Martha Grimes - The Lamorna Wink

“If the woman was wearing Ferre or perhaps Sonia Rykiel, the garment could almost certainly be traced. You know, through the place where she bought it; or, if someone else bought it, then through that person.”

Melrose hated it when Diane made a sensible suggestion.

“I wouldn’t mind knowing someone who’d buy me Ferre,” she said, and returned to the matter of Chris Wells. “Now, she sounds Cornwall through and through; what’s in her closet is probably cardigans and plaid things and Barbour knockoffs from Marks and Sparks. Anyway, the question of her outfit doesn’t really apply, does it? Are you sure she didn’t just go off on her own?”

“No,” said Melrose. “I’m fairly sure she didn’t. From what I’ve heard about her, she isn’t a capricious person.”

“Then you think she was abducted? Or lured away somehow?”

Melrose nodded.

Diane sipped her martini, tapped her cigarette into the ashtray, and said, “I expect one has to make some sort of arrangement.”

Surrey,” said Macalvie. He had called Ardry End to tell him that they’d ID’d the dead woman. She was Sada Colthorp, former wife of Rodney Colthorp, Lord Mead. He lived in Surrey. “For God’s sakes, that’s only a hop, skip, and jump from Northants.”

“I don’t know how you hopped, skipped, and jumped as a lad-if you ever were; you were probably just a little policeman-but my hopping and skipping did not cover a hundred miles. That’s how far Surrey is from here.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s hardly fifty.”

Melrose knew he’d do whatever Macalvie asked him to, but it was more fun arguing about it first. Besides, he felt he deserved to let Macalvie know how much he was being put out. “Anyway, you said you’d already talked to Colthorp when he came to identify the body. So what good would it do for me to talk to him?” He knew the answer to that, too. For the same reason Jury was always asking him to step into the role of eighth earl.

“Because aristocrats have that in common-the aristocracy.”

“I stopped being one years ago. I’ve forgotten how.”

“Oh, come on. It’s like riding a bike. You never forget.”

Melrose sighed. “I would if people let me.”

“Colthorp collects cars. Vintage autos. That’s why you want to see him.”

“I do?”

“Sure. That old Bentley of yours. Isn’t that an antique by now?”

“It may not be, but I am. Let me get this straight: it’s because I too have an interest in vintage automobiles that I want to see this Lord Mead-what’s his name?”

“Rodney. Rodney Colthorp.”

“Right. It’s really his cars I’m interested in, and he’d be damned interested in my Bentley. Do you realize I know absolutely nothing about cars, including mine?” Knowing Macalvie couldn’t care less, Melrose sighed and got out his pen. “So, which part of Surrey?”

As Macalvie told him, Melrose had the happy thought that if Surrey was not close to Northants, it was certainly close to London and, therefore, to Bethnal Green. He smiled.

Lord Ardry.” Rodney Colthorp, Lord Mead, put out his hand and looked at Melrose with an enthusiasm that was flattering. He had answered the door himself, which testified to his being long on humility or short of cash. Staff did not include a full-time door opener, or, if it did, Rodney Colthorp had given the man a good deal of elbow room. Ruthven would be scandalized.

Lord Mead couldn’t resist looking past Melrose at the latter’s Bentley, one of the prewar models, or at least Melrose believed it was. It had been in the family for ages. He wondered if this man was astute enough to tell that Melrose-and his Bentley-were flying false colors. But all Rodney Colthorp said was, “What a beautiful automobile,” as he pulled at his gray mustache, a nervous, contemplative gesture. Then, as if he had forgotten Melrose was there, said, “Oh, sorry to keep you standing on my stoop. Come in, come in.”

Stoop was not the word Melrose would have chosen to describe the area at the top of the two dozen marble steps he had ascended to reach the door. The house was on a much grander scale than was Ardry End, which it resembled.

Perhaps more glorious than the house was the expansive garden and lawn at the back, dotted here and there with sculptures, a gazebo, and a folly or two. It stretched as far as the eye could see. It was both windswept and sheltered by internal hedges, with broad brick paths and gate piers. There were bold tall grasses backed by young pines, box hedges, and long vistas that drew the eye to the steeple of a church somewhere. One path between low walls made its convoluted way, vanishing somewhere in the distance.

“Is that path there for walkers?”

“No. It’s my butterfly corridor. I’m trying to keep species from disappearing completely and help them migrate. The Adonis blue is one. It’s simply beautiful.”

Rodney Colthorp said this while they were comfortably seated in one of the several drawing rooms, this one furnished more informally than the larger room they’d passed whose furnishings were dark, heavy, and priceless.

Melrose drank Lord Mead’s hundred-year-old Scotch and felt expansive.

Colthorp leaned his head back on his chair and sent both words and pipe smoke toward the ceiling. In a sort of meditation on the merits of aristocracy, he said, “Of course, you know this as well as I… but there are certain rituals, silly as they might seem to others, which should be retained or the whole damned boiling will go down. I know a lot of it seems like claptrap: the hunt, for instance. We do get a lot of these hunt saboteurs knocking about, being damned rude. I don’t ride myself, but I can understand the appeal of it. What I fail to understand is why the great hue and cry of these animal liberationists doesn’t concentrate on the real horrors of experimentation and slaughterhouses. I can only think the-” The cell phone, whose resting place must have slipped Colthorp’s mind, was finally rescued from a spot between cushion and arm of the overstuffed chair. He excused himself and pulled up the wobbly antenna. The call was not to his liking, apparently, for he began it with a huge sigh, followed by a series of grunts, growing more and more impatient over the thirty seconds or so of the caller’s comments. “No. No, Dennis, I’ve told you time and again I do not want to speculate, certainly not in a diamond mine in South Africa.” He shook his head, as if the caller could see how much he didn’t want shares in a diamond mine, and shoved down the antenna, his expression registering extreme impatience.

Melrose smiled. “Your investment banker?” He wondered what such people did, actually.

“No. My son. He’s the youngest, he’s twenty-two. He’s always on to me about the market. Day trading, futures, selling short, selling long-I haven’t the least idea what the boy’s talking about. He himself does quite well by it, has done for years. But that doesn’t mean I’d be as lucky. Now. Where did you say you were from?”

“My home’s in a village near Northampton, but at the moment I’m renting a house in Cornwall. Place called Bletchley.” Melrose waited while the name hit home. It took five seconds. Colthorp stopped in the act of tamping down his pipe.

“But that’s where Sada-you know about the woman who was murdered near Lamorna Cove?”

“Yes, yes indeed. Quite a stir that’s causing.”

“Police from Devon and Cornwall have been around here, and I’ve had to fly to Penzance to identify the body.”

Melrose feigned surprise. “Police here? Why? Did you know her?”