I Am the Only Running Footman (6 page)

Melrose saw Lucinda sliding down a bit in her chair and decided to extricate her before the group all burst into carol-singing
or something. He picked up his drink and hers, smiled, and excused both himself and her. “I really think Miss St. Clair has come to Long Piddleton for a bit of a talk with me.”

•  •  •

When they were seated at a table near the fireplace, she began with another apology for presuming upon their brief acquaintance, and told him she was just on her way back from Northampton where she'd gone to pick up some materials and things. “For Mother. She's doing up a house in Kensington. You remember Mother?”

Didn't he just. Sybil had once been plain wife and mother before she'd taken up the artsy ways of the world of interior design. Typical of her, too, that she'd send the daughter to do the dog's work, running about with swatches of material, matching and measuring. As he remembered her, she seemed to prefer frocks without waists, all folds that hung aimlessly here and there. There was all the shine and glint in her complexion that Clinique could give her.

Melrose had met her again on one of his infrequent trips to London. He had befriended Lucinda, feeling something of the agony of a young woman with no social graces and the thin-legged, long-nosed look of a crane. She wore white and shouldn't have, as it only increased the image. Poor Lucinda managed to turn a deer park into a rain forest with her large, damp brown eyes. They had been staying at the hotel he liked. Tea at Brown's had escalated into dinner, where he told them about his visit at that very hotel with an American tour group. The story of those murders had enthralled them.

“What I remembered was that you seemed to have some experience with police —”

“Well, I do know one or two, yes. But I'm not really a dab hand at the business. Why?”

She took a long breath. “There's a friend of mine, see, who seems to have got himself in trouble. I just thought perhaps
that you might be able to sort things out — Oh, I don't know. It's dreadful.”

“What's happened? Who's the friend?” He was a little sorry he'd asked when she colored and looked away. The “friend” was undoubtedly more than a friend, or she hoped so.

“No one special, really,” she said looking everywhere but at him. “A friend of the family. We've known him for ages.  . . .” The whispery voice trailed off. “Did you read about that woman murdered in Mayfair? It was in the paper today.”

The one Scroggs had talked about so juicily. “You don't mean your friend is mixed up in that? That
is
dreadful.”

All in a rush and with a great deal of intensity she said, “I'm afraid that he might just be arrested or something. He was the last one to see the girl alive. Or at least that's what they're saying.” From her large bag she drew out a copy of the same paper Scroggs had read them.

“Scotland Yard CID,” he said after reading the account. “Is this your friend? The one who's ‘helping police with their inquiries,' as they say?”

Lucinda St. Clair nodded. “I just thought that since you're so clever about these things —”

“If that's the impression I gave, I didn't mean to.” He carefully folded the paper. He certainly had been decidedly unclever when he had helped Richard Jury on that last case. The memory still sent chills down his spine. “There's really nothing I can do. Civilians can't go messing about in police business, Lucinda.” How many times had he been told
that
by Jury's superior?

It was a crestfallen look he got. “There's really no one else I can think of.”

“Surely he has a solicitor —”

She nodded and looked desolate.

“I take it this gentleman is a very good friend.”

The look of desolation only increased. “Yes.”

Melrose thought for a moment. It wouldn't hurt, he supposed, to call Jury. “You've got to understand, though, that I can't do anything by way of interfering —”

“Oh, no one's thinking of your
interfering.
I just thought you might be able somehow to look at it from another perspective.” She lost that rain-forest look for a moment. “Then you
will
come?”

“You mean to Sussex?”

“Somers Abbas. We could drive down together; I have my car —”

Melrose held up his hand. “No; I'll really have to think about this.”

Lucinda sat back, looking more desolate than she had when she came in. “Will you call, then?”

“Of course.” Melrose looked over to the table where Vivian, Trueblood, and his aunt still sat, the two women pretending not to be interested in the goings-on before the fireplace. Agatha was making a far poorer job of the pretense than was Vivian. Melrose smiled at the familiar trio in the bay window. Vivian smiled back and even wiggled her fingers in a friendly little wave. Perhaps her difficulty in crossing the Channel lay in some deep-rooted need to keep the little party intact. Benevolently she beamed at Lucinda.

He studied the girl. He felt a tacit agreement with Vivian that Lucinda St. Clair would probably never break up a party.

•  •  •

On this rare December morning Melrose sat at the rosewood dining table, the
Times
folded beside his plate of eggs. He penned in two down and one across. But he was only giving part of his mind to the crossword; the rest was on the call he had made to Richard Jury, who had told him certainly, absolutely to go to Somers Abbas. That he was acquainted
with someone who knew the Winslow family could be extremely helpful. And for all of the past help, well, Jury thought he deserved a knighthood. A bit redundant, perhaps, but anyway  . . .

“I doubt very much that Chief Superintendent Racer would oblige with a knighthood. I doubt very much that Racer has been pleased . . . .”

Melrose looked down the length of the table and out the French windows that on this unseasonable day had been opened. Their creamy curtains billowed slightly in the breeze. Beyond the window he caught a glimpse of the serpentine path that wound through the grounds and down which he loved to stroll. All of those grounds out there — the wide expanse of gardens, the silver wintercrust of the lake, the yew hedges and willows — reminded him of the walk he had taken with Lucinda St. Clair at Lady Jane's party. Melrose could imagine, all the while, Sybil St. Clair watching with the patience of a puma straddled on a branch, waiting for the least flicker of movement from the quarry below. It was maddening to feel sorry for Lucinda, and impossible not to. She had, of course, been delighted that he was coming. And in face of all her mother's objections, Melrose had insisted at a room at the local inn.

He sighed and looked up, his eye moving round the walls and the portraits there that hung in such stately procession that the whole crowd of them might have been on its way to Westminster Abbey. Viscount Nitherwold, Ross and Cromarty, Marquess of Ayreshire and Blythedale, Earl of Caverness  . . . one could hardly name them without pausing for a stiff drink in between. His eye came to rest on the portrait of his mother, one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen, and one on whom that coronet must have weighed awfully heavily at the end. Filtered sunlight fell in dancing sequins on her pale gold hair, and humor was written all over her face.

He smiled. His mother, if not the Queen, he was sure had been pleased . . . .

•  •  •

“More coffee, m'lord?” asked Ruthven, Plant's paradigm of a gentlemen's gentleman, who had been in the family practically as long as the portraits on the walls. He held the silver pot aloft.

Melrose shook his head and put down his pen. “No thanks, Ruthven. I'd better be on my way.” He pocketed his gold-rimmed spectacles and shoved back his chair.

“Will you be requiring the Flying Spur or the Rolls, sir?”

Melrose looked again at the portrait of Lady Marjorie. Was she smiling? “You know, Ruthven, I think anyone who's asked a question like that should be shot.”

T
HE
last time Jury saw him, Brian Macalvie put his foot through a jukebox. Today, at least, he was only playing it. For a man whose sentiments ran toward moving through his men like Birnam Wood and shouting at suspects, the divisional commander showed a remarkable affinity for old songs and soft voices. It was probably Macalvie's choice now that filled the Running Footman with its whispery
tristesse.

He barely raised his eyes from the menu of songs when he spoke. “Hi, Jury. Took you long enough.” Macalvie slotted another ten-p piece into the jukebox and hit the side when it didn't respond.

Jury could have run all the way from headquarters like the footman in the huge picture that gave the pub its name. However fast he was, it couldn't be fast enough. Time did a peculiar dance around Macalvie; he picked up exactly where he left off. Two years ago, ten minutes, it made no difference. Just as last year's murder was still today's news for Macalvie. He never gave up.

Jury smiled. “The world wags by three times, Macalvie: God's, yours, and Greenwich Mean.”

Macalvie might have been checking his watch against the other two because he shook it before he nodded. “Yeah. Have a beer. Just be careful of the Gopher; it'd take the scales off a brontosaurus.” He picked his pint from the top of the jukebox and walked to a table beneath the painting.

When Jury came back with his own pint, Macalvie was standing and drinking and studying the painting. “That's what we are, Jury, messengers. Good news, bad news — people'd complain no matter what we brought.” He sat down. “Where's Wiggins?”

For a divisional commander who was his own one-man police force because he couldn't put up with the slightest show of foot-dragging or malingering, it was surprising that he got on so well with Wiggins. As good a man as Wiggins was, he could be sluggish. Sickness wouldn't slow Macalvie down any more than a flea on a cheetah.

Macalvie brought out a cigar. The cellophane crackled like Macalvie's eyes. A walking conflagration with its roots in his Scotch-Irish ancestry spiked by a strong predilection for American cop films.

“Why aren't you chief constable yet, Macalvie?”

“Beats me,” he said, with no trace of irony. “I would've got here sooner, only that train from Dorchester stops for chickens.”

“You got here fast enough, considering we found the girl early this morning. I take it you think there's a connection —”

“Of course. Sheila Broome, found on a stretch of road beyond Taunton. For ten months I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

“You were sure it would? And Ivy Childess is the shoe?”

Macalvie shot him a look. “Yes.”

“I don't want to tread on your theory, Macalvie —”

As if you could,
the look said.

“—but murderers aren't all serial killers, and women get mugged every day. I don't much believe in startling coincidences.”

“Oh,
come
on. You don't believe this started out as a mugging any more than I do.”

True, he didn't. “I'm just more conservative, Macalvie.”

“No wonder you got to be superintendent, Jury.”

Jury ignored that. “So tell me about this Sheila Broome.”

“She set out on the night of twenty-nine February to go to Bristol. That's according to her mum, only she told Mum she'd got a ride. To Bristol, that is. Since none of her friends knew anything about her leaving town and no one gave her a ride from around here, we figured she was getting lifts from along the road. She was
not
prissy Priscilla. There was nothing unusual about her — she snorted coke and slept around, her friends said. Age, twenty-six, hardly a schoolkid, never married. Pretty in a sulky way; not very likeable; did two O levels and then quit, so not ambitious, either. Worked at a pub in the new part of Exeter and didn't tell the landlord she was quitting. She put me in mind of an old newspaper; you could have blown her to Bristol, and no one would notice.”

“What is it about the murder that makes you think it was more than Sheila Broome being in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

“Because she wasn't robbed and she wasn't raped. And they were out of the car, both of them, smoking grass in the woods. Now, if you were tooling along looking over the hitcher situation, what'd you be looking for? Sex or money or both. But with Sheila it's neither. I think it was someone who knew her; could have been a man, could have been a woman. I think it was someone
looking
for her —”

“That's a chancy way to get your victim, waiting until she hitches a ride.”

“If you're not in a hurry, it's a swell way. Removes both of you from home ground.”

“But the scarf; that doesn't sound premeditated, Macalvie. He just used the available means.”

Macalvie got up and collected their glasses. “Oh, I imagine he had something else, a stocking, a gun.” He went off to fill the glasses and, while he was waiting, to play the jukebox.

The Running Footman wasn't crowded; a few couples, a half-dozen singles that looked pleasant and not hurting for money. Jury supposed you weren't if you lived in Mayfair.

Macalvie walked back to the table, where they sat for a moment drinking and listening to the honey-voice of Elvis Presley. Elvis was Macalvie's favorite.

“Like I said, she wasn't robbed. She was carrying about seventy quid in a rucksack, another ten or eleven in her jacket. There was a gold watch, strap broken, in the pack and a couple of rings on her fingers.”

“What about cars, drivers? Did you find anyone?”

“There was a lorry driver. I wouldn't have found him except for a waitress in a Little Chef who thought she remembered Sheila Broome's face, not so much because of the face itself, but because she was wearing a vest the waitress fancied and asked her where she got it. Electric blue, it was. And she remembered the artic because it was so big it took up nearly half the car park. Lucky for the driver that the waitress watched when they left; she said he must have started off with Sheila, but when Mary-the-waitress looked out the window, Sheila was stepping down from the cab. She could hardly see through the fog; it was that neon-blue vest. Then Sheila was trying to hitch another ride in front of the petrol station next to the cafe.”