The Last Will And Testament Of Daphné Le Marche

Daphné stood in the middle of the room, looking around at his life and he wondered what she saw. The orderly room now looked sterile to his eyes. The darkness from the blinds being half closed felt ignorant and the closed windows suffocating.

He threw up the shades and opened a window, letting the warm air inside.

‘Shall we eat?’ he said, gesturing to the table.

Daphné sat down opposite him and watched him as he served her and then himself. He gave her more than him, and she looked up and smiled at him.

‘You should take the bigger piece,’ she said.

‘I don’t want to put on weight,’ he said, touching his flat stomach. He was in excellent shape, from his programme of walking every day and exercising self-discipline in all things.

They ate in silence and Giles watched, as she carefully used her knife and fork. There was something so endearing about her, and he wanted to protect her, teach her, love her.

He stood up and poured himself a glass of wine.

‘Wine?’ he asked Daphné who shook her head in refusal.

He saw a flush building on her neck, and he wondered if the air from the open window was too warm on her.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked her.

She paused, as though finding the right words.

‘Do you expect me to have sex with you?’ she asked, her bluntness outweighing any shame she might feel at the honesty of her question.

‘What? No,’ he cried and it was true. He had long ago given up having expectations from other people.

‘It’s just Mother said some men hire young girls so they can have something to toy with at work, and a wife to cook for them at home.’

Giles gestured around the room.

‘I have no wife, as you can see. I have a son, who I barely see who lives in Switzerland, and I have no desire for anything from you but the formula for your creams. I think we could make a very good business if we tried.’

Her eyes were downcast and then she looked up at him, her eyes meeting his, and he saw something that he imagined was disappointment in them for a moment, but then he remembered that Louise had said he had always been a fool, except now he was just an old fool.

Chapter 9

Dominic

Dominic Bertiull left Sainte-Chapelle with no more idea of what was next for the Le Marche dynasty than any of the mourners. His strategy to approach the ex-wife hadn’t played out as he had hoped. Usually they sang like birds, bitter and twisted with their place outside of the family, ready to spill their opinion on everything wrong with the past and placing curses on the future. But Matilde Le Marche hadn’t said a word. Dominic’s charms hadn’t worked; in fact, he thought, as he sat back in his office, they had quite the opposite effect.

Most women fawned over Dominic, particularly older women. He was deliberate in fashion, preferring expensive suits, silk ties and handmade shoes. He only wore shades of blues and greys, with black saved for casual wear and black tie events.

He knew he was pleasant looking, but good clothes and a slim and muscular frame ensured he went into the next category of class, and money lifted him up one more level again.

He was rich, beautiful, successful and single. Europe was his oyster and beautiful women his pearls. Born in London to his diplomat French father and a German mother, he was educated in England but went to university in America, much to his father’s disappointment. But Dominic wanted to become wealthy by the time he was thirty and money and America seemed to go hand in hand. He came back to Europe and set up an office in Paris, ready to embrace his Gallic blood, and to use his French charm to buy and sell companies for a profit.

He was rich by the time he was thirty, obscenely rich by the time he was thirty-five and, by forty, he was bored.

Matilde Le Marche came into his mind and he typed her name into his computer.

Photos of her came up from her modelling days, and he still saw the beauty in her face, although it was lined from sunbathing.

She was fifty-five years old, he noted. Ten years older than him and he wondered what she would be like in bed.

Dominic had slept with women older than Matilde, and younger than eighteen—he wasn’t an ageist. Sex was sex and he liked it because he was good at it.

He typed Celeste’s name into the computer and images of her filled the screen. She was attractive, he thought, but not like her mother had been. Celeste had sad eyes that caused her mouth to turn downwards, as though she was disapproving of everything around her.

Maybe she was like Daphné, he thought, amused at the idea. He had heard the stories of the woman’s iron fist in a velvet glove.

He flicked through the images and read some more about the company he had been watching for the last year.

There was nothing he didn’t know about the company.

Giles Le Marche, a chemist, had started the company in Paris in 1902. He married a French woman called Louise who had died just before the Second World War started.

Daphné married Yves in 1956 and was soon working in the company, turning it from a small family concern into a product that was found in every pharmacy across France.

In 1978, Yves died and Daphné took over the running of the company and soon the products were across most of Europe, but they never made it to the same level of success in America or the United Kingdom where French pharmaceuticals were seen as indulgent or too foreign.

There was a head office in London, and an office in Paris attached to a laboratory. They had excellent skin products and their lipsticks were moderately successful, but the rest of their line was struggling. Cosmetics was competitive and it wasn’t enough to have appropriate colours; they needed to have an edge, and Le Marche had lost its edge twenty years ago when Henri had died.

Dominic sat back in his chair and stared at a picture of Daphné and her two sons. They must have been sixteen and nineteen, he imagined. Robert looked like a younger version of his father, and Henri looked like a young Alain Delon.

Dominic peered at the image on the screen. Henri had a casual elegance that Robert didn’t, he noted, and he wondered what would have happened if Henri had survived and worked in the company.

He scratched his head, careful to smooth down his dark hair again and clicked through the pages on the computer again. Yes, he knew everything about the company and the basics of the scandals that befell them, with tragic deaths and any number of rumours that followed them through the years, but what he didn’t know, and what he needed to know was what were Robert’s plans for Le Marche.

The Japanese company was desperate for an established cosmetics company with a European presence they could build on, and Le Marche was perfect if Dominic could get it for the right price.

He had two choices—he could pay what it was worth and have the deal done in a matter of months, or he could try to lower the value of the company, so his client paid less and he was paid more as a bonus.

Dominic thought for a moment and then decided he never liked to pay full price for anything and so he began his war on the House of Le Marche.

* * *

Edward Badger was still at his desk when Dominic Bertiull rang him from Paris.

‘I have a client who is interested in purchasing Le Marche,’ Dominic said, then paused for effect, ‘and the formula.’

Edward cleared his throat, ‘Madame Le Marche has only just been buried today, Mr Bertiull. I don’t think we’re in the position for any such offers at the moment.’

Dominic heard the tiredness in the man’s voice and he smiled. This was going to be easy, he decided. The lawyer and right-hand man of Daphné Le Marche was most likely sick of his position. No doubt he was already looking elsewhere for another job. No one in their right mind would work under Robert Le Marche, everyone knew how hopeless he was.

‘When do you think you will be ready?’ asked Dominic, with just the right amount of respect.

‘I will have to speak to the family,’ said Edward.

The family? thought Dominic. That’s interesting. Perhaps Robert isn’t the only concern. Perhaps the granddaughter got a slice of the company also?

That was easy enough to handle, he thought. He’d done his homework on Celeste and saw she was having an affair with a married man and had no real career. She would take the money in a heartbeat.

He clicked on the screen again and saw images from Paris Match of a small dark-haired child at the funeral of her father.

Henri’s child, he reminded himself, but then dismissed her. Daphné and the mother of the child hadn’t spoken since Henri had died and, according to his private investigator, she hadn’t been back in the country since the funeral.

There was no chance the woman would make a claim now, was there? He made a mental note to speak to his private investigator to find out her whereabouts, and if she was still in Australia.

‘When will the reading of the will be? Perhaps I can speak to Robert directly?’ he offered smoothly. ‘I know how busy you must be.’

‘The reading of the will is actually none of your business, but you’re more than welcome to speak to Robert, as that’s none of my business,’ countered Edward with the same slick tone.

Dominic ignored the barb and kept focused.

‘Robert mentioned the formula. He said his mother told him she had discovered something that would change a woman’s face, make her look younger, more beautiful. He said it was being trialled around the world.’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ said Edward. ‘I have to go. Goodbye, Mr Bertiull.’

Dominic hung up the phone and sat in thought.

Something odd was going on. Edward Badger was very cagey about the formula, and then said that the decision to sell the company would be made as a family.

He needed to know more, but he didn’t want to scare the granddaughters away. His eyes turned to the computer screen, and settled on Matilde. Perhaps he might try seeing what she would reveal away from the Le Marche and Paris gossips. According to his sources, there was no love lost between her and Robert, so no doubt she would be happy to spill the secrets for some revenge and a price; there was no doubt that she would be left nothing by the old woman, and Robert wasn’t going to share anything he had with his ex-wife.

Robert really was a repugnant man, thought Dominic, as he left the office and got into his waiting car. When Robert had first approached him with the news that his mother was dying, and would he want to buy the company from him, Dominic wasn’t interested, but then he spoke of the formula. A contact at the private bank, Lombard Odier, told him there was a sealed envelope in a vault belonging to Daphné Le Marche with the words written on the front—

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