“I don’t want you to make a decision now, dear. You’re tired and upset and you’ve had a dreadful time these last few days. Why don’t you stay a couple of nights with us? You can rest up and meet the other girls; if you’d like to go to one of the parties, we can get you a nice dinner dress and you can come and see what it’s like. If you don’t care for it, you can leave after ten minutes and go back to the flat where you’ll be staying. There will be absolutely no obligation.”
Pippa was not a complete fool. She knew it sounded entirely too good to be true. She suspected that Mrs. Cavendish, in sheltering an underage runaway, would be breaking the law, and the woman would not be taking such a risk if she wasn’t hoping to profit from it. Also, Pippa realized at some point toward the end of Mrs. Cavendish’s smooth speech, that the sick feeling in her stomach had nothing to do with her headache but with the dawning understanding that she had been very professionally set up.
On the other hand, Pippa didn’t see any alternative other than crawling back to Banner House in disgrace, and she thought she’d rather die than do that. So, warily, she accepted Mrs. Cavendish’s invitation.
A summons was sent by telephone to somebody named Marilyn, who turned out to be a platinum blonde in her early twenties. She had an American accent, an un-fashionably voluptuous figure, and a kindly disposition. She exclaimed in horror at the story of Pippa’s misfortunes, and bore her off to an elegant block of flats not far away. Pippa looked around for Janine as they left Mrs. Cavendish’s house, but was both relieved and unsurprised to see no sign of her.
Marilyn had a super flat, bang up-to-date and exceedingly posh. Pippa was urged to take a long soak in the tub while her hostess rustled up some supper. The bathroom had marble everywhere and the tub was huge.
Pippa was suspicious of everyone at that point, but it is difficult to maintain a clenched mind when one is up to one’s earlobes in warm water and scented bubbles. As she began to relax a little, Pippa decided she would feel stronger if she looked more like herself, so she shampooed the dye out of her hair, working gingerly around the lump on her head. After the bath she dressed in the best casual clothes she had with her, and emerged from Marilyn’s small spare bedroom, ready to engage the enemy with cool, implacable civility.
Marilyn bustled solicitously about her, asking Pippa if she needed anything for the pain, inquiring what she’d like to drink with supper (“It’s just an omelet and salad, hope that’s all right?”), and generally being perfectly lovely, but it availed her nothing until, halfway through the meal, she looked sympathetically across the table at her reticent guest and remarked, “Well. So you are the latest victim to be rescued by Mrs. Cav from the Melbourne Muggers.”
It was clear from Pippa’s blank stare that she hadn’t a clue what Marilyn meant.
“That’s what we call them. Vicious bastards. We don’t know if they come from Melbourne, of course, we just call them that because of the Australian accent that the female uses, and even that might be a fake. We’ve got a real Aussie in the house, nice girl, name of Chrissie, she’s from Sydney; Chrissie’s heard the female Mugger talking a bit, and she thinks the accent’s not the real thing. What’s she calling herself this week, the female Mugger I mean?”
“Janine,” Pippa replied faintly.
“Well, don’t you worry, honey. Mrs. Cav’s as good as her word. You don’t want to stay here, you don’t have to stay. You don’t want to party, you don’t have to party. I mean, Christ! You’re a child! No offence. The only reason Mrs. Cav takes girls from that Australian reptile and pays her a commission, even when she knows what the Muggers do to the girls to make them desperate enough to come here, is that Mrs. Cav knows that if she doesn’t take them, the Muggers’ next stop is somewhere less respectable and less nice, and down the line from there until you get to places where they beat the girls and stuff them full of drugs. Lucky for you that you’re pretty enough and posh enough that the Muggers brought you here first. And I gotta say, dear, you look a hell of a lot better with that black crap out of your hair!”
Pippa laughed, which made her head hurt, but from that moment onward, her life began to improve by leaps and bounds.
In the long run it was not the luxury or the money that seduced Pippa. Nor was it the promise of an easy life, free of boring schoolwork and nagging teachers. It was the kindness.
Marilyn had started calling her “little Sis” by the next morning; she introduced Pippa to some of the girls in the other flats (the entire building, it seemed, was owned by Mrs. Cavendish). Marilyn and two of her chums took Pippa out to lunch. All were friendly and jolly and all seemed to be glad to have Pippa around. It had been almost two years since anybody had been glad to have Pippa around.
They talked to her enthusiastically about the life they led and encouraged her to give it a try; Mrs. Cav was a wonderful boss, more like a mother; she allowed every girl to “go at her own pace”; no girl was ever forced to get “more involved” than she wanted to. Of course some of the girls were right cows, you had to expect that, but most of the girls were nice and the ones who weren’t had their own little crowd and left you alone. Mrs. Cav saw to it that everybody stayed polite to each other. And you had all day, every day, just to do what you pleased!
And so, by easy stages, Pippa entered into a life of genteel prostitution. It was four months before she actually had sex with one of the “gentlemen”; Mrs. Cav made sure it was one of the regular guests, vouched for by the other girls as mild-mannered and gentle and patient. The encounter was a success; Pippa, liberally relaxed with champagne, actually achieved an orgasm.
In the early weeks, Pippa had checked the Times every day to see if her grandparents had put in the advertisement she had demanded. Then, one particularly enjoyable day (two of the girls took her shopping), she forgot to check the paper. Soon there was another day when she forgot. By the time Mrs. Cav spotted the ad many weeks later, Pippa had stopped looking.
She had concluded that her grandmother refused to be bent to the will of a child; she assumed that the police, possibly even private investigators, had been dispatched to find her. The fear that they might succeed was the only shadow across her bright, newfound life.
She received a message to see Mrs. Cav in her office. The older woman handed Pippa the newspaper with the ad circled in red. “Your grandparents,” she said, “want you to think that they’ve relented.” Pippa, having found Mrs. Cav every bit as motherly as the other girls had led her to expect, had long since confided in her employer her plan to escape Stiles Academy and go to a “nicer” school in London.
Pippa stared at the tiny bit of newsprint, then looked up at Mrs. Cav. “They’re going to be waiting for me with cops and psychiatrists and maybe even men in white coats, aren’t they?”
“I should think so.”
Pippa smiled with unholy joy. “Let them wait!”
After she had been at Mrs. Cav’s for a little over a year, Pippa discovered she had fallen prey to the occupational hazard of the world’s oldest profession. She was pregnant. Mrs. Cav, ever supportive, offered to get her an abortion; the house would stand the cost. Pippa pondered the offer for a moment; she wasn’t sure she liked the idea.
“Well, my dear, you have another month or so before you decide. Let me suggest you talk to the other girls who’ve been in your position. See what they say.”
This Pippa did. She pondered all her options. After two weeks she had come to a decision.
On a sunny day in May 1979, John Banner received a telephone call from the police. A healthy infant girl, about ten days old, had been left in the ladies’ room off the lobby of the Angel Hotel in Guildford.
Unknowingly following the example of her mother Clare, Pippa had left two notes. One was to the management of the hotel, telling them whom to call about the baby. The other, tucked into the baby’s blanket and addressed to “Mrs. John Banner,” was in an envelope sealed with wax. The management delivered this missive intact to Mr. John Banner, who in
turn delivered it likewise to his wife together with all the proofs of identity Pippa had left in the baby carriage. These included such things as the books and schoolwork she’d had in her backpack when she’d run away and letters she’d received from her grandfather while she was at school.
Later the police confirmed that the handwriting on the school papers matched that of the notes found with the baby. Mrs. Banner had allowed them to have pieces of the letter to herself; she cut these out with scissors. She never allowed anyone—neither the police nor her husband—to see the entire message.
Pippa had written:
Dear Grandmother,
This is my daughter. I know you don’t want her but you didn’t want me either, and you kept me anyway. I think you just like to have someone around to be horrid to. I am not going to let you be horrid to my daughter. I want her to know who she is which is why I’m not just giving her up for adoption. Her name is Margaret Sophia Bebberidge-Thorpe Daventry, and I want her to be called Meg. I want you to ask Uncle Gregory and Aunt Sophy if they will take her. If they won’t, you can find a nice loving home for her some place else but she must keep her name. I want you and Grandfather to settle 100,000 pounds on her. Put it in a trust and make Uncle Gregory and Aunt Sophy the only trustees. You must not be a trustee yourself or Grandfather either. You must not try to keep her yourself. I don’t want you even to ever speak to her because you are a poisonous old bitch and you make everybody miserable. If you don’t do everything I say you will be sorry because I will have you killed. I know you don’t believe that but you should. I have friends now who know how to get someone killed without anybody finding out. All it takes is money and I have plenty of that, no thanks to you. Don’t try to find me, you can’t. But I’ll always be able to find you. So just do as I say or you’ll die.
Your granddaughter Pippa.
Chapter 22
MONDAY MIDAFTERNOON
Five Days After Rob Hillman’s Death
“I didn’t know he was in a wheelchair,” said Tom to Kathryn.
“Neither did I,” she replied.
They were sitting in the backseat of a 1936 Rolls-Royce that was wending its way through the hedgerows back from Morgan Mallowan to Datchworth. Behind the wheel “Crump” had reverted to Crumper, conveniently deaf servant, so that Tom could talk to Kathryn privately.
Not that anybody was doing much talking.
Does the wheelchair make a difference? Tom wanted to ask, but was afraid to. Something, certainly, had made a difference. Derek she had dismissed indifferently and without hesitation. Had she dismissed Kit? Tom couldn’t tell, but whatever had happened, Kathryn was obviously not feeling indifferent about it. That was bad. Also she didn’t seem to want to talk about it. That was worse. She just looked at the scenery, or pretended to, lost in thought and looking troubled.
Back at the Castle Crumper held the car door open for Kathryn while making a sympathetic face at Tom to show they were still friends. Tom grimaced back and followed Kathryn into the Castle.
As they approached the big vase that marked their corridor, Kathryn resurfaced. When she spoke, however, it was without animation. “The Mallowans and Bebberidge-Thorpes are intermarried, did you know that? And I’ve met Meg’s half uncles. I’d met one of them already, on the train with—on the train. But I didn’t know who he was. Would you like to expand that family tree?”
“Sure.” Tom would have liked anything that kept him in her company; he had begun to fear that she was going to shut herself up in her room without a word.
“Thanks. It’s just that it would give me something to think about besides—besides Rob. Will—one of the half uncles—was talking to me about Rob.”
Tom waited for the next sentence, and when it didn’t come, ventured, “Um, should I ask? Or not?”
She shook her head. “Sorry. My mind’s wandering. Where was that chart?”
They sat at the table in the double-viewed parlor, nearly elbow-to-elbow. But the fizz had gone out of it for Tom. He had never seen her like this, never tried to talk to her when she was a thousand miles away, never had to deal with her when it was so obvious that she was paying attention to him only with an effort. That alone was not good for the ego; knowing the reason behind her inattention made it worse.
“Starting at the top,” she said, taking a pen and writing on the chart they’d previously constructed, “We now have a proper name for Cruella. It’s Clarissa, and, just as Rob said, she’s in a very posh “secure facility” somewhere in Hampshire; nobody knows for sure why she’s there, except, presumably, for Sir Gregory and Derek, who put her there. There is lurid talk about a granddaughter who vanished in mysterious circumstances, but saner heads say nonsense, the girl just died in childbirth. The child in question being Meg. Oh, these putative Daventrys are not Meg’s parents; Mr. Daventry was Mad Clare’s first husband, and Meg’s name is Daventry because nobody knows who her father was.”
Kathryn was making alterations to the chart as she spoke, rearranging Daventrys and printing over Meg’s name: “Phillipa (No Husband)” and directly under Phillipa: “DIED IN CHILDBIRTH? MURDERED BY CLARISSA???”
“Add another line there. Crumper thinks she’s still alive.”
“Really? Why?”
“Well, Clarissa and her husband both claim she died in childbirth, which is why they had baby Meg on their hands for all of twelve hours before they handed her over to Sir Greg and Aunt Sophy, but Crumper says a few people thought it was weird that there was never a memorial service for her. Not down in whatchacallit, Surrey, where the Banners live, or here at Datchworth either. No body, no coffin, no grave ever appeared in the local cemetery in either place. Not so much as a jug of ashes.”
“That is curious. But if Phillipa’s still alive, why do her grandparents say she’s dead?”
“Dunno. Crump thinks it’s something to do with avoiding scandal. Meg was born out of wedlock, that’s for sure. So maybe Cruella bribed Phillipa to go away quietly and not make any more trouble.”
Kathryn obediently wrote under Phillipa QUIETLY DISAPPEARED?
Kathryn had already crossed out Cruella and substituted Clarissa, filling in the blank for her husband’s first name with John. An Indian gentleman with a funny name, et cetera, was scribbled through to be replaced by Shailendra Tandulkar, and twin boys expanded into Harry Tandulkar and Will Tandulkar.
“You say you’ve met both of them?” Tom asked.
“Yes, they were both at lunch. It was rather a family occasion. Will and Harry—who suffer endless grief for sharing names with the young princes, as you can imagine, but they point out that their mom, that’s Mad Clare, thought of it years before Charles and Diana did, and besides, Harry, this Harry, is the older one and Will is the younger. Where was I? Was that a sentence?”
“I don’t think so, but who cares?”
“I do, normally,” Kathryn said, and then added quietly as if to herself, “but ‘normally’ died a sudden and violent— Never mind.”
“Did you find out why they call Mrs. Daventry-Tandulkar Mad Clare?”
“I did. And let me tell you, the rest of the family might be rather staid, but this line”—Kathryn actually achieved a small smile—“is a rip-roaring melodrama from start to finish. Clare got married to Daventry when she was seventeen, for heaven’s sake, just in time to legitimize Phillipa. She then decamps, leaving poor old Pip, I should say poor young Pip, because she was three days old, to the tender ministrations of her Grandmother Cruella. Eventually Pip, who apparently couldn’t stick it as long as her mom, runs away from home at fifteen, and a year and a bit later leaves a baby, our Meg, in a hotel rest room with instructions to turn her over to Sir Greg and Aunt Sophy. Then, as we’ve already established, Pip either dies in childbirth or is mysteriously murdered by Cruella or is alive and well and living God knows where, depending on who you’re talking to.”
“Great stuff. But weren’t you going to tell me about Mad Clare?”
“I’m getting ther
e. Clare, last seen abandoning Pip, divorces Daventry and instantly marries one Shailendra Tandulkar-—isn’t that the most marvelous name? Then Clare promptly produces twins Harry and Will, in that order. I know the order because Harry harps on it. Now it gets interesting.”
“Lay it on me,” said Tom, pleased to see her beginning to enjoy herself.
“Out pop Harry and Will, and instantly Cruella, who is way past it, produces Derek; everybody in the county openly agrees that she did it because she couldn’t stand the thought of the Banner billions, much less her brother’s baronetcy, going to ‘some half-breed Indian,’ as Harry himself puts it. Clare and Shailendra don’t give a damn because they’re lost in love’s young dream and they’re card-carrying socialists anyway and don’t want their kids to be corrupted by wealth. Apparently they tried like the devil to get Phillipa away from Cruella, but Cruella had more money and therefore better lawyers, and the upshot is that Harry and Will have never even laid eyes on their big sister, wherever she may be, assuming she’s still alive.
“Do you remember where you’re supposed to be going with this?”
“Patience, dear fellow. When the boys were thirteen their father caught a rare blood disease and died almost within days; Clare had the most sensational nervous breakdown in the history of psychiatric medicine and according to many people has never fully recovered, hence ‘Mad’ Clare. Meanwhile, just as the decent members of the family were trying to figure out what to do with the boys until their mom was able to take care of them again, this famous Accident occurred that killed Sir Greg’s son and heir, Gerald, Meg’s Uncle Jerry who isn’t really her uncle, and his best friend Freddy Mallowan, son and heir of Kit’s Uncle Michael, Marquis of Wallwood, and put Kit simultaneously in line for the title and in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Kit needed to go off to Eton, and Sir Greg, bless him for a democrat, suggested that the twins be sent to Eton with him, to look after him and help him get around in the chair and such. They told me this at lunch; my own private reading is that Harry didn’t like it because he felt like a servant, but Will has the same sweet disposition Kit does and they wound up as best friends. Will and Harry are now joint estate managers for Kit. Now, get this.”
Thieves Break In Page 19