The Rich Shall Inherit (80 page)

“Why
was she telling Maria-Cristina?” Mike asked quietly. “Was she Poppy’s daughter?”

“Don’t tell me you can’t find that out for yourself.” Hilliard grinned maliciously. “You’ve done a pretty good job so far. Besides, why should I tell you? Just so some avaricious bitch can get her hands on the money?”

“Why should you tell me?”
Mike exclaimed angrily. “Because Poppy’s money is lying there,
worthless
, when it could be put to good use! To one of these people it will mean a lot—freedom, education, love—it could mean everything. And a selfish old man like you has no right to deprive them of it. Look, Hilliard, one person is already dead, others may be in danger.”

Hilliard stared at him, shocked. “Dead,” he repeated, “who is dead? Not … young Aria?”

“No, not Aria, but she may be in danger. The game is over,” Mike added firmly. “You must tell me the truth.”

Hilliard sank back in his wheelchair, all the fight and game-playing gone out of him. He looked shriveled and old, and his hand shook as he poured himself another drink. “Very well, then, if it means that much, I’ll tell you what I know.” He sipped his drink in silence for a while, marshaling his thoughts.

“I’d better tell you
how
I know, first,” he said finally. “Angel lived here, at the ranch, you know, in the latter part of her life. She’d always hated living in Italy; it had bad memories for her even though her two girls spent a great deal of their time there. Especially Helena, who’d finally broken away from her mother. Maria-Cristina was always on a plane or on a boat; she changed countries as often as she changed her boyfriends, but her son, Paolo, was brought up in Italy; the old woman you told me about, Fiametta, Aria’s nurse, she looked after him.

“Anyway, it was 1939, I think. I was home on furlough from the army with my wife and a very young son of my own. Angel had complained of a bad cold she couldn’t shake off, and suddenly it seemed to go to her chest. She was a beautiful woman, you know, Mike, truly beautiful, even then, when she was almost sixty. But it was as if suddenly a lamp inside her was turned out; she just shriveled and grew old in a couple of days. I remember going to see her, she was lying in bed and she smiled at me, even though she was so ill. She reminded me of the woman in a book I’d been reading—
Lost Horizon.
You remember how the woman just crumbled to dust when her lover took her away from the enchanted valley of Shangri-la? Well, that’s how Angel looked.

“‘Tell your father I want to see him, will you?’ she asked in that clear, sweet voice of hers. I went to get my father and I remember the worried look in his eyes as I walked with him from the shearing sheds. ‘Is it that bad then?’ I asked. He nodded. ‘It’s pretty bad, Son,’ he said grimly, ‘but she’s still refusing to go to the hospital.’”

Hilliard paused to sip his sherry, sinking back into his thoughts for a few moments. “I didn’t go in with him,” he said. “I understood it was something private between the two of them. But Dad hadn’t quite closed the door and I was waiting out in the hall. Angel’s voice always had that carrying quality, so I could hear clearly what she was saying.

“‘Greg, I want to tell you about Poppy,’ she said. ‘This may be my last chance, and I think you should know the truth.’

“‘You
mustn’t talk about last chances, Angel, that’s silly,’ he said to her in the sort of reproving voice he used to use to us when we were kids.

“‘You’ve got to listen, Greg,’ she said, and she sounded panicky now.

“‘But I don’t really want to know,’ my father said. ‘Not anymore. It’s all in the past, you see. It’s better forgotten.’

“‘I’ve lied to you, and to everyone,’ she replied, ‘and before I die I’m determined to wipe the slate clean. So sit down beside me, Greg, and listen.’ I heard the chair scrape on the floor as he sat down, and then she began to tell him about Poppy and her husband, Felipe. My father heard her out and at the end, he said, ‘Angel, I wish you hadn’t told me.’

“‘I needed to,’ she said, ‘you had a right to know. You see, I knew one day she would come back to find her daughter, and when she finally did come to see me I refused to tell her.’

“‘I don’t want to know,’ he said, and I could tell he was crying, ‘please don’t tell me, Angel. To me they are both your girls and I don’t even want to think about Poppy. Let’s leave it that way.’

“There was a long silence and then Angel said, ‘I have one more confession to make, and this time it’s all my fault. No one else’s but mine.
You
know I always protected Helena too much. She was such a sweet little girl, Greg, always smiling … and then we found out about her deafness. I couldn’t bear seeing her hurt by the other children’s impatience and taunts and so I began to take over her life. I answered questions for her, I refused to let her go out without me; you remember the governesses and the
nurses …? Oh, it was fine when she was still a child, but then that child became a woman, with a woman’s feelings and emotions, but she knew nothing about men and love. After all, she never met any—I made sure of that.

“‘The only place Helena ever went without me was to see the ear doctor in San Francisco. I would leave her there while I went shopping, in the city. Dr. Barton had looked after her for years, ever since we came back from Italy. He’d operated on her once, but without much success. He was in his forties, married, with children of his own.

“‘I had to go to New York to rescue Maria-Cristina from one of her usual unfortunate entanglements, and of course I had to leave Helena here, so this time she had to go to San Francisco to see the doctor alone, though naturally I’d arranged for a chauffeured car. Dr. Barton was a very attractive man, and I hadn’t realized just how lovely Helena was, I always thought of her as a child, you see. But Dr. Barton saw her in a different light, and she, poor girl, fell in love. She didn’t even know what that sort of “love” was … she was as innocent as the child I’d tried to make her stay all her life!

“‘I was away for longer than I’d expected—almost two months. When I got back I noticed she was different, secretive … but it wasn’t until later I noticed something else. I took her to another doctor, a gynecologist, and he confirmed that she was pregnant. Helena cried when I told her—she didn’t understand it. She was like a child of twelve, mentally. “But I don’t want a baby, Mama,” she said, “all I want is Richard.” Richard Barton, the doctor!

“‘I took her away to Arizona—I told everyone it was for her health. She had the baby there. The poor girl hardly knew what was going on. It was terrible, Greg, absolutely terrible for her. I wanted to kill Dr. Barton, but of course I could do nothing—except call to tell him to stay away from her. But I didn’t tell him about the baby. I’d arranged for the child to be adopted and the couple came to pick her up. So that was the end; it was all over as though it had never happened.

“‘I took Helena back to Italy for a year or two to get her away from him, and to try to forget about the baby, and I’m afraid I began to treat her like a true invalid, cosseting her and always watching over her when she really didn’t need it. And gradually she began to adapt to the role. She stopped speaking for almost a whole year, then when she started again, she said the strangest
things … I knew there was nothing really wrong with her, but she was no longer “normal.” I’d crippled her with my stupid overwhelming love, just as surely as if I’d harmed her in some physical accident. I’d never had the sense to let go of her and she would always be a childish innocent in a grown-up world.’

“Angel was crying and coughing and I heard my father trying to calm her down. ‘You’re only upsetting yourself talking about the past,’ he told her.

“‘Helena’s forgotten about the child,’ Angel said, ‘or at least I think she has. She never mentions it and I suppose it must have seemed like a bad dream to her. I have a copy of the signed adoption form and the name and address of the couple. Of course, I’ve never seen them since. But I’ve kept it hidden all these years, inside a copy of my favorite book in the library. And with it is a letter explaining the truth about Maria-Cristina and Helena. I want you to know where it is, Greg, in case I’m not here, and it is needed.’

“‘I don’t want it,’ Greg said—he was almost shouting, I remember. ‘Leave the letter there, Angel. It’s not important anymore.
Both
girls are your daughters.’

“She was coughing again, but when she’d finished she said to him, ‘Well, Greg, you know where it is, when I’m gone. But I had to tell you, so you would understand about Helena and so you’ll look after her.’

“I think they were both crying and I figured I’d better not stay around. I watched my father afterward to see if he would go to the library and find the book, but as far as I know he never did. Angel went into the hospital and died two weeks later of pneumonia. I’ve never seen my father so upset—he was devastated. But he still never looked in the book.”

“And you did?” Mike asked.

Hilliard nodded. “Of course I looked. It meant very little to me then. I’d never known Poppy Mallory—or Angel’s husband, Felipe.” Wheeling his chair to the shelves, he took down an anthology of Keats’s poetry. “
YOU
see,” he said with his old malicious grin, “I didn’t steer you wrong.—If you’d looked hard enough, you would’ve found it.”

“It would have taken me ten years, and you knew it,” Mike retorted, watching as he took an envelope from between the pages.

“This is it,” Hilliard said, offering it to him, “this is your answer. And much good it’ll do you!”

The paper was crisp with age and falling apart at the creases. Mike opened it carefully. He read what Angel had written and looked at Hilliard. “Helena?” he asked, surprised.

“Helena,” Hilliard said, with a triumphant grin. “So now you see, you’re back to square one. You still don’t know who your ‘heiress’ is!”

A white mist hovered just inches above the Grand Canal, parting briefly as the watery noonday sun struggled through, giving a glimpse of the islands of Giudecca and San Giorgio, seemingly floating on clouds, before it closed in again.

It was the first day of
carnevale
and people were already in costume, though it was at nighttime when the true festivities would begin. The
maschereri
, Venice’s famous maskmakers, had been working overtime preparing the traditional
bauta
masks, the shiny white or black masks made from papiermache that covered the entire face, leaving just empty sockets for the eyes. It was the most sinister of all the carnival masks, and somehow the most anonymous. There were more elaborate masks: some looked like peacocks decorated with feathers and worn with feathered capes; there were lace masks studded with “diamonds,” and golden parrot masks, and porcelain masks with doll-like features. But the old tradition of the
bauta
, worn with a black hood and a full-length black cape and topped by a tricorne hat, meant people could be completely anonymous—or they could become anyone else they wanted to be.

The Palazzo Rinardi was being groomed within an inch of its life; its marble floors glistened from much polishing, its woodwork shone, its silver and crystal sparkled, and its treasures glowed. Workmen were standing on stepladders, inserting hundreds of candles into the enormous chandeliers, and a team of a dozen caterers had taken over Fiametta’s kitchen and were preparing exquisite food in readiness for the party that night. Francesca queened it over them all, issuing commands and countermanding them minutes later, and generally driving everyone
crazy, while Aria lurked by the telephone in her room, praying for it to ring.

She wondered if she should call Orlando again, but she’d already called the
pensione
so many times since she got back, now her pride held her back.
“Sì
, the Signore has returned,” they’d told her patiently, “we will give him your message, Signorina.” But Orlando still hadn’t called her. She hadn’t spoken to him since just before Christmas, when she’d told him she was going to Los Angeles with Carraldo. Surely he’d know it wasn’t that she’d
wanted
to go. She’d had no choice, and once they were there, it seemed as though Carraldo never wanted to come back. Her mother had been no help, she’d been enjoying playing the rich society hostess too much. “No one could say Francesca Rinardi didn’t leave her mark on Hollywood!” she’d exclaimed as they finally left a few days ago, her suitcases loaded down with new finery, and especially her dress for tonight’s party. It was a fluid column of white silk chiffon, beaded from neck to hem with silver and crystal, and created especially for her by Bob Mackie, the king of Hollywood designers. She’d had a special mask made to go with it, with sweeping white plumes tipped in crystal, with the eye sockets outlined in crystal to match.

Tonight was to be Francesca’s triumph, and she intended to look stunning. And tonight was Aria’s despair, because at the party for three hundred people, her engagement to Antony Carraldo would be announced. Worse, he had told her he wanted to get married right away—next week, if she would agree. “Of course you will agree,” Francesca had told her firmly. “It’s your duty. And besides, Carraldo has been very patient. He’s waited long enough—and so have I.”

Aria had understood it was no use arguing, she’d just bided her time until she got back to Venice, and Orlando. She had lain awake at night, planning how they would run away together and how, if it took Mike a long time to find the evidence proving she was the heiress, she would get a job and take care of Orlando. He wouldn’t have to worry about a thing, she told herself, he could just paint all day long. And, of course, when she finally got Poppy’s money, he could have anything he wanted, anything at all. She just knew he would repay her by becoming a very great artist one day.

The phone rang and she grabbed it, almost dropping it in her haste.
“Pronto?”
she whispered.

“Aria, it’s Mike.”

“Mike! Where have you been? I haven’t heard from you in so long. Is everything all right?”

“Yes … sure, everything’s fine,” Mike said, hating to deceive her, but on Lieber’s instructions he had no choice. The matter of the heir and the heiress was now in the lawyer’s hands. He had finally unraveled the rest of the story and it was Lieber who would contact the heirs and inform them officially that they were the true beneficiaries of Poppy’s estate.