The Stargazey (6 page)

“And she
did
finally talk to the police, didn't she? When she found out the story in the paper was wrong.”

Jury grinned. “That would get Linda up and running, I expect.”

Mona slapped the cushions of the sofa, sending up sunlit motes of dust. “Well, I'm for a few lashings of whisky, the devil with the tea; how about you? Or is all that rot about police drinking on the job really true? Anyway it really isn't your job, so what? It's that Fulham policeman's, isn't it?” She finished this off as she was making for a Victorian washstand that served as a drinks table over in a dark corner near the longcase clock.

“You're right. Yes, I'd love a drop of whisky.” Clinking and rattling went on as Mona set about getting the drinks, and Jury asked, “The sable coat?”

“Oh, that again. I gave it to Olivia, who, apparently, put it in a consignment shop after a few months.” Mona shrugged. “Poor girl needed the money, I guess. I can't understand why Olivia lives with the Fabricants—she's so different. Perhaps they have her there as a sort of antidote to Pansy.”

“Pansy?”

“Sebastian Fabricant's daughter. She's thirteen.”

Mona went on racking up the family members like billiard cues. “Olivia, she's the best of the lot. Quite nice, really. My husband's daughter by his first marriage—did I tell you that?—came rather late in the day, when he was over forty. Olivia would be—oh, early forties, I think. Divorced her husband years ago, very unsatisfactory marriage, and now she lives with the Fabricants. They're my relations by marriage. The boys, Sebastian and Nicholas—half brothers, they are—have an art gallery in Mayfair. Do very well, I understand. Their mother—well, you must meet their mother. She was Clive's second wife. I never knew the first, but if
Olivia is like her, I daresay she was a sweet woman. I would not call Ilona sweet. Awesome, but not sweet. I've no idea what Sebastian's father was like—Sebastian is Ilona's son by her first marriage. The father, Michel, was shot by the Cheka secret police as a conspirator; this was right after Stalin came to power. He was innocent, of course, but then weren't they all?”

She stopped in her pouring and turned to Jury.

“I mean that literally; I'm not being cynical. Was there ever a bloodier regime than Stalin's? Convenient, isn't it, if you want to raze the houses and dachas of wealthy families? Accuse them of something, anything, and just get them out of the way. The government confiscated everything Ilona's family had: money, silver, even the piano. And their art. They had a great many paintings.”

She put a drink in Jury's hand.

“Clive seemed to be a man of catholic tastes when it came to women. God knows, the man wasn't always marrying
his
mother; either that, or Mum must have been a very peculiar specimen.” Mona set her drink down, picked up the paper again, and fanned herself.

“Are there just the two of you in the house all the time?”

“No, there's my cook, Edna, and a little maid, Janie. The Linda brigade. Between the three of us, we can usually track her down. Oh, don't let Linda fool you, Superintendent. She appears to be obdurate, but in reality she's quite malleable.”

Jury nodded, as if agreeing, but as far as he was concerned this was one instance when appearance and reality met like long-lost brothers, and malleability didn't come into it. But he thought Linda's comings and goings might be too problematic for safety.

“You think she's mistaken, I imagine, about seeing the body in a different place.”

“Not necessarily. Both Linda and Fulham police might be right. It was some time between Linda's being in the garden and the caretaker. Five hours, about, if the caretaker fixes the time he saw her at midnight.”

“Oh, I see. Time enough for the woman to get up and move from the lad's-love.”

Jury smiled. “Not precisely. She had help.”

“But then the killer must have come back. Is that what you think?”

“Quite possibly.”

Mona Dresser had picked up her empty glass and was peering into it as if the liquid there had vanished magically. She shook her head and rose again. “I need another lashing of this. Do you, dear man?”

“Lash away.” He held out his glass.

T
he house in Chelsea was Georgian, red brick and white pilasters and a brass door knocker in the shape of a fish. Jury lifted this and let it fall a couple of times. There was also a white porcelain push for a doorbell, which he tried when the brass fish brought no sound of steps advancing. No one answered, but the open window on the ground floor and the car—a Jaguar—parked in the gravel drive suggested someone was there.

He walked down the short flight of stairs to peer over a lacy wrought-iron fence. It was nearly obscured by white shrub roses, but there were a few places where the shrubbery had thinned, through which Jury could see a large garden of beds and borders, hedges and paths. He could see a woman, her head hidden by a canvas hat, kneeling near a yew tree and plying some garden tool. He called to her.

Her head came up and then she rose to her feet, tipping back the hat and wiping her forehead with the sleeve of her shirt. It was an outsize shirt, much too big, but one of those garments people sometimes favor for a putter round the garden. As she walked towards him, his assessment of her looks changed. Dark hair and middle age became red highlights and a complexion that might have been the envy of the unpruned roses lolling over a hedge as high as Jury's shoulder. Her skin was luminous and pale pink along the cheekbones.

Jury showed her his ID, and after an “Oh, my” and a raised eyebrow she smiled and unhooked a gate in the fence that opened onto the steps. She did not introduce herself, either simply forgetting to or assuming he knew who she was, he being, after all, the police. And her inviting him in without asking him beforehand to elaborate upon his business suggested her upbringing had made a point of good manners. She apologized for not hearing the bell.

“I was digging. Bulbs take so much work. I'm digging eight inches, but you have to, don't you? Or they'll be blind.”

Jury had no idea what she meant. Blind? “I'm no gardener.”

“You're smart. Sometimes, I wish I lived in one of those arid desert states, like Arizona, where things seem to grow by default. Cactus, and so forth.”

The interior of the house had that cool, shadowy, understated look Jury associated with wealth. It seemed drowsy with money: a huge, worn oriental rug lay over travertine marble in the large foyer. The decoration was rich without being ostentatious. A large oil portrait of some dead relation—much decorated in war, by the look of it—faced another oil of a breathtakingly beautiful woman in black velvet and pearls that reminded Jury of the one in Melrose Plant's dining room. “Your mother?” asked Jury.

“Oh, my, no. That's Ilona. Ilona Kuraukov. My father's second wife, but she kept her first husband's name, I think trying to honor him, as his life and death were so wretched, poor man. That was painted, of course, years ago, when they lived in St. Petersburg.” She held out her hand. “I'm sorry. I forgot to introduce myself: Olivia Inge.”

She pulled back one of the two pocket doors and showed him into a living room, the room with the open window. Creamy light reflected off the white wall, the burnished dark wood, the Adam ceiling, which was edged with an extremely ornate molding, but one that didn't interfere with what seemed the room's pale placidity. French doors led out to the back garden, where he saw part of a lily pond, a shaded walk, a tree trunk edged in cyclamen. There was also what looked like a knot garden outlined in box hedging. He commented on its similarity to the one in Ful-ham Palace.

“It's about that dead woman I expect you've come, isn't it? The one wearing my coat?” He took the seat she gestured towards, a deep wing chair. She said, “I'd like a drink, how about you?”

Jury smiled. One couldn't say the Fabricants were stingy with their liquor. “I've just had one with your—” Should he say stepmother? The relationships in this family were complicated. “With Miss Dresser.”

She laughed. “I expect you needed one. Now you can have one with me.” She smiled at him. Jury was surprised by the deep sense of intimacy this conveyed, although he was sure it wasn't a conscious attempt on her part. But she seemed such a restful person to be around that he stretched out his legs, settled back, and said, “What I'd like is some soda water, if you have it.”

After she'd fixed the drinks, handed him the soda water, and sat down in a comfortable-looking chair, she said, “So you talked with Mona. She was a fabulous actress.”

Jury sat forward. “Yes. My mother would go over and over again to see the same film.”

“But did you ever see them
together
? Mona and Clive?”

“Your father, right?”

She nodded. “He was especially good in Restoration comedy and the Noël Coward type of play. The comedy of manners, that was his thing.”

Jury sat back, remembering why he was here. “This woman found—”

“Haven't you discovered who she was yet?”

“No. She had no identification; there was nothing. Except for the initials on the lining of the coat.”

“You discovered it was Mona's. I mean, Mona's originally.”

Jury nodded. “You told Detective Inspector Chilten that you'd taken it to one of those consignment shops. To have them sell it.”

“Yes. Well, I needed some money and, anyway, I finally decided one doesn't want to wear fur these days, not with all of the activists and the protests. I turned it over to this shop in the Brompton Road. That was some time ago. I don't know if the place is still there.”

“It's still there.”

She raised an eyebrow in question. “Well, then, why—”

“—am I talking to you instead of the shop?”

“Yes. I mean, I don't mind, understand. But as that shop was the last place it can be traced to—”

“Their records came to a dead end. The person paid cash. It must have been quite a lot.”

“Yes, it—” Olivia was interrupted by the sound of a car pulling up in the drive, one that sounded like a sporty, pricey one. Olivia half rose from her seat and peered over Jury's head. “That'll be Seb,” she said, reseating herself. “Sebastian Fabricant. If you want to talk with him . . . ?”

The man who came in through the French doors was tall and on the thin side, middle-aged but still good-looking, looks Jury put down to good bone structure. When Olivia introduced them, Sebastian Fabricant thrust out his hand and, that done, asked Olivia for a drink. As she rose to get it, he sank into the sofa with a sigh of relief.

“Bad day, Seb?” she asked.

“You know. The fucking gallery.” He turned to Jury. “I have a gallery in Mayfair.” He raised his eyebrows in a signal that the location must convey what a headache that was.

But it conveyed nothing to Jury. “Sounds upscale-quiet to me. You're talking to someone who spends most of his time downscale-noisy, messing about in North London.”

“Not at the moment, however.” Sebastian raised his eyebrows again, the only part of him that questioned Jury's presence. Even this question appeared rhetorical, however.

“No.” Jury smiled. It interested him how much the people in this family found his presence amongst them just another part of the daily reckoning of events, part of the furniture of living, more or less.

Sebastian thanked Olivia for the whisky, raised the glass slightly to Jury, toasting nothing, and drank. “That's better. North London is probably a hell of a lot more interesting.” He took a Marlboro before he dropped the pack on the table (thus dashing Jury's hopes the house was a smoke-free zone) and tortured Jury with the
click click click
of the flint in his gold cigarette lighter. Finally, he found a flame, got the thing going, inhaled and exhaled, and sat back with a sigh of supreme comfort. Jury hadn't had a cigarette in ten months. He gave himself a little ego rub by saying, when Sebastian offered him the pack, “I stopped.” He hoped this
sounded somewhat more casual and less sanctimonious than he felt in the saying of it.

Sebastian gave the standard answer, “Lord, I wish I could,” and went right back to blowing smoke rings, whose upward progress Jury watched intently. Then he looked at Jury and said, “Oh, sorry. Nearly forgot you were a policeman.”

So much for the ego rub. “That's okay. A lot of people do.”

Said Olivia, “You should feel flattered.”

Jury did not know why. “As you probably assumed, we were just talking about the woman found at Fulham Palace.”

“Ah! The wayward sable, yes?”

“More the wayward woman, really. We still haven't identified her.”

“Oh,” was all Sebastian had to offer. He slumped even farther back in his chair and, as Jury had done, stretched out his legs. He was over six feet, as tall as Jury. Then he added, politely interested, “It is peculiar, I'll grant you that.”

Jury wondered what Sebastian Fabricant wouldn't grant him. “Mona Dresser's coat is really all we've got at the moment.”

“Well,” said Seb, studying the ceiling molding, “it wasn't robbery, was it? Though I can't imagine anyone intending robbery prowling the grounds of Fulham Palace.” He grinned at Jury. He projected a sort of clubby conviviality, as if this place were where they met for drinks most days.

“No. Miss Dresser gave the coat to you—” He had turned to Olivia.

“And I took it to the consignment shop.”

Said Sebastian, “Not the most lucrative way of selling it. As I told Libby.”

Jury imagined that Seb had told Libby several times. Indeed, he imagined Sebastian told her a lot of things several times. The condescending brother—or half brother. Clive Fabricant had been married three times, after all.