‘I didn’t know you could still buy leopard,’ Amanda said.
‘It’s now an endangered species. Furriers are not allowed by law to sell new coats. You and I can’t buy a new leopard-skin coat, but Bianca can,’ said Clara. ‘I suppose the coat must have been made before the ban was imposed.’
‘She did the same thing when Uncle Ferdie died, didn’t she, Mummy?’ said Magdalena.
‘So Juan said at the time,’ Clara said. ‘I’ve always been able to see right through Bianca. My view is that she got Frank Alderman to set those curtains on fire by promising him a reward if he did so. She’ll have also sent a message through the legal team that he’ll be handsomely rewarded if he takes a dive. Delia says Etienne Reynaud told her that the Court’s appointed two members of the Andorran legal establishment to act as his defence team, so we can safely assume there will be no surprises emanating from that quarter.’
‘We all know the way those independent principalities function,’ Amanda said. ‘I can just imagine an edict being issued to the effect that this case must be cleared up with the minimum of damage being done to the principality’s reputation as a haven for the rich and shady.’
‘I think the Andorran government is also concerned about its reputation for probity, now that the French have accused them of being complicit in the money-laundering that takes place there,’ Magdalena said.
‘Uncle Piers says that they’re among the biggest money-launderers on earth, ‘Amanda said. ‘He says they even pushed through Philippe and Bianca’s citizenship in record time as an inducement for him to move his headquarters from Geneva, along with all the drug-money Philippe laundered for the Colombians and for Manuel Noriega when he was still president of Panama - that’s aside from all the tainted Russian money he brought with him. Piers says the authorities were up to their necks in it with him.’
‘Which is all the more reason why we’re going to see a similar farce akin to the one we witnessed when Ferdie died,’ Clara said. ‘Just you wait and see. Now that Philippe’s dead, Bianca will steer as wide a berth of Andorra as she has of Mexico. Frank Alderman will be let off with a light sentence. The authorities are already setting up the justification by letting out the story that he set the fire for the noblest of motives and didn’t intend to harm Philippe in any way. He will be released from prison in the near future to be greeted by the dollars that Bianca has assuredly got Juan to pay into some bank account somewhere to keep him quiet. And Bianca will trip off merrily to make herself known in every gossip column and social magazine as the richest widow in the world. In a year or two, Philippe’s death will be marked down as a tragic accident and remembered by no one except his family, his friends and many enemies, and us. The whole thing is too sickening for words but, when you have as much money as Bianca has managed to get her hands on, the authorities bend over backwards to absolve you of suspicion, especially if they have things to hide themselves.’
‘I don’t see why we should let her get away with it,’ Magdalena said.
‘There must be something we can do.’
‘There is,’ Amanda said. ‘We can give her the Ann Woodward brand of punishment.’
‘What on earth’s that?’ asked Magdalena.
‘Ann Woodward shot her husband like a dog when he threatened divorce, leaving their two children without a father’ Amanda said. ‘Their grandmother Elsie, who in her day was known as the Dowager Empress of New York Society, decided that it would be too traumatic for the children if their mother were charged with murder and possibly executed. She joined forces instead with her murderous daughter-in-law, taking her side when the Grand Jury investigated and passing the murder off as an accident, then unmasked Ann as a murderess before the only court that really mattered to either of them, the Social World: the court of smart restaurants and couture houses, the major jewellers, the houses in the country and houses in town, the social columns and the fashion pages, Vogue magazine and Cholly Knickerbocker. Thereafter, every time Ann Woodward entered a drawing room or a restaurant or merely walked down the street, there was a buzz of whispers. In the end, she couldn’t take the ignominy any more than Bianca could when all Mexico was whispering about her. It was the most exquisite form of justice: punishment by social torture. Ann Woodward finally committed suicide. You could almost say she had been administered the death sentence when she realized she’d been given a life sentence from which there was no escape.’
‘Bianca’s too tough to kill herself,’ Clara said. ‘But I do like the idea of giving her a life sentence of public revilement through exposure. I say “yes”. It’s a good idea. Let’s do it.’
‘I say we get in touch with the Mahfud family and knock heads together,’ Amanda said.
‘I’m not so sure they’ll go for it,’ Clara replied wisely. ‘Raymond knows that I’m aware of the part Philippe played in Ferdie’s death. He’s sure to think our interests are mutually exclusive.’
‘Don’t all businessmen abide by the maxim: my enemy’s enemy is my friend?’ Magdalena said.
‘Raymond’s too canny for that,’ Clara said.
‘Then let’s leave Raymond out of it, ‘Amanda said. ‘But I will approach Hepsibah and Rebecca. I’d be very surprised if they don’t provide me with as much information as they become privy to. They’ve always loathed Bianca, and they’ll be hankering after justice, no matter what Raymond says. I’ll let them know that anything they tell me won’t be traceable back to them. With their information and ours, we’ll be able to build up a comprehensive picture. We can drip-feed the information into the social world and the pages of the glossy magazines on both sides of the Atlantic. God knows, there are enough hangers-on who act as stringers for the gossip columns, earning their pin money repeating the gossip they overhear at every gallery opening, dance, dinner party.’
‘I know several sieves in London,’ said Magdalena. ‘I can use them to leak stuff.’
‘And I know several in New York as well,’ Amanda said, ‘It will be relatively easy to unmask Bianca. In fact, I’ll go further and predict that the journalists will positively leap upon the story. All we need to do is whisper in the right ears, and I guarantee that within months, if not weeks, all the smart publications on both sides of the Atlantic will be doing stories on her. I should think we can quite easily make sure Bianca gets the sort of notoriety she deserves.’
‘Punishment through opinion. Social death by informed gossip. It all has a wonderfully ironic ring to it,’ Clara said, appreciating the symmetry with which natural justice would punish when formal justice could not.
‘It’s the least she deserves,’ Amanda said.
‘Shall I tell you something?’ Clara said brightly, a large smile breaking through her features. ‘In some ways this is the most effective punishment for someone like Bianca. Maybe there really is such a thing as justice, after all. Though, it has to be said, I’ve been waiting for it for an uncomfortably long time.’
Epilogue: September 21, 2000
It’s late afternoon, and Bianca is already dressed and on her way to Brunswick House when the telephone in the Rolls Royce rings. The driver answers it.
‘It’s Mr Lowenstein, Madame.’
Bianca reaches for the telephone.
‘John, what’s up?’ she asks irritably ‘I’m on my way to the unveiling as we speak.’
‘Bianca, I have the most dreadful news. It’s such a disappointment, I don’t know where to start.’
‘Try just telling me what it is,’ she retorts, impatient to dismiss whatever paltry nuisance is getting in the way of her moment of glory.
Contrary to the golden days of widowhood she had envisaged for herself while Philippe was still alive, the first year since his death had been a living nightmare for Bianca.
Hardly a day passed without her receiving a reminder of the notoriety that had increasingly become her Mark of Cain. She had achieved renown beyond her wildest dreams, but it was for being written about in veiled terms as a gold-digger who m
ight also be a murderess. One day it was People Magazine running a four-page spread on its investigations into her husband’s death, with ample photographic coverage of the glamorous widow, L’Alexandrine and the exterior of the Banco Imperiale Building.
The next day it was the Wall Street Journal dedicating three full columns to the latest developments in the case. Frank Alderman’s daughter, Louise, also seemed to have a permanently open telephone line to the New York Daily News; and at least once a week there was some story stating that the authorities in Andorra were railroading Frank or were somehow disregarding due process of law and his human rights. The international press was up in arms about the length of time it was taking for Frank to be brought to trial. Through Louise, Frank had even publicly recanted the confession he had signed in return for the $1,000,000 to be paid into the numbered Liechtenstein bank account opened for him by Juan.
As far as Bianca was concerned, Frank more than anyone else was responsible for this public mess. He seemed incapable of comprehending that it was his own obduracy in doing things like recanting the confession that was prolonging his - and Bianca’s - torment. However, he was not the only person to blame for the flood of information that was muddying the waters. Bianca could tell, from the detail of certain stories, that the secretaries, bodyguards, nurses and domestic staff who had taken the $100,000 apiece as a reward for their silence had violated their confidentiality agreements; and that some of them were now enjoying a roaring trade selling stories about her to the steadily growing number of publications which sent out reporters with an open chequebook and open ears in search of yet another nugget of information to lay before the public. As for the public, their appetite for a solution to the mystery of the Death in Andorra seemed only to be increasing, but at least, Bianca told herself, she had John Lowenstein and close friends like Ruth Fargo Huron, Stella Minckus and the Duchess of Oldenburg to lean on in these times of travail.
In truth, Ruth, Stella and the Duchess could not have been more stalwart. They were only marginally less incensed on Bianca’s behalf than she was herself. Everywhere they went, whether it was to the Met in New York, Covent Garden in London, the Pompidou in Paris, the Palace in Gstaad or just to lunch, they spoke up on their beleaguered friend’s behalf.
Nevertheless, the support of her friends, although uplifting, was not solving the problem, and Bianca hoped that John Lowenstein would continue laying the ground for doing so.
As Bianca saw it, her problem was basically a public relations one. She had acquired a bad reputation, and she needed to replace it with a good one. She could see no point in having all of what she had striven to acquire, all of what she had worked to achieve, if she could not enjoy it along with the reverence due, in her opinion, to the wealthy. She also needed the respect that went along with her stature. According to her reasoning, status was meant to bring fame. It was meant to be something that gave you clout, that obtained influence for you and allowed you to call the shots. Status was good, and it should bring good things in its wake.
It was not meant to bring ignominy, pain and distress. It was therefore inevitable that John Lowenstein would now become the architect of her rehabilitation. At first, he tried to accomplish this miracle by working his connections in the press so that the items he placed about her would counterbalance those that were cropping up on a daily basis from other sources. There was a vibrant and seemingly neverending supply of stories to counteract. His every instinct told him that someone out there was waging a deliberate and effective campaign of vilification against his client. His media rehabilitation was doomed to failure unless it could be backed up by something else from a new and better quarter.
‘Bianca, we’re going to have to up the ante if we’re to win this struggle,’ he said to her over lunch, eight months after Philippe’s death.
‘It’s a war: not a struggle,’ Bianca retorted. ‘Of course, they’re all jealous of me. That’s why they’re doing this. It’s jealousy. Nothing but jealousy. Well, I’ve got the money, and I’m not going to allow myself to be hounded by them.’
‘Who is “them”? John enquired.
‘I’m not sure,’ she said.
‘It’s always better to know who your enemy is. It’s difficult to fight and win when you don’t know who you’re up against.’
‘I wonder if the Mahfud family isn’t behind this because Philippe snubbed those sisters of his in his will. Old crones. They look like buzzards, with those ghastly Orthodox wigs and that pasty skin Orthodox women get from that weird diet they follow… Or maybe I’m giving them too much power and it’s just the journalists covering the story who are jealous because I have so much and they have so little.’
‘You should be careful of “the little people”,’ John Lowenstein warned. ‘However, it appears we now have two identifiable enemies: the Mahfud family and the journalists covering the story. If we’re to win, Bianca, we must have a comprehensive strategy that targets both of them.’
‘One thing I’ve decided is that I’m going to officially take up residence in London. The English have the harshest libel laws in the free world and, if I move there, I’ll be able to use them to buy myself a measure of protection against the intrusiveness of the press.’
‘That’s a shrewd move, Bianca,’ John concurred.
‘I’ve looked at a house in Chelsea Square…that’s the smartest square in London. I’ve put in an offer for it and am waiting to find out if it’s been accepted.’
‘You realize, don’t you, that moving to London won’t make the stories go away? It may quieten things down a little, but believe me, this is one that isn’t going to disappear unless you position yourself very carefully. Even then, there’s no guarantee that it will ever die down completely. I believe the best you can realistically aim for is to achieve such eminence in your own right that the brilliance of your reputation will outshine all the notoriety.’
‘And how do you think we can achieve that, John?’ Bianca asked, a trace of wounded bitterness betraying itself in her voice.
‘I’m friends with Peter Rivers. He’s the American agent for The Prince’s Charity, the American branch of The Prince’s Trust, the heir to the throne’s own charity. He can deliver the prince in return for a large enough donation to the charity.’
‘Deliver, as in, being seen in public with him?’ Bianca asked.
‘Absolutely. That’s the whole point. The message couldn’t be simpler.
You’re good enough for the heir to the throne of England, so you’re good enough for anyone else. One photograph of you with His Royal Highness will be worth a million words of copy.’
‘Aha,’ Bianca said, a smile dancing across her face as she saw her place in the international pantheon as one of the world’s leading socialites secured with the very people whose opinion really mattered to her.
‘I’ll talk to Peter and find out the quid pro quo: what sort of donation gets what sort of reception. The Prince’s Charity is run on strictly tailored lines. You give X amount, he invites you to a party for five hundred supporters. You give Y, and he invites you to a party for two hundred supporters. Give Z, he invites you to a party for twenty supporters. Give Z + P, and you get to go to the party for twenty supporters and have your photograph taken with him. It’s later presented to you in a leather photograph frame embossed with his personal emblem in gold, personally signed by him. It will then be up to us how we use the press to let the world know the circles you’re now accepted in.’
‘And if I give Z + P +X + Y, multiplied by two?’
John laughed. ‘Presumably a unique donation will elicit a unique response.’
‘Why don’t you work on it?’
‘I will.’
In the coming weeks, John negotiated with Peter Rivers, and Peter Rivers negotiated with the Prince’s private secretary. Meanwhile, Bianca bought the house on Chelsea Square.
During the months of its inevitable refurbishment, Bianca lived in some approximation of what her future life
style would be in a house owned by Lord and Lady Malteviot, of Belmont’s, on the other side of Carlisle Square. What she had in physical comfort, however, she still lacked in social connections, despite the best efforts of John Lowenstein and Stella Minckus, who arranged introductions for her through friends of theirs. These few introductions, while they would prove invaluable in the future, did not provide a comprehensive solution to her problem of isolation. There was only so much you could see of people with full and busy lives, for they had neither the time nor the inclination to entertain and be entertained by - on a daily, weekly or even a fortnightly basis - someone they barely knew. Not when there were so many other equally well-placed people whom they knew better and whom they did not have the time to see as frequently as they would have liked.
As for Ruth Fargo Huron’s introductions, they were, in Bianca’s view, pathetic. She and her husband knew practically no one in London, and of the couple introductions they were able to provide, the only thing she got out of them was an education as to the limits of the social cachet foreigners possessed in English social circles. The Duchess of Oldenburg’s introduction fared no better with this student of Society.
‘Ha,’ Bianca commented sourly. ‘If possible she was even more of a disaster than Ruth’s friends. At least they had money. She’s nothing but a broken-down aristocrat: a penniless German countess whose father had been a reigning prince of a small German principality until it’s abolition in 1918. She makes costume jewellery for a living. And she lives in Battersea. I ask you…’
A more immediate problem was the time that hung heavily on her hands when she was in London. One evening, on an impulse Bianca tried Mary Landsworth’s old home number. Maybe she might know enough connections to make renewing the acquaintanceship worthwhile. To Bianca’s surprise, Mary herself answered the telephone.
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