As she dug deeper in the marmalade jar for a spoonful to put on her scone, Agatha repeated, “I said, you don’t know anybody in Lincolnshire.”
Melrose sighed. She was always doing that—repeating things in the exact words as if not one word dare be ignored. She was so infinitely ignorable. “I want to see the fens, the tulips.” He turned a page and found a picture of a massive chandelier that could have graced Versailles.
“In Lincolnshire? Tulips?”
“Lincolnshire, at least South Lincolnshire, is famous for its tulips and other flowers. Acres and acres of them, miles of them.”
“There won’t be tulips in February.”
“No, but the fens will be marvelous this time of year. Bleak and dark. . . . ”
“It sounds off-putting to me. You do have queer tastes.” The spoon clattered round in the jar. Ruthven had taken the precaution of bringing the entire jar of Chivers on the tea tray because she was always complaining she hadn’t enough. “Well, it’s a place I’ve absolutely no desire to see.”
Thank you, God. Melrose looked heavenward. He had been uncharacteristically precipitate in even telling her where he was going. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t. But he’d simply wanted to change the subject from Ada Crisp and the Jack Russell terrier. He looked at his aunt’s foot—ankle, rather—strapped up with tape. It rested on a needlepoint footstool.
She continued. “I can’t leave now, anyway. Too busy with my solicitors.”
A battery of them? wondered Melrose. How many were prepared to mount a case against a terrier? “For what barrister do your solicitors act as brief, then?” He closed Helluva Deal! and crossed his legs. He might be able to squeeze a moiety of amusement out of this solicitor-thing, after all.
“Really, Melrose. I hardly think it will come to trial. Theo agrees with me.”
Melrose winced. If she invoked the name of Theo Wrenn Browne once more he’d have to call for the gin. “You’ve always loathed Browne. Why now is he suddenly crushed to your bosom?”
She waved this objection away. “We had our differences, yes—”
“Yes. That he was a ‘dedicated jackarse’ and you were ‘a prying old windbag.’ Those were your differences.”
“You’re making it up, as usual.” She brushed scone-dust from her lap. “At any rate, Theo has advised an out-of-court settlement.”
For the first time, Melrose was actually a little anxious for the fate of Ada Crisp. If that asp, Theo Wrenn Browne, was in on it, God knows where it would all lead. “And just what would that settlement consist of? Ada Crisp has no money. She would have to declare bankruptcy.”
“There’s her shop—”
“Aha! So that’s it! One way or another, Mr. Browne is going to get her out of that shop!”
She split another scone. “Don’t be ridiculous Melrose. Theo is merely a disinterested observer—”
“The only place where Theo Wrenn Browne would have been a ‘disinterested observer’ is at Tiny Tim’s Christmas party. Or the sinking of the Lusitania. What he wants, has always wanted, is to get her out so he can expand his bookshop. Don’t tell me he hasn’t got anything riding on it.” Melrose snapped open his book again and again closed it. He thought for a moment, then said, “Of course, you know, it just might go to trial”—if the magistrates were total nitwits—“it being, perhaps, a precedent-setting case.” He smiled. “And if you lose, well, you’d have to pay costs. I hope you’re prepared. Sounds expensive to me.” He turned a page.
“Lose? Lose?” Agatha sat back, so shocked she ignored the scone she’d marmaladed up. “I assumed you were on my side in this.”
“I’m on the side of Truth,” he said, pompously. “And Justice.” More pompously.
“Well, of course, that’s what my side is!” She munched her scone.
“Agatha, hasn’t your solicitor asked you how your foot happened to get in that pot in the first place?” Melrose had to exercise a good deal of self-control to keep from laughing himself sick.
“Naturally.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Well?”
“What do you mean? You saw what happened. You were directly across the street, going in the Jack and Hammer, where, I might add, you spend entirely too much time—”
“What I saw was you landing a helluva kick”—he was picking up the Nuttings’ bouncy language—“in the dog’s side. That’s what I saw.”
“You saw me fall down—” She held out her arm, pointed a stubby finger at him. “So you want to blame the entire episode on me!”
Melrose held up his hands, palms outward. “Oh, far be it from me to do that. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Ada Crisp might not take that view of things. Ada might take umbrage at your smashing up her property.”
“I couldn’t get my foot out. What was I to do? Walk around the rest of my life with my foot in a chamber pot?”
Melrose toyed with this image for a moment. Then he retrieved his book from the Sheraton table beside his chair and said, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“For lord’s sake,” she said scraping the last of the marmalade from the jar, “it was nothing but an old chamber pot!”
“You hope.” The book had fallen open to the middle section of illustrations. Here was the Meissen bowl the Spiker sisters of Twinjump had been setting on the floor for their mongrel dog to eat from and even after learning its value continued to put to that service. (“Ain’t nothin’ too good for our Alfie.”) Melrose felt like applauding the Spiker sisters. “You know, Trueblood had a look at that pot. Or the pieces, I should say. Said it reminded him of the Meissen bowl in his shop.”
She sputtered. “Trueblood . . . he’s a degenerate coxcomb!”
“Perhaps. But he’s a degenerate coxcomb of an antiques expert, and that’s something to think about when the prosecution gets going. Trueblood would make an excellent witness.” His smile across the four feet of Kirman carpet (Dribble’s: £2,000) was slight and unsympathetic. He was warming to the subject of Ardry vs. Crisp now. He reflected on the time that Richard Jury had scared the hell out of Theo Wrenn Browne when Browne had threatened Ada Crisp with a lawsuit years ago. Claimed the stuff she set on the walk outside her door was a hazard to life and limb. An obstruction of traffic. Ye gods, for years passersby had stepped gingerly round needlepoint footstools, ancient hobby horses—and, of course, the odd bins of china cups and plates—and never minded. It was just Ada’s lot. Jury had scared Browne by telling him stories of the sad ends of landlords who had tried to evict sitting tenants. He had done it with a copy of Bleak House under his arm.
“Well?” said Agatha, holding a rock cake aloft.
Melrose raised his eyebrows. “ ‘Well’ what?”
“What did he say? Trueblood?”
Despite her disdain of the man, to ignore his opinion in this case would prove costly. Melrose stared at a handsome hunt table he’d always liked. (Dribble’s: perhaps £500?) and said, “Can’t remember. Sorry.”
He didn’t want to put words in Trueblood’s mouth. Trueblood was too good at doing that himself. And he knew Trueblood would go along with this happily. He’d been looking for a few new windmills to tilt at.
Having stripped the jar clean of its thick-cut marmalade and the china plate of its scones, Agatha sat back and made little adjustments to her person. Fiddled with the collar of her blouse, rearranged a chiffon scarf, rubbed at the semiprecious center of a ring.
Melrose watched her as she did this.
Brooch, scarf, ring. Army and Navy Stores: ten pounds, twenty pence. At most.
Part II
The Cold Ladies
9
He had got off the A17 on to one of the godforsaken B roads that was scarcely wider than a wrinkle on the face of the fens. It must have happened back there just beyond Market Deeping, where he’d taken the wrong road out and had wound up going round and round the tiny village of Cowbit. In his transit, he’d passed by a freshly painted cottage with the words written across its lintel in neat, black cursive: Th
e Red Last. He’d stopped, idled there in his car for some moments, wondering what it meant. Probably been a pub once. Queer name. The Red Last.
Finally, a few more turnings took him back to the A17. What he saw before and around him was fen country, stretching south and east into Cambridgeshire and the Black Fens. The ground was stiff with ice on either side of the road and the land was crisscrossed by canals and drainage ditches. Since the Lincolnshire fens were sometimes referred to as “Little Holland,” Melrose supposed that shortly these acres of cold brown fields would be a quilt of color. It must be glorious in the early spring with the bright reds, deep purples, yellows, shimmering in the sunlight across fields that looked like stained-glass windows.
Here was a directional sign, thank heavens: the way to Spalding was clear and simple. After seeing how fast Trueblood’s van would go—eighty mph, not bad—he slowly put on the brakes because the welcome sign of a pub had just flown past an eighth of a mile back. He made a U-turn and drove back; he knew beforehand that directions would be needed to Fengate, and who better to supply them than a local pub. Having reached the car park, Melrose folded and pocketed his map. Crunching past the sign of the Case Has Altered, he once again ran over the details about the pieces Max Owen wanted valued. Melrose was also mindful of the fact that Owen would want them authenticated, would want to know their provenance.
As he did this his spirits flagged. But the promise of conviviality inside the pub—customers with their pints and bottles, the low hum of conversation, the pleasant bartender, the long mahogany bar—that perked him right up. Once inside, though, he found the conversation of the regulars wound down, then stopped. Why did people clam up this way? They clammed up because watching a stranger, any stranger, in their midst was far more interesting than the same old crack.
The bar was blue with smoke, the effluvia of many hours of cigarettes. He took his pint of Old Peculier and wandered over to a dartboard whose riddled concentric rings testified to its popularity. Melrose wondered if he was still any good at the game; he had been once, at age fifteen or sixteen. Quite the champ, actually. Or did he only imagine that? Was that another element in his fictional past? He bent his head and looked down at the thin layer of foam in his glass. The malaise that overcame him whenever he thought of those far-off days settled again. He felt sleepy, but he knew that too was a protective layer.
He drank his beer and thought of his approach to the Owens. Trueblood had talked him into delivering this table à la Bourgogne as even further window dressing. He looked down at his clothes. He had decided to look country and wore an out-at-elbow wool sweater and his Barbour coat. He thought this would be the costume of the true aesthete, not a suit with a waistcoat. And he also wore a cap much like that group of flat-caps up there at the bar having their friendly argument. Were they old fenmen? Spin-offs from the ones in the sixteenth century who had raised such a riot over attempts to drain the area?
He decided it would be a good idea to join the group at the bar and stand a round. That had always proved an efficient icebreaker. Though given a double murder in the area, there shouldn’t be too much ice to break. He mentioned to the bartender to stand everyone a drink and said to the knot of rather rough-looking men and one woman, “Afternoon, gentlemen.” Inclining his head, he added, “Ladies.”
They murmured greetings, nodded.
“You be Londoner?” asked one of them, as a fresh drink was set before him.
“Good God, no!” He hoped he got it across, his detestation of London and Londoners. “I’m from Northants.” That was a good solid part of the country—hardly worth envying a chap from Northamptonshire. He noticed, though, that their looks were a trifle severe and suspicious. These expressions relaxed into conviviality when the bartender set down the rest of the drinks.
The woman who wore a hat with plastic berries round the brim pulled down over her dishwater hair asked, “You be goin’ to Spalding, then?”
“Not quite. A little village called Algarkirk.” He was glad he had real business here, and didn’t have to fabricate his destination. Like most prevaricators, Melrose was sure his country getup and affable beer-buying maneuver were as transparent as glass. “Got a delivery to make to a place called Fengate. Furniture. It’s out there”—he nodded in the direction of the car park—“in my van.” He wanted to get it across that he worked for a living hauling things about. But as the smoke from their several cigarettes curled upward to form a restive cloud below the ceiling, he found his announcement did nothing to stir them up.
“You be right on top o’ it, then. This here’s Algarkirk.”
Why weren’t they fascinated that Melrose was going right to the scene of the crime? Why weren’t they telling him about their famous murder? Melrose raised his glass. “Cheers!”
There was more desultory conversation about the weather and the coming flower parade and the price of feed. Melrose decided to bring up the house he had seen near Cowbit. He told them about the name. “ ‘The Red Last.’ Odd that, isn’t it? Was it once a pub, d’you think?”
One of the younger men, Malcolm by name, said, “Well, it’s to do with shoes, ihn’t?”
The others nodded. One said, “Aye, still, funny name for a pub. I ain’t never heard of it . . . you, Ian?” He turned to the other younger man. He and Malcolm seemed to be mates. Ian shook his head.
“It’s that thing they use,” said Malcolm, proud of being the one whose intelligence matched that of the stranger, “you know, that wood thing that’s the shape o’ yer foot.”
Some jocularity here about the various feet in attendance, until the one named Ian, probably tired of his friend’s getting the attention, said, “Fengate House you’re looking for? Ah, that be the place where that murder happened.”
About time, thought Melrose, turning to the woman in the berry hat. “Murder?” he asked, wonderingly.
The woman put her hands around her throat and made ghoulish choking noises. “Found only wearin’ a wrapper out on the fen.” She lowered her voice. “Interfered with, they say.”
One of the men, disgusted with the misreporting, said, “Warn’t interfered with and warn’t wearin’ no wrapper, neither. They was one shot and one strangled, ’er and Dorcas.”
“Good lord,” said Melrose. “You mean you’ve had two murders here?”
They all nodded, pleased as punch that here was a beer-buying stranger they might be able to keep going until afternoon closing. “Aye, they was both of them from Fengate. There was poor Dorcas, and she used to work here too, am I not right, Dave?” One of the men addressed the bartender, who was probably the owner also. He smiled, nodded, went down the bar to fill another order. The old man picked up the account. “One was some woman who was guest there, she be the first to die—” Ah, the relish with which he said it! “Found her shot dead!”
The rest of them nodded solemnly.
“An’ Dorcas, poor gurhl,” said the woman, though it didn’t sound like sorrow she was expressing. “Only twenty, was Dorcas. Whyever would someone want to kill poor Dorcas? Harmless, she was.”
Fruitlessly, they argued over Dorcas’s age. They each seemed to have a favorite number from nineteen to twenty-eight, until Dave came down the bar to join the talk and put paid to this disagreement by telling them Dorcas was twenty-two. They all deferred instantly to his age-assessment; Dave clearly had the respect of all of them on any subject from malt to murder.
When Melrose realized that he actually knew more about these deaths than the locals, he smiled and said he’d have to be on his way (but not forgetting to signal for one last round for his new friends). Then he asked Dave for directions to Fengate House, afraid if he asked the regulars it would start another argument.
Dave called across the room to a man who was passing the time leveling darts at the dartboard, “Jack! Someone here wants to know how to get to Fengate.”
Melrose watched the tall man named Jack approach. When he passed the table where he’d apparently been sitting
, he picked up the glass he’d left and drank the rest of it off. “You’re nearly on top of it, it’s just the other side of Algarkirk.” He nodded his head in a westerly direction “Go on for under a mile and you’re there.”
“You’re sure? I mean, that it’s that easy? I’m poor on directions.”
Jack laughed. “I should be sure. I live there. On the other side of Windy Fen out there. Here, I’ll just draw it.” He plucked a pencil stub from his pocket, grabbed a paper napkin from a holder, and in a flat fifteen seconds drew a road complete with trees and roundabout and a tiny house at the end, pillars and all. Then he resumed drinking and when the glass was nearly empty, dangled it in his long fingers.
Elegant fingers, thought Melrose, wondering if Price might be an artist or a pianist.
“You’ve some business at Fengate, do you?” His tone wasn’t especially curious.
“I have, yes. A delivery for the Owens. Antique table à la Bourgogne.” Melrose was, at this point, rather enjoying rolling that off his tongue.
“Never prove it by me; I’m thick as two planks when it comes to Max’s stuff.” He held out his hand, smiled at Melrose. “I’m Jack Price, incidentally.”
Melrose extended his own hand. “Melrose Plant.”
Price shook his hand, asked, “You a dealer, then? Or simply a transporter?”
“Neither. Occasionally, I’m called in to appraise a piece.” That didn’t sound quite right; he had made it appear that his might be the last word. He cleared his throat, only too conscious of not being even the first word in determining value. “What I mean is—I’m not a professional, not at all. I have an amateur’s interest in these things.”
“What is it you’ve brought, again?”
“A table à la Bourgogne. Quite rare.” He thought too late he should not be editorializing. However, if the table weren’t rare, he imagined his error would be safe with Jack Price, whose interest in it was no more than polite.
“Sounds impressive. Sounds like something Max would kill for.”
The Case Has Altered Page 8