Hot Money Part 4

'That's why I'm staying,' I said.

He stared. He said, 'My G.o.d,' and he laughed, 'I thought I knew you. Seems I don't.'

He finished his brandy, stubbed out his cigar and decided on bed; and in the morning he was up before me, sitting on a sofa in one of the bathrobes and reading the Sporting Life Sporting Life when I ambled out in the underpants and s.h.i.+rt I'd slept in. when I ambled out in the underpants and s.h.i.+rt I'd slept in.

'I've ordered breakfast,' he said. 'And I'm in the paper - how about that?'

I looked where he pointed. His name was certainly there, somewhere near the end of the detailed lists of yesterday's sales. 'Lot 79, ch. colt, 2,070,000 gns. Malcolm Pembroke'.

He put down the paper, well pleased. 'Now, what do we do today?'

'We summon your private eye, we fix a trainer for the colt, I fetch our pa.s.sports and some clothes, and you stay here.'

Slightly to my surprise, he raised no arguments except to tell me not to be away too long. He was looking rather thoughtfully at the healing graze down my right thigh and the red beginnings of bruising around it.

'The trouble is,' he said, 'I don't have the private eye's phone number. Not with me.'

'We'll get another agency, then, from the yellow pages.'

'Your mother knows it, of course. Joyce knows it.'

'How does she know it?'

'She used him,' he said airily, 'to follow me and Alicia.'

There was nothing, I supposed, which should ever surprise me about my parents.

'When the lawyer fellow said to have Moira tailed, I got the private eye's name from Joyce. After all, he'd done a good job on me and Alicia all those years ago. Too b.l.o.o.d.y good, when you think of it. So get through to Joyce, Ian, and ask her for the number.'

Bemused, I did as he said.

'Darling,' my mother shrieked down the line. 'Where's your father?'

'I don't know,' I said.

'Darling, do you know what he's b.l.o.o.d.y done? done?'

'No... what?'

'He's given a fortune fortune, darling, I mean literally hundreds hundreds of of thousands thousands, to some wretched little film company to make some absolutely ghastly ghastly film about tadpoles or something. Some b.l.o.o.d.y fool of a man telephoned to find out where your father was, because it seems he promised them even film about tadpoles or something. Some b.l.o.o.d.y fool of a man telephoned to find out where your father was, because it seems he promised them even more more money which they'd like to have... I ask you! I know you and Malcolm aren't talking, but you've got to do something to stop him.' money which they'd like to have... I ask you! I know you and Malcolm aren't talking, but you've got to do something to stop him.'

'Well,' I said, 'it's his money.'

'Darling, don't be so naive naive. Someone's going to inherit it, and if only you'd swallow all that b.l.o.o.d.y pride, as I've told you over and over, it would be yours yours. If you go on and on with this b.l.o.o.d.y quarrel, he'll leave it all to Alicia's beastly brood, and I cannot bear bear the prospect of her gloating for ever more. So make it up with Malcolm the prospect of her gloating for ever more. So make it up with Malcolm at once at once, darling, and get him to see sense.'

'Calm down,' I said. 'I have.'

'What?'

'Made it up with him.'

'Thank G.o.d, at last last!' my mother shrieked. 'Then, darling, what are you waiting for? Get onto him straight straight away and stop him spending your inheritance.' away and stop him spending your inheritance.'

Three.

Malcolm's house, after three years of Moira's occupancy, had greatly changed.

Malcolm's Victorian house was known as 'Quantum' because of the Latin inscription carved into the lintel over the front door. QUANTUM IN ME FUIT - roughly, 'I did the best I could.'

I went there remembering the comfortable casualness that Coochie had left and not actually expecting that things would be different: and I should have known better, as each wife in turn, Coochie included, had done her best to eradicate all signs of her predecessor. Marrying Malcolm had, for each wife, involved moving into his house, but he had indulged them all, I now understood, in the matter of ambience.

I let myself in through the kitchen door with Malcolm's keys and thought wildly for a moment that I'd come to the wrong place. Coochie's pinewood and red-tiled homeliness had been swept away in favour of glossy yellow walls, glittering white appliances and shelves crowded with scarlet and deep pink geraniums cascading from white pots.

Faintly stunned, I looked back through time to the era before Coochie, to Alicia's fluffy occupancy of broderie anglaise frills on s.h.i.+mmering white curtains with pale blue work-tops and white floor tiles; and back further still to the starker olive and milk-coffee angularities chosen by Joyce. I remembered the day the workmen had torn out my mother's kitchen, and how I'd gone howling to Malcolm: he'd packed me off to Joyce immediately for a month, which I didn't like either, and when I returned I'd found the white frills installed, and the pale blue cupboards, and I thought them all sissy, but I'd learned not to say so.

For the first time ever, I wondered what the kitchen had looked like in Vivien's time, when forty-five or so years ago young Malcolm had brought her there as his first bride. Vivien had been dispossessed and resentful by the time I was born, and I'd seldom seen her smiling. She seemed to me the least positive of the five wives and the least intelligent but, according to her photographs, she had been in her youth by streets the most beautiful. The dark sweep of her eyebrows and the high cheekbones remained, but the thick black hair had thinned now in greying, and entrenched bitterness had soured the once sweet mouth. Vivien's marriage, I'd guessed, had died through Malcolm's boredom with her, and although they now still met occasionally at events to do with their mutual children and grandchildren, they were more apt to turn their backs than to kiss.

Vivien disliked and was plaintively critical of almost everybody while at the same time unerringly interpreting the most innocent general remarks of others as being criticism of herself. It was impossible to please her often or for long, and I, like almost all the extended family, had long ago stopped trying. She had indoctrinated her three offspring with her own dissatisfactions to the point where they were nastily disparaging of Malcolm behind his back, though not to his face, hypocrites that they were.

Malcolm had steadfastly maintained them through young adulthood and then cast them loose, each with a trust fund that would prevent them from actually starving. He had treated all seven of his normally surviving children in the same way; his eighth child, Robin, would be looked after for ever. None of us seven could have any complaints: he had given us all whatever vocational training we'd chosen and afterwards the cus.h.i.+on against penury, and at that point in each of our lives had considered his work done. Whatever became of us in the future, he said, had to be in our own hands.

With the family powerfully in mind, I went from the kitchen into the hall where I found that Moira had had the oak panelling painted white. Increasingly amused, I thought of the distant days when Alicia had painstakingly bleached all the old wood, only to have Coochie stain it dark again: and I supposed that perhaps Malcolm enjoyed change around him in many ways, not just in women.

His own private room, always called the office although more like a comfortable cluttered sitting-room, seemed to have escaped the latest refit except in the matter of gold velvet curtains replacing the old green. Otherwise, the room as always seemed filled with his strong personality, the walls covered with dozens of framed photographs, the deep cupboards bulging with files, the bookshelves crammed, every surface bearing mementoes of his journey ings and achievements, nothing very tidy.

I went over to the desk to find his pa.s.sport and half-expected to hear his voice at any minute even though I'd left him forty miles away persuasively telephoning to 'the fellow who tailed Moira'.

His pa.s.sport, he'd said, was in the second drawer down on the right-hand side, and so it was, among a large clutter of bygone travel arrangements and expired medical insurances. Malcolm seldom threw much away, merely building another cupboard for files. His filing system was such that no one but he had the slightest idea where any paper or information could be found, but he himself could put his finger on things unerringly. His method, he'd told me once long ago, was always to put everything where he would first think of looking for it; and as a child, I'd seen such sense in that that I had copied him ever since.

Looking around again, it struck me that although the room was crammed with objects, several familiar ones were missing. The gold dolphin, for instance, and the gold tree bearing amethysts, and the Georgian silver candelabras. Perhaps at last, I thought, he had stored them prudently in the bank.

Carrying the pa.s.sport, I went upstairs to fetch clothes to add to his sketchy packing and out of irresistible curiosity detoured into the room which had been mine. I expected a bright Moira-style transformation, but in fact nothing at all had been changed, except that nothing of me remained.

The room was without soul; barren. The single bed, stripped, showed a bare mattress. There were no cobwebs, no dust, no smell of neglect, but the message was clear: the son who had slept there no longer existed.

s.h.i.+vering slightly, I closed the door and wondered whether the absolute rejection had been Malcolm's or Moira's and, shrugging, decided I didn't now mind which.

Moira's idea of the perfect bedroom turned out to be plum and pink with louvred doors everywhere possible. Malcolm's dressing-room next door had received the same treatment, as had their joint bathroom, and I set about collecting his belongings with a strong feeling of intruding upon strangers.

I found Moira's portrait only because I kicked it while searching for pyjamas: it was underneath Malcolm's chest of drawers in the dressing-room. Looking to see what I'd damaged, I pulled out a square gold frame which fitted a discoloured patch on the wall and, turning it over, found the horrible Moira smiling at me with all her insufferable complacency.

I had forgotten how young she had been, and how pretty. Thirty years younger than Malcolm; thirty-five when she'd married him and, in the painting anyway, unlined. Reddish-gold hair, pale unfreckled skin, pointed chin, delicate neck. The artist seemed to me to have caught the calculation in her eyes with disconcerting clarity, and when I glanced at the name scrawled at the bottom I understood why. Malcolm might not have given her diamonds, but her portrait had been painted by the best.

I put her back face down under the chest of drawers as I'd found her, where Malcolm, I was sure, had consigned her.

Fetching a suitcase from the boxroom (no decor changes there), I packed Malcolm's things and went downstairs, and in the hall came face to face with a smallish man carrying a large shotgun, the business end pointing my way.

I stopped abruptly, as one would.

'Put your hands up,' he said hoa.r.s.ely.

I set the suitcase on the floor and did as he bid. He wore earth-stained dark trousers and had mud on his hands, and I asked him immediately, 'Are you the gardener?'

'What if I am? What are you doing here?'

'Collecting clothes for my father... er... Mr Pembroke. I'm his son.'

I don't know you. I'm getting the police.' His voice was belligerent but quavery, the shotgun none too steady in his hands.

'All right,' I said.

He was faced then with the problem of how to telephone while aiming my way.

I said, seeing his hesitation, 'I can prove I'm Mr Pembroke's son, and I'll open the suitcase to show you I'm not stealing anything. Would that help?'

After a pause, he nodded. 'You stay over there, though,' he said.

I judged that if I alarmed him there would be a further death in my father's house, so I very slowly and carefully opened the suitcase, removed the underpants and the rest, and laid them out on the hall floor. After that, 1 equally slowly took my own wallet out of my pocket, opened it, removed a credit card and laid it on the floor face upwards. Then I retreated backwards from the exhibits, ending with my back against the closed and locked front door.

The elderly gardener came suspiciously forward and inspected the show, dropping his eyes only in split seconds, raising them quickly, giving me no chance to jump him.

'That's his pa.s.sport,' he said accusingly.

'He asked me to fetch it.'

'Where is he?' he said. 'Where's he gone?'

'I have to meet him with his pa.s.sport. I don't know where he's going.' I paused. 'I really am his son. You must be new here. I haven't seen you before.'

'Two years,' he said defensively. 'I've worked here two years.' He seemed to come quite suddenly to a decision to believe me, and almost apologetically lowered the gun. 'This house is supposed to be locked up,' he said. 'Then I see you moving about upstairs.'

'Upsetting,' I agreed.

He gestured to Malcolm's things. 'You'd better pack them again.'

I began to do so under his still watchful eye.

'It was brave of you to come in here,' I said, 'if you thought I was a burglar.'

He braced his shoulders in an old automatic movement. 'I was in the army once.' He relaxed and shrugged. 'Tell you the truth, I was coming in quietly-like to phone the police, then you started down the stairs.'

'And... the gun?'

'Brought it with me just in case. I go after rabbits... I keep the gun handy.'

I nodded. It was the gardener's own gun, I thought. Malcolm had never owned one, as far as I knew.

'Has my father paid you for the week?' I said.

His eyes at once brightened hopefully. 'He paid me last Friday, same as usual. Then Sat.u.r.day morning he phoned my house to tell me to come round here to see to the dogs. Take them home with me, same as I always do when he's away. So I did. But he was gone off the line before I could ask him how long he'd be wanting me to have them.'

I pulled out my cheque-book and wrote him a cheque for the amount he specified. Arthur Bel I brook, he said his name was. I tore out the cheque and gave it to him and asked him if there was anyone else who needed wages.

He shook his head. 'The cleaner left when Mrs Pembroke was done in... er... murdered. Said she didn't fancy the place any more.'

'Where exactly was Mrs Pembroke... er... murdered?'

'I'll show you if you like.' He stored the cheque away in a pocket. 'Outside in the greenhouse.'

He took me, however, not as I'd imagined to the rickety old familiar greenhouse sagging against a mellowed wall in the kitchen garden, but to a bright white octagonal wrought-iron construction like a fancy bird-cage set as a summer-house on a secluded patch of lawn. From far outside, one could clearly see the flouris.h.i.+ng geraniums within.

'Well, well,' I said.

Arthur Bellbrook uttered 'Huh' as expressing his disapproval and opened the metal-and-gla.s.s door.

'Cost a fortune to heat, will this place,' he observed. 'And it got too hot in the summer. The only thing as will survive in it is geraniums. Mrs Pembroke's pa.s.sion, geraniums.'

An almost full sack of potting compost lay along one of the work surfaces, the top side of it slit from end to end to make the soil mixture easy to reach. A box of small pots stood nearby, some of them occupied by cuttings.

I looked at the compost with revulsion. 'Is that where...?' I began.

'Yes,' he said. 'Poor lady. There's no one ought to die like that, however difficult they could be.'

'No,' I agreed. A thought struck me. 'It was you who found her, wasn't it?'

'I went home like always at four o'clock, but I was out for a stroll about seven, and I thought I would just come in to see what state she'd left the place in. See, she played at gardening. Never cleaned the tools, things like that.' He looked at the boarded floor as if still seeing her there. 'She was lying face down, and I turned her over. She was dead all right. She was white like always but she had these little pink dots in her skin. They say you get those dots from asphyxiation. They found potting compost in her lungs, poor lady.' He had undoubtedly been shocked and moved at the time, but there was an echo of countless repet.i.tions in his voice now and precious little feeling.

'Thank you for showing me,' I said.

He nodded and we both went out, shutting the door behind us.

i don't think Mr Pembroke liked this place much,' he said unexpectedly. 'Last spring, when she chose it, he said she could have it only if he couldn't see it from the house. Otherwise he wouldn't pay the bill. I wasn't supposed to hear, of course, but there you are, I did. They'd got to shouting, you see.'

'Yes,' I said, 'I do see.' Shouting, slammed doors, the lot.

'They were all lovey-dovey when I first came here,' he said, 'but then I reckon her little ways got to him, like, and you could see it all going downhill like a runaway train. I'm here all day long, see, and in and out of the house, and you couldn't miss it.'

'What little ways?' I asked casually.

He glanced at me sideways with reawakening suspicions, 'I thought you were his son. You must have known her.'

'I didn't come here. I didn't like her.'