A middle-aged, moustachioed couple glided past. They were wearing light grey suits with ties and white shirts, so that Mr Rogers thought that perhaps it had been unnecessary to spend his clients’ money purchasing his new outfit. But he soon saw that most of the other dancers of either or indeterminate gender were in shirts and pants, except for some very tall, beefily built, heavily made-up dancers in elaborate ball-gowns. For ten minutes he watched; then he saw Jules coming towards him leading by the hand a slender Oriental figure, a head shorter than she. When they were a few yards from Mr Rogers, Jules pecked the cheek of her small partner who immediately turned away.
Jules beckoned, and Mr Rogers followed her to an empty table, slightly raised, guarded from the dance-floor by a brass rail. From time to time dancers leaned over the rail and spoke to Jules and embraced her. Each time she introduced Mr Rogers. ‘Harry,’ she said, ‘from London, England.’
After half an hour they were joined by the person whom Mr Rogers had come to meet, a grey-haired man who walked with a stick. He was skeletally thin, had a grey moustache turned down at the corners of his mouth and wore, Mr Rogers noted ruefully, a shirt of a far more conservative design than that which he had purchased in the hotel shop. As soon as the newcomer had seated himself at their table, Jules imperiously waved away any who approached. After an hour of conversation, Mr Rogers left and took a cab back to his hotel.
Next morning, he abandoned his extravagantly flowered shirt for one of a plain dark blue, but slung from his shoulder a leather bag. When Jules collected him, he had already taken a long call from Charleston during which Clover Harrison told him of the arrival of Jameson. Mr Rogers advised him to leave town until he was certain that Jameson had departed.
Like his activities in Charleston, Mr Rogers’ visit to San Francisco settled into a pattern; by day, a series of visits to the Castro and the Haight and elsewhere, usually to apartments up winding, outside stairs and small, white or pink box-like houses, wreathed in climbing roses and orange blossom; by night visits to clubs. The registry office and the hospital and several law offices were also visited but it was in the apartment of the thin man and his younger companion that Mr Rogers spent most time. On the third morning after his arrival, he put a call through to the friendly barman at the hotel where he’d stayed in Charleston and asked the barman to check Clover Harrison’s address to make sure he had left town. Later the barman reported that he had been round to Mr Harrison’s rooms and been told by the owner of the drug-store that Mr Harrison was away but the apartment had recently been broken into.
It was a thoughtful Mr Rogers who left with Jules for the airport, once again attired in his tight-fitting fawn suit. He flew east to Atlanta, ignoring other reservations in his name on flights to LA and to Boston. In Atlanta he boarded a flight to Miami where, on arrival, he hired a car and drove to West Palm Beach. After more calls from a call-box, he drove to the WPB airport, handed in the car and reported to the offices of Caribbean Ferry Services. He was left to wait, drinking coffee and watching television. After two hours, he was conducted from the offices to a Beachmaster turbo-prop executive jet warming up on the apron. During the flight, Mr Rogers sat alone in the cabin behind the two pilots, writing. On arrival at Belize he joined a Vargas flight to Rio. He stayed the night at the airport hotel and next day flew on to Buenos Aires.
After two days in BA, and with no sign that he had been followed south by Richard Jameson, he flew back across the Atlantic, and reported to Oliver Goodbody in Oliver’s flat in Kensington. A day later he was on his travels again, this time to Europe.
19
Brought to a sudden halt by the traffic as she breasted the hill just east of Stonehenge, Valerie Spencer snapped down the sun-visor and examined herself in the looking-glass. She pushed her short dark hair into place on her temples and smoothed the skin at the corners of her mouth. Too many lines, she thought; too deep now to disguise.
The car in front began to move and she pushed up the visor. She would stop to fix her face before she got to the house.
Yesterday the appointment had been confirmed. She’d made her pitch two days before, unexpectedly catching the woman on the telephone, telling her that all they wanted was background, just an interview about the kind of family they were. Everyone’s talking about the Caverel claim, Valerie had said. An interview would give her a chance, Valerie added, to present herself to the public. Her paper had three million readers and an interview would give her the opportunity to show them what kind of woman it was who was facing a claim which might turn her and her child out of doors. To Valerie’s surprise, for there could be little doubt in most people’s minds on which side her paper, the Daily News, would stand, her call had been returned. Would it really be general background, just about her and the family? Of course, nothing more, just a profile of you and the family home. Very well, the voice said. She’d be pleased to receive Miss Spencer at eleven o’clock at Ravenscourt.
‘Receive!’ Valerie snorted when she’d put down the receiver. ‘Does she think she’s the Queen Mother!’
Press interest in the Caverel claim, as Valerie had said on the telephone, had grown. The incongruity of a claimant with a background of black America and European night-clubs and the aristocratic family living in the vast Palladian mansion in Wiltshire was intriguing editors and readers. Although no proceedings had as yet been begun, they were obviously imminent and lawyers warned that the stories had to be handled discreetly. So the press concentrated mainly on the personalities. On one side, the half-black, exotic girl with a mysterious past who was supported by an eccentric and, rumour had it, alcoholic grandmother who had not been seen since she’d made a scene at the press conference; and on the other, the ancient but obscure and apparently dim aristocratic family consisting of an infant with an insignificant mother, supported by an unpopular military cousin who was running the estate. It was because Willoughby Blake had seen to it that so many of the stories presented such a sympathetic picture of the claimant that Andrea had, apparently, consented to be interviewed.
Valerie Spencer had done her homework: sending for the cuttings; looking up the family history and background in the reference books; checking the dates and places of the husband’s diplomatic career and reading the reports of his death in the car crash. She spoke to the paper’s man in Rome and he filled her in on the political and financial crises and scandals in Italy when Robin Caverel had been at the Embassy. He also told her the gossip concerning Robin’s brief Roman love affair. Everyone knew about it, he said, except the English wife who at the time was in England having her baby. He sounded so knowing that for a moment Valerie almost felt sorry for the wife. But not for long. It was a useful tip. She’d have no scruple in using it. Other people’s pain gave neither her nor her editor sleepless nights. Basically, the editor said, the piece had to be about the woman as widow and mother facing a claim which might push her on to the street and not about whom her dead husband had been bonking. But ‘Give it bite, darling,’ he had added. ‘You know how to handle these sort of stories about these sort of people.’ The story of the affair might provide just what was needed, for Robin Caverel’s lover was well known to the pages of Hello! and other glossy magazines.
As Valerie Spencer drove past Stonehenge she wondered idly what it must be like to have the threat of eviction hanging over one’s head. But if she was threatened with eviction, all she’d do would be to find another flat in Battersea. She smiled when she compared her flat to what she’d heard about Ravenscourt, but she stopped smiling when she thought of the woman’s child. She never smiled when she thought about children. She would have liked to have had a child. But in her twenties and thirties there had never been time. The battle in the jungle of what was Fleet Street and was now Dockland had absorbed her whole life. Forty-nine next birthday, she was probably too old now to bear a child. And anyway, there was no one to give her one. There had been no one since January when Sam had moved out.
After Stonehenge, the traf
fic thinned and she drove fast across the plain. She pulled into a lay-by and studied the map. It wasn’t far now; it would be eleven when she got there. Would she be offered lunch? There’d been no mention of it on the telephone. The editor had also warned her about the retired soldier who ran the estate – perhaps the woman might insist he be present during the interview. Valerie wouldn’t mind. Last year she’d done a feature, three articles, on London men’s clubs, one of which had been ingenuous enough to allow her the run of the premises and produced specimen members for her to interview. They hadn’t recognised themselves when they read what she’d written. Upper-class toffs with bristly moustaches, plummy voices, oyster eyes. She had a tape-recorder; they hadn’t, so they couldn’t deny what she said they had said. And each had a drink in his hand when he’d been photographed. Hadn’t she asked them to? But for Valerie the series had been a triumph. So if the military cousin forced himself into the interview, she wouldn’t discourage it. She could deal with him. But she wouldn’t like a lawyer. Then she’d have to be more careful.
She checked the small tape-recorder in her bag, making sure it was loaded and working. Next she confirmed on the car telephone that Graham, the photographer, was at the Caverel Arms. She hadn’t wanted to arrive with a photographer. She wanted time with the woman first. Then she’d send for Graham. He could be at the house in a couple of minutes. She had told him to be at the pub by ten forty-five and wait. And he was. She said she’d call him when she’d fixed it up.
Lastly, she fixed her face, grimacing into the mirror and groaning to herself. She hoped the woman she was to interview was not too attractive.
* * *
As soon as she rang the bell, the door was opened by a tall, thin woman in her mid-thirties with fine, blonde hair. ‘Lady Caverel?’ Valerie enquired.
‘Yes. Please come in.’
Andrea led the way and Valerie followed her into the hall with its black and white tiled floor, looking up at the ceiling high above her head and at the sweeping stair which led up to the dome with the portraits on the walls.
‘Family pictures?’
‘Yes.’
One day, Valerie thought with amusement, there might be a portrait of the black girl.
Andrea had dark rings under her eyes. She was pretty in a pallid, county sort of way, Valerie thought, but she looked worn. She obviously didn’t take much trouble with herself. Valerie followed her into a small square library, the walls lined with fitted bookshelves. Sporting prints were on any wall free of books.
Andrea closed the door behind them. She looked tense and Valerie was tempted to say something to put her at her ease. I’m not going to bite you, she wanted to say, but then Valerie, the professional, thought she’d get more out of her if the woman did stay tense. And perhaps she was going to bite!
‘May I sit?’ was all she said.
‘Please do.’ Andrea went to a side table by the window. ‘Would you like some coffee?’
‘Thank you.’ When Valerie tasted it, she put it aside. It was lukewarm. There had been no mention of anyone joining them and Valerie took out her notebook and tape. ‘Before we start, can I ask you out of curiosity why you agreed to see me?’
Andrea looked down at her hands. ‘You were the only one who asked.’
Valerie laughed. ‘But even so, why did you agree?’
‘Because I’d like to show the public I’m not an ogre, and that there’s another side to the story which the public haven’t been told.’
Valerie smiled and nodded her head. There were several photographs in silver frames in different parts of the room, one on the chimney-piece. ‘Your husband and your son?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘They’re very handsome.’ Then Valerie went on briskly, ‘Well, I expect you’re busy and I mustn’t keep you, so shall we start?’ She switched on the small tape which she put on one of the arms of the chair. Her notebook, in which she’d written a series of headings, was on the other. ‘Can we begin with you and your family, and come to the Caverels later?’
‘Of course.’ Andrea was sitting on the edge of the sofa, her hands clasped around her knees.
‘Your maiden name was Aberdower, wasn’t it?’ Andrea nodded. ‘The men in your family seem to have lived a lot abroad, India or Africa in the days of the Empire and the Raj?’
‘Yes, quite a few were in the Indian Civil or Colonial Service – or were soldiers. I had one great-uncle in the Indian army and another in the Sudan political service.’
‘Lording it over the natives?’ Valerie smiled sweetly.
Andrea did not reply. ‘But your father was a sailor, a captain, RN?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tell me about your grandparents, Lord and Lady Aberdower. When you were a small child, you often stayed with them?’
‘Often.’ Andrea smiled, remembering. ‘On their farm in Africa. It was very beautiful.’
‘That was in the White Highlands in Kenya?’
‘Yes, just below Mount Kenya.’
‘You liked it there?’
‘I loved it. My father was so often away at sea and my mother had died when I was very young. So for a few years from about the age of three my grandparents almost brought me up.’
‘You loved them very much?’
‘Very much.’
Valerie consulted her notes. ‘You were eight at the time of the massacre?’
Andrea nodded.
‘When the gang attacked the house, killed two of the servants and then got to your grandparents. They…’ She was going to say what she’d read in the cuttings that the gang had done. Two old people tortured to get the key of the safe, mutilated, finally their throats cut. Instead she asked, ‘Where were you at the time?’
‘With friends, at another farm. I’d spent the night with them, about twenty miles away.’
‘And the next day, not knowing what had happened, they brought you back home and you ran into the house and found them – the bodies of your grandfather and grandmother?’
There had been many cuttings on the grandfather, a former Governor of Bermuda, and plenty on what had happened in the bedroom in the farmhouse in the White Highlands below Mount Kenya.
‘Did that turn you against Africans, against blacks?’
‘No. Only against murderers and gangsters.’
‘Your grandfather and grandmother had many black servants, I suppose?’
‘Several. I had a black ayah, a nanny who looked after me.’
‘Were you fond of her?’
‘Very.’
‘What happened to her?’
Andrea looked surprised. ‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, when you were older, did you see her?’
‘No, she went back to her people. I was very fond of her.’
‘After she left, did you ever look her up when she’d returned to the townships?’
‘No.’
‘You just dropped her? She just passed out of your life?’ The sniff was not lost on Andrea. Valerie studied her notes and then went on, ‘Would you say that all the blacks you’ve ever come across have been servants? Have you ever had any black friends?’
Andrea’s hand was at her neck, playing with the necklace. ‘Not a close friend. Have you?’
‘Yes, I have.’ Valerie thought of standing by the bedroom door while Sam was bent over the bed packing his case and then watching him walk down the front path with that easy, athletic lope carrying his guitar. And her relief that at last he’d gone. But it was true. He had been a close friend, once.
‘Has it come as an extra shock to you’, Valerie went on, ‘that the claim to the Caverel barony and to your house, to Ravenscourt, is being brought by a black woman?’
‘Certainly not, not because she’s black. The claim itself is a great shock, because it’s a lie, it’s a plot and she –’ She stopped, remembering what she’d told herself she must not say. Valerie waited but Andrea, a little colour now in her pale cheeks, said no more.
‘Would you mind if a black woman became the Baroness Caverel and lived in this house?’
‘I would mind anyone living in this house other than my son and me. Of course I would.’
‘I’m told we shouldn’t really discuss what they call the merits of the case but –’
‘There aren’t any merits, not in their case,’ Andrea interrupted. ‘It’s all lies.’
‘Of course,’ said Valerie. ‘But just suppose the young woman does succeed in establishing her right to this house and the estate, what will you do?’
‘I haven’t thought. I don’t know. But she won’t.’
‘But if she did,’ Valerie persisted, ‘and you had to leave Ravenscourt, where would you take your son?’
Andrea thought for a moment. Then she said simply, ‘To friends.’ She added, ‘But that won’t happen. This is Francis’ and my home. Francis’ ancestors have lived here for hundreds of years and when he’s grown up, he’ll live here. It’s his inheritance and she’ll never be able to take this from us.’
‘But if she convinces the court that she’s the rightful heir, that would make her your niece by marriage and your little boy’s first cousin. Would you not talk with her and see if you could not persuade her to let you and your child stay on and all live here together?’
‘Never.’
‘You’re not a Caverel by blood. Why does this place mean so much to you?’
‘Because it was my husband’s and now it’s my son’s. It’s his inheritance and I’ll do everything I can to stop these people getting their hands on it and driving us out.’
‘Will you be called to give evidence if it comes to a trial?’
‘I don’t know. I will gladly, if they need me.’
Valerie ticked off another of the headings in her notebook. ‘Perhaps we’re talking too much about the claim, so let me ask you more about yourself. Where did you meet your husband?’
‘In Sussex, one weekend. He was playing polo at Cowdray Park and we’d gone over to watch and he came back to the house where I was staying for dinner.’
The Caverel Claim Page 11