I returned to the weighing-room area afterwards and found that not only were all the same family members still on the racecourse, but that they had coalesced into an angry swarm and had been joined by one of the queen bees herself, my mother Joyce.
Joyce, in fur and a green hat, was a rinsed blonde with greenish eyes behind contact lenses which seldom missed a trick in life as in cards. Dismayed but blank-faced, I gave her a dutiful peck on her smooth cheek which, it seemed, she was in no mood to receive.
"Darling," she said, the syllables sizzling with displeasure, "did you or did you not send that weasel Norman West to check up on my whereabouts last Friday?"
"Er," I said.
"Did you or did you not send him sniffing round Vivien on the same errand?"
"Well," I said, half smiling, "I wouldn't have put it as crudely, but I suppose so, yes."
The battery of eyes from the others was as friendly as napalm.
Why? "Joyce snapped.
"Didn't Norman West tell you?"
She said impatiently, "He said something nonsensical about Malcolm being attacked. I told him if Malcolm had been attacked, I would have heard of it."
"Malcolm was very nearly killed," I said flatly. "He and I asked Norman West to make sure that none of you could have done it."
Joyce demanded to be told what had happened to Malcolm, and I told her. She and all the others listened with open mouths and every evidence of shock, and if there was knowledge, not ignorance, behind any of the horrified eyes, I couldn't discern it.
"Poor Daddy!" Serena exclaimed. "How beastly."
"A matter for the police," Donald said forcefully.
"I agree," I said. "I'm surprised they haven't been to see all of you already, as they did when Moira died."
Edwin said, with a shake of the head, "How near, how near," and then, hearing the regret in his voice as clearly as I did, added hurriedly, "What a blessing he woke up."
"When the police make their enquiries," I said, "they don't exactly report the results to Malcolm. He wants to make sure for himself that none of the family was at Quantum last Friday afternoon. If you cooperate with Norman West when he gets to you, you'll set Malcolm's mind at rest."
"And what if we can't prove where we were?" Debs asked.
"Or even remember?" Lucy said.
"Malcolm will have to live with it," Joyce said crisply.
"Living with it would present him less problem," I Said dryly. "It's dying he wants to avoid."
They stared at me in silence. The reality of Moira's murder had been to them, I guessed, as to me, a slow-burning fuse, with seemingly no bad consequences at first, but with accelerating worries as time passed. Perhaps they, as I had done, had clung to the motiveless-intruder-from-outside theory at first because the alternative was surely unthinkable, but in the weeks since then, they must at least have begun to wonder. The fuse would heat soon into active suspicions, I saw, which might tear apart and finally scatter for ever the fragile family fabric.
Would I mind, I thought? Not if I still had Malcolm… and perhaps Ferdinand and Joyce… and maybe Lucy, or Thomas… Serena… would I care if I never again laid eyes on Gervase?
The answer, surprisingly enough, was yes, I would mind. Imperfect, quarrelsome, ramshackle as it was, the family were origins and framework, the geography of living. Moira, un grieved was already rewriting that map, and if her murderer remained for ever undiscovered, if Malcolm himself – I couldn't think of it – were killed, there would be no healing, no reforming, no telephone network for information, no contact, just a lot of severed galaxies moving inexorably apart.
The big bang, I thought, still lay ahead. The trick was to smother the fuse before the explosion, and that was all very well, but where was the burning point, and how long had we got?
"Buy me a drink, darling," Joyce commanded. "We're in deep trouble."
She began to move off, but the others showed no signs of following. I looked at the seven faces all expressing varying degrees of anxiety and saw them already begin to move slightly away from each other, not one cohesive group, but Donald and Helen as a couple, Lucy and Edwin, a pair, and Ferdinand, Debs and Serena, the youngest trio.
"I'll tell Malcolm your fears," I said. "And your needs."
"Oh yes, please do," Helen said intensely.
"And Gervase's plan," Ferdinand added.
"Do come on, darling," Joyce said peremptorily over her shoulder. "Which way is the bar?"
"Run along, little brother," Lucy said with irony. Serena said, "Mumsie's waiting," and Debs fairly tittered. I thought of sticking my toes in and making Joyce come back, but what did it matter? I could put up with the jibes, I'd survived them for years, and I understood what prompted them. I shrugged ruefully and went after Joyce, and could feel the pitying smiles on the back of my neck.
I steered Joyce into the busy Members' bar which had a buffet table along one side with salads and breads and a large man in chef's clothes carving from turkeys, haunches of beef and hams on the bone. I was hungry after riding and offered Joyce food, but she waved away the suggestion as frivolity. I bought her instead a large vodka and tonic with a plain ginger ale for myself, and we found spare seats at a table in a far corner where, after the merest glance around to make sure she wouldn't be overheard among the general hubbub, she leaned forward until the brim of the green hat was practically touching my forehead and launched into her inquisition.
"Where is your father?" she said.
"When did you last see your father?" I amended.
"What on earth are you talking about?"
"That picture by Orchardson."
"Stop playing games. Where is Malcolm?"
"I don't know," I said.
"You're lying."
"Why do you want to find him?"
"WHY?" She was astonished. "Because he's out of his mind." She dug into her capacious handbag and brought out an envelope, which she thrust towards me. "Read that."
I opened the envelope and found a small piece of newspaper inside, a snipped paragraph without headline or provenance.
It said:
Second-string British contender is Blue Clancy, second in last year's Derby and winner this year of Royal Ascot's King Edward VII Stakes. Owner Ramsey Osborn yesterday hedged his Arc bets by selling a half-share in his four-year-old colt to arbitrageur Malcolm Pembroke, who launched into blood stock only this week with a two million guineas yearling at the Premium Sales. -
Ouch, I thought.
"Where did it come from?" I asked.
"What does it matter where it came from? That new 'Racing Patter' column in the Daily Towncrieras a matter of fact. I was drinking coffee this morning when I read it and nearly choked. The point is, is it true?"
"Yes," I said.
"What?"
"Yes," I said again. "Malcolm bought half of Blue Clancy. Why shouldn't he?"
"Sometimes," my mother said forcefully, "you are so stupid I could hit you." She paused for breath. "And what exactly is an arbitrageur?"
"A guy who makes money by buying low and selling high."
"Oh. Gold."
"And foreign currencies. And shares. And maybe racehorses."
She was unmollified. "You know perfectly well he's just throwing his money away to spite everybody."
"He didn't like Moira being killed. He didn't like being attacked himself. I shouldn't think he'll stop spending until he knows whether we have or haven't a murderer in the family, and even then…" I smiled, "he's getting a taste for it."
Joyce stared. "Moira was murdered by an intruder," she said.
I didn't answer.
She took a large swallow of her vodka and tonic and looked at me bleakly. She had been barely twenty when I was born, barely nineteen when Malcolm had whisked her headlong from an antique shop in Kensington and within a month installed her in his house with a new wedding ring and too little to do.