“According to Theo, there are a lot of animal-rights activists in Sidbury.”
“Oh,” said Diane, “those people who spray-paint fur coats. They sprayed my sable once, in front of Selfridge’s.”
“You’re kidding! What did you do?” asked Joanna.
“Bought another one.”
“I doubt,” said Melrose, “that’s how these people would want to be identified.”
Joanna looked thoughtful. “Or maybe they would.” Joanna was the author of some two dozen romance novels, which she had advised them all to steer clear of. (“Such drivel.”) She went on: “Maybe their need for publicity is what motivates them, not animal rights.”
Diane stepped in here. “If my cat had any more rights I’d be the one watching the bung hole nights and she’d be inside with brandy and a book.” She turned to Joanna. “Your latest is quite good, Joanna.” Upon Joanna’s telling them all they’d be wasting their time with her books, Diane had started reading them.
“Thank you. I just don’t think those are the rights they’re defending, or say they are.”
“How cynical,” said Trueblood.
Joanna turned to Diane. “You should do a bit of investigative reporting there, Diane. You work for the Sidbury paper.”
Diane “working” was an oxymoron. She was languor’s home, ennui’s back garden, apathy’s arbor. However, she did indeed pen the astrology column for that paper-the daily horoscope. Diane was impeded by only two things: she couldn’t write and she knew nothing about the stars. People loved the horoscope, though, for they believed it to be a tongue-in-cheek parody. Diane didn’t know any more about parody than she did about writing or the stars. “You mean go to one of those things and say what they’re doing?”
Diane had always been, generally speaking, a master of vagueness. Melrose said, “It’s the activists I think Joanna is talking about.”
Instead of an answer, Diane held out a cigarette for someone to light-God, if no one else was available. Trueblood lit it. She blew a narrow veil of smoke toward them and reflected on this reporting. It was rather restful watching Diane’s mind at work. One never had to venture far and there were a lot of lay-bys along the way. “I suppose I could do.” But her nose wrinkled at the thought as though a displeasing odor had wafted through the room.
“Do what?” asked Trueblood.
Diane heaved a sigh. “Go to a hunt. Haven’t you been listening at all? Where is it?” she asked Melrose. “When is it?”
Melrose looked at his book jacket bearing the image of an American Thorougbred named Spectacular Bid. What a name! “According to Theo, there’s one tomorrow. Why don’t we all go?”
“Excellent!” said Trueblood. “It’s one of my half days, so I’ll just close the shop.”
“One of? How many half days do you allow yourself? There’s only supposed to be one a week,” said Melrose.
“Depends. This week it’ll be three. Well, I’ve got a life to live, haven’t I?”
They all looked at him.
“Very funny, very funny. So why don’t we all go?”
Joanna said, “I’d love to, but I’ve got fifteen pages to write because I didn’t do today’s ten. I only did half.”
“Your self-discipline is awesome,” said Melrose.
“My self-discipline is no more nor less than my Barclays account. That’s awesome.”
This statement was made without a hint of conceit; indeed her implication was that her royalties were so far from being deserved it was pathetic.
“Okay, when shall we meet? Where?” said Melrose.
Trueblood said, “As to the when, I’d say eightish-” “Eight is not an hour, it’s pirate’s treasure,” said Diane.
“They start fairly early in the morning,” said Trueblood.
Diane’s smile was humorless. “They do; I don’t.”
“Nine, then.”
Given Diane’s expression, nine was only marginally better, but she agreed.
“And where? We can’t do it here because it’s closed till eleven. We’ll meet next door. How’s that?”
“Fine. Only what about this half-day business. If you leave at nine, that’s more like a full day,” said Melrose.
“Then I’ll make up for it by staying all day the next day, as the next day is only a half day, too.”
“That makes sense.”
ELEVEN
“We should have signs,” said Melrose, casting his eye over the courtyard of the country hotel appropriately named the Horse and Hounds. There was quite a crowd, an eclectic-looking bunch, from hunters in their pink coats and black hats to a rather seedy-looking elderly man with a piece of white posterboard hanging from a string around his neck that announced BEWARE THE HOUR DRAWS NIGH! Melrose wondered what it had to do with the hunt, or, indeed, the antihunt. Probably nothing, or no more than it had to do with the price of a pint in the Horse and Hounds. The hunt participants were up on horses, the restless hounds milling about, snuffling the brick and pebble-dashed courtyard as if they were looking for heroin, and the master was sniffily regarding the cup being handed him by one of the hotel staff.
Watching the cup being handed around, Melrose said, “It’s rather like communion, isn’t it? Passing the goblet down the line of the faithful at the altar. In any event, it’s certainly ritual, no doubt of it.”
“Of course,” said Trueblood. “That’s mostly what it’s all about. Ritual, tradition, class. Always class these things turn out to be. A class war. You don’t honestly think these people with their signs and slogans are interested in the fox’s welfare?”
“I imagine they think they are. You can’t generalize that way.” Melrose thought the women looked haggard with their rough clothes and flyaway hair; the men looked better, more convivial, owing, perhaps, to one more round in the Horse and Hounds.
“We stick out like a sore thumb,” said Marshall Trueblood.
“We do?” Melrose observed two of the protesters wearing fox kit and masks that covered the upper half of their faces, thus leaving their mouths free to hector the riders. LET’S RIP THE HUNT TO PIECES THE WAY YOU DO US read one of the placards. He felt that could have been better put.
Taken all in all, hounds and horses were definitely the best-looking gathered there. Diane, who was rooting about in a big black leather bag, said, “That’s a spiffy-looking Master of Foxhounds, I’d say.”
Trueblood said, “MFHs are always spiffy. I’d be spiffy, too, in one of those pink coats and up on that bay he’s riding. It’s all sex, anyway, isn’t it? Sex, class, politics.”
“Marshall, it’s almost as if you’d given the matter some thought,” said Diane in a God-forbid tone.
Hounds, horses, hunters set off down the road for some faraway field and everyone else more or less followed. When Melrose and Trueblood started off, Diane said, “Good Lord, you two. We’re not going to follow on foot. We’ll take the car.”
Melrose was puzzled. “But, Diane, we won’t be able to follow in a car unless there’s a road that runs beside their route all the way. We’ll lose them.”
“No, we won’t. You drive, Marshall.” She handed him the keys to her car. “You drive so I’ll be free to do this.” She patted the leather bag slung over her shoulder.
“Do what? What is that?”
“Camcorder.” She eased herself into the passenger’s seat of the BMW. “You said I should do some investigative reporting, didn’t you? Well, I’ll need pictures.”
They shrugged and got in the car, Melrose in the backseat.
“Just go straight down to the bottom of this road and then turn left.”