“WELL WELL WELL, the talented Mr. Lamb.” Chetwynd-Pitt’s making garlic bread in the kitchen, or trying to. It’s gone five o’clock but he’s still in his dressing gown. A cigar is balanced across a wine glass and George Michael’s Listen Without Prejudiceis on the CD player. “Olly and Fitz went off in search of you two or three hours ago.”
“It’s a big old massif. Needles, haystacks, and all that.”
“And where did your Alpine foray take you aujourd’hui?”
“Up to Palanche de la Cretta, then cross-country. No more nasty black pistes for me. How’s your hangover?”
“How was Stalingrad in 1943? The hair of the dog: ouzo on ice.” He jiggles a small glass of milky liquid and knocks back half.
“Ouzo always reminds me of sperm.” I wish I had a camera as Chetwynd-Pitt swallows the stuff. “Tactless. Sorry.”
He glares at me, puffs on his cigar, and returns to chopping garlic. I fish in a drawer. “Try this revolutionary device: the ‘garlic-crusher.’ ”
Now Chetwynd-Pitt glares at the implement. “The housekeeper must have bought it before we arrived.”
I used it here last year, but never mind. I wash my hands and turn on the oven, which Chetwynd-Pitt had not. “C’mon, make way.” I squeeze the garlicky pulp into the butter.
Grumpy but glad, Chetwynd-Pitt parks his arse on the counter. “I suppose it’s compensation for fleecing me at pool.”
“You’ll get your revenge.” Pepper, parsley, stir with a fork.
“I’ve been thinking about why he did it.”
“I gather we’re talking about Jonny Penhaligon?”
“There’s more to this than meets the eye, Lamb.”
My fork stops: His gaze is … accusing? A code of omert аoperates at Toad’s, but no code can be 100 percent secure. “Go on.” Absurdly, I find myself scanning the kitchen for a murder weapon. “I’m all ears.”
“Jonny Penhaligon was a victim of privilege.”
“Okay.” My fork’s stirring again. “Elaborate.”
“A pleb is someone who thinks privilege is about living off the fat of the land and getting chambermaids to nosh you. Truth is, blue blood’s a serious curse in this day and age. First off, the great unwashed laugh at you for having too many syllables in your name andblame you, personally, for class inequality, the deforestation of the Amazon, and the price of beer going up. The second curse is marriage: How can I know if it’s me my future wife loves—as opposed to my eleven hundred acres of Buckinghamshire and the title Lady Chetwynd-Pitt? Third, my future is shackled to estate management. Now, if youwant to be a broker earning gazillions or an Antarctic archaeologist or a zero-gravity vibraphonist, it’s ‘If you’re happy we’re happy, Hugo.’ Me, I’ve tenants to keep afloat, charities to sponsor, and a seat in the House of Lords to fill one day.”
I fork garlic butter into grooves in the bread. “My heart bleeds. You’re, what, sixty-third in line to the throne?”
“Sixty-fourth, now whatsisname’s born. But I’m serious, Hugo, and I haven’t finished: The fourth curse is the county hunt. I bloody hatebeagles, and horses are moody quad-bikes that piss on your boot and cost thousands in vets’ fees. And the fifth curse is the kicker: the dread that you’ll be the one who loses it all. Start out in life as a social nobody, like you and Olly—no offense—and the only direction you can go is up. Start off with your name in the Domesday Book, like me and Jonny, and the only direction is down the sodding crapper. It’s like an intergenerational pass-the-parcel with bankruptcy instead of a tube of Rolos, and whoever’s alive when the money dries up gets to be the Chetwynd-Pitt who has to learn how to assemble flat-pack furniture from Argos.”
I wrap the garlic bread in foil. “And you reckon this posy of curses was what made Jonny drive off a cliff?”
“That,” says Rufus Chetwynd-Pitt, “and the fact he had nobody to call in his darkest hour. Nobody to trust.”
I put the tray into the oven and crank up the heat.
December 31
I CICLES ARE DRIPPING all down the alley, catching the slanted sun. There’s a barstool propping open the door of Le Croc, and inside Holly is hoovering, attired in baggy army trousers, a white T-shirt, and a khaki baseball cap, which doubles as a ponytail scrunchie. A droplet from an icicle above finds the gap between my coat and my neck and sizzles between my shoulder blades. Holly senses me and turns. As the Hoover’s groan dies, I say, “Knock-knock.”
She recognizes me. “We’re not open. Come back in nine hours.”
“You say, ‘Who’s there?’ It’s a knock-knock joke.”
“I refuse even to open the door, Hugo Lamb.”
“But it’s already a bitopen. And look,” I hold up the paper bags from the patisserie, “breakfast. Surely Gьnter has to let you eat?”
“Some of us had breakfast two hours ago, Poshboy.”
“If you go to Richmond Boys College you get ridiculed for the crime of not being posh e nough. How about a midmorning snackette, then?”
“Le Croc doesn’t clean itself.”
“Don’t Gьnter and your colleague ever help?”
“Gьnter’s the owner, Monique’s hired just as bar staff. They’ll be wrapped up in each other until after lunch. Literally, as it happens: Gьnter left his third wife a few weeks ago. So the privilege of sloshing out the sty falls to the manager.”
I look around. “Where’s the manager?”
“You’re looking at her, y’eejit. Me.”
“Oh. Then if Poshboy does the men’s lavvy, will you take a twenty-minute break?”
Holly hesitates. A part of her wants to say yes. “See that long thing? It’s called a mop. You hold the pointy end.”
“TOLD YOU IT was a sty.” Like a time traveler operating her machine, Holly pulls the handles and swivels the valves of the chrome coffeemaker. It hisses, belches, and gurgles.
I wash my hands and take a couple of barstools off a table. “That was one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever done. Men are pigs. They wipe their arses, then missthe toilet bowl, and just leave the scrunched-up shitty tissue where it fell. And the splattered puke in the last cubicle— nice. Vomit sets if it’s just left there. Like Polyfilla.”
“Switch your nose off. Breathe with your mouth.” She brings over a cappuccino. “And someone had to clean every toilet you’ve ever used. If your dad had run a pub instead of a bank, like mine did, it might’ve been you. Thought for the Day.”
I take out an almond croissant and slide the other bags to Holly. “Why don’t you do the cleaning the night before?”
Holly unravels the edge of an apricot pastry. “Gьnter’s regulars don’t piss off till three in the morning, if I’m lucky. Youtry facing the cleaning at that time after nine hours’ worth of serving drinks.”
I concede the point. “Well, the bar’s looking battle-ready now.”
“Sort of. I’ll clean the taps later, then restock.”
“There was I, thinking bars just ran themselves.”
She lights a cigarette. “I’d be out of a job if they did.”
“Do you see yourself in, uh, hospitality long-term?”
Holly’s frown is a warning. “What’s it to you?”
“I just … Dunno. You seem capable of doing anything.”
Her frown is both wary and weary. She taps ash from her cigarette. “The schools the lower orders go to don’t exactly encourage you to think that way. Hairdressing courses or garage apprenticeships were more the thing.”
“You can’t blame a crap school forever, though.”
She taps her cigarette. “You’re clever, obviously. But there are some areas where you really don’t know shit, Mr. Lamb.”
I nod and sip my coffee. “Your French teacher was brilliant.”
“My French teacher was nonexistent. I picked it up on the job. Survival. Fending off Frenchmen.”
I dig a bit of almond from my teeth. “So where’s the pub?”
“What pub?”
“The one your dad works in.”
“Owns. Co-owns, in fact, with my mam. It’s the Captain Marlow, by the Thames at Gravesend.”