The Stargazey (8 page)

“I don't know, Madame Kuraukov. After all, it led me to you.” He smiled.

She stopped in the lighting of the cigarette, looking stunned by both the smile and the compliment. At least, she took it as a compliment. Probably she did most things. She seemed born to deserve them.

Jury rose and handed Sebastian his card, took Sebastian's and his brother's in return. He looked at all of them, at the strangely united front they presented—despite what internecine battles might go on between them—said good-bye to Olivia (who had risen to go with him) and that he could see himself out, and left.

T
he fish are arranged, whole, to break through the crust, the dead eyes staring upwards
.” Melrose Plant stole a covert glance over the top of the cookery book. He knew she would say it was disgusting and that he was making it up.

Said Agatha, “That is absolutely disgusting.”

(Right.)

“No one would eat that. You're making it up.”

(Right again.)

“It's right here, word for word” (although he himself had added the garnish of “dead” fish eyes). He tapped the book. “Starry-gazey Pie. That's what they call it.”

She was marmalading another scone. “Instead of spending your time sitting around all day trying to think up nonsense to fool me with, you would do better to attend to that neglected garden”—she poked her head forward in the direction of Ardry End's extensive grounds—“and do some planting. You hired that Momaday person, remember, and all he does is wander about.”

Melrose put the book between the chair arm and himself and took up his own cup. “Well, wander around is all
I
do—except when I'm sitting around—so it's a comfort to have someone to wander with, if only in dreams.”

“I don't know what you're talking about. I'm only telling you for—”

(Your own good.)

“—your own good, Melrose.”

(Right again.)

Agatha's threat never to speak to him again (after the dog and chamber-pot affair) had, unfortunately, not been carried out. How he wished he were back in the little courtroom listening to Marshall True-blood's excellent defense of Ada Crisp.
That
had been an unexpected treat! Agatha had dragged poor Miss Crisp up before the magistrates, not only citing the secondhand furniture shop for displaying wares on the pavement (tables, chairs, and chamber pots), thereby endangering life and limb, but also accusing Ada Crisp's little terrier of attacking her when Agatha went belly-up. Marshall Trueblood, having appointed himself as attorney for the defense, made mincemeat of Agatha's solicitor's arguments. For once he wished Agatha would drag somebody else into court. Perhaps he could get her to sue
him.
Well, he'd have to drop dead first, he supposed; then she could contest the will. Only he wouldn't be around to see it.

He picked up Jury's postcard and inserted it as a bookmark in the old cookery book. He had set his man Ruthven the task of looking up the recipe Jury was betting him ten pounds he couldn't find. Ruthven (who had been a part of the Ardry-Plant staff for what seemed a hundred years) would, of course, get the ten pounds.

Agatha stopped reading snippets of Melrose's
Telegraph
aloud to him long enough to marmalade a scone and pick up his
Country
magazine, which she held at arm's length (what, he wondered, were her bifocals doing for her?). Now she was reading an article about the museum theft some months ago.

“
—the hitherto undiscovered painting by Marc Chagall only recently acquired by the Hermitage and believed to have been painted before he fled to Paris in the early twenties. The painting, titled
Wingless, Wingless Angels,
is the only Chagall in the museum. It is believed to have been part of the spoil seized from the homes of the wealthy during the revolution.

“Cut right out of the frame on the wall of the Hermitage. Look at it.” Agatha turned the magazine for a moment toward Melrose, then back again. “What an absurd picture. It's got people all floating around, and there's even a cat. Can't imagine what the man must be thinking of. All this modern art is just too much for me. Give me a nice Rubens.”

“Yes, well, that's probably what the thief said: ‘Give me a nice Chagall.' ”

“I wouldn't give tuppence for them—these paintings that are nothing but little squiggles of paint or great big squares—”

“Are you referring to Mr. Pollock and Mr. Rothko?”

“What difference does it make? A painting should be
of
something, shouldn't it?”

“I daresay Mr. Pollock and Mr. Rothko think theirs
are
.” Why was he contributing to this inane exchange? He had only himself to blame for its continuance.

“It's valued at nearly a quarter of a million, it says here.” Agatha gave the magazine a little slap, as if spanking it for its headstrongness.

“The Chagall? Hmm. That's not really much for taking such chances, is it?”

“
You
should talk!”

Melrose looked up, surprised. But why should he be surprised? Any attempt at an ordinary conversational exchange was doomed with Agatha. “
I
should talk? Sorry, I don't get your drift.” The painter Chagall inspired Melrose to do a bit of artwork of his own. He picked up a pencil and started drawing little fish heads, making the eyes big and blank.

“It's fine for those of us who have money—”

(Agatha not being among the “us.”)

“—to speak of a sum such as that as
not much
.”

Melrose ignored her and drew a scalloped line all around to represent the pie. “You exaggerate my personal worth. I've told Martha to employ a number of cuts in our menus. We're having fish pie for Sunday dinner.”

She was now drawing the local paper out of her voluminous bag, having done with the bigger issues of life as reported in the national papers. Melrose noted that she was awash in papers this morning;
usually she depended upon her own stop-press reporting. As if it had fleas, she shook out the
Sidbury Star.
“There's this horoscope rant that Diane Demorney's on.”

Melrose rather liked the notion of a horoscope
rant.
Of course, Diane Demorney ranting about anything (even including the proportion of vermouth to vodka in her martini) was difficult to envision. She was much too languid. “Well, her horoscopes have livened the paper up considerably.” If one could breathe life into mummy remains. “To call it ranting is overdoing it, I think.”

Agatha slapped the paper a few times. “Listen to this; it's Pisces:

“
As somebody once said, ‘To every man there is a season,' and you've had yours. Get up, get out, get it together. Instead of constantly effing and blinding about the way the world treats you, consider the way
you
treat the world, to paraphrase John F. Kennedy. As the Moon transits Neptune there could be trouble, so don't go making it for yourself. Stop whining!
”

“You don't think that's good advice? I'd take it to heart, if that were my sign.” Melrose said this absently, as he sat back and compared his sketching of fishes with the fishes on Jury's postcard. Pretty good. Perhaps he did have a calling after all. Not art, but making fish pies. He held his drawing out for her to feast her eyes on, as he was pretty certain she wouldn't want to feast her mouth on it.

Agatha stopped in the process of her own rant to put a dollop of thick cream on her scone. “What were you saying about Sunday dinner? What fish pie? It sounds absolutely dreadful.”

“Starry-gazey pie. I saw Martha just this morning, cleaning the little fish. It's one of her specialties.” He decided to poke another fish head through the crust. He wished he had some coloring pencils.

In a tone of abject disgust, she said, “Melrose—”

(Don't be ridiculous.)

“—don't be ridiculous.”

(Right again.)

I
n Shoe Lane, to which Melrose had repaired after Agatha polished off the plates, the scented air told him he was nearing the cottage of Miss Alice Broadstairs. As usual, she was gardening, while her oafish gray cat, Desperado, loafed on top of one of the stone pillars rather ostentatiously set on both sides of her short paved walk. Melrose had several times tried to excite this cat, but he couldn't. Neither could Mindy nor Miss Crisp's Jack Russell (of chamber-pot fame). Miss Broadstairs, however, was eminently excitable, even when no one was trying. Excitement seemed to be bred into her marrow, for she was a fluttery, breathy woman, thin and dry as the leaves she trod underfoot. She and Lavinia Vine were always taking home the blue and gold ribbons from the annual Sidbury flower show.

“One can't start too early, Mr. Plant!” she called, referring to this spring extravaganza, and came to talk to him over her neatly trimmed hedge.

As far as Melrose was concerned, one needn't start at all. But he smiled his encouragement in a most friendly manner. Her voice was low and her look secretive: lips crimped together, hydrangea-colored eyes darting left and right, as if probing the empty lane for flower thieves. “I'm forcing sweet peas.”

Melrose blinked at this unexciting news, uncertain how to respond. “To do what?”

Alice Broadstairs seemed to think this the funniest thing in the world and laughed and laughed. “I've a new one; it's quite the loveliest pink you can imagine.”

She vanished from his view—
poof!
—as if she'd suddenly fainted under too heady a sweet-pea scent or had an attack of the vapors (which is the way he thought of it; couldn't help himself, Miss Broadstairs seeming more likely to succumb to a nineteenth-century complaint), and Melrose tried to see over the hedge, when—
poof!
—here she was back again, brandishing a coral-colored sweet pea.

“Oh!” he said. “Well, that's quite beautiful. Yes, a beautiful color.”

“It's from my little greenhouse. I've a nice little plot of them.” Here she vanished again and again was back within a moment, this time with a sky-blue sweet pea. “This one, Mr. Plant, was not wholly successful. I was trying for a more vibrant shade of blue. But have it, won't you?” She thrust it towards him.

Apparently, he was to be the recipient of one of her laboratory failures, in the way of Dr. Frankenstein bestowing upon him a poorly functioning hand. “Why . . . thank you, Miss Broadstairs.” The flower was too large for his buttonhole, but he stuck the stem through it anyway and carried on.

 • • • 

The Wrenn's Nest Book Shoppe occupied a corner next to Ada Crisp's secondhand furniture shop and across the street from the Jack and Hammer. Theo Wrenn Browne, the owner, competed only with Melrose's aunt for the title of the village's highest-ranking troublemaker.

Having been bested in his attempts to drive Ada Crisp into either bankruptcy or a nervous breakdown, his current campaign was to shut down Long Piddleton's small library by supplying the reading public with an opportunity to get new books hot off the publisher's press. Miss Twinny, the local librarian, who might just lose her job over this, could not get them half as fast. Browne had been expanding this service over the years. And to get the non-book-buying people in, he had put in a large periodicals section, even a table and chairs, to make it appear that he welcomed the casual reader (which he didn't), a water cooler, and
a candy rack. Melrose asked him when they could expect the slot machines.

The only person Browne hated more than Melrose Plant was Marshall Trueblood. Both of them had, between them, everything in the world that Browne wanted: land, money, titles, looks, exquisite taste, high wit, and goodwill. Although the man had no control over the first four qualities, he could have done something about the last ones, but they were things Browne had kept hidden behind something resembling the brick wall cemented in place by Poe's Montresor. He was vulgar; he was banal; he was mean; he was ostentatious even to the point of having added an “e” to his name (thinking that might separate him from the workaday Browns).

The little boy whom Theo Wrenn Browne was chastising over the counter looked to be no more than three or four. This dusty urchin had apparently been sent on the errand of returning a book to Browne's “lending library.” Browne was bedeviling him with the news that his rental book was overdue, not by days but
over six months!
Didn't he understand that it had been a brand-new book and people had waited for it? The book in question looked familiar to Melrose, who had gone over to scour the magazine rack for astrology offerings.

He looked towards the counter, squinting up the title. . . . Yes! It was
Patrick, the Painted Pig,
the very book young Sally had got a dressing-down for a few months before. Melrose stood back and listened to Browne scold this luckless child, younger than Sally, who must be her brother Bub. The boy was pale and small, with stick-thin arms and legs. Melrose had kindling wood in better shape.

“And here's a torn page”—Theo Wrenn Browne rattled it—“and here's a stain that looks like fingerpaints . . . well! You can see it's damaged and you'll just have to pay for it. Tell your mum it's twelve pounds fifty; that's what another will cost me.” He snapped the book shut. Bub, already as white as rice paper, went whiter still.

Melrose (who thought God was in his heaven for once) plucked a magazine and picked a candy bar from the candy rack, then stepped up to the counter with the KitKat and the good news. “Pardon me for
interrupting, Mr. Browne. I'll have one of these, I think, and this magazine.” Melrose put the money on the counter for the magazine and the candy, which he unwrapped and carefully bit a piece from, before handing the candy to Bub, who looked like he needed a shot of caffeine in the circumstances. “Problem with one of your rental books, is it?”