It was, she supposed, the classic stepmother – stepdaughter relationship. With Stephen in the middle.
Despite his acuteness in business he had never been able to see how treacherous his own daughter could be. He had showered her with material possessions; her trust funds and the country properties she would inherit in England made her worth tens of millions of pounds. And with her looks and brains she was bound to acquire herself a fabulously wealthy husband.
But it wasn’t enough, not for Victoria. Platinum Resorts Inc. remained, a monument to Stephen’s vision and legendary flair. Tomorrow the disposition of his holding in the company was to be made clear.
Tomorrow, at the lawyer’s meeting, Victoria was certain to make her move.
Robert Leyton awoke with a colossal hangover.
Delicately he eased himself out of the bed, careful not to jolt his sore and aching head.
Behind the bathroom door was a full-length mirror. Robert squinted at his reflection. He looked like death. The muscles of his stocky, gone-to-seed body were slack and his face was drawn and haggard, eyelids drooping heavily over his dark eyes.
‘Getting old, my son,’ he told himself in the mirror.
His hand shook as he slowly and painfully shaved the dark stubble off his chin, careful not to nick himself. He didn’t want shaving cuts on his face today, not with a meeting with that smart lawyer coming up. Besides, as Victoria’s chief trustee he owed it to her to put up a good appearance. He must do his best for Stephen’s daughter. His old friend and partner would have expected no less.
He lit a cigarette with a hand that trembled slightly and inhaled, letting the smoke curl lazily away from his thin lips as he gazed out of the window at the driving rain. Thirty-two floors below him it was washing some of the surface filth off the streets of the city. He hated New York; had never been able to understand why Stephen had loved it so much.
But then, there was much about his former partner he had never understood.
Staring sightlessly out of the window, he drew smoke deep into his lungs and recalled Stephen’s words to him the day before he died. His voice on the telephone had been cold and deadly serious.
‘Robert, you must promise me something. It’s very important. If anything happens to me in the next few days I want you to go to Zurich, to see Nicolas Wagner. He has a letter in his possession. It’s to do with Platinum Resorts …’ – the company Stephen had founded without Robert’s participation – ‘He’ll know what to do if you tell him it’s time. He’ll contact Klein first. It’s all arranged.’
Robert had expressed surprise. He had never known Stephen be so mysterious. ‘But why?’ he had asked.
‘Because you’re the only one I can trust to do it.’
‘Do what?’
‘Stop that bastard Cellini getting his hands on Platinum Resorts! He’ll do anything to gain control, anything. It’s up to you to stop him.’
Robert had shivered. He doubted if there was anyone who could stop Antonio Cellini getting what he wanted. Except a man like Stephen.
‘Have I your word, Robert?’ Stephen’s voice had been low and urgent. ‘You’ll pull out all the stops?’ It had been a demand.
Though mystified, he had agreed. ‘Yes, of course, Stephen. You know I will. Anything you say. But come on, why so serious? You’re as fit as a fiddle. Nothing’s going to happen to you.’
‘I know that,’ the voice at the other end of the telephone had snapped back. ‘It’s merely a precaution. You know me. Better safe than sorry.’
They were Stephen’s last words to him.
The following day Christina had phoned and broken the fatal news in a distant, choking voice.
Victor, the butler, had found Stephen’s body at the foot of the stairs in their Barbados home, Crystal Springs House. His neck was broken.
The island coroner had ruled that it was death by misadventure. Robert had difficulty accepting the verdict, but kept his own counsel. It surely could not have been coincidence that Stephen had set in motion those complicated and highly secret arrangements ‘in case of’ his own death?
He turned from the rain-splattered window and savagely screwed his cigarette out in an ashtray. What, he wondered for the hundredth time, had Stephen got himself mixed up in?
After the fortieth length, Antonio Cellini pulled himself effortlessly out of the heated water and padded across the marble tiles to a towel draped on a chair at the side of the dark-blue-tiled swimming-pool.
He moved on the ground as he had in the water: effortlessly and with an animal grace. Standing at six one and weighing 180 pounds, he had the body of a man of thirty. Which, he considered, wasn’t bad when next birthday he would be fifty-three.
Wrapping himself in the towel, he looked across the grounds of the Southampton colonial-style mansion he had finally bought from his parents-in-law. He never tired of the sense of pride that view gave him; it represented everything he had ever wanted, everything he had worked for and achieved.
A flash of blonde hair appeared at a bedroom window but was gone before he could lift a hand to wave. He wondered why Susanna was up so early. It was unusual.
He jogged barefoot up the well-manicured lawns and through the open french windows. He was surprised to see his wife sitting fully dressed at the head of the polished dining-table in the elegant, pale-green morning room. She was spreading butter sparingly over a wafer-thin slice of toast.
‘Good morning, Susanna,’ he said brightly. ‘Up so early? To what do I owe this pleasure?’
She ignored his question. ‘Antonio,’ she demanded with barely controlled irritation, ‘how many times do I have to ask you? After you have been swimming, please come in through the kitchen. You are dripping all over the Aubusson.’
Her blue eyes were cold and full of disapproval.
He was tempted to tell her acidly that the faded, threadbare rug he was soaking had cost him several thousand dollars. That if he wanted to stand on it, wet or otherwise, he would. And that furthermore, if there was one thing he had learned in his long years of association with a tight-ass like Stephen Reece-Carlton, it was that it was vulgar to use anything but the generic: ‘the car’, not ‘the Mercedes’; ‘champagne’, not ‘Dom Perignon’; ‘the rug’, not the goddamned ‘Aubusson’! He caught his own chain of thought and smiled ironically. Well, what do you know? Some of Stephen’s class had finally rubbed off. Too bad it had to be after his death. He wondered if he ought to correct the supposedly classy woman he had married. But he thought better of it. He didn’t want another argument, not this morning. This morning he had more important things on his mind.
‘You haven’t answered my question,’ he continued, glancing at the Louis XV clock, yet another of Susanna’s expensive antiques. ‘Why aren’t you still in bed? You’re never up at this time in the morning.’
‘I have an appointment with Clifford Norton about the party next month. He goes on vacation this afternoon. This morning is the only time he could make.’ Her mouth nipped at a corner of the toast and she chewed it slowly and delicately. He grimaced. It irritated him the way she ate like a bird.
‘Not another party, Susanna,’ he moaned. ‘I’m sick of your constant parties. All those phoney people descending on us like a cloud of locusts. Give me a break. Haven’t we done our quota of entertaining for this year?’
She gave him another icy stare but said nothing. He grabbed a warm croissant from a plate on the table and bit into it as he walked out of the room, leaving a trail of crumbs