She nodded. “They’re the only ones who produce this stuff.”
“Oh. Do you want me to put British Telecom out of business at the same time?”
She just gave him a look.
Vernon sat back. “Even if I could do this, which I certainly doubt”-(but the prospect of such a trick excited him, that is, would, if such a manipulation was not illegal, which it was; he was doing this in a vacuum, or doing it theoretically. But it wasn’t theoretical, that was the trouble-“even if I could, you do realize that the drug wouldn’t be the only thing that you could say good-bye to. We’d be saying good-bye to God knows how many jobs.”
Nell looked away from him and out the window to the lightening sky. Not light but its adumbration in the faint lines of buildings showing through the darkness. “I know.”
“But you don’t care?”
She turned back to look at him. “No.” She held up the folder. “Listen to me, Vern. Listen: the foals are slaughtered since there’s no use for them, to keep women more comfortable during menopause. To help avoid hot flashes, Vernon. What in the bloody hell is the matter with us?”
She was relentless. He frowned. She could even be ruthless.
Nell smiled. “This is something you could do; you’re reckless, Vernon.”
Actually, he wasn’t; he only appeared to be because he would undertake tasks that would find most people running for cover.
“I’m sorry to lay all this at your doorstep. You haven’t been living with it for nearly two years like I have. If you had done, if you had had all that time to think about it…” Her tone was rueful. “I’m sorry.”
“Not on my account.” He looked at the window, at the frosty light and the spire of St. Paul’s spiking the early-morning mist that shrouded it. “I’ll give this some thought. In the meantime-” He drank off his whiskey and made a face. “Why doesn’t this stuff taste as good at six a.m. as if does at six p.m.? Come on, your room’s at the end of the hall.”
She got up. He put his hands on her shoulders; they felt fragile, despite her being a girl toughened by sun and wind and hard work. It was that look of hers, a look at once solid and ethereal. He was for a moment afraid. You couldn’t keep jumping through hoops of fire without getting burned. But the fear subsided when she yawned like any ordinary up-all-night child.
Only Nell wasn’t ordinary, despite these glimpses of that other girl, the one he had seen before in that swift two seconds.
And who was she?
THIRTY-SEVEN
The house looked marble cold and cavernous, more the crumbling remains of a house of banished royalty than a home. She lived alone, or that was the impression Jury had gotten when he talked to her on the telephone.
The raised voice Jury heard on the other side of a partly open window appeared to be remonstrating with something not human-a dog or cat. If it was a cat, the cat would remain unregenerate. Used to the cat Cyril in DCS Racer’s office, Jury knew as much as anyone about the persistence of cats. He rang and heard footsteps.
Sara Hunt blushed, whether from having to deal with a stranger and a policeman or because she’d been caught red-handed lecturing a cat, Jury didn’t know. Over her shoulder he could see the big ginger-colored cat who paused in his blameless paw washing long enough to fix his eyes on Jury. The cat had exceptionally green eyes (rather the color of Melrose Plant’s) and a precarious seat on the newel post at the bottom of the stairs. One could tell the cat was hopelessly its own master and would get through any talking down with no other feeling than boredom.
Sara Hunt said immediately after she opened the door, as if in defense of her remonstrating with her cat, “He’s just made a mess of my papers. He’s shoved them on the floor and they weren’t all that organized to begin with.” Vexed, she looked at Jury. “I’m sorry. You’re Superintendent Jury?”
“New Scotland Yard.” He held out his ID.
Apparently she thought she was supposed to appropriate it for she didn’t return it after taking a good look. She held the door wider and said, “They’ve come for you, Henry! Hear that, Henry?” She flung this over her shoulder. The cat went on washing. She turned back to Jury. “Hopeless. Oh, do come in.” He followed her through the large entrance hall. The cat jumped off the newel post and made its way, haughtily, toward the rear of the house.
Sara Hunt stood aside as Jury entered a living room, which would also have been cold had it not been for the fire burning in the grate. Above the fireplace were framed etchings, probably of the area, if not of these actual grounds, a great many moss- and ivy-clad crumbling walls, romantic and fantastic. Out of an enormous Gothic window, its view partly obscured by a huge oak, he could see just such a wall.
“Here,” she said, “let me take your coat.”
“I will if you give it back.” He nodded at the ID still clutched in her hand.
“What?”
“I’ll need that. How else will I know who I am?” He smiled.
So did she and her smile was broad. “I’m sorry.” She handed it back. “Do you really need to prove it? Wouldn’t anybody let you in? Any woman, anyway?”
“Thanks.” He did not respond to this flirty attempt to ingratiate herself to the police. He sat down in the armchair she indicated, covered like the sofa and other chairs in an Oriental print-birds, green stems, bamboo-much faded. He felt the need to restore, or right, the balance between them.
She seemed extremely composed and was probably one of those witnesses who could take over an interrogation and wind up doing most of it. Yet she didn’t really seem to see herself in that role as she sat with her hands neatly folded on her knees, smiling slightly, waiting. He was, after all, trained to take over; unfortunately, she seemed just as well trained to derail any conversation she did not like. He intuited this.
“You’d make,” he said, “a hell of a good double agent.”
Her eyes widened and he saw they were a soft, ambiguous brown. Why “ambiguous”? He didn’t know.
“I would?”
“Oh, definitely.”
Her hair was a sort of toffee color, a tarnished gold, as if it were waiting for the light now streaking the window behind her to provide the highlights.
“I’m taking that as a compliment.”
Jury laughed. “Why? Agents are deceitful and slippery.”
“Because that’s the way you meant it. They’re also very clever. That’s something I’m not. I’ve always lacked that-cleverness.”
“Why do I doubt that?”
“No, but it’s true.” She smiled again. “So you’ve come to recruit me for an undercover job.” The smile broadened as if she really meant it.
Jury couldn’t tell. He was almost relieved to see the upper two teeth just a shade crooked, but then he thought there was something of childhood in that crookedness and that, too, might be deceptive. “Actually, I’ve come to ask you some questions.”
“About what?” She settled back in her chair.
“You knew Dan Ryder, the jockey?”
At that moment, a presence up to this point absent, something veiled and ghostlike, entered the room, and Jury sat forward and just resisted the impulse to reach out for it. Yet her expression hadn’t changed. That was the problem, wasn’t it? Something had entered to change it, and it hadn’t changed at all.
“I didn’t really know Dan Ryder; I met him a few times. It was at-” She looked at the mantel, Jury presumed at the silver-framed pictures sitting there between two old brass candleholders. She rose and crossed to it and picked one picture up, which she handed to Jury. “That was Newmarket races. He’s up on Criminal Type-or at least that’s what I thought-and that’s Arthur Ryder holding the reins. And the trainer, I forget his name. I’m in the background, there.” She tapped the glass.