The Old Contemptibles (39 page)

She was watching, with growing interest, the wide field on the other side of the gardens and the stone cottage, where a figure was walking along from the direction of Tarn House. Millie Thale. She could recognize the little girl even from this distance. Now Millie had reached the garden and was stopping, apparently oblivious to Adam Holdsworth’s sideshow (that wheelchair was surely operating against the laws of gravity, coming up that incline as it did) and was stooping to pick a bouquet of daffodils.

She was
now
watching another figure, far, far in the distance coming from the same direction. Running.

Lady Cray rose so suddenly that her bag slipped to the ground. She retrieved it.

As she set off down the lawn, she returned Adam’s wave.

“I brought you these,” said Millie Thale, her hands holding an enormous bouquet of daffodils.

Helen Viner, who had been sitting stock-still, frowning at the images in her own mind, rose as she changed her expression to one of smiling indulgence. “Millie! But
daffodils,
Millie?” She started to come from behind her desk.

“I expect I’m cured,” said Millie, holding out the flowers with both hands.

“Well, thank—”

The daffodils fell away and fluttered to the floor.

The impact of the bullet flattened Helen Viner against the wall. Her body seemed riveted there, palms pushed to the wall, eyes staring, when Alex Holdsworth wedged himself through the window, yelling at Millie. Sorcerer jumped from the sill.

“She killed my mum and I’ll kill her ten times.”

Alex grabbed the gun from her frozen, outstretched fingers. The second shot made Helen Viner lurch again; at the same time there was a thud, a whoop and a holler from outside the door.

Through the door came Lady Cray, who brought her small, neat hand down in a hard chop on Alex Holdsworth’s arm, forcing him to drop the Webley.

Lady Cray pushed in front of Adam Holdsworth’s wheelchair, took careful aim and shot Helen Viner. The body that had been sliding down the wall hit the floor. There was little blood.

“What in hell—?”

Lady Cray handed the gun to Adam. “Shoot her!”

“If you say so.” Adam’s hands wobbled the automatic up to some level or other and shot.

The four of them looked in one state of horror or another at the slumped form of Dr. Helen Viner.

Briskly, Lady Cray removed a small revolver from her bag, walked over to Helen Viner’s body, stood in the place where Helen
Viner had last stood and shot carefully at the spot where Millie had been standing. Then she pressed the gun into the good doctor’s hand and let it fall away, quite naturally.

Millie was shaking and holding on to Alex.

Adam’s mouth was working, but no words came from it.

Alex stood stock-still, staring at Lady Cray.

“She’s quite dead,” said Lady Cray, “for which we, and Castle Howe, should be thankful.” Then she looked hard at Millie and Alex, and said, “But it’s impossible to know which bullet killed her and one of them went right into the wall. So we’re quite straight on that point, aren’t we?”

They all nodded, Adam blubbering something about the law.

“Rough justice,” snapped Lady Cray. “Now, we must get our story straight. Dr. Viner obviously attempted to shoot Millie—”

“To shoot
me,”
said Alex. “After all, it was
my
gun.” His face was flushed as he gripped Millie’s hand. “Millie grabbed the gun.”

“Very well. And clearly we had to shoot her in self-defense.”

“Are you daft?”
shouted Adam. “That gun you just planted on her is
your
gun, not hers!”

Lady Cray sighed. “Of
course
it’s mine. You don’t think the staff of Castle Howe will allow their guests to tote revolvers about? She took it from me the first day I was here.”

“Oh,” said Adam, puzzled. He sighed and twirled his thumbs. “Too bad, nice woman.”

“Nice? She was vile. That cat’s a better judge of character.”

Sorcerer was sitting on the desk, slowly blinking.

“She killed my mum and she made Alex’s dad kill himself. And other things. I was listening out there in the tree.” Millie’s voice was high and shrill.

“But for the Lord’s sake, woman,” Adam said, “we’ll land up in the nick!” Then he whooped and thumped his fists on his wheelchair. “In the nick at eighty-nine!”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, no one will land in the nick. With a good lawyer, what court would convict an hysterical little girl, a schoolboy, a kleptomaniac, and a crazy old coot?”

“Crazy old
coot?”
shouted Adam, indignantly.

“So we’re agreed?”

They nodded.

“Then nothing leaves this room”—she whisked the Cadbury box from the bookshelf—“except these chocolates.”

By Martha Grimes

The Man with a Load of Mischief

The Old Fox Deceiv’d

The Anodyne Necklace

The Dirty Duck

Jerusalem Inn

Help the Poor Struggler

The Deer Leap

I Am the Only Running Footman

Five Bells and Bladebone

The Old Silent

The Old Contemptibles

DOUBLE DOUBLE
is a dual memoir of alcoholism written by Martha Grimes and her son Ken. This brutally candid book describes how different both the disease and the recovery can look in two different people—even two people who are mother and son.

THE WAY OF ALL FISH
is a wickedly funny sequel to Grimes’s bestselling novel,
Foul Matter
, “a satire of the venal, not to say murderous practices of the New York publishing industry” (
The New York Times Book Review
).