The Old Wine Shades (13 page)

17

They pulled into one of the slanted parking spaces outside Forester and Flynn Estate Agents, walked up the shallow steps to the raised pavement and went in.

Melrose said he’d hang about outside to look at all of the properties for sale stuck in the windows on cards. ‘If this thatched cottage is a quarter million quid, then Ardry End should pull in about three billion.’

‘Come on, you’re the party who wants to lease Winterhaus.’

‘What? Since when?’

‘Drag out one of those Earl of Caverness cards you carry around.’

‘I do not carry those around.’

‘Yes, you do.’

‘And why didn’t you tell me your plan earlier?’

‘Because I didn’t want to listen to you whine all the way here. Look, you’re interested in leasing this house. In the event this agent might decide to come along, don’t let her.’

‘And how do I avoid that?’

‘You pull rank. You’re the aristocracy, after all. You should have pulling rank down to a fine art.’

‘Well, you’re Scotland Yard CID.
You’ve
got a ton more authority than I have.’

‘Yes, but I don’t want her to think that’s the reason I came. Anyway, Lord Ardry has already called to make this appointment.’

‘Oh, really. Funny, I don’t remember.’

‘You were asleep at the time. Come on.’ Jury held the glass door open. ‘Agent’s name is Marjorie Bathous. Mrs., I think.’

Melrose grumbled as they entered and walked to the other end of the room, where sat a middle-aged, still-pretty woman who was one of the three agents in the office and who seemed to be expecting them. Or him, at least.

Melrose extended his hand across the desk. ‘Mrs. Bathous?’

She smiled and shook hands. ‘You must be Lord Ardry. I’m Marjorie Bathous. I’m so happy you’re interested in this property.’

Jury thought that Marjorie Bathous, in her dark suit and white silk blouse, was the very template of the professional woman. She was probably born wearing navy blue. He smiled at her and her own smile slipped off Melrose and rested on Jury.

‘How did you hear about Winterhaus?’

‘From him.’ Melrose flipped his hand toward Jury. ‘He handles this sort of thing—’ A foot descended on Melrose’s instep.

Jury stretched out his hand. ‘Richard Jury, New Scotland Yard CID.’ He smiled brilliantly, and said, ‘But I’m not here in any official capacity, only accompanying Mr. Plant. I wanted a drive in the country.’

Marjorie Bathous looked pleasantly astonished as she took his hand. The other hand went to her perfectly coiffed brown hair.

Jury’s look at Melrose was telling him to take up the slack or they’d be bogged down in New Scotland Yard. Marjorie Bathous would have good reason to want to talk about that event a year ago at Winterhaus.

Melrose began his pitch as Jury looked around. It was an office filled with a great deal of dark wood—desks, paneling, coffee tables, twin sofas meant for clients. A sort of fence with a small gate much like that in a courtroom ran across the middle of the room. There were a couple of men, other agents sitting at two mahogany desks, one in front of the other. The man at the first desk had turned to the one behind him. They were talking, or one was, telling the other a story, perhaps. Jury could hear nothing of what they said. For an office that did a lot of business—and he could tell Forester and Flynn certainly wasn’t hurting—it seemed so quiet. Jury took seat in one of the several wooden chairs that lined the agents’ side of the gate.

‘I’ve been looking for a largish place, one with land around it.’ Melrose hooked his wallet out of a rear pocket, opened it and withdrew one of his old cards. He ignored the beginning of a snicker behind him. He carri’ed them in case of an emergency, though God only knew why there’d be an aristocrat-needed emergency.

‘And the countess?’ Marjorie Bathous suggested.

Melrose took it as a suggestion that he might have forgotten the countess. ‘Oh, well, there isn’t one if you mean by that my wife; there’s just an old auntie who wants to live nearer London and insists upon large rooms and trees. I shall probably visit at the weekend.’

‘Now, Lord Ardry . . .’ She set about describing the property in far less detail than Jury’s secondhand description had done. ‘You see Winterhaus hasn’t been occupied for some time.’

Jury said, ‘We heard something unfortunate happened there.’

‘Where did you hear that?’

Neither affirming and or denying. Perhaps she was afraid of launching a full-scale investigation by New Scotland Yard. ‘I expect it’s just a rumor. You know. And a friend was talking with the owner—a Mr. Torres?’

‘Mr. Torres, yes, well.’ But she said no more.

What Jury wanted was confirmation that a Mr. Torres was indeed the owner. Did indeed exist.

The first confirmation had been she herself. But, really, this need for confirmation that these people in Harry’s story actually
were
—that was slightly obsessive, wasn’t it? Would Harry Johnson have told him
You should go there and see the house
had there been no Marjorie Bathous, no Ben Torres?

Melrose nodded. ‘If you’d just give us your details on the house—could the lease be done for five years? That long?’

‘Yes, of course. Longer if you like.’ She drew the property information sheet from one of several stacks on her desk and handed it to Melrose. ‘Right here.’

She had not mentioned the Gaults, and no wonder. Worse to have gone into the house’s history. Assuming that history had not been conjured up by Ben Torres’s mother. ‘What I meant by ‘strange history’—I was thinking more about the woman and her son who seem to have gone off in the process of viewing your properties.’ Clearly, she didn’t care for the link between the ‘going off’ and viewing ‘her’ property. Still, she was quite brave about it, quite matter-of-fact. ‘Oh, yes. You’re speaking of Mrs. Gault and her boy. You know I did wonder about them. It was quite strange that she didn’t come back. But there was no
certainty
she’d been to Winter- haus. I mean that had been her intention, to look in, but there was no way of knowing if she actually
had.
The boy was only eight or nine, I believe. But what happened, then?’

‘We don’t really know.’

Marjorie Bathous shook her head, puzzled. ‘She was to look into two houses along that same road, and I know she’d stopped at Lark Cottage—she wasn’t interested in it, though. ‘Too quaint, too English’ was the gist of what she said. It’s also for sale. I thought, really, it would be just the thing as it’s much smaller than Winter- haus, and there were only three in the Gault family, and I think it was just to be a weekend place. The owners are a lovely elderly couple—’ She stopped talking and looked at Melrose. ‘I should have mentioned this place to you. Perhaps you’d like to view it?’

‘No, I only—’

‘Yes,’ said Jury, kicking Plant’s foot away from his chair leg and saying to him, ‘you might as well.’ Then to the agent, ‘It’s on the way, you said?’

‘Only about a half mile between the two houses. I can call the owners and let them know.’

As she turned away with her mobile phone, Melrose said, sotto voce, ‘Why see this cottage?’

‘For the obvious reason: Glynnis Gault did.’

‘Oh. Well, she probably saw that petrol station we passed outside of town. Should we stop in there, too?’

Jury shook his head. ‘Remind me never to offer you a job.’

‘Okay. Never offer me a job.’

Marjorie Bathous flipped her phone shut as she swung her chair around to face them. ‘They’d be delighted. I told them in about a half hour, which is plenty of time. You can get there from here in twenty minutes quite easily. Their name is Shoesmith.’ She was writing it down, together with the address, the phone number and directions, including a small diagram.

Estate agents were always so efficient. Maybe he should offer
her
a job.

Marjorie Bathous brought all of these items together and put them in a manila folder. She slipped in the property details of Winterhaus and Lark Cottage. She looked at the small picture of the house on the sheet. ‘It’s quite a lovely spot.’

‘Yes,’ said Melrose.

She opened a drawer and took out keys with a little tag attached on which was a number. She handed these to Melrose. ‘Unless you’d like me to accompany—?’

The two agents came to the end of their ghostly conversation and laughed and returned to their work. Jury watched them for no particular reason. Parts of Harry Johnson’s story came back to him. He felt it was by turns puzzling, sinister, sad, ominous.

They rose and thanked Marjorie Bathous and went back to the car.

18

It was one of those narrow roads bordered by hedges and dry stone walls, sheep off in the distance, recent rain with the trees still raining, a walker with a blackthorn stick and two Labs sniffing along and quick light on the white feathers of a rise of geese.

England. Melrose sighed.

‘There’s a wheelbarrow,’ said Jury. ‘And a cow.’

Melrose was driving. ‘Oh, I wonder which is which.’

‘Just in case you didn’t see them.’

‘You mean as they’re taking up the entire road?’ Melrose beeped his horn. ‘Ever seen a cow jump?’ It didn’t, but there was startlement.

‘How childish,’ said Jury. ‘You really crave excitement, don’t you?’

Cow and cowherd passed by, slowly, cow looking the more intelligent of the two—of the four, if it came right down to it.

‘It’s not much farther,’ said Jury, consulting the agent’s map. In another minute, he pointed. ‘There it is—Lark Cottage.’

Melrose slowed, pulled into the short drive. ‘Well, look at it: it
is
cute, isn’t it? How very English.’

The Shoesmiths—’I’m Bob and this is the wife, Maeve’—were delighted to make their acquaintance, especially Scotland Yard CID. That was too thrilling for Maeve, who was settling in with tea and biscuits on one of the several overstuffed dark-brown chairs with stiffly laundered antimacassars on the backs and arms. Jury looked around the room at the different patterns Maeve had chosen: the fleur-de-lis design of the wallpaper, the toile curtains crowded with old-English figures and the crushed roses in the carpet. Even

the little wastebasket was decorated with vines and leaves. This mix of patterns Jury found poignant, for some reason, as if it reminded him of a home he didn’t remember.

It took Melrose all of two seconds to hate the furniture. He hoped the Shoesmiths would fare better as he bit into a biscuit. Maeve was rattling on about Lark Cottage and its many advantages.

Bob said, ‘It’s the old black beams that make it, don’t you think? ‘Course, we men, we got to lower our heads to keep from get- tin’ bashed by these lintels.’ As if it were really a joke, he laughed.

‘Now, we’ve the three bedrooms, two up and one down,’ said Maeve. ‘The one down is en suite. But there’s a toilet and bath upstairs, too.’ She looked from Jury to Melrose uncertainly. ‘Which of you—’

‘That would be me, madam,’ said Melrose. ‘I don’t require much room, or, rather my aunt doesn’t; it’s for her I’m looking. She wants a place nearer to London. And she wants a garden.’

‘Oh, well, our
garden . .
. you can see for yourself.’ Maeve made a sweeping gesture.

‘Quite so,’ Melrose said, feeling himself growing stuffier by the minute. Pretty soon, you could toss an antimacassar on him and sit down.

‘Kitchen’s small but efficient,’ said Bob. ‘Got an Aga and even a newish dishwasher. One of those small ones that sits on the counter, you’ve seen those.’

Yes, and they’re ghastly, thought Melrose, makeshift and only big enough to wash a cat.

Jury said, ‘I recall a peculiar incident a year or so ago—woman and child who just disappeared from around here?’ He smiled charmingly. ‘You’ll have to forgive me, I’m not here in any official capacity, but when 1 heard about this house a mile or so on’—he inclined his head in that direction—’I naturally wanted to see it.’ Another charming smile.

Maeve was already smoothing stray brown hairs up into the roll in which she wore it. ‘Well, it was a bit peculiar, wasn’t it, Bob? Marjorie Bathous said she never heard from the woman again. Never did return the key, either. What was her name—Gall, was it, Bob?’

‘Gault,’ said Bob. ‘A Mrs. Gault and her boy, he being about eight or nine.’