That girl is, well, she’s
Jamie stared at her. Nobody had spoken to him like that before. She undoubtedly meant it well, but what exactly was wrong with his trousers? He looked down at his legs, at his trousers, and then he looked at Grace.
She was shaking her head; not in disapproval, but in sorrow, as at missed opportunities, potential unfulfilled.
JA M I E R E T U R N E D S H O RT LY before seven that evening, bringing with him an overnight case. The glaziers had been that afternoon and the stained-glass panel in the inner hall door had now been replaced with a large sheet of plain glass. Isabel was in her study when he arrived and she asked him to wait for a few minutes in the drawing room while she finished off a letter she was drafting. She seemed to be in good spirits when she let him in, he thought, but when she came through, her expression was more sombre.
“I had two calls from Minty,” she said. “Do you want to hear about them?”
“Of course I do. I was thinking about it all day.”
“Minty was really angry when Grace told her about last night.
She said that she and Paul would go round immediately to have a word with Johnny Sanderson, which they did, apparently. And then she called back and said that I need not worry anymore about him, that he had been well and truly warned off. Apparently they have something else on him that they could threaten him with, and he backed down. So that’s it.”
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“And Mark Fraser? Was anything said about Mark’s death?”
“No,” said Isabel. “Nothing. But if you ask me, I would say that there’s still a chance that Mark Fraser was pushed over the balcony by Johnny Sanderson, or by somebody acting on his behalf. But we shall never be able to prove it, and I assume that Johnny Sanderson knows it. So that’s the end of that. Everything has been tidied away. The financial community has tucked its dirty washing out of sight. A young man’s death has been tucked away too. And it’s business as usual, all round.”
Jamie looked at the floor. “We’re not very brilliant investiga-tors, are we?”
Isabel smiled. “No,” she said. “We’re a couple of rather help-less amateurs. A bassoonist and a philosopher.” She paused. “But there is something to be cheerful about, I suppose, in the midst of all this moral failure.”
Jamie was curious. “And what would that be?”
Isabel rose to her feet. “I think we might just allow ourselves a glass of sherry on that one,” she said. “It would be indecent to open the champagne.” She moved over to the drinks cabinet and extracted two glasses.
“What precisely are we celebrating?” asked Jamie.
“Cat is no longer engaged,” said Isabel. “For a very brief period she was in grave danger of marriage to Toby. But she came round this afternoon and we had a good cry on each other’s shoulders. Toby is history, as you people so vividly put it.”
Jamie knew that she was right, one should not celebrate the end of a relationship with champagne. But one could go out to dinner, which is what he proposed, and what she accepted.
C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - S E V E N
E
ISABEL DID NOT LIKE to leave things unfinished. She had engaged in the whole issue of Mark Fraser’s fall on the basis that she had become involved, whether she liked it or not. This moral involvement was almost over, except for one thing. She decided now to see Neil, and tell him the outcome of her enquiries. He was the one who had effectively asked her to act, and she felt that she should explain to him how matters had turned out. The knowledge that there was no connection between Mark’s apparent disquiet and the fall could help him, if he was feeling unhappy about his having done nothing himself.
But there was something more that drew her to seek out Neil. Ever since her first meeting with him, on that awkward evening when she had seen him darting across the hall, she had felt puzzled by him. The circumstances of their meeting, of course, had not been easy; she had disturbed him in bed with Hen, and that was embarrassing, but it was more than that. At that first meeting, he had been suspicious of her and his answers to her questions had been unforthcoming. Of course, she was not entitled to expect a warm welcome—he could easily, and under-T H E S U N D A Y P H I L O S O P H Y C L U B
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standably, have resented anybody coming to ask about Mark—
but it went beyond that.
She decided to see him the following day. She tried to telephone him to arrange to go round to the flat, but there was no reply from the flat number and he was unavailable at his office.
So she decided to risk an unannounced visit again.
As she walked up the stairs she reflected on what had happened in the interval between her last visit and this. Only a few weeks had passed, but in that time it seemed that she had been put through a comprehensive and thoroughly efficient emotional wringer. Now here she was, back exactly where she had started.
She rang the bell, and as last time, Hen let her in. This time, her welcome was warmer and she was immediately offered a glass of wine, which she accepted.
“I’ve actually come to see Neil,” she said. “I wanted to talk to him again. I hope he won’t mind.”
“I’m sure he won’t,” said Hen. “He’s not back yet, but I don’t think he’ll be long.”
Isabel found herself recalling the previous visit, when Hen had lied to her about Neil’s absence and she had seen him dash naked across the hallway. She wanted to smile, but did not.
“I’m moving out,” said Hen, conversationally. “Flitting. I’ve found a job in London and I’m going down there.
