tapped at the door of the sickroom.
‘Come in,’ Sir Nigel called.
Trying to give the impression he’d only just that second arrived, Rudy went in breezily.
Sir Nigel, who was sitting in bed propped up by pillows, looked anything but pleased to see him, while Simon gave him a sharp glance from tawny-green eyes, and a cool nod.
Biting back his chagrin with an effort, Rudy returned his brother-in-law’s nod.
With an uncomfortable feeling of coming in a poor second, he always felt threatened by Simon’s undoubted good looks and masculinity, his air of power and authority.
Turning to the man in bed, he asked as genially as possible, ‘How are you today, Sir Nigel?’
‘As well as can be expected, thank you.’
The old devil was only just civil, Rudy thought petulantly. In spite of the fact that he had been married to Sir Nigel’s granddaughter for almost three years, he was still shown none of the cordiality the baronet reserved for the other members of his family.
Nursing his grievance, Rudy went on, ‘Lucy wanted to return these books you lent her, so she asked me to call in on my way up to town.’
‘How is the dear girl?’
‘Her progress is good since she’s been home.’
Clearly making an effort, Sir Nigel asked, ‘Won’t you sit down?’
Never comfortable at the Hall, Rudy said, ‘Thanks, but I must get on my way. As Simon will tell you, we’re up to the neck in it at the bank. Apart from the normal grind there are evening meetings scheduled for the next few weeks. Then I have to face the journey home. It’s at times like this I wish I’d never given up my flat.’
It was an old and familiar complaint.
Too many nights spent in town had made Lucy suspect him of having another affair, and she had put pressure on him to give up his rented flat.
Proving he had a human side, Simon said, ‘I have to fly to New York tomorrow, so if you need to stay in town any night during the next two or three weeks you can have the use of my flat while I’m away.’
‘That would help enormously.’
‘I’ll let you have the keys before I go.’
‘Thanks. Well, I must be off,’ Rudy said.
‘Give Lucy my love,’ Sir Nigel said.
‘I will.’
His head full of what he’d overheard, Rudy closed the door behind him and hurried down the stairs.
Here he was, having to work for a living, he thought resentfully, while that old devil was talking about giving away a priceless diamond. Probably, if Maria was already dead, to someone he had never even met.
It just wasn’t fair.
While he drove up to London, Rudy mulled it over. There must be some way he could turn the situation to his advantage…
Suppose he could trace Maria and her descendents before Simon got back from the States? That would give him a head start, and provide some interesting, and hopefully lucrative, options…
Failing that, he could kill the proverbial two birds with one stone—make some capital out of it and get a bit of his own back, by selling the story to the Press.
Oomphed up a little, it should be worth quite a few thousand. ‘Aristocratic family…’ ‘Veil of secrecy…’ ‘Priceless diamond…’ He could almost see the headlines now. ‘Dying baronet seeking pregnant heiress who vanished from the ancestral home in 1946…’
Simon, who had glanced at him so sharply, might well suspect the source, but so long as neither he nor Sir Nigel could prove anything…
Rudy grinned to himself in anticipation.
But though he would like nothing better than to see the pair of them squirm, instinct told him the first option might be the better one, so he’d try that to start with.
Either way, what he had so fortuitously overheard would give him a chance to thumb his nose at the Bell-Farringdon family, none of whom had thought him good enough to marry Lucy…
Wall Street, New York
Some ten days later, Simon Farringdon received a report from his private detective which read:
I was able to establish that shortly after she disappeared from home, Maria Bell-Farringdon changed her name to Mary Bell.
Having checked the available records, I discovered that in March 1947, in the district of Whitechapel, a Mary Bell had registered the birth of a daughter, Emily Charlotte, father unknown.
The address had been given as 42 Bold Lane.
I kept searching, and discovered that in 1951 the same Mary Bell had married a man named Paul Yancey, who later adopted her daughter.
Emily Yancey married a man named Bolton in 1967; however, the marriage ended in divorce some ten years later. In 1980 Emily had a daughter whose birth was registered as father unknown. Emily died some six months later. The baby, named Charlotte, was adopted by a Mr and Mrs Christie…
Bayswater, London.
‘How do I look?’ Unusually for her, Charlotte was nervous. The lilac chiffon dress, bought in a hurry during her half-hour lunch break, had looked reasonably sedate in the store. Now at its highest point the asymmetrically cut skirt seemed higher than she recalled, and the plunging neckline a lot lower.
Surveying the lovely, heart-shaped face framed in a cloud of silky dark hair, and the luminous grey eyes, her flatmate answered, ‘So beautiful it’s sickening.’
‘No, seriously.’
‘I’m being serious. I’d kill for cheekbones like yours and naturally curly hair, not to mention your ears. I always think nice ears are so sexy.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with your ears,’ Charlotte said crisply.
‘There’s nothing right with them. They’re seriously big, and the lobes are so long I look like a spaniel. Whereas your ears are small and neat, and you’ve hardly any lobes to speak of.’
‘Which is a nuisance. It makes it awkward to wear earrings. But to get back to the point. I meant the dress; will it do?’ Charlotte asked.
‘Do? I can only hope the poor devil hasn’t got a weak heart…’
The two girls had been flatmates since Charlotte had answered the door one evening, almost two years ago, to find a tall, rangy girl with spiky blonde hair and a thin, intelligent face standing there.
‘I’ve just been next door visiting Macy,’ the newcomer had announced. ‘She mentioned that you had a two-bedroomed flat and were thinking of getting someone to share.’
‘I’ve
