Bloody Royal Prints (22 page)

What next? Something had to be done. But what? She had been over and over the problem to no avail. She was still worrying about it when Dinah called.

“I got
Secrets
this morning and I recognized the image!” Dinah said. “May I come over and show you what I saw? And Coleman's with me—she recognized it, too. We'd like to discuss it with you.”

“Oh, yes, please come right away,” Rachel said. Had they recognized the woman in the picture? If so, did that mean the woman was famous? Would fame make the image even more damaging?

•••

Dinah and Coleman came in together, bubbling over with information. Dinah started talking before she sat down.

“This work is a copy of a lithograph by an American artist, Arnold Rönnebeck, made in about 1930. He died in 1947. He wasn't famous, and she might have gotten away with it, but a friend of ours used it as an illustration in a book she wrote. Both Coleman and I recognize it.”

Rachel looked bewildered. “What does it mean?”

“It means she copied it, and pretended it was her work—it's a forgery. And it certainly isn't a portrait of anyone connected to the Palace.”

“How could she have done it?” Rachel asked.

“Copying another print is easy. Trace the original, using a pencil and very thin paper. Once that's done, place the traced image on a prepared etching plate. Go over the traced drawing with a very sharp pencil, so the lines are impressed onto the waxed surface of the plate. Then take an etching needle and score the lines impressed in the wax all the way to the plate, exposing the copper. Pop it into the usual acid bath—the acid does its work, biting the plate. Neutralize, clean off the wax, and you've got an etched plate,” Dinah said.

“Do we think the earlier works were forgeries, too?” Rachel asked.

“Almost certainly. They were probably taken from cheap reproductions that were inspired by the real thing,” Coleman said.

“Why did she do it?”

“She probably had no ideas, no talent to originate art, so she stole someone else's work,” Coleman said.

“We think all of her prints are copies,” Dinah said. “We could probably prove it, but it would be time-consuming. If we confront her, I'm sure she'll confess.”

“I've always suspected everything about those wretched prints was a racket. It's time I called her and confronted her. We'll try to get the truth from her, although sometimes I wonder if she knows what truth is,” Rachel said. “Excuse me while I go into my office, phone her, and send my car to get her—she won't be able to resist that.”

The three women sat down, chatted desultorily, and sipped coffee while they waited. Twenty minutes later, Stephanie pranced in. She was in powder blue again, a dress with a matching coat, and appeared to be in fine spirits.

“I enjoyed riding in your car,” she said to Rachel. “You should lend it to me. You can't need it all the time, and I get tired of taxis.”

Rachel ignored her remarks, and held up
Secrets
. “Have you seen this?”

“Oh, yes, it's too bad, isn't it? The Royals will be so upset.” She shrugged. “As you know, I couldn't get the money the thieves wanted.”

“Stephanie, we know this is a copy, a forgery of an American lithograph. Coleman and Dinah have seen the original.”

Stephanie broke into tears. “I didn't think anyone would recognize it. Just my luck—American art experts see it,” she said through her tears. “I hate these damned prints. I wish I'd never seen Queen Victoria's. I wish I'd never seen the bloody prints. They're ugly and boring.”

“Of course someone recognized it. Maybe a lot of people have. You have not heard from them yet. But why are you doing this? To hurt the Queen?”

“No. I'm related to the Royal Family, and I'm very fond of them. I had to pretend to be a Republican to get the flat in the Little Palace. It was the only way I knew to get a decent place to live,” Stephanie said, tears still pouring down her face.

“But if not to hurt the Palace, why did you tell all these lies? Put those pictures in the paper?”

“I need money. I thought this would be an easy way to get it,” Stephanie said.

Rachel frowned. “Who did you think was going to pay you to stop printing these images?” she asked.

“I thought
you
would. That's why I came to see you, to tell you about the stolen prints. Everyone knows you love the Queen, and that you're rich. And you have that rich American friend, Heyward Bain. I thought he would help, if you asked him. If you'd paid up when the first print appeared in
Secrets
, I wouldn't be in this mess. Why didn't you? You can afford it,” Stephanie said. She was still crying, but her tone was angry.

Rachel, exasperated, shook her head. “Intelligent, law-abiding people do not pay off blackmailers or kidnappers or other criminals. It may be illegal to do so. It is certainly illegal to try to extort money as you have done,” Rachel said.

Stephanie cried harder. “Are you going to have me arrested? Will I have to go to jail?” she whimpered.

“I do not know,” Rachel said. “Why are you so desperate for money that you would forge art and extort money?”

“I've done bad things. I'm being blackmailed. If I don't pay the blackmailer I'll be exposed, and all sorts of awful things will be in the papers, and I'll go to prison.” She was crying louder, so loud the others could barely understand her words.

“I'd like to smack her the way people in films do when they want to shut up a hysterical woman,” Coleman murmured to Dinah.

“I know,” Dinah said. “I can't stand crybabies.”

“Stephanie, please compose yourself,” said Rachel. “I will see about getting you some tea. Dinah, Coleman, will you help me carry this tray back to the kitchen?” She stood and moved across the room, not looking to see whether Dinah and Coleman followed.

In the hallway to the kitchen she said softly, “What are we going to do with her? She is not ashamed or repentant. She seems to be totally lacking in morals, ethics. She is swamped in entitlement. You heard her. She thinks I should give her my money, my car, just because I have it, and she does not. I do not understand that kind of mentality.”

“She's becoming hysterical,” Coleman said. “I think we ought to try to get her to calm down. Do you have a room where she can rest, while we try to figure out what to do with her? I have to leave soon. I have an early date this evening, and I need to get some sleep this afternoon. I'm still jet-lagged.”

“Yes,” Rachel said. “I will ask Eileen, my maid, to take her up to the guest room, and stay with her. I do not want Stephanie alone while she is here, or making phone calls. She is too disturbed. Who knows what she will say or do?”

“Coleman, go ahead and have James take you home. I'll stay with Rachel,” Dinah said.

“Thanks. I'll send James back with the car when I get home. I'll talk to you tomorrow,” Coleman said.

Before Rachel and Dinah returned to the sitting room, Dinah said, “I think Stephanie's a candidate for Heyward's new clinic.”

“What clinic?” Rachel asked.

“It's a new project of his. He has this idea about helping people who can't understand the difference between right and wrong. They're not exactly insane, and putting them in jail solves nothing—they learn how to become even worse. He and some other people who share his ideas think maybe they can be saved. They've opened special clinics to treat them—one in London, another in New York.”

“Would he get her in the clinic?” Rachel asked.

“I'm sure he would. I'll call him in a few minutes, but I doubt anything can be done today. Where can she go for tonight, or maybe for a day or two?” Dinah asked.

“I will call her friend Isobel Strange to come and get her. I am sure she can stay with Isobel overnight, if Heyward can get her in the clinic tomorrow,” Rachel said.

Rachel waited while Dinah called Heyward, who promised to find Stephanie a spot in the new clinic by Sunday morning.

“What is the name of the clinic?” Rachel asked.

“The New Eden. Heyward says it's where people can learn about right and wrong and learn to make better choices: Think about Eve and the original Eden. He says it's designed to help the Stephanies of the world. He'll have a car and a nurse collect Stephanie from the Little Palace Sunday morning at ten,” Dinah said.

Rachel called Isobel Strange, who hadn't known where Stephanie was, and sounded frantic about her disappearance. She was relieved to learn that Stephanie was with Rachel, and accepted Rachel's offer of the car to pick her up. She was with Rachel and Dinah twenty minutes later.

Rachel thought Isobel looked worse than ever. She wore the same tattered and ugly clothes she'd had on when Rachel saw her at the Little Palace. Was it necessary to look that bad? She would talk to Julia about Isobel's situation, try to find out more about her. She looked as if she deliberately tried to be a fright. But why would anyone be deliberately repulsive?

Isobel—Rachel refused to use her ugly nickname—started talking as soon as she knew Stephanie was upstairs and safe. “I know what everyone thinks of her. She can't help the way she is. Her parents were killed in an automobile accident when she was a baby. She was put in foster care, where she was sexually abused. She wasn't removed until she was five, when she was put into another foster home, where her caregivers rented her out. She was very pretty and they took many photos of her and sold them. Some went to decent magazines and papers, others to pornographers. When she was twelve and too old for the men who had used her, she was sent to a children's home. She was too old for it, but no one knew what to do with her. That's where I met her. She didn't know what was true and what was false. She told me she was a princess, and she named herself Stephanie after a real princess. She still doesn't know what is real and what is not real. She talks about people connected to the Royal Family who come to the Little Palace. No royal visitors have been anywhere near the place. She talks about being close to the Royal Family. It isn't true. She has never had any connection with them. She is not descended from Queen Victoria.

“She ran away from the children's home, and when I next saw her she was living with an old man who shared her with his friends. He'd found her on the streets, and, bad as her life was with him, it was the best she ever knew. What little education she had, she got in that man's house. When he died, she was lost again. I took her with me to the Remembrance Society. They'll help anyone who'll say they're anti-Royal. That's how we have flats at the Little Palace.

“Stephanie's not very bright, but she can be very sweet, and she's still pretty. I think Ivan would have married her if he hadn't been killed.”

“Who do you think killed him?” Rachel asked.

“I don't know. I heard that the police think Stephanie did it, but I don't believe it. She had no reason to,” Isobel said.

“Well, we think we have found a good place for her.” Dinah explained about the clinic and Isobel seemed satisfied with the idea of Stephanie entering The New Eden.

“I'll visit her as soon as they say I can,” Isobel said. “May I take her back with me now? I'll have her ready tomorrow morning.”

“Yes, my maid—her name is Eileen—will show you upstairs to her room, and help you bring her downstairs, if she is too upset to walk by herself. My driver will take you both back to the Little Palace.”

Rachel summoned Eileen, and introduced Miss Strange to the maid, who escorted Stephanie's friend up the stairs.

Rachel returned to the library, and Dinah stood up. “I have to go, too,” Dinah said. “What a horrible story about Stephanie. I disliked her so much. I still do, but now I'm also sorry for her. How does she seem? I'm ashamed of how I've thought of her.”

“I didn't see her with Isobel, but the woman is said to be her best friend. I think she'll be glad to see her, but who knows? I know she'll be thrilled to ride back to the Little Palace in my car.”

After Rachel walked Dinah to the door, she returned to the library to settle down and think about all she'd learned today.

When she heard the story of Stephanie's life, Rachel had flinched. It was not her story, but it could have been. Like Isobel, she had been plain. Her plainness had saved her from many of the terrible things that had happened to Stephanie. Also, as bad as the Oklahoma William Brown Home for Orphans had been, the places where Stephanie spent her childhood were apparently far worse.

No one seemed to have helped Stephanie. Several people had befriended Rachel along the way: Luna in the orphanage had helped her—why had she never called Luna or written to her? She could have made the wretched woman's life better. Mrs. Watson in Chicago had been nice to her, had tried to be her friend. Rachel had never written to thank her, or to tell Mrs. Watson how she was doing.

When she moved to Cambridge, Gregory had been wonderful to her, and she hadn't spoken to him in months. How could she have been so rude, so ungrateful, so forgetful of all he had done for her? Angela Fox, Ransome's secretary, had also been helpful and friendly. Where was she now? Rachel had never even sent her so much as a Christmas card. Clara the hairdresser—she should have sent her a card, too.

She berated herself for what she had become—selfish, self-involved. She had expressed her gratitude to Ransome and to Heyward, her great patrons, but not to the people who had helped her along the way. Worse still, she could have helped so many others, especially children who had been abandoned or neglected as she had been. She might have been able to save some children. She might have made a few children's homes better places.

Rachel stood up and paced the room. It wasn't too late. Thanks to Heyward, she had plenty of money. Maybe Heyward would know how she could find a way to help unfortunate children. It was time to give back. Time to rethink, rearrange her life. Every morning she set aside time to be thankful. She would still do so, but she would also make sure that every day she did something for someone else.