Empress Bianca (25 page)

More convinced than ever that Ferdie knew about Bianca and himself, Philippe headed towards the study and sat behind his host’s desk. He took out his handkerchief, covered the receiver of the telephone with it and then, removing his Mont Blanc fountain pen from his pocket, used it to dial Antonio Gagliari at home.

The butler answered. ‘Tell Mr Gagliari that Señor Piedraplata wishes to speak with him,’ Philippe announced then waited for him to come to the telephone.

‘Ferdie,’ Antonio said when he picked up the receiver. ‘This is a surprise. What can I do for you?’

‘It’s Philippe Mahfud, not Ferdie. I’m calling from his house. We have a little problem, and we need some assistance with it.’

‘What sort of problem?’

‘The problem isn’t the problem; it’s the solution. We need a permanent solution, and we need it quickly.’

‘How quickly?’

‘Friday.’

Antonio Gagliari sucked in air between his teeth. Philippe heard it clearly. ‘I have a friend who might be able to assist you. I suggest you meet him on neutral territory. Somewhere crowded, like a busy street corner. Say the corner of Ascencion and Madrigal.’

‘That will be fine.’

‘Eleven o’clock tomorrow morning?’

‘I’ll be there.’

‘Wear a white carnation in the lapel of your jacket and carry a rolled-up newspaper under your right arm. He’ll approach you.’

‘Ring me at home later. Say after midnight, if that’s not too late for you.’

‘We’re night owls in this family.’

‘How much will the service cost?’

‘Why don’t you credit an extra $25,000 to my account in Geneva, and we’ll forget we ever had this conversation?’

‘Thanks for your help, Antonio. It’s much appreciated.’

‘Think nothing of it, Philippe. We businessmen have to stick together and help each other out when we can.’

When they hung up, Philippe let out a sigh of relief. ‘My God,’ he thought, ‘he didn’t even want to know the identity of the person we’re
wasting.’ That level of professionalism took the breath away. It was just another contract.

The delicious irony of arranging a contract on someone from the victim’s own desk was not lost on Philippe. He almost felt sorry for Ferdie. Almost: but not quite. With a sense of accomplishment, Philippe walked back outside. He had always wondered if he could kill someone.

Now he knew the answer.

D
uarte dropped Ferdie off at five-forty five sharp, as was his habit. Instead of taking the car to the garage at the back of the house before having a relaxing drink in the servant’s television room, he followed Bianca’s instructions, issued at midday when she had sent him to Sintra to pick up a dress she wanted to wear the following evening.

His instructions were to drop Ferdie at the front door and leave immediately to collect Bianca and Manolito at the house of Señor and Señora d’Olivera. To ensure that Duarte would not dally, she had specifically forbidden him from entering the house, even to use the lavatory, telling him if he did so she would dismiss him instantly. Knowing that Bianca, for all her generosity, would carry out her threat if she ever discovered that he had deviated from her orders even slightly, the chauffeur adhered to them punctiliously, as Bianca knew he would. The virtue of having well-trained servants was that you knew precisely how they would react.

As soon as Ferdie was out of the car, he sped off. Duarte did not realize that Ferdie was now walking into a house where there were no servants at all, all of them having been given the afternoon off while he was en route from Sintra to Mexico City with the dress that Bianca had ordered him to collect. The last he saw of the Señor, therefore, was when he looked in his rear-view mirror and saw him entering the house through the front door.

Ferdie walked into the hall. The house was still, but that was not unusual. Stillness is always an overriding characteristic of big houses with a lot of staff, no matter how many people buzz around in the background.

This is one of the less renowned perks of great wealth, so even though it may not buy happiness, it can and frequently does buy a superficial calm born of a well-tended and structured environment.

‘I’m home,’ Ferdie shouted, the cue for Manolito to come bounding up to him. He did not know that his son was at the d’Oliveras’, although he was aware that Raoul d’Olivera’s driver had taken his son there, along with Bianca, that afternoon.

Nothing.

‘Manolito, Papa’s home,’ he shouted expectantly.

Still nothing.

No Manolito, no dogs. The latter must be having a bath, Ferdie presumed, knowing Bianca’s mania for cleanliness. She insisted that the dogs be bathed twice a week, which, he knew, was not good for their coats. Fortunately it was now only a matter of time before he and the dogs were rid of her. What he did not know was that she had locked the dogs in the laundry room, having given them, in typical Bianca fashion, raw prime ribs of beef to keep them quiet.

Ferdie listened carefully. He could vaguely hear what sounded like a television set playing in the nursery. ‘Ah, Manolito must be up there,’ he decided, and set off down the passage past his office, heading towards the stairs which led to his son’s room. Ferdie’s last thought was of Manolito, his last sight the Louis XIV console table with its vast arrangement of orchids, ginger lilies and cocoa leaves in the passage just past the door to his office.

No sooner had he passed that office than the hitman, wearing surgeon’s gloves, stepped out of the room into the passage behind him. He knocked him out with one blow to the back of the head, delivered with Ferdie’s own gun. Philippe had informed the killer where he would find it. With consummate professionalism, the assassin bent down, removed Ferdie’s Gucci loafers to prevent them from scuffing the carpet as he dragged him upstairs and, careful not to dislocate Ferdie’s shoulders lest the pathologist do a thorough job at the autopsy, grasped him from the front under his armpits and pulled him up the stairs to his bedroom.

Once there, the hitman hauled Ferdie up onto the bed. Placing a silencer on the gun, he stood over him momentarily then briskly put the muzzle directly onto Ferdie’s ribcage over his heart. To ensure that serendipity could play no part and that Ferdie might somehow survive a
bullet delivered at point-blank range into his heart, he pulled the trigger twice.

Blood oozed from Ferdie’s chest cavity onto a counterpane that Bianca had ordered to be specially made at Porthault. The hitman, satisfied that he had accomplished his task, pulled back Ferdie’s eyelids to check that he was dead. Then he removed the silencer, placed the gun in Ferdie’s left hand and ambled out of the house so unconcernedly that an onlooker would have taken him for a lazy servant dragging his heels in the performance of his duties.

At the gate, the killer sauntered out into the street with all the casual ease of a servant going home for the evening. He continued to amble down the street until an old pink Pontiac passed him, coming to a stop. To an onlooker, the driver appeared to be offering him a lift. He jumped in, and the two men drove off, again at a slow enough pace to avoid notice.

Bianca looked at her watch. It was only a quarter past six. Her servants were off until seven. There was little prospect, therefore, of them returning before that time. She knew that on no account could she return home until after the servants had done so. How could she stretch out this visit for another hour? Whatever Gloria d’Olivera’s virtues, they did not include wit or sparkle, and the conversation had been so leaden that Bianca already felt as if she were an athlete pushing a two-ton cannonball up to the top of a mountain peak.

Just then the d’Olivera butler came to inform his mistress and her guest that Duarte had arrived. ‘Give him a cool drink,’ Gloria d’Olivera responded, ‘and tell him the Señora will be with him when we’ve finished out chat.’

In desperation Bianca decided she must do something to remove the possibility of any suspicion in the future that she had lingered on selfservingly.

Pressing her right hand against her temple and covering her right eye and forehead with her fingers, she said: ‘You know? My head’s been bothering me slightly all day. I really should’ve gone to bed in a darkened room… That’s the only thing that works when you get a headache…but not for anything would I have missed the pleasure of seeing you here, in your own home…’

‘Can I get you some aspirin?’

‘That would be kind,’ Bianca said as her hostess pressed the buzzer on the wall three times.

‘It’s tension, of course,’ Bianca said. ‘I don’t think I’m being disloyal to my husband if I tell you something you most likely already know. He suffers from depression and he has these “turns”…’

‘I’d heard that his health fluctuates…’

The butler appeared again in the doorway. ‘Please fetch some aspirin for Señora Piedraplata,’ Gloria d’Olivera ordered imperiously.

The butler nodded assent.

‘Ferdie’s started another of his depressions,’ Bianca confided. ‘He can be very trying when the mood takes him…the tension is probably the reason that I’m having this headache.’

‘My poor friend, is there anything I can do?’

‘Would it be too great a liberty to ask you if I could lie down in one of your guest rooms for an hour or so? If I could just rest for that amount of time, it would make all the difference.’

‘My dear, of course you can. Come with me.’

Gloria led the way to a bedroom at the back of the house overlooking a courtyard. The minister’s wife proudly indicated an imperial-sized double bed. Bianca winced, not out of pain but because the lady’s taste was so execrable that even Bianca was revolted by it. The furniture staring her in the face was a caricature: an over-carved, overpainted, over-gilded, over-sized bedroom suite in a blend of the worst features of the Rococo period. ‘And I thought the drawing-room was tasteless,’ Bianca thought to herself, knowing that her hostess would be waiting for a compliment.

‘What an inviting bed,’ Bianca said in her most dulcet tones, as she congratulated herself for not actually having lied. ‘I’ll bet Señor Cassia made it.’

Señor Cassia was Mexico City’s premier purveyor of carved furniture, most of which was crudely and hastily executed at extortionate prices for the
nouveaux riches
to procure as future antiques for their progeny.

‘He did,’ said Gloria d’Olivera proudly. ‘In fact, he carved all the furniture in the house.’

‘You mean, both the drawing-room furniture and this?’

‘Oh, no, my dear. I mean the furniture in each and every room of our home, except, of course, the servant’s quarters. That we got at Calorblanco,’ she said with a nervous little laugh.

Bianca clutched her temple and winced again. ‘I mustn’t laugh,’ she said. ‘It makes the pain worse. But Calorblanco…that is funny.’

‘Laughing hurts me too when I have my headaches. Come, my dear, lie down here,’ Gloria said, making to turn down the bedspread.

‘No need to bother,’ Bianca said. ‘I’ll just lie on top of it. Will you wake me up in an hour?’

‘Seven-twenty it is then. I’ll have your aspirin sent in to you right now.

‘If you need anything else, please don’t hesitate to let me know.’

‘You are too kind,’ Bianca said sweetly, beaming her a tiny smile of gratitude.

As she reclined on the bed with her eyes closed, images of what was happening - or had happened - at her house flashed past her eyes. Was Ferdie being strangled? Shot? Was he being hacked to death with a machete? Try as she might, she could not put the images out of her mind.

Finally, sick to her stomach, she rushed to the lavatory and threw up. As she was kneeling on the floor over the bowl, it occurred to Bianca that this unintended proof of illness was providential. Vomiting, after all, was evidence of a severe headache. So, fastidious though she normally was, and sickened though she would ordinarily have been by what she was about to do, she allowed some of the vomit to miss the lavatory. It trickled down the front of the bowl to the vibrant green pattern of the tiles on the floor. Bianca returned to the bed and lay down again, waiting for the wakeup call. At exactly seven-twenty five her hostess knocked softly on the door and opened it quietly, saying: ‘Time to get up, Bianca.’

Bianca made a great display of slowly opening her eyes, as if she had been in a deep sleep. ‘Is it time already? I’m feeling much better now, though I have to warn you, I had a little accident in your toilet, and I’ve left a bit of a mess on the floor.’

‘Think nothing of it,’ Gloria said graciously.

‘I don’t know how I would’ve managed without you,’ Bianca said, getting up and slipping on her red and navy Ferragamo shoes. ‘Thank you so much.’

‘Would you like something before you go?’

‘It’s kind of you, but I think not,’ Bianca replied, advancing towards Gloria, who picked up the cue and started to escort her towards the front of the house. ‘My husband is waiting for us. His greatest joy is playing with
Manolito. I’ve already eaten into an hour and a half of his time, so we mustn’t inconvenience you further.’

‘It’s been a pleasure, my dear. While you were sleeping, I checked at the back of the house where Manolito has been playing with the cook’s three-year-old son. They’ve been having the time of their lives.’

‘I’m so glad you’re like me. I always let my children play with the servants’ kids. It’s good for them to grow up being able to relate to all categories of citizen, I believe,’ Bianca said.

Just then Manolito came into the hall with the butler. ‘Mama,’ he said excitedly, obviously pleased to see his stepmother. She tousled his hair and drew him to her so that she could snuggle with him while standing up. ‘I hear you’ve been a very good boy and you’ve been having a very exciting afternoon,’ she said, ‘but the time has come to say goodbye to nice Señora d’Olivera. Now be a good boy and hold out your hand the way Mama has been teaching you and shake hands like a proper English gentleman.’

Gloria smiled as Manolito extended his little hand. ‘What an adorable little boy he is,’ she said.

‘Yes. Daddy and I love him madly. Don’t we, my darling son?’ Bianca said, stroking his hair while thanking her hostess for having had them for tea. She then took the child by the hand and walked towards the vehicle whose engine Duarte had running.

Manolito, of course, was not Bianca’s son at all, but she had grown to love the little boy. Moreover, the way she had come to be his ‘mother’was not her fault at all, but Ferdie’s. Manolito had remained more attached to Amanda than to Bianca, so he had taken steps to ensure that his new wife would become Manolito’s primary mother by instructing his lawyers to inform his ex-wife that it would be in everyone’s best interests if she saw her son only twice a year. Furthermore Ferdie had stipulated in his will that, if he should die before Manolito achieved his majority, his custody of the child was to be transferred to Bianca.

Now, as Bianca journeyed home with Manolito to face the outcome of Philippe’s plan, her thoughts turned to Amanda and her predecessor’s relationship with the little boy. If Ferdie were indeed dead, he would inherit half his late father’s assets, the other half going to his widow. Amanda, as his mother, would have control over all the child’s assets unless Bianca could obtain guardianship of the boy. She only hoped that Philippe had this complication under control, otherwise she could foresee
Amanda becoming a problem for the remainder of their lives.

By this time, Duarte was steering the car into the driveway of the Piedraplata family home. ‘The place is crawling with police,’ Bianca remarked, steeling herself against what she was about to discover. ‘I wonder what’s happened.’

‘I don’t know, Señora,’ the old retainer replied. ‘Everything was fine when I dropped Señor Piedraplata off.’

The driver pulled the car up under the porte-cochère, jumped out and made to open his employer’s door. Before he could do so, however, a policeman beat him to it.

‘What’s happened?’ Bianca asked.

‘Who wants to know?’ the policeman retorted.

‘I am Señora Piedraplata.’

‘I’ll take you to my captain.’

‘What’s happened?’ Bianca demanded, determined to display what she judged to be the correct level of innocent ignorance. ‘I want to know.’

The policeman suddenly softened. ‘The captain will tell you, Señora,’ he said with a mixture of kindness and embarrassment as he escorted her into her own drawing-room.’ Please wait here.’