How jolly, thought Melrose.
ELEVEN
1
IT HAD to be an abbey.
SPINNEY ABBEY the bronze plaque on the stone pillar announced. Certainly, “the house” was an extremely modest appraisal of the vast structure whose unaccommodating, cold chambers (Plant was sure) awaited them at the end of a quarter-mile-long, partially plowed drive. The place was huge, austere, deep-windowed, medieval. Tall chimneys, lancet-vented and with conical caps, struck spearlike into the nightsky. Melrose’s spirits were not raised by Seaingham’s informing his little party that the abbey sites were often chosen for their dismal locations.
They piled out of the Land Rover and, hunched against the snow, all made their way up to a front door that looked as if it could only be hauled open by a couple of Gauls or Goths. It was magically opened by a single butler.
“Marchbanks,” said Seaingham, as they were helped out of coats and scarves and boots, “see that Lord Ardry’s man is taken care of, will you? And tell Cook we’ll be dining in another half-hour.” He smiled. “These people need a drink to take the chill off.”
As far as Melrose was concerned, the chill was on. The Great Hall, two stories high, contained a huge central hearth and recessed windows that were double-lighted above and shuttered below. A massive Christmas tree, lit by crisscrossed strings of white lights, stood beneath the vaulted ceiling. Once the hall must have served as dining-chamber to visiting lords and their retinues. Now it seemed to serve no purpose other than as a half-acre of tiled flooring and statuary on the way to somewhere else, no doubt equally feudal.
Marchbanks, who was now squaring off against Ruthven, fit the place perfectly. He might have stepped out of one of the niches spotted up and down the walls which held austere busts and forms, most with hanging heads and draperies of vaguely religious origins.
While Marchbanks led Ruthven away, Seaingham whipped the others into action, leading them to another door — this one a large, sliding double-door, its dark wood polished by years of wax and firelight.
• • •
There were not really all that many people gathered here, but the room gave the impression of having a rugby-field-ful. Perhaps it was just the way the guests were spaced or — rather in the manner of the statues behind him — draped against couches and chairs and walls. The state of the house-guests, however, was owing far more to inebriation than to religion. The martini pitcher had clearly made its way round several times over, and the whiskey and soda siphons had got a good workout. This salon or parlor held only slightly to the ambience of the Great Hall. The lintel of the palatial fireplace was a frieze bearing some past lord’s coat of arms. There were tall windows with transomed lights and stone window seats. But aside from that, the room was all warm elegance: velvet and brocade, green pastel walls, cream ceiling with garlanded moldings. Melrose was quite fond of ceilings: Ardry End was full of Adam ceilings whose delicacy one’s eye could trace in idle moments when Agatha came to tea.
From some distant wing came the ragged sound of the worst piano-playing Melrose had ever heard.
Grace Seaingham, Charles’s wife, was taking all the ribbons for Perfect Hostess: she managed to hand Agatha and Vivian around without appearing to lay a glove on them. She was on the thin side, with a sort of cool beauty made even chillier by white silk and glass blond hair. Her only jewelry was a mosaic pendant.
The whole lot of them were dressed up, gowned and dinner jacketed. Melrose imagined Ruthven would expire on the spot to see the Earl of Caverness sitting down to dine in tweed. Looking the room over, he felt almost sorry he hadn’t worn jodhpurs and a sweater out at elbows. Agatha would be dying a thousand deaths because she wasn’t in purple velvet and pearls. His mother’s pearls, rather. The Countess of Caverness had not bequeathed her jewels to Agatha. But that made no odds to Agatha. Right now she was wearing an opal of Ardry-Plant origins.
In the course of the introductions, Melrose realized that not all of the evening clothes fit their models quite as comfortably as did Lady St. Leger’s, who was clearly born to the purple that Agatha wished she were wearing. Elizabeth St. Leger offered Melrose her hand, fingers twisted a bit, probably from arthritis, not unusual for a woman of her years. She wore a single strand of pearls and her gown was velvet, but gray and plainly cut for her rather stout figure, the sort of cut that would cost a shorthand-typist a year’s salary.
That particular allusion was called up by the next lady, Lady Assington (who whispered Susan in his ear, as if her first name were a well-kept secret). There was, beneath Lady Assington’s expensive ’twenties-style green gown, a typist trying to get out, which was probably what she had been before she’d married Sir George Assington, thirty years her senior, mustached, and a pukka-sahib type. He was (Melrose discovered) a distinguished physician. There had to be some reason for Seaingham’s putting up with the wife. When Sir George was introduced he studied Melrose’s ear, or the air surrounding it, and then immediately returned his hands to his back and his back to the fire.
It was a good thing the room was plenty warm, or the next guest, introduced as Beatrice Sleight, would have frozen where she stood in what she was wearing. The black gown had a slit back, a front cut to the waist, and a slash up the side, all like arrows pointing Danger. She had an abundance of gorgeous mahogany hair, as polished as the woodwork, stuck here and there with jet and amber combs, one of them topped by a gold dragon, ruby-eyed and sapphire-winged. The combs gave to the hair that tumbled look of one just preparing for bed. Melrose imagined she usually was. Round her neck in enameled mountings were large, square emeralds that looked absolutely black in this light. This elaboration of jewels was in exact contrast to Mrs. Seaingham’s pendant: set in the mosaic was the symbol — the religious chi rho. And Beatrice Sleight was also the opposite of Vivian, who went around like beauty-in-hiding, dressed right now in a plain skirt and a cashmere sweater and looking as comfortable as someone who’d come on a camel.
Beatrice Sleight gave Melrose more of herself than her hand: the only thing between them was her cocktail glass. She was a writer belonging to some sort of genre she seemed to have invented herself: she specialized in the roman à clef with the Brtitish peerage as her central target. Two of her books — Death of a Duke and Exit an Earl — had rocketed straight to the top of the best-seller lists. “Everyone’s interested in the private lives of the peerage, aren’t they?”
“I wouldn’t know,” said Melrose, with a smile, before Charles Seaingham untangled him from Beatrice and led him toward a youngish man. This was William MacQuade, the one whom Vivian admired. MacQuade had recently won several awards for a novel that even Charles Seaingham had praised. To say that was to say a good deal. Melrose liked him, as much for his ill-fitting dinner jacket as for his intelligence. Two minutes with him, and he didn’t utter one cliché, like “Beastly old blow out there,” or attempt to fill Melrose in on his genius.
The tall, brooding type who’d been leaning by the window when they’d walked in turned out to be the painter, Parmenger. He put Melrose in mind of Heathcliff, and Agatha was obviously adding to his moorland gloom. Parmenger merely kept one hand in his pocket and the other folded round a large whiskey and said nothing but “Hullo.” He was very handsome, horribly talented, and couldn’t care less if Melrose were Lord Ardry, plain Plant, or even this lady’s nephew. After introducing them, Seaingham withdrew to talk to Vivian. A man of sense, thought Melrose.
“My nephew, Lord Ardry,” said Agatha, re-introducing Melrose and Parmenger.
“Melrose Plant,” her nephew corrected her for perhaps the hundredth time in the last few years.
Frederick Parmenger looked from the one to the other with a slight smile on his mouth but none in his eyes. “You seem to disagree on who this is.”
Since Melrose knew who he was, the mild insult of this didn’t bother him at all. Indeed, he inferred that the meeting was the most interesting thing that had happened to Parmenger during the whole of the cockt
ail hour — an hour extended into two, since Charles Seaingham had had to fetch his last guests from the inn.
“Melrose likes to tell people he’s relinquished his title,” said Agatha, drinking her gin and bitters, saying it in a way that implied Melrose was a liar.
“Actually, I believe it’s you, dear Aunt, who likes to tell people I like to tell people —”
She waved him away, a bad-mannered boy. “Stop talking in riddles, Plant.” Parmenger, who had begun to be interested in this little family squabble, was now being bored to death by Agatha’s talking about painting, and making Parmenger look for a refill with her I-know-what-I-like philosophy.
The piano music — was it the Seaingham’s idea of a medieval musicale? — stopped and Melrose was on his way to rescue Vivian from Lady Assington, when Charles Seaingham came up behind him and said, “My dear fellow, here’s someone you must meet.”
Melrose turned.
“Lord Ardry. The Marquess of Meares.” Seaingham chuckled and winked. “We call him Tommy. Family name, Whittaker.”
Melrose stared. It was the pool player from Jerusalem Inn.
Tommy Whittaker, Marquess of Meares, stared back. Obviously, from his expression, Tommy Whittaker had also seen Melrose when he’d wandered into the back room of the pub. Tommy looked a little sick.
All Melrose wanted to know was how this boy had got back to Spinney Abbey, changed into black tie, and sat down at (and fortunately had now got up from) the piano, before the Land Rover had arrived.
Tommy Whittaker cleared his throat and said, “I wish people wouldn’t introduce me that way.”
“So does he,” said Vivian, inclining her head toward Melrose and managing to get a little of the Parmenger-tone into the he.
“I’m too young to be a marquess.”
Vivian, who had decided to be clever after two martinis, said, “He’s too old to be an earl. You’ve something in common.”
“I’d be careful, were I you, Vivian. You’re the one who made us stop at the Jerusalem Inn —” He stopped, seeing Tommy Whittaker redden. The blush only made the Marquess of Meares handsomer. He was, indeed, one of the handsomest young men Melrose had ever seen. Girls’ hearts must have crumbled like crackers.
Vivian sailed off, steered by gin, to talk to MacQuade, and Tommy Whittaker cleared his throat and said, plaintively, “I say. You won’t mention you saw me there?”
“I’d take a bullet in the chest first. Only tell me. We barely made it in the Land Rover. Just how the hell did you get here before us?”
Tom Whittaker gave him a blinding smile, but before he could answer, Lady St. Leger appeared at his side, supported by a silver-handled cane. “I see you’ve met my nephew,” she said to Melrose, but all the while looking at Tommy Whittaker adoringly. “You were a bit late, my dear. Of course, I know you must practice —” To Melrose, she turned and informed her that her nephew was quite musical . . .
At that point Marchbanks drew open the double doors and announced dinner with as much grace as he could muster, considering dinner was late, and he had had to make room for Ruthven, the butler’s butler.
2
THE dining room had mullioned windows of rose and amethyst glass, was oak-paneled and candlelit, and, in its mingling of tones, seemed to throw over the dinners a fine patina of burnished copper.
Thus the voice of Susan Assington was like a scratch upon this lovely surface. “I think,” said Lady Assington, “we should have a murder.”
She looked up and down the dinner table, crowded with polished plate and polished crystal and tarnished conversation.
“I mean,” said Lady Assington, tapping a silvery nail against her wineglass, “it’s just too perfect.” Having captured the entire table for the first time — and they were already on their dessert — she was breathless for a response.
Melrose, seated to her right, asked politely (when no one else took her up), “Why is that?”
“Why, here we are, snowed in! Just the sort of thing to bring one’s nerves to the boiling point —”
Lady Assington was not one to worry over her metaphors, thought Melrose. But since she appeared to have no nerves at all, boiling was as good for them as freezing, he supposed. Susan Assington’s dark hair was cut in the bobbed flapper style of the ’twenties. The gown itself hung and clung at odd angles, as if the seamstress had gone mad in the making, hacking her way with scissors and silk. Melrose noted all of this as she went on about murder, waving her fork about, tipped with the soufflé Grand Marnier that had probably been whipped to a froth in the same dark kitchen as her mind, but with considerably more success.
“ . . . twelve of us, don’t you see? You can hardly get away from that, now can you?”
Not if you can count, thought Melrose.
“We’re like that book where all those people are fetched up on an island and go killing one another off —”
“Ah, yes. Well, I shouldn’t worry. There were only ten of them, but we’ll probably find a body stuffed up a chimney or out in the potting shed. No footprints in the snow, of course.”
MacQuade laughed and gestured toward the windows behind him. “It’s like the Yorkshire Moors out there — dark footprints on all that white . . . just the sort of symbolism I love.”
“I’m afraid murder will not bow to your taste for imagery, Mr. MacQuade.” Melrose smiled. “How would those nice, black prints have landed there —?”
Lady Assington shivered. “Oh, do stop all this talk of murder —” Susan having forgotten, apparently, it was she who started it. “I don’t read thrillers, not really, Lord Ardry.” She had suddenly decided to cultivate more literary tastes, looking around Seaingham’s table.
“I do,” said MacQuade, leaving Susan Assington to shift for herself. He rolled the wine around in his glass. “I’ve even tried to write one, but it’s no good. I don’t have the mind for murder. All of those loose ends one has to tie up . . . ”
Melrose thought of Polly Praed, his mystery-writer friend, and said, “Some of them are good. And it’s not ‘Lord Ardry,’ Lady Assington. Just ‘Melrose Plant.’ ”
How stupid of him, he realized, when her widened gazelle-eye fixed on him. If there was one thing Susan Assington loved, it was a title — it had taken her long enough to get one. Susan (née Breedlove, he had discovered in conversation with Beatrice Sleight) had clerked in a milliner’s until Money walked in one day. Loss of title far outstripped loss of life on Lady Assington’s list.
“But if you’re the Earl of Caverness — well, it’s clearly ‘Lord.’ ” If there was one book she’d read within an inch of its life, he was certain it was Debrett’s. “I don’t understand,” she said.
Agatha bellowed from her end of the table, “Who does? Can you imagine giving up being an earl? But, then Melrose always has been a queer duck.” She sighed and had a second helping of soufflé from Marchbanks’s silver spoon, as she signed to Ruthven for wine. Plant’s man had been graciously permitted to second Marchbanks, fortunately for Agatha, who thought she owned him.
Melrose wondered if the visa he had used to cross the border were now found to be invalid, as eyes turned on him, expecting him to explain his queer duck behavior. Not everyone, though: MacQuade smiled one of his rare smiles. Vivian had her eyes turned ceilingward. And Bea Sleight, across the table from him, leaned so far into the candles he was sure she’d melt the combs in her hair. The ruby eye of the dragon glittered.
“It’s simple enough,” said Melrose, who had no intention of explaining anything, “I didn’t want it. Them,” he added for good measure.
Tommy Whittaker joined in the conversation for the first time. “You mean you can just — stop?” It was as if Melrose had been slave to the demon rum or opium.
“Of course. In 1963 an act was passed that allows us to disclaim our titles. Unless one is Irish. Then one is, unfortunately, in for the long haul.”
Beatrice Sleight leaned even farther into the candlelight, probably to show her décolle
tage to its best advantage. Her tone, when she spoke, suggested that Lord Ardry’s motives for giving up those titles that she presumably hated had to be ulterior. “Well, then, why did you?” She went on with heavy-handed sarcasm. “To enjoy all of the advantages of us commoners? I mean, did you want to vote, or something?”
“For whom?”
Parmenger laughed, Vivian smiled down at her dessert plate, and Susan Assington drew her sleek hair behind her ear and looked as if she would answer the question if she could.
But Bea Sleight was not for letting Melrose off so lightly. In her book, a belted earl was stuck with wearing it. “The trouble with You People,” she said, dribbling cigarette ash in the Christmas-rose-and-candle centerpiece, “is that you simply wink at the decadence of the peerage.” Her eye slid from Melrose to Tom Whittaker to Lady St. Leger to Sir George to an appalled Susan Assington.
“No more decadent than the rest of the world, surely,” said Charles Seaingham, reasonably, from the other end of the table where he had sat Agatha next to him. (The man really did have strength of mind.) It was rumored there might be a title in store for him, though a knighthood would condemn only Seaingham and not his progeny.
“No? Look at people like Lucan and Josyln Erroll.”
Lady St. Leger said coldly, “Hardly representative of the peerage. There’s always the bad apple in the lot.”
Bea Sleight’s laugh was unpleasant. “Bad apple? That’s what you’d call them? You all stick together, don’t you? You can go round murdering nannies and running roughshod over everyone —”
“I think we can do without this rehearsal of the indiscretions of the nobility,” said Lady St. Leger.
“I’d hardly call Erroll’s conduct simply ‘indiscreet’ — after all, he —”
Jerusalem Inn Page 10