The Daughter of Night (2 page)

'Oh, I don't think you'll do that.' He was imperturbable and he stood quietly, making her cosy room look somehow small and tawdry. 'But if you did, you'd need my name. It's Demetrios Thalassis. Does that ring a bell?'

'It tolls a knell!' she corrected him. 'Did Vilma—my mother send you?' And she caught the gleam of very white, very even teeth as his mouth curved into a half-moon smile. Now she could place him, and the faint trace of accent. Greek, like Vilma's husband.

'Nobody sends me anywhere, my dear Hester,' he murmured. 'Vilma came to me—she was in trouble, money trouble, and she told me all about it. I don't like members of my family being blackmailed.' He reached into his pocket and came out with a cigarette case. Hester's eyes noted the gleam of gold and the deeply cut monogram before he produced a matching lighter, lit a cigarette and restored his valuables to his pocket.

'So,' he continued smoothly, 'I came to see for myself. And speaking of the police, I suppose you're aware you face an extremely serious charge— demanding money with menaces?'

'Do smoke, if you want to,' Hester said wearily, wondering if this was her mother's idea of a bully boy or had they some other sort of relationship. 'Have you brought the money?'

'Do I look that mad?' Without asking, he hitched a chair towards him with his foot and sat down as though he owned the place.

'And please make yourself comfortable.' Her eyes narrowed, glittering between their thick fringes of lashes. 'If you haven't brought the money, why have you come at all?'

'To size up the opposition, of course.' He blew a perfect smoke ring, his very dark eyes never leaving her face. 'In the course of my life, I've encountered villains of all shapes and sizes, but this is the first time I've ever met a female blackmailer. I was curious about you before, and now I've met you, I'm even more curious. You aren't what I expected.'

'There's a pattern for female blackmailers?' Hester was beginning to find her feet and she had decided that any show of fear would be taken as weakness. Instead, she raised a cool eyebrow. 'You must really tell me what it is so that I can dress the part next time.'

'You certainly don't look like a girl with criminal tendencies.' His eyes slid over her from the crown of her head to the soles of her bare feet. 'Given the right clothes and a short course in mannerly behaviour…'

'Mannerly behaviour!' Her voice rose indignantly. 'Look who's talking about manners—forcing your way into my flat…'

'… As I said,' he interrupted her interruption without blinking an eyelid, 'some good clothes and a few lessons in behaviour and you could be quite something. Is that why you want Vilma to give you twenty thousand pounds? But tell me, please, why do you think she
should
give it to you?'

Hester smiled at him wolfishly. She had ignored the bit about clothes but the remark about her manners had hit hard and to cover it, she became crude.

'Oh lord! Vilma's picked herself a right one this time, but you can't be her husband, although you do have the same name—she wouldn't have told him about this—not about me, so I suppose you're some sort of minor relation. A very minor one, I'd guess—a little dog she's sent out to bark for her.'

'And I bite as well.'

'You may bite,' she pointed out curtly, 'but you haven't brought the money!'

'And you're a very cool customer.' He blew another smoke ring. 'Are your demands always so blunt, and don't you ever worry about prosecution?'

'Oh,' she gestured largely, 'it's my first try at the business—you can't expect a professional approach, not at this stage, and as for prosecution, why should I worry about that? I didn't put anything in writing and there weren't any witnesses. It was all strictly between Vilma and me—until you butted in,' she added angrily.

'And you don't count me as a witness?'

'No,' she gave him a tight smile with no mirth in it. 'Remember, I didn't ask you for money, merely whether you'd brought it. As you haven't, you've made a needless journey, so you'd better run back to Vilma and tell her she's pushing it. The deadline's the end of this week, which gives her just four clear days. After that, the balloon goes up!'

'And the penalty if she doesn't meet your deadline?'

Hester's mirthless grin widened almost as though she could savour triumph. 'I have a friend who's in the newspaper business. He works for a rather pink publication, a widely read weekly, and he's dedicated himself to printing the lowdown on those who live the high life. He loves his work—I suppose you could call him a compulsive stirrer up of mud and I should imagine that after his first instalment on the present Mrs Sandros Thalassis, her husband, reported as being a strict and devoted family man, will retire to a lonely villa somewhere with egg on his face.'

'Your friend's going to write all this in four days?' Demetrios Thalassis ground out his half smoked cigarette.

Hester laughed in his face. 'What do you take me for—a fool? No, the first instalment's nearly ready, but the bit I can add is a bombshell—it's such a well kept secret, not common knowledge like the rest. That'll make it that much spicier, don't you think, and Vilma won't have an invitation to the next Garden Party. In fact, I think some of her high-placed friends will cool off rapidly.'

'I was wrong about you.' He remained calm, but there were white patches of temper at the corners of his nostrils, though the emotion was controlled perfectly; his voice was still calm and almost lazy. 'I thought you were a young girl who'd been led astray, who wanted her name in the papers, but you're more than that, you're a bitch of the first water.'

'So I'm a bitch!' she flared. 'Who cares? I don't, it doesn't worry me. I want that money and Vilma can afford it. It's not as if I was mugging an O.A.P. for the few coins in her purse. If Vilma's reluctant to have her husband know—if she can't raise the cash—you can tell her to sell a few of those diamonds she wears to parties. Just as long as it adds up to twenty thousand pounds!'

'Which is rather a large sum to keep you quiet about a piffling little indiscretion which took place when she was very young.' Demetrios Thalassis' face was a mask of distaste, and Hester watched him warily as she estimated the strength of the opposition.

He wasn't as tall as she'd first thought, slightly under six foot, but his breadth of shoulder had misled her—powerfully built men often looked bigger than they really were. He was also extremely good-looking—his black, glossy hair clung in short curls to a well shaped skull—his eyes were large and well spaced, although half their beauty was hidden by long, curling, almost feminine lashes and the heavy eyelids. His nose, she decided, was arrogant and his mouth had a sensual curve that sent a small shiver down her spine but at his chin, she stopped. It was like granite—this wasn't a man she wanted to tangle with, but she had no choice, apparently, and she wasn't giving up now or being frightened off, there was too much at stake.

She tried to imagine the scene between him and Vilma—Vilma, small, blonde, looking far younger than her years and weeping softly all over that wide chest—but not so much as to damage her make-up or make her mascara run. Maybe she had confessed to a tiny indiscretion—almost nothing really—Hester could almost hear the words dropping reluctantly, interspersed with tiny sobs. 'It had all happened so many, many years ago'—when Vilma was little more than a child.

Hester's thoughts took another direction. This man, whoever he was—whatever the connection between him and Vilma—he wasn't a nobody. Vilma would never waste her time buttering up a mere nonentity. She felt her temper slipping from the hard control she was putting on it and she made no further attempt to keep it in check.

'A little indiscretion!' She almost shouted it at him.

'Do I look that "little"? Yes,' as she saw his mouth tighten, the sensual curve straightening out into a hard, straight line, 'don't tell me Vilma's only given you half a tale, and don't look so surprised. I'm five foot five inches, and that's rather large to be called a "little indiscretion" any longer!'

'You're implying that you're Vilma's daughter?'

Hester steeled herself to speak normally and not yell 'Yes!' in his face. She waved a hand airily instead. 'You don't catch on very quickly, do you?' She made it sound as sarcastic as possible and gave it a smile to match. 'Or has my mother been telling lies about her age again? The last quote in the gossip columns put her at thirty-eight, although she prefers to say thirty-six. Since you're part of her new husband's family and not exactly blind, I would have thought you'd know that was an understatement. Her little indiscretion took place all of twenty-five years ago and she was well over the age of consent at the time. I'm twenty-four and a bit—work it out for yourself!'

'It could have been rape,' he suggested mildly.

'It was!' she retorted, 'but not the way you think, not the way you hope. When I'd traced my mother, I went down to the little place where she'd been living at the time—very small and everybody knows everybody. Apparently I'm very like my father, so I hardly had to ask—I was directed to where his mother was living by at least four very helpful people in the local pub.' She paused, the grimness of her face softened by sorrow and a faint, wry pity.

'He was dead, of course. He'd gone out to Australia, worked on sheep stations and with rodeos—that was where he was killed—and they'd sent his few personal effects back to his mother since he had no other relatives. She showed them to me and in the box was a little bundle of notes and letters, all tied up with pink ribbon. The poor, romantic fool, he'd actually loved her! Anyway, those notes and things proved who'd raped whom!'

'But if Vilma's your mother, as you say…'

'I don't just say it, I can prove it, so there's no "if" about it,' Hester interrupted him swiftly and fiercely. 'My dear little mother covered it all up very successfully. She'd left things too late for an abortion, so she went on a "six-month cruise" to explain her absence from the social scene. Everything was very neat and tidy and nobody would ever have known if the law hadn't been changed and I was allowed to trace her as soon as I was old enough. She gave me away the day I was born in the place where she'd spent the last few weeks of her "cruise", and she didn't even bother about a reputable adoption agency—I suppose she thought that might be traced. Oh no, I went into a Council orphanage as an abandoned baby.'

During the last part of this, she had turned her back on him to look out of the window at the gathering shadows of the spring evening and to hide the hurt which she knew must be showing on her face, but now she swung round on him like a tiger. 'She didn't tell anybody, not even my father's mother who would have been quite willing to bring me up. The old lady's dead now, so that part of it doesn't matter any more. You're looking at me as though I was dirt, aren't you? Well, I am! I'm Vilma's dirt which she carefully swept under the carpet—something to be forgotten, ignored and as quickly as possible—but I won't be forgotten! Now, you get back to her and tell her she has until the end of this week to pay up. I traced her as soon as it was possible and I was able—it took a bit of time and a lot of money which I could ill afford, but I did it, and now I've got my birth certificate to prove what I say and,' she smiled tightly into his rigid face, 'you can tell her, while you're about it, that I can put a name to that blank space she left in the column marked "Father". That should make her all the more eager to have the whole thing kept quiet!'

Demetrios Thalassis moved slightly in his chair, although he continued to look enigmatic. 'This makes you one of the family,' he murmured.

'Thank you for nothing!' She spat it at him. 'Vilma's kind of family is something I can do without.'

He frowned her into silence. 'I'm speaking about the Thalassis family, so kindly be silent while I work this out. We apparently owe you something…'

'You—
your
family owes me nothing,' she broke in on him stormily. 'It's Vilma who owes me and it's Vilma who's going to pay. She can afford it, this is her second wealthy husband and she has money of her own anyway. Tell her to spare some of that!'

'And if you get the money?' He raised eyebrows, black and arched. 'What do you intend doing with it?'

'When, not if,' she corrected him. 'And it's none of your business what I do with it. Personally, I'd like to burn the whole lot under her nose, but I've got a better use for it. Now, if you'll please go—it's not midsummer and I'm getting cold.' She smoothed out her voice to a polite flatness, all trace of anger and any other emotion wiped away. 'Thank you for calling, Mr Thalassis, although I can't say I've enjoyed meeting you or that your visit has given me very much pleasure…'

'Not yet,' he made no attempt to rise. 'I'm thinking about your future, I don't want this sort of thing happening again, and twenty thousand pounds isn't very much by today's standards…'

'Now, that's a change in your tune,' she marvelled brightly. 'A few minutes ago you called it "rather a large sum". What's happened to make you change your mind?'

He shrugged, ignoring her as though she hadn't spoken. 'Do you intend to invest it—maybe start up a business of your own, or have you some idea of marriage? It wouldn't even buy you a decent house.'

'And as I said before,' Hester stood very erect and looked down on him haughtily, 'it's none of your business what I do, but, just for the record, I've a very good job and no intention of changing it—also, I've no intention of getting married. In my layer of society, that's not quite the ideal state as pictured in the glossy magazines. Ordinary housewives are expected to cook and clean—stay at home and look after babies. No, thank you, that's not my idea of life!'

'Then perhaps a new wardrobe and a year to catch a wealthy husband…?'

'That does it!' Almost without thinking, her rage was so great, she had grasped his shoulder and was pulling him from the chair, anger lending strength to her hands. 'You can speculate all you want on the way back to where you came from. As I said, it's no concern of yours. So just go back to Vilma and tell her she hasn't much time left.'