Rainbow's End (52 page)

Obviously for him. It was now fifteen minutes past seven. He had told her
probably
seven, but that he might be later, as he wasn't sure of the roads. Looked like snow. But Polly would have stopped listening, not attending to any details, certainly not to probabilities. And would make no allowances. Melrose crossed the road on the other side of the green, went up her short walk, and raised the brass knocker. No answer. He knocked again. He watched the second hand of his backlit wristwatch sweep around a full minute. Still no answer. With his umbrella, he reached past the porch to tap on the windowpane.

Finally, the door opened and she looked out. “Oh, it's you,” was her enthusiastic greeting.

“Well, hello, Polly.”

“Hello.” She manufactured a yawn. “Come on in.”

Even before Melrose was fully into the hall, she was turning her back, walking away, and he shot his umbrella straight out, managing to connect the curved handle into the neckline of her dress, and tug.

“What—?” She stumbled backwards, far enough that he could reach her, and he embraced her and—since her back was still turned—brought his mouth down on her neck.

Polly made a disapproving noise and rubbed at her shoulder. “What are you
doing
?”

“Giving you a kiss. Haven't seen you in four years.”

She walked right away from him and into her living room, straightening her dress as if he had done much more than kiss her on the cheek. “Well, don't.”

Polly was quite attractive, but she didn't know how to dress. She was wearing one of those colors that she seemed to favor. An entire vegetable-color spectrum would have to be invented for her. That pumpkin-brown jumper! That aubergine-green skirt! What a combination, if you wanted to make your skin look like candle tallow and your hair mud brown. Still, nothing could distract from her marvellous
eyes that, depending on the light, ran the gamut from lavender to deep purple. Amethyst eyes.

Why was it, Melrose wondered, as he sat down in the vaguely offered chair, that women went into an alcoholic-like denial to let him know they didn't care a fingersnap for him, and, at the same time, went to so much trouble to get him there in the first place? This did not happen to Richard Jury. Polly was tongue-tied around Richard Jury. But tongue-tiedness didn't necessarily mean “love,” did it?

She was anything but tongue-tied around Melrose. Nor shy. Nor retiring. She frowned and demanded, “Where are you staying, anyway?” She looked round at him from the copper-inlaid sink which served as a drinks table.

“The Bold Blue Boy.” It was the only place he
could
stay, as she well knew.

She handed him a whisky and water, held out a plate of mouse-morsels of cheese, and sat down on the sofa across from him. “So what's all this about Lady Kennington?”

“Richard Jury asked me to look for her.”

“He can't find her himself? Has he got dim, or something?”

“It's actually the Stratford police looking for her—”

Polly became breathlessly expectant. “My God! What's she done?”

“Nothing, I'm sorry to have to tell you. Nothing except witness something.”

“ ‘Something'? What ‘something'?

“I don't know the details. Jury's off in the U.S. on some case and I simply got a message by way of his policeman friend in Stratford-upon-Avon.” Melrose would have been happy to make up a story about a mass murderer, but since he knew one of the principals, he thought that would be ill advised. “Really, Polly, I don't know anything about it.” He switched the subject. “It's wonderful to see you; it's been a long time.”

“Do you think you could manage not to talk about time passing?” she asked crossly.

He laughed. “Don't worry; you have many, many writing years ahead of you.”

“Well, I don't have many, many writing
days
before my absolutely final, penultimate deadline for my book.”

“Is that why you're in such a bad mood?” Polly was a writer of many deadlines. There were the ignorable deadlines, the not-to-be-taken-too-seriously deadlines; the deadlines-before-the-deadlines deadlines, and finally, the no-kidding-around deadlines. She set these various dates, she'd told him, to fool herself. Melrose never remembered this working. “I've a friend in Baltimore who chains herself to her desk, if that's any help.”

“But that's wonderful!” That it was “she” meant nothing over against the “she” being a writer. Polly would happily forgo jealousy for the pleasure of talking about writing and writers. She leaned forward, careless of her drink. “But how does she do it? I mean, we
all
could chain ourselves to our desks, but the trouble there is, you could just unlock yourself and get out.” As usual, she took it quite seriously.

“She put the key where she couldn't get at it.”

Polly frowned a frown of deep thought. “But—”

Melrose explained just what Ellen did.

“God!” Polly fell back against the sofa. “I expect I'm lucky compared to that!”

She didn't ask whether Ellen Taylor's work was any good. It was agony, not quality, that interested her. Polly loved to talk about writing. It occurred to Melrose that it was almost a sensual thing, and certainly passionate. It was a turn-on. So he told her he himself was writing a mystery.

The fountain of enthusiasm dried up pretty quickly. “You?”

“Why not? I certainly spend enough of my time reading your rumpled drafts.” Probably, that's what made her scoff. If he turned his hand to the trade, he wouldn't be available for editing. He sighed. “What does the absolutely final deadline apply to? What book?”

“Remember
Death of a Doge
?”

“Actually, I've been trying to forget it.”

“Well,
ta
very
much
! Anyway, this is the sequel.”

“Pardon me?” If there was one book that did not cry out for a sequel, it was
Death of a Doge.
“Don't you remember what an awful time you had writing that book?”

“Yes, but I liked Aubrey.”

Melrose didn't. Was he once more to have to follow the travails of Aubrey Adderly in his escape through the misty byways of Venice? “I thought Aubrey was snuffed out there.”

“No, you're thinking about somebody else.”

“If this book was the one I remember, I'm thinking about
everybody
else.” Polly had no problem bumping off a dozen people in as many pages. “Polly, you've got too much Venetian competition. Why don't you choose another setting? Portsmouth or Bury St. Edmunds, for instance.”

“Oh, don't be dim. Those places are never used.”

“That's my point. Indeed, what about
here
? Are you still killing off the Bodenheims?”

Another topic she delighted in. “I just did in Julia for the eighteenth time.”

Julia Bodenheim was the daughter, not only a snob, but a snob on horseback.

“Whilst she was riding to hounds, her mount threw her off the other side of a hedge and half of the field of horses jumped it and trampled her to death. Bloodcurdling.” She uttered a satisfied sigh. For years, she'd been killing off the Bodenheims, one after another.

“Do you know, I saw Miles Bodenheim coming out of the post office.” Melrose sank farther into the comfortable armchair. Polly might not have known clothes, but she certainly knew furniture. Her little cottage was beautifully done up. “I can't believe it's been ten years. Ten years.” He studied the ceiling molding. “The place is caught in a time warp.”

“No, it isn't.”

Argument, to Polly, meant contradiction. She passed him the cheese and crackers.

“No? Well, I'd swear Bodenheim had that same smarmy look on his face, the one he always got when he'd succeeded in making life hell for someone. In this case, the postmistress—what's her name?”

“Pennystevens.” If they weren't to talk about her books, she'd leaf through that magazine.

“Miss Pennyfeathers. Now, she looked ready to retire when I saw her ten years ago. But here she is. Here
they are.
Lord knows, Bodenheim looks the same right down to the egg on his waistcoat.”

“You're being sentimental. You probably like A. E. Housman—‘What are those blue, remembered hills.' That stuff.”

“You're certainly attached to your Venetian stuff, aren't you?”

She yawned by way of answer.

“Well, I expect I'd better be going. You're tired.”

Ah, the yawn had backfired, had it? “No! No, you don't have to . . . ” she ended up whining.

“I'll see you tomorrow, Polly. Perhaps we could have lunch.”

Her expression was thoughtful, suspicious. “Did you see her?”

“Lady Kennington, you mean? No, she wasn't at the pub.”

“Yes, she is. I saw her.”

“I mean, she's gone out somewhere.”

Polly studied the air. “Probably to that house she used to own. Skulking around the grounds, probably.”

In Polly's darkling world, people didn't simply look and walk; they peered and skulked.

Melrose did not want to say that Stonington was where he was heading. “I think I'd like to take a walk round the village. See if I'm not right. See if it's not just the same.”

“You can't go home again.”

One of the sappier entries in the cliché sweepstakes, he thought.

“Yes, you can. Goodnight, Polly.”

MELROSE HAD NEVER
been on the other side of the stone wall, but he remembered the wall itself and the small brass plate fitted into the stone with the name Stonington engraved on it.

He had looked before through its iron gates, remembered the grounds as being overgrown and unpruned in summer; February's leafless trees allowed for a better view of the house itself, which was huge. He inspected the stone posts for some sort of call box or electronic thing by which to gain admittance, saw nothing, then saw that the gate was neither locked nor chained and swung when he pushed it.

Up the gravel drive he walked, a drive that needed some seeing to, he thought, avoiding the potholes. He wondered how long it had stood vacant, for it had all of the appearance of a place not lived in for a very long time. It was the most hushed and deserted landscape he could remember. Birds should have found a bird paradise here, what with the overgrown privets, the untended herbaceous borders, but he heard no birds. He was probably still under the influence of Baltimore and Edgar Allan Poe, for he found he enjoyed finding sere landscapes, abandoned buildings he could think of as Poe-esque.

Melrose walked up the wide steps and when he got to the top cupped his face in his hands to look inside, as Polly had done earlier that evening to spy out his arrival.

What would he find?

How bloody ridiculous. He would find Lady Kennington, that's what. The bored, hence gossipy, secretary in the estate agent's office had told him Lady Kennington was most likely at the house, for she spent a lot of time there, looking at things, probably taking measurements, and did he know that once she owned it? Oh, yes, she had, and her husband, Lord Kennington, up and died on her, and she just stayed on as long as she could, well, I'd never, not alone I wouldn't, not after those grisly murders, and did he know about that? That woman found in the—

Yes, Melrose knew, he said, and thanked her and left.

 • • • 

THE STATUE
at the center of the courtyard must have served as a still point about which the household moved. It fascinated him that it could be seen from every room, upstairs and down-, for the rooms on the ground floor gave out on this courtyard, and those on the first each had a little balcony.

He observed this through the tall windows of a large, empty room, after observing the figure of a woman—not the statue, but near it, standing, and sometimes stooping in the garden around it. And what was she doing? Weeding? At night? Presumably, for when she stood up, her gloved hand was full of black, stemlike things. It amused him the way she seemed to be surveying the impossibly overgrown garden that surrounded the statue. Still, she bent down again to continue this thankless job. If she didn't officially own the place, Melrose thought, she very much belonged to it. Like that statue, really. A permanent fixture.

Now, he was unsure what to do, that is, how to make his appearance without scaring the hell out of her. Tap on the windowpane? No, that would be even more frightening in an empty house. And her back was to him, so if he came from this direction, she wouldn't able to see him coming. He walked through this room to another, to step through the french window there so that she could see him approaching.

And she did. She rose from whatever fruitless task she was performing, looked at him for a long moment, her head cocked to one side, and smiled and said, finally:

“I remember
you.
” She said it as if some question of identity, long plaguing her, had finally been answered; as if some destiny had finally been fulfilled.

Or that was the way Melrose wanted to hear it. “We never really met.”

“No, but you were at—the funeral.” For a moment, her eyes looked away.

“That's right. Ten years ago. I'm amazed you can remember.”

“That long.” She shook her head. “Time plays such tricks. You'd never think this house had been lived in, would you? But it was rented for several years. Now it's up for sale.” And then, quickly, she asked, “You're not—?”

He smiled at the anxiety in her tone. “No, I'm not a prospective buyer, Lady Kennington.”

“Oh, don't call me that.” She smiled that glittery smile. “I never did like all that ‘Lady' business. And now my husband's dead, I don't feel . . . Just Jenny. But, if you haven't come to view the place, then, why—?”