Dust

by Martha Grimes

  Agatha (Lady Watermouth née Ardry) certainly never stopped objecting to Mr. Blodgett. “Don’t you think the joke has gone far enough, Melrose?”

  “No joke can.” He picked up his thimble of port and Country Life, eager to see what the young lady of the week was doing.

  “Can what?”

  He leveled a look at her. “What you just said: can go far enough.”

  She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Riddles, riddles.”

  Country Life was a handsome magazine; it glimmered and shimmered with a promise that largely went unkept. The doll of the week was a Miss Gertrude Frobisher-Stauton, and she was holding a pig. Well, why not? If the magazine ever wanted to do a series on British peers who had jettisoned their titles (himself, in other words, although he imagined there must be others), he would be happy to pose holding a goat. He didn’t want to break the spell his imagination could toss over this picture like a veil, so he just made up the caption. The captions were pretty much always the same, giving age and rank and—in this case—what the pig meant. It would also likely state where this lovely girl was going to school, or where she would be spending her gap year—in Miss Frobisher-Stauton’s case, Paris. How terribly adventurous of her! He flipped back to the beginning of the magazine and its endless shots of overpriced properties. Melrose had actually found here the house that he had let for a few weeks in Cornwall. That was a year or so ago.

  He turned another page and thought about this poor Maples chap and wondered what he had been doing at Lamb House. One would of course wonder what Maples had been doing at the hotel in Clerkenwell Road, since he’d been murdered there, but why had Billy Maples opted for the tenancy of Lamb House?

  Did he love Henry James? A lot of people liked Henry James, but that didn’t mean they wanted to go to bed with him, in a manner of speaking. From the story sketched out by Jury, Lamb House seemed an unlikely venue for a man like Billy Maples.

  “I don’t know why you read that magazine, Melrose.”

  “Because it’s got pictures in it. I’m checking out the housing market.”

  “Why?”

  “To see how much I could get for Ardry End.”

  The sound of choking coming from the sofa caused him to look over the top of Country Life, in hopes that the choking might lead to something. No such luck. She was scanning the room, the Oriental rug, the doors, the sconces, the ceiling molding, like a valuer.

  “Don’t be silly. Why on earth would you even think about selling up?” She set about robbing a fairy cake of its pale pink fluting.

  He hadn’t been thinking of selling, but it was a tack to take: “Why not? It’s too big for me to be rattling around in all on my own.” He decided to throw out another delicious prospect. “Of course, I could marry, have a few children…”

  Agatha stopped the fairy cake halfway to her mouth and exclaimed, “What? And who in heaven’s name would you marry?”

  He had returned to the photo of the honorable Gertrude Frobisher-Stauton. “I met a lovely young lady the last time I was in London at my club. Gertie Frobisher. We talked at length. She was a bit young, perhaps, but that signifies nothing these days. She loves farm animals. She’d be great with Aghast.” He went back to his magazine.

  “That’s absolutely ridiculous!”

  “No, it’s true. She has a penchant for pigs.”

  “I’m not talking about that, I’m talking about her marrying you!”

  “Lots of women would marry me. I’m rich, I have this estate.” Here he swept his arm round the room. “And my father was the seventh earl of Caverness.”

  “And you are no longer the eighth earl, in case you’ve forgotten.” She simpered, proud of the point she’d made.

  Hmph! “Oh, most women don’t give a damn for a title anymore.” He again regarded the Honorable Gertrude. They didn’t? Since when? Even the pig looked as if it would not eschew a title.

  “You’re wrong there, I can tell you!”

  Well, she should know, not being Lady Ardry at all, but having decided to call herself that after her husband (who was another “honorable”) had died. He’d also been Melrose’s uncle, who’d had the great misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  “No, I’m not wrong at all. Gertie is quite all right with my not having a title. She has one of her own. It probably makes her feel a little superior.”

  “Well, really. You wouldn’t want to marry a woman who felt she was better than you!”

  “Why not? It would keep her from messing in my affairs, as she’d think her own were more important.”

  Another scone half was being marmaladed. “Is she from a good family?”

  “A pig-farming one.”

  Agatha actually set her scone down on her small glass plate. “Pig? Pig farmers! Now I know you can’t be serious!”

  “I see nothing objectionable. She wants to bring along several of them. She’s afraid she’d miss them.”

  “Surely, you’re not acquiescing to this monstrous plan!”

  Melrose was looking at the honorable G. F.-S., raking the paragraph under her picture for fresh ideas. What amazed him was that Agatha apparently thought Melrose had indeed proposed marriage, despite his telling her he had only just met Gertrude. “When she’s finished her gap year. She intends to spend it in Zimbabwe, working as a volunteer with Médicins Sans Frontières.”

  “What on earth is that?”

  “Doctors Without Borders. They got the Nobel Peace Prize, in case you didn’t know.”

  “Are you saying she’s a doctor?”

  “No, of course not. Although she’s thinking about veterinary medicine.”

  Then it struck Agatha, apparently, that Gertrude was still in school. “Gap year! Melrose, how old is this person?”

  “Oh, twentyish.” G. F.-S. was more eighteenish, according to the magazine.

  “You’re old enough to be her father!”

  “Yes, but I’m not.” He slapped the arms of his cozy chair and rose. “Well, I’m off!”

  “The Jack and Hammer, I expect.”

  “For a farewell drink. Then to Rye.”

  That stopped a rock cake in midair. Twice in a morning, a record! “What are you talking about? That’s the coast of Sussex, for heaven’s sakes.”

  “The last I heard. Don’t get up. I’ll see myself out.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Trueblood, looking out of the Jack and Hammer’s bay window, said, “But this is perfect!” He looked at Melrose. “Take it as a sign!”

  Melrose, occupying the window seat with Vivian, turned, as did Vivian. Joanna stood up to see. Diane Demorney didn’t bother.

  “Agatha and, would you believe it, our own Mr. Lambert Strether.”

  That got Diane’s attention. “How marvelous! We can continue the Henry James experiment.”

  “Here they come,” said Joanna. “Here they come.”

  The five of them arranged themselves for the encounter.

  A gust of air wrapped them in its chilly embrace as the outside door was shoved open and the two appeared.

  “Agatha!” exclaimed Melrose. “That was quick. I just left you at the house. And I do believe it’s Mr. Strether.”

  “Yes, Mr. Strether,” said Diane. “We wondered where you’d got to. You left in such a rush.”

  Trueblood and Melrose had risen to shake the impossibly named Lambert Strether’s hand. Trueblood pulled a couple of chairs around from another table and insisted the two join them. Strether barked out an order to Dick Scroggs for a gin and tonic and a shooting sherry. Dick did not regard Lambert Strether—as did the other five—as a source of horseplay. Dick merely thought him an idiot.

  “Now, Strether, are you riding around on your horse, or mine, looking at property?” said Melrose.

  Strether gave a bellicose laugh. “Your horse? Neither. But I have indeed viewed some property. If you recall, I was interested in the old pub on the hill.”

  “The Man with a Load of Mischief,�
� said Vivian.

  “And I believe it was you”—here he looked at Joanna—“who led me to believe you were buying it?”

  Joanna had about as much interest in the pub as in a flea circus, but she nodded to him.

  Strether smiled meanly. “Except the agent said there was no offer on the table.”

  Joanna wrote some words in her notebook with a flourish. “That agent. She’s so absent-minded, it’s absurd.”

  Said Strether, “It’s a he!”

  “See what I mean?” said Joanna.

  At this, both Agatha and Strether knit their brows. The others acted as if the answer made sense.

  Strether went on. “Anyway, you might be surprised to hear that the FOR SALE sign has come down.”

  “I can’t remember there was ever one up,” said Melrose.

  “Metaphorically speaking, then.”

  “Melrose remembers nothing of importance,” said Agatha, taking the sherry from Dick’s tray, after which Dick set down the gin and tonic.

  “Actually,” said Strether, pausing to drink, “I’ve inherited it.” His smile put his tarnished teeth on vivid display.

  “How do like that?” Agatha said, as if she’d just trumped every ace in their deck. She was pleased as punch that Mr. Lambert Strether had thrown a spanner in the works, whatever the works and whatever the spanner. “So you see, the Mischief will be opening soon!”

  Strether had the grace to appear humble. “Let’s not count our chickens, Lady Ardry.”

  If one could call the objets d’art in Ardry End chickens, Agatha was always counting them, apparently convinced that, number one, she would inherit the lot and, number two, Melrose, some thirty years younger, would die first.

  “I don’t understand,” said Trueblood, pretending to be vexed by all of this. “When you were here before—and it’s only been a couple of weeks—you did not know about your good luck, or your inheritance.”

  “We-ll, I didn’t know for a certainty, so I wasn’t prepared to raise the point, especially after you”—he tilted his head in Joanna’s direction—“said you were buying it.”

  Not rising to the bait, Joanna simply turned a page of her marked-in-red manuscript.

  Melrose said, “Now, the last owner was a man by the name of Matchett, Simon Matchett. Before that, it was a Mr. Lipseed, who owned it for some time before he got arrested. Before him we had a woman named Elerbee and her seven children. Now that’s going a long way back.” Indeed, it was so far back that Melrose hadn’t the slightest idea where it would lead. The pub could have been owned by his goat, Aghast, for all he knew, in partnership with his hermit, Mr. Blodgett. “Hence I’m wondering, Mr. Strether, just who these ancestors of yours were.”

  Strether poured the rest of his gin down his throat and smiled. “A great-great-great-granduncle and-aunt, the White-Winterbothams.”

  “White-Winterbotham? The only time I’ve heard that name was in connection with a triple murder in Clapham. A grisly affair. Are these your people?”

  “Of course not. It’s an old, old family from Yorkshire. They’ve had their share of OBEs.”

  “We’ve had our share of DUIs but it hasn’t got us anywhere.” Trueblood was severing the tip from one of his Montecristo cigars. Rarely did he smoke one.

  Vivian said, “This is the first we’ve heard about anyone’s having a connection to the pub. It’s been well over a decade since it was occupied. That was when Mr. Matchett ran it. And since he had no wife, no children, no relations at all, he left The Man with a Load of Mischief to the village. Long Piddleton. Yes, we thought that extremely generous of him.”

  No, he didn’t and no, we didn’t, certainly not after he made a pig’s breakfast of everything on his way out of town, thought Melrose.

  There were wide eyes and slightly open mouths when Vivian produced this bit of high history, and from other than Mr. Strether.

  “Well, Vivian,” said Trueblood, fascinated by her inventiveness. “You’re right. I’d forgotten that. Damned decent of him.”

  But Strether was not giving up so easily. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Miss—”

  “Rivington.”

  “Miss Rivington. But the White-Winterbothams passed it on to their progeny. Perhaps this Matchett fellow was landlord, just renting it. He hadn’t it within his power to dispose of it.”

  “You can prove all of this, Mr. Strether?” inquired Melrose.

  Mr. Strether was looking over his shoulder, trying to corral Dick Scroggs for another gin. So Agatha answered for him. “Certainly he’s got proof. The documents are with his lawyer in London.”

  Scroggs came with another gin, half of which Strether got down in one go. He sat and gave a bleary smile.

  Diane, smoking in her languid way, said: “I think, Mr. Strether, you might find your claim to this pub less certain than you suppose. You are not, you know, the only claimant.”

  Both Lambert Strether and Agatha looked at her narrowly. Diane was a complete mystery to Agatha. An unpleasant one.

  “If you’re talking about this village’s inheriting, as I’ve just said—”

  “No, no,” said Diane. “The claims are far more certain than that.”

  Now all of them were leaning slightly toward her, all with a curious gaze.

  “Then what on earth are you talking about?”

  “Well, good heavens, Agatha, are you so out of touch with Long Piddleton you don’t know?” Diane’s smile was crafty.

  Agatha hesitated, “Well, yes, I do have my ear to the ground…”

  And the wall and the door and the keyhole, thought Melrose, who was himself fascinated by what Diane had just said.

  Lambert Strether looked at her, hoping probably for some cue. He returned his gaze to Diane. “Exactly what are you talking about?” He could not keep the anxious note out of his voice.

  “About the many claims to the property? It’s a bit mixed up. You know. Extremely difficult to sort: whose father was whose son or whose cousin was whose wife or whose aunt was whose grandmother. Well, you get the picture.” Diane raised her glass as if toasting confusion. “And all of them, at least the ones we know about, all of them have the papers. Why do you think the old pub has been untenanted for fifteen years?”

  Agatha shut her mouth and opened it again. “I don’t know what on earth you’re on about. I know nothing of this.” To her companion she said, “Lambert, are we going?”

  Lambert Strether looked disinclined to leave the present company. He clearly wanted to hear more.

  “Come on, Lambert! They haven’t a grain of sense among them.”

  Fully baffled by this turn in the talk, he mumbled a yes-yes and drank off his gin and tonic. “Let’s go, then, shall we?”

  They rose—neither of them leaving even a deposit on the table toward their drinks—and bundled themselves out the door.

  “Now what in hell? White-Winterbotham?” said Melrose. “Well, he couldn’t possibly have any legal right to the place, surely.”

  “Diane, I’m intrigued. You certainly put the wind up our local confidence man. What are you thinking of?”

  “Bleak House, obviously. You know, the interminable legal battle over Jaundice and Jaundice.”

  “Jarndyce,” said Melrose. “Jarndyce and Jarndyce. Are you telling us you read Bleak House?”

  “Not the entire book, no, probably the only one who did was Dickens. But I did skim over the marvelous legal and courtroom scenes; they reminded me of my divorces. As far as wrangling is concerned, Dickens is right on the money. Thank God there weren’t estate agents tossed into the mix or he would’ve died with the book unfinished.”

  “It rattled our friend Strether, certainly,” said Vivian.

  “Rattling isn’t enough,” said Diane. “No.” She sipped her drink and drew in on her cigarette. “No, Mr. Strether does not give up easily.” Diane looked through the scrim of smoke with narrowed eyes.

  They waited. She thought. Thinking was not an experience that came aroun
d every day for Diane. “We need a few strangers—or at least strangers to Mr. Strether—which shouldn’t be too hard.” Diane looked around the room, her eyes falling on Dick’s char.

  Undescended from Cinderella, Mrs. Withersby was taking her rest, sitting on one of the trestle benches on either side of the fire, which roared along like the last steam engine to leave Victoria. Mrs. Withersby spat into the fire. The fire spat back.

  “Do you think she could round up a few of her nearest and dearest? She has relations, doesn’t she?”

  “By all accounts, yes.”

  “Would she do it for fifty quid, d’you think?”

  “She’d do it for fifty pee, Diane. She’d do it for a fag.”

  “Let’s call her over.”

  It was unusual that they’d have to, as Mrs. Withersby ordinarily found some excuse to hang around their window table to cadge cigarettes and gin.

  “Shall I ask her if she wants to earn a bit of money?”

  That was like asking a cactus if it would like to spend a while in the sun and sand.

  “What’ve you got in mind, Diane?” Melrose was absolutely fascinated that Diane had anything at all in mind. Although, he reminded himself, she had worked out a brilliant scheme for getting rid of Vivian’s old flame. Count Dracula had beat it back to Florence after Diane shot a few home truths at him. Perhaps getting rid of people was her forte? Perhaps she should get mobbed-up?

  Diane must have been reading his mind. “Melrose, you’ll have to keep Agatha out of the way.”

  “Permanently?”

  “Sorry,” she said to him with a sly smile. “Just for this; just to get rid of Mr. Strether.”

  “How?”

  “What I said before: Jaundice—”

  “Jarndyce.”

  “Right.” She sighed. “I wish Richard Jury were here. He added such panache to Mr. Strether’s departure the first time.”

  They all agreed and sent up a collective sigh.

  “But I suppose,” Diane added, “he’s got other things to do.”

  EIGHTEEN