Both women took the proffered glasses of champagne, and Jude sailed boldly forward towards a room where there wasn’t music playing. “Let’s look for somewhere with seats.”
“Why do you want to sit down?”
“I don’t, Carole, but I know there’s one person in this household who will be sitting down.”
“Flora. Of course.”
Through the crush they did manage to find the old lady. She was sitting in a high-winged armchair which, with her in it, looked like a throne. Her hair had been expertly remoulded into shape and she wore a dress of glittering silver. The diamonds round her neck and hanging from her ears were undoubtedly the real thing (making Carole feel that her brooch was even more tawdry). If ever there was an illustration for ageing gracefully, Flora Le Bonnier was providing it. Only her crippled hands, immobile fingers pressed together as she lifted a champagne glass to her lips, let down the image.
When the two women reached her chair, she was alone, surveying the scene with all the grandeur of a monarch reviewing her troops. She recognized Jude instantly and inclined her head graciously to Carole.
“You’re looking magnificent,” said Jude. “I do hope this means that you’re feeling better.”
“My dear girl,” Flora Le Bonnier trilled, “I cannot thank you enough for what you have done for me. From the moment you finished your healing, the pain disappeared and, thank the Lord, has stayed away. No professional doctor, however many letters he might have after his name, could have begun to do what you did for me.”
Jude decided that when it came to investigation, there was no time like the present. “I’ve been reading your book, Flora,” she said, “which I found absolutely riveting.”
“Oh, it’s just a pot-boiler.” In spite of her modest words, Flora was clearly very pleased by the compliment.
“One thing that really interested me,” Jude went on, “was about Ricky.”
“Oh?” There was a new alertness in the old woman’s eyes.
“For a start, there doesn’t seem to be a lot about him in the book.”
Flora sighed. “I know. I so wanted to put in more about my dear boy – I’d even written a lot of it – but I had this very stubborn editor at the publisher’s. She kept saying, ‘The book is about you, your career, not your family life.’ So, I’m afraid, if I wanted to get the book published, I had to go along with her recommendations. I kept telling her that Ricky was famous in his own right, that his involvement in pop music might spread the potential readership for the book, but she wouldn’t budge.”
“Oh well, maybe he’ll write his own biography in time.”
A gracious smile greeted this. Flora clearly had no objection to the idea. She looked at Carole. “And have you read the book?”
The expression was so imperious that Carole felt as if she was up in front of a headmistress for not having done her homework. “No, I haven’t yet, but I’m looking forward to borrowing it from Jude and reading it.” She was, too. A second mind applied to the text might deduce more about the Le Bonnier family secrets.
Jude was still in investigative mode. “There was something in the book which I found rather strange…”
“Oh?”
“Well, I hadn’t thought about it before, but I found I was suddenly asking myself why Ricky’s surname was Le Bonnier.”
“Why shouldn’t it be? It’s my surname. It’s a name with a great deal of history.”
“Yes, I’m not questioning that, but there is a tradition in this country that children take the surname of their father.”
“Traditions,” Flora Le Bonnier announced magisterially, “are there to be broken. Ricky’s father had no relevance in his life.”
“But who was – ?”
That was as far as Jude was allowed to get. “My dear girl, you are not the first person to have asked me that question. Over the decades many journalists have tried by various means to winkle a name out of me. None has been successful, and I’m afraid you won’t be either. Le Bonnier is a fine and time-honoured name. My son has always been proud to bear it.”
“If that’s the case,” Carole chipped in, “why did he go to school under the name of Ricky Brown?”
The look that travelled down Flora Le Bonnier’s finely sculpted nose was very nearly a glare. Then, remembering her manners, she converted it into a cold smile. “I would gather,” she said, “that you have never been troubled by the inconveniences of celebrity.” Carole was forced to admit that she hadn’t. “Well, let me explain to you. When Ricky was young, I was – there’s no point in false modesty – very famous indeed. The media make a great fuss nowadays about the hounding of celebrities by the paparazzi, by door-stepping journalists, by stalkers even, but let me tell you that kind of thing was very much up and running in the post-war years. Before the major expansion of television, the cinema played an even more important role in people’s lives, and its stars were subjects of intense popular speculation. For my son to have gone to a local school down here in Fethering under the name of Ricky Le Bonnier would have been to condemn him to a nightmare of intrusive interest and teasing. For that reason he was known as Ricky Brown.”
“So Brown wasn’t his father’s surname?”
Carole’s suggestion was greeted by a sardonic smile. “A nice try, but I think you’ll have to be a bit subtler than that. As I said, the identity of Ricky’s father is something I have never revealed and I firmly intend to take that secret with me to the grave.”
“So when did he start calling himself Ricky Le Bonnier?” asked Jude.
“That was when he began to work in the music business. His feeling was – and it was one with which I heartily agreed – that having a famous name might help to get his career under way. Which is exactly what happened.” She smiled complacently, as if her words had ended that particular topic of conversation.
But Jude persisted. “When he was a boy down here in Fethering, he was looked after by someone called ‘Auntie Vi’. I was wondering – ”
But wondering was as far as she got. With a flamboyant squeal of “Flora – darling!” an elderly man with a rather beautiful younger one in tow swooped down on the actress to initiate an exchange of scurrilous theatrical gossip. After a few minutes Carole and Jude drifted away, their departure unacknowledged by the grande dame of British theatre.
Twenty-Nine
Their champagne glasses recharged and delicious nibbles supplied by the black-clad waitresses, the two women wandered towards the source of the music. In the hall Ricky Le Bonnier, his arm round Lola’s waist, was, as ever, the centre of attention, regaling the group around him with more of his stories. Seeing him there and seeing the look of adoration in his wife’s eyes, Carole felt another surge of anger. She thought of her conversation with Anna, the details of which she had told Jude on the drive over to Fedborough. What was it with men, particularly men of Ricky’s age, that stopped them from being content with what they had? Why would men like him betray a beautiful, intelligent girl like Lola with a sad, neurotic widow like Anna? Was it the galloping approach of death that motivated them? Was it a feeling that in some conjectural heaven their score would be marked down for not having bedded enough women? Carole Seddon would never understand men.
From what Ricky was saying, the band performing in his sitting room were extremely famous. Carole hadn’t heard of them, but Jude had and was suitably impressed to find them playing in a private house. Their host was talking about the band as the two women joined the circle around him.