Please try to forgive her and remember her for her best qualities and the great love she bore you. Angie, I do not think we shall ever meet again and so I wish you all the best for your future.
Miss Jane Emma Blunt alias Vera Glanville-Smith
Lisa had heard the story of the 1921 fire which had remained unsolved, despite vicious gossip about ‘arson’ and ‘an insurance job’. But this . . . this strange story of deceit and double-crossing that led to the tragic death of Freya. This was heartbreaking.
If its contents were true, this letter also revealed a very different Adam Fox to the one she had heard about in her childhood and imagined from the photos. Who was he really? The larrikin in his wife’s floral hat at the Annual Staff Ball, laughing and pouring champagne for his gardener? The man of action in the smart trilby and pinstriped suit, standing proudly in front of the Hudson? The sad, vulnerable man, with his staff gathered around him like a family, grieving for his hotel that was about to close, possibly forever? She knew this Adam Fox well.
Could this possibly be the same man who tormented Freya so cruelly that she had been driven to this elaborate act of madness? Who bought a valuable painting from her and then as good as stole it? Who took advantage of anti-German hysteria to force the Wood family off their property and bully Freya into surrendering her title? Who was this Adam Fox?
Once, and only once, Monika had spoken of a different man. The family was at Laura’s apartment, looking through the albums, listening to Grandma’s stories again. Monika appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, unsteady, a little drunk. It was not like her. ‘For God’s sake,’ she yelled. ‘Stop these endless fairytales. Tell them the truth, Laura. Tell them what a bastard he really was!’
Lisa had not thought about this for many years. And there it was – the memory of that outburst as vivid as the day she first heard it. That was when she heard the crack of the landslide, felt the sickening drag of the abyss. Nothing would be the same ever again. She understood for the first time the bitterness in the locals’ names for their town’s famous hotel, this monument to her grandfather’s monstrous and ruthless ego. Fox’s Folly. The Palace of Tears.
CHAPTER 24
* * *
Adam
Meadow Springs, August 1928
This would be the last time Dame Nellie sang at the Palace. In fact, this evening’s concert was one of the last three public performances she would ever give in Australia. Nobody could quite believe that the diva’s notoriously long farewell was almost over. The most famous Australian in the world was about to exit the stage, this time for good. Except for some crackly recordings that failed miserably to capture its perfection, the purest operatic voice in history would soon be silenced. Forever.
No wonder then, this evening, the Palace was packed with its largest, most resplendent assembly in living memory. The lobby reverberated with a buzz of anticipation and preening self-importance unlike anything Adam could recall. Every chair, sofa, lounge and foot stool that could be found had been crammed into the casino as well as the adjoining billiard room and the smoking lounge. ‘Fire regulations be damned!’ Fox muttered to his general manager.
The silver-haired hotelier now stood on the front steps with his lovely young wife, Laura, on his arm. They nodded and smiled in greeting to the ceaseless flood of gentlemen in gleaming white shirt fronts, glossy top hats and silk scarves. And the women – what a parade of female splendour. It did Adam’s heart good to see it. Creamy bare shoulders and satin-gloved forearms, midnight-blue gowns and evening coats of violet georgette and gold lamé, black opera cloaks embroidered with silver rhinestones and trimmed with fur, all with the added ornamentation of baroque pearls, diamond brooches, and corsages of lilies and orchids.
At Adam’s left hand stood Hugh Ward, with his usual lopsided half-smile. He was still the comic actor at heart, waiting for his cue, and one of Adam’s oldest friends. As the managing director of J.C. Williamson’s, he had partnered the theatre company with Melba and her hand-picked cast of Italian opera singers for this triumphant farewell tour. Under Hugh’s direction, the hotel’s Steinway had been rolled out of the casino that morning and Melba’s own grand piano, trucked up from Sydney, had been rolled in and tuned for tonight’s concert. Melba herself arrived in her private train carriage in time for lunch and Hugh then helped her settle into the hotel’s Delmonte Suite overlooking the valley.
At this very moment, the diva was upstairs, preparing. Adam had made sure her suite overflowed with cascades of daffodils, her favourites, as did the casino’s proscenium stage, awash in so many of these golden blooms that the entire room glowed butter-yellow right up to the dome. The suite’s four-poster bed had been fitted with Melba’s own monogrammed silk sheets and cushions and a large Louis XV mirror hung on the opposite wall. It was no secret Nell’s tastes tended towards the opulent. Her house in London had been decorated in the style of Versailles and her clothes and jewellery were renowned for their exaggerated size and brilliance: large hats and pearls as big as pigeon eggs. Let them snigger at her vulgarity, what did she care? Nothing changed the fact she was the highest-paid opera singer in history and, thanks to the advice of her good friend Baron Rothschild, she had amassed a staggering fortune.
‘So you are the infamous Mr Fox,’ she growled at him the first time they met, in 1909. Taking a break from her supreme reign at Covent Garden, she was back home on one of her ‘sentimental tours’ through the small towns of country Australia. Thanks to Hugh Ward, she had been persuaded to stop off at Meadow Springs for a concert at the Palace. She was much shorter than she appeared on stage, Adam thought, and more imperious than beautiful, but there was no mistaking her charisma. Her large brown eyes fixed on Adam with a mischievous twinkle. ‘I’ve knocked around a few of Europe’s finest hotels, my dear Mr Fox, but this bloody great pile of yours pisses on them all!’
Fox had guffawed at that. Hugh had warned him about the diva’s swearing, learned from shearers and the like when Nell was growing up in outback Victoria. Still, it was quite something to hear such words come out of the same mouth that poured forth music so sublime, it made grown men weep for joy.
The 1909 concert at the Palace had been a sell-out success. In 1922, the diva was home again for concerts in Melbourne and Sydney which had each drawn a crowd of seventy thousand. Fox invited Melba back to perform at his hotel with her good friend, the English contralto Clara Butt. It was just what the hotel needed that year to restore its reputation for grandeur and celebrity and dispel the pall of gloom that hung over ‘the Palace of Tears’ after the tragic fire and Adelina’s death the previous year.
Fox found much to like and admire in Dame Nellie. Just as Adam had done, she had invented herself from modest origins through the sheer force of her will and intelligence: a Scottish builder’s daughter from country Victoria, hobnobbing with European aristocracy and royalty, and captivating audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. Like him, she had bullied and manipulated when necessary and shown immense generosity and loyalty when warranted. And she had made serious sacrifices. Because of a newspaper scandal that threatened to ruin her career, she had given up the Duc d’Orléans, her only true love. Adam had continued to follow her glittering public life with interest. And now, six years later, she was back.
‘I hear you’ve done alright for yourself, you bloody cradle-snatcher!’ she’d exclaimed when Adam went up to her room to pay his respects that afternoon. ‘So when do I get to meet the lucky lady? I hear she’s a bit of a looker. Keeps you awake at night, I bet!’
‘I have a baby daughter to do that now,’ said Adam, grinning. ‘Little Lottie. The way she bawls her lungs out, I was hoping you might give her lessons.’
Melba’s eyebrows arched. ‘You know my golden rule.’ She smiled slyly. ‘I’ll teach her everything I know as long as she has absolutely no talent.’ Despite the rumours that she would stop at nothing to make sure no upcoming singers threatened her supremacy, she had in fact sponsored several young proté
gées at Covent Garden and set up an all-female singing school in Melbourne.
At the age of sixty-seven, Melba looked tired, thought Adam – which was hardly surprising given the rigours of touring and performance. She had also put on weight. Still the mistress of her own public image, she swathed herself dramatically in cloaks and furs to disguise her matron’s figure. She knew the critics circled like vultures, waiting to pick over the bones of her ruined reputation if her voice faltered. But to date, she had defied them all. Her last concert at Convent Garden in 1926 had been a critical triumph.
And now they made fun of her long goodbye: three years of ‘final’ concerts. ‘More farewells than Melba’ became the mocking expression. But why should she go? Adam argued in her defence. The struggle to the top of the mountain had taken such courage and cost so much. She was the most famous Australian in the world. Why should she be in any hurry to leave the spotlight for someone else?
Adam himself had turned fifty-three in July. With his exceptional fitness and obsession over diets and health, he felt like a much younger man, full of the juice and muscle of life, fizzing with ideas. And Nellie was right that his young wife kept him up at night. Adam Fox had discovered the kind of excitement and stamina in the bedroom that he had never suspected was possible.
There were calls from some quarters for Adam Fox to slow down and start thinking about retirement and succession planning. He still kept a position on the board of the department store in Sydney that bore his name and maintained an active interest in the Palace, which had enjoyed a decade of record occupancy rates and steeply rising profits.
‘You are a rich man,’ well-meaning friends reminded Adam. ‘And you have so many other interests. The store and the hotel are in good shape. They don’t need your hand on the tiller anymore.’ But the truth was he needed an heir to take over the family business. He didn’t want to see everything he had built end up in someone else’s hands. Back in 1921, with the death of Adelina, the loss of Robbie had struck him even more profoundly. He had no ties to the past and no connections to the future. Even the ghost of Freya seemed to have faded away to an incomprehensible silence. He was utterly alone in the world – except, of course, for the young woman whose beauty had captivated him. Though Laura was less than half his age, her soul was ageless and mysterious. Adam could not see why he should not be given a second chance at happiness.
As Mr Longford’s film shoot at the Palace rapidly drew to its conclusion, Adam had to make a decision. That fateful night in the gallery, Laura had described their romance as ‘a nice fantasy’ which must inevitably come to an end. Adam dared hope for more. Lesser men would have been daunted by Laura’s youth and beauty and the scandal of their affair, but Fox was not so easily discouraged. He had taken risks before in the face of public ridicule and disapproval and they had paid off handsomely
On 12 August 1921, less than a month after Adelina’s death, Adam Fox proposed to Laura. She gave him her answer the next day. In December, they were married in a private ceremony at St Canice’s in Katoomba and headed off on their honeymoon, travelling first class on the S.S. Ormuz to London, followed by a week at the Hotel de Crillon in Paris and three more weeks touring the Continent.
‘You look supremely lovely tonight, my dear,’ he murmured now in Laura’s gold-and pearl-studded ear as she stood at his side, greeting guests with that enigmatic smile of hers. She looked stunning in an embroidered white silk, satin and chiffon evening gown by Lucien Lelong, its low-cut neckline showing off her shoulders, neck and breasts to perfection. Over this, Laura wore a garnet velvet evening wrap with a dark mink fur collar and ruched cuffs. The whole ensemble was a gift from Adam on their most recent sojourn abroad. It looked exotic and expensive and flattered Laura’s voluptuous figure, little altered from her pregnancy last year with Lottie. ‘You do this hotel proud.’
She beamed back at him. ‘You look pretty presentable yourself.’
There was no doubt about it, thought Adam. Laura and the Palace were destined for each other. Maybe not the old, swank Edwardian Palace of chandeliers, waltzes and palm court orchestras. Pale, aristocratic and snobbish Adelina had been the perfect mascot for that Palace, though she despised it.
Tonight’s concert evoked memories of that slower, more elegant, self-regarding time when barons of commerce back-slapped each other in the billiard room while, next door, their fine-boned wives, seated in lounges, sniggered discreetly at the nouveau riche ladies passing before them like penny arcade shooting ducks. But time does not stand still. Adam was shocked to realise how quickly his beloved hotel, boasting every modern convenience and innovation at its birth, had acquired the mildewy whiff of quaintness. Everything changed faster than ever before. The Palace had to change too.
The new post-war Palace was about naughtiness. Laura and Adam knew all about that: they had begun their affair behind his wife’s back. In this new Palace, the hijinks, the bed-hopping, the madcap licentiousness that had once been the preserve of the very rich was now on offer to anyone with a little cash. Sex, ever-present but discreetly hidden by the hotel’s Edwardian guests, now took centre stage.
After the war years, thousands of newlyweds flocked to the mountains, flush with money and aching to embrace life with a reckless urgency. The locals’ nickname for the steam train service from Sydney was ‘The Honeymoon Express’. Fancy dress parties at the Palace offered prizes for the best Valentino sheik, Clara Bow flapper and Fairbanks swashbuckler. The Jazz Age had arrived in the Blue Mountains.
Adam had always had a weakness for rule-breaking and merrymaking. Even before the Great War, he had instituted the Annual Staff Ball, a formal banquet held every June in the grand dining room. All the hotel staff, from the general manager down to the gardeners, kitchen hands and drivers, were seated in their Sunday best and waited on by the hotel’s guests dressed in waiters’ jackets and maids’ pinafores. Everybody had fun playacting at being their opposite.
Including Fox himself. At the 1924 Staff Ball, Adam had gone one step further. He pulled on one of his wife’s evening gowns, donned a large floral hat and swanned around the grand dining room batting his eyelids and blowing kisses. Pleasantly squiffy on beer and wine, the staff roared with laughter at the sight of their employer in drag and blew kisses back. A photographer captured the mood as Fox poured a flute of bubbly for the gardener, Stanley Hicks.
Fox’s drag act opened a floodgate. Cross-dressing and playacting became the flavour of all the Palace’s parties, whether New Years’, Christmas, Easter, Melbourne Cup or the King’s Birthday. The photos told it all: a gaggle of lanky boys in identical white tennis dresses, Alice bands and cotton socks; pretty girls wearing boaters, ill-fitting suits and ties and with moustaches pencilled on their upper lips; men with blacked-up faces, flouncy swimsuits and paper Japanese umbrellas parading as bathing beauties. ‘The Palace of Queers’ some local wags came to call it.
At every party all eyes were drawn to Laura. Sheathed in the latest Lanvin or Patou dress from Paris and with her glossy Louise Brooks bob, Laura was impossible to ignore, out-drinking, out-dancing, outshining all the women in the room.
There had been only one source of disquiet in this perfect existence, the blowfly in the golden syrup tin, so to speak: it took Laura over five years to fall pregnant. Doctors were consulted to make sure there were no mechanical problems. She even went on special diets and regimes of pills. And yet still no baby came. In his darker moments, Fox wondered if this was God’s punishment for his past sins. Lottie’s eventual safe arrival was welcomed with a mix of joy and relief, compromised only by Adam’s unspoken disappointment that he still had no son. But that would come. It would all come in good time. Laura was only twenty-six. The future looked bright.
‘We have a serious problem.’
Mr Bosely’s face was ashen. He had politely pushed his way through the human tide in the lobby to reach the Foxes. With less than an hour until Melba’s concert – to be followed by a gala banquet for four hundred fea
turing Melba toast and Pêche Melba among other diva-inspired dishes – a major crisis had emerged.
‘What is it?’ Fox kept his voice steady.
‘Dame Melba is indisposed. She tells me she cannot . . . will not go on.’ The general manager looked like a man who had just done battle with a superior foe and lost. ‘It appears she has read something in the Daily Telegraph that has upset her.’
‘Shit,’ said Hugh loudly enough to cause guests’ heads to turn in his direction. He appeared to know what this was about. ‘I thought we agreed not let any newspapers near her, Mr Bosely.’
‘I know. I’m sorry, sir. It appears that one of the household staff didn’t get the message and slipped the evening edition under her door. I’m so dreadfully sorry.’
‘Okay.’ Hugh sighed. He turned to Laura and Adam. ‘Come with me. This is not going to be easy.’
When they reached the suite in the Delmonte Wing, they could hear two loud voices on the far side of the door. One of them belonged to Beverley Nichols, the secretary and biographer who travelled everywhere with Melba.
‘You’re making far too much of this,’ they heard him scream. ‘It’s a storm in a bloody teacup, for crying out loud!’
Hugh knocked on the door. ‘It’s me, Nell. We need to talk. I have Adam and Laura with me.’
‘Go away!’ came the reply. A loud thump suggested something had been hurled at the door.
‘Jesus wept. Calm down, you silly woman!’ screeched the alarmed secretary. ‘You have to talk to Hugh.’
Adam looked at his wife and rolled his eyes. Nell had a reputation for tantrums and paranoia. She was convinced, for example, that the Germans wanted to assassinate her because she had been rude to the Kaiser before the war and then raised so much money for the Allies’ war effort with her patriotic concerts.
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