Empress Bianca (56 page)

‘Bianca’s too tough to kill herself,’ Clara said. ‘But I do like the idea of giving her a life sentence of public revilement through exposure. I say “yes”. It’s a good idea. Let’s do it.’

‘I say we get in touch with the Mahfud family and knock heads together,’ Amanda said.

‘I’m not so sure they’ll go for it,’ Clara replied wisely. ‘Raymond knows that I’m aware of the part Philippe played in Ferdie’s death. He’s sure to think our interests are mutually exclusive.’

‘Don’t all businessmen abide by the maxim: my enemy’s enemy is my friend?’ Magdalena said.

‘Raymond’s too canny for that,’ Clara said.

‘Then let’s leave Raymond out of it, ‘Amanda said. ‘But I will approach Hepsibah and Rebecca. I’d be very surprised if they don’t provide me with as much information as they become privy to. They’ve always loathed Bianca, and they’ll be hankering after justice, no matter what Raymond says. I’ll let them know that anything they tell me won’t be traceable back to them. With their information and ours, we’ll be able to build up a comprehensive picture. We can drip-feed the information into the social world and the pages of the glossy magazines on both sides of the Atlantic. God knows, there are enough hangers-on who act as stringers for the gossip columns, earning their pin money repeating the gossip they overhear at every gallery opening, dance, dinner party.’

‘I know several sieves in London,’ said Magdalena. ‘I can use them to leak stuff.’

‘And I know several in New York as well,’ Amanda said, ‘It will be relatively easy to unmask Bianca. In fact, I’ll go further and predict that the journalists will positively leap upon the story. All we need to do is whisper in the right ears, and I guarantee that within months, if not weeks, all the smart publications on both sides of the Atlantic will be
doing stories on her. I should think we can quite easily make sure Bianca gets the sort of notoriety she deserves.’

‘Punishment through opinion. Social death by informed gossip. It all has a wonderfully ironic ring to it,’ Clara said, appreciating the symmetry with which natural justice would punish when formal justice could not.

‘It’s the least she deserves,’ Amanda said.

‘Shall I tell you something?’ Clara said brightly, a large smile breaking through her features. ‘In some ways this is the most effective punishment for someone like Bianca. Maybe there really is such a thing as justice, after all. Though, it has to be said, I’ve been waiting for it for an uncomfortably long time.’

It’s late afternoon, and Bianca is already dressed and on her way to Brunswick House when the telephone in the Rolls Royce rings. The driver answers it.

‘It’s Mr Lowenstein, Madame.’

Bianca reaches for the telephone.

‘John, what’s up?’ she asks irritably ‘I’m on my way to the unveiling as we speak.’

‘Bianca, I have the most dreadful news. It’s such a disappointment, I don’t know where to start.’

‘Try just telling me what it is,’ she retorts, impatient to dismiss whatever paltry nuisance is getting in the way of her moment of glory.

Contrary to the golden days of widowhood she had envisaged for herself while Philippe was still alive, the first year since his death had been a living nightmare for Bianca.

Hardly a day passed without her receiving a reminder of the notoriety that had increasingly become her Mark of Cain. She had achieved renown beyond her wildest dreams, but it was for being written about in veiled terms as a gold-digger who might also be a murderess. One day it was
People Magazine
running a four-page spread on its investigations into her husband’s death, with ample photographic coverage of the glamorous
widow, L’Alexandrine and the exterior of the Banco Imperiale Building.

The next day it was the
Wall Street Journal
dedicating three full columns to the latest developments in the case. Frank Alderman’s daughter, Louise, also seemed to have a permanently open telephone line to the
New York Daily News
; and at least once a week there was some story stating that the authorities in Andorra were railroading Frank or were somehow disregarding due process of law and his human rights. The international press was up in arms about the length of time it was taking for Frank to be brought to trial. Through Louise, Frank had even publicly recanted the confession he had signed in return for the $1,000,000 to be paid into the numbered Liechtenstein bank account opened for him by Juan.

As far as Bianca was concerned, Frank more than anyone else was responsible for this public mess. He seemed incapable of comprehending that it was his own obduracy in doing things like recanting the confession that was prolonging his - and Bianca’s - torment. However, he was not the only person to blame for the flood of information that was muddying the waters. Bianca could tell, from the detail of certain stories, that the secretaries, bodyguards, nurses and domestic staff who had taken the $100,000 apiece as a reward for their silence had violated their confidentiality agreements; and that some of them were now enjoying a roaring trade selling stories about her to the steadily growing number of publications which sent out reporters with an open chequebook and open ears in search of yet another nugget of information to lay before the public. As for the public, their appetite for a solution to the mystery of the Death in Andorra seemed only to be increasing, but at least, Bianca told herself, she had John Lowenstein and close friends like Ruth Fargo Huron, Stella Minckus and the Duchess of Oldenburg to lean on in these times of travail.

In truth, Ruth, Stella and the Duchess could not have been more stalwart. They were only marginally less incensed on Bianca’s behalf than she was herself. Everywhere they went, whether it was to the Met in New York, Covent Garden in London, the Pompidou in Paris, the Palace in Gstaad or just to lunch, they spoke up on their beleaguered friend’s behalf.

Nevertheless, the support of her friends, although uplifting, was not solving the problem, and Bianca hoped that John Lowenstein would continue laying the ground for doing so.

As Bianca saw it, her problem was basically a public relations one. She had acquired a bad reputation, and she needed to replace it with a good one. She could see no point in having all of what she had striven to acquire, all of what she had worked to achieve, if she could not enjoy it along with the reverence due, in her opinion, to the wealthy. She also needed the respect that went along with her stature. According to her reasoning, status was meant to bring fame. It was meant to be something that gave you clout, that obtained influence for you and allowed you to call the shots. Status was good, and it should bring good things in its wake.

It was not meant to bring ignominy, pain and distress. It was therefore inevitable that John Lowenstein would now become the architect of her rehabilitation. At first, he tried to accomplish this miracle by working his connections in the press so that the items he placed about her would counterbalance those that were cropping up on a daily basis from other sources. There was a vibrant and seemingly neverending supply of stories to counteract. His every instinct told him that someone out there was waging a deliberate and effective campaign of vilification against his client. His media rehabilitation was doomed to failure unless it could be backed up by something else from a new and better quarter.

‘Bianca, we’re going to have to up the ante if we’re to win this struggle,’ he said to her over lunch, eight months after Philippe’s death.

‘It’s a war: not a struggle,’ Bianca retorted. ‘Of course, they’re all jealous of me. That’s why they’re doing this. It’s jealousy. Nothing but jealousy. Well, I’ve got the money, and I’m not going to allow myself to be hounded by them.’

‘Who is “them”? John enquired.

‘I’m not sure,’ she said.

‘It’s always better to know who your enemy is. It’s difficult to fight and win when you don’t know who you’re up against.’

‘I wonder if the Mahfud family isn’t behind this because Philippe snubbed those sisters of his in his will. Old crones. They look like buzzards, with those ghastly Orthodox wigs and that pasty skin Orthodox women get from that weird diet they follow… Or maybe I’m giving them too much power and it’s just the journalists covering the story who are jealous because I have so much and they have so little.’

‘You should be careful of “the little people”,’ John Lowenstein warned.
‘However, it appears we now have two identifiable enemies: the Mahfud family and the journalists covering the story. If we’re to win, Bianca, we must have a comprehensive strategy that targets both of them.’

‘One thing I’ve decided is that I’m going to officially take up residence in London. The English have the harshest libel laws in the free world and, if I move there, I’ll be able to use them to buy myself a measure of protection against the intrusiveness of the press.’

‘That’s a shrewd move, Bianca,’ John concurred.

‘I’ve looked at a house in Chelsea Square…that’s the smartest square in London. I’ve put in an offer for it and am waiting to find out if it’s been accepted.’

‘You realize, don’t you, that moving to London won’t make the stories go away? It may quieten things down a little, but believe me, this is one that isn’t going to disappear unless you position yourself very carefully. Even then, there’s no guarantee that it will ever die down completely. I believe the best you can realistically aim for is to achieve such eminence in your own right that the brilliance of your reputation will outshine all the notoriety.’

‘And how do you think we can achieve that, John?’ Bianca asked, a trace of wounded bitterness betraying itself in her voice.

‘I’m friends with Peter Rivers. He’s the American agent for The Prince’s Charity, the American branch of The Prince’s Trust, the heir to the throne’s own charity. He can deliver the prince in return for a large enough donation to the charity.’

‘Deliver, as in, being seen in public with him?’ Bianca asked.

‘Absolutely. That’s the whole point. The message couldn’t be simpler.

You’re good enough for the heir to the throne of England, so you’re good enough for anyone else. One photograph of you with His Royal Highness will be worth a million words of copy.’

‘Aha,’ Bianca said, a smile dancing across her face as she saw her place in the international pantheon as one of the world’s leading socialites secured with the very people whose opinion really mattered to her.

‘I’ll talk to Peter and find out the quid pro quo: what sort of donation gets what sort of reception. The Prince’s Charity is run on strictly tailored lines. You give X amount, he invites you to a party for five hundred supporters. You give Y, and he invites you to a party for two hundred supporters. Give Z, he invites you to a party for twenty supporters. Give
Z + P, and you get to go to the party for twenty supporters and have your photograph taken with him. It’s later presented to you in a leather photograph frame embossed with his personal emblem in gold, personally signed by him. It will then be up to us how we use the press to let the world know the circles you’re now accepted in.’

‘And if I give Z + P +X + Y, multiplied by two?’

John laughed. ‘Presumably a unique donation will elicit a unique response.’

‘Why don’t you work on it?’

‘I will.’

In the coming weeks, John negotiated with Peter Rivers, and Peter Rivers negotiated with the Prince’s private secretary. Meanwhile, Bianca bought the house on Chelsea Square.

During the months of its inevitable refurbishment, Bianca lived in some approximation of what her future lifestyle would be in a house owned by Lord and Lady Malteviot, of Belmont’s, on the other side of Carlisle Square. What she had in physical comfort, however, she still lacked in social connections, despite the best efforts of John Lowenstein and Stella Minckus, who arranged introductions for her through friends of theirs. These few introductions, while they would prove invaluable in the future, did not provide a comprehensive solution to her problem of isolation. There was only so much you could see of people with full and busy lives, for they had neither the time nor the inclination to entertain and be entertained by - on a daily, weekly or even a fortnightly basis - someone they barely knew. Not when there were so many other equally well-placed people whom they knew better and whom they did not have the time to see as frequently as they would have liked.

As for Ruth Fargo Huron’s introductions, they were, in Bianca’s view, pathetic. She and her husband knew practically no one in London, and of the couple introductions they were able to provide, the only thing she got out of them was an education as to the limits of the social cachet foreigners possessed in English social circles. The Duchess of Oldenburg’s introduction fared no better with this student of Society.

‘Ha,’ Bianca commented sourly. ‘If possible she was even more of a disaster than Ruth’s friends. At least they had money. She’s nothing but a broken-down aristocrat: a penniless German countess whose father had been a reigning prince of a small German principality until it’s abolition
in 1918. She makes costume jewellery for a living. And she lives in Battersea. I ask you…’

A more immediate problem was the time that hung heavily on her hands when she was in London. One evening, on an impulse Bianca tried Mary Landsworth’s old home number. Maybe she might know enough connections to make renewing the acquaintanceship worthwhile. To Bianca’s surprise, Mary herself answered the telephone.

‘Mary, this is a voice from your past. It’s Bianca. Bianca Antonescu as was. Do you remember me? I used to be your client.’

‘Bianca! How could I forget? You’re one of the most memorable people I’ve ever known…if not
the
most memorable. How are you?’

‘I’m well, thank you, and you?’

‘Never been better. To what do I owe the honour of this call?’

‘I’m living in London now and thought how nice it would be to get together with you.’

‘I’d love that.’

‘Would you prefer lunch at Harry’s Bar or dinner at Mark’s Club?’

‘If it’s dinner His Lordship has to come with me,’ Mary said in a jocular tone that managed to convey the information that her husband had been made a Lord Justice without seeming to boast about it.

‘Shall we then say dinner next Tuesday or Wednesday at eight o’clock?’

‘Wednesday would be better for us.’

‘Eight it is then.’

‘What a treat this is! It will be so good to hear your news first-hand, instead of having to read all about you in the newspapers.’

‘Yes,’ Bianca said, the dejection breaking through her voice. ‘I seem to have gone full cycle, haven’t I? I’m right back where I was when I first had to come to you.’

‘I wouldn’t have put it quite like that, dear girl. Back then you had to fight off an intransigent sister-in-law. Now you’re a huge media star and the queen of the columns.’

A huge media star: Bianca liked the sound of that, even though she knew there was a slight element of exaggeration about it. Certainly, she was being talked and written about. Did that make her a huge media star? No. But did it at least make her a star? The answer to that was ‘yes’. For all her hyperbole, Mary was on the right track. Maybe people in the Establishment really cared less about her ‘baggage’ that she did. If that was
the case, her rise to the peak might be easier than she had thought. All the same Bianca was beginning to regret her status as a widow. Life had not turned out the way she had expected it to. In her estimation, she had moved one step forward and five steps back. She now looked back on the years between Philippe’s decline and his death as the real ‘golden days’.

His very existence, she now saw, had offered protection in a way that only women who have been protected by a rich and powerful man would ever understand or appreciate. Invincibility had then been the cornerstone of her existence, and now it had died along with him. Bianca had to admit that she missed it.

It was at this juncture that John Lowenstein came up with a long-term plan that would serve both his and Bianca’s interests in equal and inextricable measure. Philippe had now been dead nearly a year, and John was aware that his retainer would be coming up for its annual review within the next two months. Calculating that there was little chance of her keeping him on as PR advisor at a cost of $100,000 a month once Bianca had achieved her ambitions, he had devised a comprehensive strategy that delayed using Peter Rivers’ connection with Prince Charles while at the same time feeding Bianca’s growing hunger for social recognition.

He told her his idea over lunch at The Four Seasons in New York. ‘Association with English royalty is the solution to your problem,’ he declared. ‘But you must save the prince for when your foundations are solid. Diversify in the meantime and then use him to crown you as the Queen of the International Set.’