Джеффри Арчер - The Prodigal Daughter

‘That’s more like it,’ he said, releasing her other arm.

Slowly she reached backward for the vase. When she had it firmly in her hand, she broke away and brought the vase crashing down on the back of his skull. His head slumped forward and it took all her strength to push him off her. Florentyna’s first reaction when she saw the blood pouring from his scalp was to fear that she had killed him. There was a loud knock on the door.

Startled, Florentyna tried to stand up, but she felt too weak in the knees. The knock came again, even louder, but this time accompanied by a voice that could belong to only one person. Florentyna staggered to the door and opened it to find Bella taking up the whole space between the jambs.

‘You look awful.’

‘I feel awful.’ Florentyna stared down at her tattered Balenciaga evening dress.

‘Who did that to you?’

Florentyna took a pace backward and pointed to the motionless body of Henry Osborne.

‘Now I see why your phone was off the hook,’ said Bella as she strode over to the prostrate body. ‘Got rather less than he deserved, I see.’

‘Is he still alive?’ asked Florentyna weakly.

Bella knelt over him and checked his pulse. ‘Unfortunately, yes. It’s only a flesh wound. He wouldn’t have lived if I’d hit him. Now all he’ll have to show for his trouble is a large bump on his head in the morning, which is not enough for a jerk like that. I think I’ll throw him out the window,’ she added, picking Henry up and chucking him over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

‘No, Bella. We’re on the forty-second floor.’

‘He won’t notice the first forty-one,’ said Bella, and started walking toward the window.

‘No, no,’ said Florentyna.

Bella grinned before turning back. ‘I’ll be generous this time and put him in the freight elevator. The management can deal with him as they see fit.’ Florentyna did not argue as Bella strode past her with Henry still over her shoulder. She returned a few moments later looking as if she had saved a penalty against Vassar.

‘I’ve sent him to the basement,’ she said with glee.

Florentyna was sitting on the floor sipping a Rémy Martin.

‘Bella, am I ever going to be wooed romantically?’

‘I’m the wrong person to ask. No one has ever tried to rape me, let alone be romantic.’

Florentyna fell into her arms laughing. ‘Thank God you came when you did. Why are you here, not that I’m complaining?’

‘Little Miss Efficiency has forgotten that I’m being put up in the hotel tonight because I’m playing hockey in New York tomorrow. The Devils against the Angels.’

‘But they’re both men’s teams.’

‘That’s what they think, and don’t interrupt. When I arrived at the desk they had no reservation in my name and the receptionist told me the hotel was packed, so I thought I would come up and complain to the management. Give me a pillow and I’ll be happy to sleep in the bathtub.’

Florentyna held her head in her hands.

‘Why are you crying?’

‘I’m not, I’m laughing. Bella, you deserve a king-size bed and you shall have one.’ Florentyna put the phone back on the hook and then picked up the receiver.

‘Yes, Miss Rosnovski?’

‘Is the Presidential Suite free tonight?’

‘Yes, miss.’

‘Please register it in the name of Miss Bella Hellaman and charge it to me. She’ll be down to confirm in a minute.’

‘Certainly, miss. How will I recognize Miss Hellaman?’

The next morning Henry Osborne called and begged Florentyna not to tell her father what had taken place the night before, pleading with her that it wouldn’t have happened if he had not drunk so much and adding plaintively that he could not afford to lose his place on the board. Florentyna stared down at the bloodstain on the carpet and reluctantly agreed.

When Abel returned from Paris he was appalled to learn that one of his directors had been found drunk in a freight elevator and had needed seventeen stitches in his scalp.

‘No doubt Henry is claiming he tripped over a dumbwaiter,’ said Abel before he unlocked a drawer in his desk, took out an unmarked file and added another note to it.

‘More likely a dumb blonde,’ laughed George.

Abel nodded.

‘Are you going to do anything about Henry?’ George asked.

‘Not at the moment. He’s still useful as long as he has contacts in Washington. In any case, I’m up to my eyes with buildings in London and Paris, and now I see the board wants me to look at possibilities in Amsterdam, Geneva, Cannes and Edinburgh. And now Zaphia is threatening to take me to court if I don’t increase her alimony.’

‘Perhaps the easy way out would be to pension Henry off?’ suggested George.

‘Not quite yet,’ replied Abel. ‘There is still one thing I need him for.’

George couldn’t think of anything.

‘We’ll kill ’em,’ said Bella. Bella’s decision to challenge Harvard’s ice hockey team to a field hockey match came as no surprise to anyone except the Harvard team, which politely declined the invitation without comment. Bella immediately took out a half-page advertisement in the Harvard Crimson which read:

The enterprising editor of the Crimson , who had seen the advertisement before it went to press, decided to interview Bella, so she landed on the front page as well. The photograph of Bella wearing her mask and pads, and brandishing a hockey stick, ran with the caption: ‘She’s more frightening when she takes the mask off.’ Bella was delighted with the picture and with the caption.

Within a week Harvard had offered to send its third-string team to Radcliffe. Bella refused, demanding varsity players only. A compromise was reached, with Harvard making up a team of four varsity players, four junior varsity players and three third-string players. A date was chosen and the necessary preparations were made. The undergraduates at Radcliffe began to get quite chauvinistic about the challenge, and Bella became a cult figure on campus.

‘More figure than cult,’ she told Florentyna.

Bella’s tactics for trying to win the match were later described by the Harvard Crimson as nothing short of diabolical. When the Harvard team arrived in their bus they were met by eleven amazons with hockey sticks slung over their shoulders. The fit young men were immediately whisked off for lunch. Members of the Harvard squad never normally drank a drop before a match, but as the girls, without exception, ordered beers, they felt honor-bound to join them. Most of the men managed three cans before lunch and also enjoyed the excellent wine served throughout the meal. None of the Harvard men thought to comment on Radcliffe’s generosity or to ask if they were breaking any college rules. All twenty-two ended the lunch with a glass of champagne to toast the fortunes of both colleges.

The eleven Harvard men were then escorted to their locker room, where they found another magnum of champagne awaiting them. The eleven happy ladies left them to change. When the Harvard captain led his team out onto the hockey field he was met by a crowd of over five hundred spectators and eleven strapping girls whom he had never before seen in his life. Eleven other ladies, not unknown to the captain, were finding it hard to remain awake in the stands. Harvard was down 3–0 by half time and was lucky to lose only 7–0. The Harvard Crimson might well have described Bella as a cheat, but the Boston Globe declared her to be a woman of great enterprise.

The captain of the Harvard team immediately challenged Bella to replay against the full varsity squad. ‘Exactly what I wanted in the first place,’ she told Florentyna. Bella accepted by sending a telegram from one side of Cambridge Common to the other. It read: ‘ Your place or mine? ’ Radcliffe had to arrange for several cars to transport their supporters, their ranks swelled by Harvard’s decision to put on a dance that evening after the game. Florentyna drove Bella and three other members of the team across the river in her newly acquired 1952 Oldsmobile, with hockey sticks, shin pads and evening dresses piled high in the trunk. When they arrived, they did not meet up with any of the Harvard team before they reached the playing field. This time they were greeted by a crowd of three thousand, which included President Conant of Harvard and President Jordan of Radcliffe.