Robert Galbraith - The Silkworm

“ God, ” said the redhead, awestruck.

“Speaking of Fancourt,” said Waldegrave, glancing at his watch, “I’m supposed to be telling you all that there’s going to be a grand announcement downstairs at nine. You girls won’t want to miss it.”

He ambled away. Two of the girls ground out their cigarettes and followed him. The blonde drifted off towards another group.

“Lovely, Jerry, isn’t he?” Nina asked Strike, shivering in the depths of her woolen coat.

“Very magnanimous,” said Strike. “Nobody else seems to think that Quine didn’t know exactly what he was doing. Want to get back in the warm?”

Exhaustion was lapping at the edges of Strike’s consciousness. He wanted passionately to go home, to begin the tiresome process of putting his leg to sleep (as he described it to himself), to close his eyes and attempt eight straight hours’ slumber until he had to rise and place himself again in the vicinity of another unfaithful husband.

The room downstairs was more densely packed than ever. Nina stopped several times to shout and bawl into the ears of acquaintances. Strike was introduced to a squat romantic novelist who appeared dazzled by the glamour of cheap champagne and the loud band, and to Jerry Waldegrave’s wife, who greeted Nina effusively and drunkenly through a lot of tangled black hair.

“She always sucks up,” said Nina coldly, disengaging herself and leading Strike closer to the makeshift stage. “She comes from money and makes it clear that she married down with Jerry. Horrible snob.”

“Impressed by your father the QC, is she?” asked Strike.

“Scary memory you’ve got,” said Nina, with an admiring look. “No, I think it’s…well, I’m the Honorable Nina Lascelles really. I mean, who gives a shit? But people like Fenella do.”

An underling was now angling a microphone at a wooden lectern on a stage near the bar. Roper Chard’s logo, a rope knot between the two names, and “100th Anniversary” were emblazoned on a banner.

There followed a tedious ten-minute wait during which Strike responded politely and appropriately to Nina’s chatter, which required a great effort, as she was so much shorter, and the room was increasingly noisy.

“Is Larry Pinkelman here?” he asked, remembering the old children’s writer on Elizabeth Tassel’s wall.

“Oh no, he hates parties,” said Nina cheerfully.

“I thought you were throwing him one?”

“How did you know that?” she asked, startled.

“You just told me so, in the pub.”

“Wow, you really pay attention, don’t you? Yeah, we’re doing a dinner for the reprint of his Christmas stories, but it’ll be very small. He hates crowds, Larry, he’s really shy.”

Daniel Chard had at last reached the stage. The talk faded to a murmur and then died. Strike detected tension in the air as Chard shuffled his notes and then cleared his throat.

He must have had a great deal of practice, Strike thought, and yet his public speaking was barely competent. Chard looked up mechanically to the same spot over the crowd’s head at regular intervals; he made eye contact with nobody; he was, at times, barely audible. After taking his listeners on a brief journey through the illustrious history of Roper Publishing, he made a modest detour into the antecedents of Chard Books, his grandfather’s company, described their amalgamation and his own humble delight and pride, expressed in the same flat monotone as the rest, in finding himself, ten years on, as head of the global company. His small jokes were greeted with exuberant laughter fueled, Strike thought, by discomfort as much as alcohol. Strike found himself staring at the sore, boiled-looking hands. He had once known a young private in the army whose eczema had become so bad under stress that he had had to be hospitalized.

“There can be no doubt,” said Chard, turning to what Strike, one of the tallest men in the room and close to the stage, could see was the last page of his speech, “that publishing is currently undergoing a period of rapid changes and fresh challenges, but one thing remains as true today as it was a century ago: content is king. While we boast the best writers in the world, Roper Chard will continue to excite, to challenge and to entertain. And it is in that context”—the approach of a climax was declared not by any excitement, but by a relaxation in Chard’s manner induced by the fact that his ordeal was nearly over—“that I am honored and delighted to tell you that we have this week secured the talents of one of the finest authors in the world. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Michael Fancourt!”

A perceptible intake of breath rolled like a breeze across the crowd. A woman yelped excitedly. Applause broke out somewhere to the rear of the room and spread like crackling fire to the front. Strike saw a distant door open, the glimpse of an overlarge head, a sour expression, before Fancourt was swallowed by the enthusiastic employees. It was several minutes before he emerged onto the stage to shake Chard’s hand.

“Oh my God,” an excitedly applauding Nina kept saying. “Oh my God .”

Jerry Waldegrave, who like Strike rose head and shoulders above the mostly female crowd, was standing almost directly opposite them on the other side of the stage. He was again holding a full glass, so could not applaud, and he raised it to his lips, unsmiling, as he watched Fancourt gesture for quiet in front of the microphone.

“Thanks, Dan,” said Fancourt. “Well, I certainly never expected to find myself here,” he said, and these words were greeted by a raucous outbreak of laughter, “but it feels like a homecoming. I wrote for Chard and then I wrote for Roper and they were good days. I was an angry young man”—widespread titters—“and now I’m an angry old man”—much laughter and even a small smile from Daniel Chard—“and I look forward to raging for you”—effusive laughter from Chard as well as the crowd; Strike and Waldegrave seemed to be the only two in the room not convulsed. “I’m delighted to be back and I’ll do my best to—what was it, Dan?—keep Roper Chard exciting, challenging and entertaining.”

A storm of applause; the two men were shaking hands amid camera flashes.

“Half a mill, I reckon,” said a drunken man behind Strike, “and ten k to turn up tonight.”

Fancourt descended the stage right in front of Strike. His habitually dour expression had barely varied for the photographs, but he looked happier as hands stretched out towards him. Michael Fancourt did not disdain adulation.

“ Wow, ” said Nina to Strike. “Can you believe that?”

Fancourt’s overlarge head had disappeared into the crowd. The curvaceous Joanna Waldegrave appeared, trying to make her way towards the famous author. Her father was suddenly behind her; with a drunken lurch he reached out a hand and took her upper arm none too gently.

“He’s got other people to talk to, Jo, leave him.”

“Mummy’s made a beeline, why don’t you grab her? ”

Strike watched Joanna stalk away from her father, evidently angry. Daniel Chard had vanished too; Strike wondered whether he had slipped out of a door while the crowd was busy with Fancourt.

“Your CEO doesn’t love the limelight,” Strike commented to Nina.

“They say he’s got a lot better,” said Nina, who was still gazing towards Fancourt. “He could barely look up from his notes ten years ago. He’s a good businessman, though, you know. Shrewd.”

Curiosity and tiredness tussled inside Strike.

“Nina,” he said, drawing his companion away from the throng pressing around Fancourt; she permitted him to lead her willingly, “where did you say the manuscript of Bombyx Mori is?”