The Old Contemptibles (19 page)

“Wouldn’t be at all surprised. Nice this,” said Fellowes, looking from the case to Melrose, the poor out-of-work librarian.

Melrose snapped it shut and quickly returned it to his pocket. “Aunt gave it to me. A bit of money, but I’m not a favorite.” Actually, it was all he could do to keep “Aunt” from nicking it. “One of those distant, dotty relations.”

“Like Adam, you mean?” asked Fellowes. “Oh, but I rather imagine they all wish he
was
dotty.”

“But the cook, that is, the one who committed suicide—she wasn’t part of the family.”

“No. But she was well liked by Adam. So was Graham. Even though he didn’t amount to much, he was a kind boy; he was thirty-five, but I could never think of him as anything but a ‘boy.’ And he was, after all, the only grandchild. As far as his own sons are concerned, I don’t think Adam cares for either one. Crabbe and George are both fools in different ways. And Genevieve. Well, Genevieve . . . Oh, of course Adam’ll leave them something, as I expect he might even leave me enough for paints and brushes. But it’s the ones he truly likes who’ll get the spoils. Such as Jane would have. Very fond of Jane, he was. The ones he likes seem over the years to be dropping down dead.” Fellows paused. “How did you come to know Madeline, did you say?”

He’d asked it rather overcasually, Melrose thought. Hell, he wondered if Francis Fellowes believed for a moment he was a simple librarian. Certainly a simpleminded one, he thought, with irritation. “Oh, I didn’t know her. She just happened to be in London interviewing
people who answered adverts for the post.” Let him think he’d been one of them; he hoped Fellowes wasn’t interested enough to check with Madeline. Perhaps he might confess something to Fellowes, something he hoped his new friend would keep to himself. Confess what? Confess he did not hold with cherished beliefs about the Lake poets. Actually, he thought he was right. “Look, don’t let it get back to Crabbe Holdsworth, but, frankly, Wordsworth was exploiting Coleridge . . . at least
I
think he was. The fabled friendship might have started well, but it certainly ended with Wum—I mean, William—blasting poor Sam out of the water. Well, perhaps that’s a
bit
strong. But Sam got understandably down because ‘Christabel’ never made it into
Lyrical Ballads . . .
and you know who did all the editing on
that
lot, don’t you? So there was Coleridge, being upbraided for all of the supranatural stuff in his poetry that was the very
reason
Wordsworth ostensibly wanted him in on the game in the first place. Coleridge might as well’ve been a book-cataloguer, for all the thanks he got!” Melrose said this heatedly, mashing out his cigarette in the tin tray. “Chap’s got to make a living, though.”

Fellowes laughed. “You’re one of the few people in that house who does. And you appear quite an authority, to boot.”

Just a fast reader, thought Melrose. “You don’t honestly think all of that codswallop in
Lyrical Ballads
is true?”

Fellowes frowned. “What’s true?”

“The similarity of purpose. That ‘seeing the mystical in the ordinary’ stuff? Wordsworth simply couldn’t deal with snakes and albatrosses, that’s all. Poor Coleridge. Y’know he suffered excruciating pain for a large part of his life. Neuralgia.” Why was he tenderly feeling his own face? Melrose wondered. Quickly, he lowered his hand and continued his lecture. “Don’t you know the name ‘Lake School’ was a sarcastic assessment by the
Edinburgh Review?”
Melrose polished off his bitter and thumped the glass down. Instead of thinking about some obscure nineteenth-century essay, he should be working on a way of getting information to William, ah, Richard Jury, shouldn’t he? He couldn’t ring Jury from Tarn House. Fellowes was often out. . . . “Are you on the phone?” he asked, rather overcasually, considering the recent hectic of his stinging appraisal of Wordsworth.

“The phone?” Fellowes frowned. “I’ve an extension, yes.”

“You mean of the Tarn House main?”

Fellowes nodded. “Why?”

“Oh, no reason. Just wondered how the service was here.” Could he make up some reason for visiting Adam Holdsworth? Use the line at Castle Howe? He could hardly stand about in a call box with a bucketful of change. He looked at their glasses. “Care for another?”

“Good idea. I’ll buy.” Fellowes started up, but Melrose waved him down.

“My turn.”

As he walked up to the bar and plunked the glasses down he thought of his problem. Actually, with his thorough notetaking—well, he
imagined
himself to be thorough—there would be too much material for a call, anyway.

Rheumy nodded to him in the mirror, his large Adam’s apple shifting up and down as he drained his pint. Sadly, he regarded the cavernous emptiness of his glass.

Melrose signed to O. Bottemly to take care of the empty pint, saw dawn break in Rheumy’s smile, and asked, “You on the phone?”

Rheumy stared at him and shook his head as if British Telecom were something he’d had a brief flirtation with ages ago, but had long since left in the lurch.

Absently, Melrose gathered in the two full glasses for his table, as he said, “How the devil’s anyone get information out of this village?”

“Over t’post office.” Rheumy lifted his glass.

“Letters take too long.”

“Fax it, Squire.”

The cat had appeared in the kitchen suddenly, out of that nowhere that only cats had discovered. The kitchen door was latched; the windows were shut.

Sorcerer kept getting in her way. He was standing between Millie and the cooker, staring at her, moving as she moved, forward, left, right, blocking her way to the pan on the stove. Millie could never sleep well; she always came down at night to make herself cocoa and usually Sorcerer slept right on top of the pillow above her head. But he hadn’t been there tonight.

He was here now, though.
What’s wrong with you?
she asked wordlessly, irritably, as she reached again for the pan. Of course, she could have shoved Sorcerer, but she never did that. Not after that horrible time five years ago when the cat had appeared magically and watched her and stayed with her.

“What’s
wrong?”

Sorcerer raced to the kitchen door and sat, tail twitching.

When she continued to dip the spoon in the cocoa, he came back, sat down between her and the cooker again.

She frowned. Back to the door. Back to Millie.

Millie walked over to the inside door that opened onto the mud-room. She switched on an electric torch that Hawkes kept on a shelf. Nothing. Before she could turn and close the door, the cat was through it and sitting at the outside door. When she didn’t move, it ran between the two doors, going cat-crazy. Millie opened the door and Sorcerer made a dash for the field.

She took an old jacket from a hook and shoved her feet into the Wellingtons she always kept there. Through the darkness, she could see Sorcerer’s eyes staring at her over the broom and tall weeds, eyes that seemed disconnected, floating above the grass. Millie aimed the torch downward to keep the lane of light as short as possible. You could never tell who might be watching from that house. Mr. Hawkes’s light was on; as long as there was light inside, he couldn’t see outside.

The grass was long, the ground peaty. Near the wood she ran the torch along the edge and saw Sorcerer clambering up the rotting ladder that led to the tree house.

 • • • 

Alex heard her climbing and saw her eyes come up over the edge of the floorboards. “It’s me, Millie,” he said.

She opened her mouth but nothing came out. Millie was not given to physical demonstrations, but now she was speechlessly hopping from one foot to another as if she had to pee, her small hands fisted against her temples. Finally, she sat down, still without saying a word. She sat in the other corner, opposite him, her arms twined round her updrawn knees.

At last, she said, “Police are looking for you. They were here, asking questions. They even asked
me
questions. I told them you had
amnesia. That you were wandering in London and didn’t know who you were. I told them you did it before. Had amnesia.”

Alex laughed. She liked the sound of the word on her tongue. Millie had heard someone use it, perhaps even in relation to his disappearance, and had taken it up. Millie loved words, certain words. When she heard one she liked she would use it in every possible circumstance, whether it fit quite perfectly or not.
Debauchery
was a favorite. When she was able to talk about her disappearance after her mother’s death, she said she had pulled up the daffodils in a fit of debauchery.

Alex wanted to say to her now, about his mother,
She didn’t do it,
but that would have been terrible, because Annie Thale really had. She must have thrown herself off that grassy promontory to lie, with her broken body, in the lake below. Wast Water was the deepest lake in all of England. “Fickle blue,” Millie called the lakes.

It was Millie who said it: “I don’t believe it.” No need to define “it.” “You can cry if you want,” she added, in that businesslike manner of hers that put people off the scent, that made them think the little girl was uncommonly cool and adult.

“I already did. You know, I must’ve been here over a whole day, asleep. What’s been going on? What did the others tell the police about—Mum?”

“That they couldn’t believe it and they didn’t understand it and she was . . . ‘neurotic’ ” Millie was fooling with the rucksack.

“Worse than that, I’ll bet. The usual stuff about her not being a good mother and not being able to hold a job and so forth and so forth.” He hadn’t had to ask, really. “What police were here?”

“Oh, that constable from the village. But he just came along with the one from London. Cramer, or something. He looked foreign.”

“Kamir?”

“That’s right, with his sergeant. And your granddad was here”—meaning his great-grandfather, Adam—“telling police that all the rest of them were crazy, that there was nothing wrong with your mum, and anyway why were they asking questions as if it was—” She stopped.

“It’s okay. As if it was suicide, you mean. What’d they say?”

“Nothing. They didn’t say nothing, except that it might be a ‘suspicious death.’ I expect it’s different from a sudden one. Then everyone had to tell them where they were on Monday night. Did you
know your aunt Madeline and Her” (meaning Genevieve, whom Millie loathed) “were in London, and had to admit it? They went up on Sunday.” Millie’s smile was more than a little mean.

“For what?” Alex sat up; the steel band had loosened its grip on his chest. “Why?”

“Your auntie had to see people about getting a person who does books to help Mr. Holdsworth.
She
went like She always does, to buy clothes. I’m surprised there’s anything left in the shops.”

“Were all the others here? Was Francis?”

Millie shrugged. “He always leaves after dinner, when he has it. I didn’t see him. Only your uncle George and Mr. Holdsworth had dinner. I had to cook rabbits. Yuck.” She screwed up her face. “If he kills them, he ought to have to cook them.”

Alex sighed. “I expect I’ll have to show my face. I can’t learn anything sitting in this tree.”

Millie gave him a look of disgust. “You can think, can’t you?”

He lowered his head. “I had a terrible dream.” Millie was very good with dreams, figuring them out. Sometimes he was amazed at her sensitivity, the way she could feel things that normally passed other people by, the way she could work her way into other people’s feelings. It was almost as if she
became
the object.
Too close to the ground, Millie is,
his great-grandfather had said once.

“The pack of cards,” he said. “It kept sticking. I didn’t believe before she’d really—” He stopped. “I wonder now if I had something to do with it; I was always betting. Just before it happened I was playing poker and got sent down.”

“No!” She raised her head and thrust her legs out violently. “Your mum would never have killed herself and anyway it wasn’t a pack of cards.” Again, she drew up her legs, rested her chin on her hands. “Things never are what they look like in dreams.”

“But she turned into the Queen of Hearts. It’s as if she was stuck, stuck with me in that pack of cards—”

“Alice-in-Wonderland.” Millie shut her eyes and rocked back. “There’s a Red Queen. The Red Queen is riding a horse but she never really gets anyplace. Where’d you get this?” Millie held up the automatic she’d rooted from the sack.

“Put that down, for God’s sake! You could get hurt!” Even Sorcerer jumped.

“If it’s loaded I nearly sat on it.”

“Of
course
it isn’t. You think I’m crazy? It needs the clip.”

“How do you do it?”

Alex took out the ammunition clip and smacked it into the handle with the palm of his hand, making sure the safety was on. The gun gave off a slightly oily smell.

Millie studied the gun in his hand. Thoughtfully, she said, “Maybe that’s the pack of cards in your dream.”

Alex blinked at it, laid it on the boards. Then he remembered: “Something was missing from my mother’s room. But I can’t remember what.” Like Millie, he grew thoughtful. “Do you think it’s safe to talk to Dr. Viner?”

“I don’t think it’s safe to talk to
anybody.
I’ll fix you some sandwiches and Sorcerer can bring them back.”

“How can Sorcerer carry them?—Put that down, Millie!” Before he could stop her, she’d picked up the gun and pulled out the ammunition clip. “It’s not to play with.”

“I wasn’t thinking of playing.” She put the gun and the clip in the rucksack. “There’s somebody new here.”

“Who?”

“His name’s Mr. Plant. He’s the one that your aunt hired to do something with the books.” She studied the hole in the roof of the tree house. “At least that’s what he says he’s doing here. I don’t believe him.”

The Dunsters were feuding again.

Their feuds did not take the form of baleful glances, spiteful silences or vitriolic remarks about appearances. Had the fights been mere vituperative name-calling, Mrs. Colin-Jackson could easily have stepped in with her smarmy manner and wheedling voice, promising extra sweets.