Vintage Stuff (19 page)

Born Constance Sugg, of 421 Selsdon Avenue, Croydon, she had risen by a series of changed
identities and useful adulteries to her present title. In fact it could be truthfully said that
she had a great many pasts. She had been Miss Croydon at seventeen, a starlet in Hollywood at
nineteen, a masseuse in an extremely dubious parlour in San Francisco at the age of twenty-two, a
hostess at a dude-ranch three years later and for ten years the wife of Siskin J. Wanderby. By
then Wanderby, a man who believed in putting his money where his mouth was, had made and lost
several fortunes and Constance, now Anita Blanche and mother of Anthony B. Wanderby, had divorced
him on the grounds that never knowing from one week to another whether she was the wife of a
millionaire or something destined for Skid Row constituted a particularly sadistic form of mental
cruelty. At the time, Wanderby had been on the point of making a fortune out of capped oil wells
in Texas and had looked good for a gigantic alimony. Instead, the oil glut had put paid to her
hopes and she had been forced to provide for her own future. Since she was in Las Vegas she had
changed her name to Betty Bonford and had stayed on as sucker-bait at Caesar's Palace. It was
there she met her future husband, Alphonse Giraud Barbier, Comte de Montcon.

At fifty, the count had already gained a considerable reputation as a playboy, a gambler and a
piss-artist, a consequence of his having followed his widowed mother's advice to the letter.
'Don't marry for money, Alphonse,' she had told him, 'go where money is.' And Alphonse had. By
the time he landed in Las Vegas he had been to almost every expensive hotel, ski-resort,
exclusive club and casino in Europe and was down to his last million francs and the Château
Carmagnac. He was also under orders to marry the first rich woman who would have what was left of
him. Again the Count had done what he was told and had proposed to Deirdre Gosforth (she had
changed her name once more for this eventuality) in the mistaken belief that a woman who could
win a hundred thousand dollars three nights running in crap games had to be loaded. The fact that
it was the dice that were, and that she handed back her winnings to the management, never
occurred to him, even when she had steered him in an alcoholic haze through a marriage ceremony
and onto a jet to Paris taking with her, for once, all her winnings.

It was only when they reached the Château that the Count realized his mistake and the new
Countess knew that in hooking her last sucker she had been hooked herself. Worse still, there was
no way she was going back to the States with a hundred grand of the Syndicate's money. She had
reconciled herself with the knowledge that any man who breakfasted on black coffee laced with
Armagnac was heading for the hereafter at a rate of knots and as his widow she'd be able to flog
the Château. The illusion hadn't persisted. The Count's constitution proved stronger than his
intellect and while the Château might be in his possession it couldn't be in his will. Without an
heir it would revert to the family and the Count's two sisters had no intention of losing it to a
Yankee gold-digger. In fact they had done their damnedest to get the marriage annulled. Deirdre
had fought back by keeping the Count's alcohol level too high for him to remember where he'd been
married, or to care.

In the ensuing vendetta neither side could be said to have won. Deirdre's premature
announcement that she was pregnant had driven the two sisters to consult the family lawyers while
her efforts to achieve the only partially desired result had killed the Count. Since the
traumatic moment when she had realized his brandy droop was terminal and that for the past ten
minutes she had been having coition with nothing more responsive than a corpse with a
strangulated hernia, the Countess had come to an accommodation with the family.

'You want me out, you buy me out,' she told the relatives after the funeral, 'and that means a
million.'

'Francs?' asked ancient Uncle René hopefully.

'Dollars.'

'Impossible. Impossible. Where would we get such a fantastic sum?'

'By selling this dump.'

'Only a madman would pay...'

'Not as it stands,' said Deirdre, 'We turn it into a Château de luxe. Best food in France, the
finest wines, get top ratings in the Guide Bleu. We climb on the cuisine gravy train and charge
through the nose.'

The relatives had looked at one another thoughtfully. Money talked, but they had their family
pride to consider.

'Are you expecting us to become restaurateurs?'

'Leave it to me,' Deirdre told them, 'I run the joint and '

'The name Montcon means something still in France. We are not petit bourgeois,' said one of
the sisters.

'So we don't muddy the name. I'll take the flak. You can keep your hands clean and inside five
years we put it on the market and scoop the pool.'

After a great deal of argument, the family had agreed and the Countess, now plain Deirdre, had
set to work only to discover that she had been taken for a sucker yet again. The family had no
intention of ever selling. She could have her cut of the profits but that was all. Even her
threat to drag the name of Montcon through the mud of the courts had backfired. The family no
longer existed and the sisters and nieces were content with their husband's names and the income
they drew from Deirdre's efforts. Worse still, the youngest sister of the late Count had married
Dr Grenoy, the Cultural Attaché to the Embassy in Washington, who had used his position to look a
little more closely into Deirdre's background. From that moment, Deirdre had become a dependant.
Dr Grenoy had made that clear enough. 'There are...how shall I say?...certain gentlemen in a town
renowned for gambling and violence who have long memories. It would interest them to know where
their money has been invested.' Deirdre's eyes had hardened and Dr Grenoy continued. 'However
that need not concern us. In France we are more civilized. Naturally we will have to readjust
your percentage to prepare for any unfortunate contingencies...'

'Hold it there,' said Deirdre, 'I work my butt off and you tell me...'

'Madame,' interrupted Dr Grenoy, 'there are additional advantages I have yet to mention. I
need not stress your understandable desire for anonymity but I have something to offer.
Conferences funded by international corporations', UNESCO, the World Wildlife Conservation. I am
in a position to influence the venue and with the service you provide...Need I say more?'

'And the cut off my percentage goes to you?'

Dr Grenoy nodded. Deirdre had agreed, with the private reservation that she'd keep meticulous
records of Dr Grenoy's new source of income. Two could play that game. And one of these days she
would skip France and resume her original identity in her bungalow at Bognor Regis. Constance
Sugg was not a name she'd have chosen for herself but it had the great advantage of being on her
birth certificate.

Now as she drove the little van back from Boosat her mind was concerned with a new problem.
Once it had been impossible to get money out of Britain and easy to shift it from France. The
situation had changed and the little gold bars she had slowly accumulated over the years, while
they had appreciated enormously in value, made the matter even more difficult. Perhaps if she
bribed a fisherman to take her across to Falmouth...At least there would be no trouble with
Immigration Officials. She was a British subject born and bred...But the problem was never to be
resolved.

As she drove into the courtyard and saw the ambulance, her mind switched to the terrible
possibility that one of the visitors had gone down with food poisoning. Those mushrooms she had
used in the coq au vin...She got out and hurried into the hall and was stopped by Dr Grenoy.

'What has happened?' she asked.

'I can't explain here,' said Grenoy, hustling her into the dining room and shutting the door.
'They've found you. A man with a gun was here during the night looking for you.'

The Countess sat down. She felt sick. 'For me?'

'He demanded of the guests where you were. He asked specifically for the Countess.'

'But no one knows. Except you and Marie-Louise and some of the servants,' she said. 'This is
all your fault. They must have traced me through you and your stupid enquiries in the
States.'

'I didn't make enquiries myself. I hired a detective. He didn't know who I was.'

'He knew you were French. And doubtless you paid him by cheque.'

'I paid in cash. I am not indiscreet. You think I wanted my wife's family to be known to be
involved with such people? I have my reputation to consider.'

'And I've got my life.'

'Exactly,' said Dr Grenoy, 'You must leave here at once. Go to Paris. Go anywhere. This affair
could become a national scandal. Professor Botwyk has already had to be rescued from the river
and the Russian delegate and the dreadful Englishman, Hodgson, were both assaulted. Not to
mention other most unpleasant events concerning the wife of Mr Rutherby and Mr Coombe. The
situation is extremely awkward.'

Deirdre smiled. It had occurred to her that there was another explanation. They wanted her out
of the Château and she had no intention of leaving except in her own good time. 'Dr Grenoy,' she
said, 'with your influence I am sure I shall be well protected. In the meantime, no one knows who
I am and, if what you say is correct, no one need know. I shall speak to the servants. You need
have no worry. I can take care of myself.'

She went down to the kitchen and found Dr Voisin gleefully helping himself to coffee from the
pot on the stove. 'Ah, madame la Comtesse,' he said, 'my illusions of a lifetime have been
destroyed. I had always believed that French women, my dear wife in particular, were the most
possessive in the world. But now I know better. Madame Voisin, and I thank the good God for it,
is only interested in possessing material things. True, one may count the male organ as material,
though for myself I prefer a more personalistic approach. Monsieur Coombe shares my prejudice.
But Madame Rutherby...what a woman! Passion and possessiveness to that degree are fortunately
beyond my experience. And one speaks of women's liberation...'

'What on earth are you talking about?' asked the Countess, when she could get a word in. 'I
understood a gunman was here...' She stopped. The less said about the purpose of his visit the
better.

'The English,' continued Dr Voisin. 'An amazing species. One cannot designate them as a race.
And one would not describe Madame Rutherby as a particularly desirable woman. It is all a
mystery. And finally to find that the American has been rescued by an English eccentric with one
eye who claims to be on a walking tour in the middle of the night, no, that is not explicable
either. And when I offered him a sedative it was as though I was trying to poison him.'

'An Englishman with one eye rescued Mr Botwyk? Did he give his name?'

'I think he said Pringle. It was difficult to tell, he was in such an agitated state. And how
the American came to be at the foot of the cliff is another mystery. But I must be off. I have my
other patients to think of if I can bring my thoughts to bear on anything except the
English.'

And muttering to himself about barbarians he went out to his car and drove off. In the
kitchen, the Countess busied herself with the preparations for breakfast but her thoughts were
still on the bizarre events of the night. A one-eyed Englishman? Where had she heard of such a
person before? It was only when Marie-Louise brought the two men's clothes down to be laundered
and dry-cleaned that the puzzle was resolved. And made more mysterious. Inside Glodstone's shirt
and underpants were sewn little labels on which were written his name. It was something the
school laundry demanded and he had entirely forgotten.

In the case of Mr and Mrs Clyde-Browne there would never be any forgetting their holiday in
Italy. From the first it had been an unmitigated disaster. The weather had been lousy; their
hotel accommodation had included cockroaches; the Adriatic had been awash with untreated sewage
and the whole damned place, in Mr Clyde-Browne's opinion, polluted by ubiquitous Italians.

'You'd think they'd have the gumption to go to Greece or Turkey for their own blasted holidays
instead of cluttering up the beaches here,' he complained, 'their economy's on the brink of
collapse and without the money they get from tourism the lira would be worth even less than it is
now.'

'Yes, dear,' said Mrs Clyde-Browne with her usual apathy when politics came up in their
conversation.

'I mean, no sane Englishman would dream of going to Brighton or even Torquay in August. Mind
you, you'd have less chance of bumping into a turd in the Channel than you do here.'

In the end a bout of Adriatic tummy had persuaded them to cut their losses and fly home a week
early. Mr Clyde-Browne waddled off the plane at Gatwick wearing one of his wife's tampons and
determined to institute legal action against the travel agent who had misled them. His wife, more
philosophically, looked forward to being with Peregrine again. 'We've hardly had a chance to see
him all year,' she said as they drove home, 'And now that he's left Groxbourne...'

'He'll be lounging about the house all day unless I can get him into the Army.'

'All the same, it will be nice...'

'It won't,' said Mr Clyde-Browne. 'It'll be pure hell.'

But his attitude changed when he found among the mail cluttering the floor in the hall a
letter from the Headmaster apologizing for the cancellation of the Overactive Underachiever's
Survival Course in Wales owing to unforeseen circumstances. 'Unforeseen circumstances, my foot,
every circumstance ought to be foreseen. That's what we're given brains for, to foresee
circumstances and make contingency plans. Now if that infernal idiot at the travel agent's had
done his homework, he'd have foreseen that our bloody holiday would be a downright
catastrophe.'