The St. Tropez Lonely Hearts Club (27 page)

‘Yes, well, that’s about all I can tell you for now,’ said Carlotta.

‘How is he going to get here?’ asked Maximus.

‘Serena told me he’s coming on some bigwig’s yacht the day after tomorrow.’

‘If we’re all stranded here and not allowed to leave, how come he can get here?’ asked Fabrizio.

‘If anyone can get in, it’s Prince Harry. He knows how to get into all kinds of things!’ joked Charlie.

‘Who’s the bigwig?’ Lara didn’t want Fabrizio talking to Carlotta. ‘I know most of the high rollers who have boats.’

‘Serena didn’t tell me. All I know is that the party for the Prince is at Henry and Blanche’s villa next Thursday and you’re all invited.’

Maximus looked at Carlotta approvingly. In the few weeks she had been in Saint-Tropez, she had certainly learned the ropes.

‘Well done,
cara
,’ he patted her on the back. ‘You’re becoming one of us now.’

There had been such an outcry from everyone who hadn’t been allowed to leave Saint-Tropez that reluctantly the Mayor was forced to drop the ban. ‘It’s unconstitutional,’ Jonathan Meyer had declared. ‘Against human rights.’

Even Captain Poulpe, who would have loved to interview everyone over and over again, realised the ban was unrealistic. However, he felt he had enough information and was making headway on the murder case. Now, with the news of Prince Harry’s imminent arrival, everyone decided to stay anyway, making his job much easier.

Carlotta was becoming so much a part of the Saint-Tropez social scene that Sophie had issued an invitation to her to come for an intimate tea one afternoon.

‘It was not so much an invitation, more like a royal command,’ Carlotta told Max nervously.

‘But you have to go,
cara
,’ he insisted. ‘Just to see how she lives is an experience. My God, the dogs and the cats . . .
oh!
And the smell!’ He did a pretend sniff holding his nose and Carlotta giggled.

‘But she terrifies me!’

‘Nonsense – she’s just an old lady wearing a lot of make-up and too many jewels. Underneath all that she’s really quite sweet!’

‘You’re joking!’

‘No – you’ll see, the diva act is just an act, and besides, she misses Frick, she’s lonely. Maybe she sees in you the daughter she never had.’

‘Oh, dear! That’s rather hard to live up to,’ Carlotta said. She paused for a second then added, almost to herself. ‘On the other hand, that would be quite nice – I wasn’t very close to my mother.’

Max expressed a touch of fake sympathy as he thought about how he could turn this unexpected social event to his advantage. ‘Maybe I should come for tea?’ he asked.

‘Sorry, she told me I could bring a friend as long as it wasn’t you!’ Carlotta giggled.

Max made a disappointed
moue
then smiled excitedly, ‘Fabrizio! Why don’t you take him?’

‘Oh, God, no – perish the thought! I’ve asked Nick, if he’s back from the Middle East, and I’ll ask Sophie if that’s okay.’

‘He’s press,’ said Max gloomily, ‘she won’t like that.’

‘He’s promised not to write about her – and besides, he’s been commissioned by the
Mail
to do an interview with Henry Phillips, which he’ll be working on when he’s finished the stint he’s doing now. Oh dear, do you think maybe the
Daily Mail
has heard about Prince Harry coming?’

‘I doubt it,’ said Max, sounding disappointed and sad, realising the opportunities that were being denied him. Had he known about an offer for a
Mail
interview with the racing legend Henry Phillips, he could have negotiated it himself and made himself a little bit of money. God knows he needed it. Everyone seemed to be getting a piece except him.

When Carlotta and Nick entered the dimly lit entrance hall of Sophie Silvestri’s secluded villa, Carlotta wrinkled her nose. ‘It reeks of animals,’ she whispered.

‘Man’s best friend,’ Nick smiled, ‘and obviously Madame Silvestri’s best friend as well.’

A sombre figure sheathed in black with his arm in a sling appeared at the end of the corridor.

‘Madame will see you now,’ Adolpho, still mourning his lover Frick, announced gloomily.

The salon was dark, even though it was the middle of the afternoon. Sophie was ensconced in an enormous eighteenth-century gilt and red velvet bergère armchair. It had definitely seen better days, as had all the furnishings in the room. She was clad in a voluminous silk caftan in purple to pink ombré. It bore the signs of wear and tear from the menagerie of animals that drifted in and out of the salon and crowded around her chair looking curiously at the newcomers. There was a strong smell of cat’s pee and Carlotta noticed several litter trays stashed around the room. Sophie held out her hand, smiling warmly at the young lovers.

‘Sit, sit,’ she commanded. ‘Adolpho, bring tea. You like English tea?’

Carlotta nodded.

‘I always have it every afternoon, most refreshing in this hot climate,’ smiled Sophie.

‘Out, out!’ she barked at two enormous poodles that had taken over the cosy armchairs opposite her.

Incense burned on a rickety table beside Sophie, and the enormous grand piano was covered in a Spanish shawl, on which were stacked about thirty silver photo frames. Nick, with his reporter’s eye, quickly spotted the famous star smiling with Reagan, Sinatra, Streisand and Nelson Mandela amongst many others. ‘Shades of Gloria Swanson,’ he mouthed to Carlotta as Sophie turned to throw off her lap the giant cat she had been caressing. Adolpho had brought in an old-fashioned tea trolley gleaming with exquisite china, and plates piled high with sandwiches and a selection of patisserie. Sophie poured the tea elegantly, in a passable imitation of how the Queen might do it and, without asking, sloshed a generous amount of milk into their delicate cups.

After a limited amount of small talk she said, ‘Now maybe you are wondering why I asked you here?’

‘Yes . . . I actually . . . I mean, I’m extremely flattered to be invited, Madame Silvestri.’

Sophie held up her hand and said, ‘Sophie, please.’

‘Yes, well . . . Sophie. I’ve seen so many of your movies and my mother really admired you.’

A slightly irritated frown crossed the actress’s heavily cosmeticised face and Carlotta swiftly realised she’d crossed an invisible no-no line.

‘But I loved you in
The Barefoot Bride
. It was on TV a couple of months ago,’ she added hastily, trying to repair the damage. Nick shot her an affectionately warning glance and Carlotta decided to shut up.

‘Ah yes,
The Barefoot Bride
, one of my favourites. Jack Lemmon . . . ah, he was such a sweetie, we had so much fun.’ She sipped her tea and, taking a bite out of a chocolate éclair, fed the rest to a massive basset hound who had been lurking under her chair. She stared off into the distance for a few minutes, apparently lost in thoughts of high jinks with Jack Lemmon.

It was quite gloomy in the salon, the windows shielded from the afternoon sun by thick parasol pines. Another fierce mistral had been brewing since lunchtime and it started its familiar high-pitched whistle as the branches knocked against the windows.

‘Ah, you know what they say about mistrals, don’t you?’ said Sophie with a thin smile.

‘Yeah, they keep telling us!’ smiled Nick. ‘A murderer is forgiven if he kills during a mistral, right?’

‘Exactly – except not any murderer: a man who kills his wife.’

‘Archaic,’ breathed Carlotta. ‘Does that rule still exist?’

‘In this part of the world, my dear, yes, it does. Although I must admit it hasn’t happened recently. You see, what everyone perceives about Saint-Tropez is just the tip of the iceberg, the cherry on top of the cake. There are ancient mystical customs here that have been practised for hundreds of years since the village had to protect itself. We were invaded by Turkish pirates, Spaniards – even the Japanese, you know.’

‘Is that when they built the citadel?’ asked Nick.

‘Yes, by order of the King in the seventeenth century, but the people of Saint-Tropez are still very superstitious, and they don’t like strangers. Nor do I,’ she said firmly. ‘That is why I rarely go out in the daytime. I can’t bear to mix with the hideous mobs that come here in their tour buses, and go camping next to our beautiful beaches, leaving all their filth and detritus everywhere. Sacrilegious!’ she spat, almost choking on a pastry, and looked furiously out of the window. ‘They come here on their boats and try to get a glimpse of me. I’m old now. I don’t want them to see me like this.’

Nick glanced at Carlotta, who was completely fascinated by Sophie’s recollections. The star seemed to shrink and lose her glamour as her anger started to engulf her.

‘I have tried . . .
Mon Dieu
, how I have tried for thirty years to stop all of this trash coming here. It upsets me so much, but what do they care? All that interests the Mayor and all the councils of the whole of this part of the Côte d’Azur is money, money, money!’ She banged her hand so hard on the tea trolley that the plate of pastries fell to the floor and several cats leapt to devour them.

Suddenly there was another huge gust of wind and somewhere in the back of the villa a door banged so loudly that several of the dogs started howling. Sophie grinned devilishly at Carlotta’s nervousness.

‘Don’t worry, my dear, it’s not a big mistral and you’re not married! Now let’s get started. There were two reasons why I asked you here today. The first one was because I believe it’s more than a coincidence that both Mina’s murder and Spencer’s death occurred during the time of a mistral –
n’est-ce pas?
’ She stared at them both as the cat jumped on her lap again and she fed it a piece of smoked salmon from her sandwich.

‘Well . . .’ Nick was hesitant. ‘I’m not much of a one for superstitions, but it does seem like quite a coincidence.’

‘And my party for Marvin Rheingold, when my dear darling Frick was killed on the funicular . . .’ Sophie’s eyes filled with tears and she dabbed at her cheeks with the cat’s fluffy tail. ‘There was a mistral then, do you remember?’

Nick and Carlotta nodded. It had turned much darker in the salon, and the wind blew stronger now.

‘I wanted to see if you young people had any ideas about who would want to murder those innocent people? Because Poulpe and that daughter of his don’t seem to have a clue.’

‘I’m a journalist, ma’am, and believe me, if I had any suspicions, I would let Captain Poulpe or the Mayor know. But I’m sorry to say, ma’am, they all look like accidents to me. Gruesome, yes, and freakishly coincidental, but accidents nevertheless,’ said Nick.

‘The Mayor? Bah! He’s useless, and he loves the fact that Saint-Tropez is full of trash!’ Sophie leaned forward ominously. ‘And I don’t mean those shabby-looking people wandering around in their ugly clothes. No, the real trash here are the oligarchs – those billionaires with their obscene yachts, and their jeroboams of champagne that they spray all over their whores at the beaches and restaurants.’

‘Well, yes, there are quite a few of those guys around, I admit,’ Carlotta conceded.

‘But the town needs those people for the season,’ Nick pointed out. ‘Otherwise the locals, the shopkeepers, restaurateurs, the owners of the bars and beaches – they would go broke.’

‘So what?’ snarled Sophie, suddenly back to behaving like a virago. ‘Saint-Tropez should be the sleepy fishing village it was before that
puta
Coco Chanel started coming here with her fancy friends in the thirties. Then that Brigitte Bardot ruined it even more in the fifties, running around half-naked.’ She took a sip of her tea and stared at them both, becoming even more wild-eyed. ‘Perhaps you don’t agree with me. Many people don’t. In fact . . .’ she stroked the cat and her eyes gleamed as she leaned forward, ‘many people think I am a witch!’

There was a huge crash from upstairs and Adolpho’s voice came down the stairs faintly. ‘Sorry, sorry,
cherie,
I just dropped a vase.’

Carlotta shuddered. She was beginning to feel quite queasy, and the pastries Sophie had insisted she eat were weighing heavily on her. She wanted to leave but as she started to rise, Sophie grabbed her arm.