"Am I still likely to infect anyone else? " I asked.
He took longer to answer, then he said, "Just bear in mind that no one knows. Among cattle the basic disease Johne"s-is only spread through ingesting either feces or infected milk. " He grinned broadly. "You should be all right here. Visitors may come without a mask. " Jett came often, usually with my grandmother"s gifts of a book not too heavy for holding when sitting in a wheelchair or bed, or anywhere with gin and tonic or busted ribs. Even though upright and walking round and round a civilized room, I learned from Wednesday to Sunday an approximation of my grandmother"s restricted life.
I talked to her on Thursday on the telephone, and I sent her a bowl of Christmas roses and a spray bottle of cologne.
On Friday morning early, colleagues at work called to urge my a. s. a. p. return, as it seemed I had won the annual Bracknell Meteorological Office sweepstake by guessing which day in the year would register the hottest shade temperature on the roof (September first) and they wanted to help me with un popping the cork of the prize bottle of fizz.
They had barely left me smiling when I had Bell exploding in trouble in my ear, almost unintelligibly full of a five-star disaster.
"Slow down, dearest Bell, " I begged, hoping that what she"d just told me pretty hysterically was at least only half true.
"What did you say about Glenda? " "I told you, " she shouted. "Why don"t you b.l.o.o.d.y listen?
Kris is frantic. She stole his trains... " "Bell. Slow down. " "She jumped in front of a train. " The words still tumbled out.
"Glenda? " "Of course, Glenda... Stop being so stupid. An underground train. Late last night. The police came here this morning. She"s.. terribly... dead. They"ve not long gone. " Bell swallowed between words to get them out, but she was audibly crying.
"I"ve talked to Dad... " , l "Bell... " I had at last, and with growing dismay, taken it in.
"Where are you? Is somebody with you? Kris? Jett could be with you... I could come myself. " "No, you can"t, you"re in hospital. Glenda yattered all the way to London on Wednesday and honestly I got fed up with her--oh h.e.l.l... " She gulped, but the tears wouldn"t stop.
"I.
wish I had been nicer to her, but I"ve never truly liked her..
I"ve done my best while I"ve been working for George, but I was going to change jobs--but that"s only half of it and the rest is worse. " It couldn"t be much worse, I thought, and of course I was wrong.
Bell said, "Glenda went on and on about George being a traitor. She said she couldn"t bear to be married to a traitor.
She said she"d told you all about it, and you knew it was true and she couldn"t bear the shame of having a trial... she couldn"t live with the disgrace... and I thought... I thought she was exaggerating, you know how she always rattles on and swings her arms about... Oh dear. Oh dear... " I"d tried Kris"s flat several times without reply, so into the pause for sobs I asked again, "Bell, where are you right now? " "In your attic. " Bell said it matter-of-factly as if I should have expected it.
"We moved in here yesterday evening. Kris had a key, " she added. "He said you wouldn"t mind. We"d got so utterly bored with Glenda going on and on all day yesterday, so when she finally went out at last we just came here to get away from her and of course we never dreamt... " The unstoppable sobs, I thought, might almost have a compound of guilt.
"When Glenda was with you, " I asked, "couldn"t you in any way have calmed her about George? " "Perry. " Bell"s voice on the telephone was a wail. "You don"t understand. The Newmarket police went to George"s house to tell him Glenda was dead. They didn"t go to arrest him. They just went because of Glenda... " Bell fell into a silence that seemed past even sobs.
"Go on, " I said, "What did George say? " "He was dead, " Bell said.
"Dead? " Bell said jerkily, "He was upstairs in his bedroom. He had been hit on the back of his head. His skull was crushed. The police went round to see Dad because of me working for George, and they told him George was dead... and Glenda had left a letter in the bedroom saying she couldn"t bear the disgrace... " She wept. "Dad told the police to look for us here because I wasn"t at Kris"s place. " "Are you saying, " I asked her plainly, "that while Glenda sat in Newmarket, in her kitchen, tellingJett and me how she"d given radiation sickness to the filly, George was lying dead upstairs? " "Yes. " Bell"s distress carried its own measure of horror. "He must have been. When you and Jett drove off to the Equine Research place and I went home to pack a case... we left them in that state of really murderous fury... she must have killed him during that time when we weren"t there... and then she packed a few things and went down to wait for us. " Bell still couldn"t quite control her voice. "Kris thinks she told George she was going upstairs to pack as she was leaving him,
and telling the world about his trade in uranium, and he went upstairs after her to stop her. " One could imagine George, in a rage, leaning over Glenda"s suitcase to take things out of it... and one could also imagine Glenda, s.n.a.t.c.hing up a heavy object...
"What did she hit him with? " I asked.
"I don"t know. h.e.l.l, Perry, what does it matter? I"ve hardly ever been in their bedroom... they have a heavy bra.s.s clock... modern... " Her voice was cracking, and Jett would have reckoned she needed a tranquilizer, or better, a hug.
"Is Kris with you now? " I asked.
"He went to get some food. " "Then eat it. " "Glenda! " she said miserably. "And George! " Disbelief racked her, and she felt more pain for them dead than she"d felt affection for them while they lived.
It would be no use telling her not to think about them. She had known them for most of her life.
I thought of them myself as I had seen them first at Caspar Harvey"s lunch, no odder than many a bickering married couple, and I thought how their central cores had slowly begun a meltdown after that, until the bedrock character had clarified in each.
George"s innate villainy had taken over from the still respected racehorse trainer until he was ready to try killing with blinding oil. Glenda with her foolish unfounded s.e.xual suspicions had uncovered not the lover but the traitor in her house, and in shame and disillusion had both killed and died.
I thought of the manifest instinct to destroy that had throbbed between the pair of them in that kitchen. There had been, that Wednesday morning, the basic b.l.o.o.d.y urge of nature.
. all red teeth and claws.
Did a murderer, I wondered, live deep within us all?
AT AROUND NOON I ran dear disheveled Melanie to the other end of the wire and asked if I could speak to my ghostwriter about my book on storms. "Sure, " she blithely replied and in a moment Ghost himself was saying, "I thought you"d come out in spots. " "Spots don"t gag you. " "So I gather you want to talk. " "There are storms present and future, " I said. "There are things you should know. " "On our way. " They both came, long John Rupert and insubstantial Ghost.
I invited them to sit down, and apologized for the imitation measles I could well have done without. Ravi Chand expected the rash would fade by Sunday, but Sunday seemed a long way off. I looked a mess.
"What"s wrong with you?
"John Rupert asked.
"Mycobacterium para tuberculosis variant X. " "Ah, " one said and
"Yes, of course, " said the other. Neither had ever seen it before, but then, nor had anyone else.
"Last night, " I said, trying not to make it sound too theatrical, "Glenda Loricroft, wife of George, jumped in front of an underground train. " Their mouths opened speechlessly.
"On Wednesday morning in Newmarket it seems she had bashed in her husband"s skull. He lay undiscovered in his bedroom until the police found him this morning, when they went to tell him his wife had killed herself. " John Rupert and Ghost started breathing again, and I said, "Before you ask, he had not been unduly missed by the staff of his racing stable, because he constantly traveled overseas without saying where he was going. He supervised a schooling session early on Wednesday morning--I was there myself.
So was Belladonna Harvey, his a.s.sistant, but when neither she nor George nor George"s wife appeared yesterday morning, or today, the head groom simply carried on with the stable routine as he"d done several times before. " They listened intently while I told them about Glenda, the filly, the alpha-particle powder and the lead container. I asked them, after that, if they had any authority to search Loricroft"s world? The answer seemed to be somewhere between
"No" and
"It depends" and
"It"s up to the Newmarket police. " There was no simple
"Yes. " "Of all the possible Traders, " I remarked, "George Loricroft might have been the one most likely to handle and keep orders from foreign sources... but he"s been dead two days. " John Rupert nodded,
"His Trader colleagues will have picked the body clean. But what would you have hoped to find? He would have been too careful. They always are. The real question now is, who will take his place? " A thoughtful silence ensued. Glenda"s spurious snowfalls, Ghost said, had put more than a husband out of action. There would be a pause for regrouping. A vulnerable period, he thought, for the Traders.
John Rupert asked me again, "What would you have hoped to find at Loricroft"s place? " "I suppose names and addresses would have been too much to hope for, " I said. "Glenda herself might have got rid of anything obviously damaging. She had time. But how about a dipstick in the trunk of his car, say, with smears of oil matching that in the crunched airplane? How about bank statements, phone bills... a paper trail? " They shook their heads, thoughtful and depressed. John Rupert said, "Even though the Traders aren"t a hundred percent professional, Loricroft will have known better than to leave d.a.m.ning paperwork lying around. " Ghost agreed. "Do you know what I think? " he said. "I really do think we may have them undecided at this moment and not knowing what to do next, but it won"t last long. So what we need now are some good sound ideas. Fruitful ideas.
It"s time for genius. " John Rupert smiled lopsidedly. "We need someone they would never expect to be actively working against them. " I found both visitors turning their heads until their eyes focused on my face, and I thought that if they expected fruitful ideas from me, they had come to a dry well.
"I, " I pointed out, "originally sought you out for help. My province is as a forecaster of wind and rain and sunshine, not as an ideas man in ant.i.terrorist country. You must know better then I do how to profit from a Trader"s death. " I waited for a good while during which they un helpfully offered no suggestions even in the fruitful category, never mind genius, and with disquiet I realized that they had begun to rely on me for direction, not the other way round.
"I need a few answers, " I said reluctantly. I had to be crazy, I thought, even to begin on such a journey, but unless I knew where I was going, I would no longer agree to go anywhere at all. Only an idiot would set out without a map.
I said,