Rainbow's End (38 page)

Now she studied her crimson-painted fingernails. “Um. The earphones.”

Melrose felt as if he'd seized up, like the engine of a cheap automobile. “I beg your pardon?”

“
You
know. You said you did it yourself, at that exhibit of portraits in the Tate. You purchased the guided tour. Probably, so did—what's her name?” Melrose was too stunned to answer. And the question, apparently, was rhetorical anyway. Diane did not give a fig for victims. “And the second one, whoever, was in Exeter Cathedral. Now, you know as well as I they nearly
always
have those taped tours of cathedrals. Just to check it out, I rang them up. Guess what? There's a guided tour of those—whatchamcallits—?” She snapped her fingers in an effort to jar her memory. “Those embroidered things. Those cushions.”

“Rondels. You're talking about the rondels.”

She nodded, pleased as punch. “Now, I bet the one woman picked up the tape of the portrait collections and the other—didn't someone say she was a tapestier?—”

“Tapister.”

“A tapister. Wouldn't you imagine she would have listened to one of those tapes?”

Melrose blinked. “Diane, the tour of the Swagger Portraits was done by an actor. He didn't scream out
‘PREPARE TO DIE
'—”

With an expression of total disdain for his thickness, she said, “My
God
, Melrose, don't you see? The
murderer
switched the tapes!”

He took a long drink of his martini and leaned back in his chair, but since it allowed no real support, he found he was nearly supine. He gathered himself together and sat up. “How?”

“ ‘How?'? How what?”

“Did he or she switch the tapes.”

Here, Diane gave a little flick of her fingers, waving this trivial question away. “I expect any number of ways—
you
should be able to work that out;
you're
writing the mystery! Ask what's-his-name? Inspector Smithson!”

“That's different, for heaven's sake!”

Eagerly, she leaned forward now, clasping her hands round her knees. “But Melrose,
if
someone could do it, it
would
be perfectly plausible, now wouldn't it?”

“If someone could do it . . . ” He swigged his drink. “Well, it's that wearisome old ‘if' . . . ” He chortled (a bit drunkenly? crazily?) and held out his glass to be topped up again. “I mean, if I could grab that knife blade of sunlight on the wall, I could stab your cat, too.”

The cat flicked its tail, raised its rump, and
meeeeowwwed.
Diane cuffed it.

“And another thing.” Melrose grinned through gritted teeth. He was close to hating himself both for squashing her pretty theory on the one hand and for discussing it on the other. “And another thing,” he said again, “it wouldn't work for the young woman they found at Old Sarum, would it?”

“Why not?”

He stared at her, dribbling a bit of his martini as he took his glass from her hand. “Well . . . because they don't have recorded tours of places like Sarum and Stonehenge.”

In genuine astonishment, she raised those jet brows and said, “But Melrose, they're famous sites. Stonehenge is one of the most visited
monuments
in the entire world! Old Sarum and Stonehenge are—hundreds of years old!”

Melrose studied the dagger of sunlight now lying across his polished shoe. Perhaps he could grab it up and smite himself, rather than the cat? “I think. I, uh . . . think . . . ” He looked up at her rather hopelessly. “I think they expect you, well, when it comes to a place like Stonehenge . . . either you get it . . . or you don't.”

Really
? said her expression.

Sam Lasko sighed, the weight of the day's vanishing apparently on his shoulders, taking witnesses with it. “I told her not to leave,” he said, almost miserably, his hangdog expression like a dad's whose errant child had gone off in a fit of caprice. “Material witness. Well, that doesn't look good, does it?”

They were walking in the cold dusk past the stone patio of the pub across the street from the park and the River Avon. It was not yet open for its evening trade. Lasko paused, looked up at the façade of the Dirty Duck, as if its refusal to switch to London opening hours were only another stab in the back. “I could use a drink,” he said.

They walked on.

“You don't know that she has,” said Melrose in answer to Lasko's sad statement as to the unreliability of Jenny Kennington. “Left, I mean.” He watched a family of ducks (“family” was his own invention) scavenging the riverbank in the far distance for bread left over from that day's takings. Not much in February, he imagined; not many tourists crowding the banks and tossing out crumbs and popcorn and chips to the swans. It was quite beautiful; it always was. Misty sodium lights had just turned themselves on along the path that joined the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and the little church that was the playwright's burial place. Melrose added, “She's just not at home.” Now, there was a clever bit of deduction. He felt Lasko's eyes on him. Lamely, he added, “I mean—what about her friends? Might she be visiting one of them?”

“Of course, I checked that out, didn't I?”

“Yes. Sorry.” It was all this running around that was dulling his wits. He'd intended to make straight for Stratford-upon-Avon first
thing that morning but had instead allowed himself a lie-in following his visits to the Blue Parrot and Diane's.

Lasko asked, “Is this lady a particular friend of Richard's? He seems to be concerned.” Lasko's face clouded over, as if this might add to his difficulties.

It certainly added to Melrose's. “Apparently,” he responded, impatiently. What was it with Jury and women? Either they died, or turned out to be murderers, or were otherwise totally unsuitable. And now this one had disappeared. According to Lasko. Melrose doubted it. He did not know Jenny Kennington very well—he did not know her at all, come to think of it. Only one time had he actually seen her, and that was at a distance; furthermore, it had been at a funeral. She'd been standing way off, the other side of the grave. But he did know a great deal of her history, that having been an important part of the case in Hertfordshire where she'd lived. And Jury had talked about her on occasion. Consequently, he felt he knew her, knew something of her, that she didn't sound like the type of person who would run off.

As they turned the corner of Ryland Street, Lasko said, again, “She shouldn't have scarpered.”

 • • • 

THE HOUSE
on Ryland street, only a short distance from the pub, had been their destination. Seeing the Dirty Duck opening, though, they'd stopped for a drink and a chat about old times.

Now as they walked the short distance to Ryland Street, the breeze coming off the Avon had a tang to it, almost medicinal, and Melrose thought of Wiggins, laid up in hospital reading Josephine Tey. The spartan room came to mind, its antiseptic whiteness relieved by now (he hoped) with bright sprays of color. He'd forgotten to send flowers from himself. Well, that could be the next round.

At the door they were met by a chewed-up black tomcat that looked as if it had just escaped from Borstal. Melrose at first mistook it for a piece of misplaced garden statuary, as it sat there looking scraped, chipped, and dusty.

The cat decided to bristle at sight of the intruders, the hair along its back standing up like a Mohawk on a Piccadilly Circus punk. Actually (thought Melrose, tilting his head) the resemblance was remarkable.

“You wanna see the warrant? There.” Lasko unrolled the search warrant and held it out to the cat.

“Thank God you were first one in,” said Melrose.

The cat became very starchy, got up and turned its back and swayed out of the hallway.

Melrose and Lasko followed it into the small front room. Melrose immediately made for the kitchen and inspected the floor. A foot from the wastepaper basket stood one bowl of water, clean and topped up, and two dishes of food, one wet, one dry, both partly eaten. He inspected the half-eaten canned food closely.

“All right. Lady Kennington's about and it's coincidence you haven't been in touch, or else she's fixed up with somebody to come in regularly and feed Fidel Castro, here. The food couldn't have been sitting out for long or it would have at least begun to dry up. Either way, she hasn't scarpered, Inspector.”

Lasko looked slightly pained. “You can arrange to have somebody feed your animal indefinitely, Mr. Plant.”

Melrose shook his head. “No. People don't do that; she'd have taken it to a shelter or given it away. All I'm talking about is it looks like a clear intent to return. And look at the rest of the house.” They were in the living room now. “Book open and facedown on chair, newspaper, cup and saucer there beside the chair. It has the look of someone who might have left on the spur—”

“Which is what I'm talking about, isn't it?”

“—to take care of some business or something and possibly been detained. What about that pub you were telling me about that she's thinking of buying up from the brewery?”

Lasko was sifting through mail and circulars lying on a table. “Naturally, I checked there. No one's seen her for two days.”

“What I meant was, perhaps she's gone somewhere on business related to it. Up to London, something like that.”

“Uh-huh.”

Lasko didn't believe it, clearly. He was busy now with the open drawer of a delicate secretaire by the french windows, running his hands through the papers there. It made Melrose feel uncomfortable. And he also thought it a futile search. “What do you think you'll find, Inspector?”

Lasko shrugged. “Beats me.” He closed the drawer, turned his eyes toward the ceiling. “I'll think I'll have a look upstairs.” He left.

Melrose stood in the center of the living room and simply looked around, finding it cozy, pleasant, perhaps a bit overcrowded with the antiques brought from her former house in Hertford. What had been its name? He remembered passing it on the Littlebourne road, a big place screened by a high wall set well back from everything.

On the gateleg table by which he stood and which (he imagined) served as a makeshift dining-room table, sat a small bisque figurine. He picked it up, turned it in his hands. What did it remind him of? Jury's description of the courtyard of that house—

Stonington. That was it. Still holding the figure, he sat down and looked at it. And he tried to remember what Jenny Kennington looked like, but he couldn't. He was shocked, literally shocked, when he started counting back, measuring off subsequent events in the years that had followed the murders in Littlebourne, that it had been ten years ago. Was it possible?

No, he could not remember her face, but what he could remember was her figure standing back away from everyone on the other side of that grave site. Still and solemn. Detached and rather elegant. And the other thing he remembered: thinking her hands were empty, and then being sure that they weren't. He had stood there on the bank, looking back towards the little cemetery, watching as whatever she'd been holding in her hand had been shoved in her coat pocket. And he knew that it was only out of gratitude (or more) for Richard Jury that the damned thing she'd pocketed hadn't gone into the grave.

Melrose sighed and sat down in the one comfortable armchair. He did not consider himself as particularly brilliant at ferreting out clues; still, he noted the cold, half-drunk cup of coffee on the table beside him, noted the newspaper on the chair's matching ottoman, neatly folded to reveal the crossword. He picked this up, slid down in the chair and looked at the one penciled-in entry. Well, half an entry, as she hadn't finished putting in the rest of the word, which he thought must be

SKULK

The clue was “Not a fox-hunt, but foxes hunting”; that was a misleading clue for “skulk of foxes,” he thought. But only the S, K, and U had been penciled in the little squares. She knew it, that was fairly clear. Why had she left it? It, and the rest of the crossword?

He looked over the top of the newspaper, frowning. The phone? The doorbell? Given the order of the rest of the house, the cold cup, the bitten biscuit suggested she'd left in quite a hurry. Leaving a half-finished coffee, a half-finished word. Odd.

Lasko came stomping down the stairs as Melrose had been about to open the newspaper. He said, peering at Melrose, comfortably ensconced in the armchair: “Don't knock yourself out; life's too short. Let's get a drink. You've earned it.”

Melrose ignored the sarcasm and got up, forgetting the newspaper.

The cat reappeared, like a well-trained butler, to watch them make their exit.

THE DIRTY DUCK
had been open for an hour, and had a goodish pre-theatre crowd gathered in both the pub side and the dining room (which side sailed under another name, the Black Swan). Melrose had invited Sam Lasko to dine with him, but Lasko said he'd only got time for a pint before he had to get back to headquarters. The pint had been half-consumed from a standing position, before Lasko said he wanted to call in to see if anything had come up.

Melrose took over a table vacated by a couple and glanced over the theatre advert they'd left behind. The Royal Shakespeare Company was doing one of the
Henrys
and Melrose had no desire to see it. He was in the mood for revenge tragedy. He noted that the little theatre coyly named the Other Place was doing
The Duchess of Malfi
, but not that night. Drat. He could have used a spot of that, or
The Changeling
, or
The White Devil
, or even
The Revenger's Tragedy
, hammy as it was. Last time he'd been in Stratford-upon-Avon he'd twice tried to see the RSC's
Hamlet
and twice been dragged out of it before the good stuff, such as Ophelia's going mad and drowning. Ophelia.