“I’ll tell her from now on to serve the rubbish you’re used to.” Melrose turned back to his book. He was reading about Red Rum, the horse Jury had mentioned, a three-time Derby winner of old who had the distinction, when he died, of being buried in the winner’s circle at Aintree. This was a fellow he’d have to remember. On the marquetry table beside his chair lay a small black leather notebook in which he set down this information.
Half of her light-brown muffin gone, Agatha said, “You’ve been writing in that thingamajig”-here she discounted the little notebook’s usefulness with a gesture, waving it to its thingamajiggish grave-“ever since I came. It’s quite rude of you, also, Melrose, but then you never were one to observe the social niceties.”
“I didn’t know that’s what we were doing.” He smiled down at Red Rum, making another note. He was really drawing Red Rum’s tail, since his doing anything in the notebook irritated her so much. The recording of things to which she was not privy bothered her. Melrose had an actual insight there. He blinked. Perhaps Agatha deserved some sympathy if she was one of those people who were afraid that life would come crashing down if they didn’t know everything that was going on around them. It was as if all sorts of rascally things might be taking place. (Just look at those muffins!)
“You’re not, I hope, thinking of buying one?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact. Indeed, I think I’ll have that old stable brushed up and put in a riding ring and perhaps a racing course-”
“Good God!” The muffin half fell from her hand. “Surely you can’t be seriously thinking of ruining these beautiful grounds!”
“They’re not all that beautiful, as it happens. Momaday does nothing.” Mr. Momaday had been taken on as a gardener, and he called himself a “groundskeeper.” He did precious little of either, spending most of his time tramping around Ardry End’s hundred acres, looking for something to shoot. Acres and acres of grass, weeds, wildflowers, deciduous trees, a few crumbling marble statues and a gone-to-ruin hermit’s hut. Melrose could not imagine his father countenancing that. What he said was, “I’m also thinking of hiring a hermit for that hermitage out there-yonder.” He loved this word.
“Are you talking about that old broken-down stone thing? Hire a hermit, indeed!”
“That’s what people did in the nineteenth century. It was fashionable to have a hermit on one’s grounds. I believe the Romantics went in for it.”
“You’re making it up, as usual.” She poked a piece of muffin into her mouth.
“I swear it’s true!” It was, too. He clamped a hand over his heart. “Hermits got to be collectors’ items.”
“I can tell you this: if a hermit comes, I go.”
Melrose studied the ceiling.
She went on. “As to this horse business, I can just see you trotting around the village as if you were Master of Foxhounds.”
Melrose tuned her out. Having squeezed whatever mileage he could out of horse and hermit, he went back to his book. It was one of several he had taken from the library. Ah! This was interesting. A Thoroughbred named Shergar had been kidnapped by the IRA and held for ransom. The ransom wasn’t paid; the horse was never seen again, at least not in the UK. This was a strange little story, showing how much England valued its horses, or how little, depending on the way you looked at it.
Delighted to have found this entrée into horses and lost girls, Melrose snapped the book shut, gulped down his cold tea and stood. “I’m off, Agatha. Stay as long as you like.”
“Off to where?”
“A number of places, including the library.”
“Just an excuse to go to the Jack and Hammer.”
Melrose raised his eyebrows in mock astonishment. “Since when did I need an excuse to go to the Jack and Hammer?”
His first stop really was the library, where he dropped off his books and went back to the shelves to look for fresh material. The horse books seemed geared largely to prepubescent girls, involving matters such as jumping and dressage. Nothing here on Thoroughbreds or racecourses.
On his way out, he stopped and said hello to Miss Twinny and asked her if she’d like to have a coffee with him, but she declined. “Oh, so nice of you, Mr. Plant, but I’ve got to get some books sorted before noon. Were these of any help?” She indicated the ones he’d left on the returns area of the front desk.
“Absolutely. I thought I might stop by the Wrenn’s Nest and see if Mr. Browne has anything I could use.” Melrose could have kicked himself when he saw the expression on Miss Twinny’s face. Theo Wrenn Browne had tried to shut down the library, which would have cost Miss Twinny her job. It was Marshall Trueblood who had saved both library and librarian by talking her into setting up an espresso bar.
Melrose changed the subject by nodding toward that little café now. “Still going great guns, isn’t it?”
She smiled. “It’s quite wonderful, Mr. Plant. Do you know there are people coming over from Sidbury? Why, there are never enough tables to go around. I just might have to expand!” Delighted, she laughed.
“Horses? You want something on horses?” Theo Wrenn Browne looked as if he’d been broadsided.
Melrose was standing in the Wrenn’s Nest Bookshop, stupefying its owner. Why did everyone find Melrose’s interest in this animal so problematic?
“Yes” was all he answered.
“May I ask why?”
“You just have.”
Silence while Theo Wrenn Browne tried to work this out.
Melrose started off. “Don’t discommode yourself, Mr. Browne. I’ll just wander through the stacks.”
Theo quickly came out from his station by the money drawer and followed on Melrose’s heels. “Mr. Plant, I’d be only too happy to help you.”
The trouble with Theo Wrenn Browne was his capacity for being a sycophant on the one hand and, on the other, for sneering superiority. He was disliked by all of Melrose’s circle-except Agatha, who found in Theo Wrenn Browne a compatriot, a fellow-traveler in malice. They had collaborated on the Chamber Pot Caper a few years before, in an attempt to close poor Miss Ada Crisp’s secondhand furniture shop next door to the Wrenn’s Nest. Following this had been the attempt to drive the library out of business. Marshall Trueblood’s solution of opening the latte‘ and espresso bar had turned the library absolutely trendy. It had become a hot spot. That was Theo Wrenn Browne, a snake at worst, a weasel at best, as today he was weaseling after Melrose.
To demonstrate his interest in the hunt, Melrose pulled down a volume, largely of photographs of self-congratulation, to judge from the rubicund faces of the hunt members. The dogs were quite handsome, as were the horses; it took only a few humans to ruin the overall effect. The one with hounds churning at his feet was the master of hounds. He and the whipper-in were all wearing pink coats; all the others were in black coats or tweeds. Melrose smiled because (again except for horses and hounds) they all looked remarkably silly. He handed this book to Browne and pulled out another titled Thoroughbred Racing: From Churchill Downs to Saratoga Springs. These places were in the United States, but wouldn’t a horse be a horse most any old where? And it would be good, too, letting the Ryder person know that he wasn’t a dunce when it came to American racing, either. The book fell open at a two-page spread of the wondrous Secretariat. Even Melrose had heard of Secretariat. No wonder people loved to watch it, but imagine what it must be like to do it! Looking at the photographs of Secretariat racing round the course, Melrose thought it must be, for the jockey, a Eureka! Like Manet putting the last touch of light to a field of flowers, or Keats upon seeing that Grecian urn or Lou Reed attacking his guitar.