Help the Poor Struggler (16 page)

And she continued to paint the canvas of Sara Millar in the most astonishing colors. She was beautiful, beneficent, agreeable . . .

Melrose noticed Henry was not with them.

“Oh, him?” Jessie said to his question. “He likes to sleep in cars; he's probably climbed back in. Never mind him.” And she put the last dab of color to the portrait of Miss Millar by saying, “Honestly, she's almost saintly.”

“Wonderful,” said Robert Ashcroft, his head half-buried under the bonnet of the Rolls-Royce. “Absolutely terrific. Just look at the way . . .”

Thus had Mr. Ashcroft gone on, while Melrose shifted from one foot to another, bored to tears with the lesson he was getting in auto-mechanics.

“It's only the fan belt. Can't imagine one simply slipping off. But we can get one from London.”

Jessie beamed up at Melrose.

“So please,” said Ashcroft, “be my guest, won't you?”

“Oh. But I couldn't
possibly
impose . . .”

No one seemed to notice Plant was a few steps ahead of them as they started toward the house again.

W
HY
Sara Millar had been presented by Jessica Ashcroft as the well-wrought urn round which played all the lively virtues, Melrose could not imagine.

Sara Millar was not overly smooth, often clever in her conversation, and very nearly pretty. She seemed to just miss being all or any of those things completely. She wasn't so much the urn, but a very mixed bouquet done up quickly for the occasion. Melrose thought she might be somewhat too much of a soft touch for the likes of Lady Jessica. But then he thought he detected in Miss Millar's velvet glove something of an iron hand. He doubted that Jessica would welcome anyone's telling her what to do.

Other, that is, than her uncle, whom she clearly adored. The feeling seemed to be mutual: Robert Ashcroft thought the world of his niece.

But, then, if one is sitting next to four million pounds, one might not find it difficult to give it a loving pat on the head. Cynical of him. Yet, he had been sent here to be cynical — or, at least, objective. Who was it in the household Jury suspected if not Ashcroft himself? It was too bad that the man
was so likable. He was unpretentious and hospitable, not particularly impressed by Melrose's titles. Yet Jury told him to trot out the whole batch of them. Agatha was missing a rare treat in not hearing all of that Earl of Caverness; Viscount of Nitherwold, Ross and Cromarty; Baron Mountardry stuff dragged out.

The introductions were handed round in the drawing room during a pleasant hour set aside for cocktails. There was Victoria Gray, who did not fit at all the role of housekeeper-secretary. In her background were culture and breeding, more so than in Sara Millar's. Victoria Gray was also better-looking, although a trifle witchlike. She was dressed in black, with a long-sleeved jacket of some sequined material. Her hair was black, turned under slightly — perhaps it was all of this that gave Melrose his impression. Perhaps his mind was tired, what with the drive itself, the trumped-up mechanical trouble, and Dartmoor. As they had walked up to the house earlier, even though scarcely noon, their feet were buried in mist, which rose until the trees were gloved in fog.

“I like your dress, Victoria,” said Jessica, who was herself quite dressed up in a blue frock.

Victoria Gray looked at Jessica with a frown. (It seemed compliments from Jessica were rare enough to be suspect.) “You do? Thank you.”

“It's beautiful. All spangly. It makes you look ever so much younger.”

Robert Ashcroft looked at his niece sharply and then laughed it off. His instinct was probably right. Calling attention to Jessica's rudeness might only have made the matter worse, though Victoria seemed to take it in stride.

“That's why I wore it,” she said. “Takes at least a hundred years off my age. What about you, Jessica? It's the first time I've seen you out of your mechanic's outfit in ages. And what have you done to Henry? It looks like a ribbon in his collar.”

Since it was difficult to see Henry's collar, buried as it was
in his furled skin, the bow peeked out as a tiny ruff of green.

“I dressed him up for company. It matches his eyes.”

Ashcroft was surprised. “Henry's eyes? Didn't know he had any.”

“You
know
he has green eyes,” Jess said, looking innocently into their guest's own.

 • • • 

However unprepared Mulchop was to be butler, Mrs. Mulchop certainly wasn't to be cook. Smoked salmon, double consommé and roast duckling with a mararet stuffing unlike anything Melrose had tasted before. He would like to have the recipe to give to his own cook, he said.

It was Sara Millar who told him: “Herbs and such, and mushrooms, anchovies and poached sweetbreads. Delicious, isn't it?”

Jessie, who had just taken a bite of this delicacy, stared at her plate. “Yuck! Why didn't somebody
tell
me?” She pushed the offending stuffing onto her small bread and butter dish and set it on the floor. “There, Henry,” she said sweetly.

“No feeding Henry
at the table,
Jess,” said Ashcroft.

Melrose had until then been unaware that Henry made one of their party. It also surprised him that, rather than Jessica's insisting she sit next to the fascinating stranger, she had allowed Sara that honor.

“You must forgive Jessie,” said Victoria.

No one looked in less need of forgiveness.

“Poor Henry.” Jessie sighed, as if the world were against him, and reached down to pat him in a lightning gesture that rid her plate of a particularly uninteresting turnip that had been lolling there. Then she set about eagerly eating her potatoes and making conversation before someone noticed the gap. “Lord Ardry . . .”

“Lady Jessica?”

“Oh, don't call me
that!
”

“All right, if you don't call me ‘lord.' The family name is Plant. It's really horribly complicated, isn't it?”

“Yes. My father's name was Ashcroft. But he was also the Earl of Clerlew.”

Ashcroft said, “You mean Curlew. Eat your dinner, Jess.” Robert Ashcroft seemed disturbed by all of this talk of lineage.

“I can't eat, not after you told me about the
brains.”
She readdressed herself to Melrose. “My mother's name was Barbara Allan.” Pointing her fork at the wall opposite, she said, “That's her portrait. Wasn't she beautiful?”

The picture hung behind Robert Ashcroft, who, Melrose saw, had put down his fork. He also seemed to have lost his appetite.

The Countess of Ashcroft was indeed beautiful — slender, tall, dark and wearing a smile that implied having one's picture painted was silly.

“She was also very nice,” said Victoria Gray. “So was James, her husband.”

Undercurrents, thought Melrose. Or an actual undertow.

Jessica, however, was not going to let her mother's reputation hang by this slender thread of “goodness.” “She had a very tragic life —”

Her uncle said, “Leave it alone, Jessie.
Mulchop
— stop lolling there and bring us some more wine!”

Melrose suspected that Ashcroft merely wanted to get their attention away from the Countess of Ashcroft.

It was no deterrent to Jessica. “Grandmother Ashcroft was mad because my mother was only a commoner and her family was in trade. My father always thought that was a good joke. ‘In trade.' You can make a lot of money ‘in trade,' he kept saying. Like being shopkeepers, if you have a lot of shops.”

Robert interrupted. “I don't think our guest is interested in the family tree, Jess.”

But Jessica continued to wash the dirty linen. “There was one of them that ran a pub. . . .” As she continued the Barbara Allan saga, it was clear that not only did the Allans have the
money, but that hearts had shattered to smithereens wherever the woman walked.

Victoria told her to stop exaggerating and stubbed out her cigarette violently.

“I'm
not!
It's just like the song — isn't it, Uncle Rob. You told me.”

Ashcroft smiled and clipped the end of a cigar. “I'm not sure who told who at this point. There seem to be a few frills and furbelows that I don't remember.”

In her gossipy way, Jessica went on: “She was lots younger than my father. . . . Though there's nothing wrong with that. I think it's all awfully romantic. But Gran thought it was just to get the title and was furious about it —”

Sara Millar broke in: “I don't think all of this should be trotted out in front of well,
two
relative strangers, Jessica.” Her voice was soft and pleasant.

Melrose wanted to laugh. In Jessica Ashcroft he had an unexpected ally. She would make sure he stayed and
stayed,
as long as he took Miss Millar when he left. Romantic things like that happened in Jessica's mind, he was sure. In this case, the romance would also be most fortuitous.

 • • • 

The subject of the recent murders came up — was brought up by Jessica, that is — when they were seated in the drawing room with coffee and cigars and cigarettes.

Robert Ashcroft and Sara Millar were seated side by side on the small sofa. Melrose regarded it as a marvel of logistics, the way Jessica worked herself round to sit between them. She was merely leaning against the arm of the sofa when she said, “The vicar's son. It was really grisly —”

While Jessica enjoyed the grisliness, Melrose studied the portrait of James Ashcroft, which hung above the marble fireplace. He only half-heard the conversation while he thought about James Ashcroft. Clerihew. Curlew. An easy enough error to make . . .

When Melrose turned his attention back to the conversation, he heard Jessica talking about the boy in Dorchester —

Magically, she was now sitting between the two grownups.

“Bed, Jessie,” said Ashcroft.

“Very well.” She sighed. “I only wish I could go for a ride tomorrow.”

“That,” said Victoria, “is one of the few positive things I think I've heard from you. It's about time I put you up on that horse —”

“Horse?
Who said
horse?
I mean a motorcar. Sara and Mr. Plant haven't had any rides at all in your cars. Couldn't Mr. Plant drive your Aston?” She looked at Melrose. “It goes from zero to sixty in five-point-two seconds.”

“It might, but I doubt I could go from zero to one in under an hour. Must be the Dartmoor air.” He yawned.

“
You
want to ride around Dartmoor, Jess?” Ashcroft said. “You're always telling me how boring it is.”

“That's only because we
live
here. It's always boring where you live. But they'd like it —” She looked from Sara to Melrose. “Just as long as we stay away from Wistman's Wood and the Hairy Hands.
Come on,
Henry.”

And she and the dog walked slowly off to bed.

Victoria Gray was arranging flowers in a shallow cut-glass bowl for the circular table when Melrose came down for breakfast. She was dressed in riding togs.

“Good morning, Lord Ardry.” She cut the stem of one last chrysanthemum, stuck it in the center of her arrangement, and stepped back to look at it with a critical eye much like a painter evaluating his canvas. “Will it do?”

Melrose smiled. “Very nicely, I'd say. Am I the last one down?”

“Except for Jessie. She said she had a sick-headache, and asked to be excused from your excursion into the wilds of Dartmoor.”

“I see. But she was to be our tour-guide.”

Victoria smiled. “She told me to give you this map. As far as I can see, it's to be a grim tour. Wynchcoombe, Clerihew Marsh, Princetown. I'll have coffee with you, if you don't mind. All the food's still warm, though Mulchop did his best to wrestle it off the sideboard.”

“Mind? Indeed not. One gets tired of breakfasting by oneself.” Just as one, thought Melrose, gets tired of talking like a peer of the realm. Melrose was having difficulty with his earldom, a difficulty he had never had before he gave up his title. He was perfectly happy talking like a commoner
then.
He felt like someone Jury had dragged out of a ditch, dusted off, and said, “Okay. You'll do.”

On the sideboard was a lavish display, all kept cozily warm in their silver dishes. He spooned up some kidney, took a portion of buttered eggs, layered on a couple of rashers of bacon, and helped himself to toast and butter. Then he frowned at his plate and wondered if a peer would gorge himself in this fashion.

Victoria Gray helped herself to toast and coffee. When she had settled at the table across from him, Melrose said, “If you don't mind my saying it — you don't fit the stereotype of ‘housekeeper.' ”

She laughed. “If you mean changing the linen and towels and wearing keys at my waist — no, I don't. This position is a sinecure. I do take care of the horses pretty much — Billy's a bit lazy — type the odd letter or two for Robert, and arrange flowers.” She smiled. “Barbara — Lady Ashcroft — and I were first cousins, though she was born in Waterford. County Waterford. A typical Irish colleen, she was. We were also very good friends. Barbara made an excellent marriage — well, she deserved it, didn't she . . . ?”

She seemed to be talking to herself. Or in the manner of one who is addressing an intimate acquaintance.

“The late Lady Ashcroft was Irish? You mean her daughter's tale of gloom and doom is true?”

“Of course not. Barbara didn't leave a trail of fallen hearts behind her like petals in the dust.” She paused. “At least not knowingly.”

He wondered what she meant by that. Barbara Ashcroft's face looked down at him from the far wall. The smile was inscrutable, a Mona Lisa smile. “If that portrait doesn't flatter her —”