Babe felt an instant’s anxiousness in the pit of her stomach. She hid it with an interested smile. “That probably helped your schoolwork.”
“Yes, I did well in music.”
“You get that from your father.”
“And I did well in French and history and art too.”
“You get the art from me.”
“I graduated with honors.”
“I wish I could have been at your graduation.”
“Be glad you weren’t. It rained. And guess what. The headmistress turned out to be a murderess. She’s serving a twenty-five-year sentence for shooting three bullets into her Jewish lover.”
Babe studied Cordelia, wondering if she was playing some kind of joke.
Cordelia smiled. The smile got as far as her eyes and then her jaw and chin tightened. Suddenly she placed her head across Babe’s lap. Babe began stroking the pale golden spill of hair.
After a moment Cordelia sat up again, choking back a sniffle. “I had my coming-out that spring at the cottage in Newport. Grandpère was my escort. He looked smashing in his old World War One ribbons.”
Babe wondered—why Grandpère, why not Scottie? “Grandpère’s decorations are World War Two, darling.”
“You know what I mean. And then Vassar accepted me. But after six months I knew it wasn’t for me. So I came back to New York, and met an agent at a party, and voilà, I’m a model. I haven’t made up my mind whether or not to work full time. Modeling’s so dull—half of it’s just standing around perfecting your bored look.”
She demonstrated her bored look, and Babe had to laugh.
“Do you want to see my portfolio?” Cordelia opened a large leather carrying case. It was crammed with glossies. She slipped them out of their plastic sheaths and handed them over one by one.
Babe studied photos of her daughter on horseback, on camelback, on elephantback, her daughter running on beaches, in Irish meadows, across Newport lawns, her daughter lounging formally, informally, in furs, in a Scaasi, in Calvin Klein jeans, her daughter smiling at dogs, at jewelry, at foreign cars, at silverware, at young men. And then there were magazines with Cordelia on the cover: Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Mademoiselle.
“You’re very successful,” Babe said. “But you gave up college?”
“I earn thirty-five hundred an hour. College just didn’t do it for me.”
Babe wondered what money was worth nowadays. She wondered what an education was worth.
“I’m the logo of Babethings,” Cordelia said.
Babethings—the company Babe had founded to market her designs. She wondered who was heading it now, how it was doing.
“I’m under contract. I do print ads and TV. Anytime they need a face or a voice-over, it’s me. So in a way, I’m famous. I’ve been interviewed in People magazine and Interview and I’ve been on talk shows and I’m invited all sorts of terrific places.”
Babe’s thoughts were racing, trying to keep up with everything her daughter was telling her. “And do you have boyfriends?”
Cordelia’s eyes flicked away. “At the moment there’s Rickie—you’ll meet him. I’m fond of Rickie, he’s a smashing tennis player and he dances terrifically. He wants to marry me but I honestly don’t know. His father is Sir Rickie Hawkes, Barclays Bank.”
“Oh, yes,” Babe said, recognizing the bank, not Sir Rickie. Doubtless the British had created quite a few new sirs since she’d gone under.
Cordelia spoke of her other interests—discos and parties and cars and Thoroughbreds and interesting people doing interesting things that got mentioned in the papers.
“And do you ever see your father?” Babe said.
“Ernst is wonderful. Every time he plays in New York I go backstage. We’re very close. Vanity Fair did a father-daughter article on us. He played a smashing Rachmaninoff Third with the Cleveland at Carnegie last month. I saved you the reviews.”
“Do you two ever have time to talk? Does he take an interest in you?”
“We talk all the time. Ernst phones no matter where he is—Budapest, Berlin, Capetown—just last week it was Tokyo. Of course he gets the time zones mixed up, so we’re usually talking at four in the morning—but I do adore him.”
It sounded to Babe like the same old Ernst, going as strong at seventy as at fifty-five, whisking in on a jet plane, sweeping Cordelia off to the Palm Court for champagne and cakes, pressing two tickets into her hand, tossing her to the press in the greenroom after the concert.
“And do you ever see Scottie?” Babe asked.
Cordelia froze over. It seemed precocious to Babe, a girl that young able to freeze over that hard, that fast.
“Why would I see Scottie?”
A silence fell on the room.
“Because he’s your stepfather.”
“But he’s not—not since he divorced you.”
Babe felt a jolt of pain jump through her nerves. She pushed herself up in the bed: she was shaking. She had to make herself believe that this was reaclass="underline" the words she had just heard, the girl watching her, the shock reeling through her.
Cordelia’s eyes were fixed on her mother now, wide and observing. “Grandmère said she was going to tell you everything. I can see I’ve put my foot in it.”
Only the thought that she must be strong in front of her daughter kept Babe from breaking into little fragments. “Of course Grandmère told me. Are you and Scottie still friends?”
Amazement and pain mingled in Cordelia’s expression. “How could we be, Mother? After what he did to you?”
Babe’s instincts were telling her to keep going, fake it. “Don’t blame him, darling,” she said quietly, telling herself she’d suspected, that she’d been prepared for bad news. “You can’t expect a man to stay married seven years to a woman who might never wake up.”
Cordelia’s hands tightened into fists. “Why are you so kind to him? You must love him incredibly. Still.”
5
“DID YOU NOTICE ANY strangers in the building over the weekend?” Detective Sam Richards asked.
“Strangers?” the woman said. “There are always strangers in the building. Those shops bring in nothing but, and that psychiatric clinic on the fifth floor produces some very strange encounters.”
Sam Richards had been on the job long enough to know the world and its bullshit. Yet the word princess still commanded his respect. It conjured up pictures from a book of King Arthur and his knights that he had pored over as a boy. True, Lily Lobkowitz was no lady fair. She might once have been. There were vestiges—a bright blue sparkle to the eyes that nervously watched him, an attempted confidence to the tilt of her very rounded chin. But her face was lined and tired, and powder had spilled onto her dark blouse. He had a feeling she’d put on her makeup after he had rung the doorbell.
She sat very still on the chintz sofa, not regally straight but cautiously so, as though if she leaned in any direction at all she’d keep going, right onto the floor. She smelled of vodka.
“Did you see strangers over the weekend?” he asked.
“No, not over the weekend—not that I can recollect.” Her teeth touched her lower lip. “Of course, I’ve been indoors all the time, trying to shake this summer cold.”
The princess’s livingroom was spacious, comfortably furnished; the plush love seat and chairs matched the sofa. A portrait of a woman with a jeweled crown hung over the fireplace. Beyond the grand piano striped awnings shaded the terrace from the bright afternoon sun.
“Did you go out at all on Saturday, ma’am?”
He had a hunch she didn’t like taking deliveries from the liquor store; she didn’t want the building staff to count. So she went out herself. She probably had two or three stores in the neighborhood and was careful to rotate her visits. It seemed sad, a princess spending a holiday weekend alone with her Stolichnaya.
“Did you see anything or anyone unusual?”
That same faraway look, annoyance seeping in now. “You could hardly call it unusual—Hector does it all the time.”