The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike, #2)(112)

‘Get enough of your co-workers during office hours, do you?’ Strike asked.

‘Nothing wrong with them,’ said Jerry Waldegrave, pushing his glasses up his nose and waving at a waiter, ‘but the atmosphere’s poisonous just now. Glass of red, please,’ he told the young man who had answered his wave. ‘I don’t care, anything.’

But the waiter, on whose front a small knight chess piece was embroidered, answered repressively:

‘I’ll send over the wine waiter, sir,’ and retreated.

‘See the clock over the doors as you come in here?’ Waldegrave asked Strike, pushing his glasses up his nose again. ‘They say it stopped when the first woman came in here in 1984. Little in-joke. And on the menu, it says “bill of fare”. They wouldn’t use “menu”, you see, because it was French. My father loved that stuff. I’d just got into Oxford, that’s why he brought me here. He hated foreign food.’

Strike could feel Waldegrave’s nervousness. He was used to having that effect on people. Now was not the moment to ask whether Waldegrave had helped Quine write the blueprint for his murder.

‘What did you do at Oxford?’

‘English,’ said Waldegrave with a sigh. ‘My father was putting a brave face on it; he wanted me to do medicine.’

The fingers of Waldegrave’s right hand played an arpeggio on the tablecloth.

‘Things tense at the office, are they?’ asked Strike.

‘You could say that,’ replied Waldegrave, looking around again for the wine waiter. ‘It’s sinking in, now we know how Owen was killed. People erasing emails like idiots, pretending they never looked at the book, don’t know how it ends. It’s not so funny now.’

‘Was it funny before?’ asked Strike.

‘Well… yeah, it was, when people thought Owen had just done a runner. People love seeing the powerful ridiculed, don’t they? They aren’t popular men, either of them, Fancourt and Chard.’

The wine waiter arrived and handed the list to Waldegrave.

‘I’ll get a bottle, shall I?’ said Waldegrave, scanning it. ‘I take it this is on you?’

‘Yeah,’ said Strike, not without trepidation.

Waldegrave ordered a bottle of Chateau Lezongars, which Strike saw with profound misgiving cost nearly fifty quid, though there were bottles on the list that cost nearly two hundred.

‘So,’ said Waldegrave with sudden bravado, as the wine waiter retreated, ‘any leads yet? Know who did it?’

‘Not yet,’ said Strike.

An uncomfortable beat followed. Waldegrave pushed his glasses up his sweaty nose.

‘Sorry,’ he muttered. ‘Crass – defence mechanism. It’s – I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it happened.’

‘No one ever can,’ said Strike.

On a rush of confidence, Waldegrave said:

‘I can’t shake this mad bloody idea that Owen did it to himself. That he staged it.’

‘Really?’ said Strike, watching Waldegrave closely.

‘I know he can’t have done, I know that.’ The editor’s hands were playing a deft scale on the edge of the table now. ‘It’s so – so theatrical, how he was – how he was killed. So – so grotesque. And… the awful thing… best publicity any author ever got his book. God, Owen loved publicity. Poor Owen. He once told me – this isn’t a joke – he once told me in all seriousness that he liked to get his girlfriend to interview him. Said it clarified his thought processes. I said, “What do you use as a mic?”, taking the mickey, you know, and you know what the silly sod said? “Biros mostly. Whatever’s around.”’

Waldegrave burst into panting chuckles that sounded very like sobs.

‘Poor bastard,’ he said. ‘Poor silly bastard. Lost it completely at the end, didn’t he? Well, I hope Elizabeth Tassel’s happy. Winding him up.’

Their original waiter returned with a notebook.

‘What are you having?’ the editor asked Strike, focusing short-sightedly on his bill of fare.

‘The beef,’ said Strike, who had had time to watch it being carved from the silver salver on a trolley that circulated the tables. He had not had Yorkshire pudding in years; not, in fact, since the last time he had gone back to St Mawes to see his aunt and uncle.

Waldegrave ordered Dover sole, then craned his neck again to see whether the wine waiter was returning. When he caught sight of the man approaching with the bottle he noticeably relaxed, sinking more comfortably into his chair. His glass filled, he drank several mouthfuls before sighing like a man who had received urgent medical treatment.

‘You were saying Elizabeth Tassel wound Quine up,’ Strike said.

‘Eh?’ said Waldegrave, cupping his right hand around his ear.

Strike remembered his one-sided deafness. The restaurant was indeed filling up, becoming noisier. He repeated his question more loudly.

‘Oh yeah,’ said Waldegrave. ‘Yeah, about Fancourt. The pair of them liked brooding on the wrongs Fancourt did them.’

‘What wrongs?’ asked Strike, and Waldegrave swigged more wine.

‘Fancourt’s been badmouthing them both for years.’ Waldegrave scratched his chest absent-mindedly through his creased shirt and drank more wine. ‘Owen, because of that parody of his dead wife’s novel; Liz, because she stuck by Owen – mind you, nobody’s ever blamed Fancourt for leaving Liz Tassel. The woman’s a bitch. Down to about two clients now. Twisted. Probably spends her evenings working out how much she lost: fifteen per cent of Fancourt’s royalties is big money. Booker dinners, film premieres… instead she gets Quine interviewing himself with a biro and burnt sausages in Dorcus Pengelly’s back garden.’