The Claimant Read online

  The note read:

  There’s your problem, Lucifer. I don’t want anything. I’ve already got what I want.

  There was a payphone beside the bar and he promptly called reception at the Hyatt. ‘I just missed a call from one of your guests,’ he explained. ‘Can you connect me?’

  ‘Certainly, sir. What name?’

  ‘Ah, I believe she is registered as Lilith Jardine.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, there is no answer from her room.’

  He left a message. ‘I’ll be in the lobby lounge at your hotel.’

  Marlowe rushed out of the Oyster Bar, emerged onto East 42nd, turned left, and entered the cavernous lobby of the Grand Hyatt. He sat in the lounge where he could watch anyone entering from the street. He picked up the hotel’s free copy of the New York Post, a trashy society-gossip rag which he despised but which had served him well as a fertile hunting ground for new clients. In fact he knew very well that apart from financial predators like himself, only Republican campaign managers and desperate art-museum fundraisers, sniffing for big money whatever it smelled like, read that kind of journalistic swill.

  VANDERBILT BUTTERFLY LAYS LOW, the headline read. There was a photograph of Celise in a strapless gown.

  Startled, Marlowe read on.

  Social butterfly Celise Vanderbilt, who kept her widowed name after the death of her second husband and after remarrying into Old South money and Old South plantation aristocracy, says she is dumbfounded to learn she is next in line to inherit properties in the Hamptons and in France, as well as a handsome Fifth Avenue penthouse. A fellow socialite fundraiser who described herself as a friend – but who declined to be identified – said this was not surprising. Celise eats properties the way she eats men, this friend claimed.

  There have been rumors that Ms. Vanderbilt and her most recent husband – her third, a legendary investment broker – were splitting up. Ms. Vanderbilt has denied this adamantly. ‘My husband and I are very much in love,’ she said.

  Asked if she wished to comment on speculation that an SEC investigation into her husband’s affairs was imminent and that allegations of major financial irregularities were pending, Ms. Vanderbilt said: ‘You’ll have to speak to my husband about that. I was brought up to believe that for a lady to speak about money was quite vulgar.’

  The case of the Vanderbilt claimant and the jury’s finding have set off a frenzy of investigative journalism in this country, in France, and in Australia. The claimant has been tentatively identified – perhaps, to be more precise, creatively and theoretically identified – as Christophe Jardinier the Younger, a village butcher from France (though this evidence is as yet unsubstantiated and was not uncovered in time to be presented at the trial).

  The jury has convicted the claimant of fraud, but it transpires that legally speaking the claimant was actually la comtesse herself, mother of the Vanderbilt heir, and – at the time of the verdict – the claimant was in fact the estate of the recently deceased comtesse. It is not yet clear if the courts consider that the deceased countess was deliberately guilty of attempted fraud or of desperate grief-stricken hope. It is not yet clear if she was duped by her lawyers or if her lawyers may be charged with fiduciary misconduct, embezzlement, and swindling on an unprecedented scale.

  Investigative research has uncovered that Christophe Jardinier the Younger, known in his native French village as Petit Christophe, mysteriously disappeared in 1960. He was the son of the head gardener of the Château de Boissy which stands just outside the village of St Gilles on the Vienne River, a tributary of the Loire. Petit Christophe was apprenticed to the village butcher. It was rumored for many years that he had been murdered by Monsieur Monsard, the butcher himself, father of the young woman whom Petit Christophe had made pregnant. Evidence now suggests that, fearful of the wrath of his lover’s father, it is possible that Petit Christophe fled the country. Some sources (not yet verified) claim that he fled to Australia. He may have been, for many years, the butcher in a rural town in Queensland, Australia, conducting business under the name of Christy McLew, which is to say that the claimant as seen in the courtroom video may be Petit Christophe. Nevertheless, at this point, there is no DNA confirmation that the claimant is indeed Christophe the Younger. Nor, in spite of the jury’s finding, is there DNA confirmation that the claimant is not Gwynne Patrice Vanderbilt.

  Several sources, who have insisted on anonymity because they feel themselves to be at personal risk, suggest that certain members of the Vanderbilt family are eager for the claimant to disappear – or to be disappeared – before further information comes to light. Unidentified sources in France, in particular members of the gendarmerie in small Loire Valley towns, suggest that whoever killed Christophe the Younger acquired a taste for blood and is still at large. He may be a serial killer and may well be still killing, they claim, though whether he is at large in France or in Australia or elsewhere they are not able to say. It is even possible, these sources suggest, that the heir himself killed Christophe the Younger and that is why he immediately left the country and why he might not be dead at all.

  Marlowe downed several whiskeys and kept his eye on the revolving doors that gave onto 42nd Street until his attention was caught by a television screen anchored to one of the pillars in the lounge. He was obliged to watch his wife giving an interview on CNN.

  ‘It has been so embarrassing for the family,’ Marlowe’s wife said demurely, ‘to have someone who is essentially a farmhand claim to be heir to my uncle’s estate.’

  ‘That is to say, your uncle by marriage,’ the interviewer said.

  ‘My uncle by marriage, yes. The uncle of my deceased husband. We were very close. I mean, my husband’s uncle and I were very close. He was the younger brother of my father-in-law, who was tragically killed in a steeplechase incident. I was quite devastated when my husband’s uncle died.’

  ‘Is it true, Ms Vanderbilt,’ the interviewer asked, ‘that if the jury’s verdict stands, and is not overturned by appeal, then you are next in line to inherit?’

  ‘You know,’ Marlowe’s wife responded sweetly, ‘I am married to a very wealthy man, a brilliant financier. The inheritance, per se, is obviously not an issue that concerns us. Family honour is a different matter.’

  ‘Okay. Enough. Leave it right there,’ Marlowe said to the television screen. He was, by this time, quite drunk, and considered hurling his glass at the TV.

  An aerial photograph of the Château de Boissy and the village of St Gilles filled the screen. The outer wall of the chateau was crumbling. A voiceover explained that a natural system of village conservation was in process. Once a building began to decay, the villagers carted away the stone for re-use elsewhere. An oak tree branched up through a hole in the roof of the chateau.

  ‘Ms Vanderbilt,’ the interviewer went on, ‘it would appear that the chateau is a ruin. If you inherit, what do you intend to do with it?’

  ‘Good heavens,’ Marlowe’s wife replied. ‘I haven’t given the matter any thought.’

  ‘Did you ever meet the Comtesse Isabelle de la Vallière Vanderbilt, the former owner of the chateau?’

  ‘Oh indeed. We were very fond of each other. We met on many formal family occasions in the Fifth Avenue penthouse,’ Marlowe’s wife said, ‘before the tragic death of my second husband. The countess moved back to New York in the summer of 1968 and I had married into the family not long before that. After Gwynne Patrice was killed in Vietnam, I dropped by as often as I could. I like to think I was a source of comfort to her. In fact, I was at her bedside not long before she died.’

  ‘You know that she recognised the claimant as her son?’

  ‘Yes. Sight unseen, in fact.’ Marlowe’s wife sighed. ‘Poor Isabelle. Grief does terrible things to people, and denial is only one of these things. The fear of destitution compounds the problem. To be frank, I think Isabelle would have identified a chimpanzee as her son if that would have paid for repairs to the chateau and covered the upkeep on th
e penthouse and the association fee.’

  ‘The penthouse on Fifth Avenue?’

  ‘Yes. She lived there in apparent splendour but the sad fact is she was a pauper. I happen to know that her black domestic did the grocery shopping and had to pay for the food. That was when I chipped in – anonymously of course – in deference to her pride. It was the least I could do.’

  ‘Could you explain to our audience exactly the nature of your relationship to the actual heir, should he be found to be alive?’

  ‘I am his cousin by marriage,’ Marlowe’s wife said. ‘The heir’s father was Lawrence Gwynne Vanderbilt, the older brother of Harry –’

  ‘That is to say of Harold Cornelius Vanderbilt?’

  ‘Yes. Father of my deceased husband Billy.’

  ‘That is to say, father of William Jeremiah Vanderbilt?’

  ‘Father of Billy. Yes.’

  ‘So your second husband was the heir’s cousin?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Why did you keep the Vanderbilt name after you remarried?’

  ‘Out of respect for the Vanderbilt family. They had become very dear to me.’

  ‘Since our inquiries in France have given us to understand that the chateau was given in perpetuity, by royal decree, to the family of the countess, can you explain to our viewers how it became part of this lawsuit and part of your own inheritance if the verdict holds?’

  ‘After the death of the Comtesse Isabelle, which took place in New York, where she had executed her final will and testament and which is therefore subject to New York state law, her estate passed into her husband’s estate, and hence on to his heirs. Which is to say, given the death in Vietnam of his only son, the estate of the countess passed from her husband to his nephew, my deceased husband.’

  ‘And since your second husband, now deceased, left his entire estate to you, you are now next in line to inherit the chateau as well as the Vanderbilt holdings in this country?’

  ‘So my lawyers tell me,’ Marlowe’s wife said, with a disarming shrug of her shoulders. ‘I might, you know, donate the chateau to the Metropolitan Museum of Art as French exhibition space.’

  ‘Ms Vanderbilt,’ the interviewer explained to the TV audience and to the world, ‘has a distinguished and generous record of sponsorship of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as of MoMA and the Metropolitan Opera. Nevertheless,’ he continued, ‘I am obliged to ask you, Ms Vanderbilt, if there is any substance to the rumours that you yourself had an affair with the heir’s father before your marriage to –’

  ‘Oh my goodness!’ Celise raised her eyes heavenwards. ‘Have we come to this? I won’t dignify that question with an answer. Does this mean that even a major news channel stoops to the gutter?’

  ‘As I’m sure you’re aware, Ms Vanderbilt, photographs taken in nightclubs in the sixties …’

  ‘Ah yes,’ Celise sighed. ‘Fakes. Doctored collages. What everyone expects from the tabloids. They have already been served notice by my lawyers.’

  Marlowe signalled for another glass of whiskey.

  He called Sotheby’s from a payphone in the lobby and intended to ask if he could speak to one of their appraisers, the one based in Australia, the one who was currently a guest at the Grand Hyatt. He got a standard after-hours recording and a number to call in emergency. He called that number and spoke to an unknown live person. ‘You have reached our answering service,’ the live person said. ‘Sotheby’s does not give out personal information on appraisers when they are travelling, but we can take a message and it will be relayed to the appraiser’s hotel room. Please leave your message after the tone.’

  ‘Lilith,’ he said after the tone, ‘I’m waiting downstairs at your hotel. I’m going to wait here until you come.’

  He kept downing whiskeys but Lilith never came.

  ‘Sir,’ a steward said, waking him. ‘Can I escort you to your room, or should I call you a cab?’

  6.

  A man named Marlowe is taken home from the Grand Hyatt in a cab. Between them, the doorman and the taxi driver manage to get Marlowe across the lobby. He wakes in his own apartment with a terrible hangover. His dreams have been mangled. In one fragment, he is on Interstate 95 driving down from Boston to New York for an anti-war sit-in in Central Park. The car radio is dissecting the fallout of the assassinations (Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy) and is predicting violence for the upcoming Democratic Convention in Chicago. Lilith is in the passenger seat. He has to swerve for an oncoming car that is going the wrong way at high speed, head-on collision imminent; the other driver must have come up the off-ramp, must be crazy or drunk or high. The passenger door is flung open and Lilith is ejected like a rocket. Marlowe jams on the brakes, not a wise reflex, because cars and trucks pile up on him from the rear and crush his vehicle like a tin can in a garbage compactor.

  Marlowe wakes briefly with an excruciating headache, tries to claw his way out of the wreckage of his dream, and gives up. In any case, he has to go back for Lilith. He can’t just take the exit ramp and leave her in the rubble of the interstate, of a nightmare, of his life. Has he lost her permanently? It is now as clear as the shard of windshield sticking out of his throbbing eye that what he wants is so much more than mere conquest. He wants her to want him. He wants her to think well of him. He wants to want to be the kind of person she would think well of. Well, almost. In lieu of becoming someone else, he wants to perform magic. He wants her Lucifer reflex to make a U-turn. He wants her to think she sees the kind of man she admires.

  Beneath him, shockingly, suddenly, the interstate gapes open and he falls down the sinkhole, turning and tumbling into darkness. He finds himself in a tunnel, scraped and bruised and slick with sewage, but otherwise unharmed. He crawls forward. Ahead of him a tollbooth appears and in the booth, all buck teeth and smirk, the White Rabbit demands to see his interstate ticket. ‘It’s here somewhere,’ Marlowe says, anxiously searching his pockets. ‘I know I’ve got it. I came on in Boston at that interchange of the Mass Pike with I-95.’ He can feel a panic attack closing in. On the lowered boom ahead of him sits the Cheshire Cat. The cat is almost nothing but grin. ‘If you don’t have your toll receipt,’ the Cheshire Cat says, ‘the boom will not let you through. It has a dual function, you know.’

  ‘I’ve got it, I know I’ve got it,’ Marlowe says. ‘As a matter of fact, you don’t even have the right to ask because I have an E-Z Pass. I always get through. I’m never stopped. I don’t even have to pause. I have permanent right of way.’

  ‘So show me your E-Z Pass.’

  ‘It’s on my windshield, naturally, under that pile-up. How can I find it? Anyway, I have to find Lilith first.’

  ‘Better find both of them fast,’ the White Rabbit advises, checking his fob watch, ‘because the Queen’s on her way. Patience is not her strong suit and she’s not inclined to make allowances. She doesn’t cut slack for mistakes.’

  ‘I know my toll ticket’s here somewhere,’ Marlowe says, oddly desperate and seriously offended. He is not used to being put on the defensive. He is not used to a racing heartbeat, hyperventilation and panic. None of this is normal. He is always the one in control. ‘I have to save Lilith,’ he explains. ‘She was thrown clear but she’ll be in critical condition. Call for an ambulance.’

  ‘Not until I see your pass or your ticket,’ the White Rabbit says.

  ‘It’s a matter of life and death, for God’s sake! Call 911.’

  ‘Ticket first. Those are the rules.’

  ‘What the hell is the matter with you bureaucrats?’

  ‘You must hurry,’ the White Rabbit says, checking his watch again. ‘The Queen doesn’t tolerate delays. Oh dear, oh dear, she’s late as usual, she’s always late, but here she is.’

  ‘Guilty!’ the Queen shouts. ‘Off with his head!’ And when Marlowe turns, the face is that of his wife, Celise, whom he has not yet even met. He does not yet even know of her existence in this late-summer week of 1968, though (as it turns out)
she does know of his; she is waiting for him, watching for him, the black widow at the hub of her web. As it turns out – much too late for his own future fate – she already has an alarmingly thick dossier on him. She is reeling him in. In less than twenty-four hours they will meet in New York.

  ‘I have to rescue Lilith,’ he explains to his future wife.

  ‘She has never needed rescuing,’ the Queen says icily. ‘And her name is Alice.’

  ‘How many names does she have?’

  ‘You may well ask,’ says the Queen. ‘But your time is up. Off with his head!’

  The interstate tollbooth boom comes down with its bright angled shimmering guillotine blade. Marlowe does not even feel pain. He is eye to eye with the Queen as she holds up his own head by its hair.

  ‘I do think that was overkill,’ the White Rabbit says.

  ‘Don’t imagine I can be shuffled off,’ Celise warns, dangling his head like a toy. ‘You’re not the card sharp you think you are, and you’re certainly not the sharpest card in the pack. You don’t even begin to know how many aces I have up my sleeve.’

  All that is left of the Cheshire Cat is its smile.

  Marlowe, holding his head (now reattached to his body) in his hands, palms pressed against throbbing temples, stumbles into the kitchen to make coffee. There is a note propped against the coffee machine.

  Darling,

  Eggs and bacon in the fridge. Cappuccino machine loaded and ready to go. Just push the green button. Quite a turn of events in the news yesterday, wasn’t it? Heaven knows what we’ve yet to find out about that fraud. La pauvre comtesse. She must be turning in her grave. I’ve actually been asked to do an interview with Vanity Fair about my close familial relationship with Lady Isabelle. They know I was at her side when she died. They’ve set up a photo shoot for next week in the Vanderbilt penthouse with all those lovely antiques.

  I’m not sure how well you remember the penthouse but it’s where we met the first time, though I don’t think we’ve been back there together since then. Do you remember the magnificent marble lobby with its floor-to-ceiling French baroque mirror? And do you remember that on the opposite wall there’s a huge seventeenth-century painting of the Virgin and Child? It’s worth a fortune. I thought I’d suggest to Vanity Fair that I sit in one of the countess’s Louis XIV carved armchairs in front of the painting and their photographer could arrange things so that the painting and Yours Truly would also be reflected in the mirror.