Death of a Cozy Writer: A St. Just Mystery (8 page)

She stumped over to the sideboard and investigated the contents of the warming pans—eggs, bacon, ham, kidneys, haddock, and cold pheasant—then began heaping large selections from each onto a Wedgwood plate. Paulo, who was supposed to be standing by at breakfast time, was nowhere to be seen. Sarah helped herself to a coffee that was mostly cream and castor sugar.

Her resolve during the night had flickered like a dying candle, becoming fully extinguished as the first streaks of dawn appeared. What had decided her, for the moment, against going to her father about Violet was the same fear that keeps honest citizens from going to the police: the fear of not being believed; the fear of being held up to ridicule and scorn. There was also, of course, the risk of retaliation from the offended party. In her muddled way, however, Sarah realized she feared retaliation from her father, not from Violet. It would be too much like telling the emperor he was wearing no clothes.

“Another early riser, I see.”

She turned from the sideboard to see Natasha, pencilslim in black, gliding in on a waft of what Sarah imagined was insanely expensive French perfume.

“Yes, good morning. I find I never sleep well when I’m at home. When I’m away from home, I should say.”

“I have rather the same problem. A hotel bed, no matter how comfortable, is never the same as having all one’s familiar things around, especially when one awakens in the night. Once in Paris I nearly plunged off the balcony, thinking I was on my way to the loo.”

“Have you stayed at many hotels?” asked Sarah, anxious for something to say, then flushed, realizing how peculiar that might sound.

Natasha laughed. “Only about a hundred nights a year. My job, you know.”

At Sarah’s even more stricken look, Natasha hastily added, “I’m an interior architect. I design art galleries, mostly. The occasional boutique or restaurant. I—well, my firm, actually—we gut and renovate old buildings, smarten up new ones. That’s how George and I met.”

“At a boutique?”

Natasha blinked. Was Sarah really as dim as she seemed? Kindly, she smiled. “No, we met at his art gallery.”

“Oh! Yes, I’d rather forgotten he’d gone in for all that. He and I don’t really stay in touch. And he’s had several careers, you know. George always had a bit of trouble … settling.”

With this she herself settled at the table and began digging into breakfast, wondering whether or not she should expand on this theme of George’s restlessness on such short acquaintance with Natasha. Really, Natasha seemed like quite a nice girl. Most of George’s girlfriends that she had met had been nice, although perhaps a bit more brittle upon leaving the relationship than upon entering it. Was she morally obligated to warn Natasha? The thought brought her back to her other moral dilemma of the day regarding her father and Violet. The dual quandary made her head start to pound.

“Really?” Natasha carried her toast and coffee to a seat across the table. Sarah watched as she dabbed the thinnest possible shaving of butter on the toast, then proceeded to cut the slice into dainty quarters. Her hair as it fell on either side of her face in the winter’s light was as black as a bruise, the slight upward tilt to her eyes even more pronounced as she bent her head to her task. Sarah wondered if there weren’t Russian blood somewhere in her background.

In the best tradition of the Girl Guides, Sarah believed that a hearty breakfast was the preventative for any ill ranging from dropsy to bubonic plague. Natasha couldn’t live another fortnight on the little she appeared to eat.

“Well, it looks as if he may have found his niche at last, then,” Natasha was saying. “The gallery is getting quite a reputation already, and in London, that is definitely saying something. George has a sharp eye for—” she stopped. Sarah was almost certain she had been going to say “the main chance.” Instead she continued, “—the up-and-coming young artist.”

“You amaze me. He never showed much interest as a child. My father has quite a good collection of paintings here, you know. Ancestors. Also horses and dogs from the tally ho! period. Quite rare, I understand. You should look around, if you’re interested in art.”

Natasha, who had already done a mental inventory of the contents of the house on public display, smiled. Sir Adrian might be a canny old fox when it came to his mystery plots, but someone had certainly sold him a bill of goods on some of the furniture and paintings.

She glanced at the crackle-glazed horror hanging over the fireplace to her left. Surely she’d seen the original somewhere in Wiltshire? But there, the Duke or whatever he was hadn’t appeared quite so wall-eyed and deranged, whatever his famed eccentricities, as he appeared in this appalling copy.

The George II sideboard at least was real, standing on leaf-carved cabriole legs ending in big hairy paw feet—a style she fervently hoped would never come back in favor. But as for ancestors: my grandmother’s arse, she thought. And the hunting scenes you couldn’t sell to a purblind rich American.

“Perhaps later,” she said. She hesitated, clearly wondering whether to broach a delicate subject. “I hope it’s all right, my being here.”

“Being here?”

“On such a family occasion. I feel rather like I’m intruding, but George insisted.”

“George never could stand to be alone for a single minute.” Then, fearing she had been rude, she hastily added, “You’re no more a stranger here than the rest of us. And it helps, somehow, having … an outsider. If you know what I mean. Not that you’re really—I mean …”

“I do,” said Natasha hastily, to stem the flow of unneeded apology. There was something rather touching, and at the same time alarming, about Sarah’s gaucheness. A painful honesty that kept the truth just gushing out of her mouth. “I am completely an outsider, having known George—or Scorpio, as he prefers to be called these days; it’s the name of the gallery—such a short time. I gather there was quite a family powwow last night. He was livid when he came back to our room. Also worried, I’d say. Not the kind of fine emotion I’d often connect with George.”

Sarah heaved something that might have been a sigh of relief. Natasha seemed already to have taken George’s measure fairly well, relieving Sarah of the responsibility for any dire warnings.

“The marriage, you see. It changes things.”

“I don’t see why.”

“Don’t you?”

Sarah had allowed a touch of asperity to creep into her voice unbidden. She chased a bit of sausage around her plate, then rose for a refill. While in London she tried to adhere to the dietary prescriptions of her books, here at “home” no hold appeared to be barred. She felt ravenous; hummus was all very well, but there was nothing like a good fry-up on occasion, with eggs swimming in a fine film of bacon grease.

Turning back to Natasha, she said, “It’s the will, of course. They’re wondering what he’ll do, now that there’s another potential heir in the picture. Heiress, in this case.”

“If you don’t mind my mentioning it, it appears to me there’s more than enough to go around,” said Natasha. “You can’t enter a bookstore anywhere in this country without tripping over a display of Miss Rampling, peering accusingly at one through her pincenez.”

Which, on the face of it, was true, Sarah reflected. Or would be true, if her father weren’t the kind of man he was: more than capable of cutting any or all of his children out as it suited him, to the full extent allowed by law. Oh, there would probably be something left to all of them, an amount nicely judged to prevent any of them from going to the bother and expense of a lawsuit. The sad thing, to Sarah, was that Albert was the only one of them who really needed the money. George just
wanted
the money, almost as if he needed the reassurance his father still remembered who he was. Ruthven wanted the money, also, but because he felt it was his by right, as the eldest.

As for Sarah, she was already making more money than she could spend: the kind of wealth in royalties and advances guaranteed to bring on the unwanted scrutiny of the Inland Revenue. Most of it just sat in her bank account, earning more interest for her to pay more taxes on. People who claim to have simple tastes are generally the first to run out and buy a Jaguar as soon as they win the pools. Sarah really did have simple tastes, and no particular interest in cars. (She had accidentally run over a squirrel using her provisional license; it was years before the guilt receded enough to allow her to attempt driving again.)

She returned to the table with her refilled plate.

“I don’t think it’s the money—not entirely, or not in all cases. It’s that my father has made money into a substitute for love, if you want to know what I think. And the boys have bought into that. After years of neglect they’re all looking for some sign that he acknowledged their existence, even if it did come too late, after he was dead.”

Love. She blurted out the word in her earnest, wide-eyed way. Natasha felt she was speaking for herself rather than her brothers. Certainly, Natasha believed George when he said his father could drop dead any time, for all George cared, whether or not there were money involved.

Natasha studied Sarah thoughtfully, mentally rearranging her first impressions. Not as stupid as she appeared. Naïve and lacking in confidence, certainly, but not stupid.

“Of course, it doesn’t help Ruthven that he has Lilith whispering in his ear all the time,” Sarah was saying, warming to her subject. She found she was quite enjoying this all-girl’s chit-chat. She had so few acquaintances, male or female.

“Lilith? Surely you mean?—”

“Oh, sorry.” Sarah erupted in schoolgirlish giggles. “It just slipped out. That’s my private name for Lillian. Lilith means “Night Demon” in Arabic. Much more fitting, don’t you think?”

“Do you think so?”

The voice from the doorway held all the warmth of the Queen’s in some of her later private conversations with the then-Princess Fergie.

“Lillian! I didn’t—”

“Yes, the old demon seed herself.” With the poise born of complete indifference to such as Sarah, Lillian swept into the room.

She began to select from among the several newspapers arranged on a tray near the sideboard before helping herself to coffee.

“Night Demon,” corrected Sarah automatically. “I’m sorry, Lillian, it’s just something I came across in my research. Lilith was supposed to be Adam’s first wife. Somehow, the name just stuck in my mind. I didn’t mean …” She trailed off slowly, her unnatural honesty preventing her from finishing the sentence.

“Lillian means ‘lily flower’ in Latin, did you know that?” she finished brightly.

“What a bore this must be for you, Natasha,” said Lillian. “You’ll find our little family has its ups and downs, just like all families, although most of my acquaintance are far too well-bred to air their differences beyond the confines of the family group.” Complacently, she shook out her copy of
The Guardian
and, flipping noisily to its version of the society pages, began reading.

Natasha admired the woman’s self-possession. It was an excellent impersonation of aristocracy putting the revolting masses back in their place. Natasha, who had done her own research, found the act nearly pitch-perfect—for an act it was, she was certain. She wouldn’t have put it past Lillian to have arrived at breakfast dressed in jodhpurs, cracking a whip against her highly polished boots, despite the absence of a stables for forty miles or more. Instead, Lillian had opted for the simple wool sheath bedecked with a king’s ransom in pearls at neck and wrist: the uniform of the bored society matron. But not, Natasha recognized, quite the done thing for breakfast in a country manor house.

“Well,” said Natasha, dabbing at invisible crumbs before putting her napkin by her plate, “I’m off. Time to mobilize George. We’re going into Cambridge today to have a look in the Fitzwilliam, perhaps visit some of his old haunts.”

Ignoring the pleading look in Sarah’s eyes that said more plainly than words,
Don’t leave me here alone with her!
, Natasha took herself off. High time Sarah learned to stand up to bullies and snobs, she told herself.

Lillian aimed an insincere but well-bred “Enjoy your day” at Natasha’s back. Natasha turned at the door, smiling, and said, “Oh, never fear.” Lillian’s newspaper shielded her from the chilly smile, which was just as well. With a kindly wink at Sarah, Natasha was gone.

SECOND SEATING

_______________________

“I CAN SEE WHAT
he sees in Mrs. Romano,” Albert was complaining, “but why the deuce does he put up with Paulo?”

“Deuce?” drawled Ruthven, from behind his paper. “Do you know, I can’t recall the last time I heard anyone use that expression.”

“Occupational hazard,” muttered Albert. “Too many drawing-room dramas.”

“I thought you were excellent in
Noises Off
,” said Lillian.

Albert looked at her. For one thing, he had never actually been in
Noises Off
.

“Thank you,” he said at last. Lillian, he decided, was probably always so fashionably late to the theatre it was doubtful she’d ever actually seen a play.

“To answer your question: ‘Package Deal,’” Ruthven went on, turning a page of the
Times
. “The price for having a dream of a cook who happens to make the old sod think he’s starring in a remake of
La Dolce Vita
seems to be that he gets saddled with her son, a butler/chauffeur who drives like a maniac, when he can be induced to work at all.”

“I rang for coffee ten minutes ago. Where in hell is he? My head is splitting.”

Indeed, all the excesses of the day before were written large on Albert’s prematurely aged face. Ruthven began calculating, not for the first time, when Albert might drink himself out of the running in the contest for heir apparent. The old man was in bad shape but his youngest son was in demonstrably worse.

Complacently, Ruthven surveyed his own solid paunch, giving his biceps an unobtrusive flex. Sound mind in a healthy body, that’s the ticket, he thought. If Albert drank himself to death, Sarah ate herself to death, and George orgied himself to death, it would nicely clear the field without his having to lift a finger. The appearance of Violet had put something of a damper on this happy prospect, but that, he was convinced, was a temporary inconvenience, soon disposed of. The flood of faxes into his laptop, starting at nine this morning, had only buoyed his hopes in that regard.