Sailing to Capri (30 page)

“I’m a klutz in front of a camera. ‘Hopeless’ one director called me when I auditioned for him.” She frowned. “I thought that was a little unkind.”

We agreed it was, all except Diane, who drank more wine, staring balefully at her rival.

“I can’t believe you two,” Ginny said. “You have everything: looks, glamorous lives in glamorous places, opportunity. All I had was a simple life in a Yorkshire village, but I’m beginning to think you should envy
me.
I had a lovely childhood; we had pigs in our field and a rough-and-tumble pony in the shed be
hind Dad’s greenhouses. We had a couple of dogs that slept on the sofa, and a few black cats that shed all over everything. The house was too small and it was always a mess and my brothers and sisters were always fighting, but they smacked up the school bully when she started on me and told her never to do it again—or else. I’ve never taken money from a man, and I’ve never been married, but not for the want of the askin’, and it was my choice. I’ll know when I meet Mr. Right, and if I don’t, well, I’ll always be Ginny Bunn, the best barmaid Sneadley’s Ram’s Head’s ever had.”

Rosalia, who’d managed to follow most of this, said,
“Bravo,
Ginny, you’re right to love who you are and what you are. It’s the way a woman should feel about herself. What a pity more of us don’t,” she added. “You shouldn’t underestimate yourself, Filomena. You’re beautiful and you’re still young, but those aren’t your only assets.”

Filomena had let her guard down. I knew she felt inadequate and thought she had nothing to offer, and quite suddenly I felt sorry for her. I was sure she hadn’t killed Bob, no matter how desperate she was for the money.

Magdalena came and said it was time Bella was in bed. I kissed her good night, and with a final wink from Bella, they departed. I caught Rosalia before she left, though. I took the manila envelope from the safe and handed it to her. She looked at the packet of letters.

“You’ll never know how hard it was for me to send them back,” she said. “I don’t blame Bob, I never have. A man should follow the path he’s chosen. But then, my dear Daisy, so should a woman.”

I waited hopefully for her to say more, but with the letters clutched to her breast and tears glistening in her eyes, she kissed me on either cheek. “Thank you for taking such good care of Roberto in his last years,” she murmured as she left. “I know he must have loved you too.”

Ginny peeked into the bedroom and seeing I was alone, she said, “I can’t keep this thing to myself any longer. I was going to tell Montana but I’m bursting with it. I just can’t go on looking at that man any longer, knowing what I know about him.” Her mouth tightened and her eyes flashed angrily. “The bastard,” she snarled.

“Who?”

“Charles Clement. Charlie everybody calls him, as though it makes him nicer.”

I sat down on the bed and patted the space next to me. “Come, sit here, Ginny, and tell me all about it.”

“It’s really Mrs. Wainwright’s story, not mine,” she said, “but everybody in the village knew about it. You know how Bob was, always inviting folk to the Hall. Some weekends it was just men.”

“I remember. I’d make all the arrangements then go back down to London and leave them to their boyish devices.”

“Hah, boyish!” Ginny said bitterly. “So Bob invites this Charlie Clement a couple of times, for the shooting and the like. Then another time Charlie brings a girl with him. Mrs. Wainwright was in the hall when they arrived, and Charlie introduced the girl. Mrs. W said she could see Bob disapproved, he thought she was too young, and so did she. Well, you know Mrs. W, she’s a bit of a nosey-parker, and later she asked the girl how old she was. She told her she was eighteen but Mrs. W didn’t believe her.

“Oh, God, Ginny,” I said, “you’re telling me she was underage?”

Ginny nodded. “She mentioned it to Bob and he took the girl aside, asked what she was doing. She cried and said she wasn’t a prostitute, she only did this with men like Charlie who liked schoolgirls, and that he paid good money. Then she admitted she was only thirteen.”

“Oh … my … God …”

“Bob went berserk. He punched Charlie, knocked him flat right in front of the girl, and she just stood there, giggling like a child. Mrs. W said she’d never felt so sorry for anyone in her life. And she heard Charlie Clement vow to get back at Bob. ‘Don’t think I’m alone in this,’ Charlie said in a nasty tone of voice. ‘You’re only like the rest of us, Bob Hardwick.’ So Bob hit him again, and this time he knocked him out.

“Bob had Charlie’s things packed in minutes, and he was driven off to the station sporting a big black eye and no doubt with a bad headache. I believe Bob found out where the girl
came from, her home I mean, not where she’d been living in London. Mrs. W said he drove her back there and talked to her parents, and she thinks he offered to help them.

“She also said she got the distinct impression Charlie Clement had brought the girl as a sort of gift for Bob. Can you just imagine such a thing?” Ginny added.

I shook my head. Now I understood why Charlie might have misled Bob. He wanted revenge.

I promised to tell Montana when he got back, and just then Texas limped into the bedroom. “We thought we might go to the bar,” she said cheerfully. “Maybe I’ll even sing for you tonight.”

Ginny perked up, thrilled. “Then I’m off to get dressed,” she said. “Can’t go to that posh bar in my dressing gown, now can I?”

I showed my guests out, powdered my nose, put on some lipstick and slipped into my old “uniform” of black pants, black top, black ballet flats.

Bob was right; the suspects were beginning to reveal themselves. It was like peeling away the skins of an onion until at the heart we would find the truth.

In the bar, I saw that Texas had also slipped into a “little something” but hers was a little something glamorous: a cool gray chiffon that flashed silver when she moved. Leaning against the black baby grand, she sang silky sultry songs about love and broken hearts: “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” “My Funny Valentine,” “Spring Is Here.” And, finally, “Body and Soul.” It seemed a fitting way to end the evening.

It was late, and everyone had left the bar except Dopplemann. Alone in the dark and the silence, with only the soft throbbing of the engines as the yacht slid through the waves making for Sorrento by early morning, he wondered again why Bob Hardwick had invited him on his “farewell” cruise, especially since he’d recently made the tremendous effort and returned to New York with the intention of having things out with him. But Bob had refused to see him. “Sir Robert is busy,” an assistant had informed him. “He’ll be in meetings all day.”

Dopplemann had said he would wait. “Sir Robert will be in meetings far into the night,” the male assistant had said curtly. He obviously didn’t know who Dopplemann was, but then Dopplemann had been gone a long time.

He didn’t know if the man had even bothered to tell Bob he was there; to him he was just an eccentric shabby man who
looked like nothing. A man who
was
nothing, thanks, of course, to Bob.

He heard a woman’s footsteps and glanced nervously up. She hesitated, peering into the dark as though looking for somebody; then she took a step forward and the light caught her. It was Daisy.

Dopplemann shrank back into his dark corner. She didn’t see him and went and knelt on a sofa by the window. She rested her head on her arms, gazing out at the nighttime sea.

“Daisy,” he said quietly. She swung around.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, sounding scared. “Herr Dopplemann.”

“I’m sorry I startled you,” he said. “And please, my name is Marius. It was given to me by my mother after a great deal of argument. My father complained it was too romantic; he said it was a name for composers and artists, not for men like us. Anyhow, ‘Mutti’ prevailed and Marius I became, though for most of my life I seem to have been addressed by my patrimonial name.”

She was staring at him, eyes bugging.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “And I assume neither could you.” Uninvited, he sat on the sofa next to her and felt her shrink from him. “Is something troubling you?” he asked gently.

“No…. Well, yes…. Many things…. Bob …”

He clicked his tongue sympathetically. “It’s distressing to celebrate someone’s death, but isn’t it what Bob himself wished?”

Daisy slumped into the sofa cushions. She turned to look at him. “There’s more than just that …”

“Do you wish to tell me?”

Daisy was puzzled. Dopplemann was acting like a human being. Maybe it was because they were alone in the dark in the middle of the sea, cut off from reality. She decided to play him along.

“Herr Dopplemann …”

“Marius,” he corrected her.

“Marius,” she said, “have you ever been in love?”

“Yes, I’ve been in love. It was the most painful time of my life.”

“But
why
was it so painful?”

Dopplemann took off his glasses and with his usual nervous gesture, began to polish them with the soft cloth he kept in his jacket pocket. “Because she betrayed me.” He put the glasses back on and surprisingly, he smiled at her. “Women are like that sometimes, so I’ve heard. Her name was Magali, and she was Hungarian. They’re a passionate race, you know, always making war or making love, whichever is more important at the moment.” He shrugged. “I asked her to marry me. I was crazy with love, ready to give her every penny I had, everything I owned. But when she asked for what she really wanted, I told her the price was too high, I couldn’t do it. She begged, she threatened, she cajoled. She promised to marry me the next day if I gave her what she’d asked for. ‘You’ll be rich for life,’ she told me, but I told her riches were not what I wanted.”

He took off his glasses again and polished them agitatedly. “Of course, I should have realized that she was working for a foreign power and that all she really wanted was my knowledge. They wanted me to spy for them. To trade America’s secrets.”
Dopplemann paused. “And in return I would get the woman I wanted.”

He put the glasses back on. He was twisting his hands together so tightly the veins popped. “Bob had always kept a friendly eye on me; he said he didn’t think I was a practical man, I was too caught up in my scientific daydreams. He’d met Magali, and like everyone, he wondered why a shrewd, beautiful woman of the world was courting me.” He shrugged again. “Magali arranged a rendezvous with an agent in a park in Washington. Somehow Bob got to know about it. He followed me, guessed what was going on.

“‘Scum,’ he called me. ‘This country has been bloody good to you,’ he said, ‘and now you’ll turn her in for a cheap woman who’s got you wrapped around her little finger and doesn’t give a shit about you, a woman who’ll dump you as soon as she’s got what she wants. You’re a brilliant scientist,’ he told me, ‘but you’re an idiot. Any man who’ll contemplate selling out the country that gave him every accolade, every chance … is no friend of mine. And I’ll see that you are no friend of anyone else’s.’”

From behind the glasses, Dopplemann’s glassy green eyes met Daisy’s stunned ones. “Because I had not actually committed the crime, Bob gave me an option. Leave immediately and he would say nothing. Make some excuse, he said, health, family … anything. Just leave. If not, he would turn me in to the FBI.”

“So of course you left,” Daisy said, breathing a sigh of relief.

Dopplemann lifted his empty eyes to Daisy’s. “I asked Magali to come with me. She laughed at me, said I was worthless,
that she had no use for me anymore, no one had, and I was as good as dead. I’ve prayed many times over these past years to find it in my heart to forgive her, and to forgive Bob, because between them they ruined my life. Bob could have overlooked it, he could have let me stay, let me do the job I’m trained for. After all, I was the best in the world …”

“So you’ve never forgiven him.” Daisy understood now what Dopplemann’s motive for murder was.

“I had been the best. Now, because of Bob, I was nobody. It’s impossible to forgive that.” Dopplemann got to his feet. He pulled at his jacket, straightened his tie, coughing nervously as he once again adjusted his glasses. “I’ve never spoken about this to anyone. It’s been a long time inside me, but here, on the ship, away from everything, and because you knew Bob so well, I found I could talk to you.”