‘How long are you staying?’
‘Five, ten minutes and then I’ll clear out and leave you to it.’
‘The kitchen’s in here. Come on!’ she demanded. Melrose was not allowed to linger. ‘See, there’s everything you need, like a teakettle.’ She pointed out the mismatched, but very colorful crockery on the open shelves; the pots and pans; the various appliances, small, but clearly big enough for the one or two (at most) people who’d be occupying it.
‘You should be a tour guide. Blenheim Palace would suit you.’
‘I don’t know if I’d care for a palace.’ She had a way, when she was thoughtful, of wrapping a strand of hair round her finger, which was an unsuccessful maneuver, since her dark hair was so straight.
‘The Churchills will be inconsolable to hear it. Well, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll get settled in–’
‘Okay.’ And she was through the cottage door quicker than a rabbit.
Here was someone who made up her mind and acted on it immediately.
Melrose decided the first order of business was to go upstairs and take a nap.
17
You’re to come for drinks.’ Lulu intercepted Melrose at the cottage door as he was standing in the doorway contemplating food. Sleeping always made him hungry.
‘I am?’ He looked at his watch. It was five o’clock, he was surprised to see. ‘And by that, do you mean tea with you and unidentified others?’
She squinted in thought, as if the decision were hers to make.
‘Mr. Scott said maybe you’d like whiskey.’
‘Mr. Scott couldn’t be righter. So he’s home, is he?’
She nodded. ‘I’m supposed to tell you and bring you.’
‘Right. Hold on while I get my jacket and we’ll go.’ He did this as she hopped from one foot to the other in one of those energy-wasting displays that kids seemed to favor. Following her along the pebble path, he said, ‘My name, incidentally, is Melrose Plant.’
Now, she was walking backward to talk. ‘My name’s really Louise, but I don’t like that name. I want people to call me Lulu.’
‘I don’t care too much for mine all that much, either. But I don’t want people to call me Lulu.’
‘You can use your middle name.’
‘I don’t have one.’
‘Oh.’ Interest in his name went completely south and probably interest in him, too. She hopscotched her way now on the wider path to the terrace and the house.
It tired Melrose to watch her expending all of that energy. He took solace in the wild growth around him. Solace? Why should he need it? He must; otherwise it wouldn’t have sprung to mind. Although a goodly part of the gardens had come under the purview of the landscape designer and the horticulturists, there was still this wild space around the cottage and its wintry flowers—drifts of snowdrops against the far wall, shoots of narcissus, a handful here and there, the dry fountain, the path from cottage to house in patches slick with moss or covered in bramble, ivy rampaging up the perimeter wall, the white birches at the back, their trunks looking too delicate to withstand any heavy wind (but which were protected by the brick garden wall), bare coppery stems of Rubus grass, thick brown tangles of clematis–it was, he supposed, what any serious gardener would call a right mess, but for him it had a strange charm.
Ahead of him now, and his meandering thoughts, Lulu was calling. He wondered which steps were the ones to be ‘turfed.’ He sighed. Must he really talk about it over drinks, when he’d much rather talk about the past? His past, Scott’s past, any past.
He walked up the steps to the French doors Lulu had disappeared through. She was nowhere to be seen. Probably just getting him on his feet and moving was her understanding of the word ‘bring’ and delivering him to wherever the whiskey was being put into play.
Melrose looked around this octagon-shaped room–at the high windows and the portraits hung between them, at the deep gold walls that might have been paint or might have been damask, with the last of the wan light showing in faint oblongs on the floor. The room’s only furniture consisted of two French settees facing each other but out of easy conversational range.
He walked from here down a long gallery that led to a room at the end whose pocket doors were halfway open. Farther along this gallery were the entrance hall and the front of the house.
Tentatively, Melrose presented himself at the door of this room, a library, judging from all of the books. A dark-haired man stood by the fireplace mantel, upon which sat a glass of whiskey.
There was also a woman whom Melrose didn’t see immediately because she was sitting in a wing chair with its back to the door. The man himself was impressive, the woman plain as junket. Declan Scott, a handsome and (probably to many) tragic figure, a widower and filthy rich, must have had women lined up all the way down that avenue of trees. Melrose doubted that the woman here would have been in the running, though.
Look at Melrose himself, not quite as tall or as handsome but just as filthy rich, and he wasn’t peeling women like grape skins from his person. So it had to do with a way (unconscious, Melrose was sure) of isolating one’s self. Declan Scott would have far more reason to do this than Melrose. His wife dies, his only child disappears, and now he’s got a body in his garden. Lucky man.
‘Mr. Plant!’ Declan Scott had looked up from talking to the seated woman and seen him. He advanced toward Melrose, hand out. He introduced the woman as Hermione Hobbs.
Melrose shook Declan’s hand, saying, ‘I’m glad to be here. Your house is beautiful.’
‘Isn’t it just?’ said Hermione Hobbs, with a curdled smile. She was a person, Melrose guessed, who was always ingratiating herself to others, and sometimes got a bit sick of it.
Scott held up the whiskey decanter in invitation and Melrose nodded (he hoped not too eagerly). ‘When I was walking from the cottage, I had the feeling of being caught in a time warp,’ Melrose said as he accepted the drink Scott handed him. ‘It was a very seductive feeling, I mean the temptation to do nothing but just contemplate it.’
Hermione said, ‘You know, I’ve often felt the same way.’ Which Melrose was sure she hadn’t.
‘But I must be going.’ She placed her glass on the small table beside the chair and rose.
Declan Scott made no attempt to detain her. ‘Thanks for stopping by, Hermione.’
As he made to accompany her to the door, she said, ‘Oh, I can find my own way out. Nice to meet you, she said, and walked out.
‘An old friend,’ said Scott as he gestured for Melrose to sit down. Melrose felt he was sinking into the small deep sofa, rather than merely sitting on it. Declan Scott sat in an armchair across from him. But unlike the settees in the octagon room, these were placed for conversation.
‘You’re suggesting,’ said Declan Scott, smiling, ‘if you were I, you wouldn’t change it?’
Melrose wondered for a moment what he meant, then said, ‘You mean the time warp business?’ The man certainly listened.
Declan nodded and went on. ‘I’m restoring the gardens out there as an act of will. Or maybe I should say an act of faith.’
‘In what?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe that’s the faith part. It’s because my wife wanted it. And I’ve waited too long as it is.’ He held up his glass, his own was empty–to see the reflection of the fire, or perhaps the emptiness of the glass. Then he rose and went to the drinks table, a handsome gilt and brass mounted commode, whose twin sat on the other side of the fireplace. Melrose knew enough about antiques (hanging around Marshall Trueblood did that) to know those pieces, taken together, would be in the thousands of pounds.
Family heirlooms, probably, but it made him reassess his own filthy rich factor.
Declan poured his drink and went on. ‘I like that section around the cottage. I like it that snowdrops grow no matter what you do or don’t do. They were my wife’s favorite. Mary was one of those people it was relaxing to be around. There aren’t very many of them, people with w
hom you can kick off your shoes, sit back and sort of sink into the ground. Like that garden out there, sunk in desuetude.’
‘Well, if it reminds you of your wife, no wonder you don’t want to change it.’
Declan looked up from his drink, whose cut-glass surface he’d been tracing with his finger. ‘Perhaps you’re right. He returned to his chair. ‘According to Superintendent Jury, you’re an expert gardener.’
‘Not at all, not at all. My line is turf, pure and simple. Oh, and enameling, too, of course.’
‘And why did you choose to concentrate on those two aspects of gardening?’
Melrose’s mind went blank (not for the first time). He might have expected the ‘what’ but certainly not the ‘why.’ Why indeed would anyone care why Melrose was interested in turf. ‘Well, turf was a favorite subject of my father. Many’s the time I’d hear him holding forth on the beauty of soil. I guess I was just indoctrinated from an early age.’ Let’s get off this subject in a quick hurry.
He deliberately downed his whiskey, and then held up his glass. ‘I wonder–?’
‘Oh, sorry.’ Declan took it to the drinks table. ‘Well, you mustn’t mind the Macmillans, the father especially thinks if he doesn’t know about it, it isn’t worth knowing.’
It probably isn’t, thought Melrose, as Declan handed back his glass and sat down.
‘Anyway, don’t let Macmillan get in your hair. The old guy can be extremely bossy.’
‘I’m surprised the Macmillans don’t do it themselves–the turfing.’
‘They never have, and the old man calls it “flighty pretty”, which goes for the enameled mead, too.’
Melrose laughed. ‘I’m sure he’ll find me “flighty pretty”, too.’
‘I hope you live up to that description; it’ll furnish me enough entertainment to eke out my days.’
Melrose laughed again. Declan Scott was rather entertaining himself; indeed for all the gloom and doom that dogged him, Declan himself hardly lived up to the notion of the tragic figure. But he would have to eschew the entertainment if they were to get to the subject of murder. He’d started to work his way round to it, when Scott brought it up himself.
‘I’m sure after you’d been here for ten minutes, Lulu told you about the murder.’
‘That’s about how long it took her, yes. This must be awfully unpleasant–a murder in your garden.’
Declan smiled. ‘Not for Lulu. What surprises me is that police can’t identify this woman. You’d think that with all of the sophisticated equipment they have, and that with fingerprints, DNA and teeth and so forth, they’d have got it in one, wouldn’t you?’
‘Well, first there has to be something to compare fingerprints with. About all it says is that she’d never been arrested.’
‘They’ve got Scotland Yard in on it: your friend.’ Declan smiled. ‘He’s a very pleasant fellow. After five minutes, you forget he’s a detective.’
‘I’d suppose that manner’s put any number of villains away.
Declan’s smile broadened. ‘I see what you mean. But this woman. It’s so extraordinary. It seems there’s nothing to tie her to, well, anything. It seems so strange when we live in a world where you can scarcely breathe without proof of identity and where people seem to know more about you than you do yourself, yes, it’s very strange. It’s almost as if she appeared for a single purpose and then vanished. Or would have done, if she hadn’t been murdered. Appeared and disappeared—that whoever she was, she was that person for that purpose only.’
Melrose considered this.
Declan shook his head. ‘For a purpose we may never know, but one in which I, for some reason, appear to be involved. That part of it, I really don’t like.’ He set his empty glass on the rosewood table beside his chair. Then he looked at the portrait over the mantel for a moment and said, ‘She was so very plain, one couldn’t help but notice. Strange.’
Clearly he was not referring to his wife, if this was her portrait.
She stood in a black velvet evening gown, her hand up on that same mantel. Anything but plain.
‘In Brown’s Hotel, she seemed out of place.’
‘Brown’s?’ said Melrose. ‘You mean the Mayfair hotel?’
‘Yes, sorry. All of this has been gone over so much I forget not everybody knows about it. I saw her there, having tea with my wife. The woman seemed old, somehow. I’m not talking about years, I mean, I suppose, old-fashioned. Well, that’s not it, either. Something clung to her, like dust, as if she were done in sepia tones, you know, like those old photographs.’
‘Perhaps what did happen was what was supposed to happen. Except the end of it, of course; that is, from her point of view, she didn’t see that.’
Declan said, ‘You’ve lost me.’
‘I’m just wondering if it was an act for your benefit.’ Melrose shrugged and sipped his drink. It was very good whiskey.
Declan said, ‘Well, enough of murder. Let’s get back to the gardens.’
Oh, let’s not. He sighed. ‘Miss Owen mentioned an architect or landscape designer.’
‘That’s Marc Warburton. The gardeners, they’re the Macmillans. They have a big nursery just outside Launceston.’
Warburton. Melrose loved that. He visualized all of the Touchetts and Isabel Archer spread out across the grassy terrace having tea.
He said, ‘But if Mr. Macmillan owns a whole nursery, can’t he supply the turf for the steps?’
‘I asked him. He was unsure as to exactly what was needed.’ Good. ‘Well, it merely depends on the acidity and alkalinity (could that be a noun?) of your soil, but your gardeners would know that with all the planting they’ve been doing.’
‘They said they’d heard of it but never actually seen it.’ That makes four of us–or five if you count Lord Warburton.
‘That’s odd. I would have thought your landscape architect would know all about it.’
‘Oh, he knows about it; he just hasn’t used it. Maybe he thinks it’s the wrong thing to do. I’m afraid you’re on your own here.’ Thank God.
Melrose wanted to steer the conversation around to little Flora Baumann, but he didn’t want to bring it up himself. He stared at his glass, rejecting one opener after another. Lulu. ‘Lulu is your housekeeper’s niece, I understand.’
‘Great-niece. Her parents were killed in a road accident. She’s a bit shy until she gets to know you.’
Melrose nearly choked on his whiskey. Shy? He said, ‘You must be used to extremely forward children, then. I found her to be far from shy. I think she’s cagey.’
‘Cagey?’
‘Sure. Well, not being used to children, I could be dead wrong. I’ve never had any children.’ He glanced at Declan. It was as if Melrose had wounded him.
‘I had. Well, a stepchild, but she felt like my own. She disappeared.’
‘What?’
‘At first, we thought she’d been kidnapped. I still think she was. But in theory, unless there’s a ransom demand...’ Declan’s voice trailed off.
‘Why? There are other reasons for taking a child. We’re always hearing about a baby’s being stolen from a hospital ward or from a stroller while the mother’s in a shop. No ransom demand there.’
‘I know. What bothered me most was I was afraid that the police wouldn’t pursue a so-called abduction as vigorously as a kidnapping. But I think they did all they could; they tried awfully hard. Flora and Mary were visiting Heligan–the Lost Gardens, you’ve probably heard of them. Flora was abducted. That was three years ago. We never saw her again.’
The world might as well have switched off a light in the man, for everything about him seemed suddenly to dim so that it was like looking at a photograph developing in reverse, going back to a lack of image, going back to nothing.
18
The following day dawned clear and cold. Not that Melrose was up in it. He wondered sometimes what an up-at-dawn experience would be like, but he never wondered enough to try it.
; But here in another man’s house and on another man’s payroll (at least metaphorically speaking), he knew he’d have to be up before ten (his usual fall-out-of-bed time) and was prepared to make that sacrifice. Especially this first morning, when he wanted to be out ‘going over the ground’ before the Macmillans arrived. For after they arrived, he planned on going into St. Austell for ‘supplies.’ He was up, wearing his flat cap and a suede jacket with a fleecelined collar he had purchased in Sidbury and which he had asked Ruthven to beat up a little so that it looked old and worn. Ruthven had claimed the jacket was already beat up, if that described a garment so poorly tailored that no man of any taste would wear the thing. But at Melrose’s insistence he had done a fair job with it: creased, cracked, oil spotted and with a few bits missing from the fleecy collar.
Melrose opened the cottage door to be surprised by Lulu with her dog, bearing a little tray. They both stared up at him, Lulu and Roy. ‘Good morning, Lulu.’
‘Here’s your tea.’ She thrust the tray at him with all of the good will of the Man in the Iron Mask’s jailer as he slipped the tray through the slot.
She ran off and he watched her go, wondering if Jury had talked to her. Then he gulped down his tea and with his pipe in a breast pocket proceeded toward the garden. They were already there, Macmillan and his daughter, tamping down earth, pulling up weeds, whatever one did in these cases. (Melrose now wished he’d paid more attention to Miss Broadstairs.) He decided to be hearty.
‘Mr. Macmillan!’ he exclaimed. Macmillan rose from his kneeling position. He was a small man, but strong looking, his nerves probably semiconductors of electricity. One could say that too for the daughter, who stopped working in order to lean on her hoe like a figure out of a Whistler painting, only not as graceful.
‘I’m Melrose Plant!’ he announced, glad that he could use his own name. This turf expertise was, after all, only a hobby. ‘I’m here about the steps and the tuft.’ Could such a person call himself a ‘tufter’? Better just stick with ‘tuft.’ He left off the enameled mead job, not wanting to allow too much opportunity for questions.
The Winds of Change Page 12
