“Indeed, that is terrible, my lord. I barely slept a wink, thinking of it.” But the apologetic tone suggested the murder of Beatrice Sleight was merely an addendum to the awfulness of claret sediment.
Melrose picked a microscopic bit of lint from the jacket Ruthven had just brushed and put it on, wishing that his butler would stop that milord form of address. He had given up correcting Ruthven long ago: the Earl of Caverness once, the Earl of Carverness forever. It must really stick in Ruthven’s throat that earls were one down from marquesses. Teenage marquesses, at that.
Ruthven, bringing up the polish on boots that had been polished once by the Seaingham’s footman, sighed and murmured something about “poor Mrs. Seaingham.”
Surprised, Melrose turned from the mirror, unsuccessful in his attempt to plaster down the lick of hair that stood up on the crown of his head, yank it about as he might, and said, “What about Mrs. Seaingham?”
“These boots were not done proper, my lord.”
To Melrose they looked like burnished copper. Patiently, he repeated, “What about Mrs. Seaingham?”
“Why, she looks quite ill, sir. And perhaps you wouldn’t notice how she scarcely touches her food. I’ve seen her plate come back, without hardly so much as a bite taken. Not too much of a surprise, of course, when you come to think on it. We, being used to Mrs. Ruthven’s cooking —”
“Martha’s. She’s been cooking for the family all of my life. No need to stand on formalities.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. But what I wished to say was that, knowing superior cuisine, it is not at all surprising that Mrs. Seaingham might indeed lose a bit of appetite here. I mean, really, sir. The Cumberland sauce merely disguised a rather overcooked joint.” Ruthven’s otherwise granite-still face came close to a smirk. “And the béarnaise —”
“My dear Ruthven. I really do not think that what has happened in Spinney Abbey should be put down to a choice of sauces.”
“No, my lord. You’re quite right,” he said, his own line of thought undisturbed. “It’s more the people, isn’t it?”
“I should think so, Ruthven.” Melrose lit a pre-luncheon cigar and watched Ruthven place the boots on the floor, giving a sad little headshake over them, as if they too were destined for an early grave. “They’ll never be the same, sir.”
“The boots? Or the guests? I take it you approve of neither?”
“It’s not for me to comment, my lord. But it’s clear that, well, some of them just won’t do. I mean, sir, did you see Lady Assington with the Stilton?”
“Threw it on the floor, did she?”
Briefly, Ruthven shut his eyes, bearing up patiently under his young (forever young would Melrose be in Ruthven’s eyes) lordship’s making light of a serious matter. “She used a scoop, sir. I allow as how these jumped-up lower classes use them, but —”
“Surely, you’re not calling the Seainghams ‘jumped-up,’ and if they supply scoops — Ruthven, why are we talking about cheese scoops? Tell me something more to the point: what do their servants think of the Seainghams in general?”
Ruthven looked simply shocked. “Really, my lord. I would not lower myself to reporting the common gossip below stairs.”
In the distance a bell tinkled like a cow in the pasture. “Time for luncheon, Ruthven. Come on, give —” Melrose aborted a sneeze with his handkerchief.
“I do hope you’ve not caught a chill from being out last night. You have simply not conditioned yourself for winter sports, my lord.”
Ruthven was, if anything, a master of undersell. “I haven’t conditioned myself for any sports. I am one of the idle rich.”
“That is not at all true. You have your professorial duties at University.”
“You must’ve heard something. You haven’t been spending all of that time amongst the forks and knives and Branston pickle without hearing something.”
As Ruthven set to rebrushing Melrose’s already perfectly brushed jacked, he said, “Only that the Seainghams had had several rows and that he wanted a divorce. Well, of course, Mrs. Seaingham, being High Church and all, wouldn’t hear of it.” He paused, reflectively. “Did you notice Mr. MacQuade, sir? Last night at dinner, I mean?”
“Notice what? He does seem interested in Mrs. Seaingham, certainly.”
“Well, I wouldn’t know about that. But he didn’t slide the port, my lord. He lifted the bottle.”
And with that startling bit of news, Ruthven swanned out of the room.
2
MELROSE found Susan Assington, in a dark green lawn dress, adrift in the library like a leaf fallen far from its branch, unused as she appeared to be to books: given the vague surprise she registered while turning pages, Gutenberg might only have come along yesterday.
“Looking for something to read, Lady Assington?”
He had taken her by surprise, that was certain, as she quickly stuffed the volume back into the bookcase. “It’s just something on gardens.”
Hard to imagine her with a hoe in her hand, but Melrose went on, holding up The Third Pigeon. “I can definitely recommend Elizabeth Onions, if you like a sort of Scotland-bird-shooting mystery milieu —”
That was obviously no recommendation to her. “I hate thrillers. Anyway, I don’t see how you can make jokes about it. . . . . ” She was definitely on the verge of tears. “Proper mess, I call it.” Lady Assington’s idiom seemed to have removed itself from Hampstead Heath to the stoops of Lambeth, reestablishing the shopgirl Susan as the real owners of both.
“Sorry. Guess I wasn’t thinking. Would you like a cigarette?” Melrose extended his gold case, hoping she would sit down in one of the old leather chairs for a cozy conversation.
“I don’t mind,” she said in a pouty way, and did sit down.
Melrose took the twin of the chair opposite, lit their cigarettes, and watched her toy with hers more than smoke it.
“Stuck up here . . . feel like I’m in prison, I do. When do you suppose they’ll let all of us go? There’s George gone off to London to one of his meetings and left me here. . . . ” Above the well-shod foot Susan Assington was nervously swinging, Melrose thought he recognized one of those plain little Laura Ashley dresses, probably in the hundred-pound range, a dress designed to make its wearer look simple and countrified, as if she’d just come in from milking silver-plated cows. Susan was definitely not the milkmaid type.
“Did you know her well?”
“Who?” She flicked cigarette ash into the cold grate.
The woman really was featherbrained, or doing a good job of pretending to be in the face of a bloody murder.
“Beatrice Sleight.”
“Oh,” she said, as if the murdered woman were of no more account than one of the Onions pigeons. “Well, we saw her round and about. Proper bitch is all I’ve got to say, though George didn’t seem to think there was any harm in her. ‘No harm?’ I says to him. ‘Look at those books she writes.’ Well, of course, I don’t read trash like that,” she added quickly.
From the music room came the cacophonous sound of a piano being disemboweled by Tommy Whittaker.
Susan Assington held a hand heavy with emeralds to her forehead. “Oh, I do wish that boy’d stop it. Why his aunt ever thinks he’s musical, I don’t know.” She was flipping through a glossy fashion magazine and held it out to Melrose as if he might be her hairdresser. “What do you think of this do?”
Patiently, Melrose took out his spectacles and studied the “do.” The model’s hair stood up on end and with her darkly outlined eyes, Melrose assumed she’d either come upon the Thing from Spinney Moor or else was It. “Not for you, Lady Assington. The way you’re wearing it now is much more becoming.”
Delicately, she ran her hair over the smooth, dark helmet of hair, and said, “You oughtn’t to wear glasses. You’ve got smashing eyes. Green,” she added helpfully, in case he’d forgotten.
Melrose thanked her and pocketed his glasses. Haut coiffure forgotten, Susan had levered herself a bit fo
rward in her chair, displaying embellishments beside her glossy hair, and was looking into the eyes she admired. “Funny you being a bachelor.” Hematology and murder seemed to be going the way of all flesh.
“Not really. Just haven’t got around to marriage, I expect.” He listened to Tommy going down the scales at the same rate as Susan’s Hampstead accent. Trying to work the conversation back to murder, he said, “I’d think you of all people would appreciate what’s happened.” That got him a puzzled frown. “You were saying at dinner that all of us here together at a country house party seemed ripe for a murder.”
“Well, I was only teasing, wasn’t I?” she said with some fright.
“Of course, of course.” Melrose’s tone was soothing. “How did you happen to meet Beatrice Sleight?”
“You sound like police,” she said, surprising Melrose that she could come anywhere near the mark. But her tone was casual. “At one of those autograph-signings. In a bookstore. George thought it’d be fun to go along and get her to sign one of her books. He knew her, you see. In a casual way.”
“A casual way” was how Sir George had put it to the Northumbria police. His wife seemed to accept this rote description without qualification. “But it’s Grace Seaingham, isn’t it, they meant to kill?” she said, glancing at Melrose with surprising sharpness. “You know where you usually start looking when there’s that sort of trouble — the husband.”
“The Seainghams strike me as a very well matched couple, very fond of one another.”
“Can’t always go by looks, can you?” said Susan. “What I don’t understand is, they act like it was one of us. When it’s obvious it was just someone trying to break in or just some tramp and Beatrice must have seen them, or something.” She flung down her fashion magazine, having exhausted every new gown and “do” before she got up to leave.
Susan Assington could certainly fly in the teeth of the evidence. Melrose decided to break the news gently. “Well, that would seem to be rather unlikely because of the snow.” She actually managed to appear bewildered. Melrose embroidered: “We’ve been snowed in, you see.”
She looked at him as if he were a bit dim. “That doesn’t mean everyone else’s been snowed out, does it?”
3
“DO BE dummy, Melrose,” said Lady Ardry, slapping down a card as Melrose wandered into the games room. Agatha, Lady St. Leger, and Vivian were having what looked like a game of three-handed bridge. “We don’t expect you to do anything. You’ve never been good at cards.”
Noticing a copy of Debrett’s lying on the table beside Agatha, he thought perhaps they should have been playing at Patience and Peers. “Your invitation to join the party is irresistible, Agatha, but no thank you. Anyway, if you’re playing three-handed, you don’t have a dummy.”
“We could,” said Vivian with that gritty little smile she’d lately affected. She scooped up a trick.
“You seem to be taking the events of last evening with iron self-control. I applaud you.”
Under her dusting of rouge and powder, Lady St. Leger blushed a bit, as if they’d been caught out like bad children. “It’s just to take our minds off the whole — nasty business.”
When he entered, she had been taking her mind off the nasty business by extolling the virtues of the marquetries of Miln and Abbisferd over the earldom of Dunleith, a bait to which his aunt now rose.
“Perfectly hideous places,” said Agatha, sitting in close proximity to the tea table. “Monkeys climbing all over the cars — if you’re not going to play, why must you be about, Melrose, whilst we’re trying to concentrate?”
Monkeys? wondered Melrose. “I thought I’d left my book in here. I’m merely waiting for Superintendent Jury.” He picked a cue from the rack and walked about the table to get a better look at Agatha’s hand. He’d played cards with her before.
Cards fanned out against her bosom, the expression on her face made it clear she would rather he do his waiting elsewhere. “It’s not for me to say, of course,” she said, slapping a trump on Vivian’s king, and sweeping in the trick, “but why should Jury be here? What’s the death of Beatrice Sleight got to do with Scotland Yard?” She grimaced as Elizabeth St. Leger led with a diamond. “After all, it’s not as though the Northumbria police asked for his help, is it?” Vivian a deuce of clubs. “I don’t see —”
“What did you mean, ‘monkeys’?” asked Melrose.
“What are you talking about?” Agatha was suddenly overcome with a fit of coughing and drew a handkerchief from her long sleeve, whereupon Melrose noticed, sighting along his cue, that a king of hearts quietly landed in her lap. Agatha coughed gently, replaced the handkerchief, and said, “We were merely speaking of the rather resourceful ways in which some of the peerage were keeping up their estates.” She slapped the king of hearts over the absent fourth’s queen. “Of course, a place as small as Ardry End doesn’t present the problems of an estate as large as Meares Hall.”
It was the first time Melrose had ever heard her call Ardry End “small.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Melrose, fascinated with his aunt’s shuffling of the deck. At least two cards had thus far come off the bottom. “It’s not so big as Spinney Abbey, but —”
“That’s scarcely a comparison!” She fanned out her cards, looked them over, and led with a jack of diamonds. Then, apparently remembering that she, as well as her nephew, had some vested interest in the family seat, said, “Still, Ardry End is one of the finest smallish manor houses in the country. And it might be added, we needn’t keep it up by selling tickets to coach parties and having grubby-fingered children make free with the lawns and gardens.”
Melrose refrained from pointing out she needn’t keep it up at all, since it wasn’t hers. He was more interested in what would be the final disposal of the ace in her lap.
Elizabeth St. Leger was not to be baited, however. She merely played her card and said, “You are very fortunate, then. Most of us” (Melrose smiled, knowing that Agatha would never be included in that “us”) “really must do something to defray expenses. And I rather like it, somehow. I like people enjoying the gardens; I really am quite a gardener myself . . . is that another ace, Agatha?”
Agatha didn’t answer this direct question, but said, “Oh, we’ve fine gardens, too. But we enjoy them only ourselves. It’s such a pity that the peerage has had to stoop so. Just look at Woburn Abbey. Chockablock with tea tents and antiques people and all manner of trade. And Bath.” Lady St. Leger played her last trump — a five of clubs. “That’s where the monkeys are,” she said to Melrose, “at Longleat. And lions and so forth. The place is a zoo.” While she was addressing Melrose, she had another brief coughing fit and trumped the five with a jack. “But of course I sympathize,” added Agatha.
That should make news, thought Melrose. . . .
“There are times when one must take desperate remedies for the sake of one’s good name. Melrose would agree, I’m sure.”
“Most certainly,” said Melrose, watching Agatha sweep the last trick from the table before she reached for the cake-plate.
• • •
Elizabeth St. Leger had either grown tired of cards altogether or of her friend’s playing of them and had now seated herself by the fire in the drawing room, at work on her embroidery.
Melrose, waiting for Jury to call, did not even try to hide his astonishment when Agatha drew from a workbasket — one she had probably scrounged from her hostess — an embroidery hoop.
“You, Agatha? I’ve never seen you do embroidery.”
“Certainly I do. But then you have never asked, have you?” she said with typical Agatha-logic, accompanied by a typical Agatha-sigh. “I’m doing your Christmas present, if you must know.”
That was even more astonishing. His aunt had not, in living memory, ever given him a gift. She had, instead, given him excuses. He came to look over her shoulder. There had been little stitching done, and that was crude at best. “It looks like a mouse.”
“It looks like the ear of a mouse to me.”
“It’s a unicorn’s horn.”
“Well, anyway, why are you embroidering unicorns?”
“If you must know and spoil the surprise —”
There would be no earthly way to keep her from spoiling it for him, since she had, he knew, every intention of impressing Lady St. Leger with her intricate handiwork. She started to speak, but Melrose forestalled her.
“No, no, Agatha. I’d much rather it be a surprise,” and he frustrated her by turning the topic of conversation to the first thing his eye fell upon — one of the bowls of Christmas roses. “These are lovely flowers,” he said, now addressing Elizabeth St. Leger, the gardener among them. “It’s nice to have white flowers at Christmas.” He did not know why, particularly, but it kept the subject off Agatha’s embroidery.
“Aren’t they?” said Lady St. Leger. She looked at the bowl of flowers. “Helleborus niger, the black hellebore. Strange name for a pinkish-white flower. I suppose it’s because of the root. That’s black and extremely poisonous.” She snipped a dark green thread with her scissors. “Sweet of Susan to bring them, all those flowers. She doesn’t strike me at all as the sort who would think of it, frankly.”
Sweet of Susan, yes. Melrose stared at the flowers, and came back from his reflections when Elizabeth St. Leger put her hands to her ears and said, “Oh, dear. He’s started up again.” She looked at Melrose. “I don’t suppose you could distract him from his music for a while, could you, Mr. Plant? I’m sure everyone would appreciate it greatly. I know I would.”
Melrose thought for a moment and then said, with a smile. “I’d be delighted if he’d go with me into Durham, now the roads are open.”
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