The St. Tropez Lonely Hearts Club (31 page)

Vanessa had more than her fair share of ‘apple-pie’ beds and ghost-like apparitions in the middle of the night, when the older girls would come into her room covered in black from head to toe, making scary noises and waking her up screaming. Luckily the pranks stopped when Jane and Jessica were both married off, before they were twenty and within a year of each other, leaving Vanessa to sleep alone in the top wing of the castle. Even though they had been unkind to her, she missed her sisters. Worse was to come when her father Charles died, exactly on the day when his first grandchild, a boy, was born. Lady Anstruther-Formby took to her bed for most of the next year and the teenaged Vanessa was pretty much left to fend for herself.

The castle really did have an empty and intimidating feeling to it. When the winds whistled through the bare branches of the oak trees and barged relentlessly against the mullioned windows of the castle, Vanessa was scared. She started to keep a diary; she felt abandoned and alone and had the spooky feeling that her father was watching her. The diary became a means of support; she could commit her inner thoughts to these pages.

The winds have become ridiculously strong. Woke up, yet again, in the middle of the night and had to take a pill. For somebody who is anti-drug and anti-pill, this is becoming ridiculous, but I do feel that sleep is necessary,
she wrote.

One night her mother rushed into Vanessa’s bedroom. Both of them had heard a horrible, terrifying creaking in the walls.

‘I’ve never heard anything like it,’ her mother told her. ‘It’s awful, how can you sleep?’

‘I can’t,’ Vanessa said simply. ‘It’s a continuing nightmare.’

‘I’ll send you to stay with your aunt,’ said her mother.

‘No,
please
! You always said I could go to art school to study design, like Jeremy.’

Lady Anstruther-Formby wasn’t averse to the idea. Motherhood had not been her forte, and with her youngest daughter gone she could dedicate her days to riding and taking care of the tourist trade at the castle’s shop, selling hampers, gift sets featuring the family crest and concocting delicious organic preserves and biscuits made from the finest ingredients. Trade had increased significantly, and Lady Anstruther-Formby was now in her element.

Vanessa thrived at the London School of Art and Design and she made many friends, mostly boys. The male population at university hit upon her relentlessly, but she simply wasn’t interested in men until she met Roman Scavolini. A little-known Italian artist, he had been giving a lecture to the students on post-Impressionist paintings. Afterwards they asked him questions, and when the beauteous Honourable Vanessa Anstruther-Formby cast her guileless blue eyes upon him, he was more than intrigued. Although it was totally against college rules, Signor Scavolini managed to wangle a date with Vanessa. She was thrilled. All the girls in her class fancied him, and now he had actually asked
her
out – it was exhilarating. It was also inevitable that Vanessa would sleep with him. He was not only the most alluring and seductive man she had ever met, but he was a brilliant and expert lover and, at eighteen, she was the only virgin in college – a fact she didn’t like to advertise. He played Vanessa as he would a fine violin and brought her to peaks of joy she had never known existed.

And then he dumped her. It wasn’t gradual, it wasn’t expected and it wasn’t kind. One day she just couldn’t reach him. After she had sweated it out for three of the longest days of her life, she found out he had left the hotel where he had been staying with no forwarding address. His phone went straight to voicemail and her texts and emails went unanswered.

Broken-hearted, Vanessa had no one to comfort her. At home with her mother, she couldn’t admit what had happened, but a phrase Lady Anstruther-Formby had used many years ago kept resonating in her head: ‘Men only want one thing.’

The following year, Vanessa won a scholarship to the Parsons School of Design in New York, and was delighted that her mother had no qualms about letting her leave England. Lady Anstruther-Formby’s line was turning over a tidy profit so she could afford to help Vanessa along in her dreams. She hit New York feeling just like the song: ‘I want to wake up in a city that never sleeps’.

That fall, Vanessa met the mega-rich mogul Jonathan Meyer. Although still married to the volatile Russian ex-dancer Lara, but unable to keep his zipper zipped, he wooed gorgeous Vanessa with every trick in his book. She was so cool, so English, so refined – he wanted her as he had never wanted any woman before; and what Jonathan wanted, Jonathan always got.

She gave him her body and showed him all the sensual tricks that Roman had taught her, but there was a part of her he could never possess. He wanted her to love him, but she couldn’t. Her wounds were still too open. The hurt had healed but a part of her heart had been injured for ever. But when Vanessa became pregnant and Jonathan begged her to marry him, she decided to take on the life of a Manhattan trophy wife of one of the richest men in the world. Why not? Even a damaged heart can be fixed. He adored her, he was handsome, albeit somewhat balding, and he let her do anything she wanted, within reason. And when their son was born, Vanessa felt almost complete for the first time in her life.

No one had any idea who had sent the bomb to Sophie. But whoever it was would have been delighted with the completely shocking effect it had had on everyone connected to her.

Still grieving over the death of Frick in the funicular, and now with the loss of her faithful old maid Teresa, Sophie felt so frail, weak and old that she took to her bed. Nevertheless, Captain Poulpe had gently tried to coax any information from her – she still had to be interrogated.

‘Do you know of anyone who would wish you ill,
madame
?’

‘Plenty,’ she snarled. Lying on her bed in her over-decorated purple bedroom, she was swathed in cashmere and fox-fur wraps against the cold, even though it was eighty degrees outside. For her it was perpetually chilly in the old stone villa – it never really became warm until the July sun had penetrated the ancient walls and flies started buzzing in the main salon and in Sophie’s bedroom.

‘I have a lot of enemies.’ She handed him an envelope. ‘Read it.’

Poulpe took rubber gloves from his pocket and gently removed the note.

‘You won’t escape next time,’ was printed in block letters on the kind of cheap lined paper that was available from any supermarket.

‘When did this come?’

‘This morning. Adolpho found it under the front door – now I’m having to hire security guards.’ She started to weep and Gabrielle Poulpe, who had been standing quietly in the door, handed her a tissue and plumped the cushions behind the old actress’s bewigged head.

‘Of course I have enemies. Many people are – or were – jealous of me. I was famous, I was beautiful, I had many lovers, some of whom I stole from their partners.’ She blew her nose and looked contrite. ‘This I regret, of course.’

‘Is there anyone in Saint-Tropez now who you believe might bear you a grudge?’ asked Poulpe.

‘Well, Lara Meyer, of course. She hated me when I was successful and she tried to ruin me with that debacle of my boutique opening.’

Poulpe wrote rapidly in his old-fashioned notebook as Sophie expounded on the long-ago event, while Gabrielle took notes on her cell phone.

‘Hmmm, now is there someone else who is
not
persistently drunk and half-comatose who you believe might bear you a grudge?’ enquired Poulpe with an edge of irony.

‘Maybe that stupid gigolo she lives with – Fabrizio. He hates me too, I think.’

‘You mean Fabrizio Bricconni. Why is that?’

‘I rejected him,’ Sophie said. ‘Last month he came to me and asked if I would sponsor him in some TV show – that
X Factor
thing in a country I’d never heard of. Of course I said no. I would have had to go there to sponsor him and be on TV; become a laughing stock for
him
,’ she laughed bitterly. ‘He was quite angry – told me it would be a great opportunity to . . . how did he put it? Ah, yes –
to regain my fanbase
. Ha! As if I’d ever lost it!’

‘But you are in the same social circle, are you not?’

‘We are, unfortunately. I am always civil to him because, as the saying goes, “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer”.’

‘What about Mademoiselle Martez?’ asked the Captain.

Madeleine Martez was a somewhat mythical figure in Saint-Tropez. A major star in the 1950s, she was now rarely seen either out or at any of the parties. Rumour had it that she and Sophie had been enemies for years although no one ever knew why.

‘That cow! She’s always hated me, from the very beginning when I moved here. I’m younger than her, and I was more popular in Hollywood. She never made it in Hollywood, you know.’

‘I did not know that; I thought she was a big star there?’

‘Star? Bah! She did one Hollywood film and that was the end. No one could understand her accent. I speak perfect English, you know.’

‘Yes, I know that – most impressive. Well, I think I must interview Ms Martez as soon as possible.’

‘Oh, good luck with
that!
’ crowed Sophie. ‘She’s more of a recluse than I am. Too ashamed to be seen because she looks so hideous.’

‘Really – I see her photos everywhere,’ mused Poulpe.

‘Yes, you do, parading around in tiny shorts and bikinis. Yes, you actually do, Captain. What you don’t see is that those photographs were taken over fifty years ago . . . when I admit she was good-looking,’ she added grudgingly.

‘Ah yes, of course!’ He scribbled some more then asked, ‘Anyone else you can think of,
madame
?’

‘Deneuve,’ she hissed. ‘Catherine has always detested me.’

‘Ah, yes.’
This woman is completely deluded
, thought Poulpe.

At over seventy, Catherine Deneuve was still one of the most popular Gallic actresses. The chances that she resented Sophie Silvestri, who had definitely seen better days, were slim to nil. Still, he’d have one of his colleagues in Paris check her out.

François Lardon stood naked in front of the mirror, admiring himself.

‘You are gorgeous,’ he said, smiling at his stunning reflection. Deeply tanned, six foot three of rippling muscles, black curly hair and a movie-star face, he was well aware of his genetic luck, and he spent plenty of time taking care of his gift.

He hummed as he anointed himself with Tom Ford’s latest men’s scent, and admired the tattoo on his shoulder, which he always kept covered with a shirt or a white T-shirt. It was a fierce black and yellow snake that coiled down one arm, its viperish tongue reaching out to devour a tiger’s head etched around his left nipple. Underneath was a motto in Latin:
Causa Mortis
– cause of death.

Tonight he was going out with the luscious Gabrielle Poulpe, and he couldn’t wait. Although he pulled girls regularly, young tourists from Scandinavia and America, they were all too easy. They were all suckers for a handsome waiter in white and he never slept with them more than once. Gabrielle was different. Conquering her was like flying too close to the sun and the danger was exhilarating. And besides, if he wasn’t mistaken, she hadn’t had much experience with men. He wanted her, and he was going to get her.