Chapter Forty-Four

London, February 1925

When Eve was seventeen weeks pregnant, a telegram arrived from Brograve’s mother saying that his father had died, suddenly, in the South of France after catching a chill while on holiday. Although Sir Edward had been in frail health for some time, it came as a shock.

Brograve had no time to mourn because he had to rush out to attend the funeral, which was being held at the English cemetery in Nice two days hence. Eve wanted to go with him—she’d grown very fond of her father-in-law—but it was out of the question. Travel sickness on top of pregnancy sickness would finish her off. On the journey there he worried about leaving her behind, and he worried about how his mother would cope with the loss of his father. He had to step up and be head of the family now, the patriarch. It was his turn to protect everyone, and deep down he wasn’t sure if he was capable. But he had to be; he had no choice in the matter.

After the funeral, Brograve brought Betty back to London and, at Eve’s suggestion, she moved in with them rather than go home alone. Brograve well remembered her uncontrollable grief after his brother died and was wary that her distress might upset Eve, but this time she was quiet and contained in her mourning. She proved to be good company for Eve, offering the kind of woman-to-woman advice that Almina had singularly failed to give during this pregnancy.

Brograve was frantically busy. He couldn’t sleep at night for making lists in his head of all the things he had to do: talking to obituarists about Sir Edward’s illustrious career and sending photographs to accompany their articles; sorting out his father’s financial affairs and taking charge of his mother’s, because she had never so much as paid a bill in her life and wouldn’t know where to start. Friends and family who had been unable to travel to Nice were agitating for a memorial service to pay their respects to his father, so he organized one in St. Margaret’s, the church where he and Eve had been married. It was standing room only, and afterward everyone told Brograve he’d done his father proud, but the strain of the day exhausted him.

It was a difficult period, made a hundred times worse when Almina’s case, Dennistoun v. Dennistoun, came to the High Court in March.

All of Almina’s and Dorothy’s friends had urged the women to back down, but they were headstrong characters, incapable of compromise. Proceedings were vitriolic from the start, with accusations of promiscuity and infidelity flung around and names dragged through the mud. Almina’s barrister leaked a story doing the rounds that Dorothy had slept with her husband’s superior in the army to win him a promotion, and it became headline news. There were strong hints that Almina had been having an affair with Ian before the death of her first husband, the Earl of Carnarvon. It was also revealed that Almina had been the illegitimate child of Alfred de Rothschild, something most of her society friends already knew but not the nation at large. Every sordid detail of their lives became fodder for the opposition’s barrister and a gift for the journalists covering the trial.

Each evening, Almina telephoned Eve to rant about the day’s proceedings, never once stopping to ask how she was feeling, or how Betty or Brograve were faring after their bereavement. Eve clearly found it draining but she would never refuse to take the telephone calls, and Brograve’s fury grew by the day.

One evening, when Eve was weak from prolonged vomiting, he could hold back no longer. He grabbed the receiver and spoke to Almina directly: “My wife is ill and vulnerable, and I would ask you to please refrain from distressing her further with your calls.”

“How dare you come between me and my daughter!” she shrieked. “Hand back the telephone immediately.”

Brograve prided himself on never losing his temper, but suddenly he felt rage welling up, boiling and unstoppable: “Strange as it may seem, not everything is about you, Almina,” he shouted. “Did you ever stop to consider how it would affect Eve that you are dragging the family name through the mud? No, I don’t suppose you did. You are the most selfish woman it has ever been my misfortune to come across!”

“I’ve never heard such impertinence!” Almina replied, sounding shocked. “Unless you apologize, I will never speak to you again.”

In response Brograve hung up the phone. He turned to Eve and his mother. “She says she won’t speak to me again unless I apologize. And since I have no intention of apologizing, we may not be seeing her for a while.”

He left the room, grabbed his coat, and charged out the front door before either could stop him. He stamped down the darkened street, muttering under his breath, not even looking where he was going, and kept moving until he had walked off the worst of his rage.

On his return, Eve didn’t berate him for losing his temper with her mother. Instead she got up and hugged him. He didn’t expect her to stop taking her mother’s telephone calls. That wouldn’t be fair. But it would suit him right down to the ground if he never had to see Almina again.

* * *

All in all, Brograve could sympathize with the fact that Porchy was still furious with Almina three years after her death. She’d been the kind of woman who aroused fury. It was testament to Eve’s easygoing personality that she never had a serious falling-out with her mother, but continued to be the family peacemaker, the one who got on with everyone.

In his summing-up at the end of the Dennistoun case, the judge had called it “the most bitterly contested litigation” he had ever known. The jury decided that Almina need not pay alimony to Dorothy—but costs were awarded against her, so she would have to pay the substantial legal fees herself. It took a large dent out of her fortune and led directly to the financial mishaps and hardship of her later years. In Brograve’s opinion, the dispute should never have been allowed to go to court.

After Ian Dennistoun died in 1938, Almina was lonely. Eve lunched with her in London from time to time, and they kept up to date by telephone, but she never came to stay at Framfield because that would have meant accepting hospitality from Brograve, and his name was still mud.

When her money ran out, Almina used to call regularly with some sob story or other, and Eve would write her a check. She knew that Brograve knew, because he was the one who checked the bank statements, but it was never mentioned.

Before they left Highclere, Brograve succeeded in persuading Porchy not to write an indiscreet memoir.

“There’s no benefit to be served in reliving the bad old days,” he said. “And it would be undignified.”

Porchy agreed. “If only Pups had lived. He could control Almina’s impulsive nature, just about, but I never stood a chance. You’re right—best draw a line under it.”

On their last day at Highclere, Taylor handed Brograve a telephone message. His friend Cuthbert had rung and asked if he would call back.

“I got in touch with the university in Cairo,” Cuthbert said, “and I have some unsettling news for you. Ana Mansour is no longer employed there. She used to work for them but she was sacked more than a year ago.”

“Good god!” Brograve exclaimed, shocked. “Whatever for?”

“I don’t know the precise circumstances—they were cagey about it—but I get the impression it was quite a scandal. If she was trying to get your wife to hand over Tutankhamun artifacts by impersonating a university employee, then she was committing fraud.”

Brograve was horrified. The woman had been in his house. He’d taken her to meet Eve while she was in a vulnerable condition. Why hadn’t he checked up on her? He had trusted her simply because she wrote on university notepaper, but she must have had some left over from when she worked there. What a fool he had been!

“I suppose there’s no harm done if you didn’t give her anything,” Cuthbert said.

“No, we didn’t, thank god. I imagine she planned to take our heirlooms and sell them to the highest bidder.” He remembered something. “She said her father used to be an antiquities dealer so I suppose she could have learned the business from him.”

“Some of the world’s biggest auction houses turn a blind eye when it comes to the provenance of antiquities. You’d be amazed,” Cuthbert said.

“So what do you suggest we do with the artifacts we’ve found at Highclere? I want it to be entirely aboveboard.”

“Perhaps talking to the British Museum is the best option,” Cuthbert replied. “I’m told Lord Carnarvon left a stipulation in his will that they be given first call on his collection, but his widow decided to go with the Met in New York, since they were the highest bidder.”

“Of course she did,” Brograve said wearily. “That was my mother-in-law all over. Many thanks for your help, Cuthbert.”

He hung up the phone feeling stunned. You read about people who preyed on the elderly. Could Ana be one of them? Might she have taken anything of theirs? Why, oh why, had he ever let her in his home?