‘Mary, this is a voice from your past. It’s Bianca. Bianca Antonescu as was. Do you remember me? I used to be your client.’
‘Bianca! How could I forget? You’re one of the most memorable people I’ve ever known…if not the most memorable. How are you?’
‘I’m well, thank you, and you?’
‘Never been better. To what do I owe the honour of this call?’
‘I’m living in London now and thought how nice it would be to get together with you.’
‘I’d love that.’
‘Would you prefer lunch at Harry’s Bar or dinner at Mark’s Club?’
‘If it’s dinner His Lordship has to come with me,’ Mary said in a jocular tone that managed to convey the information that her husband had been made a Lord Justice without seeming to boast about it.
‘Shall we then say dinner next Tuesday or Wednesday at eight o’clock?’
‘Wednesday would be better for us.’
‘Eight it is then.’
‘What a treat this is! It will be so good to hear your news first-hand, instead of having to read all about you in the newspapers.’
‘Yes,’ Bianca said, the dejection breaking through her voice. ‘I seem to have gone full cycle, haven’t I? I’m right back where I was when I first had to come to you.’
‘I wouldn’t have put it quite like that, dear girl. Back then you had to fight off an intransigent sister-in-law. Now you’re a huge media star and the queen of the columns.’
A huge media star: Bianca liked the sound of that, even though she knew there was a slight element of exaggeration about it. Certainly, she was being talked and written about. Did that make her a huge media star? No. But did it at least make her a star? The answer to that was ‘yes’. For all her hyperbole, Mary was on the right track. Maybe people in the Establishment really cared less about her ‘baggage’ that she did. If that was the case, her rise to the peak might be easier than she had thought. All the same Bianca was beginning to regret her status as a widow. Life had not turned out the way she had expected it to. In her estimation, she had moved one step forward and five steps back. She now looked back on the years between Philippe’s decline and his death as the real ‘golden days’.
His very existence, she now saw, had offered protection in a way that only women who have been protected by a rich and powerful man would ever understand or appreciate. Invincibility had then been the cornerstone of her existence, and now it had died along with him. Bianca had to admit that she missed it.
It was at this juncture that John Lowenstein came up with a long-term plan that would serve both his and Bianca’s interests in equal and inextricable measure. Philippe had now been dead nearly a year, and John was aware that his retainer would be coming up for its annual review within the next two months. Calculating that there was little chance of her keeping him on as PR advisor at a cost of $100,000 a month once Bianca had achieved her ambitions, he had devised a comprehensive strategy that delayed using Peter Rivers’ connection with Prince Charles while at the same time feeding Bianca’s growing hunger for social recognition.
He told her his idea over lunch at The Four Seasons in New York. ‘Association with English royalty is the solution to your problem,’ he declared. ‘But you must save the prince for when your foundations are solid. Diversify in the meantime and then use him to crown you as the Queen of the International Set.’
‘Only the Queen?’ Bianca replied archly, an ironic smile playing on her lips.
John laughed, getting her point. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Empress then.’
‘Just as long as we’re clear about what my rightful position should be,’ she said, still jokingly, but John also could tell there was an element of truth to her jest.
‘I say we save the Prince of Wales until we’re more established than we are at present,’ he said. ‘Get the house on Chelsea Square finished first. Have a few soirées and fly in all your friends. I’ll get wonderful social columnists like Suzy or Richard Johnson to cover the events for you in the American press. That way, we spread the word in New York about how successfully you’ve made the transition from New York to London. Then, when we’ve primed the public to be receptive to your respectability, we pull the Prince out of the hat and have him crown you as the Empress by his presence.’
‘But what’s your suggestion for putting me in there?’
‘Donate a major art work to the English nation in memory of Philippe,’ John said.
‘Yes,’ Bianca said eagerly, knowing how successfully Ruth Fargo Huron and Brooke Astor had used such donations to cement their positions.
‘But not just any painting,’ John continued. ‘In fact, not a painting at all. Something major and huge and imposing. Like a massive sculpture. Something that will jump out at people whether they want it to or not.’
‘I’ll get Ion onto it as soon as I get home.’
‘No need. I’ve found the perfect thing. It’s a huge Henry Moore sculpture. It was the centrepiece of the Wasserman Collection, but they’re having to sell because stock in Wasserman Technology has plummeted in the last few months.’
‘How much is it?’
‘One point six million dollars. It sounds a lot, but it will put you on the map. It’s as big as a house in Queens. Peter Rivers says he can have it placed for you in the middle of the piazza of Brunswick House. That’s one of the former royal palaces on the Thames. It’s being refurbished as a gallery of modern art. So you’ll have a prime site, with royal connections. Peter says he can whisper in the right ear and get you one of the senior royals along for the dedication ceremony. In fact, he’s already talked with the Queen Mother’s private secretary, and she’s amenable to the idea. The only risk we run there is of her dying before the big day. She is, after all, nearly a hundred.’
‘If she dies, will one of the other royals take her place?’
‘I don’t know. I’ll have to ask Peter.’
‘You do that. And if the answer’s yes, then my answer’s yes.’
Peter Rivers’ informed John that another royal would indeed fill in for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother should she pass away before the engagement. Having received the answer she wanted, Bianca gave John the go-ahead to acquire the sculpture and plan the unveiling in the presence of the last Queen-Empress of the British Empire.
Events of this nature always take a long time to execute, and Bianca now had to exercise patience while plans were made. Brunswick House wasn’t due to be opened until the middle of September 2000, at which time the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, would officiate at the opening ceremony. That meant that the unveiling of the sculpture by Her Majesty could not take place until afterwards. Telephone calls and letters now flew back and forth between 10 Downing Street, Clarence House and John Lowenstein’s office on Madison Avenue in New York. Finally, after nearly two months of negotiating, an agreement was reached. Tony Blair would open the renovated centre for modern art on September 16, 2000, and Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother would unveil the Henry Moore statue in memory of Philippe Mahfud on September 21.
Once the dates were set, there was no changing them, royal and prime ministerial engagements being set in stone. ‘That’s because all the royals have their diaries planned six months in advance,’ John Lowenstein explained, ‘and, as they try to do three and four different engagements in a day and the people organizing the events depend on the royal family not to let them down on such occasions, usually only death or serious illness prevent them from attending. Can you imagine the chaos if the Queen Mother didn’t attend? Not to mention the disappointment and humiliation? It may be a palaver getting a royal to agree to an official engagement, but at least we know, once they’ve committed themselves to it, they never back out.’
To Bianca, this was both a relief and a torment.
‘All this waiting will kill me,’ she said, ‘but I suppose the interval will at least give you the chance to drip-feed stories to the American public through Suzy and Richa
rd Johnson.’
John Lowenstein chuckled. ‘How well you know me.’
These now became days of hope and excitement, as well as of anxiety and distress for Bianca as she and her army of cohorts waged their respective campaigns to fend off her adversaries and prepare her life for ultimate victory. While her public image continued to receive a battering in the tabloids and glossy magazines, renovation work on the house in Chelsea Square house continued at its own pace.
As June became July and July became August, and August became September, Bianca became more and more panic-stricken. ‘I was so hoping to have moved in by the 21st so that the dinner following the unveiling of the Henry Moore could be chez moi,’ she confided in Mary Landsworth. ‘Now I’m going to have to come up with another venue, and I can’t think of anything suitable.’
‘We can get you the Lord Chancellor’s Apartment in the House of Lords, if that helps,’ Mary suggested, keen to make herself useful. Since Bianca had returned into her life, she’d received only one donation for her Distressed Legal Gentlefolk Society, and that was for a paltry £20,000, but she was hoping that this offer would induce her former client to open her purse with more of that welcome generosity for which she was known.
‘I like the sound of that,’ Bianca said, thinking that she must run this suggested location by John Lowenstein. ‘Are the rooms big?’
‘Not particularly, but they are very impressive, and you’ll be able to get in a select hundred or so without too much trouble.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t have been having more than that at home in any case,’ said Bianca.
‘So, shall we ask Derry…Lord Irvine of Lairg, the Lord Chancellor?’
‘If you don’t mind, Mary, I’ll think about it tonight and let you know tomorrow. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but…’
‘It’s quite all right, my dear. Makes no difference to me if you decide you don’t want one of the most exclusive and hard to obtain venues in the land.’
John Lowenstein concurred with Bianca that the Lord Chamberlain’s Apartment was unbeatable in terms of prestige, so she rang up Mary the following morning and accepted her offer, feeling optimistic for the first time in months.
Within an hour of hanging up the telephone in her office, Mary’s secretary buzzed her on the intercom. ‘Mrs Mahfud’s driver is in reception. He says he has a note from her that he’s been instructed to deliver to you in person. What shall I do?’
‘Do you mind if we have a thirty-second interruption?’ said to the client sitting opposite her.
‘Not at all,’ the client replied.
‘Ask reception to show him up and bring him in,’ said Mary. But only for thirty seconds. No more.’
Mary wondered what the note would say. She would not be surprised if it contained a cheque, although she could not be sure.
Her secretary soon showed the driver into her office. In less than thirty seconds he had handed over the envelope, she had thanked him, and he was out the door.
‘Do you mind?’ she asked her client once more, this time reaching for a silver Asprey letter-opener, ostentatiously engraved with her husband’s coat of arms, even though Mary knew only too well that wives were forbidden by the College of Arms to use them. ‘It might be something urgent,’ she explained, knowing very well that it would not. She deftly cut open the envelope and peered inside. Before she even removed its contents, she could see a cheque neatly folded between the pages of a handwritten letter on Smythson notepaper. Sliding it out, she saw that it was made out to the Distressed Legal Gentlefolk Society and was for the considerable sum of £50,000. She felt her heart leap with delight. Bianca was back on track. ‘Say what her detractors will about her,’ Mary thought, ‘the fact remains she has a thorough understanding of how the world works. There’s nothing cheap or shoddy about her. She pays her way. No wonder she has such good friends.’
But Mary’s surprises for the day were not yet complete: a massive arrangement of flowers arrived from Pulbrook & Gould, the smart florists near Sloane Square in the heartland of Chelsea.
It was after arranging for Pulbrook & Gould to deliver the flowers that Bianca, a study in chic, sailed out of the Malteviot house she was renting on Carlisle Square to walk to Sloane Street. Turning heads, she headed straight for Smythson’s, the elegant stationers whom she had been using since the days when she was Señora Calman, living in middleclass Mexico City and needing to further herself socially with ‘aristocratic’ British traditions her family had never possessed.
For once, it was a beautiful day in London so, having completed the task of ordering invitations for the New Year’s Eve party she intended to have in the Chealsea Square house she would have moved into by that time, she walked up Sloane Street to Tomasz Starzewski’s showroom at the Knightsbridge end of the street. ‘It’s so seldom one has the chance to walk in London, but today is different,’ Bianca reflected. ‘It’s as if God is celebrating my triumph in finding an even better venue for the reception than my house.’
With an irrepressible smile on her face, Bianca felt a surge of the high spirits which had always been such a characteristic of her personality, but which had deserted her since Philippe’s death. The only other time in the whole of her life she had been so low was after Ferdie’s death, but at least then she had had Philippe. Now she had no one. ‘And yet,’ she decided as she walked past Gucci after looking in its window, ‘maybe I’ve turned the corner. The last fifteen months have been torment itself, but maybe now I’m back on track once more. After all, who but a lunatic would believe that there’s any real mystery to Philippe’s death when I’m so respectable that the Queen Mother and Lord Chancellor of Great Britain are prepared to have their names linked with mine?’
In the ensuing four weeks, Bianca felt more light-hearted than she had done since Philippe’s death. Things really were going to be all right.
‘How simple life is,’ she told herself as this new mood of buoyancy took hold. ‘You have money. You buy yourself influence. Queens and Lords, even the head of a kingdom’s legal system, pay court to you. And all for a price that, in relative terms, costs you less than a maid buying a hairpin out of her wages.’
By the morning of September 21, 2000, the optimist in Bianca was now so confident that nothing could go wrong that she even took Pedro’s call without fear that this most tiresome of sons would blight her mood on her big day. Nothing, but nothing, she believed, could touch her now. This was the crowning moment of her life. John Lowenstein had been right. After tonight, her place as Empress of English and International Society would be so firmly established that she could forget about everyone who had made her life a misery since Philippe’s death. She would rise above their niggardly comments and mean-spirited slurs, treating them with the contempt they deserved. Soon they wouldn’t be able to touch her anymore.
Meanwhile in a townhouse in Kensington, Delia Bertram Candower was sitting down to breakfast with her husband Charles. Theirs was a great love-match and still, after all these years of marriage, he pulled out her chair for her in one of the acts of consideration which had kept their marriage fresh. She slipped into it, and he eased it forward. While he was doing so, she reached for The Times and turned, as she did every morning, to the Court Circular. She quickly glanced to see the report on Princess Anne’s activities of the day before then cast her eyes over the day’s List of Royal Engagements underneath.
‘I don’t believe it!’ Delia exclaimed. ‘Charles, look here! Look at this!’ She stabbed at the page with her index finger.
Charles read that at a public ceremony at Brunswick House later that day Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother was due to dedicate a Henry Moore statue donated by Mrs Philippe Mahfud in honour of her late husband.
‘She’s done it this time,’ he said.
‘We can’t let her get away with this. Queen Elizabeth can have no idea that the woman’s a murderess who’s killed not one but two husbands. We must tell “You Know Who”,’ she said, re
ferring to her royal friend Anne, in case the staff should overhear what she was saying. ‘If we say nothing, and Queen Elizabeth discovers somewhere down the line that Bianca is connected to us through marriage, she’ll never forgive us for having remained silent. You know what a high moral tone she takes about everything.’
‘Let’s ring our friend right now.’
‘Don’t use your cell phone. Bring the landline over. The last thing we need is for someone to hack into our conversation and make it public, the way the Sun newspaper did with Diana and Camilla.’
Charles walked to the sideboard, brought back the telephone and placed it in front of his wife. Delia dialled. The butler answered.
‘Good morning,’ she said. ‘This is Delia Candower here. May I speak with Her Royal Highness?’
‘I’ll fetch her for you right now, Mrs Candower,’ he said, hearing the urgency in her voice.
The princess came on the line. Without preamble, Delia plunged right in. ‘I’ve just been reading the List of Today’s Royal Engagements. I see that Queen Elizabeth is unveiling a statue donated by Mrs Philippe Mahfud in honour of her late husband. Mrs Philippe Mahfud was the wife of my first cousin Magdalena’s uncle, Ferdie Piedraplata. We have proof that she helped Philippe Mahfud murder him, and I’ve heard the Andorran authorities know that she’s also responsible for organizing Philippe Mahfud’s death. You’ve got to get in touch with Her Majesty’s private secretary and warn him.’
Grateful to her friend for the tip-off, the princess agreed to do so immediately. And she did.
‘Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother’s Private Secretary just called,’ John Lowenstein explains over the phone to Bianca, as her Rolls Royce continues on its way to Brunswick House and the unveiling ceremony. ‘He said Her Majesty has come down with a chill, and the doctor has ordered her to bed. He says she’s been fighting it all day and had hoped to honour the commitment, but she’s got steadily worse, and he’s had to call in the doctor. He rang as soon as the doctor left.’
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