The Case Has Altered

by Martha Grimes

  Trevor Sly served him his drink and then took down the pricey whiskey, pouring out another inch. He collected another tenner from Melrose, recoiled himself on the stool, and cast his eye ceilingward, speculating on the truth of what Melrose had said. “I suppose you could say that, um.”

  Melrose laughed, artificially. “Actually, Watermeadows is my neighbor. It’s next to Ardry End, you know.” If next to could sensibly describe two houses with so much land between they were a good half mile apart. “So Miss Fludd—the Fludds—are by way of being my neighbor. I haven’t met all of them, though. Only her. And she seems a nice enough person. Wouldn’t you say?”

  “Oh, indeed, Mr. Plant, indeed. Quite a nice person.”

  Silence fell like lead.

  Melrose racked his brain for some way of getting Sly to talk. He ought not to have bought him that second whiskey so soon. Yet, Melrose doubted Sly was keeping mum deliberately. The best explanation was the man didn’t know anything. He should have brought Trueblood along. Trueblood would have wrung it out of him. The trouble was, Trueblood was so all fired up with the Law these days—more strictly speaking, with his interpretation of same—that it was hard to get his attention about anything.

  The Fludds (however many of them there were) had turned out to be cousins of Lady Summerston, who owned Watermeadows but hadn’t been in residence for some years. Miss Fludd was the only Fludd he’d met. He had been so smitten he’d even forgotten to find out her first name.

  “It’s a shame,” said Melrose, “that Miss Fludd has that difficulty with her leg.”

  “Sad, init? She wears a brace.”

  As if Melrose were blind. “I can see that. I wonder how it happened.”

  “Yes. I wonder myself.”

  “Can’t be polio. I mean, polio was stamped out ages ago. Now, if we were all living back four decades ago, why, polio’s the first thing I’d think of.”

  Sly’s mouth formed in a little moue. “And you’d be right, sir, I expect. Yes, I do expect you’d be right.”

  Tired of this mirror-talk, Melrose stopped speculating and stared at the sediment in his glass. Steel shavings, probably. And he’d now drunk two of them. That’s what being smitten will do to a fellow. He sighed. What disturbed him was that he couldn’t work out why he was smitten. She was pretty, but no prettier than, say, Polly Praed. Not as pretty as Ellen Taylor. And not a patch on Vivian. Or Jenny Kennington—

  Oh, God. He should have been putting all of these frivolous thoughts to one side and thinking about Jenny. Poor Jenny! Melrose drew from his jacket pocket the little spiral notebook he’d taken to carrying (which looked like the one Jury used) and opened it.

  “Headache, Mr. Plant?”

  “What? Oh, no. Mr. Sly, if you don’t mind, I shall take my drink to one of the tables and try to work on something I’ve been thinking about. I don’t mean to be rude—”

  Trevor Sly flapped a long-fingered hand at him and said, “Not at all, not at all. You just go right on.” He picked up the plate of untasted bar snacks. “I’ll just pop these in the microwave for a few seconds to reheat ’em.”

  Melrose took his notebook over to one of the tables in the shadows—the Blue Parrot being drenched in them—and thumbed backward through the few notes he’d made. Table à la Bourgogne. Ispahan. Verna Dunn. More items on his list. J. Price. Notes on J. Price. He flicked back and forth, surprised the notebook was nearly full. The Red Last. That house in Cow-bit with the odd name . . .

  “Hullo.”

  His head snapped up. His mouth dropped open. And his cracked voice echoed the greeting as he started to rise from his chair.

  “Oh, please don’t let me disturb you. He”—her head made a gesture toward Trevor Sly—“told me I’d better not bother you, that you were trying to concentrate, that you were working on a case,” said Miss Fludd.

  Melrose smiled but when he looked in Sly’s direction his thoughts were murderous.

  “—but I just wanted to say ‘hello’ and hope maybe we might have another talk sometime.”

  “This time. I mean, uh, right now. Please have a seat. Sit down.”

  If she noticed this odd mode of address, combined pleas and commands, she gave no sign. How in the name of God could he have missed seeing or at least hearing her come in? The leg brace she wore dragged against the floor planks quite audibly. He was beside her, pulling out a chair, taking her drink and setting it gently on the table as if it, as well as she, might break if he wasn’t careful. She was wearing the same dark coat, a bit short in the sleeve, barely covering the wrist bone. Her hair this time was drawn back loosely and held with a narrow band of black ribbon into which a few blossoms had been shoved. Cornflowers and daisies.

  He sat down. “I like your hair,” he blurted.

  She reached back to touch the flowers. “I thought, well, it’s nearly April, and I should do something.” Then she pulled a cornflower from the hair-bouquet, reached across the table, and pulled the stem through the buttonhole of his jacket. This gesture appeared to her to be completely natural, expected. “That’s a beautiful jacket. It’s some sort of silk wool, isn’t it?”

  Melrose pulled back the side as if he’d find a label with the name of the owner or the blend of the material there. He shrugged. “Don’t know.”

  “It is. I know material. That’s of a very high quality.”

  “It is?”

  She nodded and drank her beer. He hoped it wasn’t Cairo Flame.

  She said, “I’ve been hoping you’d come back. I really enjoyed our talk. I don’t often get an opportunity to really talk—”

  “Beggin’ your pardon, both of your pardons—” Trevor Sly slumped over them washing his hands and smiling his quarter-moon smile. “But I see you don’t have a drink, Mr. Plant, and you, miss, you’ve nearly finished yours—”

  “Two more!” barked Melrose. Damn the man. “Did you come here from London?”

  “Yes. I was living in London, in Limehouse. When Aunt Nora offered Watermeadows for the year, I loved the idea. Space to roam around in, country air, all that.”

  “ ‘Aunt Nora?’ ”

  “Lady Summerston. Eleanor. She’s my great-aunt. Well, by marriage.”

  Suddenly, Melrose sat back, as shocked as if Sly had thrown the beer in his face that he was now setting on the table. Then he walked off. Slithered, more like. “But then you must be some relation of—” Melrose really didn’t want to say Hannah Lean. It had all been simply too sad. For Jury, not for him. He looked at his glass, moved it in damp circles.

  Waiting for him to finish, she leaned toward him slightly. “Related to who—?” It was her turn to recognize the significance that Watermeadows would have to the people who lived around here. The who . . . ended on a long indrawn breath. “Ah. Hannah. That’s who you mean isn’t it? Hannah Lean? Aunt Nora’s granddaughter.” Sadly, she shook her head.

  Melrose saw that she too was studying her drink, or whatever was deep and beyond it.

  “I heard . . . some story . . . about her husband. I never knew him.” She looked expectantly at Melrose, as if he might be able to tell her the story.

  Which he did. That part she didn’t already know.

  “How awful.”

  They drank their drinks and looked in different directions at indifferent space. Her view would have been the barren land beyond the window; his was the poster of the film Lawrence of Arabia. And beside it A Passage to India. It had been four or five years, but he still felt awful when he thought about Hannah Lean. And Jury.

  “Do you like it? Watermeadows, I mean.” He wondered how she felt about living at the site of such a tragedy. He expected the question to elicit an immediate response. Instead, she sat silently looking at her glass of bitter. For a long time, she did this. Long enough for Melrose to become a little uncomfortable in the silence. He hoped he wasn’t prey to the anxiety occasioned by silence, as so many were, and therefore filled the air with empty talk.

  Yet she seemed quite unaware
of this, when she finally said, “I don’t know. It’s certainly beautiful, the most beautiful place I think I’ve seen. Those gardens and that lake. The willow trees, the statuary. It’s Italianate, I think, a lot of it. I’m not much good at gardening—” She patted the brace just below her knee. “—it’s all of that kneeling, that getting up and down, but I am good at pruning. I take care of the trellises and some of the rosebushes.

  “I’ve lived all of my life in London, with my uncle. We have this narrow little house in Limehouse. A ‘mean’ little house, some would say. ‘Mean,’ that is, before the gentrification of Limehouse when ‘mean’ became ‘chic.’ The old moldy warehouses, now luxury flats. My uncle could have sold his house for an astonishing price. He used to laugh about it. He likes to count the foreign cars. The ‘gin and Jag set’ he calls the gentrifiers.” She laughed. “Anyway, he wasn’t about to sell up, and then Aunt Nora offered us Watermeadows. Uncle Ned jumped at it, but I think it was for me, not for him. He wanted to get me out of London. Fresh air and flowers.”

  She leaned forward, cupped her chin in her hands. “I’m glad he only rented it, though. I love that London house. There’s nothing at all to distinguish it from a million other terraced houses, but I love it. It has an attic you have to have the skills of a rock climber to get up to. It’s got these mingy little stairs. But there’s a window up there looks right out over the Thames. The room’s very dark and the window’s round; it reminds me of a camera obscura, for it seems more like a screen than a window, and the panorama more like something viewed through a periscope or a mirror-reflection. It’s so dark my eyes never really adjust to the light. Through that window I could see the Isle of Dogs. People complain about how things have been ruined by all of this new development. But the outlines are still there, the footprints.” Abruptly, she stopped speaking, and then said, “I don’t know what this means.” But she seemed to be questioning herself, rather than Melrose.

  She went on: “What I saw out of the attic window looked more like a representation of the Thames—a moving picture, a series of snapshots—than it did the Thames itself. As if I could remain aloof from reality.” She shrugged. “I don’t know. Yes, I like Watermeadows, but I expect nothing’s quite as good as the house you left behind. Don’t you feel that way about Ardry End?”

  For some reason, Melrose was surprised she knew the name. “Yes, I expect so. You know we’re neighbors?”

  “Yes. That beautiful manor house. I’m sure I’ve walked on your land. It’s hard to tell where one leaves off and—”

  “Be careful!” Melrose threw up his hands in mock horror. “Wear those neon stripes that joggers do and keep a good lookout. I have a grounds-keeper. At least that’s what Momaday calls himself. He thinks himself a dab hand at shooting. Walks around with a shotgun broken—I hope—over his arm. Occasionally, I hear shots. Distant shots. I worry.”

  She laughed. “I’ll watch out for him. Do you walk a lot, too?”

  “Absolutely.” Melrose was prompt with his lie. Which he modified a little with a bit of truth. “To the Jack and Hammer, that’s a pleasant walk.” It wasn’t really; it was boring. He added, “For my daily saturnalia. Actually, I lead a comparatively quiet and generally worthless life.”

  “How pleasant. But what’s this investigation Trevor Sly says you’re doing? You can’t be a detective, can you?”

  “Do not put too much credence in anything Mr. Sly tells you. No, I’m not a detective. That’s a friend of mine, name of Jury, who’s the detective. He’s with New Scotland Yard. A superintendent.”

  “Really! And does he come here, to Northampton?”

  “Watermeadows is really in Long Piddleton. Yes, he comes here. He was here on the Simon Lean business. And years ago, when we had a string of murders. It all started with a pub called Man with a Load of Mischief.”

  “I’ve seen it. It sits up on that hill overlooking the village. But it’s closed.”

  Melrose told her that story. She didn’t move; she barely breathed. Riveted. She said, “He sounds brilliant.” She was speaking of Richard Jury.

  “Oh, he is—” Melrose began, enthusiastically. Then thought, Hold it! Let’s not shift what little limelight there is! He sucked in breath, thinking, and said, “—at least he was. That sort of life takes its toll. It ages one pretty early on, I think.” He took out his cigarettes. “You can’t keep your mind working at fever pitch and not pay the price. And going at the pace Jury goes at, well, you begin to look pretty haggard, too.”

  “I saw his picture.”

  The chair Melrose had been rocking back on two legs clumped down. “Where? When?”

  “Telegraph. I just now remembered as you were talking. He didn’t look at all haggard to me. He looked quite handsome.”

  “Jury’s very photogenic. But what was it about?” Jury wasn’t the primary—hell, he wasn’t even the secondary investigating officer in the Lincolnshire business. For him, it was all unofficial.

  She squinted, trying to recollect. “It was . . . something about a Soho restaurateur. But I expect you know about it.”

  Melrose hadn’t a clue. Why the devil was Jury leading this double life, when he, Melrose, sat around in pubs, un-impressing people? “Oh, something of it. Not much. But I can tell you this—” He leaned forward across the table, pushing the camel matchbook holder to one side. “Did you read anything about the double-murder in Lincolnshire? Near Spalding?”

  “Oh. Yes. The woman was an actress, or something. And the other was a servant, wasn’t she? You had something to do with that?”

  It had been in all of the papers; he was not divulging any information that had not been made public, except for his own role as “appraiser.” He told her the story, and, as he did so, drew a small picture, a diagram of house and pub on a page of his notebook. He continued on another page with the location of the Wash, trying to describe to her the events of that night.

  She went silent for some moments, her head leaning on her hand, still looking at the notebook pages.

  “Is something wrong?” Melrose asked, when the extended silence began to eat at him.

  “No. I’m only thinking.” She sat back then and looked up at the ceiling.

  Stared up. The magnetic pull of someone’s staring at something was irresistible. Melrose had to look too, even knowing there was nothing there but a ceiling fan. “Do you have some idea, or something?” The big fan turned slowly and creakingly. The white globe in the middle was shadowed with the corpses of dead moths.

  “This murdered woman left the grounds of the house and drove to the Wash.” Her face screwed up in a frown. “Isn’t that an odd place to go?”

  “Distinctly odd.”

  “Why do the Lincolnshire police think that place was chosen?”

  “To delay discovery of the body. People don’t go there; it’s not a beauty spot trod by tourists. For one thing, it’s rather dangerous because of the mines still left from the Second World War. But also, it’s a good spot because of tides and shifting sands. The body might well be covered.”

  She looked at the diagram again. “What do you think? Could she have done it?”

  It was his turn to be silent, now. He felt he should have been able immediately to dismiss such a question as too ridiculous. But he couldn’t. Chief Inspector Bannen certainly didn’t find it ridiculous. “To be honest—I don’t know.” He was looking toward the bar and saw the big clock with its palm tree hands. He was amazed that it was nearly seven. He turned to her. “Look here, would you like to have dinner?”

  Her smile lit up her face. “Oh, that’s very nice of you, but I’ve already cooked dinner and it’s rather special. It’s a friend’s birthday.” She started gathering her coat and scarf together.

  “At least,” said Melrose, “let me offer you a ride.” Why did he feel slightly miffed he wasn’t being invited to this party? Nor had there been mention of the sex of this “friend.” He rose and started around the table as she struggled out of the chair, b
ut held back from actually putting out an arm for her to lean on. Instead he took the coat from her, helped her on with it.

  “I’m saying no to that, too. See, I’ve got to walk. One reason I come here is for the walk.”

  It was hard to feel slighted. But he did.

  “May I take this page?” She picked up the notebook. “It’s a puzzle I’d like to think more about.”

  “Of course.” Melrose tore off the page, handed it to her.

  She turned the page over. “There’s notes on the back; do you need them?”

  “No, they’re not much use to me now.”

  She frowned slightly, reading: “ ‘The Red Last.’ What’s ‘The Red Last’?”

  “A pub in Lincolnshire. I mean it was a pub once, must’ve been. Now it looks like a private home. Just one of those weird inn names we like so much. Nobody seems to know what it means. Something to do with shoes, probably. The ‘last’ of a shoe.”

  She stared into the gloom for a moment. “Or ‘end.’ ”

  “What?”

  “ ‘End,’ you know, ‘final,’ as one might say ‘women first, men last,’ or ‘the white first, the red last.’ ” She was looking at the piece of paper.

  Melrose was astonished. “My lord. Of course. Why didn’t I think of that?”

  She shrugged. “We get set on a certain answer and it’s nearly impossible to dislodge it, I think. If someone asks you to give the opposite of ‘left,’ you’d say ‘right.’ But the answer could as easily be ‘taken.’ ‘Left,’ ‘taken.’ ”

  “Well, that’s certainly a turn-up.” It reminded him of something, but he couldn’t think what. They walked to the door and outside and she bade him good-bye. Melrose stood leaning against the doorjamb, watching her make her slow progress along the unmade road. And then he stood straight, realizing he still didn’t know her name. He called to her. She turned. “Do you mind if I call you Nancy?”

  She seemed to be thinking about this. “No, I don’t mind. My name’s Flora, though.”