The Winds of Change (43 page)

Declan put an arm around her chest, pinning her to him. ‘It’s okay, Lulu. I’m sure nothing will happen to Rebecca.’

Lulu had broken free. She was jumping again. ‘But it was only a story! Tell them!’ She hung on to Rebecca’s hand.

‘I’ll be all right, Flora–’

‘No! I don’t want to be Flora! I want to be Lulu!’ Patricia Quint was openmouthed.

Declan froze. ‘Flora? What on earth are you talking about?’ He looked from Lulu to Rebecca Owen.

She said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m truly sorry, Declan. I couldn’t–’ But what she couldn’t was lost in silence until Macalvie said, ‘Let’s go’ and led Rebecca Owen to the door.

Declan knelt down and studied Flora’s face that looked, for the first time since Jury had known her, as if it were crumpling into tears. ‘It’ll be all right, Flora. I’ll make sure nothing happens to Rebecca. You stay here with Pat.’

He was getting into his coat when he said to Jury, ‘What will happen to her?’

‘I can’t say for certain, but I would imagine the circumstances would make her very sympathetic in a trial.’ Jury was walking with Declan to the door. ‘Mr. Scott, there’s just one thing I don’t understand.’

At the door, Declan turned. ‘What’s that?’

‘I know people see what they expect to see, and Flora was made to look completely different as Lulu, probably as different as Lena Banks was from Georgina Fox. But I don’t see how you wouldn’t have known.’

Declan Scott smiled slightly. ‘What makes you think I didn’t, Superintendent?’

MAN WALKED INTO A PUB

49

I can’t imagine, Superintendent,’ said Agatha, ‘why you would want to spend any more time in Cornwall than was absolutely necessary. You recall the last time we were there, surely.’ Jury speared a sausage, and Melrose drank his tea. Melrose raised an eyebrow. ‘Recall what, exactly?’

‘The whole dreadful business.’

Melrose stopped drinking his tea long enough to observe, ‘I should cut out my tongue for saying it, but I feel a strong presence of Henry James.’

Jury snickered and chewed his sausage.

‘And even though it’s been three months since your accident, Superintendent–’

Melrose cut her off. ‘‘Accident,’ Agatha? You make it sound as if he’d fallen off his bike.’

Agatha sighed and layered up another scone half with blackberry jam and clotted cream. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Melrose. I’m not minimizing his being shot at.’

Jury smiled. ‘I’m fine, Lady Ardry. Right as rain. Or will be if Martha has any scrambled eggs left.’

Agatha smirked. ‘Martha’s getting too old to cook.’

‘Agatha, refresh my memory, will you? Precisely why are you here at nine in the morning?’

‘Why?’

‘Yes, that’s more or less what I said.’

‘I always look in to see how you are around this time.’ She huffed up, chagrined.

Melrose loved that ‘look in.’

‘No, you don’t. You come here for your elevenses, not your nineses.’

‘Well, I have something particular to report, but as you’re not interested–’

What interested Melrose at the moment was his horse going by and looking in the dining-room window.

Jury followed his line of bafflement, looking over his shoulder.

‘What’s Aggrieved doing out there?’

‘That’s the first question. The second is, who’s the other horse?’ For a white horse had followed Aggrieved past the window.

‘That,’ said Agatha, ‘is the information I wished to impart.’ Melrose was for once all ears. So was Jury, who stopped in the middle of his last sausage. ‘Impart, for God’s sakes.’

Agatha held out for five seconds by delicately patting her mouth with her napkin. ‘The horse belongs to Mr. Strether.’

‘And who in hell is he to be up here getting Aggrieved out of bed?’

‘Horses sleep standing up,’ said Jury as he contemplated his empty plate.

‘Don’t you start in,’ said Melrose. He turned back to Agatha.

‘Well?’

‘If you’d stop shouting, I’d tell you.’

Pleased as punch she was with herself. ‘I wasn’t shouting. This is shouting!’ His vocal cords took off.

Ruthven came rushing in, looking alarmed. ‘M’lord? Is something wrong?’

‘It’s all right, Ruthven. I was just demonstrating a shout.’ Ah! Ruthven would know! ‘Who the devil’s that other horse out there?’

‘That would be Mr. Strether’s m’lord. Mr. Momaday’s up on Aggrieved.’

Knowing all of this was her fault, Ruthven gave her a frigid look.

‘But what’s this Strether person doing here? Is he some friend of Momaday?’

‘No. I believe it was Lady Ardry who invited him.’

 
Melrose turned to her again. ‘I don’t get it. Why? The man’s a complete stranger.’

‘Not to me,’ said Agatha. ‘And I thought your poor horse would enjoy it.’

Jury sniggered. Then he asked Ruthven, ‘Do you think Martha has any more eggs and sausages left?’

‘Absolutely,’ said Ruthven, taking Jury’s empty plate.

‘Enjoy–? What? That he now has a playmate?’ She produced a martyred sigh and ate her scone, wordless for a blessed change.

Melrose threw down his napkin and got up. ‘Come on,’ he said to Jury.

‘Come on where? I haven’t finished breakfast.’

Agatha chortled. ‘At least here’s one person you can’t order around!’

Jury rose and slugged back his coffee. ‘Sure he can.’

Melrose was talking to the man on the horse, who sat quite high in the saddle. He reached down his hand to shake Melrose’s hand.

Wouldn’t common horse courtesy ask that he at least slide down from it?

He said, ‘Lambert Strether, sir, from Slough.’

Melrose turned to look at Jury, who merely shrugged.

‘Lambert Strether, you say?’

Now Strether did hook his leg over the horse’s rump and come down. Beaming. His teeth glittered. He shook hands with Jury and said, ‘I see you’re well read.’

‘He is,’ said Jury, inclining his head toward Melrose. ‘I’m not.’ Strether turned to Melrose. ‘The name means something to you?’

‘It means something to a lot of people.’

‘My mother adored Henry James.’

Melrose looked at Jury. ‘Is Henry James adorable? I wouldn’t think so.’

‘Lambert Strether is the protagonist of The Ambassadors.’ Strether aimed this nugget of information at Jury as if Jury were sitting in the front row, mostly asleep. ‘It’s rather embarrassing, the name, when I meet educated people.’

‘Then why didn’t you change it to Fred or Digby or something?’

‘Trevor?’ said Jury. ‘Trevor’s always good.’

This suggestion seemed to confound Strether, who opened his mouth but couldn’t think of a response.

‘Leaving the name aside, what are you doing here, Mr. Strether?’

‘Why, I met up with Lady Ardry, who claimed this was her family seat.’

‘It is, but she’s not sitting in it. But why’s my horse out here with a saddle on? That suggests someone’s been riding him.’

‘Your groundsperson, your caretaker was up on him, but he suddenly recalled something he had to do.’

‘Yes, like getting off my horse. That would be Mr. Momaday.’ Jury fed Aggrieved a sugar cube and, feeling a bit sorry for the white horse for having to cart such a pompous arse around, fed him one, too.

‘But tell me, Mr. Strether, what are you doing in Long Piddleton?’

‘I’m looking around.’

‘I can see that. But what is your larger, wider mission?’ Strether looked blank and then, catching on, said, ‘Oh, you mean why I’m in the village? I’m looking for property.’ Jury looked at Melrose and tilted his head upward in the direction of the hill.

‘Really?’ said Melrose. ‘Not much to invest in around here, though there is a pub up there that did a smashing business until it closed.’

Strether looked off in that general direction. ‘Why did it close if it was doing so well?’

‘Owner relocated,’ said Jury, with a snicker.

‘Perhaps I should see it, then.’

‘Perhaps you should,’ said Melrose. ‘It’s called the Man with a Load of Mischief.’

‘Interesting.’

‘The renovation, that’d be a bit pricey as it hasn’t been lived in for so long.’

‘Oh, that doesn’t signify. No, price is not a problem. I own so much property.’

‘What’s he all about?’ said Melrose that afternoon as he and Jury passed Miss Broadstairs’s cat, Desperado, asleep on top of her garden wall. Melrose poked him and the cat shot up, tail twitching.

Jury said, ‘Whatever it is, it’s not what he says. The jacket didn’t fit, the cuffs were frayed, and did you see the shoes?’

‘I didn’t, Sherlock, no.’

‘Heels run down like mad. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had newspaper in them to hide the holes.’

‘What was he doing?’

‘At Ardry End? Casing the joint, I expect.’

Melrose stopped by the pond where ducks were scooting this way and that. ‘You mean I’m about to be robbed?’

‘Don’t get so excited over it. He’s probably only looking round to see who has a few quid to make it worth his while.’ Melrose didn’t follow this. ‘For what?’

‘My guess is he’s a con artist. A confidence man.’ They crossed over the street. ‘Wait. I’d forgotten the contest! Strether, yes, he’s the one who inspired the Henry James contest.’ Jury stopped and looked up the cobbled street to the old pub sign and the mechanical Jack. His trousers were in need of a coat of turquoise paint. ‘I see. The Henry James contest. You know, that’s about what I’d expect of your pals.’ As they walked on, he asked, ‘Do they ever do anything constructive ?’

‘Of course not. We none of us do.’ Melrose waved to Miss Crisp across the street who was setting another chair outside her secondhand furniture store. It was directly across from Trueblood’s Antiques and made a nice contrast. ‘And stop talking about them as if they weren’t your pals, too.’

Jury smiled. ‘Oh, they’re quite definitely mine.’

They turned into the Jack and Hammer where Jury was warmly greeted, first by Dick Scroggs and then by the group at the table in the window. Diane Demorney even set down her martini long enough to give Jury a ginny kiss. Vivian Rivington tried to do this but failed, missing his cheek by a few inches since she had to lean over the table. She gazed at Jury as if he’d just tossed an armload of roses at her feet. It was hard to tell about Vivian.

‘You’re in time to judge the competition. Melrose told you about our little contest. Or do you want to enter yourself?’ Trueblood asked this so earnestly that Jury laughed. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t read enough Henry James to imitate him.’

‘Not read enough?’ said a startled Diane, who appeared to be tasting the word carefully, as one might a portion of something dangerous, like puffer fish. ‘Dear God, you don’t think we have, do you? I read the beginning of The Portrait of a Lady where they’re gathered for tea on the lawn, in spite of its being late enough for drinks. I question whether Henry James had his priorities straight.’ Jury tossed his coat on a neighboring chair and sat down by Vivian in the window seat and looked around at all of them. ‘If you haven’t read him, how can you parody him?’

Joanna Lewes, their resident writer of romance novels, said, ‘We all read, you know, something or other a long time ago, and Marshall copied out a page of The Ambassadors. You see, this man walked into the Jack and Hammer–’

‘You mean Mr. Lambert Strether?’

‘Right. So he seems such an idiot–I can’t imagine the real Lambert Strether barging in on a tableful of people who were having a good time without him, can you? So we’ve got this contest going where each of us has to write one sentence–it’ll have to be fairly long, if it’s in the style of James.’

‘Don’t forget the important bit,’ said Vivian.

Jury said, ‘I’m glad to hear there is an important bit.’

‘Do you want to enter?’ asked Trueblood. ‘Entry fee is one pound fifty.’

‘I sincerely doubt it. But I have first of all to hear the important bit.’

‘Tin in,’ said Melrose, slapping two pound coins on the center of the table and taking back one fifty p piece.

Trueblood supplied Jury’s answer: ‘The sentence has to begin ‘Man walked into a pub.’ Those words must appear in your sentence. The only variant allowed would be ‘the’ put in place of ‘a,’ as in ‘Man walked into the pub,’ instead of ‘Man walked into a pub.’ Want to put up a quid? Winner takes the pot.’

Diane shook her head. ‘Winner takes most of it; runner-up gets the fifty p pieces.’

Jury was about to improve on his earlier sarcasm, when Mrs. Withersby (‘girl of the moment,’ Melrose said), waving a bit of paper, yelled, ‘I got it; mine’s done.’

Mrs. Withersby (Dick’s char) cleared her throat, which was no mean feat, considering her two-pack-a-day habit. She raised her voice and recited: ‘Man walked into a pub and pissed hisself before he got to the bar.’ She chortled, thinking that wonderfully funny.

Jury did, too. He looked at the people around the table as they looked at Mrs. Withersby, as if they were considering her entry.