umbrella and gave it to her. ‘Then go, my dear, and don’t look back. It didn’t happen, none of it.’ She stepped back and picked up the girl’s purse where it had fallen. ‘Don’t forget this.’
The girl took it. ‘And I won’t forget you.’
The woman smiled. ‘On the whole, I’d rather you did.’
The girl managed a small smile. ‘I see what you mean.’
She turned and hurried off, clutching the umbrella. The woman watched her go, examined the bullet hole in her hat, put it on, then opened her own umbrella and walked away in the opposite direction.
Two blocks north, she found the Lincoln parked at the kerb. The man behind the wheel was out and waiting for her as she approached, a large black man wearing a grey chauffeur’s suit.
‘You okay?’ he asked.
‘I’m here, aren’t I?’
She got into the front passenger seat. She closed the door, went round and got behind the wheel. She strapped herself in and tapped his shoulder. ‘Where’s that flask of yours, Hedley, the Bushmills whiskey?’
He took a silver flask from the glove compartment, unscrewed the cap and passed it to her. She swallowed once, twice, then handed it back.
‘Wonderful.’
She took out a silver case, selected a cigarette and lit it with the car lighter, then blew out a long stream of smoke. ‘All the bad habits are so pleasurable.’
‘You shouldn’t be doing that. It’s not good for you.’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Don’t say that.’ He was upset. ‘Did you get the bastard?’
‘Cohan? No, something got in the way. Let’s head back to the Plaza and I’ll tell you.’ She was finished by the time they were halfway there and he was horrified.
‘My God, what you trying to do? Clean up the whole world now?’
‘I see. You mean I should have stood by and waited while those two animals raped the girl and probably cut her throat?’
‘Okay, okay!’ he sighed and nodded. ‘What about Senator Cohan?’
‘We’ll fly back to London tomorrow. He’s due there in a few days, showing his face on what he pretends is Presidential business. I’ll get him then.’
‘And then what? Where does it end?’ Hedley grunted. ‘It all seems unreal.’
He pulled up at the Plaza and she smiled mischievously like a child. ‘I’m a great trial to you, Hedley, I know that, but what would I do without you? See you in the morning.’
He went round and opened the door for her and watched her go up the steps.
‘And what would I do without you?’ he asked softly, then got behind the wheel and drove away.
The night doorman was waiting at the top. ‘Lady Helen!’ he said. ‘It’s wonderful to see you. I heard you were in.’
‘And you, George.’ She kissed him on the cheek. ‘How’s that new daughter of yours?’
‘Great, just great.’
‘I’m going back to London in the morning. I’ll see you again soon.’
‘’Night, Lady Helen.’
She went in, and a man in a raincoat who had been waiting for a cab said, ‘Hey, who was that woman?’
‘Lady Helen Lang. She’s been coming here for years.’
‘Lady, huh? Funny, she doesn’t sound English.’
‘That’s ’cause she’s from Boston. Married an English Lord ages ago. People say she’s worth millions.’
‘Really? Well, she seems quite something.’
‘You can say that again. Nicest person you’ll ever meet.’
Born in Boston in 1933 to one of Boston’s wealthiest families, Helen Darcy was raised as an only child as her mother had died giving birth to her. Fortunately, her father truly loved her and she loved him just as much in return. In spite of his enormous business interests in steel, shipbuilding and oil, he took the time to lavish every attention on her, and she was worth it. Enormously intelligent, she went to the best private schools, and later, Vassar, where she found she had a special flair for foreign languages.
To her father, only the best was good enough and, himself a Rhodes Scholar as a young man, he sent her to England to finish her graduate education at St Hugh’s College at Oxford University.
Many of her father’s business associates in London put themselves out to entertain her and she became popular in London society. She was twenty-four when she met Sir Roger Lang, a baronet and one-time lieutenant colonel in the Scots Guards, now chairman of a merchant bank with close associations with her father.
She adored him at once and the attraction was mutual. There was one flaw, however. Although he was unmarried, there was a fifteen years’ age difference between them and, at the time, it simply seemed too much for her.
She returned to America, confused and uncertain about the future, for business held no attraction for her and she’d had enough of academia. There were plenty of young men, of course, if only for the wrong reason – her father’s enormous wealth – but no one suited her, because in the background there was always Roger Lang, with whom she stayed in touch once a week by telephone.
Finally, one weekend at their beach house on Cape Cod, she said to her father across the breakfast table, ‘Daddy, don’t be mad at me, but I’m thinking of moving back to England…and getting married.’
He leaned back and smiled. ‘Does Roger Lang know about this?’
‘Dammit, you knew.’
‘Ever since you came back from Oxford. I was wondering when you’d come to your senses.’
She poured tea, a habit she’d acquired in England. ‘The answer is…he doesn’t know.’
‘Then I suggest you fly to London and tell him,’ and he returned to his New York Times.
And so, a new life began for Helen Darcy, now Lady Helen Lang, divided between the house in South Audley Street and the country estate by the sea in North Norfolk, called Compton Place. There was only one fly in the ointment. In spite of every effort to have a child, she was bedevilled by miscarriages year after year, so that by the time her son, Peter, was born when she was thirty-three, it seemed a major miracle.
Peter
