105. an Angel In Hell

  Author’s Note

  The way in which Monte Carlo was described and denounced at the end of the last century is not exaggerated. It was considered by the Clergy of almost every nation as ‘a hell’ on earth.

  The newspaper articles are authentic.

  Today Point de Cabéel is known as Cap Estel and on it is the loveliest small hotel I know. The garden is exactly as I have described it and it has a flight of forty white marble steps from the terrace.

  I have used the old spelling of Eza for Eze and St. Hospice is now Cap Ferrat.

  Monte Carlo is still to me as beautiful, romantic and exciting as it has been ever since François Blanc opened the Casino in 1858.

  Chapter One 1898

  “I am sorry it happened so suddenly, Ancella,” Sir Felix Johnson said in his quiet voice, which had earned him the reputation of having the best bedside manner in London.

  “It is better that way,” Lady Ancella Winn replied. “I would not have wanted Papa to go on enduring suffering and misery as he has these past years.”

  “He has been a very difficult patient,” Sir Felix said, “and I can only commend you, Ancella, as being the most dutiful and exceptional daughter I have ever known in the whole of my long career.”

  “Thank you, Sir Felix,” Ancella replied with a faint smile.

  “I am worrying that perhaps your father’s death has been a great shock,” Sir Felix continued kindly.

  “No, not a shock,” Ancella answered. “I was expecting it.”

  Sir Felix looked at her in a puzzled manner.

  The Earl of Medwin had indeed been ill for a long time, but it was the sort of disease that usually prolonged itself almost indefinitely.

  As if she knew that Sir Felix was waiting for an explanation, Ancella, with the colour rising slightly in her cheeks, said,

  “I sometimes know about – such things. I knew before Mama died that there was no – hope.”

  “You mean you are clairvoyant?”

  “I suppose you might call it that. My nurse, who was Scottish, used to describe it as being ‘fey’. It is just that sometimes I feel an inexplicable conviction about things and, ever since I was a child, it has always proved right.”

  “That is very interesting, but what I would like you to tell me is whether you have a conviction about what you should do now.”

  Ancella made a little helpless gesture with her hands.

  “That is something quite different,” she said, “and quite frankly I have no idea.”

  “That is what worries me,” Sir Felix commented.

  He had not only been doctor to the Earl for over twenty years, but he was also a friend and he was genuinely very fond of the Earl of Medwin’s only child, Lady Ancella Winn.

  He looked at her now with speculative eyes as she moved across the room to stand looking out of the window at the unkempt and untidy garden, which looked desolate in the cheerless gloom of a January morning.

  She was very fair and her skin, normally very white, was almost startlingly so after her father’s sudden death.

  ‘She is lovely!’ Sir Felix told himself and, as Ancella turned her large grey eyes towards him, he enquired,

  “Ought you not to think about what you should do before your relations arrive and the heir to the title inevitably takes over?”

  “Cousin Alfred, I understand, will not live here,” Ancella answered. “He has always disliked the house and has no intention of spending any money on repairing it or keeping up the grounds. As you must know, Sir Felix, it would have been quite impossible for Papa, if he had not died, to hold on very much longer.”

  “I am aware of that,” Sir Felix said, “and anyway there could be no question of your living here with your cousin.”

  “No, indeed,” Ancella agreed quickly. “I have never liked Cousin Alfred and Papa positively disliked him!”

  “So he has often told me. Well then, what is the alternative? ”

  “Aunt Emily or perhaps Aunt Edith,” Ancella replied. “Oh, Sir Felix, I don’t think I could bear it!”

  Sir Felix could understand her feelings when he remembered the elderly grim-faced maiden ladies who had always disapproved of the independence Ancella had enjoyed after her mother’s death.

  Her father had let her do more or less as she wished, provided that she kept house for him and was there when he wanted her to listen to his grumbles about money and his constant harangues with his relatives.

  When he became ill, he had refused to have a nurse – not that they could have afforded one – and had relied entirely on Ancella to look after him and be at his beck and call from first thing in the morning until last thing at night.

  In fact she was also frequently wakened during the night, but she never complained and Sir Felix had often asked himself what other girl of her age would have been so efficient or so willing to carry out his instructions.

  Now, as he considered the Winn relations, he found himself thinking that none of them would make Ancella’s life anything but a misery.

  They were all very narrow, strait-laced, almost puritanical in their outlook and the Earl had undoubtedly been right when he referred to them as ‘a lot of old hypocritical psalm-singing spinsters!’

  “If only I had some talents,” Ancella said with a little sigh. “I can ride, I can sew, I can dance – when I get the chance! And I can speak several languages.”

  She gave a little laugh.

  “None of that sounds to me to be saleable!”

  “You can speak French?” Sir Felix asked.

  “Like a Parisian – at least that was what the old Mademoiselle who taught me always said!” Ancella replied with a smile.

  “That gives me an idea,” Sir Felix said. “You may think that it is an impertinence, you may laugh at me for suggesting it, but it might be a solution.”

  Ancella walked towards him to put her hand on his arm.

  “You know, Sir Felix, that anything you suggested to me I should know was meant kindly and as a true friend. I have often wondered what we should have done without you these past months when Papa was so difficult and would refuse to do anything he was told.”

  She sighed before she went on,

  “You were the only person he trusted and I often thought that we have imposed on your kindness and your friendship, when he continually asked you to come here when you were so busy in London.”

  Sir Felix put his hand over hers.

  “Anything I have done, my dear, has been a pleasure, and I mean that!”

  “And what is more,” Ancella said quietly, “you have never sent us a bill!”

  “Nor do I intend to do so,” Sir Felix replied. “When I was a young man, your father honoured me with his friendship. That meant a great deal to me in those days when I was unknown and struggling. So anything that I have done has been only a very small recompense for what I owe him.”

  For the first time tears came into Ancella’s eyes.

  “Thank you, Sir Felix!” she declared. “I have always known how lucky I have been that you were there and I could rely on you.”

  “Then I am going to talk to you now both as a friend and as a doctor, so let’s sit down, Ancella, and be comfortable while we do so.”

  She obeyed him, sitting upright in the chair, her hands in her lap like a child who is about to have a lesson.

  Sir Felix seated himself opposite her on the other side of the fireplace.

  In his long frockcoat and high elegantly tied cravat, which sported a large pearl pin, he was an impressive figure, as befitted the Physician in Ordinary to the Royal Family who was tremendously in demand amongst the fashionable Society that followed Queen Victoria’s lead.

  Ancella was aware that, by comin
g down from London at a moment’s notice when a groom had brought him the news that the Earl of Medwin was dead, he had probably created chaos amongst his wealthy patients who would be expecting him to call on them at this time of the day.

  But she knew as she sent for him that Sir Felix would not fail her and he had in fact arrived at Medwin Park near Windsor in almost record time.

  “What are you going to suggest? “ Ancella asked. “That I should be your receptionist?”

  Sir Felix laughed.

  “My waiting room is far too crowded already without filling it with all the jeunesse dorée of fashionable Society! There would be more men consulting you than women consulting me and that would be very bad for my morale!”

  Ancella gave a little laugh, which, however, turned into a cough.

  She took out her handkerchief and choked into it for a moment or two while Sir Felix watched her.

  When she was ready to continue, he said,

  “I noticed that cough of yours last time I was here. It comes from being overtired and spending a very long exhausting winter in this abominable climate.”

  “Are you suggesting I should swim to the South Seas?” Ancella enquired.

  “No, I am suggesting that you should go to the South of France!”

  Ancella laughed again.

  “Now you are treating me like one of your fashionable beauties,” she said, “to whom you prescribe a sea voyage on a yacht with oysters and champagne every day or a villa in the South of France with nothing to do but smell the mimosa and watch the bougainvillaea coming into bloom!”

  “The latter is exactly what I am suggesting,” Sir Felix said. “But actually you would have something to do.”

  Ancella looked at him with wide-eyed surprise.

  “I had a letter yesterday,” Sir Felix explained, “from a colleague of mine who is the most fashionable doctor in Monte Carlo. He was reporting on a patient I sent him and at the end of his letter he wrote – ”

  As Sir Felix spoke, he drew a folded sheet of writing paper out of the inside pocket of his coat and read aloud,

  “I suppose you do not know of a nurse, by any chance, preferably a lady, who could attend Princess Feodogrova Vsevolovski? Her Highness is as tough as a horse, but she thinks that she needs a nurse to trail around after her.

  I have no qualified nurse I can possibly spare, and quite frankly the Princess needs no nursing. It is fashionable here to pretend that one is an invalid. If you can think of anyone, and money is no object, it would, my dear Sir Felix, be of inestimable benefit to me, because these women are driving me mad with their incessant and unnecessary calls and I never have a moment to myself!”

  Sir Felix, as he finished reading, folded the letter and said,

  “Well, Ancella, what do you think of the idea?”

  “A nurse! But I am certainly not qualified.”

  “Dr. Groves says no qualifications are necessary and I imagine it is really a post as companion. Could you bear to take on another elderly person – and this time a malade imaginaire!”

  “I really don’t know what to answer,” Ancella replied a little helplessly.

  “I am not only thinking of the money, which Dr. Groves says is no object,” Sir Felix said, “although I am quite certain, knowing a little of your father’s affairs, it would not be unwelcome. I am really thinking of your health.”

  “Of my health?” Ancella repeated with a startled look in her eyes.

  “You have had over a year of constant anxiety, tremendous pressure, and having to work far harder than any trained nurse would have done,” Sir Felix replied. “You have lost weight, Ancella, and quite frankly I don’t like that cough! However I feel sure that a few months in the sunshine will disperse it.”

  He paused and went on,

  “I also think living in a rich household you would eat more sensibly, for I have an idea that any small luxuries that came into this house went straight upstairs to your father’s bedroom.”

  “You know quite well that there has been no money for any extravagance,” Ancella said.

  “You really reinforce my argument,” Sir Felix went on. “Why not be brave, Ancella, and try out this little experiment? After all, if the position proves really intolerable you can always come home.”

  “That is true,” Ancella murmured, “but – Monte Carlo!”

  “Does it sound such a frightening place in your ears?” Sir Felix asked. “I was there last year and I enjoyed it enormously.”

  “It has always been held up to me by my aunts as a kind of Sodom and Gomorrah!” Ancella answered. “You know that Papa gambled away some of his inheritance when he was a young man? They have never forgotten it! They talk as if it happened only yesterday and they are continually preaching to me about the evils of gaming.”

  “I am not suggesting you should throw your hard-earned salary, and I have no doubt it will be hard-earned, on the tables!” Sir Felix laughed. “What I am suggesting is that you should get as much sunshine as possible, eat as much as you can stuff into your body and, when you look like you did a year or so ago, come back, and we will find a suitable husband for you!”

  ‘‘Sir Felix!”

  Ancella knew that he was teasing, but she could not help the colour coming into her face.

  “You talk as if I was longing to get married!”

  “You have not had much chance so far,” Sir Felix said dryly. “Tell me when you last went to a party, when you last danced a waltz.”

  “You know very well the answer to that,” Ancella replied.

  “Yes, I do and I deplore it very much,” he said. “You are very lovely, Ancella! I have admired you ever since you were a small child and you are very like your mother.”

  Ancella gave a deep sigh.

  “Mama was really beautiful!”

  She was still for a moment.

  Then she said,

  “Perhaps, if she could have gone into the sunshine instead of suffering so abominably from the cold, she would have lived longer.”

  “That is why I am not going to let history repeat itself,” Sir Felix said. “I want your permission, Ancella, to write to Dr. Groves tonight to tell him that I have found the perfect person for his Princess.”

  “She must be Russian.”

  “The South of France is full of Russians,” Sir Felix answered. “There are Grand Dukes, all handsome and attractive, throwing thousands of pounds away on the green baize tables, building colossal villas and entertaining the most beautiful and delectable ladies of every sort and description!”

  His eyes twinkled as he spoke, but Ancella said,

  “I shall look a drab little English sparrow amongst such birds of paradise.”

  Then she added quickly,

  “But, of course, I shall only be an onlooker of the Social world – not a part of it!”

  “I am sure you will look very lovely whatever you wear,” Sir Felix said consolingly.

  “There speaks the eternal man, who thinks that clothes do not matter to a woman,” Ancella said mockingly. “But I dare say that, as a nurse-companion, I shall look suitably demure and no one will notice me.”

  Sir Felix privately thought that that was most unlikely, but, as he did not wish to alarm Ancella, he said nothing.

  Instead he rose to his feet, remarking,

  “I must now return to London. I expect that you have sent telegrams to your nearest relatives and one or two of them at least will be arriving during the afternoon. They will help you with the funeral, but I have already instructed the local doctor to make arrangements with the undertakers and not to trouble you more than is absolutely necessary.”

  Ancella rose too.

  “Thank you again, Sir Felix,” she said. “I do wish my relatives were like you! Because I love you, besides being so grateful for all you have done for Papa, I will do as you suggest. At least it will be an adventure!”

  “It will indeed,” Sir Felix concurred, “and I promise you that, if you find the situat
ion intolerable, you have only to telegraph me and I will either send you the money for your return ticket or come and fetch you myself!”

  He smiled and added,

  “That would at least be an excellent excuse for me to revisit the Riviera, which I would very much enjoy!”

  *

  It was three weeks later when Ancella found herself travelling in the Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée Express away from the cold snow and the bitter winds of the North towards the Côte d’Azur.

  Even now she could hardly believe that she had been able to get away instead of being coerced and brow-beaten by her aunts into going to stay with them rather than leaving England.

  She had not told them, of course, what she was about to do, for she and Sir Felix had decided that would be asking for trouble.

  Instead she pretended that she had been invited to stay with a friend in the South of France and had decided to accept the invitation.

  They put all possible objections in her way.

  It was too soon to stay away when she was in mourning! Such gadding about was unbecoming in a young girl who had recently been bereaved! It would be extremely improper for her to travel alone! And most important of all she was not old enough to be without the constant chaperonage of someone like themselves!

  As that, of all the arguments they reiterated over and over again was what Ancella most wanted to avoid, it made her more and more determined to escape.

  She had already decided with Sir Felix that she would not call herself by her real name.

  After all, the Winns were a large family and, although the Earl of Medwin had been too ill to go out and about ever since Ancella had grown up, there still might be some distant cousin or perhaps a friend who would recognise the name Ancella Winn.

  “I will call myself Winton,” she told Sir Felix. “It’s no use inventing a name too unlike my own or I shall never remember to answer to it!”

  Accordingly Sir Felix had sat down and written to Dr. Groves that a Miss Ancella Winton would accept the post with Princess Feodogrova Vsevolovski and would arrive at Beaulieu Station on the 7th February.

  Ancella had to tell her aunts that her friends lived near Beaulieu and this caused another storm.