105. an Angel In Hell Read online

  “Beaulieu cannot be very far from Monte Carlo!” Aunt Emily exclaimed. “I can only hope, Ancella, that you will not contemplate for one moment entering that cesspool of wickedness!”

  “I cannot believe it is as bad as that!” Ancella answered, remembering what Sir Felix had said.

  “The dear Bishop has written several letters to The Times protesting against the wickedness of gambling,” Aunt Emily replied, “and the misery that it brings to those who participate in such evil.”

  “People don’t have to gamble, Aunt Emily,” Ancella retorted.

  To reinforce the argument her aunt had sent home for a scrapbook, which arrived before Ancella left Medwin Park.

  In it she had collected through the years pressed flowers, ball programmes, Christmas messages, sketches and photographs and had stuck them all into a scrapbook, which she had entitled, Mementoes of my Life.

  She turned over the pages and found a letter that had been written some years before by a man called John Addington Symonds, one of the earliest English visitors to Monaco.

  His letter had appeared in a newspaper and Aunt Emily had cut it out.

  Part of it said,

  “There is a large house of sin blazing with gas lamps by night, flaming and shining by the shore like pandemonium or the habitation of some romantic witch. The witch herself holds her high court in the never-ending festival of sin in the hall of the green tables. Splendid women with bold eyes and golden hair and marble columns of imperial throats are there to laugh, to sing songs, to tempt. Inside the gaming-house play goes forward like a business. Roulette and Rouge et Noir tables are crowded. Little can be heard but the monotonous voices of the croupiers, the rattle of gold under their wooden shovels and the click of the ball spinning round for roulette. The croupiers are either fat sensual cormorants or shallow lean-cheeked vultures or suspicious foxes. These men of the gaming bank show every trace of dissolute youth in a vile calling with low, sensual and hardened avarice upon their faces.”

  Ancella’s aunt had read aloud in a low shocked voice and now, raising her eyes and taking off her pince-nez, she asked,

  “You understand? That is what you must avoid!”

  With difficulty Ancella prevented herself from laughing.

  “I think you have forgotten, Aunt Emily, how hard up I am! Papa, as you well know, was unable to leave me any money. I have only one hundred pounds a year which my grandmother left me and I assure you that that sum will leave nothing over for wild gambling.”

  “You are not to go inside that dissolute place. Do you understand, Ancella?”

  “Yes, Aunt Emily.”

  “If anyone invites you to do so, you are to refuse. If the dear Bishop learnt that my niece had been seen in Monte Carlo I think I should die of shame!”

  “I will try not to make you do that, Aunt Emily!”

  “So I should hope!” her Aunt replied.

  The cutting Aunt Emily read out had been written, Ancella knew, many years ago.

  Even so, she remembered that there had been letters recently in The Times attacking Monte Carlo.

  One of her duties had been to read to her father anything that might interest him in the newspapers and she remembered a letter in The Pall Mall Gazette in which a doctor who lived in Menton had said,

  “I have several times had the mortification of seeing patients sink into graves, who would have recovered had they not been enticed into one of the most pernicious forms of all excitements – gambling. The removal of this great evil from the beautiful shores of the Riviera would certainly be a benefit to our fellow men and advance our Saviour’s Kingdom.”

  “Damn nonsense!” the Earl of Medwin had exclaimed when she read the letter to him.

  Another letter Ancella read aloud said,

  “What of the suicides at Monaco – deaths registered as accidents, but which would be more truly described as ‘Murdered by Monte Carlo’?”

  “Gross exaggeration,” the Earl growled.

  “But I saw in The Times yesterday, Papa,” Ancella answered, “that a petition signed by four thousand residents and visitors to the Riviera has been presented to the French Chamber. It said that Monaco had become a ‘den of corruption’ and begged the French Government to put an end to the Casino.”

  “Blasted spoil-sports!” the Earl had ejaculated forcefully. “Why the devil they cannot live and let live I do not know! If people don’t spend their money one way, they will spend it another!”

  He had dismissed the subject, but Ancella had found it impossible not to be curious about Monte Carlo and wondered whether it was in fact as evil as everyone made out.

  The Daily News claimed that Queen Victoria, the King of Italy and the German Royal Family were anxious to put an end to the ‘evil consequences of a Hell such as Monaco’.

  But the Earl would not listen.

  ‘Perhaps now I shall have a chance to find out for myself,’ Ancella thought as the train rushed through the night carrying her towards what she described to herself whimsically as ‘the beautiful and the bad’.

  She was certain that it was due to what Sir Felix had written to Dr. Groves that she was travelling, not as she had expected, Second Class, but First Class!

  This enabled her to have a sleeping compartment and she was fascinated by the small bed made up skilfully by the attendant, by the comfort of the washing facilities and by the fact that she could be alone.

  She knew that when Society ladies travelled they took with them their own silk or linen sheets, their lace-edged pillowcases, a mat to stand on and every other adjunct that appertained to their comfort.

  She could remember her mother describing to her how she and her father had travelled when they visited Europe.

  They used to take with them a maid and a valet who packed and unpacked their luggage, made up their sleeping compartments and saw that everything in a train, a ship, a hotel was arranged to their liking.

  But, although Ancella could not travel in quite such grand style, she was not complaining.

  She had been overcome when Dr. Groves had written back enthusiastically accepting Sir Felix’s suggestion of sending him ‘Miss Ancella Winton’ and saying that he had persuaded the Princess to pay her the equivalent in francs of one hundred and fifty pounds a year.

  “It’s a fortune!” Ancella exclaimed when Sir Felix told her.

  “You will find that it will not go very far in the richest playground in Europe,” he had answered. “So be sensible, Ancella, and remember that you must never spend any of your own money, but always expect to be paid for.”

  “I hope I shall behave like a well-trained senior servant!” Ancella laughed.

  “Then remember that servants expect to be generously paid for their services and never in any circumstances to put their hands into their own pockets!” he advised.

  “I will remember,” Ancella promised.

  But, because she felt that she would be rich, she had bought herself some new dresses.

  She had not been extravagant, but had bought, as her mother had always done, with taste and discrimination, which made every pound go a very long way.

  She had already discussed with Sir Felix whether she should dress in mourning or whether her employer would find that irksome.

  “Personally, knowing the Riviera, I think you will find that black is too hot and too gloomy,” Sir Felix said. “There is colour everywhere and you will want to feel a part of it.”

  Knowing he was speaking sound common sense, Ancella had purchased white and pale mauve dresses and had taken with her just one black evening gown that she had bought after the death of her mother.

  It had been rather an expensive gown and, as she had seldom worn it since then, it seemed a pity not to make use of it now, even if it was only at dinner in the villa, if by any chance she was asked to dine with her employer.

  She did not really know what to expect and there Sir Felix could not help her.

  She did not know whether she would actually
be treated as a senior servant, expected to take her meals alone or whether she would be invited into the dining room.

  ‘I shall just have to wait and see,’ Ancella thought and told herself that it would not matter either way.

  What was really important was that she was getting away on her own and she was going into the sunshine.

  Sir Felix had been astute in perceiving that she was extremely overtired and run down.

  Now that her father was dead she felt as if her main purpose in life had ceased and all the exhaustion and fatigue that she had determined not to acknowledge while he needed her swept over her now like a flood tide.

  She was indeed very very tired and all she wanted was to have time to collect herself, to think about the future and plan quietly what she should ultimately do when this unexpected employment came to an end.

  ‘I will save every penny of what I earn,’ Ancella thought. ‘I feel certain that I shall need it when I come back to England.’

  Again she thought of living with either of her aunts and shivered.

  ‘It would be like deliberately walking into a tomb,’ she told herself, ‘and once there, there will be no escape.’

  She fell asleep listening to the beat of the wheels, imagining that they were a chariot carrying her from the darkness into the light.

  ‘I am lucky,’ she thought, ‘so very lucky!’

  *

  It was early in the morning when Ancella awoke with a start to hear the porters shouting and to realise that the train from Paris had reached its first stop.

  “St. Raphael! St. Raphael!”

  She heard the name and pulled up the shutters over her window.

  For a moment the sunshine blinded her.

  Then she looked out onto the vivid blue of the sea, at a translucent sky that still held the misty haze of dawn and thought that she was in Paradise.

  Behind the small town there were mountains, their lower slopes richly wooded.

  Ancella knew that it was in this little port that Napoleon landed on his return from Egypt in 1799 and embarked fifteen years later for imprisonment on the island of Elba.

  ‘I am living history!’ she told herself ecstatically.

  She dressed herself automatically, watching as she did so a new world unfolding itself before her eyes.

  There were mimosa trees coming into bloom. There were flowers climbing up walls, filling window boxes and in the wild grass on the hillsides. There were houses with vivid red roofs and white villas that looked like iced cakes.

  Far away in the distance she occasionally caught glimpses of mountaintops peaking high, still covered with the white snow of winter.

  It was all so entrancing and so breathtaking that she knew she had never before known colour to stir her emotions so strongly.

  ‘It is wonderful! Wonderful!’ she cried to herself and let down the window to feel the soft warm air against her cheeks.

  The train ran along the coast, stopping at places that had famous names.

  Cannes, where Ancella knew that the Prince of Wales often stayed and which had a tempestuous past. Destroyed by the Romans as a punishment for the murder of some of their colonists, it was also twice destroyed by the Saracens.

  The next stop was Antibes and Ancella saw displayed on the platform in varying shades of blue the urns, bowls and jugs that Sir Felix had told her were reviving the fame of Etruscan pottery.

  Nice, she remembered was famous for its flowers and that Napoleon Bonaparte had had boxes of carnations, lilies, violets and roses despatched to him in Paris from there every week.

  In the Bay of Villefranche were French and British warships lying at anchor off the shore and Ancella heard a porter cry,

  “Next stop Beaulieu!”

  Hurriedly she collected her belongings and, taking a quick glance at herself in the mirror to ensure that she looked the part she had to play, she prepared to leave the train.

  She had not been able to afford an expensive travelling gown, but the one she wore, which was the purple of wood violets, fitted her slim figure and made her look very elegant.

  She had brought with her in a hat box some of the new straw hats that had been reasonably priced at Peter Robinson and which she had trimmed herself. But on her head she now wore a small bonnet trimmed with Parma violets in a paler shade of mauve than her gown.

  ‘I hope I don’t look too smart,’ Ancella thought as she regarded her reflection and then smiled at her own conceit.

  ‘All the richest and most beautiful women in the world come to the Riviera at this time of the year and I will certainly not compare very favourably with them!’

  Since she had known where she was going, she had taken a delight in turning up old copies of The Illustrated London News and The Graphic, which her father had always insisted were kept.

  She found pictures of all the distinguished people who had villas in the South of France. One magazine had told her that the Hotel de Paris had amongst its guests the Emperor and Empress of Austria, the Dowager Empress of Russia, the King of Sweden, the Queen of Portugal and the King of Belgium.

  ‘I doubt if I shall mingle with such famous people,’ Ancella thought with a smile.

  But she thought that she would like to look at them, especially the Empress of Austria, who was reputed to be one of the most beautiful women in the world.

  “Beaulieu!” the porters were shouting as the train came into the station.

  Ancella was standing gazing out of her compartment window and one of the porters in his loose blue linen blouse signalled to her that he was for hire.

  She nodded and raised her hand and he stood outside the compartment window until the attendant let it down and handed Ancella’s luggage out to him.

  She had taken the trouble before she left for France to ask Sir Felix exactly what she should tip and having changed some of her pounds at Calais she now gave the man a little more than what he expected and was rewarded with a “Merci beaucoup, m’mselle”.

  She climbed down from the train onto the platform and, just as she reached her porter, a man wearing an elaborate livery came up to her and bowed.

  “Vous êtes M’mselle Winton?” he enquired in French.

  “Oui,” Ancella replied.

  “Then will you come with me, m’mselle! Her Highness asked me to meet you and there is a carriage outside.”

  “Thank you,” Ancella answered.

  Sir Felix had told her that she would be undoubtedly met.

  At the same time she had been apprehensive that she would not be considered important enough and, guessing that the villa might be some way from the station, she had been wondering whether, when she reached it, she should pay the coachman if she hired one or ask the servants to do so.

  This answered her problem and she found waiting outside a very comfortable carriage, which, to her delight, was open.

  The servant who had met her handed her in and arranged the small pieces of her luggage on the seat opposite her, while her trunk was strapped at the back. Then he climbed up on the box and they set off.

  The warm sunshine seemed almost like a caress on Ancella’s pale cheeks.

  Now that the sun had risen, the sea was sparkling and she thought it impossible to imagine that any part of the world could be lovelier.

  The road was crowded with carriages and vehicles of all types. Some were very grand, the occupants being extremely elegant ladies holding up small sunshades for fear of being sunburnt.

  Others were rough carts drawn by mules and, to her delight, Ancella often saw two white bullocks yoked together in harness.

  Beaulieu seemed to have been built in a sheltered wood and there was a profusion of orange and lemon trees, tall hedges of roses and scented geraniums bordering it.

  Above rose gigantic perpendicular cliffs, their skyline fringed with pine trees, the limestone interstratified with layers of red sandstone.

  There were also magnificent ancient olive trees, some of them, Ancella had read in a guide-boo
k, being over a thousand years old.

  After leaving Beaulieu, the carriage drove along the road known as the Lower Corniche. It had been hewn in some places out of the rock and once they passed through a short tunnel so that Ancella’s eyes had to adjust themselves from brilliant sunshine to partial darkness and back again to brilliance.

  The railway line ran beside them and before Ancella had progressed very far the train she had come from Paris in passed them and she knew that it was going on to Monte Carlo, which was the end of the line.

  She knew that thirty years ago in 1868 it had been completed so as to reach Monte Carlo and the effect had been explosive! Every day crowds of passengers poured out of the trains and into the gambling rooms.

  Ancella had noticed when they left Paris that the travellers on the express were very smart and opulent.

  They certainly made themselves comfortable on the journey. She had seen huge hampers being carried in to their compartments or left outside, heard the pop of champagne corks and in the morning had seen a great many empty bottles placed outside the doors so that they could be cleared away by the attendants.

  ‘How shocked Aunt Emily would be!’ Ancella thought with a little smile.

  Then suddenly the carriage turned off the road and began to descend a very steep driveway that curved down the side of the cliff.

  For the first time she realised that they had left the line of the railway and were between it and the sea.

  When she had asked Sir Felix the address of the Princess Feodogrova’s villa, he had told her that it was the Villa d’Azar, Point de Cabéel near Eza and Ancella had looked it up on the map.

  She had found that it was a tiny promontory on the Monte Carlo side of Beaulieu.

  It had been so small that it was only after searching for some time that she found it on a very large-scale map that her father kept of all the different regions of France.

  Now, as the carriage curved down the tree-shaded drive, with the walls on either side brilliant with pink and crimson geraniums, she saw below her a large building with a flat roof gleaming very white against the green trees and the blue sea beyond it.