Folly's Child Read online

  Bello:

  hidden talent rediscovered

  Bello is a digital only imprint of Pan Macmillan, established to breathe life into previously published classic books.

  At Bello we believe in the timeless power of the imagination, of good story, narrative and entertainment and we want to use digital technology to ensure that many more readers can enjoy these books into the future.

  We publish in ebook and Print on Demand formats to bring these wonderful books to new audiences.

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  Contents

  Janet Tanner

  Acknowledgements

  Preface

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  PART FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  PART FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  PART SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  PART SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Janet Tanner

  Folly's Child

  Janet Tanner is a prolific and well-loved author and has twice been shortlisted for RNA awards. Many of her novels are multi-generational sagas, and some – in particular the Hillsbridge Quartet – are based on her own working class background in a Somerset mining community. More recently, she has been writing historical and well-received Gothic novels for Severn House – a reviewer for Booklist, a trade publication in the United States, calls her “ a master of the Gothic genre”.

  Besides publication in the UK and US, Janet’s books have also been translated into dozens of languages and published all over the world. Before turning to novels she was a prolific writer of short stories and serials, with hundreds of stories appearing in various magazines and publications worldwide.

  Janet Tanner lives in Radstock, Somerset.

  My grateful thanks are due to Tom Winward, who advised me about insurance claims and investigations, and Julie Dammers of Dammers Models, Bristol, who was such a fount of knowledge on the fashion industry in the sixties since she was herself a Mattli couture model at that time. If I have made any slips in authenticity, neither of them are to blame!

  Thanks also to my daughters – Terri, whose thesis for her BA (Hons) degree in Fashion Design gave me the original idea, and Suzanne, who helped me devise the plot. To Rosemary Cheetham, who can always inspire me and make me determined to work harder. And of course, most of all, to my husband, Terry, for playing second fiddle to a word processor with such cheerfulness for a whole year!

  From the Daily Mail, July 1967:

  YACHT TRAGEDY OFF ITALY – FINANCIER AND

  FORMER MODEL DIE IN MYSTERY EXPLOSION

  A prominent American financier and entrepreneur and a former top fashion model are missing feared dead after a luxury yacht was lost yesterday off the west coast of Italy. Greg Martin, well known for his backing of enterprising ventures, and Paula Varna, the beautiful former model and wife of top fashion designer Hugo Varna, were holidaying at Mr Martin’s villa near Positano in the Gulf of Salerno. When they failed to return from a day’s sailing worried staff at the villa alerted the authorities and their disappearance was connected with an explosion which had been reported by fishermen. A search of the area revealed debris including a lifebelt belonging to the yacht – the Lorelei – but there was no sign of any survivors. Mr Martin, 40, is a single man but Paula, 29, and said to be the inspiration for her husband Hugo Varna’s success, is the mother of a four-year-old daughter, Harriet.

  From the Daily Mail, January 1990:

  RETURNED FROM THE DEAD!

  FINANCIER FAKED HIS OWN DEATH, WOMAN ALLEGES

  A prominent US financier who was thought to have died in an explosion on his luxury yacht off the coast of Italy has been fooling the world for more than twenty years, according to a woman who claims she has been living with him as his common law wife ever since his so-called ‘death’. The loss of the boat – and the lives of its two occupants, Greg Martin and the beautiful former model Paula Varna, wife of Martin’s business partner, world-famous fashion designer Hugo Varna, made headlines around the world at the time but though debris from the boat was washed up along the Italian coast their bodies were never found.

  Now Maria Vincenti, daughter of a wealthy Italian fabric manufacturer, has told police in Sydney, Australia, that the man sharing her luxury home at Darling Point, and known by friends and business acquaintances as ‘Michael Trafford’ is in fact Martin. ‘The explosion was a way of escaping the threatened collapse of his business empire in the States,’ she told police. ‘Everything had gone wrong and he wanted to be free to start a new life.’

  In 1967 Martin left behind him a web of intrigue – debts and crooked dealing which would certainly have brought him before the courts had he not ‘died’. Now police in two continents are searching for him in order to substantiate the claims of his one-time lover and bring him to justice, albeit twenty years late.

  PART ONE

  The Present

  CHAPTER ONE

  Tom O’Neill came through the revolving doors on a blast of icy air and stepped out on the other side into a blanket of almost oppressive warmth. Outside London might be shivering in the biting cold of a January morning, here in the foyer of the British and Cosmopolitan Insurance building centrally heated air oozed steadily from a series of concealed vents to waft summer warmth into every corner.

  Tom unbuttoned his overcoat, fished in the pocket of the dark suit which he scathingly referred to as his ‘city uniform’ for his identity card and flashed it at the uniformed security man. He did not like wearing suits and he liked a collar and tie even less. He was far more at home in jeans and a sweater or the favourite scuffed old flying jacket he had inherited from his father, who had been a Spitfire pilot in the war and he wore them whenever he could. Occasionally his job as a private insurance investigator allowed him this privilege but there were occasions which called for him to dress more formally. Visiting the Head Office of one of the companies that used his services in response to an urgent summons was one of them.

  Without waiting for his nod and wave Tom strode past the security man to the block of six lifts beyond him. One had just arrived at ground floor level; Tom followed two girl clerks into it and pressed the button for the fifteenth floor. He felt rather than saw the two girls glance at him appraisingly but took no notice. At just over six foot, with thick curling brown hair and eyes that owed their startling blueness to his Irish ancestry, Tom was used to being the object of female appreciation whilst being slightly puzzled by it. He had never thought the reflection which looked back at him each morning from the shaving mirror was particularly handsome. His nose was too large and a little crooked since taking a devastating straight left in the boxing ring when he was fifteen years old, his chin too irreg
ular. But women certainly seemed to like it and that of course had its compensations. Tom had not reached the ripe old age of twenty-nine without discovering quite a few of them.

  The lift halted at the twelfth floor for the girls to get out, then whispered on towards the fifteenth. When the doors opened again Tom emerged into a corridor, thickly carpeted in grey. Like the twelfth floor, glimpsed through the lift doors when the girls had got out, the walls were covered with a pale lemon wash, unlike the twelfth they were hung with pictures, not Old Masters but not Boots the chemists either – prints of hunting scenes and ships and a beautiful soft sunset over a bay that might have been St Ives – pictures deemed suitable for the Executive floor of a great international company.

  Tom passed them by without a glance, heading for the door at the very end of the corridor. He knocked briskly and without waiting for a bidding went in.

  The secretary seated behind the desk in the outer office looked up accusingly, then her features softened and a faint pink flush coloured her cheeks. ‘ Tom!’

  ‘Morning, Lucy. I understand the Great White Chief wants to see me.’

  ‘That’s right, he does. I’ll buzz him.’ She depressed the button. ‘Mr O’Neill is here, Mr Swansborough.’ She glanced up at Tom, a little regretfully. ‘He says to go straight in, Tom.’

  Tom nodded. ‘Thanks.’

  Watching him disappear into the inner sanctum, Lucy sighed. Why was it the gorgeous ones passed through so fleetingly while others, like that paunchy, moist-palmed Vic Tatum from Marine Claims always managed to delay in her office, ogling, leering and making suggestive remarks that she could probably take to a Sexual Harrassment Tribunal if she had a mind to!

  ‘Come in, Tom, come in!’ Roger Swansborough half rose from his executive chair holding out his hand in greeting. He was a big bluff man with a receding hairline and aggressively triple chin which somehow managed to make him look powerful but not fat – like a back row rugby player, Tom thought. He had already removed his jacket in the cloying warmth of the office but his white shirt was immaculate and as he reached across the desk Tom caught the gleam of gold cufflinks against the stiff white cuffs.

  ‘I had a message that you wanted to see me urgently,’ Tom said.

  ‘That’s right. Take your coat off, Tom, do. This place gets hotter every day. I’d open a window but …’ He gesticulated towards the expanse of glass that surrounded the office on two sides. Beyond it the sky was lowering grey, shrouding the roofs of the buildings and filtering cold dull half-light onto the streets and the distant river.

  From up here on the fifteenth floor the view was a panoramic one – unfortunately this morning it was also infinitely depressing.

  Tom did as he was bid, hanging his coat on the heavy carved stand behind the door.

  ‘What’s going on then, Roger? Who’s trying to swindle you this time?’ he asked smiling wryly – his job had made him cynical.

  The older man grimaced.

  ‘Not trying to swindle us, Tom. This time it’s a fait accompli – a bloody great sting to make your eyes water. Take a look at that.’ A copy of the morning paper was lying on his tooled leather desk top; he pushed it across to Tom, stabbing at the story with a manicured index finger. ‘ You remember the Martin business? No, you wouldn’t, of course. It happened twenty years ago, when you were still in short trousers. A luxury cabin cruiser blew up off the coast of Italy. There were two people aboard – Greg Martin, the owner, a financier with a finger in more pies than you’d care to name, and a woman, Paula Varna, wife of Hugo Varna the fashion designer. The boat was blown to glory, nothing was ever found of it except for a few bits of debris, and to all intents and purposes both occupants were blown to glory with it.’

  ‘British and Cosmpolitan were the insurers, I presume.’

  ‘Too right. Not only the boat but the lives of both Martin and Paula Varna – not peanut policies either of them as you can imagine. She had been a top model – her legs alone were insured for a five figure sum and he had enough hanging on him to bankrupt a smaller company. No, 1970 was not a good year for British and Cosmopolitan what with one thing and the other. But that’s our business, taking risks, and it works well enough – as long as everyone plays by the rules.’

  ‘And this time someone didn’t?’ Tom asked. He was trying to read the newspaper upside down without much success.

  Roger Swansborough’s hand balled into a fist and he brought it slamming down onto the desk top so that loose paperclips jumped in the big crystal ashtray.

  ‘Too right they didn’t. We paid out on the life of Greg Martin – and it seems the bastard wasn’t dead at all but living a life of luxury in Australia.’

  Tom whistled softly.

  ‘For twenty years? Are you sure it’s him?’

  ‘It’s him all right. He’s been living in Sydney under an assumed name – Michael Trafford – with an Italian heiress named Maria Vincenti. He was part Italian himself, of course – I understand his name was Martino originally until he decided to drop the ‘o’ and Americanise it to Martin. But he was an American citizen, born in the States as far as I can make out.’

  ‘So why was he insured with the British and Cosmopolitan?’ Tom asked.

  Swansborough shrugged. ‘You tell me. I dare say the slippery bastard had a good reason. He left a fair old mess behind him, by the way, when he disappeared. He’d been sailing close to the wind for years and everything was just about to blow up in his face.’

  Tom reached for the newspaper, turning it towards him. He scanned the print, seeing that it echoed more or less exactly the story Swansborough had just told him, then turned his attention to the photograph alongside – three people, obviously dressed for leisure. A thin-faced man, balding, in a shirt open at the neck to reveal gold chains, a woman, obviously beautiful in spite of the quality of the photograph, with her hair tied under a scarf Princess Grace style, and another man with a look of the Mediterranean about him whose face was partially obscured by sunglasses.

  ‘That’s Greg Martin?’ Tom asked, pointing to the third figure.

  ‘Yes. With Hugo Varna and Paula – on another trip which presumably did not end in disaster,’ Swansborough said drily. ‘ They were quite a part of the international scene in those days from what I can make out. Since he’s made his fortune Varna has become something of a recluse, of course. In fact there are those who claim he never got over his wife’s death, in spite of the fact that he married again – Paula’s younger sister, Sally, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Tom studied the photograph. ‘Well, quite obviously Mrs Varna was a real stunner. And she was alone on the boat with Martin when the accident happened. Something going on there, was there?’

  ‘Varna insisted not at the time. Said his wife had been in need of a holiday and he had been unable to get away. Martin was a close friend of the family as well as his business partner and Varna had been happy for her to go with him. But you can draw your own conclusions. She was English, by the way, which could explain why they chose to insure with us.’

  ‘A doubtful honour, the way things turned out,’ Tom said drily. ‘So – British and Cosmopolitan was taken for a small fortune – and taken for fools too by the seem of it. How the hell did it happen? The accident was investigated at the time, you say?’

  ‘Of course it was – and damned thoroughly too as you can see.’ Swansborough tapped the file in front of him and Tom saw the thick wad of papers which protruded from it. ‘But there was nothing we could get our teeth into. The boat had gone, not a doubt of it. Fishermen reported hearing the explosion and bits of debris were washed up for months afterwards. There appeared to be no survivors and there were plenty of witnesses to swear both Greg Martin and Paula Varna were on board when the yacht sailed – Martin was well known at the marina where he kept her and Paula was a highly visible character.’ He smiled thinly. ‘The papers treated it all as a great tragedy as you’ll see when you look at them. Financier and former model die in my
stery explosion was the headline at the time – and the emphasis of course was on the ‘former model’. Beautiful woman, internationally known, wife of talented fashion designer – it was heaven-sent copy, especially for the more sensational press. And she was a mother too – she and Varna had a child – a little girl who was about four at the time. You can imagine the story it made.’

  Tom nodded. ‘I certainly can. So it wouldn’t have just been insurance investigators ferreting about – it would have been the world’s press as well. But in spite of the way it looked Martin had faked his own death – and done it damned successfully. And what about the woman – Paula Varna? Did British and Cosmopolitan also fork out a small fortune to her family to which they were not entitled? Her family were the beneficiaries, I suppose. Did she die – or is she, too, still living somewhere under an assumed name?’

  Swansborough closed the file with a snap and pushed it across the desk.

  ‘That, Tom is what I want you to find out.’

  In a corner of the Salon Imperial of the Hotel Intercontinental, Paris, Harriet Varna braced her back against a statuesque pillar and looked steadily into the viewfinder of her camera, concentrating on her subjects so fiercely that she was almost oblivious to the electric atmosphere that surrounded her, bouncing off the Viennese décor and the sumptuous rococo ceiling along with the heat and the light as the models of the House of Saint Laurent moved gracefully along the hundred yards of catwalk to display the new season’s couture collection.

  Only the constant clicking of the camera shutters of the army of photographers and the intermittent bursts of rapturous applause broke the expectant hush that January afternoon, for Yves Saint Laurent is one of the few important couturiers to show in the old manner, with no mood-setting background music. In the late sixties he had declared ‘Couture is dead!’ and concentrated instead on off-the-peg designer wear, but twenty years later his revival had been both stunning and nostalgic and the long-term wealthy and the nouveau riche had come flocking, craving the glamour and excitement, and seeking the prestige that comes from owning a couture gown, specially, individually theirs after hours of masochistic fittings.