Epilogue #2
Mina never married. Instead, she maintained several beautiful homes, cherished a series of purebred poodles, and entertains lavishly to this day.
Her longtime dresser, a retired flamenco dancer called Antonia, is devoted to her mistress and takes care of her every need.
All the national newspapers have a Mina Taylor obit ready to go, but at eighty-nine, she shows little sign of slowing down.
She tirelessly keeps the world apprised of her latest style diktats (on TikTok) and dog photos (on Instagram).
At Christmas 1953, George got engaged to Rory Goodwin, and their July nuptials—the society wedding of the year, trumpeted The Sketch—were held at the bride’s ancestral home in Wickham, near Winchester.
A family friend, Sir Alec St. John Gardner, walked her down the aisle.
The six bridesmaids included banking heiress Miss Marya Barnett, the bride’s niece Miss Diana Rutland (she fainted during the ceremony, poor thing, doubtless on account of the hot weather rather than the celery-only diet prescribed by her mother in preparation for the big day), and Miss Wilhelmina Taylor, owner of the madly popular new Mayfair boutique, Mina’s.
In the days that followed, Miss Taylor kindly took the time to inform anyone with an interest—well-wishers, Fleet Street diarists, fashion-page style arbiters—which guests had bought their wedding attire at her shop.
The newlyweds were quickly blessed with little Daisy Rowena then little Alasdair Archibald, nice babies who nevertheless proved what George had always suspected: Motherhood was a crashing bore.
Thank goodness for nannies and bottle-feeding.
George and Rory remained happily and, by enthusiastic mutual agreement, unmonogamously married, until that rainy June night when Margaret Thatcher secured a third term as prime minister and George—perhaps unrelatedly—died in her sleep of a heart attack.
She was only sixty, but everyone agreed it was nice she went doing what she loved best. Her daughter, Daisy, organized a group show in her honor at the Saatchi Gallery.
Entitled Modern Muse, it gathered portraits of George from over three decades by artists from the avant-garde to the old guard.
The Evening Standard’s waspish art critic declared that only one painting, a 1953 gouache nude by the Royal Academician Auden Quennel, “manages to convert with mystery and melancholy, without glossy pretension or puerile literalism, the raw material of its bovine, slack-thighed subject to attain an elevated and abstracted ideal, a feat of keenly discerned delicate spirit transcending concupiscent flesh.”
“Concupiscent?” thought Robbie, reading the paper on the Tube. “He doesn’t know the half of it.”
After publishing one final issue, Winter 1953, Honor folded Vista in favor of a more profitable venture: resurrecting her late husband’s book publishing firm in partnership with Saul.
Reznikov Honor was diagnosed with end-stage lung cancer; and Reznikov & Wilson was acquired by a publishing conglomerate for a very substantial sum.
When Honor died, Saul went to live out his days at Mina’s chateau in Vence, near Nice, where he was looked after by two very pretty and very strict French nurses.
Mina was often there, the doting Antonia in tow, as was Marya, who was now a brittle divorcée, soignée as ever, with three children and a red Mercedes convertible she drove much too fast.
Robbie was senior commissioning editor at Reznikov & Wilson, and eventually managing director.
He never stopped despairing of the excrement that passed itself off as literature.
He could do so much better! Except that would involve finishing a manuscript and showing it to someone, hurdles he could never quite surmount.
The buyout seemed an appropriate time to retire.
He was nearly sixty-five, and he fancied doing some traveling before he was too decrepit.
Hilary, with whom he’d lived quietly for more than three decades, had taken his police pension twelve years earlier.
Some people struggled with retirement, but Hilary had no trouble filling his days with lovingly executed domestic tasks, long walks along the river, and—above all—thinking.
He liked to tend to the front garden of their small house in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, and replay old events in his mind.
Often, his thoughts returned to the investigation of 1953 and its missing puzzle pieces.
He knew Robbie had withheld much of the truth.
Obviously he had his reasons, and it made no difference to Hilary’s feelings. Yet it continued to preoccupy him.
The missing persons investigation of James Sullivan, a.k.a. Jack Shaughnessy, was closed in 1960, and he was declared presumed dead.
No other suspects were ever questioned for the 1953 murder of Lord Charles Mountford-Owen. It remains an open cold case.