Jerusalem Inn (15 page)

“St. Jude's
Grange?
He doesn't go there, does he?” Melrose was simply appalled.

“Why, yes.” She looked at him with bright eyes. “You know it then?”

Indeed he did, though he would sooner have admitted a connection with Mr. Squeers's chamber-of-horrors. Not that St. Jude's starved or beat the boys (and probably girls, now) except intellectually. St. Jude's was one of the greatest anachronisms in the British Isles, where the lineage stretched back from the present lads to their great-great-great-great-grandfathers — an inescapable hand-me-down scholarship. It had high walls and bell towers, and Melrose, during his brief sojourn there, wouldn't have been surprised to find a moat. But it was all facade. There were no keepers, no whip-crackers, no real teachers to speak of. He had been invited to lecture on the French Romantics, and the few freckled and spectacled lads who did attend his black-robed talk were having a simply marvelous time in the back row with rubber bands. The incredible thing about St. Jude's was the way in which it had maintained its reputation for scholarship, when everyone knew that its graduates were only smart enough to count the money in their wallets. The only thing St. Jude's had was an A-1 cricket team and a lot of rich, cricket-loving alumni. Melrose had let out a long breath when he had finally escaped from the school's black-gowned, ivy-hung, crenelated-bell-towered, mullion-windowed atmosphere. He'd
sooner be bricked in by Poe than spend a term there.

“I imagine you think me very old-fashioned, Mr. Plant,” said Lady St. Leger, who had been talking about young people in general and her great-nephew in particular.

“I'm rather old-fashioned myself,” said Melrose, setting aside the Italian liqueur which Grace Seaingham had suggested. She claimed it did wonders for the digestion, especially the coffee beans floating on top. Sambuca con Mosca, she called it.

Agatha, who always wanted to be in on anything new in the way of eating or drinking, thought it looked quite attractive and asked what the
con Mosca
meant.

“ ‘With flies,' ” said Grace, without so much as a grimace. “It's the coffee beans on top, you see.”

Melrose disliked syrupy liqueurs and was smoking a cigar to get the taste out of his mouth. They all seemed to have their favorites. Beatrice Sleight went in for the most violent-looking one — cranberry-colored; Grace Seaingham drank this crystal-clear stuff that seemed to suit her, Melrose thought. Agatha turned down the Sambuca “with flies” in favor of crème de violette.

Lady St. Leger was drinking far more sensibly and expensively with her Courvoisier. She was smoking the cigarette he had offered her, holding it carefully between thumb and forefinger in the manner of one who rarely smoked. “Well, it is possible that I overcompensate because Tom isn't my own. His father, the tenth marquess, and his mother both died when he was ten and as I was their closest friend — or
we
were, I should say, but Rudolph is dead now.” Her eyes grew misty. They were an elusive, pearly gray, the shade of the Waterford crystal which held her cognac.

“Both at the same time?”

“Yes. They died of malaria in Kenya. They were great travelers.”

One would have to be, Melrose supposed, to be enticed by Kenya. Melrose thought longingly of Ardry End and riveted his eyes on Vivian, who was talking to Charles Seaingham. She winked and waved and did not even seem to care that he returned neither gesture.

“ . . . safari.”

Melrose turned to Elizabeth St. Leger. “I beg your pardon? Tom's parents were on a . . . safari?” Melrose slid down in his chair, prepared for the worst.

“Yes. It was during that last one that they died.”

“He was ten? It must have been traumatic for him.” Melrose felt quite justified in disliking Tom's parents intensely. To be run down, dead drunk, in an open car on a railroad track seemed eminently more honorable.

“It was hard on Tom. The loss of his father, especially, I think. So they left him to us.”

The young Marquess of Meares sounded like a bequest in a will. Melrose was almost beginning to sympathize with Beatrice Sleight's opinion of the peerage.

“I felt they were sometimes — frivolous,” Lady St. Leger admitted, in a lowered voice.

To say the least, thought Melrose.

“That's why I may be inclined to go a little far, to be a little too strict with Tom. I am very fond of Tom; he's a good boy. The thing is, he's got a name to live up to; one can't just throw it over — oh, I do beg your pardon.”

She was, after all a lady. Melrose smiled inwardly, merely inclined his head outwardly in a royal pardon.

Quickly, she reverted to her plans for her nephew which included Christ Church College, Oxford, and a career in medicine, law, or if he
must
be a bit “bohemian” — and here she glanced at Parmenger and MacQuade, who hardly fit
that
description, Melrose thought — music or novel-writing for a while.

Poor Tom Whittaker. His life seemed to have been stamped, signed, sealed and about to be delivered up to the City, with, perhaps, a brief fling in some seamy Parisian street.

“You must think I'm much too strict.”

Melrose was a little surprised that Elizabeth St. Leger was quite serious in her wish that he endorse her actions regarding her nephew.

“I'm sure that's not for me to say.” Seeing Agatha across the room, Melrose thought that over there was one who would be only too happy to say. “But I am inclined to feel one should live his life as he likes. As it's the only one he has.”

“But that's just what Tom's parents did. Although I suppose I've no room to talk: Rudy — my husband — and I used to go on safari to Nairobi. I now think it's ridiculous. No roughing it at all. Good heavens, they even dress for dinner on those jaunts into the jungle. And I think, now, hunting's inhumane. The whole idea of fox-hunting, for example . . . Well . . . ” She shuddered.

“Your sympathies lie with the anti-hunters, then?”

“Yes, I must admit they do.”

“And what did you think of the New Forest foxhounds that were very nearly put down for killing those two deer. Because of the hunt saboteurs using horns and whistles to confuse hounds. Do you admire that sort of stratagem?”

She seemed a bit confused on that point. “You approve of blood sports, then, Mr. Plant?”

Melrose certainly didn't, but he wasn't up to continuing his discussion of the subject, especially seeing that Aunt Agatha was about to bear down on them.

“I shot an antelope once. Terrible.”

Was it mere coincidence that whenever Agatha approached, one thought of shooting something? Aunts or antelopes, it was all the same.

“Your nephew does not seem to me to be frivolous at all.” Tommy Whittaker had taken up a silent watch by the fire. “If anything, he's much too serious for a lad of his age.”

She shook her head. “You're wrong, Mr. Plant. Tom is inclined to be like his parents. Except for his music — at least he takes
that
seriously —”

If only he wouldn't, thought Melrose.

“ . . . he's quite frivolous.”

Again, Melrose inclined his head, prepared to be wrong. But he doubted he was. “In any particular way?”

She brushed a bit of cigarette ash from her velvet gown. “He plays pool.” Her silvery eyes nearly pinned Melrose to his chair.

“Good heavens,” said Melrose, rising in the wake of Agatha's arrival beside them. She settled into his vacant chair as if she'd nested there for years.

“Well, now, Betsy! I see you do embroidery too!”

Too?
wondered Melrose, who had never seen Agatha with anything in her left hand but a cup of tea or a fairy cake.

 • • • 

“I liked your book,” said Melrose to William MacQuade.

“My book?” The young man seemed mildly surprised.

Melrose smiled.
“Skier.
Surely you remember it. It won the Booker.”

MacQuade blushed. His thoughts had clearly been elsewhere, and from the direction of his gaze when Melrose moved up beside him, they had been on Grace Seaingham. “Sorry. I wasn't trying to be modest.”

Melrose doubted he'd have to try; he seemed to be a very self-effacing person. Consistent, probably, with true talent — unlike the author of
Exit an Earl.
“Charles Seaingham certainly praised it. He seldom likes anything. But I shouldn't put it that way; it makes him sound crotchety or merely iconoclastic, when he's simply being truthful. Not much to like in the world of arts and letters these days. It's pretty hard
to come up to the mark with Seaingham. I think the last thing he liked was
War and Peace
.” Melrose had said it to defuse MacQuade's embarrassment. Must play hell to be in love with the wife of a man who's championed you.

MacQuade laughed. “He's not quite that old!”

“I didn't mean it that way.” MacQuade probably wished Seaingham was “that old”: the man was getting on into his late sixties, but his ascetic way of life seemed to be keeping him pretty damned healthy.

Unlike his wife, who had the transparent look of a person chronically ill. Her thinness, though attractive, was not that of a woman who wanted the silhouette of a fashion model. He remarked to MacQuade that she reminded Melrose a little of Wilkie Collins's woman in white.

“Yes, she does,” said MacQuade, again coloring, as if he were afraid his companion could see straight into his brain. “She oughtn't to be going out in this cold. He oughtn't to allow it —” MacQuade's irritation was gaining momentum.

Melrose tried to smooth this over by suggesting, “Well, if one is of a religious bent, and it
is
Christmas . . . ” Though, personally, he couldn't imagine cloaking oneself up to dash out to chapel, even if it was only a few feet away and one were wearing ermine. “Have you known her — then — long?”

“I . . . well, no. I believe I know Grace better than Seaingham himself.” MacQuade cleared his throat and cast Melrose such a look as would have given the game away completely, if nothing else thus far had done.

 • • • 

Melrose had retreated to the bookcases and a volume of French poetry, not to read, but to watch Frederick Parmenger and Bea Sleight. She had muscled out Vivian, who had managed to get Parmenger to put down his book. Vivian now sailed straight by Melrose — apparently on the way to someone more interesting.

“Turning your blue blood red, is she, sweetie?” said Vivian, well into her second brandy.

Parmenger was doing a marvelous job of ignoring Beatrice Sleight once again. Having displaced Vivian, who seemed to interest Parmenger, Beatrice was now draping herself more or less about his chair, thinking the proximity would make him lose his place. Parmenger didn't even look up from his page as he said something to her that detached her quite quickly from the chair arm. Melrose smiled. Rude bastard, he supposed, but likable for some reason . . . perhaps for his very refusal to —

“He's doing my portrait, in case you're wondering why he's putting up with us.”

The voice interrupted his reflections. Grace Seaingham had come back from her prayers. She was one of those, apparently, in whose presence it was dangerous to think. “I can't imagine anyone would call it ‘putting up with'
you,
Mrs. Seaingham.”

The laugh was as pure as the voice. “Come now, Mr. Plant. You're no flatterer.”

“I know. That's why I said it.”

Pleased, she colored slightly. There was altogether too little color in that pale face, and the tinge of pink against white seemed almost to have drawn itself from the Christmas rose she had plucked from the centerpiece, upsetting its delicate balance. It had been a pleasing, childlike gesture of gratitude toward Susan Assingham for bringing the flowers. A gesture typical of Grace Seaingham, he was sure. If there were any troubled waters, she would be the one to anoint them with oil.

It was very difficult, he thought, looking at her, to avoid this ecclesiastical turn of thought. On the other hand, as with her taking the rose, she reminded him of nothing so much as one of Rackham's fairies, beating delicate wings over Kew
Gardens, a sprite so transparent one could see through her. “I'd like to see this portrait. Is it finished?”

“Yes. It was Charles's idea,” she added, with a slight shrug, as if to say she was not guilty of such self-indulgence. “Charles thinks the world of him. He's not a portraitist, ordinarily. I've no idea how Charles talked him into it.”

The devil she hadn't. Seaingham was simply not a man one refused. He'd got MacQuade out of that garret, hadn't he? Lord, he'd even got Vivian here, and Vivian never put herself forward.

She excused herself when Susan Assington beckoned. As she moved toward her other guests, he wondered if she were simply too good to live.

“A
CONITE
,” said Cullen. “The Queen Mother of poisons. Had your lunch?” he asked, passing the autopsy report across the table to Jury like a plate of food.

Jury had found Cullen and Trimm in a tiny restaurant in old Washington called the Geordie Nosh. Trimm was shoveling in huge portions of meat and vegetables. Possibly, because it was after three o'clock and late for lunch, there were no other diners.

“I ate on the train, thanks.” A pleasant-looking woman came over to the table. Jury asked for coffee.

“Ah, man, that's not
food.
How's London?”

“The same. Tell me more.”

Cullen did so around mouthfuls of food. “Deadly stuff. Medical examiner says as little as a fiftieth of a gram could kill a man. Greeks used to smear it on javelins and darts.” He paused. “Ever see
I, Claudius
? It's how one a the owld buggers got it —”