Rainbow's End (47 page)

“Ah,” said Melrose, who hadn't given any thought to his ostensible reason for being here. “I, uh, was thinking of taking something for dinner to a family along the street here. The Crippses, do you know them?”

“Whoever don't?” Mr. Perkins laughed. “Them kids was just in 'ere raising a ruckus, trying t'swipe that there brown sauce.” He nodded towards a shelf lined with bottles of steak sauce, vinegar, mustard.

“I was wondering, well, perhaps you might tell me what they like. Lamb? A joint of something?” He hoped Perkins wouldn't head for the suckling pig.

“Streaky bacon!” he announced, clearly proud he was on such intimate terms with his customers. “Yeah, Ash Cripps likes 'is bit a streaky bacon, druther eat that than filet any day.”

Though Melrose himself thought that rather a lowly offering, he told Mr. Perkins All right, wrap up a couple of pounds.

Ash Cripps's being on even more intimate terms with the nick than he was with the butcher caused Mr. Perkins to comment: “ ‘Course, Ash
will
get mixed up with some real bad lots.”

Melrose wondered what lot, then, Ash himself was supposed to be, as he watched Mr. Perkins expertly wielding the knife; it was clear he was on good terms with the slab of bacon. “ 'Im and Eddie Debens's gone into the car business. Anyone'd get 'isself in with Eddie's gotta be, you know . . . ” Here, the butcher made circles round his temple with forefinger.

“Not very reliable, I take it? Where's their business, then?”

Mr. Perkins removed the bacon strips from the scale and plopped them down on white paper. “Oh, they ain't got no place of business. They just use whatever's out there.” Here he gestured toward the street.

Open-mouthed, Melrose took his bundle of bacon, finally saying, “Are you telling me that Ash Cripps and this so-called business partner—?”

“Eddie Debens, that's the one.”

“—that they simply
take
cars off the street and sell them?”

“
Sell
'm off the street they do. Don't ask me 'ow it works. All I know is, one a them Pakis was shoutin' blue murder when he come 'ome one night and found 'is Vauxhall gone.” Then he said, sotto voce, “See, that's the ones they do it to, mostly. The Pakis and them other colored. Neighborhood's really gone down since they started buyin' in.” Mr. Perkins sniffed. “That'll be four pounds ten pence, thank you.”

Melrose put a five-pound note in his hand, accepted his change, said “You're welcome” to Mr. Perkins's “Ta very much,” and left the
shop, wondering as he looked down the street at the peeling front doors, the bald front yards, the curbside refuse, the rusted-out tricycles and chains—how the neighborhood could
go
very far down.

As he drew near the Cripps house, he saw the kiddies were engaged in playing some sort of game that would no doubt end with one or more fatalities. If they played it right. Melrose paused on the pavement to observe three of them, the older boy and two of the younger girls, busily tying Piddlin' Pete to a starved tree. It was so wispy that it bent backwards from the weight of the body. Piddlin' Pete was (naturally) heaving with sobs, since no game could be called officially a Cripps game unless there was plenty of weeping and wailing. Screaming, preferably. Two other children, one boy and one girl who might have been Crippses—it was hard to say—were gathering up bits of debris. The taller girl shoved a bundle of laundry or a blanket at Pete, insisting that he take it. Laundry? Melrose grew anxious. Or was that the infant being pressed into service? The boy was moving toward the mingy tree and appeared to be scattering the sticks and paper at its base. Melrose decided this was in danger of being lit, and since no one inside the house was paying attention to the screams and yells, the task fell to him.

“I
say
!”

They all turned toward him, mouths open, eyelashless eyes wide. Seeing who it was, they gave up their game (even Piddlin' Pete stopped yelling) and rushed Melrose, who was busily searching his pockets for coins and swatting their dirty, sticky fingers away. He held on to the coins and grabbed the baby away from Piddlin' Pete who looked about to drop it in the excitement. Then he told them to release Petey before they saw a single coin.

Petey, ecstatic with freedom, yanked down his short trousers and celebrated his release in the only way he knew how.

Melrose passed out the coins, pounds and fifty-pence pieces, and they all raced toward the front door, shouting in their various voices: “Elroy's here! Mam, Elroy's back!” so that White Ellie could barely shout her greeting to Melrose through this melee. “Shut yer mouths! 'is name ain't Elroy, it's Melrose, ye stupid gits,” she yelled, giving the ones she could collar as they raced past her a sound smack on the bottom, after which she greeted Melrose like a prodigal son. “ 'E's a duke or earl, one a them, anyways, and you don't call 'im by 'is given name, anyways! 'E's Mr. Plant!”

Melrose started to hand over the infant in its swaddling clothes, but White Ellie told him to hang on a bit whilst she straightened the carriage. “Ta very much,” she said, as if it were an oversight like a pint of milk she'd forgotten to pull in from the front stoop. When she reached into the carriage to pull the blankets about, a ginger cat sprang out with a baby's bonnet swinging from its mangy neck. “Gloria! You been at this cat again?” she yelled.

Neither Gloria nor the others paid any attention to this query, but merely broke the circle in order to collapse in front of the telly, which Bea Slocum was watching flanked by a short, chunky man on one side and a younger man on the other, whom Melrose presumed to be Gabe Merchant. He was sitting—or lying—on his spine and had the disoriented look of a drug user. He would have to compete with the telly again. There must have been a commercial break, for Melrose caught a glimpse of a huge can of cola. The audience was no longer watching.

White Ellie yelled to Gloria again, who yelled back “Uh-huh” and the rest all giggled and formed another circle, skipping around to the beat of “Uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh.”

“You come give this 'ere carriage a wash!” called their mother, who moved more quickly than Melrose would have imagined possible and smacked one girl (presumably Gloria) on the bottom. “I'll uh-huh all your little arses, see if I don't!”

But, of course, they took it as one more Crippsian game, this running from Ellie's stinging hand, doubled over with giggles.

The chunky fellow, Ash Cripps, introduced the fellow sitting on one side of Bea as “Gabriel,” and the chunky man as “me business partner, Edgar Debens.”

Mr. Debens rose and came smartly over to pump Melrose's hand and to push a card toward him reading,
DEBENS USED AUTOS, “NOT AS OLD AS YOU THINK.
”

Freeing one arm from the baby bundle on which he had deposited the bacon, Melrose shook Eddie's hand and gave his gift of bacon to Ellie. She was ecstatic, announcing to one and all they'd have bacon for their tea.

This brought on another chorus of hallelujah as the kiddies bounced back up, formed their goblin ring, and skipped in a circle, chanting “Streakybacon, streakybacon, streakybacon!” Melrose found it almost laudable that the kiddies could work up piles of enthusiasm for whatever was available (be it Elroy, streaky bacon, or whatever);
they took their entertainment where they found it, and would applaud if their house were burning down around their ears. Ash Cripps thanked Melrose profusely, took the white package, and said he was going to the kitchen to start a fry-up.

White Ellie made no move to relieve Melrose of his burden, for she had been and still was engaged in some sort of argument with Eddie Debens. In her high, nasal voice, she began in the middle of whatever anecdote she was relating. “So I tells 'im, he wants 'is little bit a stray, 'e can bleedin' well pack up. Up t'pub 'e was, with 'er round the corner—”

Melrose had no idea what she was talking about. Nor did she make a further move to accommodate the infant that Melrose continued bouncing lightly in his arms. She continued her argument with Eddie. Argument, Melrose knew, was merely the form of discourse amongst the parent Crippses, just as bringing that lamp over there down on the head of Piddlin' Pete was the form of discourse amongst the Cripps kiddies.

Their father commanded the older boy to stop and they all fell down on the floor again, laughing.

“Idjits,” said White Ellie.

Finally, Melrose sat down with the baby in a broken springed chair, covered with an ancient quilt, to talk—if possible—to Beatrice and Gabe. When he mentioned Frances Hamilton (who he had to identify for Gabe as the lady in Tate), Gabe frowned and said, “Why you asking questions? You ain't police.”

“Brilliant,” said Bea, sending Melrose an empathetic little smile as she rested her head on Gabe's shoulder.

“You're quite right, I'm not. I'm an anomaly, of no particular creed or purpose.”

That was too steep for Gabe. He narrowed his eyes and asked, “You mean, a private detective, like?”

“Brilliant.” Bea said it again.

A smell of frying bacon wafted into the room and the kiddies all jumped up and filed out.

“A friend of the police superintendent you spoke to. Jury. You and Bea are the only people we know of who noticed Mrs. Hamilton. Did you recall anything at all about her?”

“Yeah, well I told him what I know. Which was nuffin'. Hey, Elephant, ain't you got nuffin' to drink except tea?” He yelled across the room to White Ellie, and started to get up.

Bea pulled him down. “Only answer the bloody question, will ya?”

“I
told
ya.” Grudgingly, he resat himself.

Melrose jigged the baby a few times and said, “You told Beatrice that you saw this Mrs. Hamilton in the Tate's portrait exhibit that day.”

“So she was lookin' at the bleedin'
pictures
, wasn't she? It's a bleedin'
picture
gallery.”

Behind Melrose, one or other of the kiddies was wreaking havoc on another of them, and Bea yelled at them: “Be quiet, you lot!”

The movement of the baby in Melrose's arms was no more substantial than that of a moth. The odor of frying bacon began to penetrate into the parlor here; Melrose asked Bea if there was a fish-and-chips place anywhere in the vicinity.

“Up on the Circular Road, yeah,” she said.

He shifted in the rocking chair, settling Robespierre securely in the crook of one arm and pulling out his money clip with the other hand. He called the kiddies over, made them line up smartly, and dispensed five-pound notes. They gave Melrose about the same astonished look they might have given Father Christmas. Even Robespierre's blue eyes widened.

Said Melrose, “All right, be sure you buy fish and chips for
everyone
, that's six of us as well as you six. Understand?”

Ecstatic over the anticipated double treat of streaky bacon
and
fish and chips, they all chorused “Uh-huh uh-huh,” which was going to be the only response elicited, since they'd discovered how funny it was.

“Get going, you lot!” said Gabe.

They got going. Led by Gloria, they threw their arms in the air like high divers on a springboard, but the footwork was reminiscent of a Hitler Youth rally. They filed in a line out the front door, chanting,

Uh-
huh

El-
roy

Uh-
huh

El-
roy

with Piddlin' Pete bringing up the rear. Just as his bald bottom disappeared through the front door, Ellie came in from the kitchen, grabbed his pants, and yelled “Yer strides, Petey, yer strides!”

Robespierre opened his eyes, fixed them on Melrose, and thrust his fist in his mouth.

To thwart sudden sickness (Melrose wondered); to hold back a scream? No, apparently the fist merely did duty as something to chew on. The eyes riveted on Melrose (if such a vacant blue stare can “rivet”), and then closed again.

“About this Mrs. Hamilton, Gabe. Why is it that you remember her?”

Gabe's brow furrowed. “Why? I dunno, do I. Anyway, what's all this in aid of? Why's everybody so interested in this lady?”

“Because there were two more deaths in similar circumstances.” Not literally true, but he had to get Gabe to fix his attention somehow. “These three people, all women, seemed to have known one another. All three of them might have been murdered.”

Gabe looked at him, surprised, and Robespierre opened his eyes to fix Melrose with another scarifying blue look.

Melrose rocked and asked again. “So is there anything at all, even something that didn't seem significant, you can remember?”

Gabe chewed his thumb, seemed to be honestly trying to recollect.

Beatrice raised her head and said to him, “You told me she looked chalky, white like you might get if you're gonna be sick.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess I did. She was just standin' there lookin' sick-white and pickin' at something.”

Melrose stared at him. “What do you mean?”

“Well, like a bit a stickin' plaster.” He held up one hand so that Melrose could inspect the bandage around his finger. Gauze and sticking plaster.

“On her hand?”

“Nah. On her arm, like.”

Melrose thought of his talk with Lady Cray. “Mrs. Hamilton had a heart condition. She treated it with nitroglycerin patches. But that she would have worn on her chest.”

“How would I know, I never seen one of them things. Wasn't lookin' down her bosom.” He leered.

Beatrice had sat up. “Well, my God, you think she got too much of the stuff and it made her really sick or something?”

“It's possible. Unlikely, though, I should think.”
Some Harley Street specialist
, Andrew's fiancée had said about Frances Hamilton's
doctor. Jury should have a talk with the physician; he wouldn't be likely to give information to Melrose. He sat there in the rocking chair, creaking back and forth, back and forth, noisily. But it didn't disturb his thoughts; he was lost in them. He was thinking about “J.M.W.,” recalling what Diane had told him about Turner's black dog. “The dog was just an afterthought.” Melrose frowned. An afterthought, an accident, an addition completely unplanned.