The Case Has Altered (9 page)

“Hold it! I don't even know what kind of cupboard that is!”

Trueblood sighed. “There
wasn't
one, old sweat. But is Max Owen going to remember that? How can he remember something that never happened? I mean, that's the trick of it, isn't it?”

Melrose frowned over the logic of this.

Trueblood reached around to some heavy-looking books he had
stacked on his desk, pulled one out, flipped through it. Finding what he wanted, he turned the color plate toward Melrose. “This is the sort of cupboard.” After Melrose had spent some moments studying it, Trueblood snapped the book shut, handed it to Melrose. “Homework.”

Taking it, Melrose groaned. “I'd have to have months, years to digest what's in these books. Look how heavy they are. Don't you have anything for the layman?”

Ignoring these protests, Trueblood took a small paper from where he'd stashed it under his desk blotter. “It's not going to be all that hard for you; you can check Theo Wrenn Browne's shelves, the little shyster. Our friend Jury—clever cop, he is—left this list of pieces Max Owen wanted appraised. His wife pointed them out to Jury, and he jotted them down. There are only five pieces. You can certainly mug up on five pieces.”

Melrose put up his hand. “I've got my own, thanks.”

“That's not to say, of course, that by the time you get there—”

“There'll be twenty-five. Wonderful. Do you have pictures of all these things in the book?” Glumly, he looked at the list. He felt, actually, somewhat relieved there were only these five. But, as he himself had said, Owen could always spring a suspect Queen Anne sofa or a middling example of a Hepplewhite armchair on him.

“Probably don't have pictures of all five of them. Oh, and there's a rug, too. Ispahan.” Trueblood pulled out another volume and leafed through it.

Melrose groaned. “I know less about rugs than about furniture.”

“It's in here somewhere. Never mind, I'll dig it out soon enough.” He snapped the book shut. “I'm parched. Come on, let's have a drink.”

 • • • 

I
n the Jack and Hammer, Joanna Lewes looked up from a short stack of manuscript pages. Joanna, who wrote her immensely popular novels with a Trollopelike efficiency, forced herself to write two hundred and fifty words every fifteen minutes. She was waiting, she had once said, for the Warholian fifteen minutes. She greeted them and went back to her editing.

Trueblood got the drinks while Melrose looked over her shoulder. “
London Love?
But you've already published that one, several years ago.”

“I have,” answered Joanna, sighing. “This is a revised text. I decided Matt and Valerie hadn't been having enough sex first time around.”

Melrose sat down. “Joanna, if it's already published, why would your publisher do it again? I have always had the thrifty notion that the publisher only does that once.”

“You're forgetting Robert Graves and John Fowles.
Good-bye to All That
was revised and republished. So was
The Magus.”

“But if you thought it was rubbish once, wouldn't it be double-rubbish twice?”

She laughed. “Of course. Who cares? The publisher probably won't even remember doing
London Love
before, publishers being what they are.” She slapped another page down on the stack. “One takes a perverse pleasure in watching fools be fools. Theo, for instance, is giving a drinks party. Didn't you love the invitation?”

Trueblood was back, setting down his own drinks: Old Peculier for Melrose; for himself a campari and lime. “Cream-laid paper. Engraved. Good lord. When the best way of issuing invitations is just to stand in front of the pub and holler.”

Joanna evened up the stack of pages and rose. “Sorry. I've more writing to do. That last hour I spent is missing seven hundred and fifty words. Ta.”

“Hells bells, there's Diane. I hope she's not headed here. I can't deal with Diane today.”

“Looks like you'll have to, old trout.”

Melrose groaned.

The arctic Miss Demorney, who was entering the pub now, was a person (they both agreed) wanting in any feeling that warmed the blood of the average mortal. To increase this icy impression, she liked to dress in white. Even the decor of her living room—white leather, white walls, white cat—augmented the glacial effect.

With the confidence of one who knew someone else would fetch and carry for her, Diane Demorney smiled at Dick Scroggs, who was already shaking ice off her martini glass. She furnished him with her own special
brand of vodka and also had instructed him to keep her martini glass chilled. She still paid him full price for her drink. Diane might have been a lot of things, but she certainly wasn't cheap.

Trueblood, good-naturedly, swanned off to get her martini as Diane pulled out a chair, sat down, plugged a cigarette into her long white holder, and said, “I've only the time for one drink—”

Considering the potency of the one, she'd need plenty of time, thought Melrose.

“—as I'm going up to London. Ah, thank you,” she said, as Trueblood placed her martini before her. The circumference of the glass was the approximate size of a skating rink. She smoked and allowed the olive to steep. “I don't expect either of you cares to motor up with me?”

“Hopes dashed to the ground, Diane,” said Trueblood. “We're busy.”

Melrose did wish Trueblood would stop answering for him, even though he had no wish to accompany Diane. He doubted she wanted company as much as she wanted a chauffeur. She hated driving herself, despite that absolutely wonderful Rolls. No one knew how Diane had come into her money—donated by the several ex-husbands, probably—still, she complained of feeling “pinched” from time to time. She was the sort of profligate spender who believed if one is good, two is better. So she bought a Bentley.

Now, she sipped her drink and then sat with her chin in her hand, saying, “Honestly, Melrose, that aunt of yours.”

Must he be blamed for the relationship?

She continued: “Suing Ada Crisp, for God's sake. Has she no sense whatever?”

“Not really. But I'm glad you're on Ada's side.”

Diane's smooth eyebrows arched. “I'm not on anybody's
side.
The point is, Ada has no money.”

Trueblood said, “A benevolent way of looking at it.”

Diane gave him a peculiar look. She was not used to the word. “Well, she hasn't a sou, not a bean, and I told Agatha that if she won her suit all she'd end up with is a lot of dusty old bedsteads and legless tables. Ada Crisp has nothing in that shop that's of value. Of course, Theo just
adores
the idea because he could buy up the property and expand. So he simply eggs Agatha on. He was the one put her in touch with the solicitors in Sidbury.” She sat back and yawned, then said, “Well, it's all too strenuous for me, all of this activity.” She tilted her head and exhaled a thin blue stream of smoke at the ceiling. “I wish there were something amusing going to happen.”

“We could all go over to the Blue Parrot,” said Trueblood.

“Oh,
that's
hardly
amusing,
Marshall.”

Good lord, thought Melrose, if she didn't find the Blue Parrot's proprietor “amusing” she must be really hard up for laughs.

“And besides,” she went on, “the Blue Parrot's absolutely
medieval.
It's so
rustic.
”

Melrose had never heard the Middle Ages referred to as “rustic” before. “Diane, all of Long Piddleton is ‘rustic.' ”

“No, no,
no
” said Trueblood. “Quaint's the word.”

Diane made a moue of distaste and turned to signal to Scroggs. When he finally looked up from the weekly gossip-sheet, she made a circular motion with her finger. She was standing drinks. Melrose sometimes wondered about Diane. Her generosity seemed at odds with the rest of her—coldly calculating, self-centered, feathers for brains. Diane
appeared
to be knowledgeable only because she had picked out one arcane or esoteric fact about nearly every subject under the sun. And only one. When Dick Scroggs brought the drinks she zipped open her suitcase of a bag and brought out her checkbook, shaking her glossy black head
No, no,
as Trueblood reached for his wallet. Diane disliked carrying money. She paid for stamps with a check.

This transaction over, she raised her glass, said “Cheers,” and then sighed. “I only wish
something
amusing would happen.” She frowned. “What about Vivian's Count—” She was trying to dredge up the name.

“Dracula,” said Trueblood.

“His
name
,” said Melrose, “is Franco Giopinno.”

“Didn't I hear he might be visiting Vivian?”

“It is so rumored,” said Trueblood, “but I can't imagine it.”

She sipped her drink. “You know, I've often wondered about Dracula. . . . ”

“Funny,” said Trueblood. “I hardly think of the chap from one moment to the next.”

“No, but can you imagine it? Only blood for nourishment?” She picked up her glass. “No pre-dinner drinks, no prawn cocktail for starters, a bucket of blood for your entree, and no sweet. How perfectly
awful.”

“He's quite normal-looking, really,” said Melrose. “Actually, he's handsome. Brooding sort of looks.”

Trueblood was astonished. “You didn't tell me you'd seen him.”

“It's been so long. I met him in Stratford-upon-Avon. He was with Vivian.”

“I hope you were wearing your cross,” said Trueblood.

“But hasn't she been engaged, so to speak, for donkey's years? Sounds bloody strange—no pun intended—to me,” said Diane.

“Uh-huh. To tell the truth, I wouldn't be surprised if Vivian had him here to give him the boot. It'd be easier to do it here than to do it there, where he's surrounded by a lot of generic Italians,” said Trueblood.

Diane gave him another peculiar look. “What do you mean? Oh, never mind.” Diane was never one to explore areas of ignorance. “Is he rich?”

“Probably. He sounds rich.”

Diane's porcelain brow furrowed in a passable imitation of someone thinking. “But I expect after he married, they'd have to live in—where does he live?”

“Venice,” said Melrose.

“If you call it living,” said Trueblood, firing up a bright pink Sobranie.

“He'd probably want to live in Venice and speak Italian—” Diane's perfect black eyebrows came together in a little frown.

“Venetians do go in for that sort of thing, yes,” said Trueblood.

“It just might be too much trouble for our Vivian to go to.” She took a sip of her martini. “Quite a bit of trouble for
anyone
to go to.”

Anyone?
thought Melrose.
Who might “anyone” be?

 • • • 

T
he bell over the door of the Wrenn's Nest Bookshop tinkled in an irritated little way as Melrose entered. The shop was itself almost insufferably
quaint, with its exposed timber, low lintels—with silly “Mind Your Head” signs—and rickety staircase to the level above. Given all of Theo Wrenn Browne's sidelines—his lending library, the stuffed animals in a huge bin by the staircase, and now even T-shirts—the place was jam-packed. This (Browne had said) was the reason he needed more room, and the only room he could think of was Ada Crisp's secondhand shop.

Theo Wrenn Browne was presently engaged in one of his sidelines, the lending library. He was coming very close to putting Long Piddleton's one-room library straight out of business; since Browne had immediate access to all of the new books and bestsellers, he did nicely, even though he charged 10p a day. People were peculiar about books, Melrose decided, for when they wanted a new book, they really wanted it, expense be hanged.

Browne's borrower in this case was a small girl with flaxen hair and a sweet piping voice that would have melted the heart of the meanest of men, but not the heart of Theo Wrenn Browne, who was busy reprimanding her about the condition of her returned book. The little girl claimed that her brother Bub (even younger than she) was the guilty party. In any event, someone had cut up a page and Browne was going to make reparation or take away her privileges. And of course tell her mum.

Melrose had on several occasions come upon a scene such as this of Dickensian proportions, an exchange between Browne and some luckless kiddy. He wouldn't have dared try this if a parent had accompanied the child.

After a curt nod at Melrose, Browne went back to bedeviling the girl (whose name was, apparently, Sally): “This is the only copy I have of
Patrick.
And just
how
are we going to solve this little problem, hmm, young Sally?”

Melrose had always loathed this asking of questions that a child can't possibly answer, thereby doubling the anxiety.

“It was Bub did it, he don't know any better,” answered Sally, who was pinching the skin of one hand with the other, as if an act of self-mutilation might make all of this go away.

Why the tears standing in her eyes didn't fall, Melrose couldn't imagine. Perhaps she had willed them not to, and thus avert further humiliation.

“Well, then perhaps we can have Bub come along and answer my question.”

“No, he can't; he's only two.”

Melrose said, “Sally—”

Though softly said, Sally backed away, for now she was flanked by two adults, a double-danger. “Sally, is this book one of your favorites?”

Not surprisingly, she was too bewildered even to answer that question. “I . . . don't know.”

Theo Wrenn Browne was holding the book and Melrose removed it from his grip. He looked at the cover.
Patrick, the Painted Pig.
Patrick was a bright dripping blue, as if he'd turned over a paint can. Melrose began to turn the pages and make noises of approval. Thus Sally's energy now was taken up more with curiosity, which had reduced the fear—at least he hoped so.