Come on,' said Nina, and she boldly took Strike's hand and led him towards an all-female trio, whose breath rose in gusts of white mist even when they were not exhaling smoke.
Hi guys,' said Nina. Anyone seen Jerry?'
He's pissed,' said a redhead baldly.
Oh no,' said Nina. And he was doing so well!'
A lanky blonde glanced over her shoulder and murmured:
He was half off his face in Arbutus last week.'
It's Bombyx Mori,' said an irritable-looking girl with short dark hair. And the anniversary weekend in Paris didn't come off. Fenella had another tantrum, I think. When is he going to leave her?'
Is she here?' asked the blonde avidly.
Somewhere,' said the dark girl. Aren't you going to introduce us, Nina?'
There was a flurry of introduction that left Strike none the wiser as to which of the girls was Miranda, Sarah or Emma, before the four women plunged again into a dissection of the unhappiness and drunkenness of Jerry Waldegrave.
He should have ditched Fenella years ago,' said the dark girl. Vile woman.'
Shh!' hissed Nina and all four of them became unnaturally still as a man nearly as tall as Strike ambled up to them. His round, doughy face was partly concealed by large horn-rimmed glasses and a tangle of brown hair. A brimming glass of red wine was threatening to spill over his hand.
Guilty silence,' he noted with an amiable smile. His speech had a sonorous over-deliberation that to Strike declared a practised drunk. Three guesses what you're talking about: Bombyx – Mori – Quine. Hi,' he added, looking at Strike and stretching out a hand: their eyes were on a level. We haven't met, have we?'
Jerry – Cormoran, Cormoran – Jerry,' said Nina at once. My date,' she added, an aside directed more at the three women beside her than at the tall editor.
Cameron, was it?' asked Waldegrave, cupping a hand around his ear.
Close enough,' said Strike.
Sorry,' said Waldegrave. Deaf on one side. And have you ladies been gossiping in front of the tall dark stranger,' he said, with rather ponderous humour, in spite of Mr Chard's very clear instructions that nobody outside the company should be made privy to our guilty secret?'
You won't tell on us, will you, Jerry?' asked the dark girl.
If Daniel really wanted to keep that book quiet,' said the redhead impatiently, though with a swift glance over her shoulder to check that the boss was nowhere near by, he shouldn't be sending lawyers all over town trying to hush it up. People keep calling me, asking what's going on.'
Jerry,' said the dark girl bravely, why did you have to speak to the lawyers?'
Because I'm in it, Sarah,' said Waldegrave, with a wave of his glass that sent a slug of the contents slopping onto the manicured lawn. In it up to my malfunctioning ears. In the book.'
The women all made sounds of shock and protestation.
What could Quine possibly say about you, when you've been so decent to him?' demanded the dark girl.
The burden of Owen's song is that I'm gratuitously brutal to his masterpieces,' said Waldegrave, and he made a scissor-like gesture with the hand not grasping the glass.
Oh, is that all?' said the blonde, with the faintest tinge of disappointment. Big deal. He's lucky to have a deal at all, the way he carries on.'
Starting to look like he's gone underground again,' commented Waldegrave. Not answering any calls.'
Cowardly bastard,' said the redhead.
I'm quite worried about him, actually.'
Worried?' repeated the redhead incredulously. You can't be serious, Jerry.'
You'd be worried too, if you'd read that book,' said Waldegrave, with a tiny hiccup. I think Owen's cracking up. It reads like a suicide note.'
The blonde let out a little laugh, hastily repressed when Waldegrave looked at her.
I'm not joking. I think he's having a breakdown. The subtext, under all the usual grotesquerie, is: everyone's against me, everyone's out to get me, everyone hates me-'
Everyone does hate him,' interjected the blonde.
No rational person would have imagined it could be published. And now he's disappeared.'
He's always doing that, though,' said the redhead impatiently. It's his party piece, isn't it, doing a runner? Daisy Carter at Davis-Green told me he went off in a huff twice when they were doing The Balzac Brothers with him.'
I'm worried about him,' said Waldegrave stubbornly. He took a deep drink of wine and said, Might've slit his wrists-'
Owen wouldn't kill himself!' scoffed the blonde. Waldegrave looked down at her with what Strike thought was a mixture of pity and dislike.
People do kill themselves, you know, Miranda, when they think their whole reason for living is being taken away from them. Even the fact that other people think their suffering is a joke isn't enough to shake them out of it.'
The blonde girl looked incredulous, then glanced around the circle for support, but nobody came to her defence.
Writers are different,' said Waldegrave. I've never met one who was any good who wasn't screwy. Something bloody Liz Tassel would do well to remember.'
She claims she didn't know what was in the book,' said Nina. She's telling everyone she was ill and didn't read it properly-'
I know Liz Tassel,' growled Waldegrave and Strike was interested to see a flash of authentic anger in this amiable, drunken editor. She knew what she was bloody doing when she put that book out. She thought it was her last chance to make some money off Owen. Nice bit of publicity off the back of the scandal about Fancourt, whom she's hated for years … but now the shit's hit the fan she's disowning her client. Bloody outrageous behaviour.'
Daniel disinvited her tonight,' said the dark girl. I had to ring her and tell her. It was horrible.'
D'you know where Owen might've gone, Jerry?' asked Nina.
Waldegrave shrugged.
Could be anywhere, couldn't he? But I hope he's all right, wherever he is. I can't help being fond of the silly bastard, in spite of it all.'
What is this big Fancourt scandal that he's written about?' asked the redhead. I heard someone say it was something to do with a review … '
Everyone in the group apart from Strike began to talk at once, but Waldegrave's voice carried over the others' and the women fell silent with the instinctive courtesy women often show to incapacitated males.
Thought everyone knew that story,' said Waldegrave on another faint hiccup. In a nutshell, Michael's first wife Elspeth wrote a very bad novel. An anonymous parody of it appeared in a literary magazine. She cut the parody out, pinned it to the front of her dress and gassed herself, à la Sylvia Plath.'
The redhead gasped.
She killed herself?'
Yep,' said Waldegrave, swigging wine again. Writers: screwy.'
Who wrote the parody?'
Everyone's always thought it was Owen. He denied it, but then I suppose he would, given what it led to,' said Waldegrave. Owen and Michael never spoke again after Elspeth died. But in Bombyx Mori, Owen finds an ingenious way of suggesting that the real author of the parody was Michael himself.'
God,' said the redhead, awestruck.
Speaking of Fancourt,' said Waldegrave, glancing at his watch, I'm supposed to be telling you all that there's going to be a grand announcement downstairs at nine. You girls won't want to miss it.'
He ambled away. Two of the girls ground out their cigarettes and followed him. The blonde drifted off towards another group.
Lovely, Jerry, isn't he?' Nina asked Strike, shivering in the depths of her woollen coat.
Very magnanimous,' said Strike. Nobody else seems to think that Quine didn't know exactly what he was doing. Want to get back in the warm?'
Exhaustion was lapping at the edges of Strike's consciousness. He wanted passionately to go home, to begin the tiresome process of putting his leg to sleep (as he described it to himself), to close his eyes and attempt eight straight hours' slumber until he had to rise and place himself again in the vicinity of another unfaithful husband.
The room downstairs was more densely packed than ever. Nina stopped several times to shout and bawl into the ears of acquaintances. Strike was introduced to a squat romantic novelist who appeared dazzled by the glamour of cheap champagne and the loud band, and to Jerry Waldegrave's wife, who greeted Nina effusively and drunkenly through a lot of tangled black hair.
She always sucks up,' said Nina coldly, disengaging herself and leading Strike closer to the makeshift stage. She comes from money and makes it clear that she married down with Jerry. Horrible snob.'
Impressed by your father the QC, is she?' asked Strike.
Scary memory you've got,' said Nina, with an admiring look. No, I think it's … well, I'm the Honourable Nina Lascelles really. I mean, who gives a shit? But people like Fenella do.'
An underling was now angling a microphone at a wooden lectern on a stage near the bar. Roper Chard's logo, a rope knot between the two names, and 100th Anniversary' were emblazoned on a banner.
There followed a tedious ten-minute wait during which Strike responded politely and appropriately to Nina's chatter, which required a great effort, as she was so much shorter, and the room was increasingly noisy.
Is Larry Pinkelman here?' he asked, remembering the old children's writer on Elizabeth Tassel's wall.
Oh no, he hates parties,' said Nina cheerfully.
I thought you were throwing him one?'
How did you know that?' she asked, startled.
You just told me so, in the pub.'
Wow, you really pay attention, don't you? Yeah, we're doing a dinner for the reprint of his Christmas stories, but it'll be very small. He hates crowds, Larry, he's really shy.'
Daniel Chard had at last reached the stage. The talk faded to a murmur and then died. Strike detected tension in the air as Chard shuffled his notes and then cleared his throat.