THE GRANGE
CHACOMBE-AT-BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND
JANUARY 1973
“Fine. Have it your way,” Mrs. Spencer said, and took to roost at the end of Win’s bed, same as the chickens. “I’ll answer whatever questions you please. Though, as I said, I’m no duchess. Where’s your tape recorder, Seton?”
“Tape recorder?” Win said, stunned and buggy-eyed. “To be honest, I’d rather transcribe our discussions. I’ve grown, shall we say, rather embittered by the recorder. Just ask Miss Valentine over there.”
He nodded toward where she stood rooted beside the door. Though her exit was no longer restricted, Pru found herself unable to move. Mrs. Spencer’s demeanor had flipped. She was at once more attentive, ready to play. Pru wanted to stick around and finally hear the full tale.
“Miss Valentine? What does Miss Valentine know of your recordings?”
“I played her the tapes. Then I promptly reached my limit and chucked the device against the wall.”
“You threw it?”
“It didn’t break!” Pru chirped. “He didn’t use enough force to cause damage. It was more like a high lob.”
She arched her arm to demonstrate.
“Many thanks for that,” Win said. “A bloke can’t feel too manly around here, can he?”
“I want to be recorded,” Mrs. Spencer said. “I can’t trust you to write my words as I say them. You don’t seem particularly bright. No offense.”
“How could I possibly take offense to that?” he said and rolled his eyes. “You win, Mrs. Spencer. If you provide a single crumb of information not web-footed or feathered in nature, I will gladly record your musings.”
He opened a desk drawer. After groping its contents for thirty seconds, Win found an unused tape. He jammed it into the recorder and tapped the red circle.
“Where would you like to start?” he asked.
“I was born in 1881.”
“Righto,” Win said with a nod. “Just as the Duchess of Marlborough was.”
“No,” Mrs. Spencer said. “I mean 1892. My apologies. I’m old, you see.”
“I use that excuse all the time, too.”
“Yes, yes. I was born in 1892, at the Hotel Brighton in Paris. It was on the Rue de Rivoli across from the Tuileries Garden. My first official home was at Fourteen Rue Pierre Charron, a few blocks off the Champs-Élysées. My family was from America but I lived most of my life in Europe and consider myself a Parisian, through and through.”
Win jotted a few notes. Pru tried to see them from her place near the door.
“My mother was a known femme fatale,” Mrs. Spencer continued. “More than that, she was a demimondaine, a bygone being who was equal parts countess and courtesan.”
“Demimondaine,” Win said, addressing Pru. “A prostitute, basically. But higher class.”
“A prostitute?” She gawked.
“Oh, Miss Valentine, don’t get so prudish about it,” Mrs. Spencer clucked. “Why am I even bothering? I can’t properly explain this to a woman of the modern era, what with her job-seeking and bra-burning.”
“Note to manuscript. Mrs. Spencer glared at Miss Valentine upon speaking the word ‘bra.’”
“Believe me, there was honor in the position, in one’s ability to use her beauty and charm to make a life. Quite a nice life, it should be stated. The last home Mother lived in was a castle, decorated with unicorns and virgins.”
“Not the least bit vulgar,” Win said. “Though this is a woman who traded sex for peignoirs and incited at least one death.”
“I quite don’t know what you’re speaking about.”
“Note to manuscript: Mrs. Spencer is sniffing haughtily as can be.”
“Are you interviewing me or adding your commentary?”
“Both,” he said. “Miss Valentine, you look uncomfortable standing around like that. Why not have a seat?”
With both pairs of eyes on her, Pru scuffled against the wall and planted herself at the far side of the bed, near Win’s pillow, which still had on it faint traces of his unwashed, musky scent. Her heart rate sped up by a few extra beats.
“Where was I?” Mrs. Spencer asked, watching Pru.
“Your mother,” Win reminded her.
“Right. Mother. She was a majestic being. A noted femme fatale, as I mentioned. This got her into a spate of trouble.”
“I’ll say.”
“Mother was … her beauty … it was a crashing chandelier. She was elegant and graceful and made a scene simply by walking through a door. Her luxurious chestnut hair was envied more than her figure and her clothes, which was saying something given her resplendent serpentine dresses. She had accounts at the finest shops, bills paid by the finest men.”
“Like I said, high-class prostitution.”
“Mother traveled the world,” Mrs. Spencer went on, intent on ignoring the wisecrack, a solid strategy when dealing with Win. “But never without the four of us girls and our accompanying nurses, nursery maids, and governesses. We toured every major country in Europe, and even some minor ones. We summered in Newport, where our American cousins thought us fast merely because they caught us warming our bloomers at the fire.
“We visited Africa. South America. The far Orient. But mostly we stayed in Paris. Sometimes we lived at the best hotels, other times in meticulously appointed flats in the Marais. Either way, Paris was our home.”
“Did you study in Paris?” Win asked. “As a young girl?”
“Yes, of course. Mother ensured we were schooled in the arts. All of us were fluent in half a dozen languages by the age of ten. Even Edith, with her head thick as a brick. Mother squeezed the best parts from us. That’s what she did.
“My dearest sister Audrey and I both demonstrated early musical prowess so we trained at the Sacré-Cœur. I can still feel Audrey’s hand in mine as we promenaded through the wooden-planked entrance and toward the white domes that loomed over the city. We found our greatest happiness inside the basilica’s cool towers. So many people hated the Sacré-Cœur, so whipped up were they in Gothic furor. Audrey and I never felt threatened by the building’s aggressive Catholicism, though. Mostly the place made us want to sing.”
“Tell me about living in Rome,” Win said. “With your mum in the aforementioned unicorn castle.”
“It was a decline in station,” Mrs. Spencer said. “Despite the Renaissance palace. Mother encountered great difficulty in trying to establish herself. Italians are more rigid than their Parisian counterparts, and much less amenable to colorful backgrounds and spotty pasts. Parisians celebrate liveliness and intellect, irrespective of skeletons lurking in the closet.”
“Literal skeletons. Ergo, Coco.”
“Through it all,” she went on, doing a hero’s job of trying to hide her vexation. “Mother kept her head high and her elegance intact. She suffered no fools. She suffered nothing, really. Even at her most destitute, at the end of her life when the bills had come due and there was no one left to pay them, even then she lingered on in the palace, blue and white peacocks strutting across the lawns.”
“Form over substance, eh, Mrs. Spencer?” Win asked with a sly grin.
“Young man, my mother was nothing but substance. It was only fitting she had the form to go with it.”