The Horse You Came in On (3 page)

The fax now lay beneath the water cooler, on the little ledge that held the small paper cup, full of water. The cat did a quick, balletlike turn in the air and knocked the cup off the ledge.

They both stood there watching the water soak into the message, after which Cyril pawed and clawed it around into a soggy ball.

Fiona marched in. “Has that cat been at that water cooler again?” She put her makeup bag on the desk. Her lips were a bright and pearly red, her eyelids winged out in various mutations of blues and lavenders. “And you just standing there?” She picked up the cup and the stringy wad of paper and tossed them both into the wastepaper basket.

Racer flipped the intercom switch and barked at Fiona: “Hasn't the AC called?” When she told him no, he switched the object of his spleenish displeasure to Jury. “If you don't want trouble, then you shouldn't be around.”

“I'm ‘around' because you requested it.” If Jury were on the moon, Racer would send a space shuttle.

“This Hamilton person's family knows the assistant commissioner. That's what I'm waiting for. Information.”

Now Jury was sorry he hadn't read the fax. “So? I know the AC too, but that doesn't mean I'd put me on a case.”

“Well, for some reason—don't ask me effing why, Jury—the family wants you.”

“The family doesn't know me.”

Racer's response fell somewhere between a smirk and a simper. “Apparently they do.”

“I don't know any Hamiltons. Not one.”

“It was another name.” Racer punched the intercom switch again, told Fiona to get the AC on the line. “This woman—friend of the AC—had a nephew, or the dead woman did—hell, I can't remember all the details—that was murdered somewhere around Philadelphia. The States.” Racer was searching around his desk, looking under the blotter. “Where the hell are those tickets? I left them right here. And where are my color chips? They were here, too.”

“I don't get this. What does a killing in the States have to do with us?”

“Victim was born here.”

“So?”

Racer stopped his search for the color chips, flipped the switch, and asked Fiona if she had the assistant commissioner on the line. “And this woman's a
friend
.” (Is this the way you treat your friends, Jury?)

“Look, I'm supposed to be on leave. I'm sure whatever cops caught the squeal over there, they can handle it. I'm sure they
prefer
to handle it.” Infuriated, Jury stood up. Usually, he had more patience. Not lately, though.

“You don't have to get so damned shirty about it. No one's telling you you have to do anything. Just go along and see this woman and mollify her. That's all.”

The AC wasn't there. “His temp sec”—Fiona always loved it when someone higher up had temporary help—“wants to know, didn't you get the fax?”

“Well,
did
I, Miss Clingmore? How the fucking hell should
I
know, if I've been out of the office?” Racer was peering at the facsimile machine. “And where in hell are my air tickets, Miss Clingmore? I left them right here tucked into the blotter!”

Racer's hols, naturally, took precedence over anything else.

Jury thought he heard a series of cracks of Fiona's gum, like tiny pistol shots. “You're the one wants that fax machine in his office. Maybe it fell on the floor.”

“I've
looked
on the floor.”

“Well, she says she sent it, that's all I know.”

“Stop wasting my time arguing, and call her back. Bloody hell!” Racer flipped off the intercom. “I don't know how this goddamned place operates with these civilians who can't even count their toes. That effing cat would make a better typist.”

The fax machine burped and then stuttered out its message. Racer ripped it out, read it, said, “SW3, Jury. Warminster Road. Belgravia. Her name's Cray.”

She opened the double doors of the elegant sitting room with both hands, one on each of the brass doorknobs, making an entrance that would have seemed theatrical if it had been any woman other than Lady Cray.

And she looked, thought Jury, exactly as she had the last time he'd seen her in the Lake District. That had been at the inquest. Her well-tailored suit might have been the same one, a silvery-blue-grayish material of wool silk that exactly matched her eyes, eyes that were precisely the tint of crystal, that elusive gray called “Waterford blue.” The January afternoon was in league with Lady Cray. Slants of silvery light lay in decorous oblongs along the pale blue Chinese rugs and sparked the Waterford bowl on a little rosewood table. The sun, unusually clear for this time of year, striped the twin sofas and upholstered side chairs, all of them done in a shimmering crystalline-finished material the shade of Lady Cray's suit.

“Superintendent, I am overjoyed you have come!” She looked brightly from Jury to Sergeant Wiggins.

If any miserable case could be said to have in it a pleasant turn of events, Lady Cray was just such a turn. He took her hand and accepted her offer of tea or champagne or both.

After she had settled them into chairs of cloudlike comfort, she said, “I know you haven't called to talk about old times, but my God, those were the days, weren't they?!”

No, thought Jury, they weren't. Jane Holdsworth appeared to him, not as he had last seen her but as he first had, standing there in Camden Passage in a white macintosh, inspecting something from one of the rain-wet antiques stalls. The piece of clothing she was holding up, an amber-colored shift or something, exactly matched the color of her hair. A shift—or something? He remembered, of course, very precisely that it had been a negligee, taken from a rack of vintage clothing. And there had been a brooch she had held to the coat, testing its color and shape. That had been amber, too. This scene of a lifetime ago unrolled in his mind
with a torturous slowness, as if warning him that, having remembered at all, he would have to look at every glint of light in the brooch, every wavering shadow that fell across the cloth, the folds becoming more palpable, as if each little fold were statue drapery set in marble. He felt this in a moment of blinding acuity. And this was a mercy, really: that he had remembered the first time he saw her and not the last. But Lady Cray had not known Jane Holdsworth, though she had known the family, finally. Jane was there at the beginning, Lady Cray at the very end.

He was only partly conscious of asking her about the Holdsworths, but he supposed he must have, as he looked away, through the french windows to the cold garden beyond.

“Of course I've seen them! Did you think I wouldn't? Alex and Millie . . .”

Jury was only half listening as she talked on about Alex Holdsworth and the little girl, Millie. The smile frozen on his face must have looked natural enough, for she didn't seem to notice anything absent in his responses.

“They live there now, you know, with Adam. He still goes to Castle Howe occasionally, just to drive them all crazy. We have an absolutely
wonderful
time, Alex and Millie and I. We go to violent films together—terminators, aliens, and so forth—and I get a few of my unsuspecting friends together and we all play poker. Alex does, rather. And we spend a good bit of time at Cheltenham races.”

“Winning?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Well, of
course,
winning. We'd hardly go to lose, would we?”

His smile now was genuine enough; it was hard not to smile, thinking of Alex and poker and the ponies.

A maid entered with a silver tray and ice bucket, managing to set down silver tea service and Dom Pérignon with practiced movements. Wiggins rose to help with tray and bucket and was rewarded with a timid smile; the deployment of the champagne in the ice bucket and the tall, fluted glasses was done in a dither of cast-down glances, as if she wondered if she had the right to be in the drawing room. To Wiggins's kind murmurings, she made no reply.

Said Lady Cray when the maid had made her exit, “Afraid of her own shadow, I sometimes think. Don't take a blind bit of notice, Sergeant Wiggins. Sugar?”

Wiggins had opted for tea, and when Lady Cray held the silver bowl aloft, he told her three, please. “But she seems quite good at her job,” he said, his glance having followed the little maid all the way out of the door.

Jury took his cup, and their hostess poured herself a glass of champagne.

“She's certainly a superior cook. She's clever, too, surprisingly enough. I always think it's too bad to combine superb cooking with social awkwardness, but there you are. I put up with the speechlessness to get the cooking. Fanny was very fond of her, though.” Lady Cray sighed. Here she leaned forward and picked up an unusual bit of sculpture, a block of turquoise banded with silver and adorned with a little silver figure playing a flute. “I shall truly miss Fanny Hamilton, Superintendent. It's her nephew I talked to the commissioner about. But may I first tell you something about Fanny?” She replaced the turquoise piece and sat back.

“Of course.”

“She moved in here with me about a year ago, after I came back from Castle Howe. . . .” She paused and gave Jury a look. “Incidentally, I'm not sure what might have happened had it not been for that whiz of a barrister.”

Pete Apted, Q.C. Jury smiled. He was the legendary barrister who had taken on the defense in that instance. “Yes. Mr. Apted doesn't take hostages, does he?”

She went on. “Fanny was, in many ways, a silly woman. Well, perhaps I am too. But we weren't very much alike, and I might not have had her here to live had it not been for the great friendship of our respective husbands. Bobby and Dickie—Dickie was Lord Cray, incidentally—were just the best of friends imaginable. Both of them were pretty silly, too; but they were lovable. And when it comes to the ‘male bonding' thing, well, Bobby and Dickie could have given lessons.” Here she held up crossed fingers to testify to this close friendship, causing an enormous diamond to spark into life. “They lived together, and died together.”

“Died
together?” asked Wiggins, his pencil poised over his notebook.

“Yes, Sergeant. On the cricket ground.”

“What?” said Wiggins, astounded.

There was too much opportunity for a risible response here, and Jury bit his lip and refused to look at Wiggins, although the sergeant's capacity for comic reactions was not notable.

“Bobby was batsman, you see, and he had a tricky heart. Fanny was constantly after him to give up his damned sports—the cricket, the polo, the hunt, even—but Bobby wouldn't hear of it. Trying to keep up with my husband, who was absolutely expert at sport.”

“So how . . . ?”

“Bobby had a bad heart, and so, giving one furious bat, he simply keeled over. Then
my
husband, seeing him go down, dropped the ball and dashed to his rescue. And he tripped.” Lady Cray took a long swallow
of champagne. “Ran straight into the wicket! Can you imagine such a freak accident? He fell and hit his head. I was always telling those boys that they'd do better to choose sports that weren't so damned dangerous. I can tell you, both of us—Fanny and I—were heartbroken. Fanny was deathly ill herself; I wondered then if she had a heart condition.” Her eyes glittered, and she took another long drink from her glass. “But to tell the truth, it might have been just as well they died that way. Dickie would have had a very hard time of it without Bobby. It was funny, really, to watch Bobby try and keep up with my husband. Dickie was Master of Foxhounds, and Bobby could hardly ride.” She sighed. “Accident prone, both of them. There were accidents at polo, at billiards, at the Chichester boat race. Fanny and I knew they'd come to it in the end.”

The way she rendered the antic histories of the two husbands was to pace before the fireplace, backlit by the jumping flames, brandishing her tulip champagne glass like a dagger so that “come to't in the end” was absolutely Jacobean. Then Lady Cray heaved a sigh and said, “And of course, with both of them pegging out right there at the match, well, we'd certainly got something in common. We did get along quite well, in spite of her unabashed envy of my title. The Hamiltons had a great deal of money, much more than I, but she loved the British aristocracy. I think she was always in search of her pedigree, corresponding with professors at Oxford and Cambridge and one, even, in America. I don't know why; it wasn't the DAR that interested Fanny, it was
Burke's Peerage
. I tried to console her by saying the title wasn't, after all, anything I'd ever
earned
—I mean, it isn't exactly the Victoria Cross, is it? We hardly ever
earn
them, do we? It's all an accident of birth or marriage, unless you're in the theater, or something like that. Like Olivier or Peggy Ashcroft—I expect they did earn theirs. Americans love nothing so much as a title, wouldn't you agree?”

Thinking of Melrose Plant's aunt, Jury had to.

“It was certainly so in Fanny's case. Oh, Bobby didn't care for a title; it was cricket he loved.” She hooted. “But there it is again. Cricket! The aristocracy and cricket. Well, it doesn't even have to be a peerage—any lowly baronetcy will do. As long as it isn't Irish, of course!”

Jury laughed.

“The British peerage! Sometimes I believe Americans think that's England in a nutshell. I remember when I first met them, it was at Lord's during the second innings. Fanny was a friend of one of the people I was with; we'd taken a hamper along—you know, cold chicken and white wine—and were having a lovely picnic in the mound stand. She was fascinated that I was ‘Lady' Cray and almost immediately confided in me that she'd love nothing so much as a title. If only her husband had been
born to the purple, she said. I laughed at that. They all think it's terribly royal, don't they? Americans are so romantic. Ermine and scarlet and all of us living in places like Woburn Abbey. ‘I do want a title,' she said, ‘though Bobby doesn't'—as if they were arguing over duck for dinner!”