‘Please do.’
‘Did your mother also go to the shelter with you?’ Jane asked, nonchalantly.
‘Good heavens, no! She said we could all die of carbon monoxide poisoning, which enraged my father. He always said that if she was the only woman in the house and it was flattened by a bomb, he would feel no sorrow,’ Beatrice chuckled.
‘What a terrible thing to say!’ Jane exclaimed, ensuring that her glass was mostly filled with crushed ice. ‘Your mother was a beautiful woman. I was admiring the photographs of her.’
‘Yes, she was extraordinarily beautiful, and she never let us forget it. She was also very temperamental.’
Jane was becoming increasingly frustrated at the lack of progress in her questioning. She regretted bringing up the subject of Beatrice’s mother.
With her replenished drink in her hand, Beatrice walked over to the piano.
‘You are probably unaware that my mother’s family were titled. Her father was Count Antonin Petrukhin and her mother, Aida, was obviously a countess. I met her only once when I was about nine or ten.’
Jane sighed as Beatrice glided from one photograph to another.
‘She was a formidable woman. After the death of my grandfather, she set up home in Venice. It was my grandmother’s friend who came to London and lived with us, purportedly to teach the piano... Mikhail Avilov.’
Beatrice turned towards Jane, sipping her cocktail, but before Jane could interject, she continued yet again.
‘He infuriated my father because he and my mother would speak Russian together and it created terrible tension in the house.’
It felt as if Beatrice was bringing up any subject to divert from being questioned about the infanticide. However, it gave Jane the opportunity to mention the jewellery Muriel was wearing in so many of the photographs.
‘I couldn’t help but notice what sumptuous jewellery your mother wore, especially in this photograph.’ Jane pointed to the photograph of Muriel next to the fireplace, wearing not only the three long strands of pearls but a choker necklace and tiara. Beatrice went to stand beside Jane, still holding her glass.
‘I have a lovely story of those three strands of pearls. After mother died, Helena inherited the long strand, I was given the second strand and poor Marjorie the smaller strand.’ Beatrice lifted the necklace she was wearing. ‘I’m actually wearing mine now, because I was due to be having lunch with some of my girlfriends.’
‘Her jewellery must have been of great value, especially if they are diamonds and real pearls in the tiara?’
Beatrice nodded. ‘My mother was obsessive about every piece. She would delight in calling us into her bedroom and laying them all out on her dressing table. They were part of her trousseau. I think when they left Russia to go to America, there would have been considerably more, but her family were bankrupted.’
‘So, Marjorie had a string of pearls as well?’ Jane asked.
Beatrice drained her glass.
‘I find this most upsetting...’ She went back to the cabinet and poured herself another drink. Jane could see that Beatrice was becoming intoxicated, and decided she would just have to be patient and hope that Beatrice would eventually let her guard down and start talking about the baby.
‘Father buried Marjorie with her pearls because it was such a dreadful thing that happened,’ Beatrice continued, after taking a good sip of her fresh drink. ‘The swing was in the garden directly outside my father’s study window. He went there in the morning, and it was the first thing he saw. You have no idea how terrible it was, what she did, and the terrible repercussions we had to face.’
‘I know she hanged herself on your childhood swing...’ Jane said.
Beatrice was shaking. ‘Oh, you’ve been told. I know why you are asking me these things and it’s awfully distressing. There were always terrible problems between my father and Marjorie.’
‘Is that why she did it?’ Jane asked.
‘My father never believed that she was his daughter. The piano teacher, Mikhail, was sent packing because Father believed he and mother were having an affair, and that Marjorie was actually Mikhail’s daughter.’
‘So, your mother was in love with Mikhail?’ Jane asked.
‘We were all very taken with him. He was so young and very handsome, and he would sit very close beside us when we played duets. Mikhail’s presence in the house lifted all our spirits because he would make us laugh, and he sometimes would mimic our father, but we knew Mother spent hours alone with him when Father went to his club, and they would speak Russian together. Whether Mikhail was Marjorie’s father or not, we never knew... but Father never behaved towards Marjorie as he did with Helena and I.’
‘Was he abusive to her?’ Jane probed.
Beatrice hesitated. ‘She was... very wilful and often had to be punished.’
‘What about your mother? How did she behave towards Marjorie?’ Jane asked.
Beatrice sighed. ‘My mother was very selfish and self-absorbed... she could be very cruel. I think my mother always felt Father was inferior and was always belittling him. She said she was from aristocracy and that she had been forced to marry him against her will.’
‘When I studied the family tree, it appeared that your mother was very young when she married your father... only about fourteen?’
Beatrice’s eyes narrowed. ‘You have been doing your homework, haven’t you? My mother behaved like a spoilt brat, delighting in spreading out her precious jewels as if to humiliate us.’
She then gave a strange laugh and Jane could tell that Beatrice was feeling the effects of consuming three glasses of her very potent sloe gin. ‘But in the end, I benefitted, and I felt no guilt when I did what I did.’
She poured the last of the gin from the flask into her glass and topped it up with what was left of the crushed ice.
‘My father forbade me from seeing my late husband, John, and kept me locked up in my bedroom for weeks on end; he even threatened that he would force me to stay in the shelter.’
‘Was this before Marjorie’s death?’
‘No... after... after. He said John was a “nothing” and no daughter of his would marry a common bus driver. So, I paid him back. I have no guilt about what I did... everyone knew about it eventually. I went into my mother’s bedroom, scooped up as much of her jewellery as I could, and left. I had planned my escape... had my passport and I had saved what money I could to buy a ticket on the boat. I knew that with mother’s jewels I would be able to be together with John, but then...’ she made a wide gesture with her hands, ‘all the best plans can go wrong.’
Tina entered the drawing room.
‘Do you require your lunch, Mrs Thorpe?’
‘Yes, I do. We’ll have it on the veranda?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Can you set a place for...’ She obviously couldn’t remember Jane’s name.
‘Yes, ma’am.’
Jane sighed. The last thing she wanted was to have lunch, but it seemed there was no option if she was to have any hope of getting the information she needed.
Chapter Nineteen
After an exhausting search, Tim Taylor had finally located Jason Thorpe’s export offices. Tim had been advised that he should go to the warehouse at the main Sydney docks as Mr Thorpe had a facility there and on a Saturday they would be loading crates of wine for shipment.
In the heat of the midday sun Tim had taken a taxi to the docks and had spent forty-five minutes trying to locate the right warehouse. He had become increasingly disorientated, as there were hundreds of massive warehouses lined up along the dock, with trucks delivering and loading, and he couldn’t remember which way it was back to the street. He was also by this time feeling a bit woozy as the jet lag started to creep in on him. He was relieved to spot a pie and drinks stand next to a huge open-doored structure, with lorries driving in and out loaded with crates.