CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I flew to New York two days later, still not knowing where to find Malcolm.

The voice at Stamford, Connecticut, always helpful but uninformed, had thought, the previous evening, that the gentlemen might have gone back to Kentucky: they'd been talking of buying a horse that they'd seen there a week earlier. Another horse, not the one they'd bought yesterday.

It was just as well, I thought, that Donald and Helen and Thomas and Berenice and Edwin and Lucy and Vivien and Joyce didn't know. That Gervase, Ursula, Alicia, Ferdinand, Debs and Serena hadn't heard. All fourteen of them would have fallen upon Malcolm and torn him apart.

I chose New York for the twin reasons that Stamford, Connecticut, was barely an hour and a half's drive away (information from the voice) and that everyone should see New York some time. My journeys before that had been only in Europe, to places like Paris, Rome, Athens and Oslo. Beaches and race-meetings and temples. Horses and gods.

I was heading for a hotel on 54th Street, Manhattan, that the voice had recommended: she would tell Mr Pembroke I would be there, as soon as she knew where Mr Pembroke was. It seemed as good an arrangement as any.

Superintendent Yale didn't know I'd left England, nor did any of the family. I sighed with deep relief on the aeroplane and thought about the visits I'd made the day before to Alicia and Vivien. Neither had wanted to see me and both had been abrasive, Alicia in the morning, Vivien in the afternoon.

Alicia's flat outside Windsor was spacious and overlooked the Thames, neither of which pleasures seemed to please her. She did reluctantly let me in, but was un placated by my admiration of her view.

She was, in fact, looking youthfully pretty in a white wool dress and silver beads. Her hair was pulled high in a velvet bow on the crown, and her neat figure spoke of luck or dieting. She had a visitor with her already when I called, a fortyish substantial- looking man introduced coquettishly as Paul, who behaved with unmistakable lordliness, the master in his domain. How long, I wondered, had this been going on?

"You might have said you were coming," Alicia complained. "Ferdinand said you would, some time. I told him to tell you not to."

"it seemed best to see everyone," I said neutrally.

"Then hurry up," she said. "We're going out to lunch."

"Did Ferdinand tell you about Malcolm's new will?"

"He did, and I don't believe a word of it. You've always been Malcolm's wretched little pet. He should have sent you back to Joyce when I left. I told him to. But would he listen? No, he wouldn't."

"That was twenty years ago," I protested. "And nothing's changed. He does what he likes. He's utterly selfish."

Paul listened to the conversation without stirring and with scant apparent interest but he did, it seemed, have his influence. With an arch look at him, Alicia said, "Paul says Gervase should force Malcolm to give him power of attorney."

I couldn't off-hand think of anything less likely to happen. "Have you two known each other long?" I asked.

"No," Alicia said, and the look she gave Paul was that of a flirt of sixteen.

I asked her if she remembered the tree stump.

"Of course. I was furious with Malcolm for letting Fred do anything so ridiculous. The boys might have been hurt."

And did she remember the switches? How could she forget them, she said, they'd been all over the house. Not only that, Thomas had made another one for Serena some time later. It had sat in her room gathering dust. Those clocks had all been a pest.

"You were good to me in those old days," I said.

She stared. There was almost a softening round her eyes, but it was transitory. "I had to be," she said acidly. "Malcolm insisted."

"Weren't you ever happy?" I asked.

"Oh, yes." Her mouth curled in a malicious smile. "When Malcolm came to see me, when he was married to Joyce. Before that weaselly detective spoiled it."

I asked her if she had engaged Norman West to find Malcolm in Cambridge.

She looked at me with wide empty eyes and said blandly, "No, I didn't. Why would I want to? I didn't care where he was."

"Almost everyone wanted to find him to stop him spending his money."

"He's insane," she said. "Paranoid. He should hand control over to Gervase, and make sure that frightful Ursula isn't included. She's the wrong wife for Gervase, as I've frequently told him."

"But you didn't ask Norman West to find Malcolm?"

"No, I didn't," she said very sharply. "Stop asking that stupid question." She turned away from me restlessly. "It's high time you went."

I thought so too, on the whole. I speculated that perhaps the presence of Paul had inhibited her from saying directly to my face the poison she'd been spreading behind my back. They would dissect me when I'd gone. He nodded coolly to me as I left. No friend of mine, I thought.

If my visit to Alicia had been unfruitful, my call on Vivien was less so. Norman West's notes had been minimal: name, address, sorting magazines, no alibis. She wouldn't answer any of my questions either, or discuss any possibilities. She said several times that Malcolm was a fiend who was determined to destroy his children, and that I was the devil incarnate helping him. She hoped we would both rot in hell. (I thought devils and fiends might flourish there, actually.) Meanwhile, I said, had she employed Norman West to find Malcolm in Cambridge? Certainly not. She wanted nothing to do with that terrible little man. If I didn't remove myself from her doorstep she would call in the police.

"It can't be much fun," I said, "living with so much hatred in your head."

She was affronted. "What do you mean?"

"No peace. All anger. Very exhausting. Bad for your health."

"Go away," she said, and I obliged her.

I drove back to Cookham and spent a good deal of the evening on the telephone, talking to Lucy about Thomas and to Ferdinand about Gervase.

"We are all our brothers' keepers," Lucy said, and reported that Thomas was spending most of the time asleep. "Retreating," Lucy said.

Lucy had spoken to Berenice. "Whatever did you say to her, Ian? She sounds quite different. Subdued. Can't see it lasting long, can you? I told her Thomas was all right and she started blubbing."

Lucy said she would keep Thomas for a while, but not for his natural span.

Ferdinand, when he heard my voice, said, "Where the hell have you been? All I get is your answering machine. Did you find out who killed Moira?" There was anxiety, possibly, in his voice.

"I found out a few who didn't," I said.

"That's not what I asked."

"Well," I said, "like you with your computer, I've fed in a lot of data."

"And the result?"

"The wheels are turning."

"Computers don't have wheels. Come to think of it, though, I suppose they do. Anyway, you've left a whole trail of disasters behind you, haven't you? I hear Thomas has left Berenice, and as for Gervase, he wants your guts for taking Ursula out to lunch. Did you do that? Whatever for? You know how possessive he is. There's a hell of a row going on."

"if you want to hang on to Debs," I said, "don't listen to Alicia."

"What the hell's that got to do with Gervase and Ursula having a row?" he demanded.

"Everything."

He was furious. "You've always got it in for Alicia."

"The other way round. She's a dedicated troublemaker who's cost you one wife already."

He didn't immediately answer. I said, "Gervase is knocking back a fortune in scotch."

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"How do you cope so well with illegitimacy?"

"WHAT?"

"Everything's linked. So long, pal. See you."

I put the receiver down with a sigh, and ate dinner and packed.