Another Woman’s Husband

by Gill Paul

  She was asked to sit down, and she waited twenty-three interminable minutes, measured by the ticking of a large clock on the wall, before a short bespectacled man emerged through some glass doors and headed towards her.

  ‘Mademoiselle Wainwright? Can I help you?’

  Fortunately he spoke English. Rachel explained that her fiancé was being held there, that she had information relating to the case, and that she needed to talk to someone urgently.

  ‘Come back tomorrow morning,’ he said, glancing at the clock. ‘No one can see you today.’

  ‘Could I talk to Alex?’ she asked, but was told that was not possible.

  ‘How about his lawyer?’ she persisted. ‘Could you tell me who is representing him?’

  He sighed, implying in a brief gesture that this was a huge waste of his time, but got up and disappeared through the glass doors. When he came back a few minutes later, he handed her a card with a name and a telephone number: M. Belmont.

  On the pavement outside, Rachel took out her mobile phone. It was five thirty and she could see office workers piling onto the pavements, heading for home or for their evening assignations, while Alex sat in his tiny cell, unaware that she knew his whereabouts and was trying to help. She wasn’t sure what code to dial when using a mobile in France and had to try a couple of times before she heard the phone ring and a woman’s voice answer.

  ‘Puis-je parler à M. Belmont?’ Rachel asked. ‘Je suis la fiancée de Alex Greene, un de ses clients.’

  She knew her spoken French was terrible. The receptionist had to ask her to repeat herself twice before she understood, then she said, ‘Un moment.’

  ‘Miss Wainwright?’ A man’s voice came on the line. His English had only a trace of an accent. ‘Belmont speaking.’

  She explained that she had come to Paris to help Alex, that she had brought with her the item he was accused of stealing.

  ‘You had better come to my office,’ he said, and gave her the address.

  ‘I understand you and Alex were planning to get married on Thursday,’ Monsieur Belmont said as he invited her to sit. Rachel’s heart sank at his choice of tense. ‘I’m afraid we won’t know until tomorrow afternoon whether they plan to release him and, if so, whether he will be allowed to leave the country.’

  Rachel took the platinum heart from her purse and put it on the desk. ‘Look! This is all about a tiny piece of metal that fell off a bracelet. It’s nothing!’

  Monsieur Belmont picked it up and turned it over, reading the inscription. ‘Not quite nothing. To the police, it is theft, and interfering with a crime scene.’

  ‘How did they even find out?’ Rachel asked. ‘I thought there was no CCTV in the tunnel?’

  ‘Yes, but eleven photographers each took dozens of pictures of the scene. The police confiscated their film, processed it and pieced together what everyone in that tunnel was doing during the critical period. Several pictures show Alex picking up the heart. He was arrested at passport control at Charles de Gaulle yesterday morning.’

  Poor Alex. He must have got a terrible shock. That explained why he hadn’t been able to phone and warn her.

  ‘He’s not a souvenir hunter,’ she insisted. ‘He wasn’t going to try and sell it or anything. It’s just a mistake.’

  ‘A very unfortunate mistake. If he had handed it to the Criminal Brigade the next day, he would no doubt have been in the clear.’

  Rachel made a decision. She had to get Alex out of jail. ‘It wasn’t his fault,’ she said. ‘He gave the heart to me for safe keeping. I was supposed to return it, but I wasn’t sure who to give it to and then I forgot all about it. I’m sure Alex thought I returned it ages ago.’

  Monsieur Belmont frowned, tapped his pen on the desk. ‘That is not the story he told me.’

  ‘Of course not. He wouldn’t want to implicate me, but I’m telling you the truth.’ She met his eyes, trying not to blink.

  The lawyer thought for a moment, watching her. ‘If we tell this version of events to the police, you might be charged with receiving stolen goods and I’m not sure it would help Alex much. Let me think about it.’

  ‘What sort of sentence could he face if he’s found guilty?’ Rachel’s stomach gurgled loudly and she folded her arms across her waist.

  ‘Nine months to a year perhaps. But I’m hoping it won’t come to that.’

  A year! She felt close to tears. ‘Can I come to the station with you tomorrow to see him?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not. However, I will take this object, and I’ll point out to the police investigators that neither of you had any interest in making money from it. The fact that it was not handed in was an oversight. If you give me your telephone number, I’ll call you as soon as I know the conclusion.’

  Rachel gave her mobile number, then asked, ‘What are his chances?’

  The lawyer tapped his pen again. ‘I am not a gambling man, Miss Wainwright. There are politics involved. A British royal died on French soil and the eyes of the world are watching our investigation, so it must be seen to be thorough, with every detail accounted for. And here . . .’ He dangled the heart between his thumb and forefinger. ‘Here we have a detail.’

  Chapter 56

  Paris, 16 December 1997

  RACHEL WAS TOO STRESSED TO THINK ABOUT negotiating the Métro system and then walking the streets of Paris looking for a hotel, so she hailed a taxi and gave the name of the boutique hotel where she and Alex had stayed in August. They had a room available so she handed over her credit card, hoping against hope that there was enough left before she reached her credit limit. Fortunately the transaction went through.

  Upstairs, she flopped onto the satin-cushion-covered bed to make some phone calls: first to Nicola, asking her to mind the shop the following day, then to Kenny, and to both her mother and Alex’s father.

  ‘I’ll fly out this evening,’ Alex’s father said straight away. ‘Where is he being held?’

  ‘There’s no need,’ Rachel assured him. ‘They might release him tomorrow afternoon, and they won’t let us see him in the meantime.’

  ‘I’m not happy that he only has a state-appointed lawyer. If I make some calls I could get someone top-notch on the case in the morning. It might make all the difference. We can’t risk a conviction.’

  That was a tempting idea. Monsieur Belmont’s office had been utilitarian rather than plush. On the other hand, he had seemed perfectly competent. ‘It’s up to you, of course,’ Rachel said, ‘but I think the time to get a new lawyer would be if he is not released tomorrow.’

  ‘What if they ask for bail before they release him? I’ll stay by the phone all day and have my bank details ready.’

  Rachel was touched by his obvious anxiety. She wondered if Alex knew how much his dad cared about him. She didn’t think so.

  When she had made her calls, she ventured out in search of food. What were they feeding Alex in custody? Garde à vue, the French called it: ‘keep to see’. Would he have a room to himself, or might he be sharing a cell with real criminals? She imagined a tiny room with bunk beds and a toilet in one corner. He would cope for one more night, but she couldn’t begin to imagine his despair if he was sent to a French prison to await trial. Her heart ached for him. If only she could think of some story convincing enough to get him freed straight away.

  And what about her? If Monsieur Belmont told the police that she had kept the heart they might decide to arrest her for receiving stolen goods. She and Alex could both end up in prison. How would that affect their future together?

  She stopped outside a busy street-corner bistro with specials scrawled illegibly on a blackboard and candle wax dribbling down empty green wine bottles. The waiter showed her to a cramped table near the back, where she ordered a croque monsieur and a glass of vin rouge.

  It was strange to think that only a few days earlier she had been having doubts about Alex. Now that he was in trouble, her feelings were crystal clear. She loved him and would do whatever it took
to get him out of jail. If he were charged, she would perjure herself to try and get him released. She would go to the newspapers, protest on French television, appeal to their MP. One way or another, she wouldn’t rest until Alex was free. She missed him – sarcasm, snappiness and all.

  Chapter 57

  West Sussex, April 1936

  ELEANOR AND RALPH WERE DELIGHTED TO WELCOME Mary to their home, and as they sat with drinks on a terrace in their pretty garden, looking out over the lawn, Mary told them the story of her and Wallis, Jackie and Ernest.

  ‘The truth is I’ve been in love with Ernest since we first met back in 1924,’ she confessed, ‘but it all got into a terrible muddle. We were both married to other people at the time, then Wallis came along and ensnared him.’ She sniffed, determined not to cry. ‘His first marriage broke up because of her. But once she had married him, she set her cap at the Prince of Wales. Then my marriage to Jackie broke up – and now it’s all a hopeless mess.’

  Eleanor was sympathetic. ‘The first day I saw you and Ernest at Petworth, I assumed you were a couple. You’re so easy and natural together, so interested in what the other has to say. I am sure it’s all going to work out. I have an instinct about it.’

  ‘But if Wallis can’t marry the King, then I can’t marry Ernest. We are bound up in some infernal maze and I can’t see how we will ever untangle ourselves.’ She could not tell them about Ernest’s conversation with Winston Churchill, but they already knew that the King was not allowed to marry a divorcee.

  ‘Why can’t she just be his damn mistress?’ Ralph suggested. ‘English kings have always married some fecund young aristocrat to produce an heir and a spare, and taken the women they love as mistresses. It’s a system that’s worked since time immemorial.’

  ‘Wallis will want more security,’ Mary predicted. ‘Having oodles of money is important to her, and so is her social standing.’

  Ralph lit a cigarette, narrowing his eyes against the smoke. ‘Mistresses can have both of those. The King could settle an allowance on her in perpetuity. I can’t see what all the fuss is about.’

  If only it were that simple, Mary thought. Wallis wanted the King and she also wanted the respectability of having a husband waiting at home – and what Wallis wanted she tended to get. Besides, Ernest had not asked Mary to marry him; he had never even told her he loved her. She knew he liked her, but would he want to remarry as soon as he was free of his current marriage?

  ‘You must let me paint you while you are here,’ Ralph suggested. ‘There’s an expression on your face right now that I would dearly love to capture.’

  They agreed she would extend her stay till Ernest found her an apartment, and that work on the painting would begin the next morning.

  Ernest telephoned from the office on Monday morning, and when Mary asked how his weekend at Fort Belvedere had gone he said, ‘Miserable. Wallis was louder and more demanding than ever, bossing the King around in the most demeaning way. When she noticed that the strap of her shoe had come undone she ordered him to get down on hands and knees to fasten it, in front of all the other guests. Personally, I suspect she unfastened it herself to facilitate her little show of power.’

  ‘Did she ask if you had been in touch with me?’ Mary ventured.

  ‘She did, and I’m afraid I had to tell her you were visiting the Hargreaveses. You are likely to hear from her.’

  Mary laughed hoarsely. ‘Who knows? She might want to apologise for slapping me. I doubt it somehow.’

  Ernest cleared his throat, then changed the subject to talk about some apartments he was viewing on her behalf.

  Thoughts of Wallis were never far from Mary’s mind. Her initial distress was turning to fury when she thought about being slapped and unceremoniously evicted. You’ll regret it, she told Wallis in her head. No one else will stand by you the way I have. She felt guilty, too: of course she should not have gone to bed with her friend’s husband – but that friend had long since ceased being a wife to him.

  When a letter arrived from Wallis the following day, it was full of vitriol.

  You are a snake in the grass. I have always been loyal to you and yet you skulk around behind my back, behaving with cunning and deceit. I see now that I read your character wrong from the beginning, and that you were always jealous of me. Whatever I had, you wanted. You used me to gain access to the social circles in which I move, knowing that my friends would never accept you on your own merits because you are dull and your conversation tedious.

  The letter finished: Be very clear about this: you will never truly have Ernest. His love for me will always be greater than whatever transient feelings he might currently entertain for you.

  Mary replied the same day, venting her anger on the page:

  Far from being jealous of you, I have always felt pity for you. Poor Wallis whose mother does not have much money, poor Wallis whose first marriage was such a disaster, poor Wallis with no family to support her . . . I gave selflessly and you used me for your own ends, right the way through our friendship. Jacques always said I should beware because you were not loyal, and I knew in my heart it was true. You are the most selfish person in the world, only interested in other people for what they can do for you. I will never feel pity for you again. Whatever happens next, you have brought it on yourself.

  Back and forth the letters went, each of them raking up old history and trying to inflict the maximum hurt. Fury energised Mary. As soon as a new letter arrived, she rushed to the writing desk, bursting to reply. In one note she hurled the accusation that Wallis had been sleeping with von Ribbentrop as well as the Prince, and in her reply Wallis called her ‘ignorant and pathetic’.

  After a week of this, Ernest rang and begged her to desist.

  ‘Wallis is suffering terribly from her stomach ulcers and I’m sure it’s been brought on by the stress of your correspondence. Whatever her next letter says, please will you ignore it? You be the civilised one.’

  It stuck in Mary’s craw to let Wallis have the last word, but she was mollified when Ernest promised he would visit her at the Hargreaveses’ the following weekend. She was yearning to see him.

  She wrote to Buckie instead:

  I don’t know when Wallis turned into such a hard-nosed bitch. I look back through her life and wonder: was it in China, where she learned habits no lady should know? While here in London I have watched her bewitch a king she can barely stand the sight of, seduce a Nazi spy, and behave with callous disregard for the feelings of Ernest, who is a man of impeccable moral fibre. He still speaks up for her despite all she has heaped on his doorstep, for reasons I cannot fathom.

  A reply arrived from Buckie saying she was delighted to hear that Mary had fallen out with her childhood friend. Wallis has always been entirely self-centred, she wrote. It used to break Mother’s heart to watch how she controlled you like a puppet, but you never could see it yourself. She continued: Over here the newspapers report on her intimacy with the King and only just stop short of calling her a whore, but there is nothing about the Nazi spy. Do tell more.

  Mary clutched the letter to her chest. Despite the hospitality shown her by the Hargreaveses, and the sittings for her portrait that kept her busy each day, she was starting to feel very homesick for America and her true family. London was going to be a lonely and friendless place on her return.

  When Ernest’s car pulled up in front of the Hargreaveses’ house, Mary rushed outside, flung her arms around him and kissed him full on the mouth.

  ‘I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed you,’ she breathed, inhaling the reassuring scent of him.

  He pulled away, embarrassed by her show of affection in front of their hosts, who were standing on the steps. Mary knew that both were discreet and supportive of their situation. She slipped her arm through Ernest’s as she introduced him to Ralph. He greeted Eleanor with a handshake.

  ‘We’ve put Ernest in the room next to yours,’ Eleanor told Mary. ‘Why don’t you take him up and w
e’ll meet for cocktails in the drawing room when you are ready.’

  Mary led him upstairs, chatting excitedly about the portrait Ralph was painting and the news from her sister back home and how generous her hosts were being. She was gabbling out of the sheer joy of seeing him.

  Once they were in his room, Ernest put his arms round her and kissed her properly, making her giddy with desire.

  ‘I have news for you,’ he said. ‘As of today, you are the tenant of an apartment at Albion Gate in Hyde Park. It has three bedrooms and two bathrooms, and looks out over the park. I’m sure you’ll like it.’

  ‘Isn’t that rather close to Bryanston Court?’ she asked, wary of bumping into Wallis in the butcher’s shop or the greengrocer’s.

  ‘Five minutes away. But you’ll find she is never there. I attended a dinner with her and the King yesterday and told them it was the last time I was prepared to perform the role of chaperone. It’s humiliating and I can’t bear it. They will have to think of some other solution.’

  ‘Gosh! How did they take that?’ Mary asked.

  Ernest grimaced. ‘The King and I had rather a difficult talk in private. He pressed me again to divorce Wallis, to which I replied that I was not standing in her way. It’s her who does not want to divorce me. He said he would talk to her, so I suspect the situation will accelerate now. He is a most impetuous man.’ He shook his head, his expression disapproving.

  ‘Are they going away for the summer?’

  ‘Of course. They’ll be off to the South of France at the end of June and we can have some peace.’

  That was reassuring, although privately Mary still found it infuriating that her future happiness depended on the woman she felt such hatred for. She had not one ounce of sympathy when Ernest described Wallis bent double in agony because of her ulcers, unable to drink alcohol or eat anything but milk puddings.

  Good! she thought, although she murmured sympathetic noises.

  ‘I brought your dress,’ Ernest told her, handing over a brown paper parcel. ‘The dressmaker sent it. I have paid her for it as well.’