hadn’t directly told her, she had got them remarkably right.
‘Lucy?’ I said.
‘Lucy thinks everyone is inferior to herself, especially if they have more money.’
Poor Lucy, I thought. ‘And Edwin?’ I said.
Joyce frowned. ‘Edwin …’
‘Edwin isn’t impossible?’ I asked.
‘He never gets time off from running errands. Not enough time anyway for waiting around to catch Moira alone in her glass house.’
‘But in character?’
‘I don’t know enough about him,’ Joyce confessed. ‘He yearns for money, that’s for sure, and he’s earned it, picking up after Lucy all these years. I don’t know his impatience level.”
‘All right then,’ I said, ‘what about Thomas?’
‘Thomas!’ Joyce’s face looked almost sad. ‘He wasn’t as insufferable as Donald and Lucy when he was little. I liked him best of the three. But that damned Vivien screwed him up properly, didn’t she? God knows why he married Berenice. She’ll badger him into the grave before he inherits, and then where will she be?’
Joyce finished the vodka and said. ‘I don’t like doing this, Ian, and I’m stopping right here.’
Thomas, I thought. She wasn’t sure about Thomas, and she doesn’t want to say so. The analysis had all of a sudden come to an unwelcome, perhaps unexpected, abyss.
‘Another drink?’ I suggested.
‘Yes. Gervase is drinking, did you know?’
‘He always drinks.’
‘Ursula telephoned me to ask for advice.’
‘Did she really?’ I was surprised. ‘Why didn’t she ask Alicia?’
‘Ursula detests her mother-in-law,’ Joyce said. ‘We have that in common. Ursula and I have become quite good friends.’
Amazing, I thought, and stood up to fetch the refills.
Joyce’s eyes suddenly widened in disbelief, looking beyond me.
‘I knew you were lying,’ she said bitterly. ‘There’s Malcolm.’
Seven
I turned, not knowing whether to be frightened or merely irritated.
Malcolm hadn’t seen Joyce, and he wasn’t looking for her or for me but solely for a drink. I made my way to the bar to meet him there and took him by the arm.
‘Why aren’t you bloody upstairs?’ I said.
‘I was outstaying my welcome, old chap. It was getting very awkward. They had an ambassador to entertain. I’ve been up there three bloody hours. Why didn’t you come and fetch me?’
‘Joyce,’ I said grimly, ‘is sitting over there in the corner. I am buying her a drink, and she saw you come in.’
‘Joyce!’ He turned round and spotted her as she looked balefully in our direction. ‘Damn it.’
‘Prowling around outside we also have Donald and Helen, Lucy and Edwin, Ferdinand and Debs, and Serena.’
‘Christ,’ he said. ‘Hunting in pairs.’
‘You may joke,’ I said, ‘and you may be right.’
‘I couldn’t stay up there. They were waiting for me to leave, too polite to tell me to go.’
He looked apprehensive, as well he might.
‘Will Joyce tell them all that I’m here?’
‘We’ll see if we can stop it,’ I said. ‘What do you want to drink? Scotch?’
He nodded and I squeezed through the throng by the bar and eventually got served. He helped me carry the glasses and bottles back to the table, and sat where I’d been sitting, facing Joyce. I fetched another chair from nearby and joined my ever non-loving parents.
‘Before you start shouting at each other,’ I said, ‘can we just take two things for granted? Joyce wants Malcolm to stop scattering largesse, Malcolm wants to go on living. Both ends are more likely to be achieved if we discover who murderered Moira in case it is Moira’s murderer who wishes also to kill Malcolm.’ I paused. ‘OK for logic?’
They both looked at me with the sort of surprise parents reserve for unexpected utterances from their young.
Malcolm said, ‘Surely it’s axiomatic that it’s Moira’s murderer who’s trying to kill me?’
I shook my head. ‘Ever heard of copycat crime?’
‘My God,’ he said blankly. ‘One possible murderer in the family is tragedy. Two would be …”
‘Statistically improbable,’ Joyce said.
Malcolm and I looked at her with respect.
‘She’s right,’ Malcolm said, sounding relieved, as if one killer were somehow more manageable than two.
‘OK,’ I agreed, wondering what the statistical probabilities really were, wondering whether Ferdinand could work them out, ‘OK, the police failed to find Moira’s murderer although they tried very hard and are presumably still trying …’
‘Trying to link me with an assassin,’ muttered Malcolm darkly.
‘We might, as a family,’ I said, ‘have been able to overcome Moira’s murder by making ourselves believe in the motiveless unknown outside-intruder theory …’
‘Of course we believe it,’ Joyce said faintly.
‘Not now, we can’t. Two unknown outside-intruder motiveless murders - because Malcolm was meant to die - are so statistically improbable as to be out of sight.