The Tell-Tale Horse

CHAPTER 1

Dots of brightness sparkled in the night from electric fairy lights shaped like tiny candles on the denuded dogwoods lining the driveway. Slashes of yellow light spilled onto deep snow from the high windows in the ballroom. The brick Georgian building had settled into the landscape over the years, so that people viewing this scene from outside might have thought themselves in the eighteenth century. The faint music would have put an end to that reverie. No Mozart, but everything else a hunt ball could wish. The swirl of elegant people inside added to the beauty of the scene. It was Saturday night, February 16, and the Casanova Hunt Ball was in full swing. Only stars and tiny glittering lights offered relief from the blackness of a new moon, and it was bitterly cold. Perhaps that, too, fed the frenetic energy inside, for the moon always pulls on humans whether visible or not.

Jane “Sister” Arnold, Master of Foxhounds of the Jefferson Hunt, her escort, Gray Lorillard, and a large contingent of Jefferson members had come to the Casanova Hunt Ball. The two clubs enjoyed warm relations as well as a touch of competitiveness. The Jefferson Hunt members, whose own ball had been marred by a drunken scuffle and torn bodices, relaxed here. Surely nothing so tacky could happen at Casanova.

Seated at the master’s table were Bill and Joyce Fendley, joint masters of Casanova; their daughter, Jeanne Clark, now also a joint master; and her husband, John. Sister and Gray, Marion Maggiolo, and the entire Bancroft clan filled out the rest. Every table on the ballroom floor hosted at least one couple from JHC. Libations flowed, the dance floor was jammed, and Sister danced every dance as the gentlemen in attendance lined up to squire the master. Being Virginians, they performed this duty without thinking about it. No lady should ever sit out a dance unless she chooses to do so. Age, looks, and bloodline certainly improve a lady’s chances of further engagements, but all belles have to be treated as great beauties. It’s the custom.

In Sister’s case, the gentlemen truly enjoyed dancing with her. Seventy-three, a trim six feet, with shining silver hair and buoyant spirits, she had the gift of making a man feel like a man and she was a wonderful dancer.

Joyce Fendley, passing her on the floor, called over her partner’s shoulder, “Don’t you ever wear out?”

Sister laughed. “If I did, I wouldn’t tell you.”

As the music ended, High Vajay, head of the Vajay family and a stalwart of the Jefferson Hunt, held out his gloved hand for Sister. His family called him Lakshmi, but the Virginians, fearful of murdering his given name, had nicknamed him High. It suited him, for he was tall and reed-thin, with salt-and-pepper hair, a handsome man who reveled in the high life. His wife, Madhur, now Mandy, had been Miss Cosmos in 1990; at thirty-nine, her stunning beauty had only intensified with age. Their children, eight and ten years old, were tucked in bed at home, two hours southwest of Fauquier County, where everyone was gathered.

“Master, you move like a panther,” High purred.

“Means I have claws.” She smiled up at him, a pleasure for her since she often looked a bit down at a fellow.

“I’ve seen them.” He held her tighter.

He had, too; there were moments in the hunt field when she had to wield her power, lest a hound, horse, or human be endangered, usually in that order.

After their waltz, High walked Sister back to her table, where she and Gray sat down at the same moment. The band took a break.

“What a party.” Gray grinned, his military mustache calling attention to his white teeth.

“Anytime I’m with you, darling, it’s a celebration.”

He kissed her on the cheek. For a year and a half they’d been keeping company, as Sister’s generation politely called it. They drew closer each day, but neither one was prepared to say I love you.

But they did love each other. In fact, many of the people in this room loved each other, but they may not have recognized the feeling. Americans focus on romantic love, particularly the pursuit stage, glossing over the sustaining bonds of friendship, a condition Sister often thought of as love made bearable. She enjoyed the members of her club and loved a few with all her heart. There were Tedi and Edward Bancroft, friends for most of her life. She loved Betty Franklin, her first whipper-in, a prized position and sometimes a dangerous one. Betty Franklin, in her forties, stood talking to a group of people while Bobby, her husband, returned from the bar with her tonic water and lime.

Sister cast her eyes about the room and smiled, perhaps not realizing how very much she did care for many of those assembled but realizing she was happy: blissfully, rapturously happy.

Marion Maggiolo, owner of Horse Country, the premier emporium for foxhunting needs and other equestrian pursuits, swept back to the table, her thick gray hair, once liver chestnut, offsetting her perfect complexion. No woman could look at Marion without envying her incredibly creamy skin. The rest wasn’t bad either, for she knew how to put herself together, displaying the creative eye so evident in her store displays. Ladies may wear only black or white gowns to a hunt ball. Marion’s elegant white dress, clearly custom-made because it emphasized all of her best parts, was no exception tonight.

“This ball is a triumph,” Marion told Casanova’s masters, now back at the table.

Joyce, eyes sparkling, demurred. “We didn’t do a bad job.”

Bill, square-jawed, draped his arm over his wife’s back. “Joyce and the committee planned this better than the invasion of Iraq.”

“I don’t wonder.” Sister raised an eyebrow and the others laughed.

Slinking under the weight of black bugle beads, Trudy Pontiakowski, chair of the ball, made her way to Sister’s table.

Her face, tight around the eyes and mouth, bore testimony to her determination to look young; the plastic surgeon did the rest.

“Marion, no one is hopelessly inebriated. See?” She swept her hand to include the room.

“Not yet, Trudy.” Marion noted that Trudy herself was one drink away from the state she had just described.

“You could have lent us Trigger. He would have been perfectly safe.”

Trigger was the life-sized horse that Marion and her staff rolled out in front of the store each morning, usually reversing the process at night.

Joyce intervened. “Trudy, Trigger’s got an abscess.”

This made everyone laugh. Trudy, tipsy though she was, knew her master well enough to know this really meant, Shut up and leave Marion alone, so she left with a gracious nod.

Marion leaned toward Joyce. “Thanks.”

Joyce waved her hand in dismissal. “She’s a great social organizer, but not always as tactful as one might wish.”

Sister laughed. “At least she’s not a bulldozer.”

“Oh, well, we have a few of those, too,” Bill noted. “How can people open their mouths without thinking? The stuff that falls out!”

“Cost George Allen his Senate seat.” Gray referred to a popular Republican Senator who lost his reelection bid in 2006 thanks to loose lips.

“How do you keep from blurting out, You’re too dumb to have been born?” Sister asked Joyce.

“Count to ten. Ten again.” She added quickly, “Failing that, I do multiplication tables.”

“Wise.” Sister sipped from her champagne flute. “I bite my tongue because I really want to say, You asshole.”

They all laughed.

High returned with a portly middle-aged gentleman from Pune, a city two hours southeast of Mumbai, set amid rolling green hills, and addressed Sister.

“Master Arnold, this is Kasmir Barbhaiya. He just arrived.” He introduced Kasmir to Marion and the others.

“So sorry to be late.” Kasmir bowed. In white tie and gloves, his gold foxhead studs with ruby eyes twinkled.

“Welcome to Casanova.” Bill stood and shook hands. Kasmir, educated at Eton, Oxford, and finally MIT, spent a fortune on his clothes. Not only were they bespoke—specially made just for him—he patronized the same sartorial establishments as did the Prince of Wales. He and High had met at Oxford, their friendship ripening over the years until now they were as close as brothers.

“I will repent of my tardiness by condensing pleasure in fewer hours.” His dark eyes shone.

As they left the masters, High looked over his shoulder to wink at Sister.

“That High, he’s cooking up something,” Sister said, and winked back. Then she noticed Marion suddenly break into a forced social smile. Since Ilona Aldridge Merriman was approaching, she understood Marion’s frozen countenance.

“Why, you Casanova darlin’s have outshone us, yes, you have, and I am so pleased to be here.” Ilona deposited the Cristal she’d been toting onto the center of the table.

“How extravagant,” Joyce murmured appreciatively.

“Thank you, Ilona.” Bill lost no time in motioning a waiter to uncork the liquid treasure.

Two incredibly expensive facelifts over the decades did give Ilona a youthful appearance. Looks mattered to her perhaps more than to most women. She dieted with pathological precision, exercised religiously, and, to her great credit, hunted with abandon with Jefferson Hunt.

Turning her light blue eyes to Marion, Ilona flashed her own false smile. “Those marvelous earrings set off your thick hair. I still can’t believe you haven’t started to color your tresses, darlin’. Your natural sorrel color drove men wild. It’s harder to have that effect when one fades, so to speak. Not that you could fade, darlin’.”

“Your taste is impeccable, Ilona. Cristal.” Marion sidestepped the backhanded compliment.

“Master.” Ilona beamed at Sister.

“The rest of us get older. You get younger. You must have a painting in your attic.” Sister was alluding to that novel of psychological insight, The Picture of Dorian Gray.

“You flatter me.”

“Someone has to.” Marion fired a shot across the bow, enjoying Ilona’s struggle to keep her false bonhomie.

A flicker, then a cold reply came from lips shining with fresh lipstick. “Ramsey does nicely on that account.” She opened her arms to the table as the cork popped. “Enjoy your bubbly, and thank you, Masters Fendley, thank you.”

She slid from their table to the next, making her rounds.

“Guess she didn’t like your ball.” Marion arched an eyebrow.

“Balls.” Sister was fed up with Ilona, who showed up at meets behaving like the fashion police.

“Balls, said the queen. If I had two, I’d be king. If I had four I’d be a pinball machine.” Bill poured the champagne into flutes the waiter brought.

They laughed at the old chestnut, touching glasses.

Joyce leaned toward Marion. “She will never forgive you.”

“Balls.” Marion echoed Sister, causing more laughter.

“Speaking of balls, Ramsey operates on the use-them-or-lose-them principle.” Bill was in good form tonight, his broad smile accenting a strong masculine face.

Gray touched glasses again. “True enough, but if a man has taste and is fortunate enough to win the hand of the right woman, best to use them in one location.”

“My philosophy exactly.” Bill grinned.

“It was a good thing you said that, honey.” Joyce smiled like the Cheshire cat.

“Here’s what sets my teeth on edge.” Marion delighted in the sensation of exquisite champagne sliding down her throat. “My affair—brief, mind you, brief—occurred before Ilona married Ramsey. Twenty-five years ago! Get over it, lady!”

“Then what would she do? Ilona is loyal to her tragedies—intensely loyal, since they’re so small and she’s so spoiled.” Sister, among dear friends, could speak her mind. “But she is also loyal to her friends. She’s remained devoted to Cabel Harper, so loyalty obviously cuts both ways.”

Jeanne, in her thirties, the youngest at the table, looked at her husband, John, and asked, “Is this a generation thing? No one forgets anything?”

“Forget? Hell. They make half the stuff up to be important. A lot of people just love to suffer,” Bill said to his daughter, while John laughed.

“Perhaps the example of the two Marys at the foot of the cross inspired them.” Gray’s mustache twitched upward.

“I say give up the cross. Other people need the wood.” Sister laughed, then stopped abruptly, whispering, “Here comes my Mary. Deliver me!”

“Too late.”

Her Mary was Venita Cabel Harper, still hovering at forty-two although that age had been current for the last ten years.

Given the social catchet of Jefferson Hunt, she’d die before she’d resign but, like Ilona, Cabel had never forgiven Sister for a fling with Clayton Harper, her husband some eight years her senior. Sister and Clayton both considered it harmless, since it couldn’t last, and they knew it.

Because Clayton was married, Sister was cast as the evil vixen, and not just in Cabel’s mind either. Sex was Sister’s Achilles’ heel. Most times she could discipline herself, but every now and then she broke bad.

This being Virginia, discretion only went so far. Sooner or later you were found out. Some busybody, gender irrelevant, was forever scanning the horizon for gossip. But Sister had had ample time to repent her earlier indiscretions.

“Thank you for a lovely evening, Joyce…Bill. Clayton and I will take our leave.” Cabel nodded pleasantly to Sister. “Beautiful gown, Master.” The joke was that Cabel never rode with Clayton, given his fondness for drink. She’d make sure they left together, but she would drive her own car.

“You look splendid as always, Cabel.”

“See you in the hunt field.”

As the frosted-blonde lady returned to her table to pick up her purse and her husband, Sister said sarcastically, “Venita happens to be an unusual, even lovely name. But her grandmother was a Cabell. Have you ever known a Virginian, even if related to that family only by once delivering flour to them, who can resist parading the name front and center?”

Joyce considered this. “Come to think of it, no.”

“Even the Randolphs don’t do that. They allow you to discover their grandeur over time.” Bill, like most state history buffs, appreciated the many advancements both Cabells and Randolphs had bequeathed to the state by their foresight and energy.

The surname Cabell contains two l’s but Cabel’s mother, choosing it as her daughter’s middle name, dropped one of them. Or so she said. Her enemies said she couldn’t spell.

“You know what I am.” Gray smiled conspiratorially.

“Famous for horsemen, beautiful women, a piercing mind, and a fondness for liquid refreshment.” Joyce diplomatically refrained from saying the Lorillards produced drunks generation after generation.

“True,” Gray agreed.

Marion’s naturally high spirits rose with the champagne. “Well, the Maggiolos are Johnny-come-latelies on the paternal side. They came from Genoa. Mother’s family arrived on the May-flower. Theirs is an interesting match. Dad moved us to Fauquier County in the sixties. Glad he did.”

“We’re lucky to have you. We WASPs can be”—Sister searched for the right word—“too restrained.”

“Is it restrained or constrained?” asked Joyce, WASP herself.

“Constipated,” Bill interjected.

“Ah, still too restrained.” Gray laughed and then shrugged. “I should know. I’m a black WASP.”

It sounded contradictory in that WASP, of course, stands for white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, but Gray had absorbed the Lorillard culture minus the color. What he had that the others did not were the stories of his great-grandmother’s grandmother and grandfather, stories from another continent handed down along with a very large helping of grit.

“Retreating.” Marion noted that Cabel, her arm through that of the unsteady Clayton, appeared to be led out the door, the time being ten thirty. Actually, Cabel was leading him.

“It’s hard to believe, but once upon a time Clayton was gorgeous,” Sister mused.

“Too much lasagna.” Marion giggled.

“Do you think Cabel knows how to make lasagna?” Sister found this incongruous.

“Why not? She helped Clayton build his business. He had the idea; she had the energy. She can learn to do anything.”

Clayton installed unbelievably expensive sound and telephone systems in cars and trucks. The punch numbers for the radio, like a keyboard, also worked for the phone. A tiny speaker above the rearview mirror allowed the driver to talk while keeping both hands on the wheel.

“Exactly when did you favor Clayton with your person?” Bill put it delicately, knowing Sister wouldn’t be angry with him.

“Nineteen ninety-eight,” Gray answered.

For a moment, conversation stopped.

Finally Sister said, “You’ve done your homework.”

He took her hand in his. “I want to learn everything there is to know about you.”

“Not everything, please,” she replied. She’d only sipped half a glass, but the champagne had put her one step from giddy, since she rarely drank.

“Oh?” Gray’s eyebrows rose.

“A girl has to have some secrets.”

“Here, here!” Joyce raised her glass, as did the other ladies.

“You could give us a hint,” Bill said.

“Dad, then it wouldn’t be a secret,” Jeanne responded.

“One hint. I’ll divulge one. No man in this room has any idea of the time it takes to remove the hair on your body, do the hair on your head, polish your nails, apply makeup, and so on.” Sister lifted her hand.

“Shaving takes time,” Gray said, “especially if you have a mustache.”

“Hope I never do.” Sister laughed.

The rest of the evening continued in this vein, laughter, dancing, marvelous food, good liquor, and Cuban cigars for those gentlemen and a few ladies who donned their coats, repairing to the pristine outdoors to puff contentedly away, all the while cursing an embargo in effect since the presidency of John F. Kennedy, who had humidors packed with Cuban cigars, enough to last decades if he’d lived, poor fellow.

Finally the clock struck twelve. The band played on, but Gray rose and kissed Sister’s hand. “Honey, I’d better be going.” He had a meeting in Washington, even though it was Sunday, with the number-two man in the IRS. Gray, retired from the most prestigious D.C. accounting firm, was often called quietly, away from prying eyes, to counsel on tax matters. Capital gains was his specialty. He didn’t mind performing regular audits for businesses, though. Gray lacked haughtiness and, much as he had flourished among the powerful, he was equally happy sifting through the records of a small local company, working with the owner. He truly loved accounting, hard as it was for many people to understand, because it gave him insight into different types of businesses. It also made him an extremely shrewd investor. There was a time when a rich and powerful African-American excited comment. These days, fortunately, success was becoming more evenly distributed.

After Gray left, Marion touched Sister’s shoulder. “Ready?”

“Of course.”

Not wishing to drive the whole way back to her farm, Sister had accepted Marion’s invitation to spend the night in Warrenton. Marion lifted her spirits, making her laugh until the tears rolled down her cheeks. Also, she liked seeing Marion’s house. Whatever Marion touched became colorful, dramatic, splashed with a hint of flamboyance like Marion herself. Sister’s house, by contrast, was subdued, anchored in the eighteenth century.

Driving back to town, roads packed hard with snow despite the snowplows’ steady work, the two chattered about the ball and about politics.

“You should run for office,” Sister counseled.

“Never,” came the swift one-word reply.

“Marion, you have uncommon good sense. You’d never squander the taxpayers’ money.”

“That’s not what people want these days. They want false glamour, a smooth liar, and, above all, a pious hypocrite.”

“There are a few good people in the game.”

“I know, but I couldn’t do it. Could you?”

“Actually, I think I could. Would I enjoy it? No.”

“You know what? I forgot to bring Trigger in. Do you mind if we swing by the store? Won’t take but two minutes. I didn’t want to say anything in front of Trudy when I realized I’d left him outside. She would have run her mouth all over the ballroom. And I did say I was worried he’d be damaged. Got so busy trying to get out of the store on time that Trigger slipped my mind.”

“Let’s put Trigger in his stall,” Sister agreed.

“It’s not hard for two of us to move him inside.”

“It will be a treat, in high heels and snow.” The older woman laughed, although she didn’t mind getting her feet wet. It wouldn’t take long.

Driving in from the west, they turned onto Main Street, then right onto Alexandria Pike, moving slowly down the steep grade. There were two parking lots, one larger than the other; Marion pulled into the smaller one out front.

Both women stepped out, heels sinking into the packed snow, and did a double take.

“Those damn kids! This is what happens when I forget to take Trigger in.”

A beautiful naked model sat astride the life-sized statue.

Sister paused before wrenching her heel from the snow. “Looks real.”

“Trigger’s been saddled with gorillas and with witches for Halloween. And it always makes the newspaper, the photograph. They’re so slick, those kids. They do it right under my nose when the store’s open.”

The snow made a small popping sound as the two be-gowned women worked their way toward the horse statue, now burdened by the naked woman.

Sister grabbed Marion’s arm just as she was about to unlock the chain that anchored Trigger to the building. “Marion, don’t touch anything!”

“Why?”

“This isn’t a model.”

“What?”

The rider, ravishingly beautiful, jet-black hair and dark eyes, had her hands on Trigger’s neck as though holding his mane. Her mouth was slightly open. A tiny hole was visible over her left bosom, where her heart would be. Sister walked behind the dead woman to behold a small exit wound.

“She’s real!”

Marion followed Sister’s finger. “Oh, my God!”

“Whoever did this had plenty of time.” With the sangfroid that was typical of her in dangerous and difficult situations, Sister had already quickly absorbed the details.

“What makes you say that?”

“When a person dies they void themselves. She’s clean as a whistle.” Sister stepped back to study the body. “What a beautiful, beautiful woman, in the first flower of life.”

Marion, voice low, whispered, “Lady Godiva.”