“Oh, yes, just not one of my best moves.”
“Lady Ardry is here, in a state of high dudgeon, it appears. She insists on seeing you immediately.”
“Ruthven, why is it different from any other time? She always insists. Oh, very well.” He handed the horse over to Momaday.
Ruthven always enjoyed Agatha being in a “state,” not only because he liked seeing her upset but because it kept her from carping about the offerings on the tea table, one of which she was stuffing in just as Melrose walked into the drawing room.
Around a mouthful of scone, she accused him of something or other, but what it was, Melrose couldn’t make out except the tag end:
“… to have done it!”
“Done what, Agatha?” He was engaged in thanking whatever gods that happened to be hanging about Ardry End that she hadn’t witnessed his fall from the horse.
She was glaring as if from every corner of the room as she buttered up another scone. He poured himself a lovely cup of Darjeeling, plunked in a sugar cube and a dollop of milk, selected a moist-looking piece of cake and sat down, wishing that Aggrieved was here, hay and all, to be taking tea with him instead of Agatha. Perhaps the Sidbury Feed Store could construct a scone net, which could be hung from the Georgian ceiling molding.
He asked her again. “Done what?”
“Oh, you needn’t play the innocent with me, Plant. It’s all over the paper!”
Melrose frowned. How on earth could the Sidbury paper have gotten news of his acquisition of a racehorse? More important, why would the paper think it news at all? This rag Diane Demorney wrote for would now, in January, just be catching up with the flower show. But here was Agatha opening it, turning it for Melrose to see and tapping the offending piece with her finger.
Melrose left his chair to lean over and see it. Of course, it had nothing to do with Cambridge, how could it? The newspaper was interested only in what went on in its own backyard. He plucked it from Agatha’s hands and read:
HUNT SUPPORTERS FOIL ANIMAL-RIGHTS GROUP
There on the front page was a picture of himself, Diane and Trueblood, in one of their careless moments (he would have said), but then all of their moments were pretty careless. They gave the impression they were attacking (or counterattacking) some of the animal protesters, when the three were about as aware of animal-welfare issues as the annual rainfall in Papua New Guinea. True, Melrose would never kick a cat (though he wouldn’t answer for Diane if it got between her and the martini pitcher), but insofar as the whole movement was concerned they were totally uninformed. Yet here they were, in that moment when Melrose had quickly put out his arm to support a young woman with a sign who just then had caught her foot and was falling toward him; and Diane, raising her stiletto heel to shake out a stone; and Trueblood holding his camera above his head to keep it out of harm’s way.
What a wonderful photo op! He must send a crate of succulents round to the Sidbury photographer. What an image for misconstruction!
“It makes me out to look the proper fool, Plant! You’re aware of that, aren’t you?”
Oh, indeed, he was aware. He kept a straight face as he sat down and sipped his cooling tea. Here was a moment to relish! Should he try to work out how this made Agatha out to be a fool-not that that was ever too difficult-or just play it?
Play it. “The point is, Agatha, if you must take up a cause, you also must be aware that there’ll be a backlash from the anti-cause (was that a word?).”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Melrose.”
“Okay.” Melrose was eyeing the ruins of the tiered plate, looking for a pastry that had escaped Agatha’s ravaging. She had a way of biting off and putting back when she was especially irritated, taking it all out on the scones and seedcake. He did find an Eccles cake without tooth marks.
“I’ve always thought it shameful, shameful, the way you neglect Mindy, here!”
Mindy-here was flopped on the hearth in her usual position, soaking up heat.
“How do you work that out, Agatha?”
“She gets no exercise! Do I ever see you out with that dog on a lead?”
“No, but that’s only because you’re over here having tea during dog-leading time.”
Agatha, he saw, was actually waving that half-buttered scone around instead of eating it. She must really be on the boil! He said, “I can’t help but think we strayed from the subject, since I really don’t believe the animal-liberation people are trying to get us to walk Siberian tigers.”
“You know nothing about it!” Realizing she had a scone in her hand that could as easily be in her mouth, she put it in and munched. Then having resurrected her weak argument, she said, “You surely must see the idiocy if not the inhumanity of a pack of hounds running down a poor little fox!”
“Yes, it is idiotic. Oscar Wilde said so and I agree. But that particular idiocy is a wholly different argument and not the one you’re trying to make. As far as I’m concerned the entire hunting issue is a smoke screen for a class war.” He didn’t know if he believed that or not, but it was as good an argument as any. “Why choose a thing that is least abusive-certainly ‘least’ in terms of numbers-to make an issue of? If the welfare of animals was really at the heart of yesterday’s masquerade, then why not spend one’s time and energy on ridding the earth of far more brutal practices-slaughtering seals, mowing down wolves and deer from a helicopter, obliterating animal habitat, tracking and shooting the Siberian tiger in order to grind its bones for medicinal purposes”-which had for Melrose a terrible mythic ring to it-“so what it really comes down to isn’t the welfare of the fox, but of the pink- and black- and tweed-coated citizens of the upper classes whom we would like to unseat.”
Agatha’s attention, hard to keep in the best of circumstances, had strayed and was riveted on the long window off to her left. “A horse just passed that window!”
“Momaday’s walking it.”
Hopeless.
TWENTY-FIVE
The Sidbury paper was open on the table in the Jack and Hammer, the table’s four occupants having a good old laugh.
“How droll,” said Diane Demorney, in her Noel Coward mood, her cigarette dripping ash over the paper and coming dangerously close to the martini glass. Diane was dressed in conventional and nondroll black, one by that Asian designer she’d been favoring lately (Issy? Icky? Mickey?) “We three mistaken for animal activists. They’ve obviously never come up against my cat. All I was doing”-she tapped the picture with her cigarette holder-“was shaking a stone from my shoe.”
“What’ll we do for an encore?” said Trueblood.
“Wear mink and walk down Oxford Street,” said Vivian. “I wish I’d been there.”
“We did invite you, old girl,” said Trueblood. “We should join the hunt. Must be someplace we could rent a horse.”
“Look no farther than my back garden. I have a horse stabled there.”
He might as well have said he had a 747 hangered there, for the looks he got. He smiled.
“What on earth for? You don’t ride, do you?” said the scandalized Trueblood.
“How amusing.” Coming from Diane, this was high praise indeed.
“My riding isn’t all that good, but I plan on racing it. It’s a Thoroughbred.” Melrose felt quite smug.
Diane said, “Remember Whirlaway? That is, remember reading about him, it being long before our time? Whirlaway was owned by Calumet Farm, that racing empire that was ruined by greed and mismanagement.”