TEN
“That book,” said Agatha, craning her neck to see what Melrose was reading, “has horses on the cover.” She righted herself on the drawing-room sofa and inspected the cake plate.
“That’s because it’s about horses.” Melrose took another sip of his tea and wondered if the buffeting about of the morning light—rhomboids along the Oriental carpet, spandrel along an archway—was making up for Agatha’s unilluminating presence, the light in sympathy with him. A pathetic fallacy, but Melrose would take his pathos where he found it.
Agatha continued: “Why on earth would you be reading about horses? You don’t have one; you don’t even ride.” Having pinched another muffin—they were smallish—from the plate, she eyed it with suspicion. “What is this?”
“A muffin?”
“You know what I mean! It’s green. What did Martha do to it?”
“It’s a creme de menthe muffin.” This had been Melrose’s idea. He had told his cook Martha to add a bit of food coloring to the muffins, which he now had christened with the names of various liqueurs. He had also directed Martha to keep back the scones and tea bread. Ruthven (Melrose’s butler and Martha’s husband) had tittered.
“Oh, but won’t she make a fuss, sir?” said Martha, smiling broadly.
“That’s the idea,” Melrose had answered, matching the smile.
Unfortunately, not liking did not mean not eating and not staying. If nothing else was available for her tea, she would start in on the fruits of the Della Robbia jug he had brought back from Florence to give to someone, anyone, perhaps even Agatha. He was not fond of it.
Returning the green muffin to the riotous muffin plate, she took the most muffinish-looking muffin there. This was the color of the latte‘ served in Latte‘ at the Library.
“Creme de cacao, that one is.”
Gingerly unwrapping its furled little skirt, Agatha said, “I honestly think Martha’s getting senile, serving up this sort of rubbish.”
“I’ll tell her from now on to serve the rubbish you’re used to.” Melrose turned back to his book. He was reading about Red Rum, the horse Jury had mentioned, a three-time Derby winner of old who had the distinction, when he died, of being buried in the winner’s circle at Aintree. This was a fellow he’d have to remember. On the marquetry table beside his chair lay a small black leather notebook in which he set down this information.
Half of her light-brown muffin gone, Agatha said, “You’ve been writing in that thingamajig”—here she discounted the little notebook’s usefulness with a gesture, waving it to its thingamajiggish grave—“ever since I came. It’s quite rude of you, also, Melrose, but then you never were one to observe the social niceties.”
“I didn’t know that’s what we were doing.” He smiled down at Red Rum, making another note. He was really drawing Red Rum’s tail, since his doing anything in the notebook irritated her so much. The recording of things to which she was not privy bothered her. Melrose had an actual insight there. He blinked. Perhaps Agatha deserved some sympathy if she was one of those people who were afraid that life would come crashing down if they didn’t know everything that was going on around them. It was as if all sorts of rascally things might be taking place. (Just look at those muffins!)
“You’re not, I hope, thinking of buying one?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact. Indeed, I think I’ll have that old stable brushed up and put in a riding ring and perhaps a racing course—”
“Good God!” The muffin half fell from her hand. “Surely you can’t be seriously thinking of ruining these beautiful grounds!”
“They’re not all that beautiful, as it happens. Momaday does nothing.” Mr. Momaday had been taken on as a gardener, and he called himself a “groundskeeper.” He did precious little of either, spending most of his time tramping around Ardry End’s hundred acres, looking for something to shoot. Acres and acres of grass, weeds, wildflowers, deciduous trees, a few crumbling marble statues and a gone-to-ruin hermit’s hut. Melrose could not imagine his father countenancing that. What he said was, “I’m also thinking of hiring a hermit for that hermitage out there—yonder.” He loved this word.
“Are you talking about that old broken-down stone thing? Hire a hermit, indeed!”
“That’s what people did in the nineteenth century. It was fashionable to have a hermit on one’s grounds. I believe the Romantics went in for it.”
“You’re making it up, as usual.” She poked a piece of muffin into her mouth.
“I swear it’s true!” It was, too. He clamped a hand over his heart. “Hermits got to be collectors’ items.”
“I can tell you this: if a hermit comes, I go.”
Melrose studied the ceiling.
She went on. “As to this horse business, I can just see you trotting around the village as if you were Master of Foxhounds.”
Melrose tuned her out. Having squeezed whatever mileage he could out of horse and hermit, he went back to his book. It was one of several he had taken from the library. Ah! This was interesting. A Thoroughbred named Shergar had been kidnapped by the IRA and held for ransom. The ransom wasn’t paid; the horse was never seen again, at least not in the UK. This was a strange little story, showing how much England valued its horses, or how little, depending on the way you looked at it.
Delighted to have found this entrée into horses and lost girls, Melrose snapped the book shut, gulped down his cold tea and stood. “I’m off, Agatha. Stay as long as you like.”
“Off to where?”
“A number of places, including the library.”
“Just an excuse to go to the Jack and Hammer.”
Melrose raised his eyebrows in mock astonishment. “Since when did I need an excuse to go to the Jack and Hammer?”
His first stop really was the library, where he dropped off his books and went back to the shelves to look for fresh material. The horse books seemed geared largely to prepubescent girls, involving matters such as jumping and dressage. Nothing here on Thoroughbreds or racecourses.
On his way out, he stopped and said hello to Miss Twinny and asked her if she’d like to have a coffee with him, but she declined. “Oh, so nice of you, Mr. Plant, but I’ve got to get some books sorted before noon. Were these of any help?” She indicated the ones he’d left on the returns area of the front desk.
“Absolutely. I thought I might stop by the Wrenn’s Nest and see if Mr. Browne has anything I could use.” Melrose could have kicked himself when he saw the expression on Miss Twinny’s face. Theo Wrenn Browne had tried to shut down the library, which would have cost Miss Twinny her job. It was Marshall Trueblood who had saved both library and librarian by talking her into setting up an espresso bar.
Melrose changed the subject by nodding toward that little café now. “Still going great guns, isn’t it?”
She smiled. “It’s quite wonderful, Mr. Plant. Do you know there are people coming over from Sidbury? Why, there are never enough tables to go around. I just might have to expand!” Delighted, she laughed.
“Horses? You want something on horses?” Theo Wrenn Browne looked as if he’d been broadsided.
Melrose was standing in the Wrenn’s Nest Bookshop, stupefying its owner. Why did everyone find Melrose’s interest in this animal so problematic?
“Yes” was all he answered.
“May I ask why?”
“You just have.”
Silence while Theo Wrenn Browne tried to work this out.
Melrose started off. “Don’t discommode yourself, Mr. Browne. I’ll just wander through the stacks.”
Theo quickly came out from his station by the money drawer and followed on Melrose’s heels. “Mr. Plant, I’d be only too happy to help you.”
The trouble with Theo Wrenn Browne was his capacity for being a sycophant on the one hand and, on the other, for sneering superiority. He was disliked by all of Melrose’s circle—except Agatha, who found in Theo Wrenn Browne a compatriot, a fellow-traveler in malice. They had collaborated on the Chamber Pot Caper a few years before, in an attempt to close poor Miss Ada Crisp’s secondhand furniture shop next door to the Wrenn’s Nest. Following this had been the attempt to drive the library out of business. Marshall Trueblood’s solution of opening the latte‘ and espresso bar had turned the library absolutely trendy. It had become a hot spot. That was Theo Wrenn Browne, a snake at worst, a weasel at best, as today he was weaseling after Melrose.
To demonstrate his interest in the hunt, Melrose pulled down a volume, largely of photographs of self-congratulation, to judge from the rubicund faces of the hunt members. The dogs were quite handsome, as were the horses; it took only a few humans to ruin the overall effect. The one with hounds churning at his feet was the master of hounds. He and the whipper-in were all wearing pink coats; all the others were in black coats or tweeds. Melrose smiled because (again except for horses and hounds) they all looked remarkably silly. He handed this book to Browne and pulled out another titled Thoroughbred Racing: From Churchill Downs to Saratoga Springs. These places were in the United States, but wouldn’t a horse be a horse most any old where? And it would be good, too, letting the Ryder person know that he wasn’t a dunce when it came to American racing, either. The book fell open at a two-page spread of the wondrous Secretariat. Even Melrose had heard of Secretariat. No wonder people loved to watch it, but imagine what it must be like to do it! Looking at the photographs of Secretariat racing round the course, Melrose thought it must be, for the jockey, a Eureka! Like Manet putting the last touch of light to a field of flowers, or Keats upon seeing that Grecian urn or Lou Reed attacking his guitar.
“What are you doing, Mr. Plant?” Browne broke into Melrose’s fantasy life.
“What? Oh, just practicing the cello. I was thinking it’s easy to understand why everyone loves horse racing.”
Browne, finding an opportunity to rain on Melrose’s parade, said, “Well, now, not everyone, Mr. Plant, not by a long chalk.”
“Oh?”
“Indeed not. Not your animal activists, no. And they’re getting more and more prevalent. There’s a group over in Sidbury who’ve done most unpleasant things. If you’re planning on drawing any of your horsey friends from there, best be advised. There’s a hunt tomorrow; you can go and see for yourself.”
Melrose had no friends in Sidbury, horsey or otherwise. “There’s an even bigger group in Northampton. They’re really organized, they are. You’ll be harassed—don’t think you won’t. They’ll hound you right into the ground.” Theo covered his mouth with his hand, snorting with laughter. “Oh, that’s rich, now isn’t it?” When Melrose didn’t respond, he said it again: “Hound you,” and he laughed. “If you organize a hunt, they’ll be certain to picket; they’ll stand by the sidelines and jeer.”
“Jeering isn’t a particularly efficient way to put paid to anything. At least it wouldn’t be for me; with me they’d have to get physical—pull me off my horse.”
“I certainly wouldn’t put it past them, me.”
The rhythm of Theo’s speech often wound up back in North London if he didn’t keep an eye on it.
“Then what I need is a Glock, not a book.”
On their way from the shelves to the front of the store, they passed a window embrasure where three little children were sitting, unsmiling and silent. Two of them Melrose recognized as the Finch children, Bub and Sally, and although they must be a year or two older than when Melrose had last seen them in the bookshop, they still looked three and six. The third child he couldn’t recall seeing around the village, but he probably weighed in at some age between Bub and his sister. This child had a face so crowded with freckles it looked as though some of them had fallen on his faded T-shirt and made spots. The three smiled at Melrose, rather pathetically. It was clear they were all hugely unhappy tots and were perhaps thinking that Melrose (their hero), having delivered them once from the dreaded bookseller, might be counted on to do it again. Melrose returned their smiles and noticed that the three were holding hands, as if for a comfort none could sustain if the hands were separated.
“Hello, there. It’s Sally and Bub, isn’t it? And could this be Patrick the Painted Pig?” He said this to the third child, another fallen into the clutches of Mr. Browne.
Theo immediately took the floor. “These kiddies, Mr. Plant, were back there defacing my books. They’ve been directed to sit right there until the book police come!” Roundly, Theo gave him an exaggerated wink, as if his clever fabrication would charm Melrose, who might form part of this conspiracy against the children.
Was the man crazy? Melrose had bailed both Sally and later Bub out of trouble. “Well, now, Sally and Bub and Patrick—” Here the second little boy blushed, but still looked pleased.
Sally chimed in, “He ain’t Patrick. His name’s Regis.”
“Regis? Now there’s a kingly name. Now, tell me what this is all about.”
All three spoke up at once. No, all four did. Theo was the first one in with a version of “events.” “They were tearing, tearing that book apart! Just malicious is what they are. I’ve a call in to Mrs. Finch but she hasn’t returned it.”
“Ah, then is Mrs. Finch with the book police?” Giggles all round.
Melrose asked, “What happened?”
Sally burst out: “Me and Regis found this book and we both wanted it, so he was pulling on it and so was I.” This was delivered in one spurt of breath.
Regis frowned mightily. “No, that ain’t right. Me, I wasn’t doing nuffin’. I was only holding on to the book.”
Sally stuck out her tongue at Regis and whined, “Bub, here, though, he wasn’t even near the old book!”
Melrose liked this standing up for her brother. He thought it quite noble in the circumstances. “All right, it’s clear enough. You should be banished from Mr. Browne’s shop.” He turned to Theo. “Banishment is the only answer.”
Banishment obviously appealed to the kiddies; they stood and dropped hands, ready to be banished. The hero had spoken.
“What they will have to do after this, if they want a book, is to go to the library.”
The kids looked as if they’d be willing to march into hell, if it meant escaping from Theo Wrenn Browne.
But Theo was not at all happy with this solution, which was a perfectly logical one. Melrose knew he wouldn’t be, of course, since he derived too much pleasure from abusing children. “Well, that’s all well and good, but what about my book? Cost sixteen quid, that did, and someone’s—” He stopped when he saw Melrose smile.
“Of course someone has to pay for it.” He removed his money clip from his pocket and peeled off a twenty. “You can make the four-pound deduction from my books here.” He patted them. “Now, you three must remember to tell Miss Twinny you’ll be perfectly quiet in the library and will bring books back on time.” He peeled a five-pound note from the wad and handed it to Sally, who gaped at it. “Give this to the lady in the café and tell her you’re being treated to a lemonade or hot chocolate or whatever they have. You might tell her to keep the change for the next time.”
Now all three were gaping. Not only were they not being punished for their behavior, they were actually being rewarded!
“Now, run along, and no more fighting over books.”
They were off and out the door before Melrose had come to the end of his edict.
The Jack and Hammer was directly opposite the Wrenn’s Nest. Melrose crossed the street after bidding good morning to Ada Crisp, who sometimes sat outside her secondhand furniture shop, sometimes with her Jack Russell terrier, but more often not, as the terrier’s travel agenda took him all over the village. Miss Crisp sat among her china bowls and chamber pots, in a revenant light left over from autumn, rocking and waving at Melrose.
January and February, Melrose had decided, were the two most luckless and lackluster months on the calendar. It was difficult to get inspired (if one’s bent was inspiration) by the ragged hem of a blown climbing rose around the Jack and Hammer’s windows, or the faded turquoise coat of the Jack up on the beam, simulating bangs with his mallet to count the hours.
The inside, however, still retained a bit of New Year’s cheer, largely because Dick Scroggs hadn’t as yet taken down the lines of colored lights around the door or from the big mirror behind the bar. Melrose got Scroggs’s attention—difficult, if Dick was buried in the paper—made a sign that he wanted a drink and walked through to where his comrades were seated round their table in the window. It was Trueblood’s turn to get the seat with cushions, and there he comfortably sat, to the left of Joanna Lewes.
Diane Demorney blew out a thin stream of smoke and said, “We saw you coming out of Theo’s. You know we said we were banning the place because of that library business.”
Melrose sat down. “Did we? I thought we were already banning it just on general principles.”
“We were going to make up placards and stand in front of the shop, I thought.”
“Speaking of banning,” said Melrose, “did you know there was a hunt in Sidbury?”
“For what?” asked Diane.
“A fox,” said Trueblood, firing up a match to light a small cigar. “They organized it a year or two ago. Probably to protest the protest. You know, all of these country folk are scared to death their privilege will be taken away.”
“According to Theo, there are a lot of animal-rights activists in Sidbury.”
“Oh,” said Diane, “those people who spray-paint fur coats. They sprayed my sable once, in front of Selfridge’s.”
“You’re kidding! What did you do?” asked Joanna.
“Bought another one.”
“I doubt,” said Melrose, “that’s how these people would want to be identified.”
Joanna looked thoughtful. “Or maybe they would.” Joanna was the author of some two dozen romance novels, which she had advised them all to steer clear of. (“Such drivel.”) She went on: “Maybe their need for publicity is what motivates them, not animal rights.”
Diane stepped in here. “If my cat had any more rights I’d be the one watching the bung hole nights and she’d be inside with brandy and a book.” She turned to Joanna. “Your latest is quite good, Joanna.” Upon Joanna’s telling them all they’d be wasting their time with her books, Diane had started reading them.
“Thank you. I just don’t think those are the rights they’re defending, or say they are.”
“How cynical,” said Trueblood.
Joanna turned to Diane. “You should do a bit of investigative reporting there, Diane. You work for the Sidbury paper.”
Diane “working” was an oxymoron. She was languor’s home, ennui’s back garden, apathy’s arbor. However, she did indeed pen the astrology column for that paper—the daily horoscope. Diane was impeded by only two things: she couldn’t write and she knew nothing about the stars. People loved the horoscope, though, for they believed it to be a tongue-in-cheek parody. Diane didn’t know any more about parody than she did about writing or the stars. “You mean go to one of those things and say what they’re doing?”
Diane had always been, generally speaking, a master of vagueness. Melrose said, “It’s the activists I think Joanna is talking about.”
Instead of an answer, Diane held out a cigarette for someone to light—God, if no one else was available. Trueblood lit it. She blew a narrow veil of smoke toward them and reflected on this reporting. It was rather restful watching Diane’s mind at work. One never had to venture far and there were a lot of lay-bys along the way. “I suppose I could do.” But her nose wrinkled at the thought as though a displeasing odor had wafted through the room.
“Do what?” asked Trueblood.
Diane heaved a sigh. “Go to a hunt. Haven’t you been listening at all? Where is it?” she asked Melrose. “When is it?”
Melrose looked at his book jacket bearing the image of an American Thorougbred named Spectacular Bid. What a name! “According to Theo, there’s one tomorrow. Why don’t we all go?”
“Excellent!” said Trueblood. “It’s one of my half days, so I’ll just close the shop.”
“One of? How many half days do you allow yourself? There’s only supposed to be one a week,” said Melrose.
“Depends. This week it’ll be three. Well, I’ve got a life to live, haven’t I?”
They all looked at him.
“Very funny, very funny. So why don’t we all go?”
Joanna said, “I’d love to, but I’ve got fifteen pages to write because I didn’t do today’s ten. I only did half.”
“Your self-discipline is awesome,” said Melrose.
“My self-discipline is no more nor less than my Barclays account. That’s awesome.”
This statement was made without a hint of conceit; indeed her implication was that her royalties were so far from being deserved it was pathetic.
“Okay, when shall we meet? Where?” said Melrose.
Trueblood said, “As to the when, I’d say eightish—” “Eight is not an hour, it’s pirate’s treasure,” said Diane.
“They start fairly early in the morning,” said Trueblood.
Diane’s smile was humorless. “They do; I don’t.”
“Nine, then.”
Given Diane’s expression, nine was only marginally better, but she agreed.
“And where? We can’t do it here because it’s closed till eleven. We’ll meet next door. How’s that?”
“Fine. Only what about this half-day business. If you leave at nine, that’s more like a full day,” said Melrose.
“Then I’ll make up for it by staying all day the next day, as the next day is only a half day, too.”
“That makes sense.”