Rainbow's End

by Martha Grimes

  Miss Fludd.

  Melrose said the name to himself as he picked up his own drink and moved to stand beside her. “Miss Fludd,” he said, then, aloud.

  “Hello,” she said, scarcely turning her gaze from the poster. It was an advertisement for The Sheltering Sky, one of the newer ones in the Sly expo of desert wastes; one dark form more or less superimposed on another in dark and windblown garments. She studied it for a moment, as did Melrose. She moved on to another, Melrose following her in her silent circuit of the film posters. There must have been seven or eight big posters, new and old, most of them pictures of a desert, or at least having the suggestion of being stranded near one.

  Miss Fludd said she really liked it here in the Blue Parrot. It was so exotic.

  Melrose was astonished. He blushed deeply, and was glad for the dimness of the lighting, which simulated desert nights rather than days. Now they were standing in front of A Passage to India. The tiny figure of Peggy Ashcroft stood atop a howdah at the head of a long procession of camels, early evening sun turning the acres of sand amber.

  She loved Peggy Ashcroft, she said. Had loved, she corrected herself. Now she was dead.

  Beside that poster was the one of Lawrence in his flowing white garments, walking along a procession of dark boxcars. Melrose recalled Jury’s speaking of the two posters, hanging side by side, how the camel train in the one and the railway train, with all of its boxcars, in the other, moved toward one another, yet were destined never to meet. Jury had said that. Melrose wondered if he himself had grown cynical or simply lacked imagination, looking at the posters, looking out over the room (trying to see it through her eyes). He told her of Jury’s comment.

  She said that he must be a romantic man. Sipping her beer, looking from one picture to another, she added, “And a disappointed one.”

  Melrose thought about that for a moment.

  Standing in front of the Casablanca poster, she asked him, “Have you ever been to Paris?”

  He was, again, astonished. Hadn’t everyone? But he didn’t, of course, say that. Paris, to her, must have been as inaccessible as Algiers. Travelling for her was very difficult. Ruefully, she indicated her leg, hidden by the long skirt of the dove-gray dress.

  “ ‘We’ll always have Paris,’ ” she quoted from the film. She sighed. “Isn’t that what they said? ‘We’ll always have Paris.’ ”

  He realized that one of the disarming qualities about her was her directness—her thoughts, either well- or ill-formed, right away became words, as if there were no time to lose. And Melrose thought with a bit of a shock that rarely did he say what he was thinking. It had nothing to do with honesty or dishonesty; it was that his thoughts (and wasn’t it this way with most people?) remained just that—thoughts, inarticulated.

  They completed their turn around the room, a shabby old poster of The Desert Song, and Rudolph Valentino, and a smoky scene of dancing girls scattering veils. They returned to the bar, where she put down the dregs of her Tangier, said hello to Trueblood (smoking one of his shocking-pink cigarettes), and said she had to go.

  Melrose helped her on with her coat and walked outside with her.

  Standing by the dry fountain, she opened up the small package. “I just got these from Czechoslovakia. They come from Marienbad. Or what was Marienbad. I wonder if they’ll change the name back again. Want a piece?” She held out the big circle of wafer-thin vanilla biscuit.

  Melrose broke off a bit, tasted it. “Delicious.”

  She nodded. “If you live next door, you should come and see us.”

  Melrose smiled. Sounded like Ardry End and Watermeadows were a couple of terraced houses. “Thank you. I shall.”

  “Well, goodbye, then.”

  He looked around. There was no car except for his; he hadn’t heard one before, he remembered. “But how did you get here?”

  “Walked.”

  “But—look, I’ll be more than happy to give you a lift.”

  “No, thank you.”

  Melrose frowned. It must be a good mile from here to Watermeadows. And the dirt road to the highway was hard and rutted. Difficult walking in the best circumstances.

  She saw his expression. “It’s good for me. I need to walk.”

  “I see. Well, goodbye, then.”

  She made her difficult way across the sandy courtyard and onto the road, where she turned and waved.

  “Thanks for the biscuit!” Melrose called, and watched her wave again.

  Watching her progress on that hard road, he recollected his first sight of her. He couldn’t have been more surprised if the goddess Diana had appeared in his door with the moon under her arm.

  Miss Fludd.

  “Well?” asked Trueblood, excitedly. “Well, well?” A stagey whisper: “Who are they? How many? Little brother and sister? Alistair and Arabel—”

  “Oh, be quiet!” Melrose said, irritated. “Her name is . . . Miss Fludd.”

  “I bloody well know that, old sweat. Sly told us that.”

  Trevor Sly came from the back room in a tinkling of bead curtain. “Gentlemen, gentlemen, anything?”

  Grumpily, Melrose shoved his pint down the bar. “Give me a Tangier.”

  Marshall Trueblood put his hand on Melrose’s shoulder in a comradely and (Melrose thought) even commiserative gesture. Melrose didn’t answer. He just sat, feeling inexplicably miserable, with his chin in his hands.

  “What about the chocolate Labs?”

  EIGHT

  The small, shy-looking maid-servant wearing a black uniform and an uncertain look admitted Jury to the Belgravia house.

  In a living room full of exquisite pieces, exquisitely upholstered in variations of blue and gray, Lady Cray herself was setting fluted glasses on a silver tray beside a silver wine cooler, when the maid showed Jury in. Lady Cray was wearing one of the silvery-blue outfits she favored, a long dress with a fold of chiffon collar and cuffs encrusted with tiny pearls around the edges. The dress matched the room, that elusive blue-gray of Waterford crystal, when the facets are turned at certain angles. Jury had always thought Lady Cray had the look of old crystal.

  Champagne was her favorite drink, the hell with tea for one’s elevenses. She said, “If you tell me you’re on duty and can only drink Ribena you won’t be getting any information out of me during this interview.”

  He accepted the glass she held out. “Actually, I was going to ask for a tumblerful of gin.”

  “Ah. I take it the investigation isn’t really proceeding. Whatever the investigation is. Cheers.” She tipped her glass in his direction, made a sweep of her arm toward the sofa behind him.

  Jury sank into its impossibly soft, deep cushions. He thought he could have stayed here for days on this sofa, drinking champagne, listening to Lady Cray.

  “It’s about Fanny, again?”

  Frances Hamilton had been her best friend and, when she died so suddenly in the Tate Gallery, had been living here in the house in Belgravia. Jury wondered if he had told Lady Cray that the last image on the dead woman’s eyes had been the portrait of Chatterton. He thought of it now, as he looked around Lady Cray’s beautiful living room, and noticed that the furniture had been rearranged, probably to accommodate a large escritoire and a jade and ivory carved Oriental screen that had supplanted the small sofa and Queen Anne chairs. They had been moved to sit before the french windows which led to a patio surrounded by ornamental trees and clay pots and flowerbeds that in spring overflowed with flowers. As the furniture had been changed, so had the ornaments and oddments arranged on the tables and in the glass-enclosed commodes and escritoire. Jury didn’t see the turquoise-and-silver piece.

  “I don’t think you were ever satisfied,” Jury said, “with that verdict of cardiac arrest.”

  “I don’t think your medical examiner was, either.”

  Jury smiled. People had a way of pinning the responsibility for this investigation on him, didn’t they. “Well, actually, it wasn’t ours, Lady Cray.”

&
nbsp; She shrugged slightly and looked off through the french windows. “Satisfied or not, her heart still stopped. Which is why I didn’t press the matter.” Over the top of the tulip-shaped glass, she regarded him. “And you?”

  “There’s a question.”

  She said nothing.

  Jury set his glass on the silver tray and leaned forward. “You told me Mrs. Hamilton visited the western United States.”

  “Yes, that’s right. Last year, in November, after she went to Pennsylvania.”

  “Texas, you said. Or Arizona.”

  “Your memory is better than mine. I’m getting on, I expect.” Lady Cray sighed artificially and poured herself another glass of champagne. “Or getting drunk.” She set the bottle back in the cooler. “I expect I wasn’t paying much attention to Fanny when she went rattling on about her travels.”

  “Only because you were distracted.”

  The glass she was setting down hit the tray with a decided click. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Well, you told Sergeant Wiggins, I think, you’d just been to Harrods Food Hall and there’d been a bit of a dust-up about a box of Belgian chocolates? Your nephew, Andrew, took care of it and brought you home. Is that right?” Jury gave her a wide-eyed, innocent look.

  “How clever. Are you going to blackmail me into total recall of the details of Fanny’s trip?”

  Jury laughed. “Not exactly. It’s where Mrs. Hamilton went when she was away that interests me.”

  “Why?”

  “Do you mind if I don’t say, at the moment?”

  “Of course I mind.”

  “It’s probably not connected.”

  “With what is it not connected?”

  Jury didn’t answer directly. “She brought you a piece of sculpture, turquoise and silver. I remember it was on this table that day Wiggins and I came to see you.”

  “Yes. It’s over there, in the escritoire. Why?”

  “Would you mind if I had a look at it again?”

  She rose and moved to the glass-fronted chest. She opened the door, brought out the turquoise block, and handed it over to Jury.

  He turned it around, looked at the little silver flautist. “Where did she get this?”

  “Texas, I think. Albuquerque or Abilene. Or was it Austin? Began with an A, I remember that.” Lady Cray took a cigarette from a cloisonné box, sighed, put it back.

  “Albuquerque isn’t in Texas. The other two are, but not Albuquerque. It’s in New Mexico.”

  “You know that, do you? How clever.”

  “Did she mention Santa Fe?”

  Lady Cray cocked her head. “As a matter of fact, she did. And you’re right, it was Albuquerque, or at least that’s where the airport was. Superintendent, are you investigating the death of that young woman in the West Country? Salisbury?”

  There had been a brief account in the papers, kept brief, no doubt, by Chief Inspector Rush. It didn’t look good, foreigners dying on National Trust property. “You know about that?”

  Lady Cray’s silvery eyes slid him a look. “A body turning up at Old Sarum has a way of getting one’s attention, yes.”

  “It’s not my case.” Wasn’t Macalvie’s either, he told himself yet again. “I’m merely helping a divisional commander out there.”

  “You mean the two are connected? Fanny and that young woman?”

  “The divisional commander thinks so.” He shrugged. “It’s a hunch.” The hell it is, he could almost hear Macalvie’s voice.

  There was a silence. They both sipped their champagne. “Well, and are you going to tell me? Hunch-wise, I mean?” Another silence. She picked up the turquoise sculpture. “To do with this?”

  “Yes. But I’m not sure what. Was Fanny Hamilton actually from Philadelphia?”

  Lady Cray nodded. “Remember, we talked about her family when I told you about Philip. You know her background.”

  “Foreground, then. She’d come back from America about two months before she died. Was she different in any way?”

  “Only in respect to grieving over Philip’s death. To tell the truth, she didn’t really rabbit on about her trip.”

  “What about postcards? Did she send postcards?”

  “Yes.” Lady Cray frowned. “She did. But I might have thrown them out.”

  “All the same, would you have a look?”

  She nodded, started to get up, sat back down. “What about the people in the Tate who were there when she died? What about the people around her at the time? Could someone she came in contact there have—?” She made vague gestures with her hands. A large stone, a marquise-cut diamond, Jury thought, slid a fraction back on her thin finger.

  Jury thought back to the couple who’d been sitting on the end of the bench where Fanny had died. Bea and Gabe. “Yes. She more or less fell right against a young woman sitting beside her. And her boyfriend.” He remembered their names because he’d found it so ironic that two kids would be making out in front of Rossetti’s painting Beata Beatrix. He’d have to ring Wiggins when he got back to his flat and tell him to find out from C Division the whereabouts of Bea and Gabe, and any other witnesses, too.

  “I imagine that if they had been questioned, it wouldn’t have been with the same bare-knuckles approach reserved for witnesses to a murder.” She flashed him a smile.

  “That the treatment you get from the cops? Beatings? Strip searches?”

  “No. I generally just confess. I noticed you were looking at my ring. Wondering if I’d been to New Bond Street lately?”

  Jury smiled, shook his head. Lady Cray had had plenty of trouble with police. She was a kleptomaniac. But improving lately, since her thieving focused only on certain things. Not diamonds, certainly.

  “This turquoise, in case you’re interested”—she picked up the small block—“is the real thing. Persian, probably, as that’s where most of it comes from. Not many turquoise mines left in the States. And one has to be careful not to be fooled by the fake stuff. The kind that’s been injected with plastic.”

  Jury smiled. “You’re quite knowledgeable, Lady Cray.”

  “In my line of work, it’s better to be. God knows what sort of rubbish I might pick up otherwise.” She bestowed upon him another glittery smile. “Right now, I feel like going out and robbing a newsagent or something. Your ‘inquiry’ is beginning to tire me.” From under the rosewood lid of the desk she took out papers—letters, cards—and sifted through them. “Here’s one.” She held up a postcard, looked at the message. “Unfortunately, Fanny was of the ‘Having wonderful time, wish you were here’ category of postcard writers.”

  “What does she say?”

  “ ‘Having wonderful time, wish you were here.’ I just told you.”

  Jury held out his hand.

  “You don’t believe me.” She sighed. “Oh, all right: ‘Truly the Land of Enchantment; one almost dares to hope—’ something or other; it’s a blur—‘burden of the past . . . ’ Here. I can’t read it and it sounds too horribly deep for me anyway.” She squinted at the postmark. “New Mexico, but I can’t read the rest of it. Down at the bottom’s all this squinty little printing. Here.” Her silk skirt rustled as she moved over to Jury.

  But he looked first at the picture. An almost violent explosion of formations of red stone. High-vaulting formations of it, mountains of red rocks. It looked like something out of Disney, some futuristic Hollywood thing. It was, of course, beautiful and impressive. “Tao—no, Taos,” he said.

  Looking over his shoulder, she said, “Stupid of me. It’s printed right down in the corner.”

  “May I keep this?”

  “Of course you’ll want to milk it of all of its secrets.”

  “Of course.”

  “But how could Fanny possibly have been murdered, Superintendent? No weapon, no wound—well, it’s a mystery still. Fanny was so healthy. How could it have been some heart thing?”

  “I don’t know. But her death bears looking at just a little closer, I think.” />
  She whisked the turquoise piece from the table, held it out. “And this? Next you’re going to tell me a similar piece was found with the dead woman at Old Sarum.”

  “Not exactly. But the way you describe Fanny Hamilton, she strikes me as flighty. A bit like meringue. Tasty but lightweight. You didn’t take her very seriously.”

  Lady Cray looked sad. “If that’s the way I talked of her, I’m sorry. One has a way of speaking slightingly, sometimes, of a thing or a person who means more than one cares to admit. And, yes, Fanny was, as you put it—” Lady Cray smiled—“a meringue. But believe me, at my age, I take everyone seriously, that is, everyone I have any liking for. When you’re young, you can afford to discard or ignore or even abuse your friends and your family. We’re very careless when we’re young. It’s not that we become kinder when we grow old, we simply become more careful. Fanny is the sort of person I would probably have been careless of when I was young. At nearly eighty, I place more importance on holding on to people. I miss her, honestly.”

  Jury rose to go, slipping the postcard into his pocket. “No, you’re right. We are careless of people.” He smiled and rose. “I’ve got to get to the Yard.”

  “But I wanted you to join me in a glass of champagne. You did such a wonderful thing about Philip. And I was hoping Andrew—you know, my nephew—would be here by now. He was going to come round today. With Adrienne. That’s his fiancée.” She sighed. “You know, you might want to talk to Andrew. Why don’t you stop back later? In the meantime . . . ” Lady Cray twisted the bottle of iced champagne.

  Jury looked ruefully at the silver wine cooler. “I’ve been trying to stop smoking—”

  “I’ve never smoked champagne, to be honest.”

  “I mean, drinking that stuff, and sitting here relaxing, well, it just cries for a smoke, doesn’t it?”

  She sighed. “How true that is. Fanny smoked like a chimney and it couldn’t have done her any good. But there you are, we seldom go for what’s good for us.”

  Jury smiled. “I expect you’re right. Goodbye, Lady Cray.”