The Old Success Page 4

  This description of the pubs, the “left-outness,” and the leg struck Melrose as extremely sad. “What happened to your leg? I mean—”

  “How did it come about? Auto accident. I was in the passenger seat and the bonnet crumpled when we hit an embankment.”

  “I am sorry.” He paused. “Look, you’d be welcome to join us at the Jack and Hammer.”

  “You wouldn’t really like that. I’d change the chemistry.” Then, as if she thought that response ungracious, she said, “But dinner, that would be really nice. If it’s not too many people.”

  “I don’t know too many people.” Melrose got up, set down his cup. “All right. I’ll see to rounding up these people. But right now I’d better be off.”

  “I’m glad you came.”

  “Next time, I’ll come on a horse.”

  8

  The next afternoon, Mr. Blodgett had interrupted his sunning himself in his Florida room to help Melrose load Aggrieved into the horse trailer purchased just that morning in Northampton. Mr. Blodgett, whose mild hermit-temper was much like the horse’s, was far better than Momaday—the grumpy groundskeeper and stableman, who seemed to hate stables, grounds and every animal on them. He liked to sling a rifle over his shoulder and take aim at anything that moved.

  Melrose feared for the lives of Aggrieved, Aghast and Aggro—especially the dog, for Aggro ran around, whereas the horse and the goat merely hung around rubbing against trees and nibbling grass. Aggro loved to herd Aghast and moved the goat in circles. Aghast had little else to do but join in this game. Melrose considered getting another goat to keep Aghast company and make more of an inroad on “herd.”

  He wanted to get rid of Momaday and asked Mr. Blodgett if he would consider taking on the role of groundskeeper. “Not that you have actually to ‘keep’ the grounds. We have gardeners to do that, but to chase off the odd poacher” (whom Melrose had never in his life seen, but who Momaday swore was around in order to justify the rifle). Momaday had seen far too many American Westerns, especially Clint Eastwood’s, as he liked to narrow his eyes and blurt out “punk,” a word that must have been reserved for rabbits and squirrels, since he had never actually leveled it at Melrose.

  Melrose had heard him say it as he raised his rifle and aimed into the trees: “Punk!” Bam! Fortunately, no lifeform hit the ground, nothing but a little shower of leaves. Melrose had admonished Momaday time and again for shooting rabbits, to which the groundskeeper had replied, “Well, if you want your lettuces et up, okay.”

  Lettuces? They were growing lettuce?

  So Melrose had offered Mr. Blodgett twice the salary he was getting as a hermit, and Blodgett had said, “But that’s paying me too much, m’lord.”

  “‘Too much’ is as the payer assesses the necessity of the job, Mr. Blodgett.”

  That made no sense to Blodgett, but he heartily agreed.

  Before he left with Aggrieved, Melrose told Ruthven that Richard Jury would be joining them for dinner and that he, Melrose, would be back around five or six from Bucks.

  Melrose, having hauled the trailer to Newport Pagnell, found Horsepitality in a huge barn and followed the sound of metal striking metal to a room at the back.

  He had expected someone short and wide, not this slim girl with a clear forehead, mint-green eyes and a perfect nose. And then he recalled that Jury hadn’t given a physical description, but had talked about personality and temperament—a female Momaday of sorts: pugnacious, not very friendly and a good shot. That last attribute was not Momadayish, as he was terrible.

  The rest of Jury’s description had failed when she said, “May I help you, sir?” The tone was mild, the expression welcoming, the face beautiful if a little soot-blackened.

  “You’re Miss Cooke?”

  She nodded.

  Melrose looked round the place—the fire, the tools, the blowtorch. “You’re very young to be doing this kind of work.”

  She smiled. “One has to start somewhere.”

  One needn’t start at all, he thought. “There’s no farrier near where I live and you were highly recommended to me. I hope it’s all right that I’ve brought my horse. I think he needs re-shoeing.” Was that a word? he wondered as he inclined his head in the horse trailer’s direction.

  “Okay, let’s have a look.” She put down her tools and they went outside. “I’m not really a blacksmith, you know. But I’ve had enough training that I can shoe a horse.”

  “That’s more training than I’ve had.” Melrose opened the box and Aggrieved turned his head.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Aggrieved.”

  She laughed. “I like that. Aggrieved.” She appeared to be speaking not to Melrose but to the horse. “Come on, Aggrieved.” Sydney placed her hand on the horse’s rump and he moved toward the open door. Melrose was surprised at the horse’s willingness.

  “Come on.” She patted his rump and Aggrieved moved slowly all the way out.

  “My word. How do you do that? We had a real fight to get him in.”

  “‘Fight’ might have been the problem. The resistance goes back and forth, just as it does with people. I think it’s better, you know, with animals to play it as it lays.”

  He did not understand the meaning of that negotiation, but it certainly seemed to work for her. “But you do occasionally have the horse that won’t respond to that easy treatment?”

  As she took hold of Aggrieved’s halter (with one finger, he noticed), she shrugged and said, “Once or twice.”

  “What do you do then?”

  “Walk away.” As if to demonstrate, she and Aggrieved walked away from Melrose.

  This irritated Melrose, as if he himself were the recalcitrant one in the crowd. “I don’t see how that would work.”

  “Are there really any situations you’ve come up against that you can’t walk away from?”

  Melrose tried to think of one, couldn’t—except for murder. “You must be a horse whisperer.”

  “No. Maybe Aggrieved is. It’s the horse, not the human, that does the whispering. I think that word has long been misunderstood.”

  They seemed to be so far away from the subject of murder, Melrose had no idea how to bring it up. Then he thought of the Ryders. “I got the horse from Ryder Stud in Cambridge. Do you know it?”

  With an arm embracing Aggrieved’s front leg, she said, “I don’t believe I do.”

  “They have a tragic history.” Melrose told her about the kidnapping of Nell Ryder and the horses kept at that farm.

  “How awful.” But Melrose’s story elicited no personal history from Sydney Cooke.

  He said, lamely, “You must have a horse.”

  “More than one, actually. We have stables.”

  “On your property, you mean?”

  “It’s called Heron House. It’s my aunt’s. Great-aunt’s, to be exact.”

  Melrose feigned astonishment. “But that’s a vast estate. I passed it on my way to the village.”

  “It’s been in the family for decades. My great-grandmother passed it to my grandmother, then to my aunt. I’m next in line, I expect.”

  It seemed to be put as a question, and she looked at Melrose as if he were the estate attorney who had come to discuss her inheritance. “Well, there’d be your mother first.”

  “She’s dead. I don’t think Aggrieved needs front shoes. These seem fine.” Aggrieved’s hoof was returned to the ground and his right rear leg lifted into Sydney’s aproned lap.

  “Your father, then?”

  At first she didn’t respond. “You mean Dan Cooke? He wasn’t my father. He was … Mum’s second husband.”

  “Oh.” It sounded as if she wanted to disavow any relation to the man.

  In another half an hour, she had set down the horse’s rear foot, and now, rose. “Aggrieved, you have nice new shoes.”

  Aggrieved was stomping his rear hooves.

  “You can see he’s pleased. I wouldn’t be surprised if that old shoe was hurt
ing.” She frowned.

  “Oh, Lord, I hope not.”

  “Who looks after him?”

  “An idiot.”

  She laughed. “Well, then—”

  “The situation is being corrected.”

  “Good.” Sydney turned and looked about the barn. “Well, you’re my last customer, so I’ll pack up and go home. We can get Aggrieved into his trailer … I wonder, though. Would you like to come and have a look at my horse and stable?”

  Melrose was surprised by this invitation. “I would, yes. Very much.”

  “Come on, then. You can follow my truck. The house is only a mile or so.”

  Aggrieved went into the horse box as easily as he’d come out of it. Melrose got into the cab as Sydney got into her small truck, and he followed her to the main road.

  They drove through a wide expanse of technicolor—green grass along a smooth dirt road at the end of which was a stone house, large but not imposing. Off to the right, on a narrow side road, stood the barn and stables. Melrose pulled up beside Sydney’s truck.

  “We’ll get Aggrieved out, don’t you think? We’ve a ring, right over there.” She nodded beyond the stable. “Would you like to ride Aggrieved, Mr. Plant, now he’s reshod?”

  He had secretly known this would come up in some form. “Uh, no; my leg has been bothering me lately. Actually, the horse threw me the other day.”

  Not only did Sydney look at him in disbelief, but Aggrieved turned his head and looked, if a horse could, outraged. “No, he couldn’t have done …”

  Afraid perhaps he’d blown his cover, or Aggrieved’s, Melrose said, “Well, I admit I kind of did the throwing. We were jumping a low hedge and I—”

  “Thought so.” Sydney laughed and stroked her pal’s neck again. “Would you do me a favor, then?”

  “Of course.” As long as it’s nothing to do with getting up on a horse.

  “Could I ride him?”

  “We’d both be delighted.”

  “Just a tick, I’ll get my saddle.” She was in and out of the stable with a horse blanket and a handsome, blood-red leather saddle, which she slid over the blanket. In another few moments, she was up and in the saddle.

  “You look as if you belonged there. Aggrieved looks intensely pleased.”

  Sydney laughed. “No he doesn’t. He’s just putting up with it. Come on.”

  Melrose walked beside them as she led the horse to the ring. She took him from a trot to a canter and then was off on a gallop that astonished his owner. She rode Aggrieved around the ring twice and then drew him up to where Melrose was standing beside the fence.

  “This horse is the wind! He’s the fastest I’ve ever ridden. Of course, I’m not a jockey; I’m not that fast, but … haven’t you ever raced him?”

  “He was retired when I got him from Ryder’s. It didn’t occur to me …”

  “How old is he? I’d say four or five, looking at his teeth.”

  “Isn’t that old to be racing?”

  “Of course not. And he loves it; I can tell. Don’t you have a ring? You really should let him run.”

  Oh, dear. Was he going to have to shovel out a circle? “That takes a lot of space, doesn’t it?”

  “Only about a hundred twenty feet, maybe a little more. With good drainage. But you have a lot of land, don’t you?”

  Did he?

  They led Aggrieved back to the Cooke stable and to the horse trailer. Melrose said, “Aggrieved doesn’t want to go. He even looks as if he’s crying.”

  “Crying?” She looked concerned and went around to study the horse’s face. There was what looked like a tear running down it. “Oh, dear.”

  “You can see he’s sad.”

  “Nothing to do with sadness. He might have an eye infection. Have you seen this before?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Well, keep an eye on it, will you? Better to call in a vet, I think, though it may be nothing at all.”

  “But it might be something. And you’re as good as any vet. Look, I wonder if you’d like to come to Ardry End—that’s my place—and have dinner tomorrow night?” Melrose was inspired by Aggrieved’s possible minor illness.

  She was far more surprised. “Me? Dinner?”

  “You’d be doing me a great favor, as you could check up on Aggrieved. There are just a few friends coming. I’m no more than fifteen kilometers away. I’d be glad to send a car for you.”

  “Well …”

  “Please do. And you can see how Aggrieved is doing.”

  She smiled. “Thanks. Yes, I can do that. Just tell me the place and time and how to get there. I can drive.”

  “Around eight o’clock?” He took out his little notebook and jotted down directions. “It’s been a pleasure.” He tore out the page and handed it to her.

  It took her five minutes to get Aggrieved into the trailer, longer than it had taken to get him out. He didn’t seem to want to go.

  9

  “I had no trouble getting Sydney Cooke to talk to me,” said Melrose, when they were seated in the library with drinks in their hands.

  “You carted Aggrieved along in a trailer?”

  “That’s what you told me to do. I don’t see why you couldn’t have talked to her. She’s quite accessible.”

  “You’ve noticed I don’t have a horse,” said Jury.

  “Well, it’s true you’re always showing up in one of Scotland Yard’s old bangers.”

  “New Scotland Yard doesn’t have stables.”

  “And did you read up?” said Melrose.

  “On what?”

  “Horses, of course.”

  “No. I read up on the case. The death of her mother, as I told you.”

  “Well, she won’t talk to you about it.”

  “I think maybe she will.”

  “Why?”

  “I know her grandfather. Who else is coming to dinner?”

  “Only Diane and Marshall.”

  “You didn’t invite Miss Flood?”

  “No. I didn’t know how.”

  “My Lord. You talk like a poor inexperienced teenager.”

  “That’s pretty much what I am, to hear Agatha.”

  “What’s she like?”

  “Agatha?”

  “Ha ha. Miss Cooke.”

  “Quite charming. Pretty. Smart. I told her you worked at the Yard. I let her think you were the janitor.”

  “That’s what Racer thinks I am.”

  Melrose chortled. “Diane is bound to come up with horse arcana; she’ll fill her thimble of knowledge to the brim.”

  The door knocker fell with a thud and would have thudded again had Ruthven not been padding by with his tray and pulled the door open.

  “Well, Melrose,” began his aunt, who quickly disposed of him when she saw Richard Jury. “Superintendent! I didn’t know you’d be here!”

  “Nor did he know you’d be, so that makes three of us.”

  “But you told me about this little dinner, Melrose.”

  “Yes, but I didn’t invite you, so what—?”

  “Oh, that’s all right. You’re just forgetful. Lambert will be in directly. He’s tying up his horse. He won’t be staying for dinner. Just for a drink.”

  “That’s just as well, we haven’t enough of the hagfish to feed yet another uninvited guest.”

  “Hagfish?”

  “Otherwise known as slime eels. They’re a delicacy in South Korea, I understand. They’re also known as the most disgusting marine animals. They emit slime—”

  “How revolting! You can’t be serious! I know you’re lying, Melrose.”

  “Oh? Ruthven, ask Martha to step in, will you, and tell my aunt about dinner.”

  “Certainly, sir.” With a little smile Ruthven swanned out of the room.

  Melrose got Strether a whisky, as he looked to be on the verge of a seizure.

  In another moment here was Martha, her usually snow-white apron smeared with something, Melrose guessed olive oil. He asked her
to explain the main dish. Melrose knew Ruthven would have told her about the Agatha contretemps and Martha would have made preparations. “Yes, my lord? You wanted to know how the hagfish was coming along. Not much pleasure to prepare, it wasn’t, but with a dusting of flour and a few dashes of salt, it doesn’t look too bad.”

  Agatha, who had looked sick, looked sicker. “Never mind, Melrose. We neither of us will be staying.”

  “Oh, what a pity. So it’ll just be the five of us, Martha, assuming that Mr. Trueblood and Miss Demorney are not put off by hagfish.”

  Martha curtsied and turned and left just as the doorbell rang, and Ruthven went off to answer.

  Melrose heard the voices of Trueblood and Diane Demorney.

  Trueblood wore a misty grey suit, muted tones of blue, green and yellow in shirt and tie, and looked like a Tahitian dawn. Diane was wearing white.

  Hellos all round. “Agatha, old sweat, didn’t expect to see you here, not with Melrose serving haggis.”

  How wonderful, Trueblood falling in without knowing what he was falling into.

  “Hagfish, Marshall, not haggis.”

  “Sounds equally awful,” said Diane, white making her black hair blacker.

  “Couldn’t agree more,” said Strether, the uninvited. “We won’t be staying.”

  “Ah,” said Trueblood, drawing out the pitiful syllable. “Too bad.”

  “Oh, but we didn’t tell you our news,” said Agatha.

  “Engaged? Married?” Melrose wanted to add “having a baby,” but that might exceed the bounds of taste. Strether would have protested had he not been busying himself searching for the decanter.

  Diane laughed a spray of vodka through her nose as Agatha looked furious.

  “But that’s usually what people mean,” said Trueblood, “by ‘our news.’”

  “Mr. Trueblood, if you don’t mind!” said Agatha.

  “What’s the news?” said Jury, the adult in the room.

  Agatha simpered. “You mean Scotland Yard doesn’t even know?”

  She would drag this out as long as possible if someone didn’t stop her. “None of us knows, Agatha. What is it?”

  “A shooting.”

  “Who? Where?”

  “Watermeadows.”