Read Online The Stargazey by Martha Grimes - Free Book Online Page B

forehead and eyes, causing him often to scrape it back. The heavy Aran sweater and rumpled gray slacks added to the youthful look.
    No one else about to bother, Olivia again did the introducing, adding, “Superintendent Jury is here about that woman found dead at Fulham Palace.”
    Nicholas smiled, shrugged. “Police have already—”
    Jury finished for him. “—been here. Yes, I know.”
    He passed the police photo to Nicholas, who gave it a glancing look, shook his head. “Never seen her.”
    â€œWould you mind looking at it more closely, Mr. Fabricant?”
    He looked. His verdict was the same: no. Nick handed it back.
    Seb asked, “Where’s Ilona? Did she come with you?”
    â€œShe went round by the front door. She’s talking to Hedda—”
    This was cut off by the door’s opening again and another of the Fabricants walking in.
    â€œHello, Mum,” said Seb, getting up and taking advantage of the movement to go to the cabinet and fix himself another drink. Jury rose also; rather, he felt pulled from his chair: The woman did not look like anyone’s mum. She was outrageously beautiful, the thirty-years-older version of the woman in the painting in the foyer. But the passing years had barely scratched her surface. She must have been in her seventies if she was Seb’s mother, but her carriage hadn’t in it a hint of the bent posture that often comes with advancing years. She was very tall and slim. He knew now where Pansy had got her unusual pale hair. Her grandmother’s shimmered white-gold, the color of the pale sunlight that had recently escaped him but that now shone again across the floor. No wonder the men in the family were so damned good-looking. Yet Olivia, whose mother she wasn’t, shared something of that high-cheekboned look. Ilona’s lipstick was blatantly young and red, a color startling against her ivory skin. She wore a long-sleeved black dress, one sleeve caped, with the end of the cape slanting up across the breast, its end caught near the shoulder. It was fastened by a massive diamond pin. One didn’t have to inspect it closely to see it wasn’t costume jewelry.
    She said, “Don’t call me by that absurd appellation, please.” She said this dismissively, not looking at Sebastian but at Jury. She had a pronounced Eastern European accent. Russian, she must be, recalling what both Mona Dresser and Olivia had said.
    â€œPolice again, eh? I am Ilona Kuraukov. Mum.” Her slight smile was ironic. “I use my first husband’s name; meaning no disrespect to Nikolai’s father. I feel . . . ”
    But whatever she felt, she wasn’t saying. She still had not sat down and apparently did not intend to. Standing up was perhaps one of the ways she exerted her matriarchal authority.
    With three generations of Fabricants before him, Jury felt oddly vulnerable, unshielded, disarmed. Ilona was especially disarming. Notorious for it, he’d bet.
    She looked round the room, at all of them. “Are we all here now?” It was as if Jury, or she herself, had with some effort rounded up the Fabricants. And it did seem almost as if the meetings were staged, one character entering at a time, saying a line or two. Was it good theater? her ironic smile asked.
    As Olivia had done, Ilona took some time studying the photograph of the dead woman. First she held it nearly at arm’s length (to accommodate her imperfect eyesight), then resorted to a pair of small gold-rimmed spectacles, which she perched on the end of her nose. (It was the nose that Nicholas had been fortunate enough to inherit.) “Almost.” She handed the photo back to Jury.
    â€œI’m sorry, Madame Kuraukov. Almost?”
    â€œWell, I almost recognize her. But I don’t.” She shrugged, held out her palms.
    â€œWhat is it that looks familiar?”
    â€œThat is the problem. I don’t know,