The Bone Clocks

THE PALANCHE DE la Cretta’s middle flank isn’t a notorious descent, but stray more than a hundred meters off-piste to the right and you’ll need near-vertical skiing skills or a parachute, and the fog’s so dense that I take my own sweet time and stop every couple of minutes to wipe my goggles. About fifteen minutes down, a boulder shaped like a melting gnome rears from the freezing fog by the edge of the piste. I huddle in its leeward side to smoke a cigarette. It’s quiet. Very quiet. I consider how you don’t get to choose whom you’re attracted to, you only get to wonder about it, retrospectively. Racial differences I’ve always found to have an aphrodisiac effect on me, but class difference is sexuality’s Berlin Wall. Certainly, I can’t read Holly Sykes as well as I can girls from my own incometax tribe, but you never know. God made the whole Earth in six days, and I’m in Switzerland for nine or ten.

A group of skiers weave past the granite gnome, like a school of fluorescent fish. None notices me. I drop my cigarette butt and follow in their wake. The jolly Texans either decided they’d bitten off more than they could chew and went back down on the ski lift, or they’re following at an even more cautious pace than mine. No skier in a silver parka, either. Soon the fog thins, crags, ridges, and contours sketch and shade themselves in, and by the time I reach Chemeville station I’m under the cloud rafters again. I line my innards with a hot chocolate, then take the gentler blue piste down to La Fontaine Sainte-Agnиs.

“WELL WELL WELL, the talented Mr. Lamb.” Chetwynd-Pitt’s making garlic bread in the kitchen, or trying to. It’s gone five o’clock but he’s still in his dressing gown. A cigar is balanced across a wine glass and George Michael’s Listen Without Prejudiceis on the CD player. “Olly and Fitz went off in search of you two or three hours ago.”

“It’s a big old massif. Needles, haystacks, and all that.”

“And where did your Alpine foray take you aujourd’hui?”

“Up to Palanche de la Cretta, then cross-country. No more nasty black pistes for me. How’s your hangover?”

“How was Stalingrad in 1943? The hair of the dog: ouzo on ice.” He jiggles a small glass of milky liquid and knocks back half.

“Ouzo always reminds me of sperm.” I wish I had a camera as Chetwynd-Pitt swallows the stuff. “Tactless. Sorry.”

He glares at me, puffs on his cigar, and returns to chopping garlic. I fish in a drawer. “Try this revolutionary device: the ‘garlic-crusher.’ ”

Now Chetwynd-Pitt glares at the implement. “The housekeeper must have bought it before we arrived.”

I used it here last year, but never mind. I wash my hands and turn on the oven, which Chetwynd-Pitt had not. “C’mon, make way.” I squeeze the garlicky pulp into the butter.

Grumpy but glad, Chetwynd-Pitt parks his arse on the counter. “I suppose it’s compensation for fleecing me at pool.”

“You’ll get your revenge.” Pepper, parsley, stir with a fork.

“I’ve been thinking about why he did it.”

“I gather we’re talking about Jonny Penhaligon?”

“There’s more to this than meets the eye, Lamb.”

My fork stops: His gaze is … accusing? A code of omert аoperates at Toad’s, but no code can be 100 percent secure. “Go on.” Absurdly, I find myself scanning the kitchen for a murder weapon. “I’m all ears.”

“Jonny Penhaligon was a victim of privilege.”

“Okay.” My fork’s stirring again. “Elaborate.”

“A pleb is someone who thinks privilege is about living off the fat of the land and getting chambermaids to nosh you. Truth is, blue blood’s a serious curse in this day and age. First off, the great unwashed laugh at you for having too many syllables in your name andblame you, personally, for class inequality, the deforestation of the Amazon, and the price of beer going up. The second curse is marriage: How can I know if it’s me my future wife loves—as opposed to my eleven hundred acres of Buckinghamshire and the title Lady Chetwynd-Pitt? Third, my future is shackled to estate management. Now, if youwant to be a broker earning gazillions or an Antarctic archaeologist or a zero-gravity vibraphonist, it’s ‘If you’re happy we’re happy, Hugo.’ Me, I’ve tenants to keep afloat, charities to sponsor, and a seat in the House of Lords to fill one day.”

I fork garlic butter into grooves in the bread. “My heart bleeds. You’re, what, sixty-third in line to the throne?”