“They’re not Hon-John’s children, Nick,” Melissa said.
“Mands and Pip need ponies, and I really can’t use Hon-John’s private account for your children’s necessities.”
“Why didn’t you just ask me for some cash?”
“You had some?” The interest was immediate.
“I could have pawned the gong.” I protected my flank. I had a small amount of cash, but only enough to provision a repaired Sycorax and I did not want Melissa to fritter it away on a week’s supply of lip-gloss.
“Do you have the medal?” she asked eagerly.
“As a matter of fact I do.”
“May I see it, Nick. Please?”
I gave it to her. She turned the medal in her hands, then held it against her left breast as if judging its suitability as a brooch. “Is it worth a lot?” she asked.
“Only in scarcity value.” I held out my hand.
She wouldn’t give it back. “Pip should have it, Nick.”
“When I’m dead, he can.”
“If you’re going to lead a ragamuffin life, then perhaps it will be safer here?”
“May I have it, please?”
She closed her hand over it. “Think about it, Nick. In all fairness it ought to go to your son, shouldn’t it? I mean, you can always come back here and see it, but it will be much safer if I keep it for you.” I limped to a side table and lifted a porcelain statuette of a shep-herd girl surrounded by three soppy-looking lambs. For all I knew the ornament might have been bought in a reject shop, but it looked valuable. This tactic had worked in Richmond this morning, and a tactic that works should never be abandoned. I hefted the porcelain, aiming its dainty delicacy at one of the big window panes.
“Nick!” Melissa contritely held the medal out to me and I tenderly restored the statuette to its side table. “I was only asking,” she said in a hurt tone.
“And all I’m asking, Melissa dear”—I put the medal back into my pocket—“is why you rented Lime Wharf to Bannister.”
“You were crippled, weren’t you? That frightfully pudgy doctor said you’d never walk again, so it seemed hardly likely that you’d ever need the boat, let alone the smelly wharf. And your boat was nothing but scrap, Nick! It was a wreck! No one was looking after it.”
“Jimmy Nicholls was. Except he was ill.”
“He certainly wasn’t doing a very good job,” Melissa said tartly.
“And frankly, Nick, I thought you could do with the extra money.
For the children, of course, and I really think, Nick, that you should thank me. I was only doing what I thought right, and it took quite a lot of my time and a great deal of effort to arrange it.” The nerve of it was awe-inspiring. I reflected that if the boat’s registration papers had not been safe in my lawyer’s office Melissa would have sold Sycorax off to get herself a new hat for Royal Ascot.
“How much rent is loverboy paying you for the wharf?”
“Don’t be crude, Nicholas.”
I met her gaze and wondered how many times she’d been unfaithful to me during our marriage. “How much?” I asked again.
The door opened, saving Melissa the need to answer, and the Honourable John came into the room. He looks every inch as expensive as his wife. The Honourable John is tall, thin, very pin-striped, with sleek black hair that lies close to a narrow and handsome head.
He checked as he saw me. “Ah. Didn’t know you were here, Nick.
I hear you’re going to be a telly personality?”
“They want me to encourage the nation to its duty.”
“Splendid, splendid.” He hovered. “And are you recovering well?”
“Fine most of the time,” I said cheerfully, “but every now and then a fuse blows and I go berserk. I killed an investment broker last week. The doctors think the sight of a pin-striped suit makes me unstable.”
“Jolly good, jolly good.” The Honourable John was uncomfortable with me, and I don’t much blame him. It’s probably fitting that a man should be nervous around the ex-husband he cuckolded. “I just came in,” he explained to Melissa, “for the Common Market report on broccoli.”
“In the escritoire, darling, with your other thrillers. Nick was being tiresome about his wharf.”
“And quite right, too. I said you didn’t have any right to rent it out.” The Honourable John shot up in my estimation.
Melissa glared at her husband. “It was for Mands and Pip,” she said.
“Like auctioning my golf-clubs! I don’t suppose there’s a child born who’s worth a good iron, what?” He dug about in the papers on the desk and found whatever he wanted. “I’m off to see someone.
Will I see you for dinner, darling?”
“No,” I said. They ignored me, kissed, and the Honourable John left.
“Don’t take any notice of him,” Melissa said. “He’s really very fond of Mands and Pip.”
“Does he know about you and Anthony Bannister?” I asked.
She twisted like a disturbed cat. “Do not be more tiresome than you absolutely need to be, Nicholas.”
I stared into her face. A wedge-shaped face, narrowing from the broad clear brow to the delicate chin. It was, as my father had liked to say, a face where everything was wrong. Her nose was too long, her eyes too wide apart, her mouth was too small, yet altogether, with her pale, pale hair, it was a face that made men turn on the pavements as she went by. It was impossible, watching her now, to imagine that I had once been married to this pale and silky beauty.
“Who,” I said, returning to the earlier question that Melissa had avoided answering, “is threatening Anthony Bannister?” My previous question had been about Melissa’s relations with Bannister and she smelt blackmail. “My marriage is very happy, Nick. Hon-John and I are both grown up.” Melissa said it in a warning tone of voice.
“I hope it stays very happy,” I said, thus becoming a blackmailer, and at the same time curious to hear what would be churned up from Melissa’s remarkable memory.
“It’s only a story.” Melissa opened an onyx box, took out a cigarette and waited for me to hasten forward with a lighter.
I did not move so Melissa lit her own cigarette. “I mean, there are bound to be stories, Nick. There always are. About glamorous men like Tony.” She paused to blow out a stream of smoke. Her overmantel was thick with embossed invitation cards.
There was one, I saw, from my old mess. Good old loyalty. “You mustn’t repeat this, Nick,” she said dutifully.
“Of course not.”
“It’s all to do with Nadeznha, his late lamented. Awful name, isn’t it? Sounds like one of those Russian ballet dancers who defect to the West as soon as they discover pantyhose and underarm deodorants.
Anyway, you know she died last year?”
“I know.”
“People were full of sympathy for Tony, of course, but there is just the teensiest whim of suspicion that he might have wanted her out of the way.” Melissa watched me very carefully. “It’s the perfect murder, isn’t it? I mean, who’s to know?”
“Overboard,” I said.
“Exactly. One splash and you don’t even have to buy a coffin, do you? Perhaps that’s why I never went sailing with you?” She smiled to show she had not meant it. “Anyway, Nadeznha died at night and there was only one other person on deck.”
“The Boer?”
“Score a bull’s eye.”
“But why would Bannister want her dead?”
Melissa rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “Because she was going to walk out on him, of course! That’s what everyone thinks, anyway.
And she’d have skinned him. Think of the alimony!” Melissa’s voice took on an unaccustomed enthusiasm. “And I’m sure Tony’s not exactly playing the taxman with a straight bat. He’s got endless offshore companies and shady little bank accounts. Nadeznha would have revealed all, wouldn’t she?”