Bolt

SEVEN

Aunt Beatrice, Roland de Brescou’s sister, spoke with a slight French accent heavily overlaid with American. She had a mass of cloudy hair, not dark and long like Danielle’s, but white going on pale orange. This framed and rose above a round face with round eyes and an expression of habitual determination.
‘Danielle!’ Beatrice said, thin eyebrows rising. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I work in England.’ Danielle went to her aunt to give her a dutiful peck. ‘Since last fall.’
‘Nobody tells me anything.’
She was wearing a silk jersey suit – her outdoor mink having gone upstairs over Dawson’s arm – with a heavy seal on a gold chain shining in front. Her fistful of rings looked like ounce-heavy nuggets, and a crocodile had passed on for her handbag. Beatrice, in short, enjoyed her cash.
She was clearly about to ask who Litsi and I were when the princess entered, having come downstairs, I reckoned, at record speed.
‘Beatrice,’ she said, advancing with both hands outstretched and a sugar-substitute smile, ‘what a delightful surprise.’ She grasped Beatrice’s arms and gave her two welcoming kisses, and I saw that her eyes were cold with dismay.
‘Surprise?’ Beatrice said, as they disengaged. ‘I called on Friday and spoke to your secretary. I told her to be sure to give you the message, and she said she would leave a note.’
‘Oh.’ A look of comprehension crossed the princess’s face. ‘Then I expect it’s down in the office, and I’ve missed it. We’ve been … rather busy.’
‘Casilia, about the bamboo room …’ Beatrice began purposefully, and the princess with dexterity interrupted her.
‘Do you know my nephew, Litsi?’ she said, making sociable introductions. ‘Litsi, this is Roland’s sister, Beatrice de Brescou Bunt. Did you leave Palm Beach last evening, Beatrice? Such a long flight from Miami.’
‘Casilia …’ Beatrice shook hands with Litsi. ‘The bam –’
‘And this is Danielle’s fiancé, Christmas Fielding.’ The princess went on, obliviously. ‘I don’t think you’ve met him either. And now, my dear Beatrice, some tomato juice and vodka?’
‘Casilia!’ Beatrice said, sticking her toes in. ‘I always have the bamboo room.’
I opened my mouth to say obligingly that I didn’t mind moving, and received a rapid look of pure steel from the princess. I shut my mouth, amazed and amused, and held my facial muscles in limbo.
‘Mrs Dawson is unpacking your things in the rose room, Beatrice,’ the princess said firmly. ‘You’ll be very comfortable there.’
Beatrice, furious but outmanoeuvred, allowed a genial Litsi to concoct her a bloody mary, she issuing sharp instructions about shaking the tomato juice, about how much Worcestershire sauce, how much lemon, how much ice. The princess watched with a wiped-clean expression of vague benevolence and Danielle was stifling her laughter.
‘And now,’ Beatrice said, the drink finally fixed to her satisfaction, ‘what’s all this rubbish about Roland refusing to expand the business?’
After a frosty second of immobility, the princess sat collectedly in an armchair, crossing her wrists and ankles in artificial composure.
Beatrice repeated her question insistently. She was never, I discovered, one to give up. Litsi busied himself with offering her a chair, smoothly settling her into it, discussing cushions and comfort and giving the princess time for mental re-mustering.
Litsi sat in a third armchair, leaning forward to Beatrice with smothering civility, and Danielle and I took places on a sofa, although with half an acre of flowered chintz between us.
‘Roland is being obstructionist and I’ve come to tell him I object. He must change his mind at once. It is ridiculous not to move with the times and it’s time to look for new markets.’
The princess looked at me, and I nodded. We had heard much the same thing, even some of the identical phrases, from Henri Nanterre on Friday evening.
‘How do you know of any business proposals?’ the princess asked.
‘That dynamic young son of Louis Nanterre told me, of course. He made a special journey to see me, and explained the whole thing. He asked me to persuade Roland to drag himself into the twentieth century, let alone the twenty-first, and I decided I would come over here myself and insist on it.’
‘You do know,’ I said, ‘that he’s proposing to make and export guns?’
‘Of course,’ she said, ‘but only plastic parts of guns. Roland is old fashioned. I’ve a good friend in Palm Beach whose husband’s corporation makes missiles for the Defense Department. Where’s the difference?’ She paused. ‘And what business is it of yours?’ Her gaze travelled to Danielle, and she remembered. ‘I suppose if you’re engaged to Danielle,’ she said grudgingly, ‘then it’s marginally your business. I didn’t know Danielle was engaged. Nobody tells me anything.’
Henri Nanterre, I thought, had told her a great deal too much.
‘Beatrice,’ the princess said, ‘I’m sure you’ll want to wash after your journey. Dawson is arranging a late lunch for us, although as we didn’t know there would be so many …’
‘I want to talk to Roland,’ Beatrice said obstinately.
‘Yes, later. He’s resting just now.’ The princess stood, and we also, waiting for Danielle’s aunt to be impelled upstairs by the sheer unanimity of our expectant good manners; and it was interesting, I thought, that she gave in, put down her unfinished drink and went, albeit grumbling as she departed that she expected to be reinstated in the bamboo room by the following day at the latest.
‘She’s relentless,’ Danielle said as her voice faded away. ‘She always gets what she wants. And anyway, the bamboo room’s empty, isn’t it? How odd of Aunt Casilia to refuse it.’
‘I’ve slept in there the last two nights,’ I said.
‘Have you indeed!’ Litsi’s voice answered. ‘In accommodation above princes.’
‘That’s not fair,’ Danielle said. ‘You said you preferred those rooms on the ground floor because you could go in and out without disturbing anyone.’
Litsi looked at her fondly. ‘So I do. I only meant that Aunt Casilia must esteem your fiancé highly.’
‘Yes,’ Danielle said, giving me an embarrassed glance. ‘She does.’
We all sat down again, though Danielle came no nearer to me on the sofa.
Litsi said, ‘Why did Henri Nanterre recruit your Aunt Beatrice so diligently? She won’t change Roland’s mind.’
‘She lives on de Brescou money,’ Danielle said unexpectedly. ‘My parents do now as well, now that my black sheep of a father has been accepted back into the fold. Uncle Roland set up generous trusts for everybody out of the revenues from his land, but for as long as I’ve known my aunt, she’s complained he could afford more.’
‘For as long as you’ve known her?’ Litsi echoed. ‘Haven’t you always known her?’
She shook her head. ‘She disapproved of Dad. He left home originally under the heaviest of clouds, though what exactly he did, he’s never told me; he just laughs if I ask, but it must have been pretty bad. It was a choice, Mom says, between exile or jail, and he chose California. She and I came on the scene a lot later. Anyway, about eight years ago, Aunt Beatrice suddenly swooped down on us to see what had become of her disgraced little brother, and I’ve seen her several times since then. She married an American businessman way way back, and it was after he died she set out to track Dad down. It took her two years – the United States is a big country – but she looks on persistence as a prime virtue. She lives in a marvellous Spanish-style house in Palm Beach – I stayed there for a few days one Spring Break – and she makes trips to New York, and every summer she travels in Europe and spends some time in “our chateau”, as she calls it.’
Litsi was nodding. ‘Aunt Casilia has been known to visit me in Paris when her sister-in-law stays too long. Aunt Casilia and Roland,’ he explained, unnecessarily, ‘go to the chateau for six weeks or so around July and August, to seek some country air and play their part as landowners. Did you know?’
‘They mention it sometimes,’ I said.
‘Yes, of course.’
‘What’s the chateau like?’ Danielle asked.
‘Not a Disney castle,’ Litsi answered, smiling. ‘More like a large Georgian country house, built of light-coloured stone, with shutters on all the windows. Chateau de Brescou … The local town is built on land south of Bordeaux mostly owned by Roland, and he takes moral and civil pride in its well being. Even without the construction company, he could fund a mini-Olympics on the income he receives in rents, and his estates are run as the company used to be, with good managers and scrupulous fairness.’
‘He cannot,’ I commented, ‘deal in arms.’
Danielle sighed. ‘I do see,’ she admitted, ‘that with all that old aristocratic honour, he simply couldn’t face it.’
‘But I’m really surprised,’ I said, ‘that Beatrice could face it quite easily. I would have thought she would have shared her brother’s feelings.’
‘I’ll bet,’ Danielle said, ‘that Henri Nanterre promised her a million dollar hand-out if she got Uncle Roland to change his mind.’
‘In that case,’ I suggested mildly, ‘your uncle could offer her double to go back to Palm Beach and stay there.’
Danielle looked shocked. ‘That wouldn’t be right.’
‘Morally indefensible,’ I agreed, ‘but pragmatically an effective solution.’
Litsi’s gaze was thoughtful on my face. ‘Do you think she’s such a threat?’
‘I think she could be like water dripping on a stone, wearing it away. Like water dripping on a man’s forehead, driving him mad.’
‘The water torture,’ Litsi said, ‘I’m told it feels like a red hot poker after a while, drilling a hole into the skull.’
‘She’s just like that,’ Danielle said.
There was a short silence while we contemplated the boring capacities of Beatrice de Brescou Bunt, and then Litsi said consideringly, ‘It might be a good idea to tell her about the document you witnessed. Tell her the bad news that all four of us would have to agree to the guns, and assure her that even if she drives Roland to collapse, she’ll still have to deal with me.’
‘Don’t tell her,’ Danielle begged. ‘She’ll give none of us any peace.’
Neither of them had objected to the use made of them in their absence; on the contrary, they had been pleased. ‘It makes us a family,’ Danielle had said, and it was I, the witness, who had felt excluded.
‘Upstairs,’ I said, reflecting, ‘I’ve got what I think is a duplicate of the form Henri Nanterre wanted Monsieur de Brescou to sign. It is in French. Would you like to see it?’
‘Very much,’ Litsi said.
‘Right.’
I went upstairs to fetch it and found Beatrice Bunt in my bedroom.
‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded.
‘I came to fetch something,’ I said.
She was holding the bright blue running shorts I usually slept in, which I had stored that morning in the bedside table drawer on top of Nanterre’s form. The drawer was open, the paper presumably inside.
‘These are yours?’ she said in disbelief. ‘You are using this room?’
‘That’s right.’ I walked over to her, took the shorts from her hand and returned them to the drawer. The form, I was relieved to see, lay there undisturbed.
‘In that case,’ she said with triumph, ‘there’s no problem. I shall have this room, and you can have the other. I always have the bamboo suite, it’s the accepted thing. I see some of your things are in the bathroom. It won’t take long to switch them over.’
I’d left the door open when I went in and, perhaps hearing her voice, the princess came enquiringly to see what was going on.
‘I’ve told this young man to move, Casilia,’ Beatrice said, ‘because of course this is my room, naturally.’
‘Danielle’s fiancé,’ the princess said calmly, ‘stays in this room as long as he stays in this house. Now come along, Beatrice, do, the rose room is extremely comfortable, you’ll find.
‘It’s half the size of this one, and there’s no dressing room.’
The princess gave her a bland look, admirably concealing irritation. ‘When Kit leaves, you shall have the bamboo room, of course.’
‘I thought you said his name was Christmas.’
‘So it is,’ the princess agreed. ‘He was born on Christmas day. Come along, Beatrice, let’s go down for this very delayed lunch …’ She positively shepherded her sister-in-law out into the passage, and returned a second later for one brief and remarkable sentence, half instruction, half entreaty.
‘Stay in this house,’ she said, ‘until she is gone.’
After lunch, Litsi, Danielle and I went up to the disputed territory to look at the form, Litsi observing that his money was on Beatrice to winkle me out of all this splendour before tomorrow night.
‘Did you see the dagger looks you were getting across the half-defrosted mousseline?’
‘Couldn’t miss them.’
‘And those pointed remarks about good manners, unselfishness, and the proper precedence of rank?’
The princess had behaved as if she hadn’t heard, sweetly making enquiries about Beatrice’s health, her dogs, and the weather in Florida in February. Roland de Brescou, as very often, had remained upstairs for lunch, his door barricaded, I had no doubt. The princess with soft words would defend him.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘here’s this form.’
I retrieved it from under my blue shorts and gave it to Litsi, who wandered with it over to a group of comfortable chairs near the window. He read it attentively, sitting down absent-mindedly, a big man with natural presence and unextended power. I liked him and because of Danielle feared him, a contradictory jumble of emotion, but I also trusted his overall air of amiable competence.
I moved across the room to join him, and Danielle also, and after a while he raised his head and frowned.
‘For a start,’ he said, ‘this is not an application form for a licence to make or export arms. Are you sure that’s what Nanterre said it was?’
I thought back. ‘As far as I remember, it was the lawyer Gerald Greening who said it was a government form for preliminary application for a licence. I understood that that was what Henri Nanterre had told the princess in her box at Newbury.’
‘Well, it isn’t a government form at all. It isn’t an application for any sort of licence. What it is is a very vague and general form which would be used by simple people to draw up a contract.’ He paused. ‘In England, I believe one can buy from stationers’ shops a printed form for making a will. The legal words are all there to ensure that the will is properly executed. One simply inserts in the spaces what one wants done, like leaving the car to one’s grandson. It’s what’s written into the spaces that really counts. Well, this form is rather like that. The legal form of words is correct, so that this would be a binding document, if properly signed and properly witnessed.’ He glanced down at the paper. ‘It’s impossible to tell of course how Henri Nanterre had filled in all the spaces, but I would guess that overall it would say merely that the parties named in the contract had agreed on the course of action outlined by the accompanying documents. I would think that this form would be attached to, and act as page one, of a bulk of papers which would include all sorts of things like factory capacity, overseas sales forces, preliminary orders from customers and the specifications of the guns proposed to be manufactured. All sorts of things. But this simple form with Roland’s signature on it would validate the whole presentation. It would be taken very seriously indeed as a full statement of intent. With this in his hands, Henri Nanterre could apply for his licence immediately.’
‘And get it,’ I said. ‘He was sure of it.’
‘Yes.’
‘But Uncle Roland could say he was forced into signing,’ Danielle said. ‘He could repudiate it, couldn’t he?’
‘He might have been able to nullify an application form quite easily, but with a contract it’s much more difficult. He could plead threats and harassment, but the legal position might be that it was too late to change his mind, once he’d surrendered.’
‘And if he did get the contract overthrown,’ I said reflectively, ‘Henri Nanterre could start his harassment over again. There could be no end to it, until the contract was re-signed.’
‘But all four of us have to sign now,’ Danielle said. ‘What if we all say we won’t?’
‘I think,’ I said, ‘if your uncle decided to sign, you would all follow his lead.’
Litsi nodded. ‘The four-signature agreement is a delaying tactic, not a solution.’
‘And what,’ Danielle said flatly, ‘is a solution?’
Litsi looked my way. ‘Put Kit to work on it.’ He smiled. ‘Danielle told me you tied all sorts of strong men into knots last November. Can’t you do it again?’
‘This is a bit different,’ I said.
‘What happened last time?’ he asked. ‘Danielle told me no details.’
‘A newspaper was giving my sister Holly and her husband a lot of unearned bad publicity – he’s a racehorse trainer and they said he was going broke – and basically I got them to apologise and pay Bobby some compensation.’
‘And Bobby’s appalling father,’ Danielle said, ‘tell Litsi about him.’
She could look at me, as now, as if everything were the same. I tried with probably little success to keep my general anxiety about her from showing too much, and told the story to Litsi.
‘The real reason for the attacks on Bobby was to get at his father, who’d been trying to take over the newspaper. Bobby’s father, Maynard Allardeck, was in line for a knighthood, and the newspaper’s idea was to discredit him so that he shouldn’t get one. Maynard was a real pain, a ruthless burden on Bobby’s back. So I … er … got him off.’
‘How?’ Litsi asked curiously.
‘Maynard,’ I said, ‘makes fortunes by lending money to dicky businesses. He puts them straight and then calls in the loan. The businesses can’t repay him, so he takes over the businesses, and shortly after sells off their assets, closing them down. The smiling shark comes along and gobbles up the grateful minnows, who don’t discover their mistake until they’re half digested.’
‘So what did you do?’ Litsi said.
‘Well … I went around filming interviews with some of the people he had damaged. They were pretty emotional stuff. An old couple he’d cheated out of a star racehorse, a man whose son committed suicide when he lost his business, and a foolish boy who’d been led into gambling away half his inheritance.’
‘I saw the film,’ Danielle said. ‘It hit like hammers … it made me cry. Kit threatened to send video tape copies to all sorts of people if Maynard did any more harm to Bobby. And you’ve forgotten to say,’ she said to me, ‘that Maynard tried to get Bobby to kill you.’
Litsi blinked. ‘To kill …’
‘Mm,’ I said. ‘He’s paranoid about Bobby marrying my sister. He’s been programmed from birth to hate all Fieldings. He told Bobby when he was a little boy that if he was ever naughty, the Fieldings would eat him.’
I explained about the depth and bitterness of the old Fielding–Allardeck feud.
‘Bobby and I,’ I said, ‘have made it up and are friends, but his father can’t stand that.’
‘Bobby thinks,’ Danielle said to me, ‘that Maynard also can’t stand you being successful. He wouldn’t feel so murderous if you’d been a lousy jockey.’
‘Maynard,’ I told Litsi, smiling, ‘is a member of the Jockey Club and also now turns up quite often as a Steward at various racecourses. He would dearly like to see me lose my licence.’
‘Which he can’t manage unfairly,’ Litsi said thoughtfully, ‘because of the existence of the film.’
‘It’s a stand-off,’ I agreed equably.
‘OK,’ Litsi said, ‘then how about a stand-off for Henri Nanterre?’
‘I don’t know enough about him. I’d known Maynard all my life. I don’t know anything about arms or anyone who deals in them.’
Litsi pursed his lips. ‘I think I could arrange that,’ he said.