Help the Poor Struggler (21 page)

“You're
police.
Just go in and take the bloody things.”

“We don't have any reason to: we don't have a bit of evidence that would get us in, and it would only put everybody on guard. You wouldn't, see.”

“I know I wouldn't because I won't be there. But — out of curiosity — why?”

“Because you're running scared and that timidity is going to make Ashcroft — the girl's guardian — even more courtly, and the rest will be trying to put you at your ease.”

“Thanks!” she snapped, downing some more whiskey. “That sort of person hardly sounds like one a high-powered magazine would be sending out on jobs.”

“They would if she had your talent.”

She lowered her head. There was no sarcasm in her voice, only defeat. “I can't do it. And I don't see any reason I should.”

“I do.”

“Oh, I know that old crap. ‘Do it for yourself, Molly, it's what you need to —' ” He could hear the tears beginning.

“No. Do it for me.”

There was no sound but a log splitting and the waves beyond the window. She did not look up and did not move, but sat on the couch, feet drawn up, curled much like the cat, and just as silent.

Jury waited.

Looking not at him but at the glass she turned round and round in her hands, she said dully, “I'll need some film. I suppose this magazine wants color. Extracolor Professional or Extrachrome X.” She smiled coldly. “Oh, I forgot. None of this is real, so I'll just use what I have.”

“No. Treat it as if it were the real thing. Take along equipment you'd take if it
were
real.”

She looked up at Jury then, still with that cold little smile, shaking her head. “Do you know the difference?” Her face turned toward the fire. “Then get me a haze filter.”

He wrote it down, feeling rotten as he did.

Jury got up and went over to the couch. He leaned down, pushed back the black hair that had fallen across her face, and kissed her cheek. “Thanks, Molly.”

It happened the way it had in the hotel. At one moment she was statue-still with her glass on her knee. At the next she was up and flinging it against the grate. She turned her back to him.

Jury made a move to get the glass out of the way. The cottage reeked not of whiskey, but of desolation.

“Don't bother trying to pick up the pieces.”

E
VEN
before Jess saw the passenger, she felt slightly ill just seeing the car. It was a Lamborghini. Besides the Ferrari, it was the best sports car there was. Uncle Robert had been trying to find one for years.

It was sleek, smooth, and silver. Almost the same thing could have been said about the woman who was getting out of the car, hiking an aluminum case over her shoulder. She looked so —
London,
Jessie thought. Annoyed enough about the car, must the person driving it be good-looking, too? Under the gray cape, which got in the way of the aluminum box, she wore a pearl-gray blouse and skirt and gray leather boots. It was almost as if she were choosing her clothes to match the car.

Her uncle and the rest were out. The photographer was supposed to get there at two o'clock and it was only a little past one. She was early. Jessie watched the woman come up the broad stairs and ring. Mrs. Mulchop and Jessie collided as both of them went for the door. “Now behave, for once,” said Mrs. Mulchop, hand on door. “Don't be getting up to anything.”

Jessie smiled benignly. The only thing she was considering
getting up to was getting the photographer in and out as quick as she could. It shouldn't take long to take pictures of a few cars.

“Hello. I'm Molly Singer,” the woman said.

Mrs. Mulchop said she was sorry that Mr. Ashcroft wasn't there at the moment. He hadn't expected her until two o'clock. Would she like a cup of tea?

“If she works for a magazine,” said Jessie, “she's probably got a lot of things to do. She probably doesn't have time —”

“Be quiet, child.” Mrs. Mulchop gave Jess a kiss-of-death glance and repeated her offer of tea. “Or coffee, perhaps?”

“That's very kind of you. But I suppose — if you don't think Mr. Ashcroft would mind — I could get to work straightaway.”

“Oh,
he
wouldn't mind at all,” said Jessie. “I'll just show you where the cars are. They're outside.”

Mrs. Mulchop grumbled. “I don't expect Miss Singer thought they were in the drawing room.”

Molly laughed. Besides having a nice, low voice, she had a nice laugh. Nicer than Sara's. And Sara only had that old Morris Minor. . . . Jess was beginning to feel sick again. “Come on, then.”

“What's your name?” asked Molly as they walked through the expanse of marble hallway, through morning room, dining room, butler's pantry (where Mulchop was topping up his glass of sherry), and kitchen.

“Jessica Allan-Ashcroft. My mother's picture is in the dining room. She led a tragic life.”

“Oh, dear. How sad.”

“It was, really.” Jessie had stopped and taken her overall from the peg. “I always wear this when I work on the cars.” She looked this new woman up and down. “You wouldn't be able to get under them, not the way you're dressed.”

“Well, I hadn't planned to, actually,” said Molly as they went through a dark little hallway and out to the courtyard beyond.

“It won't take you long. I'll tell you what's what and you can snap your pictures and go. My uncle has always wanted a Lamborghini. Stable at one hundred and eighty mph,” she added, casually.

“You certainly do know a lot about cars.” Molly had taken her thirty-five-millimeter camera from the case.

“Yes. What you could do is just get them all together if you stand back far enough and you wouldn't be wasting film.”

“Not to worry. I have plenty.”

Jess was afraid of that.

“Let me look them over first —”

“That one's a Ferrari; that's a Jaguar XJ-S — silent as a Rolls and does zero to sixty in under seven seconds. That one's an Aston Martin — you know, the James Bond car; there's the Porsche; this is the Lotus; this is my Mini Cooper —”

“Yours? You mean you drive it?”

“No.” Jess hurried on with her description, curtailing questions. “That one's a Mercedes two-eighty-SL, a convertible. That's a —”

Molly laughed. “Hold on, there! You're going much too fast for me to remember them all.”

Jess kept going. “That's a Silver Ghost, and that one's —”

“My word, a Silver Ghost. That must have cost your uncle a mint.”

Jess wished she'd stop commenting so she could get on with it. “It doesn't belong to him. It's our visitor's.” And then she thought of bringing in the rear-guard action. “You'd
love
him. He's an earl, like my father was. Only, of course, not that
old.
He's handsome and rich. And very nice.”

“Umm.”

Jessie thought her description rated more than an
umm.
But some people just couldn't be pleased. “You don't really have to know the
names
of the cars, do you, if you're only taking pictures?”

Molly adjusted the lens of the camera. “Yes, I'm afraid I
do. It wouldn't do the readers of the magazine much good to have the cars but not know what they were, would it?”

Frustrated, Jessie crossed her arms and scratched at both her elbows while she watched the photographer go about her business. She was being so careful with all of her equipment, at this rate they could be stopping here all afternoon. “What time is it?”

Molly looked at her watch. “One-thirty. If you have something you want to do, go ahead.”

“No, that's all right. What about your husband? Does he take pictures too?”

“Haven't got one.”

Glumly, Jessie looked her up and down again. No doubt about it, she was the best-looking one yet — all that glowing black hair and strange yellowish eyes with little flecks of brown. “Too bad.”

“Not being married? You think being married's the best way to live?” Molly smiled.

“What?
No!
I think it's pretty dumb. Except for my mother and father — that was all right.”

Molly fixed the camera to the unipod. “You sound like Hamlet. He said there should be no more marriages.”

“I know.” Mad Margaret had made an awfully fat Ophelia.

“You
do?
You must be going to a very good school if you already know Shakespeare.”

“It's not school. There isn't one in spitting distance. I have tutors. They don't last long. What's that? I thought it was a cane.”

Molly laughed. “I'm not quite
that
old. It's a unipod. You use it to hold the camera steady.” Going through the routine might help to steady
her.
She was beginning to feel the disorientation that triggered a panic-attack out here in this unfamiliar place.

“What's that thing?” asked Jessie. She sounded worried.

“Just a spot meter. So I don't have to unthread the camera to judge the lighting or if I want a close-up.”

“It sounds complicated. It sounds like it's going to take a long time. I have a camera. All I have to do is point it.”

“Do you want to take some pictures?”

“No, no,” said Jessie, hurriedly. “It would waste your time.”

Molly was beginning to feel beads of water on her forehead. With the hand that held the spot sensor, she wiped them away. Maybe she's right.
Just take the damned pictures and get the hell out,
she told herself.
Let them worry about Identikits,
She stiffened when something moved in the rear seat of the Ferrari. “What's
that?”

“What's what? Oh,
Henry!
Don't worry, it's just Henry. He likes sleeping in cars. You look kind of pale. But Henry's safe, really. He never bit anything in his whole life. He doesn't even bite bones now, he's so old.”

“I've never seen a dog like that in my entire life.” Molly laughed, feeling the pressure in her mind ease up a little.

“It's just a stray we found.” Jessie would never give Henry credit for his blue-blooded lineage. “He's funny-looking, isn't he?” She reached down into the Ferrari and heaved Henry out.

Molly looked up at the cirrus cloud scudding across the gray vault of endless sky and felt a wave of nausea. It always started like this, the panic-attacks. She found some tissues in her pocket and wiped the perspiration from her face.

“There's not going to be much light in a little bit. Maybe you'd rather leave and come back later. Anyway, you look kind of pale. You're not sick, are you?”

 • • • 

Molly had to smile over the little girl's attempt to get rid of her, though she didn't know what prompted it. The smile faded quickly, though, and she had to turn her face to the camera to keep it from cracking like a mirror. She had the unipod far enough back that she could see all ten cars together, each slotted into its box, like race-horses in their starting boxes. Irrational as it was — which made these attacks worse — she had the ugly feeling the headlamps would
switch on and come racing toward her. She felt she'd been dropped into one of those silly films in which a car takes on the human potential to kill. They looked diabolical.

In this open court there was no safe place to stand. No walls, ceilings — nothing. She felt as she always did a prescience of something awful.

“You
do
look sick.”

“I'll be — all right. Just a moment . . .” Molly laid her head down on the arm supported by the unipod, and rested the other on Jessica's shoulder. The little girl put her hand over Molly's.

Even though she was out here in what seemed like an endless waste of sky and ground, Molly had the feeling of being shoved, stuffed into a dark closet where she would fall into a deep well. If only she could get back into her car —

And then she heard voices, people coming around the side of the house, laughter. People. The last thing she wanted. She was perilously near to blacking out.

Then she raised her head and saw the two men and the two women. One of the men started walking toward her, smiling. She looked at him, looked at the others, the man and the two women. Her eyes widened. She stared at this tableau vivant for a second before she felt the unipod slip beneath her weight. And she heard from what seemed a great distance, “It was Henry's fault. He scared her.”

Molly Singer wanted to laugh.
Oh, the dog. The poor dog.

 • • • 

When she came round, she was sitting in the Ashcroft library, being ministered to by Mrs. Mulchop with a cup of tea, Sara Millar with a cold towel, Robert Ashcroft and the other man looking concerned, and Jessica looking very guilty. It was as if her wish for release from the threat that Molly Singer represented had caused Molly's “bad spell.”

Which was what Jessica was calling it as she patted her silk-sleeved arm.

“Sorry,” said Molly. She put her head in her hand and tried
to laugh. “It certainly wasn't Henry's fault.” She smiled at Jessica.

The man standing by Jessica's uncle was introduced as Lord Ardry. “I nearly fainted myself when I saw the Ashcroft collection.” He was offering her a snifter of brandy, which she took with far more gratitude than she had the cup of tea.

“Thanks. Yes. It's quite a stunning display, but —” She had been about to say it would be better if she came back another day, and watched with a sinking heart as they seemed to be settling into chairs for a relaxing chat. Again, gratefully, she took a cigarette offered by Lord Ardry, who seemed to be observing her with more acuity than she would have liked.

“What's your magazine, Miss Singer?” asked Ashcroft. “I've forgotten.”