Folly's Child Read online

  ‘You knew her?’ Harriet asked, surprised.

  ‘No, but I know of her family.’

  ‘Who is she then? The paper said she was Italian, didn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right. Her family were fabric manufacturers with mills and factories around Lake Como. Greg was working on some kind of deal in Italy not long before he … before the accident. It’s quite conceivable they were involved in it and he met Maria as a result. He swept her off her feet, I shouldn’t wonder.’ His lip curled in a bitter smile. ‘ He was very attractive to women, was Greg.’

  Harriet ignored the implication.

  ‘But Dad – twenty years! If it’s true and he is alive where has he been all this time? And why the hell should he have pretended to be dead if he wasn’t?’

  ‘Because I guess it suited him.’ Hugo ran a finger under the roll collar of his shirt. It felt tight and hot in spite of being made of the softest combed cotton. ‘ He left one hell of a mess behind him, Harriet.’

  ‘Financial difficulties, you mean?’

  ‘And some! Oh yes, he’d overstretched himself, all right. And there was the suggestion of fraud, too. It took months – and the best financial brains in New York – to unravel his dealings and what they found was a web of debt – and worse. What a time that was!’ His eyes darkened at the memory. ‘For a while I thought we’d go down because of it. If it hadn’t been for Kurt I would have done. He rescued me, not a doubt of it, and thank God he did. But as for Greg … I suppose you could say I was all kinds of a fool to trust him, but I’m a designer, not an accountant. And I wasn’t the only one taken in by him – far from it. There were plenty of others with more experience in these matters than I who were deceived. Oh yes, if Greg had been around when the storm broke he’d have faced ruin – and probably gone to gaol into the bargain. No doubt about it, he made a very timely exit one way or the other.’

  Harriet was silent for a moment, chewing on her thumbnail. So … Greg had been little better than a crook on the business front – and he had very nearly dragged her father – and his stupendous talent – down with him. She had suspected as much, though it had never occurred to her that Greg’s death had been anything but an accident. But important as all this might once have been it did not concern her now. Hugo had weathered that particular storm with Kurt’s help and backing. No one had charged him with anything more serious than naivity and now he was one of the most successful fashion designers in New York. Besides, business dealings never figured very largely in Harriet’s reckoning. There were other, far more important aspects to life – and death.

  ‘Greg is only half the story though isn’t he, Dad?’ she said quietly.

  His eyes narrowed, emphasising the small lines and creases around them. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Oh Dad!’ she remonstrated. ‘ You know very well what I mean. What about Mom?’

  He looked away. ‘What about her?’

  ‘Dad – come out from that clam shell of yours. I know how good you are at hiding away inside it when you don’t want to face up to the real world. But it’s out here and it won’t go away.’

  ‘Your mother is dead’, he said flatly.

  ‘Is she though?’ Harriet shook her head slowly. ‘ We don’t really know that any more do we? We were always led to believe there were survivors when the Lorelei blew up. Now it seems that wasn’t the case. If this Maria Vincenti is to be believed, Greg survived. So I repeat – what happened to Mom?’

  ‘Harriet …’ He leaned on his desk wearily, not looking at her. ‘It’s so long ago now.’

  ‘What difference does that make? Twenty weeks – twenty months – twenty years – the questions are still the same and they have to be answered. If we don’t ask them someone else will. The insurance people are already starting to probe. One of them came to see me last night when I got back from Paris. He wanted to know when I last saw Mom.’

  He blanched visibly. ‘Bastards! I was afraid of something like this. So they think … yes, I suppose they would. What did you tell him?’

  ‘That I’d never seen her from that day to this, of course. But that’s no longer enough, is it? For God’s sake what happened when the Lorelei blew up? And what happened afterwards? Don’t you want to know? Dad – stop fiddling with that damned desk toy and listen to me!’

  He straightened, whirling round on her suddenly, much as he had turned on Victor Nicholson all those years ago. Gone was the vagueness, gone the composure. His eyes were bright now with suppressed passion and pain.

  ‘No, Harriet, you listen to me. There are some things best left alone – some things it’s better not to know.’

  ‘But the explosion might not have been an accident,’ she persisted. ‘Have you thought of that? It would explain how Greg manages to be in one piece while the Lorelei is nothing but a few planks of driftwood. And if what you say about the state of his finances is true then he’d have every reason for faking his death to escape the music. But it doesn’t answer my question. What happened to Mom?’

  ‘Your mother is dead.’

  ‘So you keep saying. It’s almost as if you want to believe it.’

  ‘Perhaps I do.’ His voice was tired. ‘Perhaps even that is preferable to thinking she could just disappear and let us think she was dead.’

  ‘But Dad …

  ‘How would you feel if you discovered that was the case? That she could abandon you – her four-year-old child – and never see you again? Is that what you want to hear?’

  ‘No, of course not!’

  ‘There are things I hoped you’d never, find out, Harriet,’ he said. ‘But I see now there’s no point in hiding them any longer. Besides, you are a grown woman now, and I dare say the truth will come out whether I tell you or not. Your mother was having an affair with Greg Martin. She was besotted by him. When she followed him to Italy I believe she had already made up her mind to leave us and go to him. That was why what happened on the boat makes very little difference to me. Whether she was killed or not is almost immaterial. As far as I am concerned, she was dead to me the moment she walked out the door.’

  Harriet crossed to the window and looked out. The towers of Manhattan seemed almost to be touching the cold grey sky. Far below, in the street opposite the 550 building, stood the tall statue of the Garment Worker, strangely distorted from this angle, and around the plinth on which it stood ant-like figures of vagrants and layabouts sat, oblivious to the cold. For long minutes Harriet stared down, unseeing.

  It was not her father’s revelation of an affair that surprised her. The official story had always been that Greg was simply a close family friend, but a child could have seen through the pretence and she had not been a child for a very long time, perhaps not since that long-ago night when she was four years old and had stood, unseen, outside a bedroom door … No, it was her father’s attitude that had shocked her. ‘She was dead to me,’ he had said and she could see he meant it. She was used to his ostrich ways – his ability to bury his head in the sand and shut out the things that displeased or upset him. But all the same … Harriet gave her head a small shake, hardly able to believe that even he could be quite so coldly dismissive.

  ‘Could I have a drink?’ she requested.

  ‘Coffee? I’ll buzz Nancy.’

  ‘No – a proper drink. The alcoholic sort.’ She broke off with a short laugh. ‘ Don’t look at me like that, Dad. This may be the middle of the afternoon to you, to me it’s evening – and the end of a very long day.’

  ‘Whisky? Bourbon?’ he asked, opening the elegant black-laquered cabinet.

  ‘Whisky, please. Scotch if you’ve got it – or are you waving the emerald flag for the benefit of certain up-and-coming Irish politicians of the lineage of the closest thing we in the States have to a royal family?’

  ‘I have Irish whiskey, of course – but also Scotch.’ He poured her some and handed it to her. ‘I won’t pretend it pleases me to see you drinking it, Harriet. I know you’re a grown woma
n but so are most of the others who lurch their way down the not-so-primrosy path to the Betty Ford Clinic.’

  ‘Dad!’ She rolled her eyes heavenward.

  ‘I know. I sound like a nagging father. But I’ve seen a few of them on the slippery slope – the Shiny Set, the stars, the Washington widows …’

  ‘Inadequates.’

  ‘Don’t be so sure. It gets a hold of you, Harriet.’

  ‘All right, Dad, you’ve made your point. I wish I hadn’t asked for the damned drink now. But as I said, my body hasn’t adjusted to the time-lag yet. When it does, I promise not a drop will pass my lips before dinner. Except of course …’ she broke off to toss back the rest of the whisky and set the tumbler down on Hugo’s desk, ‘except of course that I don’t suppose I shall be here long enough to make the adjustment.’

  He was unable to hide his disappointment. ‘You’re going back to London?’

  ‘No. Not yet. I’m going to Australia.’

  ‘Australia? … oh!’

  She nodded. ‘Yes. I’m going to try and find Greg Martin. I’m sorry, Dad, but I can’t just let this thing pass – sit back and pretend it hasn’t happened. It’s very important to me – and, I should have thought, to you too. It’s Mom we’re talking about – not a stranger in a sensational newspaper item – and there are too many unanswered questions about her death – or her disappearance. If Greg Martin is alive then perhaps he is the only person in the world who can supply the answers.’

  ‘But Harriet, it sounds as if he has gone into hiding again. If the police can’t find him what makes you think you could? And if they have picked him up he’ll in in custody. They’d never let you see him.’

  Her mouth set in a stubborn line he knew so well.

  ‘You may be right. But I have to try. Perhaps you don’t want to know the truth – that’s how it looks from where I’m standing. But I want to know. I want to find out what happened. Damn it – I’m going to find out!’

  He shook his head. ‘What good do you think will come from it, Harriet? If she is alive and you find her – do you think that would mean you’d have your Mom back? Of course it wouldn’t. But I honestly believe she is dead. I have thought so for a very long time.’

  ‘If that is so then it is all the more important to find out the truth,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Why? What difference can it make now?’

  ‘Because it seems as though Greg arranged the accident in order to fake his own death. That’s what the woman alleged and what you have said confirms it is quite likely. But when he sailed Mom was with him – no dispute about that is there? So if he survived and Mom died then – don’t you see? He murdered her.’

  ‘Harriet – for God’s sake!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Dad, but it’s true. It has to be a possibility. And that is why I’ll see Greg Martin if it’s the last thing I do.’

  His eyes were distant. He looked like an old man suddenly and she realised how he had aged since she had seen him last. Aged since yesterday, perhaps? Never a big man, overnight his frame seemed to have become almost frail and the sinews in his neck were raised and stringy above the cotton roll-neck. She put her arms around him.

  ‘I don’t want to upset you, Dad, but I have to do it. You must see that …’ She stopped speaking as the buzzer on his desk interrupted her. He broke away, depressing the button.

  ‘Yes, Nancy? What is it?’

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Mr Varna, but I have a Mr O’Neill here who says he is from the British and Cosmopolitan Assurance Company. He insists on seeing you.’

  ‘The man who more or less forced his way into my flat last night!’ Harriet said grimly. ‘ What is he doing in New York?’

  ‘Come to see me, obviously,’ Hugo returned drily. But his smile was strained and Harriet was alarmed by how drawn and old he suddenly looked.

  ‘Leave him to me, Dad. I’ll deal with him.’

  Tom O’Neill was in the outer office looking at one of the pictures that lines the walls – Rena, Hugo’s favourite house model, wearing a loose cut trench coat over a tailored shirt and doe-skin pants.

  ‘Mr O’Neill, I really would prefer it if you didn’t bother my father just now. There is nothing he can tell you beyond what I already have – that as far as we are concerned my mother has been dead for more than twenty years.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Today, in the half daylight, half white neon of the office, his eyes managed to look bluer and sharper than ever, like the ice-cold waters of a sunlit fiord. ‘Nevertheless I am afraid I must insist on seeing him, Miss Varna.’

  ‘Look – he’s in no fit state …’ Harriet argued. ‘Why don’t you go to Australia and talk to the Vincenti woman before you start bothering us?’

  ‘That is my next port of call,’ he said easily. ‘But right now I am here. So if you would kindly tell your father …’

  ‘Mr O’Neill, I’m telling you …’

  ‘Quit trying to protect me, Harriet.’ Hugo was standing in the doorway of his office. ‘I know you are only trying to help but the sooner we get this over with the better. I’ll see Mr O’Neill now. I have nothing to hide.’

  ‘Dad!’

  ‘You go home, Harriet. I’ll see you at dinner. And perhaps you’d warn Sally I might be a little late.’

  ‘Dad!’

  ‘Come this way, please, Mr O’Neill.’

  The door closed after them and Harriet could do nothing but glare at it impotently. Dammit, he deserved to be reported to whatever professional body insurance investigators belonged to and if he upset her father she’d see to it that he was.

  Still fuming at the insensitive arrogance of the man she turned and left the office.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  In her room at Hugo’s Central Park triplex Harriet was dressed and ready for dinner. At home in London she rarely bothered with such irrelevances; here she knew it was expected of her and accordingly she had showered, dumped her travel-weary jeans into the laundry basket from which they would be rescued by a maid, washed, ironed and returned to her next day, and dressed herself in a loose silk jersey jacket and pants suit, simple and easy enough to please her yet enough of a transformation to satisfy her father and Sally.

  She was tired out now, her eyes ached from lack of sleep and jetlag, and she glanced longingly at the king-sized bed with its lace-trimmed peach silk sheets. Oh to be able to fall into it and sink into oblivion! But it would be several more hours yet before she could do that.

  Was her father home yet? she wondered. She was anxious to see him the moment he arrived, and make sure he was all right after the trauma of the interview with the insurance investigator. But when she went to the head of the stairs and looked down she could see that his study door was ajar and the house was quiet and she returned to her room. He had said he might be late, after all, and she decided to snatch a few more moments of privacy to recharge her batteries in the one place in the whole luxurious house where she was able to relax and feel she was her own person.

  What was it about unashamed luxury, Harriet sometimes asked herself, which made her feel so uncomfortable? Most people would be only to happy to be able to enjoy such surroundings. A top line interior decorator had been given a free hand when Hugo had bought the triplex two years ago and no expense had been spared – the walls were hung with some of Hugo’s collection of Old Masters, glowing against the background of watered silk, the shelves were lined with leather bound first editions which neither Hugo nor Sally would ever open, much less read, every nook and cranny was filled with treasures and objets d’art displayed on dainty pedestals. The sofas and chairs were deep and soft enough to fall asleep in, a fireplace was topped by an Adam mantel which Hugo had had flown out from England and everywhere there were fresh flowers – long stemmed hothouse roses, orchids flown in from Singapore, daffodils and narcissi and heavy perfumed hyacinths.

  But to Harriet the grandeur and studied comfort were somehow artificial, the atmosphere more reminiscent of a luxury hotel than
a home. Perhaps, she thought, it was because she had never lived in this house. There was nothing to arouse childhood memories.

  Only in the room Sally had chosen especially for her was Harriet amongst familiar echoes of the past and she never entered it without feeling a wave of gratitude towards her aunt. Here, at Sally’s instigation, were many of the things Harriet remembered and loved from her childhood and growing-up years – the rosettes she had won with her pony, her graduation dress, her old collection of Osmond and Jackson records, her early attempts at photography, proudly framed, a pressed flower that reminded her of her first proper date. Small things, but important, the little touches that were typical of Sally and which made it possible to feel charity – and love – for her when she was fussy or critical or just plain annoying as she had been when Harriet had arrived without warning this afternoon.

  ‘Why didn’t you let us know you were coming?’ Sally had chided when the taxi had dropped Harriet off and she had bundled unceremoniously into the house. ‘You should have called, darling, and warned us. I might have been out or anything.’

  ‘There wasn’t time,’ Harriet had said, kissing her. ‘And anyway, you weren’t out.’

  ‘No, but I will be tomorrow. I have a charity luncheon to attend and …’

  ‘I probably won’t be here tomorrow either. It’s a flying visit only.’

  ‘Oh if only I’d known! I’d have asked Mark to dinner. He’s in New York, you know, though he insists on staying with a friend in that dreadful apartment over on the West side. He’d have loved to see you.’

  ‘And I’d have loved to see him. But that’s not why I’m here, Sally.’

  ‘Why then? Oh no, don’t tell me.’ Sally held up a manicured hand. ‘I don’t think I want to know. Your father and I talked about nothing else last night. Harriet, I’m sorry, but I don’t think I could stand to begin going all over that again – not just now. And I think I just might try to get hold of Mark. It might not be too late to invite him to dinner, if he’s got nothing else planned. I’ll warn Jane we shall be at least one, possibly two, extra …’