"Willow Cottage," said Julia, "It's just the other side of Littlebourne Green where the Blue Boy is." She pointed her riding crop beyond the hedgerow. "It does need doing up. But, frankly, I wouldn't get anyone round here to do the work." Considering the polished nails on the hand which held the crop, it was doubtful the daughter could recommend anyone in the way of work.
Melrose had definitely decided against Willow Cottage. "That isn't the place I'm interested in, actually." He turned his face toward the Horndean Road; along it he had discovered the sort of thing he might be interested in. The stone fence must have run both sides for half a mile. The house itself could not be seen from the road, but he judged it to be considerably larger, more formidable than Rookswood. The high iron gate had borne a discreet bronze plaque. There was a For Sale sign, equally discreet, near it.
"Stonington. That's the property I'd like to view." Melrose twitched a bit of old leaf from his coat, idly.
Even the horse shook its mane at his announcement. And somehow, the elder Bodenheim woman had managed to be within earshot. Now there came the general confusion of female voices:
"Stonington! . . . Oh, out of the question . . . Totally unsuitable for you . . . Can't think . . . It's so big! . . . a bachelor . . . You are a bachelor?"
"But I find it eminently suitable," said Melrose, breaking in. "Not quite so large as I'm used to. And Aunt Agatha will miss her rookery and the groves of ornamental trees. And the swans. Servants' quarters perhaps a bit small. Stables not quite adequate for my hunters. And . . . " He sighed unhappily. "-My sister, ah, Madeleine, needs her separate wing. She's a bit offish, you know." That could mean anything from being in a family way to simple insanity. "But my surveyor can handle the changes. Oh, well, chap can't have everything, can he?" Here he managed a sweet little smile and a deprecating shrug. "It's a jolly old place, isn't it?"
It was quite clear to him from their expressions that Stonington was a good deal jollier than Rookswood. They were-the two Bodenheim women-drawn as if against their wills to follow the direction of his gaze toward the Horndean Road, down which lay Stonington in the blue distance, the manor of manors. When she turned back, Julia was looking at Melrose afresh, reevaluating the situation. But whatever she was about to say was cut off by Melrose's calling happily, "And who's this coming now?"
Miles Bodenheim was stumping across the lawn. Perhaps he had seen them from an upstairs window and could no longer contain his curiosity, or perhaps he had got wind that the first family of Littlebourne might soon become the second and was on his way to scotch that plan.
"Sylvia! Julia!"
Instead of calling an answer, Sylvia said to Melrose, "No, I think you are not serious. You cannot be serious. Lady Kennington has not kept the place up. You know he is dead-Lord Kennington. I really don't think they were well-matched. She's most antisocial. True, there is nothing to hold her there. But I think it preferable, if Stonington is to be sold, it had better be sold to some sort of company or used as a Home for some sort of Unfortunate. You don't want to live at Stonington." She turned away and pinched a brown bud from its stalk in a mean way, like a child pinching a cat.
"Plant. Melrose Plant," he said to the latest addition to their number.
"Mr. Plant was thinking of buying Stonington, Miles, but we told him how unsuitable it would be."
"Stonington! Good God, man. You wouldn't want to live there. Big as a barn and cold. No, you shouldn't like it at all. And someone's died there recently, Lord Kennington, that was. You wouldn't want to move in where someone's just died."
"They've got to die somewhere," answered Melrose, wondering if Jury was at the pub, but wondering also how many more there were of this family who might drift toward him like dandelion heads across the lawn.
"I've told him not to buy," said Sylvia, closing the matter for all time. Her large hat bobbed as she moved along the hedge, her expression more set, her face more chartreuse.
"Mr. Plant hunts," said Julia. "You mentioned hunters. You were talking about stables."
Melrose dashed a benighted bud from the path. It landed on the elder Bodenheim's shoe. He had to be careful here; he knew nothing about hunting and found it a perfectly awful sport. "I hunt, yes. But only in Ireland. With the black and tans." Then he wondered if that were hounds or some defunct segment of the I.R.A.
"When do you plan on moving in?" asked Julia.
"A bit premature for that, isn't it? Well, this has been most pleasant, but if you'll excuse me?" Melrose touched his cap with his stick and went whistling down the public footpath, hoping he'd find someone in Littlebourne, besides Jury, more amiable than this lot.
II
Amiable was not precisely the word he would have used to describe the next person he passed, standing hard in the middle of the Green, carefully noting his progress across it. She wore a giant frown. It made Melrose slightly uncomfortable to think he had called up such a look of affliction on the face of one so small.
It so unnerved him he was forced to turn on the other side of the Green and look back. Like Lot's wife, he shouldn't have done it. She had also turned and was staring at him. The little girl was standing with her ankles turned in; her yellow hair fell in strands round her pointed face. The hacking jacket had seen better days; it was mud-bedewed and too small for her.
As he continued on his way across the High Street, he could sense, rather than see, she was following him. The Littlebourne villagers had precious little to do with their time if he could excite such interest.
The Bold Blue Boy was empty at near four in the afternoon. Although it was not yet opening time, the door to the saloon bar was open. He went in that way and found a long, low room with a huge, cold fireplace. To the right of this room was another, the entrance to which was effected by stooping under its low lintel. It was small and cheerful, full of polished copper, a smaller fireplace which was lit, and snug window seats cushioned in a faded, flowery chintz.
Melrose sat down at one of the tables to wait for the proprietor, who must know Superintendent Jury's whereabouts, and began to make himself at home. He always carried a book with him-Rimbaud, usually, but lately mystery stories had begun to supplant the French poets-and now he drew from his coat pocket his latest acquisition for emergency-waiting-periods, The Affair of the Third Feather. Before he began to read, however, he looked through the small casement window, pushing back the flowered curtain to gaze out over the Green. He saw no one except for one old pensioner making his arthritic way towards the post office stores.
As he settled down to read, he heard a popping noise that made his skin prickle. He turned. The little girl was standing in the doll-like doorway, entertaining herself by sucking in her cheeks, bunching up her mouth, and making small, popping noises.
"Mary's over to the shops," she said.
"Mary?"
"Mary O'Brien. She runs the Blue Boy."
"I see," said Melrose, returning to his book. "Well, I shall just have to wait, I daresay." He wondered why the little girl didn't leave.
Far from leaving, she went behind the bar. As the bar was tall and she was short, he could hear rather than see her rooting around. Soon her fair head popped up over the top. She must have got herself a stool to kneel on.
"Want something, then? There's Bass and bitter and Abbot's." She touched all of the enameled beer pulls.
Had he found some pocket of Dickensian England here in Littlebourne where children worked at bottle-blacking and chimney-sweeping and gin-milling? "I really don't think you should be doing that," he said, sounding unctuous, even to himself.
"I do it all the time."
He sighed and shook his head. "Very well, then. I'll have a Cockburn's, dry."
She turned to the optics behind her and measured off the sherry. "That'll be seventy-five p, please," she said, setting it before him.
"Seventy-five? Dear heavens. Inflation has hit Littlebourne."
"Want some crisps?"
"No, thank you." He put a pound on the table. She stood there, sucking in her cheeks again, making the popping sounds.
"Don't do that. You'll ruin the alignment of your jaws and throw off your bite. Your teeth will fall out, too," he added, for good measure.
"They did do, anyway." She pulled back her upper lip and displayed two gaps.
"I told you."
"Sure you don't want any crisps? Bovril's good."
"I don't like crisps. But if we must-" Melrose fished in his pocket for more change.
She climbed up on a bar stool and unhooked a packet of crisps from a circular rack. Tearing open the packet she frowningly ate them. "Want one?" She was prepared to be generous.
"No. Have you a police station in this village?"
"Across the Green." She was sitting on the window seat and hitched her thumb toward the window at her back, sliding down lower in the seat. "Are you part of the police?"
"No, of course not."
"There's one here from Scotland Yard."
Despite his reluctance to question anyone this small, Melrose asked, "Do you happen to know where he is?"
It was rather nerve-wracking, this way she had of beating her heels against the window seat. "Back in London. He had to leave. I guess he came here for the murder."