Richard Jury: The Stargazey Part 5

"It's fine for those of us who have money-"

(Agatha not being among the "us.") "-to speak of a sum such as that as not much."

Melrose ignored her and drew a scalloped line all around to represent the pie. "You exaggerate my personal worth. I've told Martha to employ a number of cuts in our menus. We're having fish pie for Sunday dinner."

She was now drawing the local paper out of her voluminous bag, having done with the bigger issues of life as reported in the national papers. Melrose noted that she was awash in papers this morning; usually she depended upon her own stop-press reporting. As if it had fleas, she shook out the Sidbury Star. "There's this horoscope rant that Diane Demorney's on."

Melrose rather liked the notion of a horoscope rant. Of course, Diane Demorney ranting about anything (even including the proportion of vermouth to vodka in her martini) was difficult to envision. She was much too languid. "Well, her horoscopes have livened the paper up considerably." If one could breathe life into mummy remains. "To call it ranting is overdoing it, I think."

Agatha slapped the paper a few times. "Listen to this; it's Pisces: "As somebody once said, 'To every man there is a season,' and you've had yours. Get up, get out, get it together. Instead of constantly effing and blinding about the way the world treats you, consider the way you treat the world, to paraphrase John F. Kennedy. As the Moon transits Neptune there could be trouble, so don't go making it for yourself. Stop whining!"

"You don't think that's good advice? I'd take it to heart, if that were my sign." Melrose said this absently, as he sat back and compared his sketching of fishes with the fishes on Jury's postcard. Pretty good. Perhaps he did have a calling after all. Not art, but making fish pies. He held his drawing out for her to feast her eyes on, as he was pretty certain she wouldn't want to feast her mouth on it.

Agatha stopped in the process of her own rant to put a dollop of thick cream on her scone. "What were you saying about Sunday dinner? What fish pie? It sounds absolutely dreadful."

"Starry-gazey pie. I saw Martha just this morning, cleaning the little fish. It's one of her specialties." He decided to poke another fish head through the crust. He wished he had some coloring pencils.

In a tone of abject disgust, she said, "Melrose-"

(Don't be ridiculous.) "-don't be ridiculous."

(Right again.)

8.

In Shoe Lane, to which Melrose had repaired after Agatha polished off the plates, the scented air told him he was nearing the cottage of Miss Alice Broadstairs. As usual, she was gardening, while her oafish gray cat, Desperado, loafed on top of one of the stone pillars rather ostentatiously set on both sides of her short paved walk. Melrose had several times tried to excite this cat, but he couldn't. Neither could Mindy nor Miss Crisp's Jack Russell (of chamber-pot fame). Miss Broadstairs, however, was eminently excitable, even when no one was trying. Excitement seemed to be bred into her marrow, for she was a fluttery, breathy woman, thin and dry as the leaves she trod underfoot. She and Lavinia Vine were always taking home the blue and gold ribbons from the annual Sidbury flower show.

"One can't start too early, Mr. Plant!" she called, referring to this spring extravaganza, and came to talk to him over her neatly trimmed hedge.

As far as Melrose was concerned, one needn't start at all. But he smiled his encouragement in a most friendly manner. Her voice was low and her look secretive: lips crimped together, hydrangea-colored eyes darting left and right, as if probing the empty lane for flower thieves. "I'm forcing sweet peas."

Melrose blinked at this unexciting news, uncertain how to respond. "To do what?"

Alice Broadstairs seemed to think this the funniest thing in the world and laughed and laughed. "I've a new one; it's quite the loveliest pink you can imagine."

She vanished from his view-poof!-as if she'd suddenly fainted under too heady a sweet-pea scent or had an attack of the vapors (which is the way he thought of it; couldn't help himself, Miss Broadstairs seeming more likely to succ.u.mb to a nineteenth-century complaint), and Melrose tried to see over the hedge, when-poof!-here she was back again, brandishing a coral-colored sweet pea.

"Oh!" he said. "Well, that's quite beautiful. Yes, a beautiful color."

"It's from my little greenhouse. I've a nice little plot of them." Here she vanished again and again was back within a moment, this time with a sky-blue sweet pea. "This one, Mr. Plant, was not wholly successful. I was trying for a more vibrant shade of blue. But have it, won't you?" She thrust it towards him.

Apparently, he was to be the recipient of one of her laboratory failures, in the way of Dr. Frankenstein bestowing upon him a poorly functioning hand. "Why . . . thank you, Miss Broadstairs." The flower was too large for his b.u.t.tonhole, but he stuck the stem through it anyway and carried on.

The Wrenn's Nest Book Shoppe occupied a corner next to Ada Crisp's secondhand furniture shop and across the street from the Jack and Hammer. Theo Wrenn Browne, the owner, competed only with Melrose's aunt for the t.i.tle of the village's highest-ranking troublemaker.

Having been bested in his attempts to drive Ada Crisp into either bankruptcy or a nervous breakdown, his current campaign was to shut down Long Piddleton's small library by supplying the reading public with an opportunity to get new books hot off the publisher's press. Miss Twinny, the local librarian, who might just lose her job over this, could not get them half as fast. Browne had been expanding this service over the years. And to get the non-book-buying people in, he had put in a large periodicals section, even a table and chairs, to make it appear that he welcomed the casual reader (which he didn't), a water cooler, and a candy rack. Melrose asked him when they could expect the slot machines.

The only person Browne hated more than Melrose Plant was Marshall Trueblood. Both of them had, between them, everything in the world that Browne wanted: land, money, t.i.tles, looks, exquisite taste, high wit, and goodwill. Although the man had no control over the first four qualities, he could have done something about the last ones, but they were things Browne had kept hidden behind something resembling the brick wall cemented in place by Poe's Montresor. He was vulgar; he was ba.n.a.l; he was mean; he was ostentatious even to the point of having added an "e" to his name (thinking that might separate him from the workaday Browns).

The little boy whom Theo Wrenn Browne was chastising over the counter looked to be no more than three or four. This dusty urchin had apparently been sent on the errand of returning a book to Browne's "lending library." Browne was bedeviling him with the news that his rental book was overdue, not by days but over six months! Didn't he understand that it had been a brand-new book and people had waited for it? The book in question looked familiar to Melrose, who had gone over to scour the magazine rack for astrology offerings.

He looked towards the counter, squinting up the t.i.tle. . . . Yes! It was Patrick, the Painted Pig, the very book young Sally had got a dressing-down for a few months before. Melrose stood back and listened to Browne scold this luckless child, younger than Sally, who must be her brother Bub. The boy was pale and small, with stick-thin arms and legs. Melrose had kindling wood in better shape.

"And here's a torn page"-Theo Wrenn Browne rattled it-"and here's a stain that looks like fingerpaints . . . well! You can see it's damaged and you'll just have to pay for it. Tell your mum it's twelve pounds fifty; that's what another will cost me." He snapped the book shut. Bub, already as white as rice paper, went whiter still.

Melrose (who thought G.o.d was in his heaven for once) plucked a magazine and picked a candy bar from the candy rack, then stepped up to the counter with the KitKat and the good news. "Pardon me for interrupting, Mr. Browne. I'll have one of these, I think, and this magazine." Melrose put the money on the counter for the magazine and the candy, which he unwrapped and carefully bit a piece from, before handing the candy to Bub, who looked like he needed a shot of caffeine in the circ.u.mstances. "Problem with one of your rental books, is it?"

Browne looked as if he could spit. His voice full of venom, he said, "I can't have my books come back torn and smudged all over."

"No, I expect not." Melrose looked the book over for identifying marks, found several he clearly remembered from young Sally's debacle with Patrick, the Painted Pig, and said, the taste of the words more delicious than chocolate on the tongue, "Only, this book"-Melrose held it up and tilted it back and forth-"this book doesn't belong to you, Mr. Browne." Melrose could scarcely remember when he'd been more tempted to jump up and click his heels. But he kept his feet on the floor.

"It most certainly does. Here's my library card in back." He flipped the book to the back cover, where he'd placed a pocket to hold the lending record.

"Oh, yes, it was yours once. Originally yours. But have you forgotten, when Sally brought it back several months ago-also, alas, late-that I purchased it from you and gave it to her?"

Browne opened his mouth, closed it, opened it, stood speechless. Finally, he said, "Well, but then why is young Bub here bringing it back?"

Young Bub, however, was no longer "here." The moment he'd seen that an adult was at hand to take up the cudgel, he'd departed on greased feet.

"I'll hazard a guess: Mum found it, had no idea anyone had actually bought and paid for it, and, as Bub happened to be there to take the flak, hurriedly sent him round with it. Only a guess, of course, but does it matter?"

Theo Wrenn Browne clearly thought it mattered. His complexion was mottling from misty gray to pale umber to a flush of pink as his blood rose like a sunrise over the Norfolk Broads. "Well. That whole family's careless as can be. The mum doesn't teach those kids manners any better than a mongoose!"

Melrose thought for a moment about mongooses while Theo Wrenn Browne punched his computer, entering the price of Melrose's magazine and reminding him, with a leer, that he'd also taken a KitKat, as if this would leave Melrose with no recourse but to stand on the corner with a begging bowl. He fingered and fingered the computer-it simply amazed Melrose that the machine supposed to take the pain out of all sorts of niggling jobs took more time to perform a simple one than it would have taken Bub to do by hand ten times over. The computer sent its morsel of information to the printer and the printer spit it out, a receipt as long as Magna Carta.

Seeking revenge, Browne looked at the magazine and said, "I wouldn't have thought you'd have much interest in this." He shook out a brown bag, placed the lowly (and garishly colored) astrology magazine in it, and added, "I'd've expected you to take Caesar's line." He looked at Melrose with his crimped little smile.

Melrose didn't know what he was talking about.

"Well, my goodness, Mr. Plant, a well-read person such as yourself, you should know that: 'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.' That's sound advice, now, ain't it?"

Melrose shrugged as he picked up the bag. "I wouldn't know, not being an underling."

He whistled a tuneless tune and crossed the street to the Jack and Hammer, which would be open by now. Long Piddleton had not gotten around to keeping London hours and probably never would. The pub kept to the old eleven o'clock opening; it was now nearly noon, and Melrose felt the need of a preprandial Old Peculiar.

d.i.c.k Scroggs was, as usual, reading the local paper. As he watched the level of Old Peculier rise in the gla.s.s, Scroggs told Melrose that it was "disgraceful" what that Browne fellow was doing to the library's business and therefore to Miss Twinny, the librarian.

"I mean, she's at our little library forty years, ain't she? Well, they've been looking for a reason to close it down and that Browne's given 'em one." d.i.c.k frowned over Melrose's half pint of dark brew and went on. "I mean, that job's her life, innit? Oh, sure, she'll get her pension-if anyone's going to get a pension, these days; you never know, do you?-but it ain't the money with Miss Twinny."

Melrose wondered how d.i.c.k, who had never mentioned the woman from one year's end to the next, had got on such friendly terms with Miss Twinny, ever since a so-called editorial had appeared in the Sidbury paper calling for "library reform." It had probably been ghostwritten by Theo Wrenn Browne.

d.i.c.k set the gla.s.s before him, and Melrose said, "And a small gla.s.s of water, please."

d.i.c.k frowned. "For what?"

"For my sweet pea." d.i.c.k eyed him as if Melrose were touched by the sun, slapped down a shot gla.s.s, and measured water into it. Melrose thanked him and walked to his favorite table, the one with the window seat looking out over the street. The window was crossed by vines of climbing white roses, brown-edged from November cold, which ran rampant over the pub's facade and had lately threatened to throttle the mechanism of the Jack and Hammer's sign: a wooden figure up high in a turquoise jacket, who, upon the hour, would stiffly raise and lower his hammer to a forge, simulating strikes of the clock. The hammer was raised halfway now, frozen in s.p.a.ce as if Jack and everyone down here were held prisoner in some doomed village.

The door opened, ushering in Diane Demorney and a current of cold air made colder owing to its proximity to Diane. Her arctic impression was much augmented by her white skin and her white clothes. She always wore white or black and was always as perfectly groomed as a Derby winner, not a shank of her black razor-cut hair out of place, not a wrinkle in her dress, not an unpolished nail or shoe. Melrose always had the impression that Diane's Art Deco angularity was carved out of the surrounding air, leaving everything beyond it, by contrast, slapdash and slipshod. Melrose always had the impulse to tidy up any s.p.a.ce she walked through.

Unfortunately, this sharpness of outline did not extend to her mind. Diane's thoughts settled like murky sediment in a dark tarn, stirred occasionally into life by someone's tossing into it a bit of juicy and mendacious gossip. It amazed Melrose that people actually thought her marvelously intelligent. As often happens, such people equated intelligence with knowledge, and Diane did know things. Strange things. To offset her sluggish thinking, she had taught herself a single, usually arcane fact about every topic imaginable-or at least every topic that was likely to come up in the boozy environs of drinks parties. Since she chose obscure facts-such as the writer Stendhal fainting in the presence of great art-it was a.s.sumed she knew everything else about the man, when she couldn't even tell you a book that he'd written. Now she was into stargazing, and the interesting thing was that what she was writing was-well, interesting.

Melrose stood and drew out a chair for her. She always took such small attentions as her due.

Referring to a column of print, d.i.c.k said, "This 'Seein' Stars' is quite rich this week, Miss Demorney."

"Oh, good," said Diane, with a total lack of enthusiasm, as she plugged a cigarette into a six-inch ivory holder. She accepted Melrose's light, then called over to d.i.c.k Scroggs, still bent over his paper. "The usual over here, if you don't mind. I shouldn't have to ask you twice, should I?"

d.i.c.k took umbrage. "Twice? You only just came in, you only just asked. That's once."

"I had to ask you yesterday, didn't I?"

Diane's preference was buffalo gra.s.s vodka, which she herself supplied. Yet she still paid him full price for the drink. No one would call Diane stingy. Next to Melrose and Marshall Trueblood, she was the biggest contributor to the Long Piddleton Save-Our-Library Fund.

"And I'll have another half pint, when you get around to it, thanks, d.i.c.k."

"Why do you always get half pints, Melrose? It only means bobbing up and down for refills."

"I like to bob."

d.i.c.k had come with Diane's martini-handicapped at twelve-to-one-and brought the Sidbury Star with him. Before he collected Melrose's gla.s.s, he opened it to "Seeing Stars" and asked, "Now, what sign were you born under, Lord Ardry?"

"The Jack and Hammer." Melrose held up his gla.s.s.

Diane said, "Capricorn."

Melrose frowned. "How did you know? Besides writing horoscopes, or what pa.s.ses for them, have you become psychic too? Do Capricornian emanations pulse from my being? Do I have all those queer manifestations of Capricornianism, such as drinking half pints instead of pints?"

Diane just looked at him. "You told me your birthday."

"Oh. My drink, d.i.c.k?" Melrose held out his gla.s.s.

"It's the sign of the Goat," finished off Diane.

"Oh, ha. In case I'd forgotten?"

Paying no attention to the gla.s.s Melrose thrust toward him, d.i.c.k attended only to Melrose's zodiacal sign. "Just you listen, Lord Ardry-"

Melrose had given up his t.i.tles, but some people seemed determined to give them back. He could not break d.i.c.k Scroggs of the "my lord" habit and had given up trying.

"This week you had better be extremely careful! With the Moon transiting Aries, your s.e.x life is even more defunct than usual. You depend entirely too much on time, tides, and the stars to sort out your problems, especially your cold-footed approach to the opposite s.e.x.

"Get a life."

d.i.c.k thought this was extremely risible and added (never the one to know on which side his bread was b.u.t.tered), "Oh, you got him right, there, Miss Demorney." Then he collected Melrose's gla.s.s and, still chortling, went back to his beer pulls and optics.

" 'Get a life'? Why does that strike me as something a bona fide astrologer would not say?"

"Because most of them refuse to upset people"-a thing Diane would never hesitate to do, if it got her a soupcon of what she called "amus.e.m.e.nt." She, who had always been languor's handmaiden, had taken over the horoscope column of the Sidbury Star. In the cla.s.sified section of that paper (where she had been scanning the Personals in hopes of securing WM, tall, ageless, loves travel, good food, spending money), she had come upon a job offer to replace the woman who was retiring and leaving her column-"Seeing Stars"-in need of a writer. Experience . . . wisdom . . . ability to relate to others. None of this deterred her from applying, of course. But she made a gross error: she was under the impression the column's heading meant that the journalist would spend her time in the company of celebrities-film folk, theater-and-music folk, savvy politicians, and artists.

She was hired on the spot, for who could possibly resist the soignee, cool-spoken, richly garbed, beautiful Diane? When she finally found out the column was to be written by the astrology consultant (herself), she gave it a whirl anyway, lacking anything better to do.

Diane's prognostications were always downers, ranging from the dour to the diabolical. There was no room for the glad tidings of the usual daily horoscope column: no inheritances, handsome strangers, promotions, cures, new jobs, money-none of that. The news was always bad. That or the reader had to put up with being preached at. And yet people appeared to like this approach. Melrose had heard circulation had increased a good twenty percent after Diane had "come on board."

"I thought you'd like that," said Diane, rinsing her olive in vodka. "I wrote it just for you."

Melrose was about to tell her that star signs were not a just-for-you thing, when the door opened and another stiff wind shoved in Marshall Trueblood, as if the natural world didn't want him in it; yet in his customary vibrant colors he resembled Alice Broadstairs's garden. What could one call that shirt but periwinkle purple? That tie but sweet-pea pink? And that muted windowpane Armani sports coat: Could it be anything but love-in-a-mist blue?

Trueblood was in one of his Campari-and-lime moods, which is what he told d.i.c.k to bring him. Campari went with boredom and desuetude. He yawned, then asked, "Do you think I should go up to Oxford and read law? Perhaps that's what I'm meant to be-a barrister." He'd been making these noises ever since his brilliant chamber-pot defense. "Yes, perhaps the law is really my destiny after all, and all these years I've been messing about with antiques." He plucked the sweet pea from the shot gla.s.s and held it against his coat. "It just matches." He plunged it back in its water and sighed. "Thank you, d.i.c.k." d.i.c.k Scroggs had set his drink before him.

Diane looked shocked when Trueblood mentioned "reading" and "Oxford." "Surely you're not serious! It would be ma.s.ses of work, wouldn't it, Melrose? It could take you a whole year, maybe even more, shut away in that gray tomb of a school with nothing but those screaming spires driving you mad."

" 'Dreaming' spires, Diane," said Melrose.

"Well, you've found your proper work, Diane," said Trueblood. "That column of yours is extremely entertaining."

"Work? I hope not. I hope I've managed to purge it of work, for heaven's sake!"

"By not knowing anything about astrology, yes," said Melrose, still smarting from his weekly dose of Capricorn.

"Naturally. But writing horoscopes isn't the job I applied for, if you recall. If that's what the job turned out to be, it's no fault of mine. And it's been done quite well without going to some school to read something." She turned to Trueblood. "Really, Marshall, don't even consider it. I'm almost sorry I wrote that nice little horoscope for you."

"You never write a nice one for anybody, Diane. That's what makes it good."

"Well, I do once in a while." She turned round and called to d.i.c.k. "d.i.c.k, just read that little bit of horoscope under Aquarius, would you?"

"Glad to," said d.i.c.k, happy to be called on to perform. He snapped the paper straight and stood with the authority of a jury foreman to read: "We all know that Aquarians are true individualists! What is less well known is their extremely charitable nature. This will be demonstrated-"

Trueblood interrupted. "Charitable nature? Well, it's less well known because I haven't b.l.o.o.d.y got one."

Diane shushed him. "d.i.c.k, go on."

"Right." d.i.c.k cleared his throat.

"-will be demonstrated this very week as the Moon pa.s.ses through one of the rings of Saturn and you take delivery on a number of objets d'art-"

"Wait a minute! Whoa!" Trueblood declared. "Are you referring to delivery of that possibly Ming-dynasty urn you're s...o...b..ring after? You think you'll get it on the cheap, then? Ha! Not a b.l.o.o.d.y chance, Diane."

"Good heavens, Marshall, horoscopes can't be that specific, or else how can one appeal to the ma.s.ses?"