Melrose picked up the picture of Kitty and another baby and the little bracelet that had dangled (as had the one downstairs) on one corner of the frame. On this one the heart was engraved with the letter E. Melrose sat with this little bracelet and looked to the window where a narrow branch of the tulip tree tapped in the wind. There was nothing surprising in Kitty Riordin’s keeping this memento of babyhood, certainly not the bracelet worn by her own baby, Erin, and not Maisie’s either, although she could have handed it over to Maisie herself or even Oliver. But that was splitting hairs. Only…
… assuming the child brought back from the walk that night was actually Maisie, how had Kitty come by Erin’s bracelet? Could she have found it in the course of frantically sifting through the rubble of the Blue Last? Surely not. He held it up, swinging it on his finger. It struck him as bloody unlikely but he would have to allow it was possible. The question then was, why? Why would she search for it? Other than as a memento, what purpose would it serve? The bracelet downstairs with the M would indicate the baby was Maisie-not prove it, since anyone can switch a bracelet from one little wrist to another.
He went back to looking at the photograph. The baby had both of its hands on Kitty’s forearm. He could see the fingers separately and clearly. In some way the picture made Melrose think of Masaccio’s Madonna and Child in the Uffizi. He recalled that the hands of the baby Jesus curled on his mother’s arm, just as Erin’s did here. The plump little hands were perfect and unmarked. This was taken before that awful night, the final night of the Blue Last, when little Maisie’s arm and hand were hit by flying rubble.
Or was it Erin’s?
Melrose kept looking from the photograph to the bracelet to the tapping branch of the tulip tree outside. It was almost enough to make him believe that Kitty Riordin knew the pub would be bombed. But not even Kitty Riordin could control the skies.
He hoped.
Forty-five
Gloomy thoughts. But it wouldn’t be the first time a mother had done something like that.
And it had been, after all, for Erin’s own good.
Melrose was in his room at Boring’s trying to decide what to change into for dinnr. For God’s sake, he told himself (snippily), you have only six articles to choose from-two jackets, a black cashmere and a greenish wool-silk; two pairs of trousers, one of those being the new black jeans he had bought at the Army-Navy Store for gardening and the other a black wool; two shirts, one white, one a black turtleneck. Still he felt all the indecision of a teenager trying to decide what to wear to the dance.
He looked his wardrobe over. Black. Now that was an interesting idea. What, he wondered, would be the effect if he pulled on the black jeans-
(He did.)
Pulled down the black turtleneck.
(He did.)
Then yanking it from its hanger, pulled on the black cashmere jacket.
He did this too, then stepped back from the long mirror, whipped out a comb and snapped it through his gold-licked hair, cool as John Travolta. He caught the whole effect and smiled. He made a gun of his thumb and index finger, pow.
Back at you.
In the Members’ Room, Melrose waved hello to Major Champs and Colonel Neame, but sat down on the other side of the room, after procuring for himself a newspaper from the rack near the desk, one of the twenty or so different papers Boring’s supplied. Melrose could understand keeping Le Monde on the rack, but did anyone in here speak Arabic? Swahili? Cigarette in his mouth, he flicked his Zippo and lowered his face to bathe in shadows and fire. Unfortunately, there was no way to see just what the effect was, but he thought it fitted his black-clothed persona.
“Cool.”
Quickly, he turned, nearly dropping the lighter. “Polly!”
Polly Praed smiled as Melrose jumped up, mouth unhinged. He’d caught the cigarette as it fell.
Polly ran her eyes from his head to his toes and then back up again. “Way cool.” She plopped down in a leather chair, companion to his own. She said, “I may have to revise my opinion.”
“What the devil are you doing here in Boring’s?”
“Oh, don’t be such a stick, Melrose. These places let anybody in nowadays. Light?”
He lit the cigarette she was waggling in her mouth. She hadn’t changed a jot in these last couple of years. She still had the only amethyst eyes in the world, excepting Elizabeth Taylor’s.
“But how did you know I’d be here? Sit down, sit down.”
Polly sat in the wide leather chair opposite him and placed a brown paper parcel she’d been carrying between herself and the arm.
“Did you come here to see me or what?”
“To see my editor.”
Melrose looked around the room. “He’s here?”
“No-o. I mean I came to London to see him.”
“How did you know I’d be here?”
“It was really hard, like tracking down the Jackal. I called your house.” She blew smoke in his direction. “Ardry End,” she added, as if he might have forgotten.
“We haven’t seen each other in over two years. Last time was when I came to Littlebourne-”
“Looking for Jenny Kennington.”
More smoke. “I wasn’t looking for her for myself.” Was she jealous?
“Who, then, were you looking for her for?”
“J-” He caught himself before he said Jury and just in time to substitute “Jenny was wanted by the Shakespeare police.”
“The what?”
“Stratford-upon-Avon police.”
“Why did they want Jenny Kennington?”
“She was chief suspect in a murder-didn’t you read it in the paper?”
“Was she convicted?” She sat eagerly forward.
What shameful hope he saw in her amethyst eyes! “No. She didn’t do it.”
“Oh.” Hope sinking, she fell back in her chair.
“Polly!”
They both looked around to see Richard Jury. Polly’s expression changed immediately from the sardonic to the devotional. Oh, she could treat him, Melrose, all any-old-how, but when it came to Richard Jury, who she ranked with a total eclipse of the sun or a lunar meltdown (sun and moon coming in second and third)-well, that was quite another matter. Her eyes widened, her black curls shivered around as if they were being launched into space.
Melrose said, “I didn’t know you were coming. Did you leave a message here?”
“Nope. Didn’t come to see you, actually.” He turned and sketched a salute to Neame and Champs. “I came to have a chat with Colonel Neame, over there.”
Melrose frowned. “Really?”
Jury nodded and returned his attention to Polly, who gave every indication of not wanting it, looking here, there, everywhere except at Jury, who now sat down on the arm of her chair. “How’d you storm this bastion of male enterprise, Polly?”
Rubbing her thumb across her wrinkled forehead, she mumbled, “Oh, you know…”
“She’s in London for the day to see her editor.” Melrose helped her out. “She cleverly found out my whereabouts. Good detective, Polly.”
Polly once more sat back and rolled her eyes. “Oh, for heaven’s sake! Why do people think just because you write mysteries you’re Sam Spade?”
“No one would take you for Sam Spade, Polly,” said Jury. His proximity, there on the chair arm, would probably bring on a seizure at any minute. “Have you got a new book in the works?”