Jerusalem Inn (13 page)

“Well, perhaps we should be going. I've just brought the Land Rover, as it's the only thing that can get through now.” As they headed toward the door, he added, “There're only a handful of us, old friends I think you'll like.” He laughed. “They'll welcome some new faces. We've been snowed in up there for three days now.”

How jolly, thought Melrose.

I
T HAD
to be an abbey.

S
PINNEY
A
BBEY
the bronze plaque on the stone pillar announced. Certainly, “the house” was an extremely modest appraisal of the vast structure whose unaccommodating, cold chambers (Plant was sure) awaited them at the end of a quarter-mile-long, partially plowed drive. The place was huge, austere, deep-windowed, medieval. Tall chimneys, lancet-vented and with conical caps, struck spearlike into the nightsky. Melrose's spirits were not raised by Seaingham's informing his little party that the abbey sites were often chosen for their dismal locations.

They piled out of the Land Rover and, hunched against the snow, all made their way up to a front door that looked as if it could only be hauled open by a couple of Gauls or Goths. It was magically opened by a single butler.

“Marchbanks,” said Seaingham, as they were helped out of coats and scarves and boots, “see that Lord Ardry's man is taken care of, will you? And tell Cook we'll be dining in another half-hour.” He smiled. “These people need a drink to take the chill off.”

As far as Melrose was concerned, the chill was on. The Great Hall, two stories high, contained a huge central hearth and recessed windows that were double-lighted above and shuttered below. A massive Christmas tree, lit by crisscrossed strings of white lights, stood beneath the vaulted ceiling. Once the hall must have served as dining-chamber to visiting lords and their retinues. Now it seemed to serve no purpose other than as a half-acre of tiled flooring and statuary on the way to somewhere else, no doubt equally feudal.

Marchbanks, who was now squaring off against Ruthven, fit the place perfectly. He might have stepped out of one of the niches spotted up and down the walls which held austere busts and forms, most with hanging heads and draperies of vaguely religious origins.

While Marchbanks led Ruthven away, Seaingham whipped the others into action, leading them to another door — this one a large, sliding double-door, its dark wood polished by years of wax and firelight.

 • • • 

There were not really all that many people gathered here, but the room gave the impression of having a rugby-field-ful. Perhaps it was just the way the guests were spaced or — rather in the manner of the statues behind him — draped against couches and chairs and walls. The state of the house-guests, however, was owing far more to inebriation than to religion. The martini pitcher had clearly made its way round several times over, and the whiskey and soda siphons had got a good workout. This salon or parlor held only slightly to the ambience of the Great Hall. The lintel of the palatial fireplace was a frieze bearing some past lord's coat of arms. There were tall windows with transomed lights and stone window seats. But aside from that, the room was all warm elegance: velvet and brocade, green pastel walls, cream ceiling with garlanded moldings. Melrose was quite fond of ceilings: Ardry End was full of Adam ceilings whose delicacy
one's eye could trace in idle moments when Agatha came to tea.

From some distant wing came the ragged sound of the worst piano-playing Melrose had ever heard.

Grace Seaingham, Charles's wife, was taking all the ribbons for Perfect Hostess: she managed to hand Agatha and Vivian around without appearing to lay a glove on them. She was on the thin side, with a sort of cool beauty made even chillier by white silk and glass blond hair. Her only jewelry was a mosaic pendant.

The whole lot of them were dressed up, gowned and dinner jacketed. Melrose imagined Ruthven would expire on the spot to see the Earl of Caverness sitting down to dine in tweed. Looking the room over, he felt almost sorry he hadn't worn jodhpurs and a sweater out at elbows. Agatha would be dying a thousand deaths because she wasn't in purple velvet and pearls. His mother's pearls, rather. The Countess of Caverness had not bequeathed her jewels to Agatha. But that made no odds to Agatha. Right now she was wearing an opal of Ardry-Plant origins.

In the course of the introductions, Melrose realized that not all of the evening clothes fit their models quite as comfortably as did Lady St. Leger's, who was clearly born to the purple that Agatha wished she were wearing. Elizabeth St. Leger offered Melrose her hand, fingers twisted a bit, probably from arthritis, not unusual for a woman of her years. She wore a single strand of pearls and her gown was velvet, but gray and plainly cut for her rather stout figure, the sort of cut that would cost a shorthand-typist a year's salary.

That particular allusion was called up by the next lady, Lady Assington (who whispered
Susan
in his ear, as if her first name were a well-kept secret). There was, beneath Lady Assington's expensive 'twenties-style green gown, a typist trying to get out, which was probably what she had been before she'd married Sir George Assington, thirty years her senior,
mustached, and a pukka-sahib type. He was (Melrose discovered) a distinguished physician. There had to be some reason for Seaingham's putting up with the wife. When Sir George was introduced he studied Melrose's ear, or the air surrounding it, and then immediately returned his hands to his back and his back to the fire.

It was a good thing the room was plenty warm, or the next guest, introduced as Beatrice Sleight, would have frozen where she stood in what she was wearing. The black gown had a slit back, a front cut to the waist, and a slash up the side, all like arrows pointing Danger. She had an abundance of gorgeous mahogany hair, as polished as the woodwork, stuck here and there with jet and amber combs, one of them topped by a gold dragon, ruby-eyed and sapphire-winged. The combs gave to the hair that tumbled look of one just preparing for bed. Melrose imagined she usually was. Round her neck in enameled mountings were large, square emeralds that looked absolutely black in this light. This elaboration of jewels was in exact contrast to Mrs. Seaingham's pendant: set in the mosaic was the symbol
— the religious chi rho. And Beatrice Sleight was also the opposite of Vivian, who went around like beauty-in-hiding, dressed right now in a plain skirt and a cashmere sweater and looking as comfortable as someone who'd come on a camel.

Beatrice Sleight gave Melrose more of herself than her hand: the only thing between them was her cocktail glass. She was a writer belonging to some sort of genre she seemed to have invented herself: she specialized in the
roman à clef
with the Brtitish peerage as her central target. Two of her books —
Death of a Duke
and
Exit an Earl —
had rocketed straight to the top of the best-seller lists. “Everyone's interested in the private lives of the peerage, aren't they?”

“I wouldn't know,” said Melrose, with a smile, before Charles Seaingham untangled him from Beatrice and led him toward a youngish man. This was William MacQuade, the
one whom Vivian admired. MacQuade had recently won several awards for a novel that even Charles Seaingham had praised. To say that was to say a good deal. Melrose liked him, as much for his ill-fitting dinner jacket as for his intelligence. Two minutes with him, and he didn't utter one cliché, like “Beastly old blow out there,” or attempt to fill Melrose in on his genius.

The tall, brooding type who'd been leaning by the window when they'd walked in turned out to be the painter, Parmenger. He put Melrose in mind of Heathcliff, and Agatha was obviously adding to his moorland gloom. Parmenger merely kept one hand in his pocket and the other folded round a large whiskey and said nothing but “Hullo.” He was very handsome, horribly talented, and couldn't care less if Melrose were Lord Ardry, plain Plant, or even this lady's nephew. After introducing them, Seaingham withdrew to talk to Vivian. A man of sense, thought Melrose.

“My nephew, Lord Ardry,” said Agatha, re-introducing Melrose and Parmenger.

“Melrose Plant,” her nephew corrected her for perhaps the hundredth time in the last few years.

Frederick Parmenger looked from the one to the other with a slight smile on his mouth but none in his eyes. “You seem to disagree on who this is.”

Since Melrose knew who he was, the mild insult of
this
didn't bother him at all. Indeed, he inferred that the meeting was the most interesting thing that had happened to Parmenger during the whole of the cocktail hour — an hour extended into two, since Charles Seaingham had had to fetch his last guests from the inn.

“Melrose likes to tell people he's relinquished his title,” said Agatha, drinking her gin and bitters, saying it in a way that implied Melrose was a liar.

“Actually, I believe it's
you,
dear Aunt, who likes to tell people I like to tell people —”

She waved him away, a bad-mannered boy. “Stop talking in riddles, Plant.” Parmenger, who had begun to be interested in this little family squabble, was now being bored to death by Agatha's talking about painting, and making Parmenger look for a refill with her I-know-what-I-like philosophy.

The piano music — was it the Seaingham's idea of a medieval musicale? — stopped and Melrose was on his way to rescue Vivian from Lady Assington, when Charles Seaingham came up behind him and said, “My dear fellow, here's someone you must meet.”

Melrose turned.

“Lord Ardry. The Marquess of Meares.” Seaingham chuckled and winked. “We call him Tommy. Family name, Whittaker.”

Melrose stared. It was the pool player from Jerusalem Inn.

Tommy Whittaker, Marquess of Meares, stared back. Obviously, from his expression, Tommy Whittaker had also seen Melrose when he'd wandered into the back room of the pub. Tommy looked a little sick.

All Melrose wanted to know was how this boy had got back to Spinney Abbey, changed into black tie, and sat down at (and fortunately had now got up from) the piano, before the Land Rover had arrived.

Tommy Whittaker cleared his throat and said, “I wish people wouldn't introduce me that way.”

“So does he,” said Vivian, inclining her head toward Melrose and managing to get a little of the Parmenger-tone into the
he.

“I'm too young to be a marquess.”

Vivian, who had decided to be clever after two martinis, said, “He's too old to be an earl. You've something in common.”

“I'd be careful, were I you, Vivian. You're the one who made us stop at the Jerusalem Inn —” He stopped, seeing
Tommy Whittaker redden. The blush only made the Marquess of Meares handsomer. He was, indeed, one of the handsomest young men Melrose had ever seen. Girls' hearts must have crumbled like crackers.

Vivian sailed off, steered by gin, to talk to MacQuade, and Tommy Whittaker cleared his throat and said, plaintively, “I say. You
won't
mention you saw me there?”

“I'd take a bullet in the chest first. Only tell me. We barely made it in the Land Rover. Just how the hell did you get here
before us?”

Tom Whittaker gave him a blinding smile, but before he could answer, Lady St. Leger appeared at his side, supported by a silver-handled cane. “I see you've met my nephew,” she said to Melrose, but all the while looking at Tommy Whittaker adoringly. “You were a bit late, my dear. Of course, I know you must practice —” To Melrose, she turned and informed her that her nephew was quite musical . . .

At that point Marchbanks drew open the double doors and announced dinner with as much grace as he could muster, considering dinner was late, and he had had to make room for Ruthven, the butler's butler.

T
HE
dining room had mullioned windows of rose and amethyst glass, was oak-paneled and candlelit, and, in its mingling of tones, seemed to throw over the dinners a fine patina of burnished copper.

Thus the voice of Susan Assington was like a scratch upon this lovely surface. “I think,” said Lady Assington, “we should have a murder.”

She looked up and down the dinner table, crowded with polished plate and polished crystal and tarnished conversation.

“I
mean,”
said Lady Assington, tapping a silvery nail against her wineglass, “it's just too
perfect.
” Having captured the entire table for the first time — and they were already on their dessert — she was breathless for a response.

Melrose, seated to her right, asked politely (when no one else took her up), “Why is that?”

“Why, here we are,
snowed in!
Just the sort of thing to bring one's nerves to the boiling point —”

Lady Assington was not one to worry over her metaphors, thought Melrose. But since she appeared to have no nerves at all, boiling was as good for them as freezing, he supposed. Susan Assington's dark hair was cut in the bobbed flapper style of the 'twenties. The gown itself hung and clung at odd angles, as if the seamstress had gone mad in the making, hacking her way with scissors and silk. Melrose noted all of this as she went on about murder, waving her fork about, tipped with the soufflé Grand Marnier that had probably been whipped to a froth in the same dark kitchen as her mind, but with considerably more success.