The Stargazey (28 page)

“And with that assessment, she plunged a century of criticism into total darkness.”

Bea screwed up her face. Her resemblance to a baby monkey was endearing. “Say what?”

“The ‘school' doesn't precede the artwork, it follows it.”

“Ain't you the expert, then.”

“It's common sense. The paintings make the school, not the school the paintings. Do you imagine Monet woke up one morning and said, “Maybe I'll just try something new; a pointillist style might be nice.”

“Seurat, you mean.”

He smiled. Her correction had been automatic, not pretentious. It was difficult for her to profess ignorance, though that seemed to be what she wanted to do.

“Listen, Bea, I could really use your help.”

Bea looked up from her steak. “What you gone and done, then?”

“Nothing.” He was surprised he was glad at the look of alarm on her face. “It's the Fabricants I'm talking about. And Ralph, in particular. You have more access than I to that gallery—”

“You want me to nick something, is that it?”

“Of course not.” His self-righteous tone was largely owing to his having some vague plans of the nicking variety. “All I mean is that you've got a reason for hanging out there.”

She chewed, looking at him in a noncomprehending, bovine way, which he was sure she knew annoyed him and enjoyed doing for that reason. “Well?” she finally said. “Hang about doing what?”

“Listening. I'm especially interested in Ralph's snow sequence.”

“The white lot.”

“Yes. You're a painter. Where's the art in it?”

“Dunno. Far as I'm concerned, there ain't none.” She had finished and shoved her plate away. “That was good.”

“It's hard to believe Sebastian Fabricant sees anything in them, either.”

“Well, I guess maybe we're wrong and he's right. But somebody must believe it. There's at least one buyer interested in a couple of 'em; more money than I'll see this year if Ralph sells 'em all.”

“Yes, I heard about that.”

“Uh-huh. Ralph says it's a collector. An American, I think.”

“This is a man I'd like to meet.”

“All I know is, old Ralph's ecstatic.” Bea was craning her neck for a better look at the dessert trolley. “You want a sweet, then? That pud looks good.” She watched the trolley making its slow circuit of the diners.

Melrose made a sign to the young waiter with the spiky hair who was overseeing it. “Since those paintings are welded together—supposedly—as a ‘progression,' you'd think having them go their separate ways would disturb him.” He did not mention that he himself had purchased one, perhaps because he was afraid it would make Bea think he had a hidden agenda in buying
hers.

“Ralph says each one can stand on its own.”

“I've never known such an accommodating artist.” Melrose shook his head as the trolley rolled over.

“Um. I like the looks of that chocolate gâteau, too.” She frowned over the choices. “What kind of pudding's that?” she asked, poking her finger towards a dome-shaped, whipped-cream laden, rich-looking pudding.

“Queen of Puddings, that one is.” The young waiter sounded a little breathless, as if he'd been waiting in the wings for just such a chance as this. “And here's a plum and hazelnut torte. This one's a Floating Island.” His finger moved to the lower tier of the trolley. “This is a Lemon Semolina gâteau. And, of course, the chocolate, and also the Chocolate Mousse Boring's.”

Melrose was unaware that Boring's had a signature dessert and asked for that, while Bea pondered and pondered. He only wished she'd devote as much loving attention to the Fabricant issue.

“I'll just have that.” She pointed to the Queen of Puddings.

Happily, the waiter set about serving up generous portions of the desserts, took Melrose's order for coffee in the lounge, and left them.

Melrose asked her, “Now if you set about painting a series, wouldn't you feel it was like cutting up the baby to have them separated?”

“I never wanted to paint one. This is good; how's yours?” She poked her fork at Melrose's mousse.

“Divine. Worthy of the name Boring's.” He hadn't yet tasted it. “Those paintings in the back room. Is it usual to keep a stash of paintings hanging about until you need them? I mean, until the gallery does?”

“I guess they keep them, so when they sell one, they have another to put up. They've got two of mine back there.” She licked the pudding from her spoon and then put her hand on the frame of the picture, which she'd insisted they carry with them to the dining room, as if it, too, might be hungry.

Yet she'd said not a word about wanting him to see the two others “back there,” as if he'd done so much already she would never expect him to do more. Watching her lovingly patting the frame, Melrose would have thought he'd adopted it, rather than purchased it.

S
he came in and sat down, and he slid the cigarettes across to her. She thanked him. After he had lighted a cigarette for her, he said, “Brussels. You were speaking of the light in the square. You said it was deceptive.”

Kate McBride smiled. “You have a remarkable memory.”

“So do you. And it's why I'm sure I saw you Saturday night.”

She looked at him squarely. “And it's why I'm sure you didn't!”

Jury smiled. “The cafe. Go on.”

After another moment she asked, “Do you mind my telling it this way? I mean, exactly the way it was?”

“That's the way I want to hear it.”

Still, she needed to justify it. “Because it helps me deal with it, you see. If I can retell details.”

Jury nodded, watched her tap ash from her cigarette into the flimsy tin ashtray.

She started to talk. “I sat in the cafe—outside, I mean, at one of the sidewalk tables. It really is quite dazzling, that square at night. I must admit I was able to let go of my anxiety for a few moments, just looking. There were so
many
stars, and the streetlamps. . . . ” She smoked. “I sat at this small table, waiting. Feeling helpless.” Her shrug seemed to mark another defeat.

“But then?”

“Then a man came, a perfectly ordinary-looking man in a brown overcoat and fedora. He wore steel-rimmed glasses, and his hair was thinning. He sat down at the next table, just as the ordinary-looking woman had done. They might have been brother and sister, they might have been twins. I wouldn't have looked at him twice except I was looking at everyone. He ordered a cassis and unfolded a newspaper. He said, ‘Look across the square.' You can imagine how my head fairly snapped around to see him, I was so surprised. He didn't even look at me. I looked across the square. Over there.” She raised a hand, pointed.

The strength of her emotion had Jury's eyes following the length of her outstretched arm.

“A dark woman stood there with a child. It was Sophie.”

Jury was startled. “You were certain? How—”

She leaned across the table, arms folded on it, eyes burning. The mix of amber and orange and blue flecks made it appear as if they did just that. She asked, “Do you have any children?”

“No.” He felt saddened by this answer, as if it were an admission of failure.

She added nothing, only looked at him and then sat back.

Jury said, “I'm sorry. When this person spoke, was he Belgian? French?”

“It's impossible to say. He had that sort of accent—that wow-accent—that's ironed out, not a wrinkle in it to designate a country or a place. Flat, you know.”

“But—Sophie? If you knew
her
, did she—?”

“Know
me
? I don't know if she saw me. Had she, I think she'd have called out or done something.” Kate's chair scraped back and she rose and walked, worrying the ring on her finger. “They did nothing; they gave no sign of seeing me. Then
he
said, and his voice was entirely devoid of emotion, ‘We only wanted you to see she's quite all right, that's all.'

“I said, ‘Take the money and let her go, for God's sake!' And he told me hysteria was a very bad idea. He actually smiled. It was a grim little smile from a grim little mouth. Then he said, ‘It's not the money we want, Mrs. McBride.' I asked him why in God's name he'd told me to bring it, then. He said, ‘To see if you'd do it, that's all; to see if you could be trusted.'
Trusted!
Good lord! He said, ‘What we want is his papers.'

“Michael had a sensitive position, and he never talked about his work. I knew he'd kept papers in a safe in our living room, and I'd never opened it. That is what I told this strange person. He said, ‘I mean the manuscript, Mrs. McBride. We want the manuscript.' ” She ran her fingers through her hair, shook another cigarette from the package. “Michael had been writing a book, you see. A novel, he'd told me. I hadn't read any of it. I asked this man why on earth he wanted it. ‘Why would you want that? Why would you want his novel?' He turned then and looked at me, and that smile was in place again. ‘That's what he told you, was it?'

“I just stared at him. I felt utterly at sea. I thought I'd never understand anything again. What was happening? He studied me for a moment and then went on. ‘Outside of Aix-en-Provence there is a château, the Château Noailles—' ”

Jury straightened in his chair. “Noailles?”

“Please,” she said, holding up her hand, asking him not to interrupt. “He said, ‘This is a magnificent château set in some two hundred acres of the loveliest part of Provence. The family—or, to be more specific, Edouard Noailles—is one of the most powerful in France, certainly one of the wealthiest.' He smiled that sardonic smile again. ‘As I said, Mrs. McBride, we've no interest in your money. Edouard Noailles, among many other things, is a collector. He has one of the biggest private collections in the world. You do not need to know the details. Only to know that your husband was very much aware of Noailles and his business.'

“ ‘What has Sophie to do—why are you putting us through this?' I was near to screaming. ‘Why?'

“ ‘But of course it shouldn't have been necessary. It was you who went to the gendarme—for all the good it did you, Mrs. McBride.' He moved for perhaps the first time, leaned across the table and said, ‘Now, I trust, you will not bother with police again? It's a simple request. We want only the manuscript and your silence. That is, if you're rash enough to read it before handing it over.'

“And then he simply got up, said, ‘We'll be in touch,' and walked away. He walked away,” she repeated, shaking her head.

The cigarette, unsmoked, had burned nearly to the fingers that held it. Jury took it from her hand, flicked it into the ashtray.

When she raised her head and looked at him, it was almost as if she were waiting for him to explain this whole lurid episode. She looked desperate; she looked as if it would take very little to drive her round the bend.

“This priest—” He stopped. She looked up, waiting. “If you saw him—”

Immediately, she shook her head. “It wouldn't do any good. I was never around him, barely saw him after that time in the islands.”

“When was this meeting in Brussels?”

She thought for a moment. “Over four months ago. Before I returned to England.”

“And did you go back to the police?”

“No, not directly. I was afraid to. And I didn't think it would do any good. You remember I told you there'd been a fire, some of their records had been lost, mine—that is, Sophie's—among them.” Ruefully, she looked at Jury. “They'd no record of what had happened.” She sighed. “It seemed, somehow, inevitable. Fate, I suppose I mean.”

Jury looked at her for a long moment but said nothing.

She shook her head. Then she said, “This woman who was murdered, if she looked that much like me—”

“Someone mistook her for you? It's possible.”

“It could hardly be a coincidence, her being there.”

“The point is, how did
both
of you come to be there?”

She rose, tiredly, and stood there looking at him. “You still think it was me you saw, don't you?”

Looking at her, seeing the strain she was under, he felt almost guilty for saying it. “I know it was you, Kate.”

T
he scratching at the door to Jury's flat, rousing him from a hard-won three hours of sleep, was something like that pervasive dream image of his childhood—skeletal, scrabbling fingers whose owner he never saw. He'd always awakened (blessedly) before that particular detail floated upwards from his unconscious.

Jury lay in a bed that looked as if it had been tossed by a brace of cops with a warrant and wondered, sleepily, if he were still six years old and if everything that he thought had happened over the last several decades had been just that—a dream.

He extricated himself from his mangled bedclothes, and this depressed him further because the cast-off sheets could not be accounted for by the presence of a woman with whom he'd made furious love the night before.

The scratching came again, accompanied by a timpani of tappings. By now he was on his feet and into his boiled-wool dressing gown and was walking barefoot to the door. He knew who it was, of course. Why was she up at—he checked his clock—seven-thirty on a Sunday morning? Especially on a Sunday morning that found him feeling just as bleak as he had on the past Sunday morning. Bleaker, probably. He was no closer to answers to the Fulham Palace business than he'd been then.

He opened the door, and Stone—who'd done the scratching—lowered his paw and dipped his head with a shame-faced expression that wanted to say, It was her made me do it, guv.