush.

When the first gentleman finally arrived, he stared at the elegant young madam in astonishment, and then he hastily removed his hat and bowed to her. Another customer followed on his heels, then another and then two more … soon Poppy found that she was too busy to be nervous, and she forgot to worry about what was going on upstairs. Netta supervised the bar and the “arrangements” in the salon; while Poppy greeted the customers pleasantly in the hall, asking how they were and commenting on the weather as she accepted their payment—in advance.

Word spread like wildfire about Poppy’s and its strange combination of naiveté and know-how; its prim lace-curtained parlor and fancy bar; the beautiful, clever girls who looked as though they were attending a fashionable finishing school; and the very proper “young lady” in the front hall. In less than six months, Poppy’s became the best-known secret in Marseilles. It was like an exclusive new club to which every man wanted to belong, but only those Poppy favored could gain entrance.

As she gained confidence the speculation grew about the lovely Poppy herself. That she was very young, there was no doubt—but no one knew exactly how young; of course she was foreign—some
said from America—but with her impeccable French accent it was difficult to tell. Certainly she was educated and well-bred—a “lady,” in fact—but no one knew her background. And with her sleek red hair and insolently tilted blue eyes, her creamy skin and long legs, Poppy was temptation itself. Her very unavailability in a house full of available women only added to her desirability, but she let it be known very firmly that any man who even dared to suggest such a thing would no longer be made welcome. Still, the combination of worldly-wise madam and beautiful young lady caused more than one man to try his luck.

“Aren’t you ever tempted?” Netta asked her curiously. “Or are you planning on remaining celibate all your life?”

“Maybe,” Poppy replied noncommittally, but her mouth set in a tight line.

Netta had her own room on the second floor with an enormous four-poster bed and a flurry of blue satin draperies. Poppy’s room was on the ground floor and it contained a simple wooden bed covered with a throw of dove-gray velvet, a dresser, and a comfortable chair. The heavy curtains were of the same gray velvet that was becoming her trademark and she’d found a pretty, old Isfahan rug in pinks and faded blues in a secondhand shop in Marseilles. The lamps had matching rose-colored shades with trembling bead fringes and even Luchay had a new stand, not of gold, but of oak, fashioned by a craftsman. While Poppy was working, the parrot would sit on his perch, accepting the admiration and tributes offered to him, but he always seemed to keep an anxious eye on her, and if she left the room he would flutter after her pathetically, crying her name, “Poppy
cara
, Poppy
chérie
, Poppy darling.”

At the end of the first year Netta and Poppy assessed their progress. Poppy was running the house with an iron hand in a velvet glove, and the business was profitable. They were able to live well, better than Netta had ever expected—she no longer had to wonder where her next meal was coming from, and neither did her girls.

“So what’s wrong?” she asked, observing Poppy’s downcast face. “Are you still thinking about that bastard in your past? Or is it Greg still?” Poppy stared into her glass of champagne, saying nothing. “It’s time you forget them all,” Netta said brusquely,
“this
is your life now, Poppy,
this
is reality. You should try to
enjoy it more.” And with an exasperated sigh, she returned to her place behind the bar.

Poppy took a sip of her champagne, pushing the dark memories away and contemplating her future. At least now, she had a future—of a sort. Yet she still wasn’t satisfied. Poppy’s was making them a living, but it was never going to make her fortune, and if there was to be no love in her life then the only alternative was to be rich. She fingered the whore’s pearls at her neck, worn flagrantly now instead of tucked away inside her blouse. Her mind was made up; if she was destined to be a madam, she wanted to be the
richest
madam in France.

1903, FRANCE

Franco Malvasi sat in his luxurious Mercedes coupe, one of the first ever seen in Marseilles, drawing on his cigarette and contemplating the exterior of Poppy’s. It was a modest house with only a small flight of iron-railinged steps separating it from the street. Heavy lace curtains covered the sparkling windows and the steps were scrubbed clean and edged with yellow scouring stone. On the surface it looked like any well-kept provincial home, but Franco knew that Poppy’s was the best-run bordello in the south, and he was here to find out why. Not that he wanted to buy a woman—he was far too fastidious a man for that—but any business that was successful enough to have its praises sung as far south as Milan and Naples and Rome intrigued him. And what
especially
intrigued him was the idea of Poppy, its unpainted, unattainable, ladylike owner.

Tossing away his cigarette, he stepped into the rainy night, glancing at his car admiringly as he walked up the steps. He was a man of many possessions, but for some reason that car gave him more pleasure than most. A massive doorman inspected him warily before permitting him to enter, and a uniformed maid took his coat, asking politely if he had been here before. When he said he hadn’t, she told him to wait, Poppy would see him in a minute.

Amused, Franco paced the red-carpeted hall, inspecting the dozens of paintings that crammed the walls from floor to ceiling. He was a collector himself, and quite a connoisseur, and though they were inexpensive and sometimes amateurish, he thought that the buyer had good taste. The tinkling sounds of a Chopin
piano sonata and a muted hum of conversation came from behind a half-opened door on his left, and he peered around it curiously. There were large bouquets of flowers everywhere and their scent mingled with the subtle perfumes of the women in the rose-shaded room. Several couples were sitting in the deep velvet sofas, talking softly and drinking champagne, while a few well-dressed, attractive girls lingered at the bar, chatting with the pert, smiling blonde behind the counter. At the far end of the room another girl sat holding the hand of a dapper gray-haired man who had fallen asleep by the fire. The pretty girl at the ebony grand switched from Chopin to Paganini, smiling at him pleasantly, while a little maid bustled around offering small dishes of smoked oysters and salmon, pate de foie gras and truffles. Apart from the bar and the fact that the girls were all attractive, he might have been at a country house party.

“Signore Malvasi?”

Franco spun around, feeling like a little boy caught out by the headmistress. “Excuse me,” he said, “I was curious …”

“Naturally,” Poppy replied, showing him into her office, “everyone is curious about Poppy’s. May I ask who recommended you, m’sieur?”

He watched for her reaction as he said quietly, “Monsieur Nobel … Jacques Nobel,” but there wasn’t even a flickker in her startling blue eyes as she nodded briskly and wrote his name in a black leather-bound book. The parrot fluttered suddenly from his stand and perched on her desk, glaring at him with eyes like topaz beads.

“You understand the rules here, Signore Malvasi,” Poppy said calmly. “Our first commitment is to our girls, but of course by keeping them protected, you—the customer—benefit. The girls are intelligent as well as pretty, and they expect to be treated like ladies in the salon. Upstairs, alone”—she shrugged—“is a personal matter between the two of you. But one word of warning—there will be no violence. I’m sure you must have heard all this from Monsieur Nobel, but we do have rules. Obviously we don’t allow just anyone in here, and those we do admit to our ‘club’ all agree to answer a few questions … your name, age, address, and business.”

Franco studied her, amused, as she waited for his response. She couldn’t be more than twenty-two or -three and in her gray velvet dress she was devastatingly attractive, but she was running her bordello with the gall of an amateur.

“Isn’t that asking a lot?” he asked with a cool smile. “Most men don’t exactly want it advertised that they are patronizing a bordello—and they certainly don’t want their names inscribed in a book for any amateur blackmailer to see.”

Poppy snapped her black leather book shut briskly. “We consider Poppy’s to be a club, not a bordello,” she said curtly. “Many of our clients have been coming here since we first opened, three years ago—they know they can trust us, and we know that we can trust them. I take the names of all new clients for their own protection, as well as for our girls’. For instance, a man arriving like you tonight, recommended, but still unknown … it’s a potentially dangerous situation for a girl, and if by any chance something should ‘happen’ to her,” she said, shrugging, “then we have some recourse against that man. There are some very important names in my book, Signore Malvasi, but I can assure you, I am the
only
one to see them.”