The Winds of Change

by Martha Grimes

  Jury said, ‘You’d have no trouble convincing me of that.’

  ‘Well, she took it all as a game, didn’t she? Flora was to stay with me until Mary could decide what to do. Then she could go back to Angel Gate. But then Mary died suddenly. I really didn’t know what to do. Flora herself was afraid of her father; if playing this game would keep him away, well, she was glad to play it. She loves her stepfather.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Macalvie. ‘You said Mary Scott would have paid this money to Lena Banks if she’d had it. She might not have, but her husband certainly did.’

  Rebecca shook her head. ‘He wouldn’t have done it. He would have got the police involved.’

  ‘And he’d have been right,’ said Jury. ‘So Declan Scott was never told?’

  She shook her head,

  God, whispered Macalvie. ‘You let him go on for all this time–? Considering how much the man has lost?’

  Rebecca bent her head. ‘I felt I had to; it’s what Mary wanted. As long as there was any danger of Flora’s being found out, I was to keep her with me. So that’s what I did. But don’t think I didn’t feel for him. That’s why I decided to let her come here with me.’

  ‘But how could this little girl go along with this?’ Macalvie was baffled.

  Jury said, ‘It was the game; it was keeping all those plates in the air.’

  Macalvie frowned. ‘What in hell does that mean?’

  Jury smiled. ‘It was seeing how far she could go. It was delightful–tempting fate. Once in a while Lulu would drop a little clue-right, Miss Owen?’ Rebecca nodded and half smiled. ‘Such as telling us there’s a place named after her. Which there is: Flora’s Green. Would we be smart enough to pick up on something like that?’

  ‘She made me very nervous; I was so anxious she’d give herself away.’

  ‘Yet here we were, policemen, detectives, who couldn’t sort it. Lulu would hold out until the last card was played. Literally. She’d make a great card sharp.’

  Cody smiled. ‘I see what you mean. And I didn’t even see–’

  ‘Leave that.’ Macalvie glared at both of them.

  Wiggins said, ‘But this Lena Banks, Miss Owen. What happened there? How had she, or they, found out that Lulu wasn’t Lulu?’

  Rebecca turned away. ‘The white crosses.’

  Jury frowned. ‘You mean the ones Flora painted on the trees out in front?’

  She nodded. ‘They had a private detective following me for some time. Viktor knew me, you see. He knew how devoted I was to Mary. When Lulu and I were at Angel Gate, the Little Comfort cottage was empty. He couldn’t get inside but he could look around, which he did. Along a path in a little wooded area he found trees with white crosses on them. I didn’t even know it.’

  ‘Your private detective,’ said Jury, ‘was probably the itinerant tree man who came to the door one day and asked Declan Scott if he wanted those trees cleared, the ones marked with white crosses. And Declan laughed and told him, no, the white crosses were done by his daughter.’

  ‘I’ll be damned,’ said Macalvie. There was a pause. He asked, ‘Why would you shoot her here? This means you put Declan Scott in the frame for that murder.’

  Rebecca shook her head, ‘I didn’t know that. I had no idea she was also this Fox woman. What I hoped was that you’d make the connection with Viktor Baumann.’

  ‘How did you know there was a connection?’ said Cody. ‘You didn’t know the woman; nobody here did.’

  ‘Lena Banks told me. There was no reason not to. The point is: I had to acquiesce; there had to be the appearance of acquiescence. I could have told you that Viktor is not a man who takes things by force. He wouldn’t kidnap Flora; he would never drive up and force her into a car. Of course he wouldn’t. The man’s a sociopath, isn’t that obvious? He needs to sustain the illusion that people know he’s right and go willingly.’ She paused and took a deep breath. ‘The gun was Mary’s; I doubt Declan even knew she had one. You can imagine how she’d feel that she needed one, can’t you?’

  Macalvie nodded. He looked, Jury thought, as if he hated the job, but still had to follow through. ‘You’ll have to come with us, Miss Owen.’

  Cody dragged the handcuffs from his belt, unwillingly. But Macalvie shook his head and Cody put them away. The three of them walked through the dining room, Jury making a fourth, but following behind.

  They sat at a table in front of the fireplace playing cards-Declan, Patricia Quint and Lulu. Jury couldn’t seem to think of her in any other way. She was Lulu. Pat Quint was laughing and giving Lulu a little swat with her cards. The three of them were so much at ease that Jury knew Lulu hadn’t told them. Yes, she would keep it up as long as she could, wouldn’t relent, wouldn’t show her hand, wouldn’t call. Jury had to admire her. Just like Joey.

  Declan heard the approach of the others and looked around over his shoulder. He frowned. ‘Rebecca?’ He rose, as did Pat Quint and Lulu. She was pale; she rushed over to Rebecca and grabbed her hand. She was jumping as if in some attempt to find a supporting ground. Then she stopped and that determined look came over her face. It was sad to see a look hardening the face of a seven-year-old girl. She said: ‘Didn’t you tell them we just made it all up? You–we–never did anything?’

  Jury marveled at Lulu’s quick inclusion of herself in the action.

  ‘We made it up. It’s only a story. I’m really Lulu and nobody’s after me. It’s a game!’ She flared at Macalvie but it was Cody she started hammering with her fists.

  Declan put an arm around her chest, pinning her to him. ‘It’s okay, Lulu. I’m sure nothing will happen to Rebecca.’

  Lulu had broken free. She was jumping again. ‘But it was only a story! Tell them!’ She hung on to Rebecca’s hand.

  ‘I’ll be all right, Flora–’

  ‘No! I don’t want to be Flora! I want to be Lulu!’ Patricia Quint was openmouthed.

  Declan froze. ‘Flora? What on earth are you talking about?’ He looked from Lulu to Rebecca Owen.

  She said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m truly sorry, Declan. I couldn’t–’ But what she couldn’t was lost in silence until Macalvie said, ‘Let’s go’ and led Rebecca Owen to the door.

  Declan knelt down and studied Flora’s face that looked, for the first time since Jury had known her, as if it were crumpling into tears. ‘It’ll be all right, Flora. I’ll make sure nothing happens to Rebecca. You stay here with Pat.’

  He was getting into his coat when he said to Jury, ‘What will happen to her?’

  ‘I can’t say for certain, but I would imagine the circumstances would make her very sympathetic in a trial.’ Jury was walking with Declan to the door. ‘Mr. Scott, there’s just one thing I don’t understand.’

  At the door, Declan turned. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I know people see what they expect to see, and Flora was made to look completely different as Lulu, probably as different as Lena Banks was from Georgina Fox. But I don’t see how you wouldn’t have known.’

  Declan Scott smiled slightly. ‘What makes you think I didn’t, Superintendent?’

  MAN WALKED INTO A PUB

  49

  I can’t imagine, Superintendent,’ said Agatha, ‘why you would want to spend any more time in Cornwall than was absolutely necessary. You recall the last time we were there, surely.’ Jury speared a sausage, and Melrose drank his tea. Melrose raised an eyebrow. ‘Recall what, exactly?’

  ‘The whole dreadful business.’

  Melrose stopped drinking his tea long enough to observe, ‘I should cut out my tongue for saying it, but I feel a strong presence of Henry James.’

  Jury snickered and chewed his sausage.

  ‘And even though it’s been three months since your accident, Superintendent–’

  Melrose cut her off. ‘‘Accident,’ Agatha? You make it sound as if he’d fallen off his bike.’

  Agatha sighed and layered up another scone half with blackberry jam and clotted cream. ‘Don’t be ridiculous
, Melrose. I’m not minimizing his being shot at.’

  Jury smiled. ‘I’m fine, Lady Ardry. Right as rain. Or will be if Martha has any scrambled eggs left.’

  Agatha smirked. ‘Martha’s getting too old to cook.’

  ‘Agatha, refresh my memory, will you? Precisely why are you here at nine in the morning?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Yes, that’s more or less what I said.’

  ‘I always look in to see how you are around this time.’ She huffed up, chagrined.

  Melrose loved that ‘look in.’

  ‘No, you don’t. You come here for your elevenses, not your nineses.’

  ‘Well, I have something particular to report, but as you’re not interested–’

  What interested Melrose at the moment was his horse going by and looking in the dining-room window.

  Jury followed his line of bafflement, looking over his shoulder.

  ‘What’s Aggrieved doing out there?’

  ‘That’s the first question. The second is, who’s the other horse?’ For a white horse had followed Aggrieved past the window.

  ‘That,’ said Agatha, ‘is the information I wished to impart.’ Melrose was for once all ears. So was Jury, who stopped in the middle of his last sausage. ‘Impart, for God’s sakes.’

  Agatha held out for five seconds by delicately patting her mouth with her napkin. ‘The horse belongs to Mr. Strether.’

  ‘And who in hell is he to be up here getting Aggrieved out of bed?’

  ‘Horses sleep standing up,’ said Jury as he contemplated his empty plate.

  ‘Don’t you start in,’ said Melrose. He turned back to Agatha.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘If you’d stop shouting, I’d tell you.’

  Pleased as punch she was with herself. ‘I wasn’t shouting. This is shouting!’ His vocal cords took off.

  Ruthven came rushing in, looking alarmed. ‘M’lord? Is something wrong?’

  ‘It’s all right, Ruthven. I was just demonstrating a shout.’ Ah! Ruthven would know! ‘Who the devil’s that other horse out there?’

  ‘That would be Mr. Strether’s m’lord. Mr. Momaday’s up on Aggrieved.’

  Knowing all of this was her fault, Ruthven gave her a frigid look.

  ‘But what’s this Strether person doing here? Is he some friend of Momaday?’

  ‘No. I believe it was Lady Ardry who invited him.’

  Melrose turned to her again. ‘I don’t get it. Why? The man’s a complete stranger.’

  ‘Not to me,’ said Agatha. ‘And I thought your poor horse would enjoy it.’

  Jury sniggered. Then he asked Ruthven, ‘Do you think Martha has any more eggs and sausages left?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Ruthven, taking Jury’s empty plate.

  ‘Enjoy–? What? That he now has a playmate?’ She produced a martyred sigh and ate her scone, wordless for a blessed change.

  Melrose threw down his napkin and got up. ‘Come on,’ he said to Jury.

  ‘Come on where? I haven’t finished breakfast.’

  Agatha chortled. ‘At least here’s one person you can’t order around!’

  Jury rose and slugged back his coffee. ‘Sure he can.’

  Melrose was talking to the man on the horse, who sat quite high in the saddle. He reached down his hand to shake Melrose’s hand.

  Wouldn’t common horse courtesy ask that he at least slide down from it?

  He said, ‘Lambert Strether, sir, from Slough.’

  Melrose turned to look at Jury, who merely shrugged.

  ‘Lambert Strether, you say?’

  Now Strether did hook his leg over the horse’s rump and come down. Beaming. His teeth glittered. He shook hands with Jury and said, ‘I see you’re well read.’

  ‘He is,’ said Jury, inclining his head toward Melrose. ‘I’m not.’ Strether turned to Melrose. ‘The name means something to you?’

  ‘It means something to a lot of people.’

  ‘My mother adored Henry James.’

  Melrose looked at Jury. ‘Is Henry James adorable? I wouldn’t think so.’

  ‘Lambert Strether is the protagonist of The Ambassadors.’ Strether aimed this nugget of information at Jury as if Jury were sitting in the front row, mostly asleep. ‘It’s rather embarrassing, the name, when I meet educated people.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you change it to Fred or Digby or something?’

  ‘Trevor?’ said Jury. ‘Trevor’s always good.’

  This suggestion seemed to confound Strether, who opened his mouth but couldn’t think of a response.

  ‘Leaving the name aside, what are you doing here, Mr. Strether?’

  ‘Why, I met up with Lady Ardry, who claimed this was her family seat.’

  ‘It is, but she’s not sitting in it. But why’s my horse out here with a saddle on? That suggests someone’s been riding him.’

  ‘Your groundsperson, your caretaker was up on him, but he suddenly recalled something he had to do.’

  ‘Yes, like getting off my horse. That would be Mr. Momaday.’ Jury fed Aggrieved a sugar cube and, feeling a bit sorry for the white horse for having to cart such a pompous arse around, fed him one, too.

  ‘But tell me, Mr. Strether, what are you doing in Long Piddleton?’

  ‘I’m looking around.’

  ‘I can see that. But what is your larger, wider mission?’ Strether looked blank and then, catching on, said, ‘Oh, you mean why I’m in the village? I’m looking for property.’ Jury looked at Melrose and tilted his head upward in the direction of the hill.

  ‘Really?’ said Melrose. ‘Not much to invest in around here, though there is a pub up there that did a smashing business until it closed.’

  Strether looked off in that general direction. ‘Why did it close if it was doing so well?’

  ‘Owner relocated,’ said Jury, with a snicker.

  ‘Perhaps I should see it, then.’

  ‘Perhaps you should,’ said Melrose. ‘It’s called the Man with a Load of Mischief.’

  ‘Interesting.’

  ‘The renovation, that’d be a bit pricey as it hasn’t been lived in for so long.’

  ‘Oh, that doesn’t signify. No, price is not a problem. I own so much property.’

  ‘What’s he all about?’ said Melrose that afternoon as he and Jury passed Miss Broadstairs’s cat, Desperado, asleep on top of her garden wall. Melrose poked him and the cat shot up, tail twitching.

  Jury said, ‘Whatever it is, it’s not what he says. The jacket didn’t fit, the cuffs were frayed, and did you see the shoes?’

  ‘I didn’t, Sherlock, no.’

  ‘Heels run down like mad. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had newspaper in them to hide the holes.’

  ‘What was he doing?’

  ‘At Ardry End? Casing the joint, I expect.’

  Melrose stopped by the pond where ducks were scooting this way and that. ‘You mean I’m about to be robbed?’

  ‘Don’t get so excited over it. He’s probably only looking round to see who has a few quid to make it worth his while.’ Melrose didn’t follow this. ‘For what?’

  ‘My guess is he’s a con artist. A confidence man.’ They crossed over the street. ‘Wait. I’d forgotten the contest! Strether, yes, he’s the one who inspired the Henry James contest.’ Jury stopped and looked up the cobbled street to the old pub sign and the mechanical Jack. His trousers were in need of a coat of turquoise paint. ‘I see. The Henry James contest. You know, that’s about what I’d expect of your pals.’ As they walked on, he asked, ‘Do they ever do anything constructive ?’

  ‘Of course not. We none of us do.’ Melrose waved to Miss Crisp across the street who was setting another chair outside her secondhand furniture store. It was directly across from Trueblood’s Antiques and made a nice contrast. ‘And stop talking about them as if they weren’t your pals, too.’

  Jury smiled. ‘Oh, they’re quite definitely mine.’

  They turned into the Jack and Hamm
er where Jury was warmly greeted, first by Dick Scroggs and then by the group at the table in the window. Diane Demorney even set down her martini long enough to give Jury a ginny kiss. Vivian Rivington tried to do this but failed, missing his cheek by a few inches since she had to lean over the table. She gazed at Jury as if he’d just tossed an armload of roses at her feet. It was hard to tell about Vivian.

  ‘You’re in time to judge the competition. Melrose told you about our little contest. Or do you want to enter yourself?’ Trueblood asked this so earnestly that Jury laughed. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t read enough Henry James to imitate him.’

  ‘Not read enough?’ said a startled Diane, who appeared to be tasting the word carefully, as one might a portion of something dangerous, like puffer fish. ‘Dear God, you don’t think we have, do you? I read the beginning of The Portrait of a Lady where they’re gathered for tea on the lawn, in spite of its being late enough for drinks. I question whether Henry James had his priorities straight.’ Jury tossed his coat on a neighboring chair and sat down by Vivian in the window seat and looked around at all of them. ‘If you haven’t read him, how can you parody him?’

  Joanna Lewes, their resident writer of romance novels, said, ‘We all read, you know, something or other a long time ago, and Marshall copied out a page of The Ambassadors. You see, this man walked into the Jack and Hammer–’

  ‘You mean Mr. Lambert Strether?’

  ‘Right. So he seems such an idiot–I can’t imagine the real Lambert Strether barging in on a tableful of people who were having a good time without him, can you? So we’ve got this contest going where each of us has to write one sentence–it’ll have to be fairly long, if it’s in the style of James.’

  ‘Don’t forget the important bit,’ said Vivian.

  Jury said, ‘I’m glad to hear there is an important bit.’

  ‘Do you want to enter?’ asked Trueblood. ‘Entry fee is one pound fifty.’

  ‘I sincerely doubt it. But I have first of all to hear the important bit.’

  ‘Tin in,’ said Melrose, slapping two pound coins on the center of the table and taking back one fifty p piece.