Rainbow's End (57 page)
Authors: Martha Grimes
“Well, I more or less made a pact with a friend. Girl I know who works a cigarette and magazine kiosk at Heathrow.”
Trev grunted. “Helluva job if you're trying to stop.”
“Yes. I expect if Desdemona can stay off them, well, I can.”
“Desdemona, huh? Shakespeare.
Othello
?”
Jury nodded.
“Me and the wife, we saw that, must've been ten, twelve years ago. Went up to Stratford-upon-Avonâ”
Jury sighed. You thought you'd got away from something, but it just came at you round another corner.
“âand that's what was playing. They got this Royal Theatre or something there.”
“Royal Shakespeare Theatre. The RSC. Royal Shakespeare Company, they're called.”
“That's it. It all comes back. It's this king, what a yob he was, kills his wifeâthat's Desdemona, right?âbecause he thinks she's been messing around. Stupid twit takes the word ofâwhat's his name?”
“lago.”
“That's the fella. lago. Bit of a wide lad, him. So all he has to do is flash this hankie in front of the king's face and tell him he found it in you-know-who's bed and Bob's-your-uncle, that's the end of Desdemona. If the coppers looked at evidence the way that yobbo did, we'd all of us be in the nick. She never had a chance, did Desdemona. Jealousy, that's what. âBeware the green-eyed monster,' and so on.” Trevor sighed, and the end of his cigarette glowed red as he dragged in. “Just goes to show.”
The two of them sat in the dark, both pulling their collars up against the cold, both wishing it were sunup or sunset, a sight that might make the sitting here worth it, maybe Nature sympathizing for a change, saying,
You put up with a lot, you yobs, but look at this, now. Flash
!
Jury was smiling. “Just goes to show.”
DOUBLE DOUBLE
is a dual memoir of alcoholism written by Martha Grimes and her son Ken. This brutally candid book describes how different both the disease and the recovery can look in two different peopleâeven two people who are mother and son.
THE WAY OF ALL FISH
is a wickedly funny sequel to Grimes's bestselling novel,
Foul Matter
, “a satire of the venal, not to say murderous practices of the New York publishing industry” (
The New York Times Book Review
).
Martha Grimes eBooks available from Scribner
First in the Richard Jury Mystery Series
The Man with a Load of Mischief
A bizarre murder disturbs a sleepy Yorkshire fishing village.
The Old Fox Deceiv'd
Murder makes the tiny village of Littlebourne a most extraordinary place.
The Anodyne Necklace
In Shakespeare's beloved Stratford, Miss Gwendolyn Bracegirdle of Sarasota, Florida, takes her last drink.
The Dirty Duck
Jury has himself a mysterious little Christmas set in a chilly English landscape and Gothic estate.
Jerusalem Inn
Around bleak Dartmoor, where the Hound of the Baskervilles once bayed, three children have been brutally murdered.
Help the Poor Struggler
In Ashdown Dean, a little English village, animals are dying in a series of seemingly innocuous accidents.
The Deer Leap
In a rainy ditch in a Devon wood, a hitchhiker is found dead. Almost a year later, on another rainy night, another murder.
I Am the Only Running Footman
A dismembered corpse is found in the compartments of an antique writing bureau.
The Five Bells and Bladebone