The Case Has Altered (13 page)

She nodded, looked at the picture herself for a moment, then asked him if he would like tea or coffee . . . or perhaps a drink?

“Coffee would be fine.”

Although there was a bellpull hanging beside the mirror over the fireplace, she did not use it, preferring instead to go herself. Melrose moved from piano to window, which gave an uninterrupted view of the fens. No trees this side. How lonely and bleak, he thought.

Grace returned, said, “Annie will bring the coffee. She's our cook. Somber, isn't it?” She had joined him at the window. “The most brooding landscape I think I've ever seen. More than the North York moors, even. The first time I drove one of these roads that goes up and
over
the river, instead of just across it, I thought the world was turned upside down. In some places, we're actually below sea-level. Once these fens
were
the sea. They used to call the water the Bailiff. The Bailiff of Fens, come to turn us out, bag and baggage, without warning.” She smiled.

For a few moments they were silent, both looking out over this watery land. Clouds were massing out there, prelude, perhaps, to a storm.

“Do you spend all of the year in London, then?”

Melrose was pulled back from this watery atmosphere; he had felt suddenly sleepy, a defense, he imagined, against the weight of his imposture. He felt it might be unlucky to lie to Grace Owen. “I, ah, have a place in Northants. In Long Piddleton.” He did not add that the “place” was a Georgian stronghold larger than Fengate and that it sat in over a hundred acres of verdant woodland. “That's how I came to know Marshall Trueblood. That's where his shop is.” He asked, somewhat anxiously, “You've not been to his shop, have you?” He had a sudden silly vision of Mrs. Withersby getting Grace aside and slyly pointing out Melrose.
“Now, you best watch that'un, bit of a wide lad, him; he'll be trying t'trick you some day.”
Melrose shook this off. No, she said, she'd never been there. “Neither has
Max. Apparently, this dealer—Trueblood? Is that his name?—heard that Max was looking for an appraiser. I think perhaps it was our Scotland Yard detective who told him.”

Melrose smiled at her appropriating Jury for their own. “I spend most of my time in Northants, not London.” He thought it would be best to play himself as himself as much as possible. Fewer lies to remember.

“But this is not your work?”

Melrose reacted strangely to this comment. It was as if everything were encompassed in it—the circumstances that accounted for her presence here as well as his, in this house, and the house itself; the murders that had been committed close by, perhaps even the death of her son, even the landscape, the fens. As if Melrose had the power of some fiendish assessor to mold these happenings. He had turned up, like a devil on the doorstep. Or the Bailiff of the Fens, come without warning. He shook himself again; he could not understand this melodramatic turn of mind, or this guilty one. He reminded himself that he was trying to help out Jury. And Jenny.

“No,” he answered. “It isn't my work, as you say. I'm a dilettante, an enthusiastic tracker-down of the false and phony. I'm not a professional by any manner of means. I don't even collect things myself.” To fend off that speculative look she was giving him, he nodded toward the paintings on the far wall, the only wall not dedicated to books. “I must say I prefer the paintings in here to the ones in your entrance hall.”
That
was certainly a safe enough judgment.

Grace smiled. “We all have our blind spots.”

He hoped that was merely a generous assessment of her husband's lapse in taste and not of his, Melrose's.

The door opened just then and a woman in her sixties came in with a tray of coffee and biscuits. Her stout figure was wound with a white apron and, as some cooks look the part, she put Melrose in mind of fresh-baked bread and scones. Her hair was pulled back tightly into a bun. It was marsh-brown. Her eyes were darker, the color of peat. She carried herself stiffly, yet her hands were lively. Annie Suggins's hands got busy setting out the cups, clinking spoons into saucers, worrying off a coffee-cozy. All of her life must have gone into her hands. They were the hands of a fluttery
sort of person who might be forever wringing them, or laying them aside her face in looks of astonishment, or jerking a fan about. But Annie did not otherwise strike Melrose as a fluttery person at all. To Grace's kind thanks, she nodded briefly, stiffly, and left.

As Grace set about pouring coffee, she said, “Annie's a wonderful cook. Rather conscious now of extra duties on her shoulders.”

Melrose smiled. “Looks like one of those truly loyal servants.”

Grace laughed. “To tell the truth, I doubt it. I think she's loyal to some Suggins-code that we can't penetrate. Cream?”

“No thank you.”

“I mean, we all live by some weird notion of propriety. Even honor. Don't we? Sugar?”

No, he said again. There was that look on her face again. That smile. He thanked her as she handed over the coffee.

She took her own cup back to the window, drank her coffee as she looked out. For those few moments she appeared to be far away and he drank his own coffee in silence, wanting her mind to proceed along its own line. She then came back to the here and now, a much less demanding place to be, Melrose thought, judging from the difference in her expression.

“Sorry,” she said. “Just woolgathering.” She sat back down on the sofa, then leaned forward, and ran her hand over the rug under her feet. “This is one thing.” She looked up at Melrose. “The rug, I mean. Max wants an opinion on it. The man from Christie's said it wasn't a genuine Turkestan. Just a reproduction. Or imitation.”

Bending over to look at it, he was pleased that he had at least identified the style. “Oh? That seems unlikely.” He put his spectacles on, hoping that would make him look smarter than he felt, rose and walked to the outside edge of the rug and flipped back a corner. “Thousands of knots here, and a very tight weave. The back's as clear as the front. It certainly appears genuine to me. And, also, you must consider the size. It's enormous, much too large to make reproducing worth one's while.” Was that true? A pound of jellybabies might cost only a little more than half-a-pound; a case of wine would not be as much as twelve separate bottles. But did this two-for-one principle hold with Turkish carpets? Didn't the value increase
incrementally, inch by precious inch? Well, he'd said it and he'd best stick by it.

Grace looked at the carpet doubtfully. “But the man from Christie's was supposed to be an expert. . . . ” Then she blushed, perhaps thinking she'd insulted him.

Breezily, Melrose said, “Oh, experts can make mistakes too.
I've
certainly made enough in my time!” And then it occurred to him to wonder why Max Owen was getting these people in to do valuations. “Tell me, why is your husband doing this?”

“Max wants to sell some things. He prefers to do it at auction. But the Christie's man—” She shrugged.

“Sotheby's then?” Melrose hoped the “Sotheby's man” didn't agree with the “Christie's man.” He would hate to go head to head with that lot, the premiere auction houses of the world. Oh, the hell with it. Most of any business was bluster. Blustering, dissembling—everyone did it until a person couldn't tell the Bayeux tapestries from granny's tatting. Melrose hoped she wouldn't ask for the provenance of that Russian amber necklace under glass—did it, in fact, descend from the Romanovs? The only jewelry he'd ever studied closely was whatever Agatha happened to have on, and that was only to see whether it had belonged to his mother. Indeed, he'd learned something about furniture from trying to ascertain what Agatha had nicked from Ardry End. Even tables and chairs had gone missing.

“I met your nephew. Mr. Price? I stopped in the pub to get directions. And a pint,” he added, not wanting to appear holier-than—Mr. Price.

“Jack? The Case is one of his favorite haunts. Jack's my husband's nephew. He has a studio out back; well it's more of a converted barn, but he seems to like it, having a separate place. Sleeps there, too. Sometimes we don't see him for days. Sometimes, I think he sleeps rough, out on the fens.”

“Are the police getting anywhere with these murders?”

Her luminous, gold leaf eyes regarded him over the rim of her cup. “If they have they're not sharing it with us. Poor Dorcas.” Gently, Grace replaced her cup. It tinkled against the saucer because her hand was shaking. “Her body was discovered over on Windy Fen. ‘Wyndham,' really, but we
call it ‘Windy.' It's National Trust property between here and the Case Has Altered. What I mean is, we take the pub for our north boundary—”

Melrose didn't want to get into a discussion of the fens and interrupted. “When did all of this happen?”

She thought for a moment. “Verna was—Verna Dunn, my husband's first wife—was killed two weeks ago. Her body was found late at night on the Wash. I honestly don't know what this Lincolnshire detective has turned up. Dorcas, that was just a few days ago—” The sound of an approaching car brought Grace to her feet. “—the night of the fourteenth. Here's Max!”

H
e was not prepared for Max Owen. Melrose had formed a picture of a fussy, somewhat arrogant dilettante, a proud man, perhaps. Anyone who set such a store by his belongings would be. But Max Owen wasn't. Melrose had been prepared to dislike him, probably because Owen and his collection were a hurdle he had to jump, a fallen tree across his path.

Now that Owen was standing in the doorway, the image dissolved. Melrose's irrational dislike of the man had mounted with every long-lived hour in Trueblood's shop trying to master the finer points of each serpentine chest, saber-legged chair, credenza, or Canterbury that Trueblood dragged to center stage. Once Melrose had actually fallen asleep listening to Trueblood drone on about a japanned chest (
“Always be suspicious of japanning—”
) only to be shaken awake and forced to repeat the more important points like a catechism. Melrose had complained that he couldn't possibly remember all of it and Trueblood had reminded him it was only five pieces he had really to know about. Not including the rug. The rest he could bluff.

“Like Diane. She's got bluffing down to a fine art.”

“If there is anyone I do not wish to be like, it's Diane Demorney!”

Far from being intimidating, Max Owen was almost boyishly shy. It was this that constituted a large part of his charm, for he
was
charming. He was not especially handsome—his face too long, too thin, with eyes like muscat grapes. Where Melrose had imagined there would be a bespoke tailor in the background, he saw that Owen was an indifferent dresser: his subdued suit, dark gray worsted; his tie, a boring tartan. Melrose had expected
a more flamboyant man—one who would wear a yellow waistcoat and was not to be trusted.

Grace said the coffee was cold, and Max said not to bother. But she would have bothered, of course, had not the cook, Annie, appeared right on his heels, with fresh hot coffee, leaving as quickly as she'd come.

Max sat down on the massive Victorian chesterfield, leaning back, legs thrust out before him, as if he were used to this sofa and often sat there. Melrose would have found it hard to get comfortable on such a piece of furniture, but then he imagined that Owen, like Trueblood, related to furnishings—“things”—far more sensitively than Melrose himself did. They could see comfort where he could not.

“Sorry not to be here to greet you. I've been all day at Carlton House. They're selling off the entire contents. You can imagine there were some good pieces.” He looked at Melrose as he sipped his coffee; the look was encouraging, as if he expected something from Melrose.

Given his avocation, Melrose would be expected to have heard about this sale. “Marshall Trueblood told me about it. I would have gone with him had I not been coming here.”

“I don't know your friend Trueblood. But I couldn't have picked him out anyway. A horde of people, really crowded.”

“Trueblood was after a couple of carved boxes. Sixteenth century. I wonder if he got them.” A small acquisition such as that probably would go unnoticed. He hoped he was being vague enough that Max Owen wouldn't question him.

Max frowned. “Don't remember seeing them in the catalogue. Anyway, I managed to walk off with the Carlton House writing table.”

“Lord, do we have room?” Grace's laugh was rueful.

Melrose was glad she'd interceded since he was sure Owen was about to put a question to him about the writing table. He sat back down on the hard settee, hoping he would not thereby call attention to this ornately carved piece, as he had no idea about its origins. But he had to sit somewhere. He should have chosen the leather wing chair, which was straightforward Chippendale.

Grace spoke as she poured the coffee. “I was telling Mr. Plant about—”

Melrose smiled and accepted more coffee. “Melrose will do, thanks.”

Max sat forward. “I understand you have a title. May I ask what?”

“Caverness, Earl of. But I prefer the family name.”

“Why?”

Oh, hell. Was Owen going to be one of these quite literal types who had no use for nuance or intuition? “Titles are cumbersome.”

“Wish I had one.” Max sat back.

“Well, don't distinguish yourself in any way and perhaps you will.”

They laughed, and Grace continued what she'd been about to say. “I was telling him about—what happened. Mr. Plant is a friend of Jennifer Kennington.”

“Ah! She too had a title she disavowed. But she'd married one, so I expect it doesn't count for much. She didn't like it, either.”

Melrose corrected Grace Owen again. “Acquaintance only. I met her once in Stratford.” He told Grace he knew Jenny to avoid the consequences of some future slip that would make it clear he did know her.