Killing a Unicorn Read Free Page A

horoscope again. Maybe there is malevolence in Saturn, or whatever else it is that makes the planets inauspicious. Bibi’s actions, her life even, are ruled by her belief in this sort of mumbo-jumbo, but you’d be very brave if you tried to laugh her out of it. She’s deadly serious.
    It was Chip, the eldest of the Calvert brothers, who brought Bibi to Membery Place, a couple of years ago. Chip, a prep school nickname for Crispin, which stuck and has been accepted ever since with the good humour that’s typical of him. Chip, of all people, who might have been expected to settle down eventually with some county gel with a loud laugh, a shiny-haired bob and a way with horses. And, hopefully, money. But no, it was Bibi. About as far from that as you could get.
    Fran first met the three Calverts at Henley, where she’d been taken by Connor O‘Sullivan, then her boss at the
O’Sullivan, O’Toole agency, now her fellow director. As a stand-in for his wife, who’d decided an invitation to join friends at their villa in Tuscany was a better prospect than the occasional few seconds’ fleeting excitement offered by the passing of two racing boats. Blink, and you missed them. Though Fran had seen at once that for anyone other than enthusiasts, the racing wasn’t by any means the only point of the Regatta.
    Happily sipping her fruity Pimms, she’d gazed across the sea of pretty hats and frocks, blazers and panamas, and immediately noticed the three seriously gorgeous young men in white flannels and striped blazers, Leander pink socks and ties. Who wouldn’t have? After the two college boats they’d been vociferously cheering had sped by, followed by the umpire boat, and were lost, they’d turned away simultaneously from leaning over the rail in the stand. Coolly surveying the crowd, standing shoulder to shoulder, they could only have been brothers, or at any rate closely related, sharing the dark, family attractiveness that had a good deal to do with that particular brand of assurance that comes only from a privileged background. Something else shared, too — an obvious solidarity, three against all comers. One for all and all for one.
    Chip, of course, had been the first to notice Fran, to make a beeline for Connor’s group, and get himself introduced to her, closely followed by Jonathan, himself never averse to a new prospect. But it had been Mark her attention had fixed on: then, and ever thereafter. And for Mark, too, it had been the same. Mark and Fran. Even Chip had acknowledged that before the end of the day, and backed off, showing a sensitivity one wouldn’t have expected from him. Fran had found herself holding on to this memory lately, like a good-luck talisman, or perhaps a lifeline.
    Chip is the eldest of the three brothers, big and glowing with healthy good spirits, laughing brown eyes and a Rugby-trophy broken nose that adds an endearing quirk to his rugged good looks. At that time obsessed with high-performance
cars, long-legged girls and having an astonishing capacity for beer. A phase, a rite of passage, they said. The cars, still fast but now sleeker, more conservative and more expensive, are around yet and, Fran suspects but doesn’t really know, maybe the girls, too, though kept in the background, for Chip has become more circumspect as he’s grown older, and the situation between him and Bibi is equivocal. Defying all previous prognostications, he has turned out to be something successful in the City, and his mother’s adviser, having rescued her from disaster after his father died.
    Their father was Conrad Calvert, gentleman of leisure, an ex-army man who’d retained his army rank of Captain to boost a stature he never again attained in civilian life. Who, had he been born into a different class, would have been called a layabout. Unremarkable for anything except the amount he could drink, the staggering extent of both his wine