The Winds of Change

by Martha Grimes

  Hermione shook’her head. ‘No, no. Elsie Hardcastle was the victim.’ She went on sipping her tea.

  Melrose nearly reached over and took the cup. At last, a morsel of information, although it sounded as if it might be more than just a morsel – and then she stopped. ‘What... how was she a victim? Of what?’

  ‘Why, Mary Scott. You see, it was raining and the traffic light was malfunctioning. This was in Meva. It was several months before Flora’s disappearance.’

  God, at last she was saying something, but excising the bits that would have made clear what she was talking about. ‘Back up for a moment. First of all, where’s Meva?’

  ‘Mevagissey, a fishing village not far from Heligan. It was dead dark and the light wouldn’t change. Mary had no choice but to go through it, finally. Elsie was crossing the street and had her umbrella up. Mary’ – Hermione shrugged – ‘hit her. Worse, though, Mary didn’t stop. It was a hit-and-run. But she managed to make the coroner believe that she honestly thought she’d hit something in the road. She didn’t think for a minute it was a person. It was raining so hard, coming down in torrents, and she thought that affected her ability to judge. And everyone knows that narrow street that goes down through the village is hell to drive in the best of circumstances.’

  ‘Well, she didn’t hit Elsie squarely on, and she certainly didn’t run over her. When she got back to Angel Gate, she was extremely upset and she told Declan she was afraid she’d hit either an animal or a person. Immediately, he called the police and gave them the information. So it was certainly not a hit-and-run, I mean, not in the real sense of one. The coroner was surprised that the blow had, actually, killed the girl.’

  ‘She was charged, though?’

  ‘Yes. But the coroner’s court didn’t convict her.’ Hermione paused. ‘Some people thought it was her husband’s money that saved her, as much as the story she told. I’m rather surprised you haven’t heard this. Declan told me you’re a friend of that Scotland Yard superintendent.’ She smiled.

  Surely, he was not now about to find that Hermione Hobbs was clever, was he? An altogether different cup of tea?

  Hermione went on. ‘You can imagine how the Hardcastles felt when Mary got off.’

  ‘The court found her innocent?’

  ‘Yes. The Hardcastles, the father and mother, were pretty restrained about the outcome. It certainly was a dreadful accident, and Mary was so torn up, well, it was hard to hate her.’ If he’d been the parent, Melrose wouldn’t find it hard to hate her or kill her. Or worse.

  ‘It’s quite possible that Declan –’ She stopped and fiddled nervously with her spoon.

  ‘Declan?’

  ‘I shouldn’t say anything.’

  Oh, do, dear lady, and I’ll buy you another pot of tea, another plate of scones, all the stuff in the window you’ve been coveting. Hell, I’ll buy you the tearoom! You’ve finally come through! ‘What shouldn’t you say?’

  Now she was busy pleating her paper napkin.

  ‘More tea!’ said Melrose, and motioned to the proprietress, who sulked over.

  Hermione laughed a little. ‘Oh, well, if you –’

  Melrose asked the woman for another pot of tea and a selection of the cakes in the window.

  The woman picked up the empty tea-muffin plate, went to the window and plopped four of the cakes on the plate and returned it to the table. She picked up the pot and moved off.

  ‘She does everything with so much élan, doesn’t she? Now, you were saying about Declan Scott–?’

  She still looked doubtful.

  Don’t dumb out on me now, for God’s sakes. ‘You were about to say that Declan Scott could have done something with relation to the Hardcastles.’

  ‘Yes, well, I don’t know if I should say it, but Declan might have given the Hardcastles a large sum of money not to make a fuss.’ A ‘fuss.’ Your child is killed and the most Hermione could come up with was ‘fuss.’ This paying off, if he had, sounded coldblooded not so much of Scott, but of the Hardcastles. Melrose wondered how much money had changed hands.

  He wondered if Jury knew about this accident. A few months between Elsie’s death and Flora’s disappearance might have police connecting the two. And Declan must have been under the impression that the Hardcastles were satisfied–broken-hearted, but satisfied – that Mary Scott really hadn’t known what she’d done.

  And Scott had, after all, called the police; they’d admitted she’d done it.

  Back with a fresh pot of tea, their churlish server deposited it on the table and then took herself off.

  Hermione said, ‘Police questioned people, Mary’s friends. I thought they might want to establish something about her character. The police who questioned me wanted to know what sort of person Mary Scott was and as to her character. I said it was unimpeachable. I didn’t mention her absentmindedness, the way she sometimes walked around with her head in a cloud. I was afraid that would make them wonder whether she’d been paying attention to the road. And if it was anyone’s fault, it was the town’s, I think. The light had been stuck that way for hours; several people attested to that. Well, it seemed to me it was down to them, to the town – the police or someone.’

  ‘When Flora Scott disappeared, was there any talk about the Hardcastles’ possibly being behind it?’

  She frowned. ‘Well, I expect so. But the Hardcastles are such an unassuming couple. I could not begin to imagine they might have been lying in wait for an opportunity to harm the Scotts. That’s diabolical, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes, but then people can be diabolical.’

  ‘Well, there’s the other child. A son. Elsie wasn’t the one and only.’

  So the one wouldn’t be missed so much? Parents didn’t divvy up their love. Melrose thought they loved each of their children completely. If one died it was not a half of the whole who died; it was the whole. He had no experience in this, but he imagined that’s how it was. He wondered if Hermione had children – probably not.

  ‘Then who might have done it? I imagine you asked yourself this.’

  Hermione gave this what she had of her share of serious thought. ‘A stranger, it must have been. Although I hate to even think it – a pedophile, perhaps? Or a thwarted woman, one who couldn’t have children. Or what about the murdered woman?’

  Surprised, Melrose looked up. ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘I don’t know, perhaps just because the two seem related.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Oh, my goodness. We’ve been sitting here over an hour. I really must be getting on home.’

  Melrose signaled the proprietress again. ‘Shall I drop you off? I’d be glad to.’

  ‘Thanks, but I have my little Morris Minor. You should see it. They’re delightful cars.’

  People were always so proud of their Morris Minors, they always seemed to want to introduce them to whomever they were talking to. ‘I’ve enjoyed this discussion very much,’ said Melrose.

  ‘I, too. And thank you for the tea.’

  The proprietress was doing double time at the cash register (no computers here!), and Melrose wondered if she was also cook and cleaner-up.

  They thanked each other again and walked off to their separate car parks.

  20

  The ground floor of Angel Gate was a blaze of light. As he got out of his car, Melrose wondered if Declan Scott was throwing a party.

  He had taken the pebble path around the side of the house and was on his way to the cottage when Lulu appeared.

  ‘Mr. Scott wants me to tell you you’re to go in.’ She hooked her thumb over her shoulder toward ‘in.’

  ‘Any room in particular? Or am I just to wander round the dining room like Banquo’s ghost?’

  Lulu, literal to a fault, considered this question. She pushed her glasses up on her nose and appeared to be deciding upon the answer. ‘I guess the library. That’s where the others are. Who’s Banquo? Did he really have a ghost or are you making it up?’

  ‘Mr. B
was a king murdered by Macbeth.’ No. ‘Macduff?’ No. Good lord, had he even forgotten the plot of Macbeth? ‘Well, one of the Macs, anyway. And he came back to haunt–whoever. Shakespeare is responsible yet again for traitorous doings and bloody revenge.’

  ‘Were there a lot of them?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A lot of Macs?’

  ‘You bet there were. Macs all over the place. Never mind. It’s only a story.’ He turned and started for the house.

  ‘Flora wasn’t,’ said Lulu, as if calling him back to storyland.

  Surprised, Melrose quickly turned to her. ‘You mean Flora wasn’t just a story?’

  Lulu nodded. ‘She really got stolen.’

  ‘Did you know her. well, then?’ He thought they might have been much the same age.

  She nodded. ‘We used to play. Nobody knows where she went. Or who took her.’

  Melrose detected in this, not surprisingly, some anxiety.

  ‘But I know,’ said Lulu. She had a piece of string round her finger, which she wound and unwound.

  He stared at her. ‘You do? Who, then?’

  ‘The Child Thief.’

  Here was a new wrinkle, a new record in childhood imagination. ‘Is that a or the Child Thief?’ Now that was a comforting question! ‘I mean, is there just one, or are there several?’ Another brilliant question. Why wasn’t Jury here? Where was the man when you needed him? Melrose felt at a loss, although he hated to admit it.

  But he wasn’t confusing Lulu; she remained firm in her belief.

  ‘Only one. There’s just the one Child Thief.’

  ‘Oh. Well, uh, what does he look like?’

  ‘Like anybody. Like you.’

  ‘Me? I assure you, I’m not the Child Thief. It wouldn’t occur to me to steal a child!’

  ‘That’s just what he’d say.’

  She was standing with her feet rolled in, a favorite child posture.

  ‘You don’t seriously think it’s me, do you?’

  ‘No.’

  That was a relief.

  ‘You wouldn’t know how,’ she added. ‘All I’m saying is he could be anyone. He could be a lady, too.’

  ‘Look, why do you think Flora was taken by this person?’ The whole plot was making Melrose nervous.

  Lulu looked off into the distance. ‘Because he’s a Child Thief. If you were him, isn’t that what you’d do?’

  ‘But this is going around in circles!’ He came at it from another direction. ‘Did you tell the police this?’ Macalvie would be delighted to hear this theory promulgated.

  She shrugged. ‘They never asked.’

  ‘Oddly enough, I don’t expect they would.’

  Head bent, Lulu was tying knots in the string. ‘I could’ve told them.’ She spun the string in the air and round her finger.

  ‘Told them what?’

  ‘Where he lives.’

  Melrose sighed. He would be stopping on this path all night listening to her spin out this fantasy in a pattern as twisty as the string. ‘Just as long as he doesn’t take up residence in my cottage, I don’t care.’

  She was winding the string again. ‘He lives in different places. Sometimes in London, and sometimes around here, and other times in’ – she was thinking – ‘Scotland. And sometimes in –’

  ‘I’m sorry I can’t follow this Child Thief on his rambles, but I must go into the house now if Mr. Scott is expecting me. So let’s walk. I imagine your aunt is waiting for you in the kitchen, isn’t she?’

  That went unanswered, but Lulu did trudge along toward the house. She said, ‘You better be careful.’

  ‘Careful of what?’

  ‘Of who, you mean.’

  It sounded as if her mind was hosting the Salem witch hunts.

  ‘I don’t mean anything. You’re the one with all the ideas.’ As if he had not spoken, she said, ‘There’s a lady in there you don’t know.’ Now she was bouncing what looked like a button on her hand.

  ‘What lady?’

  Lulu gave him a look reserved for fools and little children.

  ‘The one in there –’

  Her pointed finger reminded Melrose of Marley’s ghost.

  ‘– with Mr. Scott. Her name’s Patricia.’

  ‘You’re entirely too familiar with the goings-on around here. Do you spy and listen at doors and look through keyholes?’ She ignored that as they walked along to the patio. He said, ‘Thank you very much for giving me the message. I’ve enjoyed our little talk. Are you going to the kitchen?’

  She nodded and ran off in that general direction.

  Peculiar child. Well, he was certainly out of his depth with her.

  He walked through the octagon room to the library.

  This, thought Melrose, is more like it! When Declan Scott introduced him to Patricia Quint, Melrose made a swift comparison between Ms. Quint and Hermione Hobbs. Not only was Patricia Quint in the library, with a drink in her hand, but so was Marc Warburton, with a drink in his.

  Melrose wondered – in a shamelessly chauvinistic turn of mind – if she belonged to Declan or Marcus. Or, indeed, some husband somewhere. It was hard to believe that a woman who looked like Patricia Quint did not have some man hovering in the background, if not the foreground, here in front of the fireplace.

  The slim white hand not holding a drink reached perfectly straight out and shook Melrose’s. ‘I’ve never known an expert on turf and enameled mead. When you’re finished here, perhaps you could come to me?’

  Melrose made a short bow. ‘A pleasure. What problems do you have?’

  Patricia laughed. ‘I can’t grow anything.’

  ‘That does present an obstacle.’

  Pat Quint, in her cream-colored suit, looked as if she’d come straight from the mint. She looked moneyed, true, but it was her clarity – of skin, of eyes – and precision – the perfectly fitted suit, the perfectly cut hair – that gave her this newly minted look. The enameled lips, the diffuse blush – all of this might have looked ‘turned-out’ in an artificial way. And though artifice was evident in each lash and silky eyebrow, still she did not look artificial. It was strange, he thought, that she managed to avoid it.

  Marc Warburton was smiling (though not heartily) at this talk of Melrose’s speciality, and added, ‘I’m not sure there’s enough in turf to take up much of one’s time, though, is there?’

  ‘Well, not until you’re dead, no,’ said Melrose.

  They all liked that, especially Pat Quint.

  But Warburton didn’t want to let go of it. ‘You went into St. Austell for some sort of fertilizer? I can’t imagine you’d find anything you couldn’t get at Macmillan’s own nurseries.’

  ‘Perhaps. Much of the mixture is straightforward enough, but there are one or two things I mix with it that only the place in St. Austell carries.’

  Warburton frowned. ‘Really? What’s that?’

  Melrose smiled. ‘Even in fertilizer we have our secrets. Can’t expect me to give them all up, can you?’

  ‘Dirt isn’t always merely dirt, right?’ said Pat Quint, with a laugh.

  But Marc was back, objecting again, this time to Declan. ‘I could probably have done this for you, Declan, if you’d told me you wanted it.’

  ‘It came about accidentally, Marc. When I was talking to this Scotland Yard – well, you met him. Mr. Plant here is a friend of his.’

  Melrose objected. ‘An acquaintance, not a friend. I was doing a job near Northampton, an Italian water garden sort of thing (he was thinking of Watermeadows, which really was Italianate, and with a sad history). Superintendent Jury was conducting an investigation -’

  ‘But why’s he here?’ asked Pat with some alarm.

  Melrose thought that should be obvious.

  It was. She went on, ‘I mean, this murder’s a job for the Devon and Cornwall police to sort, isn’t it?’

  ‘Apparently not,’ said Declan. ‘Why? Do you object to Scotland Yard on your doorstep ?’

  ‘N
ot my doorstep.’

  He shrugged. ‘Our doorstep, I mean. Our comer of Cornwall.’

  ‘I don’t object. Scotland Yard just suggests the case is more dramatic.’

  Declan said, again in that somewhat instructive tone masked by a smile, ‘I’d say a body found on my grounds is pretty dramatic, Pat, with or without Scotland Yard.’

  ‘It must be painful for you; it must seem like living it all over again. I mean, Flor –’

  ‘I know what you mean, Pat.’

  As if the man could forget, thought Melrose.

  Patricia Quint recovered a little ground by saying, ‘I’m sorry. At times I can be rather thick.’

  Declan smiled. ‘I know.’

  Warburton said, ‘What have the police found out? Anything new ?’

  ‘Don’t know. The police don’t confide in me.’ There were times he wished that was true.

  Patricia said to Declan, ‘It’s as if someone had a vendetta against you.’

  ‘I didn’t know the woman,’ Declan said. ‘Why would the killer relate her to me?’

  ‘Ah, well, that’s the thing, isn’t it?’

  ‘Or not,’ Declan answered.

  ‘Speaking of gardens,’ said Melrose, trying to make up for his ‘footprint’ argument earlier, ‘I find your design of this one quite lovely, Mr. Warburton.’

  Marc’s eyes widened, as if surprised to hear a compliment from Plant.

  ‘Thanks. But most of the credit goes to the Macmillans.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s the architecture that starts it on the right path.’ Melrose shifted the subject. ‘Have you lived here long, Miss Quint?’

  ‘Pat, please. All my life, really. I don’t live here year-round, though; I go up to London quite often. I’ve got a place in Knightsbridge. Pont Street.’

  Pont Street was not a cheap address, but then Pat Quint was not a cheap person. Consider the Upper Sloane Street clothes - Ferragamo, Armani, Max Mara, one of those. ‘And your house here?’

  ‘Halfway between here and Mevagissey.’

  Mevagissey. A place Melrose had barely heard of before was now turning up everywhere, it seemed. He would have liked to hear more about the fate of Elsie Hardcastle, but that would have to wait.