Richard Jury: The Stargazey Part 26

Her contemplative frown seemed genuine enough. "No . . . wait, yes. Yes. He used to write a column, didn't he?"

"Highly regarded in the art world. Your world."

"You mean my brothers', Superintendent. Just before Ralph's show, I heard Seb laughing about something in a review he was reading and saying, 'Just thank G.o.d Pitt's gone.' " Then she quickly put her hand to a cheek that had flushed. "Oh, good lord. You mean it was he? This Simeon Pitt?"

"Yes."

She looked down at her cup. "That's-" She shrugged.

"This review. Your brother knew Pitt's review would be negative. Pitt had written negative reviews before about shows at the Fabricant Gallery?"

"Once or twice. But it's my understanding that Mr. Pitt is-was-usually hard on new painters."

"What about Rees's reviews? Were they good? Bad?"

"One or two have been good. I'd hardly think a bad review a motive for murder."

Jury said nothing to that. He set his cup and saucer back on the silver tray, got up, and walked close to one wall where a large canvas hung. It was a still life: flowers, fruit, and a triangular guitarlike instrument. "What is this instrument?"

"A balalaika. I've always liked that music."

"I don't believe I've ever heard one."

She laughed. "Well, if you went to Russia, you would. There's something nostalgic about the sound of a balalaika. Rather like the zither in that Orson Welles film. Haunting."

He drank his tea and looked at her. "Do you go with the others? To Russia, I mean." He was still looking at the still life.

"I have done a couple of times."

He turned. "St. Petersburg?"

Now it was her turn to regard him over the rim of her cup. "Is this germane to your investigation, Mr. Jury?" Her smile was slightly ironic. "Our holidays?"

"Yes." He said it easily and smiled.

Her smile was quickly lost to him. "Why?"

With a shrug, Jury turned back to the painting. "I'm not sure."

"You're not sure, but you seem quite serious."

He said nothing and turned and looked from wall to wall. There were perhaps a dozen or more paintings. "Who chose this art?"

"They did-Sebastian, Nicholas, Ilona, of course. That's one of hers. I mean, she painted it." Olivia indicated the one he'd been studying.

"Really?" Jury looked at it again. "It's lovely."

"Don't let Ilona hear you say that."

"What's wrong with loveliness?"

"To her it means decorative."

"Shallow?"

"Yes, I expect she'd say that."

Jury still looked at the painting. "What I've been wondering is why Madame Kuraukov can still have such-well, generous feelings about Russia after what happened to her husband." He turned to regard Olivia. "Michel-was that his name?" When Olivia merely nodded, he went on. "His execution wasn't, of course, an isolated case, but that's cold comfort."

"I agree. I certainly agree. Communism was murderous. But, you know, St. Petersburg was her home for most of her life."

Jury nodded. He was still up and turning to take in every painting in the room. "There's not a bad painting here." He accepted the cup she had refilled.

She laughed. "Would you expect there to be?"

"In view of the Rees exhibition, yes, I expect I would. I find it strange there'd be only that one example of highly questionable art. I don't think it's just me and my failure to appreciate it to think Rees's paintings are non-art-"

She interrupted him. "Non-subject matter, perhaps, but then people have said the same thing about Mark Rothko."

"Surely you're not telling me there's a similarity between the two."

Olivia smiled slightly, almost apologetically. "I suppose not."

"Rothko's stuff intimidates me. Rees's simply makes me feel duped." He returned to his seat and took a sip of cold tea. "What's really strange is that Rees's work would garner favor with not just one of them-Nicholas, say, which would be understandable-but all three of them. Nicholas might be soft on Ralph, but the other two would have to be soft in the head. Which they so clearly aren't."

"But perhaps they're just humoring one another. They are family, after all."

Jury shook his head. "No. Sebastian is too good a dealer and has a reputation for taste. Why would he risk it to humor his brother and his brother's boyfriend? And you'll never make me believe Madame Kuraukov would humor anybody. There has to be another reason." He looked into her eyes, their sheen softly fuzzed by firelight. "Why don't we have lunch?"

Olivia laughed. "That's a quick change of topic."

"There's a great little Indian restaurant in the Old Brompton Road."

"Well-yes, that would be very pleasant." She rose. "What about the other reason you say there has to be?"

"What?"

"For the Fabricants' supporting Ralph's work."

Jury had wondered if she'd prompt him on this. "I wish I knew. Come on."

33.

It was the afternoon for the palace tour and Linda insisted on taking it. "You'll learn a lot."

Melrose was not sure he liked the implication that he came up wanting in the knowledge department. And he had just bought her an icecream cone, which he had depended on to make her less mobile. That was a joke. For a few moments, he'd lost her, couldn't see where she'd gone. And then he picked her out, running across the gra.s.s, heading for a clutch of visitors who were making their way around to the main entrance and the courtyard.

Melrose sighed and followed her.

The palace guide was talking about Tudor brickwork. She pointed out that the black triangles of brick on three sides of the courtyard were formed by the actual ends of the bricks themselves. On the fourth side, the black design had actually been painted on to match; hence it was slowly wearing away from exposure to the elements. Satisfied with her prologue, the guide was shepherding them toward the front door when Linda said, "Aren't you going to tell them about the wicked gate?"

The guide frowned. "I'm not sure I-" Then, understanding, she smiled. "Oh, yes. The wick'd gate. Not wicked, dear. Yes, as you can see the gate is made so that the small door there will accommodate only one person at a time. That's to see if the person is friend or enemy and to avoid opening the entire gate and letting a battalion of men on horseback through." Sunlight touched the guide's gla.s.ses. The lenses gave off a blind glare that made the woman look sinister. As she turned towards the big front door again, she looked back and said to Linda, "We won't eat that inside, dear, will we?"

We will if we want to, thought Melrose, watching Linda lick her icecream cone, just as we will continue to think of the gate as "wicked."

After a few comments about the wide hallway's woodwork and ceiling, the guide led them into a large, empty, and very chilly room. To the stragglers in their group (Melrose being straggler number one), she said, "We all want to keep together now."

No, we don't. Melrose loathed touring houses. He looked at Linda, who was listening raptly to the guide's description of the architecture of this room, of the big fireplace adorned with tiles and with carvings of bowls of fruit on the overmantel.

Having polished off her ice cream, Linda's hands were now clasped almost reverently at her waist, and her mouth was partly open, as if she had trouble breathing through her nose. Why, wondered Melrose, was she listening so intensely, her lips moving as if taking the words in through her mouth? Why was she listening when she apparently knew more than the guide? She knew, he imagined, what the gardener knew, what the guide knew, what the museum keeper knew, and possibly what even the bishops of London knew. It occurred to him (and it saddened him to think so) that Fulham Palace was Linda's home-away-from home. The roads, walks, borders, and boundaries were as familiar to her as the layout of her aunt's house. It was for this reason that Linda wanted to hear about the palace; it was like hearing one's favorite story again and again at bedtime. And the storyteller better look sharp! Any discrepancy or any hole in the narrative would be brought swiftly to that person's attention.

Which was what she was doing now, upon hearing a list of contributions made to this room-the Great Hall-by various bishops of London. Linda piped up: "Tell us about the tortures. The ones Bishop Bonner did." A few chuckles could be heard from the visitors, and the guide's face reddened a little, drew in like a knot.

It was clear the guide meant to skip Bishop Bonner's doings-why, Melrose couldn't say, as it was much the most interesting news yet-for she was leading them through the door, across the hall, and down a narrower hallway. The building had the cold feeling of one not much used to pilgrims. Nonetheless, Melrose kept up. They were taken into a small and quite beautiful chapel. Melrose moved to the front of the little group to stand beside Linda, ostensibly to monitor her behavior but more (he suspected) to be on the winning side. They were given details about the east window and the quatrefoil and, when one of the pilgrims asked about the use the chapel was put to, were told that the rector of All Saints had to give permission for anything taking place here, such as weddings and christenings.

"Which he won't," Linda told the a.s.sembly, with a sigh that might have been heartfelt, suggesting her own baptism hung in the balance.

"Perhaps," said Melrose, as they were filing down the hall again, "we could go see the rector of All Saints about the jeopardy in which he's placing your soul."

Linda peered up at him, her face screwed up in a knot, like a big carbuncle. "What're you talking about?"

"I have no idea."

The next room was light and airy but also without furniture, or at least period furniture. Melrose spent the few moments not listening (he could always ask Linda) but, instead, thinking of Simeon Pitt. His death was too unexpected; his murder, too bold and too brazen. Why hadn't the killer waited until Pitt was outside the club? And this was, apparently, a woman's work, to boot. She had stabbed Pitt with surgical precision; there had been no aborted or exploratory cuts, no evidence that Pitt had raised his hands and arms in self-defense. Melrose had an image of this woman rising from her chair to go to Pitt's, leaning over him, ostensibly to look at something in the paper or to hand him something. The woman was undoubtedly not the niece, Barbara Amons, so how had she explained her presence?

Was it someone Pitt knew? (For there was no reason it couldn't have been a total stranger.) What about the artists he was so tough on? This line of thought was fruitless, since Melrose did not know who Pitt knew, or the artists Pitt took down. Who was the person Pitt had called-Jay? This could have been a man or a woman. Melrose squeezed the bridge of his nose. Why couldn't he have been more like Linda, absorbing Pitt's every word?

He still couldn't get over the audacity of the whole thing, more audacious, even, than the murder in the public grounds of Fulham Palace.

Melrose stood there, eyes blind to the moldings, ears deaf to the guide's description, thinking about the killer's moving the body. If Jury believed Linda, he did too. He wanted to go back to the herb garden and was glad that this room was the last thing on the agenda. He whispered, "We've got to go."

"It's not finished yet. We get tea and biscuits now. You have to wait."

Exasperated, Melrose said, "I'll get you tea and biscuits later."

Unmoving, she demanded, "Where?"

"At the Ritz. Only come along now; we're going back to the gardens."

Seeing it had something to do with the dead body, Linda didn't offer more argument, and they left the palace proper.

Outside, Melrose turned to her and said, as sternly as possible, "Linda, do not-I repeat, do not-get separated from me again! Do not run off the way you did."

She scratched her neck and said, "It was you that got separated from me. You weren't keeping up." She looked around as if she might go back in and get a few witnesses to this careless behavior of his.

"You know what I mean. Here, you must hold my hand."

"I don't want to. Then I can't do anything on my own."

"That's the point; you're not supposed to be doing things on your own. At least, not when I'm with you." Was that circular reasoning? "All right, you don't have to hold my hand if you promise not to go running off. The same thing might happen to you as happened to poor Sophie." They were walking past the giant redwood tree.

"Who's poor Sophie?"

"You don't know her. When she was younger than you are now, she got separated from her mum in a shop-"

"What kind of shop?"

"A market. A fancy one in Paris."

"I've never been to Paris."

"That's beside the point."

"What did she look like?"

Melrose frowned. "I don't know. It doesn't make any difference."

Linda sighed as if adults didn't know what was important and what not. "What happened to her?"

He was angry with himself for letting the Sophie predicament leak out; it had shown very poor judgment and he knew Linda would be relentless in her demand to know what happened. "Well, she got taken while she was putting potatoes in a bag."

Linda was dumbfounded. Not because Sophie was taken, but because of what had occupied her at the time. "Why would she put potatoes in a bag?"

There was nothing for it, he guessed, but to tell her at least the beginning of the Sophie tale. His story was interrupted more than once by demands to know more about the organ grinder's cat and dog and baby carriage. That Sophie had met such a dire fate didn't appear to concern her. It was all the violence on television, he supposed. Desensitization, that was it.

Linda's one hundredth (and, prayerfully, final) question was not about Sophie's lost mother, not about the kidnappers, not about the imagined dangers of the child's plight, but about the potatoes.

"What kind were they?"

"What earthly difference does it make? Must you know every single detail? Good G.o.d, it's like talking to Proust. N'allez pas trop vite."

"What's that mean?"

"It means . . . they were Rose Clouds and Yukon Golds." He was pleased with himself; he had pulled those potatoes out of a hat!

"I never heard of them. Where'd they take Sophie when they kidnapped her?"

Melrose was now concerned that perhaps she was worried. "To a film."

Linda licked the candy stick she had held him up for again and seemed to be thinking. "Well, I'm glad Sophie doesn't live around me."

What an odd thing to say. "Why?"