The Curious Incident at Claridge's by R.T. Raichev Read Free Book Online

midnight. Somebody walking on my grave, Bettina Tradescant thought. She looked up from her computer screen. Something, she knew, was about to happen—or had already happened.
    Bettina inserted a cigarette into a short jet-black holder. She lit the cigarette. She wore a perfectly pressed white shirt buttoned to the top, collar studs and black trousers with a knife-edge crease. About ten minutes earlier she had worn a jacket with a fur-trimmed collar, which seemed to raise her shoulders, and a skirt that reached below the calf and created the effect of elegant but painful attenuation. Since coming back home, she had already worn five different outfits, among them a drum majorette ensemble in white and gold and a silver off-the-shoulder evening dress. At one point she had put on a pale blue toque with a bunch of pink and yellow primulas. She was a compulsive dresser and restless experimenter, forever searching for the right sartorial coup. She had once had a real obsession with all things feathery; no less a man than designer Valentino had told her that he could find her in London by just following the trail of feathers. She found the past a never-ending source of inspiration. At the moment she sported an Edwardian coiffure: hair piled high on her head to form a bird’s nest—that was a wig, one of ten. Not even her bitterest enemy—she had a real knack for making enemies—would have dared call her a ‘clichéd fashionista’.
    Bettina suffered from insomnia. She called it her tango nocturne . She couldn’t remember when it was the last time she had managed to have a proper snooze. There were people who went off the moment their heads hit the pillow. How she envied them. Her nerves were not in a good state. Her thoughts kept turning to her brother. It always happened at this time of night. Random memories as usual. Seymour teasing her mercilessly when they were children, calling her silly names—Seymour pushing her into the pond at Tradescant Hall—Seymour dressing up as her, doing a perfect imitation of her as a party piece, making their parents’ guests scream with laughter while she had sat crying in her room.
    (She would love to be able to dress up as Seymour—but that would mean she’d have to shave all her hair—Seymour was getting to be as bald as a coot!)
    Seymour had always treated her with senseless malignancy. He’d always managed to reduce her to cowering and sullen states. Always, always, always.
    Seymour was very much like the woods in Titus Andronicus —ruthless, dreadful, deaf and dull. Well, if he hadn’t been such a colossal scrooge, if he had given her the money she needed so badly, she might have been able to forgive and forget. What Bettina wanted more than anything in the world was enough capital for her to start her own fashion magazine. Seymour could well afford it. He had after all received the bulk of their late father’s estate and his was a vast wealth. More than four thousand acres of Shropshire. He didn’t seem to be doing anything with it, apart from making donations to his ‘retreat’. It wasn’t as though he was pampering poor Penelope …
    Bettina looked down at the ring on her fourth finger and sighed. If only it were the authentic one and not a mere copy. She was mad about jewellery—though not as mad as Papa had been. She gave a twisted smile. Goodness—those photos of Papa! Mama had destroyed most of them. Papa had had quite a thing about jewellery. A veritable fetish. Papa could have given the ring to her but he hadn’t—he’d given it to Seymour— like everything else.
    Bettina sighed. ‘My darling Wallis,’ she said and kissed the ring. ‘You knew how to do things.’ But of course the ring was not the real Wallis. She sighed again.
    Bettina glanced up at the computer screen, at what she had written:
    Greys, pinks and lace are set to dominate women’s