The Five Bells and Bladebone (31 page)

“Was it the usual game?”

Now she had shoved the tea things back so that she could continue with her cards. “Of course. No.”

He looked at her looking down at the deck. “No?”

Eleanor Summerston shrugged. “She won. What I mean is, Hannah always loses. At first I thought it was to mollify
these old bones. Then I saw she was just a rotten card player. You’d think she’d been taking lessons.”

Lady Summerston frowned as Jury moved into the sitting room. “You
are
being a bore. I don’t know how you manage to connive at confidences.”

He stood, as he had done before, looking at the metal soldiers. “You said she was fond of these soldiers, especially the Bedouin.”

There was a long sigh. “You people
do
jump about so. I have no idea what I said.”

“One’s missing. Come see.”

“You expect me to move from my favorite spot . . . ? Oh, very well.”

With many a grope and grumble, she was beside him, and with surprising agility. She squinted, finally had to resort to taking out her glasses. “So there is. Crick must have taken it. Perhaps it needed mending. Are you suggesting it was nicked? It wasn’t worth anything.”

“And did she collect glass figures?” He drew the blue bird from his pocket. “Like this?”

“I’ve seen one like it, yes. Where did
you
get it? Do you catch stuff that falls off the backs of vans, too?” She turned toward the balcony.

Back at the table, Jury fingered the envelope. He should have opened it, taken out the photographs. He knew he wouldn’t; and, after all, it would be premature. Premature and dreadful, if he was wrong.

“Pick a
card
.” She held out the spread cards.

Jury put aside the envelope, drew from the fan. Queen of spades. He looked from the queen up to her woebegone eyes, her ring-heavy fingers, dragon-encrusted shawl. And he thought of Carole-anne, Meg and Joy. “I didn’t know you were a cardsharp, Lady Summerston,” he said, replacing the card as directed. Meg and Joy: they weren’t twins; put them side by side and it was clear, if one were searching their faces to find out the differences. But people saw
what they expected to see. He’d had enough experience of witnesses to know that. No one saw with a completely clear, objective eye.

Evidence of this was that not even he had seen precisely what she was doing in her great fuss at reshuffling the deck. A simple trick he’d probably seen dozens of times before and still couldn’t remember its solution.

She held up the queen of spades.

“Very good.” He smiled. “How well do you really know your granddaughter, Lady Summerston?”

She glanced at the book propping up the picture of Gerald Summerston. “I believe I agree with Mr. Melville,” she said, tapping the spine of
The Confidence Man
. “Nobody knows who anybody is. I believe that’s the way he put it.” She gave him a shrewd, ice-blue glance. “I’d think you, of all people, could appreciate that.”

He looked at the deck of cards and saw instead the deck on the coffee table in Sadie Diver’s room. “Life is full of parlor tricks, Lady Summerston.”

“A
FRAID
I
’VE COME
at a bad time,” said Melrose, as Diane Demorney divested him of his coat. “You appear to be about to go out.” A linen coat and a handbag were lying across the arm of the sofa.

“Only to Sidbury.” She immediately went about getting them drinks, wheeling over a chrome-and-glass silent butler.

He supposed he couldn’t say, “Bit early in the day for me,” since she’d just seen him at the Jack and Hammer. “Thank you. Some of that Cockburn’s sherry, please.” Then he watched as it gurgled its way into a whiskey tumbler.

The room didn’t help. There were times when he thought that the best way to furnish a room was simply to throw in chairs, sofas, tables and see where they landed. Diane Demorney’s studied attempt to make a statement with her decor had set this fancy in motion. How white could clash on white, Melrose couldn’t imagine, but here it did. The only touch of color in the room, except for Diane herself, was an arrangement of copper-colored tea roses that blazed against a white painting, just as Diane, wearing a frock of exactly the same shade, flared up like a flame against her wintry landscape. He was sitting in some sort
of white leather thing like a hollowed-out igloo that seemed to have no manageable parts, such as simple arms one could clutch or a straight back one could feel securely behind one. For a moment he was afraid she would join him there, but she sat instead at that end of the sofa nearest him.

“Have you lunched, then? We could go to Jean-Michael’s. It’s the only place in the county that has
cuisine minuet
.”

“Another time, perhaps. I have an engagement.” That sounded dreadfully stuffy, so he added, “With my aunt.” He smiled and then said, “I understand Simon Lean liked to go there.”

If he meant to catch her out, he could have saved his breath to cool his porridge. “Yes. More sherry?” She lifted the bottle, looked at his glass. “You’ve scarcely touched it.” She sighed. “How disappointing. I can’t get you drunk.” Swinging her patent pump from the end of her toes, she said, “I wonder if any woman could.” Cocking her head to one side, as if taking her measure, she shook her head and said, “What you really mean is, Did we go to Jean-Michael’s together? Yes.”

“You’re very frank. But the murder of Simon Lean doesn’t seem to stir up waves of emotion in you.”

“Must we talk about that? It’s all so dreary.” Diane hooked her shoe back on her heel, recrossed her legs, and added another go of gin to the pitcher. “Are you going to be boringly acrimonious?”

Melrose smiled. “I’m just mildly surprised that you seem to care so little that everyone knows about your affair with Simon.”

“Are they all talking? How nice.”

“Part of the
they
is the Northants constabulary.”

“They’ve been here. Your friend Mr. Jury has also been here. Now
there’s
a man one would be happy to pick up the bill for.”

“Did you for Lean?”

She laughed. “Once or twice. Simon had money, but he also had a turf accountant. He was extraordinarily charming. Well, he had to be, hadn’t he? Handsome and soigné and clever. He had nothing going for him in the way of character. He was decorative.”

“But you said clever; how clever?”

“Quite. He was a schemer, a plotter. ‘A nasty bit of work,’ as they say. Why did she marry him in the first place? Well, I’ve just said, haven’t I? His facile charm. I’m surprised it wasn’t the other way round. That
he
didn’t kill
her
.”

“Did he mention his wife?”

“ ‘Did he’ — ?” She nearly spilled her drink, laughing. “For God’s sakes, what do you think married men
do
when they’re with the ‘other woman’?”

“What did he say? What gave you the notion it wouldn’t have been surprising if he were to kill her?”

Bored, Diane had risen and was walking around the room, shoes off, auditioning for whatever role might be available up at the manor, talking about Simon Lean’s hatred of Lady Summerston, of his situation at Watermeadows. In front of the glaze of ice that passed for a mirror above the mantel, she pressed her lips together, turned her head this way and that like an actress checking her makeup, her best side.

Melrose listened closely, studying her just as closely, and at the room that surrounded her like a stage set. For as long as he had known Diane Demorney he had assumed that all of this backdrop — the artistry of her carefully arranged self, of her mind, even, and its little pinpricks of knowledge — was all a means to an end: money, men, admiration. He thought now that the persona was an end in itself. Probably, it delighted her to watch others watching her, to see her reflection in others’ eyes, as if she were walking down a corridor of mirrors.

“So he resented Lady Summerston’s grip on the purse strings.”

“Naturally. One of the reasons Hannah so annoyed him was that she isn’t interested in money, and didn’t even make an attempt to get her grandmother to divvy up before she died. Of course, he had an allowance, and a very generous one at that. Lady Summerston could hardly be called a pinchfist. But if the money isn’t one’s own . . .” She shrugged and accepted a light for another cigarette, exhaling a stream of smoke, flawless as a ribbon. “The last time I saw him — yes, at that summerhouse, before you ask — he seemed quite edgy. My guess is she meant to ask for a divorce. Or already had.”

Melrose frowned. “When was that?”

“Oh, six weeks ago, perhaps.” She had leaned forward, her elbow on her knee, chin cupped in her palm. The black hair, cut slightly longer in front, curved in a perfect frame round her chin. “I am
starved,
my dear; sure auntie can’t wait?”

“Sorry.” Diane seemed to assume that if she were dressed for an occasion, some man would come along to name it.

Diane sighed and rose. “Then I shall just have to go by myself.” She held out her light coat to him. The silk lining whispered against her arms as she said, “You know, I think I’d be absolutely smashing in the dock of the Old Bailey. And, of course, no one could possibly prove I did it; any sharp solicitor could get me off. It
would
be an experience!”

How many times had he heard that judgment passed in the last three days? By Diane, by Dick Scroggs, by Marshall Trueblood:
A sharpish solicitor can get her off?

 • • • 

Agatha couldn’t agree more, although she thought it was Jurvis who would have the experience of the dock.

“You must be joking,” said Melrose, knowing that she
wasn’t. “Sir Archibald is a
barrister
. You don’t even need a solicitor. Anyway, isn’t old Euston-Hobson going to sit on your case?” He wished it were literally true.

“I don’t care for your tone, Plant. And I should certainly think you wouldn’t stand on such technicalities where family’s involved.”

He supposed he would have to humor her if he wanted her to cooperate. “Very well, I’ll mention it to him.” Like hell he would. Even his solicitors would laugh themselves sick, to say nothing of Sir Archibald.

At the moment he was inspecting a hunt cup engraved with the Caverness crest. It was sitting on the fat-legged table where she kept her supply of port. His supply, rather: it was the Amontillado from the Ardry End wine cellar. “Where’d you get this? It’s Father’s.”

There was a pause. “In a manner of speaking, yes.”

“In the manner that he owned it.”

“You weren’t aware of the terms of Viscount Nitherwold’s will . . .”

“At the age of two, I was not sitting about reading wills.” Melrose replaced the hunt cup. Good heavenly days, if she had to go rooting that far back for a legacy, there was no point in discussing it. He let her go rambling on as he thought of the Summerston money. Hannah Lean must at some time have made a will. Surely . . . He interrupted the reading of Viscount Nitherwold’s will to say: “Agatha, what was that business you said about ‘almost’ having lunch with Mrs. Lean?” How could one “almost” have lunch? he wondered.

“It was my day in Northampton. I was looking in the window of Tibbet’s, you know, where you got that rather nice little emerald-and-ruby bracelet for me, oh,
years
ago.”

As if he’d spent not a penny on her since. “You were taking it to Tibbet’s for an appraisal?”

“Don’t be absurd. I was merely looking in the window at a lovely emerald brooch. It’s the one in the corner. Lower
left hand, between a square-cut diamond and a Russian amber —”

He held up his hands. “I get the picture. What about Hannah Lean?”

“She walked into the shop. Well, I didn’t know it was
she
at the moment; I found that out later.”

“You went in.”

“To ask to see the brooch. The manager was waiting on her. She’s a bit mousy looking for a murderess, don’t you think? He’d brought out a diamond necklace.” When she leaned toward her nephew, she must have forgot about her painful injury, for her foot came off the stool quite smartly. “Would you believe how much it cost?”

“Yes. Go on.”

“Sixteen thousand.
Sixteen —
”

“Did she buy it, then?” From the picture he’d been able to form in his own mind about Hannah Lean, interest in jewels didn’t fit.

“Yes. And told him to deliver it to Watermeadows. That’s when I knew, of course, who she —”

“Deliver it?”

“— was, and introduced myself. I thought we could have a spot of lunch, but she seemed in a hurry. Naturally, she said she’d
love
to, some other time.”

“Naturally.” Had she not wanted to carry about such a valuable piece of jewelry? Or had the woman no intention of purchasing it, but had wanted instead to fix a face and address in the mind of the manager of Tibbet’s? Melrose took out the two snapshots and showed them to Agatha. “Is this the woman you saw?”

“Yes. Where’d you get them?”

“Found them. How are you so sure?”

“What do you mean,
found
them? Were they floating by in the gutter, or something?”