Rainbow's End (2 page)

Poor girl. To have her life snuffed out just by taking a wrong step. At least, that's what he supposed had happened, in spite of what this sorry lot thought. It just went to show. You never know when your number's up. Wake up in the morning, right as rain, sun shining, and gone by nightfall.

And here again came the sunrise. He looked down at the city which seemed to smoke in the distance, mist rising from the corrugated rows of pitched rooftops, the stacked chimney pots. The sun wrapped a veil of light round the spire of Salisbury Cathedral, which looked, for a few moments, dipped in silver.

Pretty, that, thought Trev, only half hearing DCI Rush's words. “Sorry. What?”

“She was American.”

Trevor thought the copper said it in a brooding sort of way. “Well, seeing an American at Old Sarum isn't exactly like seeing a brontosaurus. We get a lot of them.”

Rush thought for a moment and then said, “We won't detain you any longer.”

Before Trevor could reply, the policeman had turned away to talk to the medical examiner, who Trev now realized was female. A woman, good Lord.

The sun shone brighter now, furring the outlines of the policemen standing near the edge of the garderobe. Trev thought: like they was taking turns taking a piss. He drew up the collar of his anorak and started down the incline. Well, there'd be no tickets sold today. He had to admit he was almost sad to go, away from the drama, back to his ancient mini, his terraced cottage (two up and two down, the kids were all gone) in Endless Street, and the weak bulb that Mavis kept in his reading lamp what with all of her penny-saved frugalities.

He stopped to light his third cigarette, allowing himself one or two extra today; after all, it'd been a hell of a morning. As he flicked the match away and continued walking he ran through his story to Mavis. And wouldn't she get a kick out of learning the medical examiner was a lady? A lady going down into that pit and messing about with a dead body.

What women got up to these days.

“Janet Leigh never took another shower.”

Diane Demomey, purveyor of arcane bits of information, adjusted her cigarette in her mouth as a signal for someone to light it. As she leaned forward, her hair, black as a buzzard, formed a razor-sharp wing across her cheekbone. Diane was good-looking, in a rapacious, raptorlike way. She kept her fashion-model body all planes and angles; her lipstick was blood red; her nails sharp as tiny scythes.

Both Melrose Plant and Marshall Trueblood looked up from the lists of names they were working on, glanced at each other, then, in concert, at Diane.

Melrose Plant had sworn to himself he would no longer encourage Diane to explain herself, but he knew he couldn't have resisted, had Trueblood not asked her himself.

“Janet Leigh?” Marshall Trueblood raised an eyebrow as well designed as the rest of him. He had sparked up his Armani ensemble with a turquoise shirt, a pale-green and turquoise striped tie. Right down to his shocking-pink Sobranie cigarette, he was a carnival of color.

She sighed. Had they not been listening? “Janet Leigh never took another
shower.
Only baths. Isn't
anyone
going to give me a light?”

Trueblood obliged. “The actress Janet Leigh?”

Diane looked at him as if he were simple. “My God. If you'd been knifed to death in a shower, even a film shower, wouldn't you prefer baths, too?”

Said Melrose, “I do anyway. My rubber duck won't float in the shower.”

“You mean
Psycho
? That Hitchcock film,
Psycho
? Is that what you're talking about?” Trueblood asked.

“What else?” She looked around the Jack and Hammer for Dick Scroggs and her vodka with the unpronounceable name. He was nowhere to be seen. “Is he out there messing paint around again?”

The Jack and Hammer, ordinarily a traditional cream-washed fake-Tudor sort of building, had been tarted up recently by Dick Scroggs's slapping ultramarine paint on its façade to match the trousers of the mechanical “Jack” perched high up on a bracketed beam. Fortunately, Dick's competitive spirit (or his hatred of work) did not extend to the pub's interior, which had been knocking along for ages now, round deal tables, rickety chairs, a huge fireplace in its saloon bar; in the public bar, narrow benches against the walls and a dartboard. Tourists would have loved it had they ever got to see it. Fortunately for some, Long Piddleton was off the beaten tourist path. As was Northampton. As was the whole of Northamptonshire, it being rather low on the totem of “counties of choice.” Long Piddletonians, the rich or retired contingent, were much in favor of this apparent falling off the map; those in trade, however, wouldn't have minded a coach party or two. God knows Dick Scroggs would be happy to turn his back garden into a car park if need be.

“He's out there,” said Vivian Rivington, who was sitting next to Melrose on the bay window embrasure, staring through leaded glass panes as if sighs and longing looks would bring on spring. But Melrose knew the real cause of those sighs: she was about to pack up and go to Venice again. My Lord, how long had she been engaged to Count Dracula? Six years? Seven?

Trueblood added “Janet” to his list and fired up another match to light a fresh cigarette, this one deep blue. His fingers, thought Melrose, should surely be rainbow-stained after years of those Sobranie cigarettes. He looked over at Trueblood's notes. “ ‘Janet'?” he read. “You're kidding. She wouldn't be named Janet.”

“Mind your own list, dammit.” Trueblood quickly covered the page he'd been writing on.

“She wouldn't be named Janet,” Melrose insisted. He pursed his lips. “Wonder how old they are?”

Trueblood scribbled down something else and said, “Same as us.” He looked round the table. “Forties.”

“I
beg
your pardon!” Diane wasn't having
that.
“All of
you
might be,” disposing of her aged company with a flick of her hand. “I'm still in my thirties,
early
ish. Of course, Melrose could be anything. He
never changes. He was probably born with all of that tarnished gold hair and those spectacles. Well, it's about time! Yoo-hoo, Dick!”

Dick Scroggs, stout and fiftyish, finally entered with his paintcan and Diane drew the shape of a martini glass in the air. Then she said, “Are you two still working on your lists? I finished mine ages ago.” She tapped an envelope lying on the table with a red-painted fingernail. “Deadline's tomorrow morning; you said so yourselves.”

“That's right. But I keep changing my mind about the name of the
wife
.” Marshall Trueblood went back to chewing on his pencil and staring at the air. He was satisfied with the names he'd chosen for the children of the Chelseaites, but not the names he'd chosen for the mother.

Diane continued, “I
hope
this family moving here doesn't mean London has discovered Long Piddleton, for God's sake. We've been free of that sort of person thus far.”

Considering that Diane Demorney had moved to Long Piddleton direct from London with no stopover in a That Sort of Person decompression chamber, it was hard to distinguish her from a London “emigrée,” in other words, That Sort of Person. Melrose reminded her of this.

“
Don't
be ridiculous. I was never from Chelsea or Sloane Square or even South Ken. I was way, way down the King's Road, practically in Parson's Green, which is hardly fashionable”—Diane had lately started making a fashion out of being “un-”—“and, anyway, I haven't the energy to be a Week-End Man—or Woman. I thought they were supposed to move into Watermeadows months ago. Where are they?”

“They're probably out Walesing,” offered Trueblood.

Melrose wrote a name on his tablet. “They're going to be disappointed. You can't Wales around here.”

Vivian Rivington gave up on spring and turned from the casement window. “Don't be silly; you can't Wales
anywhere
anymore.” Her naturally rosy complexion was quite pale, and the awful artichoke-colored jumper she was wearing did nothing to heighten either skin or auburn hair.

“The Week-End Man can. ‘Walesing' is a state of mind, independent of royal indiscretions, divorces, or geography,” Trueblood explained.

Diane Demorney yawned and ran a tiny garlic clove around the edge of her martini glass. Finally, Dick Scroggs had reappeared and
was mixing up a fresh Demorney martini. She had to furnish her own garlic cloves—essential, she claimed, for the perfect martini. She had also furnished the perfect glass. The vodka itself was a Demorney find: it had buffalo grass in it, long threadlike things waving about in the bottle that looked as if they'd been harvested from the ocean floor. Trueblood had named it the Captain Nemo martini.

The Week-End Man that Trueblood was describing was actually a Week-End Family, who had presumably taken a lease on the country estate between Long Piddleton and Northampton called Watermeadows. The trouble was, they could get no information out of the estate agent, Mr. Jenks. Mr. Jenks, a thinnish man somewhere in his sixties, had many vices: greed, avarice, a manipulative character masked by a crust of blandness, like a beef Wellington made from gristle, but he had made himself unpopular mainly because he'd upset the balance of shops along the High Street by annexing the building next to Trueblood. He did have one virtue, if refusing to give out information regarding his clients could be called virtuous. Actually, it could well be merely another facet of his vices: acquisitiveness and secretiveness.

Mr. Jenks had set himself up in a shop sporting a double-sided sign, one side advertising his estate agency, the other his travel agency. He was likewise the double-hatted representative of both firms. This Janus-faced shop was a narrow Georgian building with a bowfront window, companion to Trueblood's Antiques. Marshall Trueblood was doubly irritated by this takeover of premises he had himself been thinking of purchasing in order to expand his own business. But he took it with the same soigné grace with which he took most things, and even listened with a fair amount of patience when Mr. Jenks talked about market upheavals, sliding interest rates, mortgage buyouts. Mr. Jenks was always hard on the trail of anyone who couldn't meet his mortgage payments.

This was not, however, the reason the vast estate of Watermeadows had been let—not sold, but let—to the family Marshall Trueblood and Melrose Plant were making up lists about.

“The children will have names like Alistair and Arabella. You said they had two children, didn't you, Viv-viv?” said Trueblood, chewing his pencil.

“No.” Her chin in her fisted hands, she had turned once again to the window. A crust of snow ruffled the sill, refusing to melt on this
sunny February day. Melrose noted that her awful artichoke twin set was set off by a moldy green skirt. Beautiful as she was, she seemed determined to deglamorize herself.

Trueblood continued. “He'll be wearing a rubber coat with a hood and elbow patches; she'll have razor-cut blond hair and a tweed jacket. Two chocolate Labs, of course. They'll call out ‘Cheer-o' and describe everything as ‘simply
love
ly.' And a Land Rover. Let's not forget the Land Rover. Or a Range, makes no difference. Labs in back, with, perhaps, a marmalade cat. The cat is Arabella's. She insisted on bringing it though Mummy would have preferred to leave it home with Cook. It sheds so. Its name is—”

Vivian turned from the window. “For heaven's sakes, do stop going on.” The request was not rancorous, merely slightly bored. They
had
been going on about these new people for weeks.

Vivian was about to make one more trip to Venice. How many had she made (Melrose wondered) since her engagement to that Italian count? How many times had the wedding been put off, delayed, usually through some subterfuge Plant and Trueblood had cooked up? This last time the respite had been supplied by the death of one of the Giopinno aunts. But that was over, the family having survived the loss remarkably well. Marrying the Count Franco Giopinno, Melrose had told her at tea at Ardry End, seemed to be a sort of hobby for her, something she could take up, like tennis or the
Times
crossword, when she hadn't anything better to do. Vivian had thrown a watercress sandwich at him.

“Well, perhaps I'm wrong about the cat.” Trueblood twisted round to call to Dick for another pint of that execrable ale Dick was making to keep up with Trevor Sly, proprietor of the Blue Parrot. “Frankly, I'm just as glad they'll only come at the weekend,” said Diane Demorney. “At least that way we don't have to put up with them all year round.”

“Honestly,” said Vivian, “you both act as if you own Long Pidd. As if you own all of Northants.”

“I do,” said Melrose. He added, sotto voce, “Hell's bells, here's Agatha.”

Lady Agatha Ardry entered, her big black cape swirling about her, talking as she did so: “Well, I can certainly tell you one thing about them,” she announced, “them” having been such a hot topic during the past days that it was unnecessary to identify “them.”

Marshall Trueblood sat up. “Ah! You've seen them?” He was mildly annoyed. It would be extremely irritating if Agatha were to be the first to see the new tenants of Watermeadows. “How many are they? What do they look like? Their dogs? Cats? Cars?”

Agatha took a vast amount of time settling herself, straightening the collar of a brownish-yellow suit that made her stout, compact form look just like a bale of hay. Her dull gray hair must have been freshly done; curls were shaped and plastered, newly minted, as if the beautician had scrubbed them with silver polish. She called for Dick Scroggs to wait upon her, before saying sententiously, “They're entitled to their privacy, Mr. Trueblood. Some of us don't spend half the day in beer and gossip.”