The Winds of Change (19 page)

‘Mr. Scott wants me to tell you you’re to go in.’ She hooked her thumb over her shoulder toward ‘in.’

‘Any room in particular? Or am I just to wander round the dining room like Banquo’s ghost?’

Lulu, literal to a fault, considered this question. She pushed her glasses up on her nose and appeared to be deciding upon the answer. ‘I guess the library. That’s where the others are. Who’s Banquo? Did he really have a ghost or are you making it up?’

‘Mr. B was a king murdered by Macbeth.’ No. ‘Macduff?’ No. Good lord, had he even forgotten the plot of Macbeth? ‘Well, one of the Macs, anyway. And he came back to haunt–whoever. Shakespeare is responsible yet again for traitorous doings and bloody revenge.’

‘Were there a lot of them?’

‘What?’

‘A lot of Macs?’

‘You bet there were. Macs all over the place. Never mind. It’s only a story.’ He turned and started for the house.

‘Flora wasn’t,’ said Lulu, as if calling him back to storyland.

Surprised, Melrose quickly turned to her. ‘You mean Flora wasn’t just a story?’

Lulu nodded. ‘She really got stolen.’

‘Did you know her. well, then?’ He thought they might have been much the same age.

She nodded. ‘We used to play. Nobody knows where she went. Or who took her.’

Melrose detected in this, not surprisingly, some anxiety.

‘But I know,’ said Lulu. She had a piece of string round her finger, which she wound and unwound.

He stared at her. ‘You do? Who, then?’

‘The Child Thief.’

Here was a new wrinkle, a new record in childhood imagination. ‘Is that a or the Child Thief?’ Now that was a comforting question! ‘I mean, is there just one, or are there several?’ Another brilliant question. Why wasn’t Jury here? Where was the man when you needed him? Melrose felt at a loss, although he hated to admit it.

But he wasn’t confusing Lulu; she remained firm in her belief.

‘Only one. There’s just the one Child Thief.’

‘Oh. Well, uh, what does he look like?’

‘Like anybody. Like you.’

‘Me? I assure you, I’m not the Child Thief. It wouldn’t occur to me to steal a child!’

‘That’s just what he’d say.’

She was standing with her feet rolled in, a favorite child posture.

‘You don’t seriously think it’s me, do you?’

‘No.’

That was a relief.

‘You wouldn’t know how,’ she added. ‘All I’m saying is he could be anyone. He could be a lady, too.’

‘Look, why do you think Flora was taken by this person?’ The whole plot was making Melrose nervous.

Lulu looked off into the distance. ‘Because he’s a Child Thief. If you were him, isn’t that what you’d do?’

‘But this is going around in circles!’ He came at it from another direction. ‘Did you tell the police this?’ Macalvie would be delighted to hear this theory promulgated.

She shrugged. ‘They never asked.’

‘Oddly enough, I don’t expect they would.’

Head bent, Lulu was tying knots in the string. ‘I could’ve told them.’ She spun the string in the air and round her finger.

‘Told them what?’

‘Where he lives.’

Melrose sighed. He would be stopping on this path all night listening to her spin out this fantasy in a pattern as twisty as the string. ‘Just as long as he doesn’t take up residence in my cottage, I don’t care.’

She was winding the string again. ‘He lives in different places. Sometimes in London, and sometimes around here, and other times in’ – she was thinking – ‘Scotland. And sometimes in –’

‘I’m sorry I can’t follow this Child Thief on his rambles, but I must go into the house now if Mr. Scott is expecting me. So let’s walk. I imagine your aunt is waiting for you in the kitchen, isn’t she?’

That went unanswered, but Lulu did trudge along toward the house. She said, ‘You better be careful.’

‘Careful of what?’

‘Of who, you mean.’

It sounded as if her mind was hosting the Salem witch hunts.

‘I don’t mean anything. You’re the one with all the ideas.’ As if he had not spoken, she said, ‘There’s a lady in there you don’t know.’ Now she was bouncing what looked like a button on her hand.

‘What lady?’

Lulu gave him a look reserved for fools and little children.

‘The one in there –’

Her pointed finger reminded Melrose of Marley’s ghost.

‘– with Mr. Scott. Her name’s Patricia.’

‘You’re entirely too familiar with the goings-on around here. Do you spy and listen at doors and look through keyholes?’ She ignored that as they walked along to the patio. He said, ‘Thank you very much for giving me the message. I’ve enjoyed our little talk. Are you going to the kitchen?’

She nodded and ran off in that general direction.

Peculiar child. Well, he was certainly out of his depth with her.

He walked through the octagon room to the library.

This, thought Melrose, is more like it! When Declan Scott introduced him to Patricia Quint, Melrose made a swift comparison between Ms. Quint and Hermione Hobbs. Not only was Patricia Quint in the library, with a drink in her hand, but so was Marc Warburton, with a drink in his.

Melrose wondered – in a shamelessly chauvinistic turn of mind – if she belonged to Declan or Marcus. Or, indeed, some husband somewhere. It was hard to believe that a woman who looked like Patricia Quint did not have some man hovering in the background, if not the foreground, here in front of the fireplace.

The slim white hand not holding a drink reached perfectly straight out and shook Melrose’s. ‘I’ve never known an expert on turf and enameled mead. When you’re finished here, perhaps you could come to me?’

Melrose made a short bow. ‘A pleasure. What problems do you have?’

Patricia laughed. ‘I can’t grow anything.’

‘That does present an obstacle.’

Pat Quint, in her cream-colored suit, looked as if she’d come straight from the mint. She looked moneyed, true, but it was her clarity – of skin, of eyes – and precision – the perfectly fitted suit, the perfectly cut hair – that gave her this newly minted look. The enameled lips, the diffuse blush – all of this might have looked ‘turned-out’ in an artificial way. And though artifice was evident in each lash and silky eyebrow, still she did not look artificial. It was strange, he thought, that she managed to avoid it.

Marc Warburton was smiling (though not heartily) at this talk of Melrose’s speciality, and added, ‘I’m not sure there’s enough in turf to take up much of one’s time, though, is there?’

‘Well, not until you’re dead, no,’ said Melrose.

They all liked that, especially Pat Quint.

But Warburton didn’t want to let go of it. ‘You went into St. Austell for some sort of fertilizer? I can’t imagine you’d find anything you couldn’t get at Macmillan’s own nurseries.’

‘Perhaps. Much of the mixture is straightforward enough, but there are one or two things I mix with it that only the place in St. Austell carries.’

Warburton frowned. ‘Really? What’s that?’

Melrose smiled. ‘Even in fertilizer we have our secrets. Can’t expect me to give them all up, can you?’

‘Dirt isn’t always merely dirt, right?’ said Pat Quint, with a laugh.

But Marc was back, objecting again, this time to Declan. ‘I could probably have done this for you, Declan, if you’d told me you wanted it.’

‘It came about accidentally, Marc. When I was talking to this Scotland Yard – well, you met him. Mr. Plant here is a friend of his.’

Melrose objected. ‘An acquaintance, not a friend. I was doing a job near Northampton, an Italian water garden sort of thing (he was thinking of Watermeadows, which really was Italianate, and with a sad history). Superintendent Jury was conducting an investigation -’

‘But why’s he here?’ asked Pat with some alarm.

Melrose thought that should be obvious.

It was. She went on, ‘I mean, this murder’s a job for the Devon and Cornwall police to sort, isn’t it?’

‘Apparently not,’ said Declan. ‘Why? Do you object to Scotland Yard on your doorstep ?’

‘Not my doorstep.’

He shrugged. ‘Our doorstep, I mean. Our comer of Cornwall.’

‘I don’t object. Scotland Yard just suggests the case is more dramatic.’

Declan said, again in that somewhat instructive tone masked by a smile, ‘I’d say a body found on my grounds is pretty dramatic, Pat, with or without Scotland Yard.’

‘It must be painful for you; it must seem like living it all over again. I mean, Flor –’

‘I know what you mean, Pat.’

As if the man could forget, thought Melrose.

Patricia Quint recovered a little ground by saying, ‘I’m sorry. At times I can be rather thick.’

Declan smiled. ‘I know.’

Warburton said, ‘What have the police found out? Anything new ?’

‘Don’t know. The police don’t confide in me.’ There were times he wished that was true.

Patricia said to Declan, ‘It’s as if someone had a vendetta against you.’

‘I didn’t know the woman,’ Declan said. ‘Why would the killer relate her to me?’

‘Ah, well, that’s the thing, isn’t it?’

‘Or not,’ Declan answered.

‘Speaking of gardens,’ said Melrose, trying to make up for his ‘footprint’ argument earlier, ‘I find your design of this one quite lovely, Mr. Warburton.’

Marc’s eyes widened, as if surprised to hear a compliment from Plant.

‘Thanks. But most of the credit goes to the Macmillans.’

‘Yes, but it’s the architecture that starts it on the right path.’ Melrose shifted the subject. ‘Have you lived here long, Miss Quint?’

‘Pat, please. All my life, really. I don’t live here year-round, though; I go up to London quite often. I’ve got a place in Knightsbridge. Pont Street.’

Pont Street was not a cheap address, but then Pat Quint was not a cheap person. Consider the Upper Sloane Street clothes - Ferragamo, Armani, Max Mara, one of those. ‘And your house here?’

‘Halfway between here and Mevagissey.’

Mevagissey. A place Melrose had barely heard of before was now turning up everywhere, it seemed. He would have liked to hear more about the fate of Elsie Hardcastle, but that would have to wait.

Pat went on. ‘It’s a popular village with tourists. You know, fishing village on the coast. It’s near Heligan, indeed, right round the comer. The Lost Gardens have become a significant tourist draw. Well, they are beautiful, aren’t they?’

Here was a subject best served cold, like revenge. The Lost Gardens of Heligan.

Declan said, ‘British troops were bivouacked at Heligan in the Second World War. It was quite interesting, what they did. At one point they decided to mimic the class system, the upstairs-downstairs syndrome, you could say. So they took on different roles.’

‘How did they decide who was to be whom? Lord whoever on the one hand, and the under-butler on the other?’

‘That’s what’s so fascinating. They did it by rank. So the highest ranking would perform as family and the lower ranks as staff.

Then within those categories, there was further ranking: master sergeant, say, as butler; plain sergeant as under-butler. Captain or lieutenant as the titled owner, lieutenant as his son, the earl of whatever.’

Pat laughed. ‘That’s charming, but what was the point of it all?’

‘Something to do, I guess. Maybe we never lack the desire to dress up and be somebody else. You know, the trunk in the attic we looted as children?’

Pat Quint said, ‘I can remember doing that; dress-up appeals to all kiddies, doesn’t it?’ Then, clearly feeling she’d strayed once again too close to little Flora Baumann, she quickly put in, ‘This enameled mead stuff what is it exactly?’

‘It’s quite simple.’ What followed here was much the same information he’d given Jury, such as it was. But then if you were completely unfamiliar with the subject, it probably sounded quite esoteric. Except to Marc Warburton, who didn’t mind taking a backseat to Melrose for the moment.

‘What a pleasant effect that must be,’ said Pat.

‘I hope so.’

Declan Scott was smiling slightly, but he looked far away and unhappy. He was leaning forward in his armchair, watching Melrose, but not really seeing him.

It was at that point that Rebecca Owen came to the door and announced dinner.

‘You’ll join us, won’t you?’ said Declan as he set his half-finished drink down.

‘Thank you, but I’m meeting someone’ — Melrose looked at his watch ‘right now, actually. I’m late.’

21
 

Jury was sitting at the bar of the Winds of Change with ! Sergeant Wiggins, who had come with him from London that afternoon. They’d been met at the station by DS Platt, who appeared to have immediately forged a bond with Wiggins.

Perhaps it was their mutual rank. Right now they moved down the bar to continue whatever they had going.