105. an Angel In Hell Read online

  There was a note of bitterness in her voice that Ancella did not miss.

  As if following her train of thought, the Princess rang the bell.

  Maria appeared immediately.

  “Where is His Highness?” the Princess asked.

  “I told you, but Your Highness must have forgotten,” Maria replied, “there is yacht racin’ today.”

  “Yes, yes, of course!” the Princess said. “Have they all gone with him?”

  “The Marchioness has,” Maria answered, “and that jaunty friend of hers, Captain Fredrick Sudley. I don’t know about the other gentlemen or Baron Mikhovovitch.”

  “I know where he is. I was just wondering about the others.”

  “His Highness said he would not be back until this afternoon, so you had best have your luncheon and a good rest. You’ll need it if Your Highness is going to play late tonight.”

  “How do you know I am going to play late tonight?” the Princess enquired.

  “Does Your Highness ever do anythin’ else after havin’ listened to that gypsy woman?” Maria asked scornfully. “Fillin’ you up with a lot of nonsense. That’s what she’s doin’! If you ask me, it’s an easy way to earn a louis!”

  “I have not asked you!” the Princess retorted fretfully. “But I am certainly hungry, Maria. Tell Boris to bring my food here and a tray for Miss Winton. I am tired of eating alone.”

  “Will you tell His Highness that when he returns?” Maria asked.

  She spoke with the familiarity of an old and valued servant and Ancella had the impression that the two women enjoyed sparring with each other.

  Equally she wondered who the Prince was and whether he was the Princess’s husband or her son.

  She was to learn the answer a moment later.

  “Children are all the same!” the Princess exclaimed. “Selfish to the core! Thinking only of themselves! Vladimer knows quite well that I like him to be here for meals, but no! He goes off yacht racing, on expeditions up mountains, excursions into Cannes and I am left behind!”

  “Perhaps he is afraid that it would tire you,” Ancella suggested, “if it is your son of whom you are speaking.”

  “Of course I am talking about my son!” the Princess replied.

  Then her voice seemed to soften as she added,

  “He is a good boy at heart, but too like his father. Much too much like his father!”

  Ancella could make no sense of this and she remained silent while the Princess muttered to herself, speaking first of Vladimer, then of Serge, which Ancella gathered after a time was the name of her husband who was now dead.

  She glanced around the bedroom where there was every sort of ornament, objets d’art, porcelain, carved ebonies and exquisite Fabergé boxes, but she could see neither a photograph nor a portrait.

  It was fashionable to have photographs massed on every table, on a piano, on a writing desk and to carry them, as Queen Victoria did, from house to house and wherever she travelled.

  But, while the Princess’s room seemed to be an Aladdin’s cave of fascinating treasures, there were no photographs to help Ancella to know what the late Prince Serge looked like or to portray Prince Vladimer.

  After luncheon the Princess, as if wishing to impress her, showed Ancella her jewels.

  Never had Ancella imagined that any woman could possess such a wealth of stones as emerged from the huge leather-covered boxes that Maria set down beside the bed.

  There were tiaras that looked almost like crowns, fashioned of sapphires and diamonds, rubies, turquoises and pearls. There was one with emeralds so large that Ancella thought that if they were not worn by a Princess anyone would suspect them of being false.

  Each tiara had a necklace, brooches, bracelets and rings to match. Each was more exquisite and more valuable than the last and they glittered in the sunshine until Ancella felt dazzled by them.

  There were also sets of topaz and amethysts and there were jade necklaces so old that they must have come from China when the British were still wearing woad.

  There were ropes of pearls like the one the Princess wore round her neck, all glowing and translucent with the exotic beauty of the Orient, so that Ancella wondered what strange tales, if they could speak, they would relate.

  The Princess soon grew tired of her jewels and returned to her horoscope and talismans, which she showed to Ancella as proudly as she had shown off her jewellery.

  There was a hare’s foot and a lucky gold coin, the tooth of a whale, a piece of strangely shaped coral, the skin of a venomous snake, quite a number of silver medallions blessed by the Pope and an eagle’s claw.

  The withered heart of a bat looked unpleasant, but the Princess told Ancella that she had bought it for a very large sum from the relatives of a woman who had died of a heart attack after breaking the Bank.

  Ancella could not help thinking that the bat’s heart had not brought its previous owner much luck, but she did not like to say so.

  “What do you think this is?” the Princess asked, holding out a small piece of rope.

  “It is obviously rope, ma’am,” Ancella replied. “Has it a very special meaning? ”

  “It was given to me by a Russian Colonel,” the Princess answered. “It was part of a hangman’s rope used at a mass execution in Turkestan!”

  “How horrible!” Ancella exclaimed before she could prevent herself.

  “The Colonel told me it would bring me luck, but I doubt it!” the Princess said.

  “Throw it away!” Ancella cried. “I am certain it is unlucky!”

  “Why should you say that?” the Princess asked.

  “Because I don’t believe that anything that has brought death to one human being can bring luck to another.”

  Ancella thought for a moment that the Princess would be angry with her for speaking so positively, but instead she said surprisingly,

  “Perhaps you are right! I will throw it away!”

  She held it out, expecting Ancella to take it from her; but she felt that she could not handle anything so horrible.

  Instead she looked around and, seeing a waste paper basket, she carried it back to the Princess and waited for her to drop the piece of rope inside.

  “I have a feeling that you are not impressed by my lucky charms,” the Princess pointed out.

  “I cannot believe they are any help,” Ancella answered.

  “You will see stranger ones when you are in the Casino. There is one gambler I know well by sight, who has a matchbox painted half-red and half-black. Inside there is a spider. When the spider tries to emerge from the red side, its owner backs red, when it goes towards the black side, he puts his money on black!”

  Ancella laughed. She could not help it.

  “That is ridiculous!”

  “No one will listen if you talk like that,” the Princess said. “Many gamblers put a spoonful of salt in the pocket of their evening coat to attract the right cards.”

  “How can they believe such nonsense?” Ancella enquired.

  The Princess touched her bat’s heart.

  “If one wants to win,” she said, “one will believe in anything!”

  “You’ll not have a chance of provin’ your luck tonight,” Maria’s voice said from the door, “if Your Highness doesn’t rest!”

  “Very well,” the Princess said with a sigh. “Put my treasures away in my bag and I will try to sleep.”

  Ancella glanced towards the window.

  “Would it be permitted for me to go into the garden?” she asked.

  “Of course,” the Princess answered. “This is your time off. You can do as you like. I shall not want you again until five o’clock, when I shall expect you to amuse me until we have to change for dinner.”

  “Do I dine with you?” Ancella enquired.

  “You will dine downstairs and we will see what that woman is up to with my son!” the Princess replied.

  She saw the surprise on Ancella’s face at her words and asked,

  �
��Have you not heard of that great English beauty, the Marchioness of Chiswick?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You will see her tonight and then you can tell me what you think of her.”

  “Now don’t you start upsettin’ yourself over the Marchioness,” Maria said. “From all I hear, she’s just a guest in the villa like everyone else. You don’t have to worry about her.”

  “I know her type,” the Princess muttered, “and don’t forget, Maria, I was a beauty once myself!”

  “You were indeed, Your Highness!” Maria said with a note of sincerity in her voice. “There wasn’t a woman to touch you in St. Petersburg in the old days.”

  She put the big jewel case away and Ancella, feeling she was no longer needed, curtseyed and went from the room.

  As she went down the stairs, she felt as excited as a small boy let out of school.

  It had been so interesting listening to the Princess and she was fascinated by her. At the same time she knew she wanted to see the garden of the villa and look out at the sea.

  There were several footmen on duty in the hall and they bowed as she pasted them. It was not difficult to find the way through the magnificent salon and out onto the terrace, which she had seen as she had glanced through the Princess’s bedroom window.

  Outside in the sun she realised that the villa was built in a very unusual manner.

  As it was against the side of the cliff, the ground floor was two stories higher than the garden and, from the terrace outside the salon, there was a flight of forty white marble steps.

  On either side of the steps there were other rooms of the villa built sheer against the rock, while the garden comprised the promontory of the Point de Cabéel, encircled with firs, olives and the wide-spreading glossy foliage of the carob trees.

  Ancella remembered her father, who was very knowledgeable on forestry, describing these trees to her and now, she thought excitedly as she walked down the marble steps, she could see one at close quarters.

  She remembered that he had said that Beaulieu and its vicinity were famous for the carob trees.

  “They received their name from the Arabs who introduced them to the Riviera,” he told her. “They were also called ‘St. John’s Bread’ as they are supposed to have supplied the locust beans that formed the food of John the Baptist in the wilderness.”

  “How exciting, Papa!” Ancella enthused when he told her about it. “I would love to see the tree and eat its ‘bread’.”

  The Earl had laughed.

  “You would not enjoy them,” he replied. “In Central Africa locust pods are fed to mules and horses but, although they are sometimes eaten by human beings, they are leathery and have a very disagreeable taste!”

  On another occasion when he talked about the carob trees, he told Ancella that the husks that the swine ate in the parable of The Prodigal Son were undoubtedly the locust pods of the carob and that was why they had been a punishment for the Prodigal’s bad behaviour.

  “What do you think he spent his money on, Papa?” Ancella asked. “Do you think he lost it gambling?”

  Only Ancella would have dared to tease the Earl about an incident in his past about which he was extremely sensitive, having been nagged for so long by his sisters on the subject.

  “I expect he spent it in the proverbial manner, on wine, women and song!” he replied. “But perhaps a portion of it was lost in the Eastern equivalent of Monte Carlo!”

  “I wonder what sort of games they played?” Ancella said, but her father could not enlighten her.

  Now in the shade of the trees she walked towards the sea. On one side of the small promontory a high stone wall protected the garden whilst on the other side there was an exquisite view of the Bay of the Moors where the pirates from the Algerian coast used to land.

  Above it rose the high cliffs climbing higher and higher to a sharp summit, which she knew from the map was Eza.

  The garden was filled with flowers and a fountain was playing in the centre of them. When Ancella reached the balustrade that bordered the sea, she looked back at the perpendicular yellow limestone cliffs behind the villa.

  Out of sight there was the famous, once dangerous, original Corniche road that had been the only way for travellers to journey from Nice to Monte Carlo.

  There had been falls of rock, winds and cold from the snows of the Alps to freeze them on their intrepid journey to Monte Carlo and brigands and robbers to relieve them of their winnings on their return.

  ‘They must have felt it was all worthwhile as long as they could gamble at the tables,’ Ancella thought.

  The whole coast was so beautiful with tropical shrubs and trees growing down the cliff-sides and gorges and she could see the soft green of grass interspersed with blue borage and yellow and red of jonquils and anemones.

  ‘How lucky I am!’ Ancella told herself.

  Then she leant against the balustrade and looked at the sea with its intermingling hues of emerald and sapphire and listened to the waves splashing below her.

  Here was the Mediterranean, redolent with history, which had inspired poets, painters and writers since the beginnings of civilisation.

  Ancella did not know how long she stood there, the music of the waves in her ears, while the scent of flowers in the garden filled the air with fragrance.

  There were stocks, roses, hyacinths and azaleas and she felt as if, together with the sunshine, they swept away not only her cough but also her worries and apprehension about the future.

  It was as if such beauty held her in its arms and nothing could trouble her for the moment.

  Suddenly a tuft of red seaweed which had been flung by the waves onto the rocks below attracted her attention and made her bend further over the balustrade to look at it.

  It was several feet beneath her and she wished that she could collect it and hang it up outside her window to tell her by whether it was moist or dry what sort of day it would be.

  Bending forward she must have dislodged the small cameo brooch she wore at the neck of her new lilac-coloured gown.

  Ancella heard it tinkle as it fell onto the rocks and saw it lying not far from the seaweed and just out of reach of the wash of the waves.

  She stared at it frantically and then looked around to see if there was a gardener or anyone who could retrieve it for her.

  She had very few pieces of jewellery and this brooch was one of her favourites because it had belonged to her mother.

  Since there was no one in sight and the garden seemed to be deserted, she walked along the balustrade to see if by any chance there were steps that could lead her down onto the rocks.

  There were no steps, but Ancella saw an iron ladder attached to a small ancient turret that ended the protective stone wall and might at one time have been used as a watchtower.

  Looking round again to make sure that no one could see her, Ancella picked up her skirts and, climbing over the balustrade, put her foot on the iron ladder and without much difficulty climbed down it.

  As she reached the rocks, she realised that the balustrade had been built out over them and she could walk in the shelter of it and be out of reach of the spray from the waves, although the rocks were in fact somewhat slippery.

  Ancella was, however, a country girl used to walking and climbing and, although she was aware that if she slipped she might fall into the sea, she managed to creep along with her back against the rocks and to retrieve her brooch from where it had fallen.

  She picked up the tuft of red seaweed at the same time. It was the prettiest seaweed she had ever seen with tiny shells attached to it and she was determined to take it back to the villa.

  Hidden under the balustrade she was looking at it when she heard voices and stiffened.

  She felt it would seem somewhat strange if she disclosed herself at this moment, even the gardeners would think it unusual for a lady to climb down the iron ladder and thereby reveal, had there been anyone to watch her, quite an improper amount of an
kle!

  Accordingly, her brooch in one hand, the seaweed in the other, Ancella moved even further under the balustrade and kept still.

  “I thought I would find you here,” a man’s voice said.

  “I hoped you would have the sense to follow me, Freddie,” a woman replied.

  Ancella guessed that Freddie must be the Captain Sudley Maria had referred to so scathingly.

  “I have been longing to talk to you, you know that,” Freddie said. “Oh God, Lily, how long do we have to go on with this charade?”

  “Until His Highness makes up his mind, I suppose.”

  Ancella told herself that the slightly affected dramatic voice must belong to the Marchioness of Chiswick.

  “Surely you can bring him to the point?” Freddie asked.

  “It depends what you mean by that.”

  “Good Lord! You are not suggesting..

  “I am not suggesting anything, Freddie,” the Marchioness interposed. “I intend to marry Vladimer and the sooner he realises it the better! But if it means that I must become his mistress first, then there will be no arguments on that score!”

  “What do you think I should feel about that?”

  “What you have always felt, I suppose – that I must have a rich husband and I am not likely to find anyone richer than the Prince.”

  “Blast his eyes!” Freddie ejaculated. “Why cannot I break the Bank for once in my life?”

  “If you broke a dozen Banks, I doubt if it would last you long,” the Marchioness replied in a tired voice. “You know as well as I do that money runs through your fingers like quicksand or whatever the expression is!”

  “You don’t hang on to it very long yourself, old girl,” Freddie remarked.

  “That is why I have to bring Vladimer up to scratch and as quickly as possible.”

  “I cannot think why he is being so slow about it,” Freddie remarked. “He seemed keen enough in London.”

  “I think it’s because his mother is here. I hate her and she hates me! That grotesque creature, Boris, repeats everything to her, I know. That is why we must be careful. I knew when I found him listening outside my door the other night that we must take no chances.”