Rainbow's End

by Martha Grimes

  “I managed to wrest it from the Wiltshire police report. Jury must have moved DCI Rush to take another look at the pathology reports. What this gives you is what turned up and how much. But not everything turns up; that’s the trouble with poisons and drugs. Pathologist says what killed Angela could have been valvular heart disease. According to this cousin, Dolores Schell, she had rheumatic fever when she was a kid.”

  Melrose studied the pages. “But you don’t think it started up of its own volition.”

  “No.” Macalvie took his feet from the desk, stood up. “Come on, let’s drive over to the lab.”

  • • •

  WHITE ROOM after white room debouching off a foam-green hallway was filled both with the detritus of crime and with the forensic experts examining it. Macalvie walked ahead of him, hesitating at one door after another, occasionally mumbling some phrase or tossing back a word—“serology,” “electrophoresis,” “spectrometry”—as if Melrose knew all about the forensic sciences. One room was crowded with what looked like thousands of color-coded files and even more thousands of microfiche films; another room appeared to be given over to analyses of paint, for nearly every surface was covered with charts, chips, samples, except for the windows, and Melrose had the feeling that if the technicians in there ran out of space, light would go too. All the surfaces—floors, walls, countertops—were brilliantly clean, and as his cook, Martha, was fond of saying, “You could of et off the floor.” The personnel in the rooms they passed were manning microscopes, computers, and what looked like meat grinders. Melrose had no names to put to the tools of their trade; he thought most of them could have found a home in either a Mercedes body shop or a Brillat-Savarin kitchen. They stopped at one door and he followed Macalvie inside.

  Melrose looked around at the gleaming equipment, at a couple of technicians wearing what resembled goggles for a scuba dive, at several huge computer monitors, and at the expert with whom Macalvie was conferring. He assumed he was expert since Macalvie was actually listening. Melrose heard only the odd phrase—“swabbing out the mouth,” “vomitus sample”—as he studied a collection of petri jars.

  Macalvie walked over to Melrose, said, “Give Sloane another twenty-four hours, he’ll know. He’s already discounted God knows how many substances that fit the symptoms. At least what symptoms were noticed.”

  Melrose listened to Dr. Sloane talk to Macalvie about serum and urine analysis and the impossibility of oral ingestion in this case, as the comprehensive analysis had eliminated at least a hundred possibilities, such as barbiturates, phenothiazines, tricyclics; and the gastric juices eliminated acute oral ingestion.

  “So she didn’t swallow lye.”

  The weak joke didn’t amuse Dr. Sloane. “It was all in my report. We knew this five days ago. We knew this within several hours of receiving the samples.”

  “TL chromography isn’t sensitive enough to detect certain drugs. Cocaine, for example. Drugs of abuse,” said Macalvie.

  “This wasn’t a question of drug abuse. More likely a therapeutic drug, but even there, we’ve turned up nothing. We didn’t stop with that particular screening, at any rate. Gas chromatography, again, though, this is large-scale screening—Mr. Macalvie, did you read my report?”

  “Every word.”

  “Then why are you asking these questions?”

  Macalvie scratched his neck, frowning. “Things go missing.”

  “Well, obviously something’s gone missing here. Precisely what agent killed the woman. Not necessarily a drug. There are also insecticides.” Dr. Sloane turned away. “Read the report.”

  “Thanks,” said Macalvie.

  They retraced their steps down the hall. “Angela Hope,” said Melrose, “I understand. But why are you so sure Nell Hawes was poisoned?”

  “Because all three of them died.”

  Melrose frowned. Was a question being begged here?

  As they rounded the corner to the lift, Melrose was thinking how eerie it was, the world of this lab, a world in which there were no enigmas. He wasn’t sure he liked it. All of these people could not only strip you naked but could see, in the very garments shed, your history.

  2

  MELROSE COULDN’T help himself.

  While Macalvie was talking to the women in the quire, Melrose was inspecting the long length of embroidered cushions for messages. He tried to stop doing it; he couldn’t.

  What amazing handiwork were these rondels! The Blue Coat Schoolboy would be hiding no secrets, as there was also a statue of the schoolboy not far from the cathedral, in Princesshay. Most of the embroidered words were straightforward enough, certainly, names and dates and historical detail about men like Bishop Baldwin, church history and local history, kingships and credos and, running brilliantly through the length of the cushioning, the Te Deum. It was quite remarkable. But what about

  THE WELLS RAN DRY

  THEY USED WINE WHICH RAN OUT . . . ?

  Could that be a cleverly coded message? Oh, for heaven’s sake! The whole thing was nearly spoiled for him because of Wiggins and Josephine Tey. He should have shown up at the hospital with Elizabeth Onions. There was an antidote for a fevered imagination!

  He stopped for some moments to look down at the tiny figure of Saint Cuthbert, his gaze fixed on the drops of blood rendered in scarlet thread. Melrose studied this bit of red embroidery for some time, finally hearing in his mind’s ear, not the voices of the angels, but the voice of Ellen Taylor speaking of her character Maxim: “Who says it’s blood?” He winced; it was driving him crazy. Maxim, who had apparently been lying in a pool of his own blood at the end of Windows, now just as apparently had been resurrected in the second novel, Doors. “Apparently” must surely be the operative term here.

  Maxim Redux, revived. Maxim engaged in one of his opaque and sophistical arguments with Sweetie, the heroine, protagonist, probably the alter ego. He pulled the manuscript pages from his inside pocket, rolled off the rubber band and smoothed out the pages. He read: “I paint your portrait and who or what do you become?”

  Oh, hell’s bells, he remembered this damnable argument. Maxim and Sweetie were sitting at the dining-room table, in that very dining room where he had been apparently lying in his own blood at the end of Windows. . . .

  Melrose stopped by the black basalt effigy of some bishop or other, pondering Maxim’s and Sweetie’s situation. He moved up the nave and sat down on one of the chairs to turn his face up to the vaulted ceiling. Melrose loved ceilings. The colored bosses, the stone ribs. There was the Minstrel Gallery too, where angels held their harps and trumpets and cymbals.

  Now Macalvie was sitting on the chair beside him. “What’s that?” he asked, looking down at the manuscript.

  “Oh, some pages of a manuscript a friend of mine sent to me. Weird story.” He told Macalvie about the end of Windows, where Maxim had been lying in a pool of blood, and then in the second book he appeared to be sending notes to Sweetie. Maxim up to his old obfuscating tricks. Melrose wanted to be gone from here, wanted to be back downing a pint at the Jack and Hammer, or sitting at his own dining table before one of Martha’s roast beef dinners. But then his mind’s eye travelled farther down the table and saw his aunt gibbering away. Melrose decided Maxim might not be such bad company after all.

  To Macalvie, he said, “It’s something to do with the difference between appearance and reality.”

  “Most things are.” Macalvie was leaning forward, elbows on knees.

  Melrose glared at him and changed the subject. “Any luck with the embroiderers?”

  “No. But who knows when one of them might remember something helpful?” Macalvie folded his arms hard against his chest as if warding off spiritual rebirth. “Rush knows sod all, is my guess. How I would have loved to have a crack at that cousin who identified the body. Jury’s been gone over forty-eight hours.” Impatiently, he said this.

  Melrose asked him why he hadn’t gone to Santa Fe himself. “You’ve always wanted to see the
States.”

  “Too much of a caseload. Anyway, he’s better at getting things out of people than I am.”

  Melrose was surprised that Macalvie would say this. He was also surprised that Macalvie was sitting still. Not just sitting either, but leaning forward, elbows on knees, palms fastened together in an attitude that in anyone else would have looked prayerful. But Macalvie wasn’t praying; he was thinking. Fingertips pinched his lower lip as he stared ahead, perhaps at the giant rood screen, or the high altar, or Nothing.

  Then he said, “It’s that cousin worries me.”

  Melrose frowned. “How so?”

  “She got over here in one quick hurry, didn’t she?”

  “Police had to have some family member identify the body as soon as possible, didn’t they?”

  “She was here within twenty-four hours. Less, really. So she must have caught that Albuquerque flight in record time to make her New York flight connection. All I mean is: that’s bloody quick.”

  “It does seem rather overeager. What do you make of it?”

  “Nothing. Yet.”

  They sat in silence for a few moments. Then Melrose asked, “If you’re sure they knew one another—I mean, the Hope woman and Helen Hawes—is it possible that Angela Hope got in the way? Could she have been killed by—well—accident?”

  “Accident” wasn’t normally a word in the Macalvie lexicon, not in a murder investigation. He just looked around at Melrose, over his shoulder. “The point is, they knew one another. So the deaths are related. Whether only one was the target, whether all three were the targets, maybe one of them or all of them knew something or had something someone wanted or didn’t want them to be in possession of. The point is, you pull at one thread, you bring two other threads with it. At the moment, that’s what matters.”

  Melrose turned this over for a moment. “You sound a lot like Maxim.”

  Again, Macalvie was getting up. “So let’s go, Sweetie. I need a drink.”

  3

  CONTENTEDLY BREATHING along with his recently uncorked bottle of Châteauneuf du Pape, Melrose tucked into his smoked salmon, provided by the kitchens of the Royal Clarence Hotel. He once again envisioned Lady Kennington’s little parlor. He asked himself: why did the “regional” newspaper folded near the armchair have to be the Stratford region? My God, of course! Lady Kennington had lived for a number of years near Hertford, in a village much too small to have a paper of its own, so why might that newspaper not be a Hertford paper, or perhaps a local paper printed in the market town of Horndean, which was even closer?

  Melrose tossed down his napkin, and on his way back to his room and its telephone, told the maître d’ to hold off on his entree and to decant the wine into a carafe so it could get a proper breath.

  His old friend Polly lived in that same village, Littlebourne.

  His old friend Polly mumbled a dark “Hello,” said she didn’t care if it was only eight-thirty, she’d promised herself an early night and had just fallen asleep when he had had the nerve to call. She then ignored his question about newspapers and asked Melrose if he’d finished reading her manuscript.

  Why, he wondered, was he the editorial sounding board for writers? Why would they put any credence whatever in what he might have to say? Was he missing something? No, he had not finished and that was not what he was calling about. He wedged Richard Jury’s name into her whining questions as to why hadn’t he, and she immediately came round.

  “Oh. Is it one of his cases?”

  Melrose could almost picture the eyelashes fluttering over her lavender eyes. “Yes. All I want to know is, have you got a recent local paper lying about?”

  “You mean the Hertford Blare or the Homdean Blab?”

  “Polly, I don’t know what I mean. You live there; I don’t.”

  Melrose thinking of his wine patiently allowed her to go on at some length about his many (unkept) promises about visiting Little-bourne and how she had alerted its inhabitants of his coming, and how embarrassing it had been—

  “Polly, would you please get the paper. Not the most recent, but the one that came out several days ago.”

  “I have it. It’s a weekly.”

  Her efficiency startled him. “Look and see if it has a crossword—”

  “It does; I always try to do them. The Times ones are too hard for me.” Crinklings and rattles came down the wire. “Okay, what about it?”

  “What’s two across?” he asked.

  “ ‘Shout.’ S-H-O-U-T.”

  “ ‘Shout’?” Melrose considered. “Are you sure?”

  “Well, I am about the T because five down is definitely ‘tired.’ Which is what I feel.”

  “Polly, what’s the clue?” Silence. “Polly?”

  “Huh? Sorry, I was just thinking maybe I’m wrong, maybe it isn’t ‘tired.’ Could be ‘trial.’ ”

  “I mean, the clue for two across. Read it.”

  “ ‘Not a fox-hunt, but foxes hunting.’ ”

  That was it! “Yes. Clearly a ‘shout’ of foxes.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Now, Polly, what’s on that page? Besides the crossword?”

  “Nothing much. Just a bunch of adverts. It’s the—” she paused—“the Properties page. You know, sales, lettings, that sort of thing.”

  Melrose frowned. That didn’t sound very promising. “Read it, will you?”

  “The whole page? But it’s just lists of properties.”

  “Read whatever’s within, say, an inch around the crossword.”

  Polly Praed sighed heavily, put upon once more by Melrose Plant. “There’s the church fête—oh, I was supposed to bake a cake—they’ve got that in with the estate sales; then here’s that cottage next the Bold Blue Boy, wasn’t that for sale before when you were here years ago? Weren’t you going to buy it?”

  “Certainly not. Go on.”

  She read off at least a dozen descriptions of properties, the usual glowing reports of vistas and views and amenities concocted by estate agents. Melrose sighed. He asked her directly, “Polly, do you remember Lady Kennington?”

  “Of course I do. She’s here.”

  The receiver nearly slid from Melrose’s hand. “What?”

  “Staying at the Bold Blue Boy—Oh! Is that what you’re talking about? Well, why didn’t you say so, instead of making me read all those dumb adverts? It’s way up here at the top. The Kennington estate, Stonington. It’s back on the market again. I expect that’s what she’s here about. She’s always loved—wait a minute! Are you the one?”

  Confused, Melrose asked, “Am I the one what?”

  “The one who’s trying to buy it out from under her? It’s the reason she came here in such a hurry, because of this ruthless bast—”

  “Of course not, don’t be ridiculous.”

  “You were going to buy it once, remember?”

  “I was not. That was merely a ruse, a cover. Listen, Polly, I can’t thank you enough. You’re a marvel!”

  There was a brief silence as she coughed and reconsidered the Plant ruthlessness. “Well . . . uh . . . what about Lady Kennington? Did you want me to talk to her, or—?”

  “No. No, I don’t think so. It might be better if you didn’t mention I was asking after her.”

  “Why?” She was suspicious. Jenny Kennington was, after all, available and undoubtedly attractive.

  “It’s something to do with—” Smoothly, Melrose went on: “I might actually have to come to Littlebourne myself.”

  That pleased her! That is, he inferred it pleased her, for she wasn’t about to say so, despite her earlier protests about his broken promises. Casually, she asked him when. “Bring my manuscript with you and we can discuss it over drinks.”

  “Goodnight, Polly.”

  Feeling exultant, Melrose headed back to the dining room and his dinner. Talk about a bit of sleuthing! He paused, saw he was near the desk, and asked the receptionist if he could send a fax. Of course, she said.

 
From his wallet Melrose drew the little scrap of paper on which were the phone and fax numbers of the hotel in Santa Fe and wrote that in at the top of the sheet of Royal Clarence Hotel stationery, debated his message, and then, smiling, decided to allow himself some literary leeway. He had always been rather fond of that line in the John Fowles novel where the poor devil of a protagonist receives a telegram from the detective after years and years of searching for his ladylove.

  Chuckling darkly, he wrote (with a considerable flourish)—

  She is Found!

  PLANT

  And if Richard Jury wanted to know where in hell she was found, he could damned well come home and find her himself.

  Melrose marched victoriously back to his decanted Châteauneuf du Pape and his exquisite-sounding meal.

  You deserve it!

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  At the Welcome Break, Melrose broke.

  These motorway cafes offered less by way of a relaxing “break” than they did of a devastated, trampled entrenchment, emptied in the wake of a city’s teeming population in its hasty retreat from bombs or lethal gas. This retreat was made largely by motorcycle, from what Melrose could tell. He paused outside the restaurant complex to count twenty-eight of these shiny black monsters, ranged along one end of the car park, with several of their black-garbed monkish owners straddling the leather seats, smoking. Melrose was struck by a wave of nostalgic longing for John Wayne heading up a posse, and not one horse with a hole in its muffler. The posse of motorcycles began revving up, and soon the cortege was passing him as he moved through the door.

  He quickly purchased and drank his cup of coffee, untempted by the plastic-wrapped buns and pies and puddings symmetrically arranged beneath a steel shelf displaying granite scones and dry rolls. Melrose wished there were Happy Eaters serving motorways; he shared Sergeant Wiggins’s penchant for the bright orange restaurants, their bubble-wrapped atmosphere, their jolly waitresses, and their beans on toast. He deposited his cup and quickly left the restaurant.