Martha Grimes - The Lamorna Wink

Diane shuddered.

“Listen,” said Melrose, annoyed. “Is this related to all of that stuff you were gibbering about a couple of nights ago when you woke me up at two A.M.?”

“Never mind,” said Diane, homing to the bar.

When they were seated round a table and had been served by the unenthusiastic and underemployed Pfinn, Melrose said, “You should have taken the train from Paddington station instead of doing all that driving.”

Diane actually stopped the first martini on its way to her blood-red lips. “Taken what? ” She had never been one to explore alternative modes of travel.

“You made good time if you left Long Pidd this morning.”

“We didn’t. We left on Tuesday.”

“Tuesday? But that’s three days ago!”

Trueblood smiled stingily at Diane. “Despite the need for haste, Diane insisted on stopping at Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons. You know, that restaurant where Raymond Blanc is the chef.”

Jury frowned. “But isn’t that place near Oxford? I was on a case once very near it.”

Trueblood pounded his drink on the table. “Here, here! A Scotland Yard man who’s a bon vivant. Yes, it is near Oxford.”

“Oxford’s north, Diane. Cornwall’s south,” said Melrose.

“Don’t I know it,” said Trueblood. “We stayed there two nights. Food’s a rave, I’ll give it that.”

This time it was Jury who pounded his pint on the table, uncharacteristically for him. “So, give. What’s this prodigious news you haven’t been telling us?”

Plugging a cigarette into her long ebony holder, Diane said, “Our Vivian’s going to marry the count.”

“Count Dracula,” offered Trueblood, in case Jury had forgotten.

Which he hadn’t. “Oh, for God’s sake. That’s news? She’s been going to marry him for-what? Eight years? Nine?” Complacent now, he drank his beer.

“No, old sweat, you don’t understand: Dracula’s here. The ship’s landed, the coffin’s ashore, and all over Northants there’s a shortage of crosses and garlic.”

“Oh, do bloody shut it,” said Diane, who occasionally reverted to her Manchester upbringing. She turned to Jury and Melrose. “He’s in Long Pidd. The wedding’s in two weeks’ time, and she’s in the process of sending out invitations. So we’ve come to collect you,” she said to Melrose. To Jury, she added, “You too, except you’re not so easily collected.” She sighed. “You work for a living.” She said this as if it had a strange and alien ring to it. “Naturally, I’ve been doing what I can, writing warnings into her horoscope. Things like ‘Beware any venture requiring new clothes.’ ”

“Oscar Wilde said that,” Melrose informed her.

“Oh, hell, I thought I did. Then ‘You are about to embark on the darkest journey of your life’ and ‘You will escalate fatuousness into a fatal fall.’ ”

“Sounds good,” said Melrose. “What does it mean?”

“Who cares as long as it sounds good? Anyway, none of this has had any effect, as far as I can tell.” Diane crooked a finger at Pfinn, who paid the table even less attention than Dick Scroggs would have done. Melrose got up and went to the bar, first en-joining Diane to say nothing more until he got back. He didn’t want to miss a word.

As if taking Melrose literally, there wasn’t a word spoken until Trueblood nodded toward the dimly lit doorway and asked, “Whose dogs?”

They were out in full force, all five of them lined up and solidly together, staring at the newcomers’ table. “Pfinn’s,” said Jury. “They line up like that.”

“Okay, go on,” said Melrose, depositing the round of drinks and salt-and-vinegar crisps in the middle of the table.

“As I was saying, our Vivian didn’t appear to be paying much attention to the horoscopes.”

“The only thing we could think of was sabotaging something or other,” said Trueblood, as he tore open one of the crisp packets.

“Sabotage?” Melrose forgot his fresh pint of Old Peculiar and leaned forward, all ears.

Trueblood was searching his pockets and found what he wanted in an inside coat pocket. He unfolded a small square of white cardboard and laid it in front of Jury and Plant. “Of course, all she has to do is hand in fresh copy. Still, I see it as delaying things for a while. One has to give the person ample time to respond.”

They both looked at it, Jury and Plant. It said:

The pleasure of your company

is requested at

the marriage of Miss Vivian Rivington

and Count Dracula on

the fifteenth of October at two o’clock

at the church of St. Rules

Melrose sniggered. “Did she get them?”

“Of course. The shop delivered.”

Melrose sniggered again.

Jury looked from one to the other of them. “Of course, she would have absolutely no idea who did this, you simpletons.”

Trueblood raised his Campari and lime. “Oh, I expect she’ll sort that out. I’ve been avoiding her lately.”

“I don’t wonder,” said Jury.

Diane said, languidly, “As Marshall says, it only delays things for a while, for her to get fresh invitations printed up. I’ve been wracking my brain-”

Which didn’t put up much of a fight, thought Melrose.

“-for some solution, but I can’t come up with anything short of killing him. That is of course a possibility for us, but it would be much better were Vivian to call a halt to this thing of her own accord, which I’m sure she wants to do anyway.”

“What makes you so sure?” asked Melrose.

“ Mel -rose, try to engage your mind, will you? Because she’s having the wedding here, of course, I mean in Long Pidd instead of Venice. She’s counting on us stopping it.”

Jury said, “Come on, Diane, Vivian’s not that spineless.”

“Yes, she is,” said Trueblood, though not unkindly. “Spineless is too harsh a word, perhaps, but by now the poor girl’s totally intimidated by the fact she’s let this engagement go on for donkey’s years.”

“What’s he like, then: Dracula?” Melrose asked. But when Trueblood opened his mouth to speak, Melrose said, “I mean, really. I saw him once, so don’t try telling me he looks like a toad.” To Jury, he said, “You remember him, don’t you? We were in Stratford-upon-Avon, in the Dirty Duck.”

“Vaguely,” Jury said.

“In addition to being fairly tall, fairly dark, and fairly handsome, he’s politeness on a platter and usually seems to be lost in contemplation of a world beyond the Jack and Hammer.”

“Is there one?” asked Diane, tapping ash from her cigarette. “And am I in it?” She looked vaguely, dreamily around the room.

Trueblood went on. “I think he’s intelligent, but since he doesn’t talk much, it’s hard to say. It’s all so-irregular.”

“What does that mean?” asked Jury.

“Vivian shouldn’t marry a foreigner. She shouldn’t even marry a person we don’t know. He won’t fit, you know, our little routines.”

Said Diane, “He won’t be around for our little routines, Marshall. I expect they’ll want to live in Venice instead of Long Pidd.”

“Good lord!” said Jury. “Prefer Venice to Long Piddleton? What philistines!”

Trueblood took him seriously. “It’s the truth, though. We don’t like it at all.”

“Tell me, who’s we ?”

“Who? Why the Long Piddletonians. Ada Crisp is dead against it, as is Miss Twinney. Jurvis the Butcher is all out of sorts. Dick Scroggs doesn’t think this foreigner has any business just marching in here and carrying off Vivian. Trevor Sly’s beside himself-”

“No,” said Jury. “Richard Jury’s beside himself listening to this twaddle. Trevor Sly? Since when did any of you ever give a bloody damn what he thinks? And how did you collect these opinions anyway? Do a door-to-door canvass?”