The Heart of the Ritz Read online

  ‘But what’s “everything”?’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Marjorie repeated.

  Polly gave up. ‘That sounds lovely, Auntie.’

  Marjorie decided then that she wished to visit the powder room. She unlocked the door and stepped warily outside into the first class corridor, looking both ways. To Polly, it seemed like she shivered, as if caught by a draught.

  ‘Are you sure nothing happened while I was gone?’ Polly asked her for the final time.

  Marjorie clearly wanted Polly to believe that she was sure. ‘I’ll be back very soon.’

  The green leather Hermès remained on the banquette. ‘But your bag, Auntie?’

  Marjorie held her niece’s look for the longest moment. ‘Will you look after it for me, dear?’

  * * *

  Polly kept the compartment door open, so that she might watch who came and went along the corridor while she waited for her aunt to return. She found herself in a less anxious frame of mind. Perhaps she was drunk, one sip having been enough to send her giddy. She knew this was unlikely, though, and that her aunt’s responses had simply reassured her that nothing was really wrong, even though instinct told her otherwise. Perhaps it was the inexplicable presence of the gun that made her feel better. The knowledge that such a deadly weapon lay hidden in soft green leather mere inches from where she sat forced Polly to concede that she did not really know her aunt at all.

  From her spot just inside the compartment door, Polly became aware that she was not invisible to others. There were quite a few handsome, uniformed young men among the first class passengers – French Army officers, Polly assumed – and in succession one, then another, and then a third glanced her way while making the trip to the dining carriage. Polly reacted with the same awkward surprise when she locked eyes with each of them, which broke whatever spell might have been at the point of being woven. None of the young men returned a glance in her direction again. It was like being dismissed. Marjorie’s comments about her appearance replayed in Polly’s head. She felt a stab of loneliness, thinking again of her poor father, and of how he had died.

  A woman entered Polly’s periphery next and, with a start, Polly recognised her. This petite brunette was sultry and glowering, at least upon first impression, before the earthy humour behind her darkly made-up eyes flashed, and let it be known she was someone who did not take herself seriously. When this woman spoke, it was with the parigot accent of a Parisienne guttersnipe. ‘The Riviera,’ she tossed her curly dark hair at the wide azure sea that stretched to the horizon through the windows, ‘is not worth the shit on my soles, if you ask me, puss.’

  Polly shot out a giggle before she realised it.

  The woman smiled in a way that was more pursed lips and knowing looks than an actual grin, before her lips gave way to a blinding show of pearl white teeth that didn’t look real. She was a film star, a famous French one.

  ‘That was Zita . . .’ Polly said in amazement, to herself. Marjorie had sometimes spoken of this woman in her letters.

  ‘You bet it was, baby,’ said another woman, American, red-headed and curvy, who had materialised in the corridor while Polly had been lost in the encounter. ‘Best goddamn lay in Pigalle.’

  Polly’s eyebrows shot skyward at this and the expensively, if blowzily dressed American screamed with mirth. ‘Oh, don’t mind me – I didn’t say such a distasteful thing. I only read about it on a pissoir wall.’

  Polly couldn’t think how to reply.

  The woman frowned. ‘At least try looking like you’re having fun, honey,’ she admonished her. ‘For your Auntie Marj’s sake. Don’t let the old team down, okay?’

  Polly was startled. ‘Do you know my aunt, too?’

  ‘You bet your patootie I do.’ She winked at Polly. ‘Better than most.’ Then she went on her way to the dining carriage.

  A short time later, a willowy, fair-haired woman of quite extraordinary chic drifted along. She appeared to be wearing the very same dress on the open page of L’Officiel magazine that sat in Polly’s lap. The black and white photography failed to do justice to what was standing before Polly in the deepest, most luscious royal blue. The woman caught Polly staring because she was staring at Polly in turn.

  ‘Is – is your dress by Lanvin, Madame?’ Polly stammered at the coincidence, before she thought to stop herself.

  The woman responded with a smile of such effortless grace and then pronounced in cut-glass French, ‘You’re Polly Hartford.’

  ‘Why, yes, Madame,’ said Polly, answering in the same language, even more surprised.

  ‘Will you permit me to join you?’

  Polly sat up straight on the banquette, shocked. Then she remembered her manners. ‘Please do.’ She got to her feet to be polite and was dismayed to find herself a good head shorter than her visitor. ‘How do you know my name, Madame?’

  ‘Because I am Madame Alexandrine Ducru-Batailley,’ the woman told her, taking a seat on the banquette opposite, and presenting a hand in a white kid glove. ‘The Comtesse Alexandrine, if such a rank means anything today.’

  Polly had encountered this woman’s name in Marjorie’s letters, too. ‘What a pleasure to meet you, Madame Comtesse,’ said Polly, meaning it. She took the woman’s hand and gripped it. There was no resistance, no hint of strength to the other at all, and yet she could tell it was there.

  ‘What a lovely bag,’ said the Comtesse, indicating Marjorie’s Hermès on the seat next to Polly, ‘is it yours?’

  It was as if the secreted gun had started throbbing inside it. Unaccountably, Polly lied: ‘Yes, Madame.’ She picked up the bag and placed it in her lap.

  Polly took another moment to take in the Comtesse’s elegant appearance. Alexandrine was flawless. ‘You are my aunt’s friend, Madame?’

  ‘One of several on board who are among her very best friends, darling, and honoured to call ourselves such.’

  Polly found this confounding. ‘But – but does she even know you’re on the train?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You’ve spoken to her?’

  ‘When you were in the powder room, I believe.’

  Polly felt a shiver up her spine.

  She undid the catch of Marjorie’s bag and slid her fingers inside it, just as her aunt had. She felt the handle of the gun. She knew she mustn’t panic or lose her head. ‘Tell me, Madame,’ she started, evenly, ‘did it seem to you that she’s not quite herself today?’

  Alexandrine said nothing, her lovely face expressionless.

  ‘Did it feel to you as if she’s dealing with something awful – something she’s keeping quiet?’

  The Comtesse tut-tutted at this idea.

  ‘You see, awful things have been kept from me before,’ said Polly, frankly. ‘I have a sense for these things. When my poor, late father –’

  Alexandrine interrupted her with a look that was deeply, unexpectedly sympathetic. ‘I know about your poor father, darling.’ She left her banquette and sat next to Polly, gently lifting the handbag from Polly’s lap and placing it on the seat between them, so that she could take hold of Polly’s hand. ‘It was dreadful what happened to him – dreadful for you. You’ve known too much pain for someone so young.’

  The bag was open. All the Comtesse had to do was glance inside and see the gun for herself. Polly felt her mouth turn to chalk. Yet Alexandrine projected an aura of trustworthiness. Polly began again, ‘Do you think my aunt is not quite herself because of the war? I want to try to understand it all but people just fob me off.’

  ‘There’s no reason to worry, darling,’ said Alexandrine, frowning. ‘Hitler won’t get past that lovely row of forts all along the border with the Boches. They’re Monsieur Maginot’s cleverness.’

  Polly had heard this certainty about the French defences before but there was something effortless in the conviction with which the Comtesse spoke. ‘I see,’ she said.

  ‘Do I sound like I am “fobbing you off”?’

  ‘No, Madame.’
Polly considered. ‘You sound very confident.’

  ‘As should you be.’ Alexandrine’s attention had wandered to the window. She stood and stared out at the sun-drenched scenery.

  ‘I do like your dress,’ said Polly, for want of something else to say. She went to show her the magazine. ‘It’s quite a coincidence, really –’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Alexandrine, automatically. Her brow was creased and she raised the window, admitting a gust of warm air.

  ‘Perhaps Auntie might take me to Madame Lanvin,’ Polly mused above the din of the train and the wind through the window. ‘It says here she does mother and daughter fashion. Wouldn’t that be much the same as auntie and niece?’ She was trying to look at her own clothes differently since Marjorie’s remarks.

  Alexandrine’s gloved hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oh my God!’

  Polly craned to see what had taken her companion’s attention.

  The Comtesse had her arm out the open window, pointing at something they’d passed. ‘Oh my God – stop the train!’

  ‘Madame?’ Polly stood up. ‘What is it, Madame?’

  ‘It’s Marjorie!’ Alexandrine cried. ‘It’s Marjorie out there!’

  Polly threw herself at the window. The body of her aunt in the Mainbocher silk dress lay sprawled on her back in the long, dry grass beside the railway tracks, rapidly receding as the train sped away.

  Somehow, she had fallen from the train.

  ‘Auntie!’ Polly’s scream became deafening, overwhelming, drowning all other sounds as someone unknown, somewhere else on the carriage, pulled at the emergency cord and the luxurious Riviera sleeper began shrieking and grinding to a halt.

  2

  25 April 1940

  In the rented Nice villa’s sunny sitting room, with its windows looking out onto a vine-wrapped courtyard and rooftops beyond, the warm, morning air was wreathed in cigarette smoke. At the centre of an odd-bod collection of comfortable chairs, a low table was host to a clutter of cocktail paraphernalia. Ten o’clock in the morning was not too early to toast a departed friend.

  Two gold medals were lifted from their satin-lined case and placed in Polly’s cupped hands. Emotionally fragile, she stared at them, uncomprehending. ‘But whose are these?’

  ‘Your aunt’s,’ said Alexandrine, simply. ‘And now they’re yours, darling.’

  Polly tried to make sense of them. ‘But these things are for soldiers – for men.’

  Alexandrine cast an appeal for assistance to the shapely American woman occupying the chair next to hers, now greedily drinking a martini. Her name was Mrs Huckstepp, but to her friends she was Lana Mae. She was the same American woman Polly had met briefly on the train. She, too, was another best friend of Marjorie’s.

  ‘We girls get ’em too, honey, it ain’t the Middle Ages,’ Lana Mae told her. She pointed a lacquered red nail at the first medal. ‘That’s the Croix de Guerre.’ Her pronunciation of French, which was what they were speaking, was rather rough around the edges, filtered through a Mid-western twang. She pointed out the medal’s features. ‘It’s what they call a square cross – very la-di-da – and those are crossed swords. Your aunt got this at the end of the Great War.’

  ‘But I don’t understand,’ Polly said, softly.

  ‘What’s to understand?’ Lana Mae said. ‘This other one’s the Légion d’honneur. Ain’t it a pretty peach, though? Just about the biggest gong you can get in good old France.’

  Polly was still uncomprehending.

  Petite Zita, another of Marjorie’s grieving best friends, was curled in an armchair to Polly’s right. ‘Puss, she earned them. Don’t have us think you can’t get that idea inside your head. She was a heroine to France.’

  ‘But she was from Australia?’

  The three other women cast looks at each other and then burst into laughter; Zita and Lana Mae matching each other with full-throated guffaws; Alexandrine laughing rather more elegantly, a gloved hand to her smile.

  ‘God, what she did to try to wash that stain from her camiknickers,’ Lana Mae chuckled. ‘It never did come out, and I should know. I used the same damn soap on my own drawers.’ She looked around her, mock-conspiratorial. ‘Do you think they can tell I’m from Kansas?’

  Alexandrine composed herself. ‘The medals were awarded to your aunt in recognition of her relief work,’ she told Polly. Her eyes were shining at the memory. ‘She was completely tireless throughout the conflict. Devoted thousands of hours, and thousands of her own precious francs to the war effort.’

  ‘The gas-burn cases broke her heart,’ said Zita. ‘All those poor, pretty boys. She was nice to them. And generous.’

  ‘And, baby, you’d better believe this when I tell you,’ Lana Mae chimed in, ‘she was as Frenchy as these two stuck-up broads right here.’ She threw a many-ringed hand towards Alexandrine and Zita, who enjoyed the insult. ‘She was an inspiration to me, your Auntie Marj,’ Lana Mae added, sniffing back a tear.

  ‘An inspiration to us all,’ said Alexandrine. She took the medals from Polly’s hands and placed them in their little satin-lined case. ‘God rest her soul.’

  ‘God rest her soul,’ the other two echoed. They sipped their cocktails, contemplating the loss of their friend.

  ‘So, then . . .’ said Zita, after a minute. She weighed up grieving Polly through heavily kohled eyes. ‘You must know about us?’

  ‘I know your names,’ said Polly, ‘from my aunt’s letters.’

  ‘And?’ said Zita.

  ‘I know you’re a famous film star,’ Polly tried to offer.

  Zita was dismissive. ‘Every idiot and her pimp knows that, puss. What about what Marjorie did for us when nobody else gave a pigeon shit?’

  Polly had no idea.

  The three women looked among themselves again and seemed to wordlessly come to the agreement that this lack of knowledge wasn’t a bad thing. They relaxed a little.

  ‘I do know she was an opera singer, of course,’ Polly gave them. ‘She was a great soprano.’

  Zita chuckled. ‘You’re not a total cretin then,’ she said. She fluffed her curly hair.

  ‘She was very famous in Paris,’ said Polly, ‘before the Great War. My father kept a scrapbook about her.’

  ‘Your father who died.’ Zita made this a fact, rather than a question. ‘Your mother being dead already, which is why Marjorie sent for you here.’

  ‘Yes.’ Polly felt hot tears threatening. She’d held them off all morning, but these women were making the task hard. ‘Yes . . .’ she said again. But no other words followed, for it was only now occurring to her, three days after Marjorie’s shocking death, that she had no family left. She tried to make her best effort. ‘I suppose it wasn’t an extensive scrapbook,’ she conceded. ‘And I suppose I didn’t look at it as closely or as often as I might have . . .’

  The three older women were united in looks of disapproval again.

  This pushed Polly over the edge. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered. She gave in to crying.

  ‘Oh, darling girl.’ Alexandrine was at her side with a handkerchief. ‘No more of that. We’ve all cried enough. Stop being so harsh with her, Zita.’

  The film star bowed in apology. ‘It’s tough to lose someone who loved you, puss,’ she said softly. ‘Don’t mind me.’

  Polly nodded, blowing her nose.

  ‘What you didn’t know about Marjorie’s life was not your fault,’ said Alexandrine. ‘It’s Marjorie I blame. We’re all brought up as girls to think of modesty as a virtue, but really, Marjorie sometimes took it to extremes.’

  ‘But she wasn’t modest at all,’ said Polly, bewildered by this. ‘At least not in her letters to me. She was so colourful – so extravagant. She couldn’t help dressing lavishly, and always in haute couture. She always insisted on the highest of fine dining. She always went everywhere accompanied by so much music and art.’

  She caught the three women passing looks with each other again.

  ‘Darling, that was Ma
rjorie being French,’ said Alexandrine.

  ‘Even nuns shop for their rosaries at Cartier,’ Zita added.

  But Polly had succumbed to tears again. When she stopped, she found the women changed in their approach to her. As one, they were tender.

  Alexandrine seemed to be grappling with how to broach something delicate. She glanced at the others. ‘There’s something else you don’t know. Marjorie was living on borrowed time, Polly.’

  Polly stared at her.

  ‘You see, baby, something went bad with her heart,’ said Lana Mae, gently, ‘just lately, don’t ask us to explain, that’s just how it was. The quacks told her it could burst any time.’

  ‘Any time at all,’ said Zita. She shifted in her armchair. ‘That’s what happened, we think, on the train.’

  ‘The police think it, too,’ said Lana Mae.

  ‘And the doctor,’ said Alexandrine. ‘She must have been passing between carriages – that’s when her heart burst. That’s why she fell.’

  Polly’s face creased with her terrible grief again and they waited until it was past.

  ‘But – but why didn’t she tell me if she was so very ill?’ Polly asked them in time.

  The women were uncomfortable.

  Bewildered, Polly tried to look back on her aunt’s recent actions, seeking to equate what the women were telling her with what she’d witnessed. ‘I knew something was wrong on the train,’ she whispered, ‘but I didn’t know it was that.’

  ‘It is possible,’ Alexandrine ventured, looking for support from the other two, ‘that Marjorie wanted to spare you the truth of her condition.’

  Lana Mae agreed. ‘You’d not long lost your pa, baby. Maybe she didn’t want you getting all worked up with the idea of losing her, too?’

  ‘But I did lose her, didn’t I?’ said Polly, heartbroken. ‘At least if she’d told me she was sick I could have prepared myself for it. But now . . .’ she gestured at the sunny, comfortable room with despair, ‘I’m prepared for nothing.’

  Alexandrine took a long, deep breath through her aristocrat’s sharp nose. ‘That I very much doubt.’ She looked to Zita. ‘What was it that Marjorie always used to say?’