I Am the Only Running Footman (5 page)

“Shove the cough drop under your tongue, Wiggins,” said Jury patiently.

“Oh. Sorry, sir. It was this case about ten months ago, end of February. Young woman by the name of Sheila Broome. Well, I would have passed straight over it except for the description of the body
in situ.
Police made sure there was no
publicity because they were afraid of copy-cat murders. For good reason. She was found in a wooded area off the A303, just near the turn-off to Taunton. She'd been strangled, apparently with her own scarf. Well, it could be a coincidence —”

Jury stared blindly at Cyril, who was pressing one paw and then the other against the big snowflakes drifting against the windowpane. A serial killer. The worst kind. “Let's hope so. Get on to headquarters in Somerset.”

“Police in Somerset wouldn't be handling it, sir. It's right over the border.” Pause. “In Devon.”

“Well, call Exeter, then.”

There was another pause and a tiny rattle of paper. This seemed to be a two-cough-drop problem. Said Wiggins, wanly: “You don't suppose it's Macalvie's case, do you, sir?”

Jury half-smiled. “Every case in Devon is Macalvie's case.”

T
HE
snow outside the Jack and Hammer was tracked only by a narrow set of marks made by the Jack Russell belonging to Miss Crisp, which had left its mistress's rag-and-bone shop across the street to make its afternoon rounds of the village.

Through the dreamy motley of palette-tinted shops and cottages the sonorous drone of the bell in the church tower washed over the High Street and past the pub where the mechanical smith up on a high beam picked it up and made a simulated bong on his forge. Above him the clock struck five.

It was a call-to-arms for a few of Long Piddleton's residents. There was a half-hour yet until opening, but Scroggs often turned a blind eye to the licensing laws when it came to his family of regulars. One of these had biked the half-mile from Ardry End and was sitting at a table in the large bay window. His legs were outstretched and his trousers still pinched by bicycle clips. He had passed the halfway mark in the book he was reading.

No devotee of the thriller-novel, he would have ordinarily
skipped from the first chapter to the last, filling in whatever extraneous details were necessary for the resolution. But his longstanding affection for the author of this particular book had obligated him to read every page. Well, almost, thought Melrose Plant. Love me, love my books. His friendship with its author had not extended to a friendship with this book bearing the irrelevant title of
The Plum-Pudding Group.
It was meant, he imagined, to sell to the Christmas trade and had found its way onto the shelves of Long Piddleton's new book shop, called the Wrenn's Nest, a silly pun on its proprietor's name.

He wondered if he couldn't just take a peek at the end. The murderer's motive was the old kill-him-before-he-changes-his-will cliché, and the characters seemed at a loss to know what to do with themselves, like people looking vague on a railway platform after the train pulls away.

Melrose Plant checked his watch, not to see if the two others who usually joined him in the Jack and Hammer were late, but because he knew another body should be turning up — ah, yes, there it was. Colonel Montague. Too bad, he thought. He had rather liked old Montague despite that gin-beneath-the-palms manner that the author had saddled him with. Yes, there were bodies aplenty. If Raymond Chandler's prescription for a cure for midbook boredom was to bring in a man with a gun, Polly Praed's was to drag another corpse into every other chapter. This latest book must have been written in extreme agitation, for there was a jittery, hectic quality to the sudden discovery of body after body. Her mind, he thought, must be an abattoir.

•  •  •

All this murder and mayhem was interrupted by the arrival of two other regulars whom he was happy to see since they would relieve him of further delving into the death of Montague.

“Hello, Melrose,” said Vivian Rivington, the prettier of the
two, although Melrose wondered idly if Marshall Trueblood would insist upon a reevaluation of that assessment.

“Hullo, old bean,” said Marshall Trueblood, looking this afternoon like a fairly ordinary rather than an eccentric millionaire. He wore a dark woolen jacket so beautifully tailored that it might have been the last best dream of a Hebredean weaver. But the weaver would have wakened wide-eyed at sight of the bold blue cashmere sweater and sea green ascot tucked in the neck of a turquoise crepe de chine shirt. For Trueblood, this was a costume downplayed. “Thank God, another day in the stews and sweats is finished.”

Marshall Trueblood could afford anything but sweat. He was fond of slandering his own antiques business located in the small Tudor building next door, a thriving shop despite Long Piddleton's slender population. It prospered because it drew on a London clientele, among them some very knowledgeable dealers. Business was also helped along by the patronage of the two — even richer than Trueblood — who shared the table.

“It's only just gone five,” said Vivian Rivington with a melancholy air. Winter's dregs left the trio with little to do but comment on one another's departure from the norm. “You don't close until six,” she said, shaking her watch.

“There's no custom. I left a sign on the door to check over here if someone wants a distressed bureau. What're you reading, Melrose?” he asked as Scroggs set drinks before them.

Melrose Plant turned it cover-out so that his friends could see.

“The Plum-Pudding Group.
Strange title. Cheers.” He raised his glass.

Vivian was squinting at the name of the author. “It's another one of that Polly's, isn't it?”

“I'm afraid it's not very good. But don't tell her.”

“She's not
around
to tell,” said Vivian with just a touch of fractiousness. “I don't understand what your relationship is.”

“Careful, careful, Vivian. You're not one to talk of
engagé
involvements.”

“You're so right, Melrose,” said Trueblood. “Is this another Christmas you'll not be spending with the ill-starred Franco of Florence?”

“Venice,” she said, a little waspishly.

“Did you get bad news in your letter?” Trueblood dashed a bit of ash from the end of his black Sobranie and smiled roguishly.

Vivian's eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, in my letter?”

“Why, the one you must have got this morning. The one in your pocket.”

The hand that had strayed to the pocket of her cardigan was brought back quickly to make a fist on the table.

“Postmarked Venezio.”

“Just how do
you
know?”

“If Miss Quarrels
must
sort the post by spreading it out on the counter like a cardsharp, is it my fault?”

“And you went to the trouble of reading it upside-down!”

He had brought out his little gold nail-clipper. “No, I turned it right-side up.”

“Snoop!”

•  •  •

Hearing her cue, Lady Agatha Ardry appeared in the Jack and Hammer's doorway, making her snowy entrance with a shake-out of her cape and a stamp of her shoes. “I looked in your windows, Mr. Trueblood,” she said to Marshall Trueblood even before she called to Dick Scroggs for her double shooting sherry. “It's not six, Mr. Trueblood. Your shop should be open. But then if custom means so little  . . . my dear Plant, I was just bucketing along to Ardry End —”

Doing her rounds like Miss Crisp's terrier, thought Melrose, turning a page and finding Lady Dasher dead in the hydrangeas . . . .

“— and I passed a car —”

Lucky for the driver. Usually she just drove into them. Agatha had acquired an old Morris Minor that looked like her: rounded dome and dumpy body.

“—just coming down the drive as I drove in. Woman driver, thirtyish, brown hair, black Porsche —”

“Number plate?”

“What?”

“Surely, you got the number so we can run it through Scotland Yard's computer system. They do wonders finding hot cars these days —”

“Don't be daft, Plant. Well, she got straight away before I could stop her. Who is she, then? She's
not
terribly attractive.”

This was said with some relief, as if removing the lady in the Porsche from the running of marriageable females. These Agatha appeared to see as so many lovelies hastening toward the family vaults of Ardry End, its chinoiserie, crystal, Queen Anne furniture, and the titles that Melrose had dropped like petals in the dust — earldom, viscountcy, baronetcy — that could still be gathered up (she seemed to think) and glued back on the bud.

“You don't have visitors this time of year, Melrose.” She sighed and called again for her sherry. Scroggs went on turning the pages of his newspaper. “It's not like the old days. Remember your dear mother, Lady Marjorie —”

Here she would go again, poking along the paths of his family memories like a pig rooting through rosebushes. “The Countess of Caverness, yes. And my father, and my uncle Robert. I have always had a very good memory for detail. But what were you doing up at Ardry End?”

“To see Martha about the Christmas dinner. She said it hadn't been decided yet.”

“It has. Poor Man's Goose and Idiot Biscuits.”

“My favorite!” said Marshall Trueblood. “I hope we're invited.”

“Of course. You always are.”

“You're making it up,” said Agatha, stomping her cane on the floor in an attempt to unglue Scroggs from his paper. “There's no such thing.”

“There certainly is. It's actually ox-liver. And for your sweet you may have raspberry flummery. Or would you prefer the gooseberry fool? Martha's quite good with a fool.” Melrose yawned and watched the Jack Russell through the leaded window that spelled out Hardy's Crown in amber lettering. It was sniffing round the feet of a woman in a brown hat standing on the pavement looking speculatively at Trueblood's window. Melrose thought she looked familiar.

“There she is!” cried Agatha, craning her neck to peer through the leaded glass.

•  •  •

“I didn't mean to barge in,” said the young woman in the brown hat.

It was, thought Melrose, looking at the dreamy, gawky girl, exactly the sort of comment that Lucinda St. Clair would make. She was the sort of woman who people would still refer to as a “girl” even in her late twenties or early thirties.

“You're not barging!” said Vivian with the first display of brightness she had shown since she'd walked in.

For Melrose, Vivian Rivington had always embodied in near-equal measure beauty, grace, and kindliness. She could wear as she now did the old wool skirt and twinset or doll herself up in what Trueblood designated as “the Italian period,” but she still never seemed to know what to do with
herself or whether the one or the other persona fit. Thus it wasn't surprising that she should take the measure of Lucinda St. Clair, probably thinking that here was a female in even worse shape than she, Vivian; one who was dressed in an even drabber twinset.

“Thank you very much,” said Lucinda with a look of gratitude hardly occasioned by the simple act of Trueblood's pulling out a chair for her. He himself knew Sybil St. Clair, her mother, who was an occasional customer of his. This made it that much worse for Agatha — that even Trueblood had indirect knowledge of their visitor and she none.

Lucinda's eyes were large and chestnut brown. When they met the beady black ones of Agatha, she quickly looked away. Agatha had been silently scouring Lucinda St. Clair for signs of marriageability, signs which Agatha always seemed to think such ladies sported in neon-bright arrows. Then Agatha squinted and demanded to know if they had met.

Melrose sighed and hoped neither would track the memory down. They had indeed met, albeit very briefly, at one of those dreadful parties at Lady Jane Hay-Hurt's. But he didn't think Agatha could put a name to this memory, for she had been busy talking to Lady Jane, who was in absolutely no danger of joining the Ardry-Plant line and raiding the inheritance. Lady Jane was literally long in the tooth, resembling as she did an Alsatian, and Agatha liked to push Melrose in her path, realizing that the Ardry-Plant fortune was perfectly safe. But in Lucinda, Agatha would see a possible adversary relationship; here was an eligible woman who had crossed Agatha's field of vision and had the temerity not to withdraw from the field. She was youngish and nice and merely plain. Melrose hoped that nothing would jog his aunt's memory because then she would recall having met Lucinda's mother, Sybil, with whom his aunt had had a wonderful
time sitting on Lady Jane's settee, demolishing teacakes and characters.

“No, you haven't,” said Melrose, putting a dead stop to speculation. “Miss St. Clair somewhat resembles Amelia Sheerswater.” It was a name plucked from air. But it would make Agatha wonder about this
new
addition to the ranks of Melrose's women. “We're just having a drink; what would you like?”

Lucinda St. Clair drew her brown hair away from her face and appeared to be in deep colloquy with herself over the drink selection.

“How about sherry?” offered Vivian helpfully. “The Tio Pepe's very good.”

As if Tio Pepe were a drink so rare, refined, and quixotic that it changed from bottle to bottle and pub to pub, thought Melrose. But might as well let Vivian do her thing. Lucinda nodded and Trueblood called to Dick Scroggs for the sherry before he settled back to plug a blue Sobranie into his holder.

Everyone smiled at Lucinda except Agatha, who still was scanning the St. Clair face for telling signs of the Sheerswater one.

It occurred to Melrose when Dick brought her Tio Pepe and stood there looking at the newcomer with his bar towel draped over his shoulder that perhaps the girl was uncomfortable amidst all of this attention. Indeed Lucinda looked from her glass to him and smiled weakly as if she thought she were expected to perform at this little pre-Christmas gathering, to jump up and recite something or tell a clever anecdote. What she did not realize was that they had all been saying pretty much the same thing to one another for years now and it was refreshing to see an unfamiliar face joining their ranks.