one flashing paw.
Jury winced when he heard her talk about Taffy, but smiled when he thought about Cyril. Such people as Mavis Crewes had so indulged themselves-even the starvation diet that kept her cruelly thin was an indulgence of the ego -that they became insensate. Her plants, her cat, herself thriving in the even temperature of their surroundings, would never survive in the cold world beyond her solarium. Her thermostat did her breathing for her.
'… could stand a vacation yourself.' Her wide mouth smiled slyly, her eyelids drooped, her voice lowered, probably hoping to get at Lauren Bacall's real jungle-cat image.
Jury returned the smile with one equally false. 'Oh, I do. Are safaris particularly relaxing?' He eased himself down into the sofa, put his hands behind his neck, gave the impression he had all day, if she liked. He forced himself to smile a particularly seductive smile, to make it reach his eyes.
Mavis apparently 'liked,' all right. His look pulled her out of her chair and around the desk as effectively as Charlie Raine's had drawn Mary Lee from behind Jury's back.
Resting against the desk, both palms back on the polished surface as if for support, she said, 'Well, that depends. How much relaxation were you looking for?'
'Total. Something that would take my mind off everything-this rotten city,' (he loved London), 'my all-hours job,' (he loved his job, too, he supposed), 'my solitary life,' (he did not love that). 'What are the sleeping arrangements? Tents?'
'Very nice ones, very cozy, really.'
'Any doubles?'
Mavis Crewes was enjoying this game immensely. It was what she was good at, games. Jury hated them.
'But of course.'
He did not rise to light her cigarette; it would have lost him an edge of advantage. Sleepily, he said, 'I doubt I could stand up to the competition. Tigers, jaguars, you know.'
'You certainly don't sound like Roger. But you're probably not a shooter. Literally, I mean.'
'Oh, but I am. I've been through D-six training. I'm not a marksman, but I got a first-class rating. How good was Roger?'
'Good, though not so good as I-in most departments.' Pursing her lips, she exhaled a plume of smoke. Then her face changed.
Now she realized it. Her body went slack, her expression hard, both showing her years. For a moment she stood there before she sent the vase smashing to the floor.
Taffy reared back and spat and jumped off the sofa. Jury rose, stepped over water and shards of glass, and grabbed Mavis round the waist in a gesture that in better circumstances could have been one of the furious lover.
He cupped her chin in his hand, bringing her closer. 'I'm sorry; I don't like tricks. You could easily have told me what sort of man Healey was, for God's sakes. I expect you'll be what is described as a hostile witness. I
As he had imagined Cyril doing, she flashed her nails across his face, fortunately not connecting except at the chin line. Jury let her go..
She was screaming at him, but choked with rage. 'You're a superintendent
'Racer. Chief Superintendent Racer.' Jury had drawn out his handkerchief, was wiping the blood from his chin. 'But I don't think I'm the safari type, Mavis. I need a cold climate, someplace that lets you think. No abundance, just short rations, that forces you to use your wits to survive.'
That line from the song Melrose Plant liked so much sprang to his mind and he smiled. 'Like Alaska.'
The usual mobile of planets turning on their invisible strings had been moved to one side, apparently in preparation for the 'Heavenly Spectacular.'
But if this wasn't already it, Jury stood in wonder at what more could be added come fifteen January. Already the window was attracting passersby, and a line of children solemn as sparrows on a fence were at the forefront.
The familiar figure of a tiny Merlin in his cape and starry coned hat had been replaced by a diminutive prince on a white horse, bearing a standard, moving slowly out on a little electrical track, stopping, then returning to the dark woodland setting from which he had emerged.
A vast sigh rose from a band of urchins who had muscled in to the front, hair spiky with the wet. From a little crystal castle in the opposite corner came a spun-glass princess, her gown ballooning icily and covering the track on which she ran. Their meeting was more symbolic than actual. The two figures did not touch, but stopped instead a hair's breadth apart, as close as the wonders of the electrician or the track could manage. Each returned to seclusion.
Then a drift of snow lifted, flew about and resettled in another part of the windowfront. There must have been a snow machine somewhere. What looked like laser lights, tiny beams in misty rainbow colors, circled the skies, beaming on Pluto and Venus, then back to cast a rainbow slick across the little snowdrifts.
And this little world of its own was yet to receive further elaboration. It seemed spectacular enough to Jury right now.
Wiggins whispered, 'Will we be around the fifteenth, sir?'
Jury said, 'Couldn't miss it, could we?'
As they went in the door, Wiggins stopped sneezing and put his handkerchief away. The Starrdust was the only place that Wiggins could go where things weren't catching.
The Stardust twins, Meg and Joy, were the ones who were arranging something behind the velvet curtain, whispering and giggling.
When they saw who it was, they got up quickly, brushed off their black cord jeans, straightened their silver and gold braces on their shoulders. Their shirts were white satin.
'Hello.'
'Hello. Were you wanting Andrew? He's with a customer.'
As Wiggins looked up at the winking lights of the planetarium ceiling, Jury squinted back into the dark length of the shop. Most of the lighting was supplied by muted wall-sconces with quarter-moon shades or tall, thin, lumieres with tops like ringed planets.
Andrew Starr, a dealer in antiquarian books leaning largely toward astrology, looked up from his desk and waved. His customer was a heavy woman draped in a cape of Russian mink and a necklace of Russian amber.
'I was looking to have my fortune read,' said Jury. 'Who did the window?'
'We did,' said Meg, somewhat breathlessly. 'Joy's quite mechanical-minded.'
Jury looked at Joy, surprised. Between the two of them, he wouldn't have thought they could open a lock with a key.
'But Meg thought it up,' said Joy graciously. 'And Andrew told us we could spend what we liked,' she said proudly.
Andrew Starr would be amply rewarded, Jury knew. Hiring Joy and Meg and, especially, Carole-anne had doubled his holiday trade as it was.
