The Winds of Change

Martha Grimes

• Éditeur: Grove Press UK
• Année: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781611859218
• Sujet: Literature
• Sous-sujet: Crime & Mystery Literature

When an unidentified five-year-old girl is shot on a grimy street in London, Jury knows this will be one of the hardest investigations of his career. He is joined by his colleague DI Johnny Blakeley, head of the paedophile unit of New Scotland Yard, who suspects Viktor Baumann, owner of an iniquitous house on the same street - an operation Blakeley has been long trying to shut down.Meanwhile, at Angel Gate, where Jury's trusty sidekick, Melrose Plant, is now a gardener, an unidentified woman has been murdered in the grounds of Declan Scott's estate. First on the scene is commander of the Devon and Cornwall police, Brian Macalvie. Three years earlier, Declan Scott's four-year-old stepdaughter, Flora, was abducted and shortly after her disappearance, her mother died too, leaving Declan bereft.Together Jury, Macalvie, Blakeley and Plant rake over the past and the present and find that all sign posts point to the guilt of Viktor Baumann, who happens to be Flora's father. But when no one in this case is exactly who they seem, how can Jury be sure?

The
CHILD THIEF

16

Melrose got out of his rental car—he had decided the Bentley was too showy—and stood on the gravel looking at Angel Gate. It was an impressive great pile of red brick mellowed with age to pink. Georgian, by the look of it. No less impressive was the avenue of beeches along that winding drive up to the house.

He gathered up his pigskin suitcase and made his way to the door.

This was opened rather quickly by a little girl of undetermined age. That is, the age might be a certainty for her, but not for him. He could never tell. She was just very young, with hair of such a dark brown it looked black. She was wearing unflattering eyeglasses. This welcoming committee was swelled by her dog. Which, Melrose was glad to see, was not in automatic-bark position, one of those dogs that barked and barked whenever something was opened—door, window, package, no matter whether or not someone dangerous was on the other side.

“Have you come about the gardens?”

“Yes, I have. I like your little dog.”

“His name’s Roy.”

“Peculiar name for a dog.”

“It’s not the ‘Roy’ you’re thinking of.”

“Had I been thinking of one?”

“It means ‘king’ or ‘your highness’ and it’s spelled R-o-i. It’s French, but nobody says it right, so I just changed it to plain Roy.”

The temperature seemed to have dropped ten degrees since he’d been standing here, but perhaps that was simply the effect of a Melrose-child encounter. He hoped she wasn’t another Debbie-Polly, or he could be stranded here by the door for a week. “Look, could we continue this discussion inside? Before we take up the French Revolution?”

Reluctantly (it seemed to him) she held the door wide.

“Ta, very much.” He kept telling himself sarcasm should not be wasted on children. “I’ll say one thing for your dog—he doesn’t bark.”

“He doesn’t need to.”

Melrose frowned over this inscrutable explanation.

“You’re to come to the kitchen. Aunt Rebecca’s making lunch.”

He followed his guide from the lovely marble hall into an equally lovely dining room. Lovely to Melrose because it looked used, comfortably used. The family portraits (if that’s what they were) were not as imposing as portraits usually are. The subjects here all seemed to have been caught doing something and the painter captured the spontaneity, except for the military-looking one up on the horse.

“Who is Aunt Rebecca?”

“My aunt.”

“I gathered that. Is she anything else?”

“She takes care of me since my mum and dad died.”

(Oh, dear. This was sounding familiar. Would he have to walk softly now?)

“She’s housekeeper here.”

She had pushed through a swinging door and he quickly raised his hand to keep it from thumping back in his face.

It was a vast kitchen, one of the biggest Melrose had ever seen outside of a hotel. Along one wall ran a row of windows that lent the room a greenhouse effect. Light poured through across a long deal table set with three places.

“He’s here,” said the girl. “This is him.” Having done her duty, she went to sit at the table.

The woman who turned at this announcement Melrose supposed was Rebecca Owen. She looked surprised. “Lulu, I told you you were to come and get me when Mr. Plant arrived!” She wiped her hands on a kitchen towel and said, “I’m so sorry. I’m Rebecca Owen, Mr. Scott’s housekeeper. He was called away and asked me to be sure you were comfortable. He’ll be back later this afternoon, around teatime.”

Melrose was glad to know he would be staying in a house where tea was still a ritual. It warmed him to know this.

She turned and picked up a platter of sandwiches. “I thought you’d like some lunch.”

“That’s kind of you. You know, what I’d really like is some coffee.”

“We’ve got that, too. If you’ll just have a seat.” She nodded toward the long table where Lulu was already ensconced, sitting with her back to the window through which a dazzle of sunlight made her straight dark hair look like licorice.

Melrose took the seat opposite her, the better to survey the grounds beyond. The platter of sandwiches appeared and Lulu helped herself to one from which she took one slow bite after another, handing down little bits to Roy—at least Melrose assumed she wasn’t just throwing them down on the floor.

Rebecca Owen poured Melrose coffee and Lulu what looked like lemonade. She then sat down.

Melrose said, “I have a question about your dog.”

They both looked at him, Rebecca Owen more surprised by this question than Lulu, who probably had a question about everything on God’s green earth.

“At night, if a robber came in, how would you know, seeing that Roy doesn’t bark at strangers?”

Lulu looked thoughtful and pushed her glasses up on the bridge of her nose. “I expect Roy would think of something.” She drank her lemonade, watching Melrose over the rim of the glass.

Definitely a Polly type. He turned to Rebecca Owen. “It looks as if Mr. Scott is having extensive work done.” He nodded toward the wall of windows, which he was facing.

“He is. Everything had pretty much gone to seed over the last few years, and now he’s decided it wants sprucing up.”

Melrose took umbrage. Was he to be no better than a sprucer? He said, “Has he someone overseeing it? Or just the gardeners working?”

“He has a landscape fellow. I think he’s called a garden architect. It seems everything these days has its specialist, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. It’s hard to find a general practitioner anymore. They’re all specialists. And specialists within the specialty. The whole thing’s going to hell. Oh, pardon me—”

Lulu smiled.

He said to Miss Owen, “And you, do you specialize?”

“Lord, no. I’m general dogsbody: cook, housekeeper, doorbell answerer—that is, except when Lulu decides to be the welcoming committee herself.”

Rebecca Owen was an attractive woman who didn’t spend a lot of time in front of a mirror. He put her in her late forties or early fifties.

Lulu, who looked as if her weight could be measured by quantities of air, was now eating a watercress sandwich. Roy had come out from under the table to sit stiffly by Melrose’s chair. Why was it that other people made dogs want to frolic, whereas all he provoked in them was this blind staring?

He drank off the rest of his coffee, finished his cheese sandwich, pushed back and said, “Tell me where I’m to stay and I’ll be off.”

“Of course. Lulu can show you to the cottage; it’s just over there.” She pointed across the gardens.

“Okay,” said Lulu. “I can carry your suitcase if you like.”

“Certainly not. I’m much bigger than you.” Melrose picked up his case and they went out.

The kitchen was in, or perhaps constituted, the short left wing of the house. They crossed a patio and walked down several wide, shallow terraces that gave a sunken garden effect to the land beyond. They passed a bronze statue of two boys with buckets, one lad holding his bucket higher than Melrose’s head and could have doused him had there been water running and had the boy, of course, been animated. Melrose thought this sculpture amusing and a pleasant respite from draped and armless maidens.

Lulu pointed off to the bottom of the gardens. “We had a murder here.”

Triumph or pride registered in her tone, as if the place had done something wizard.

He expressed surprise. “Good lord, who was murdered?”

“Nobody knows, not even the police.”

They were walking a path that was outlined in yew hedges and crisscrossed with other paths. “Your gardens are beautiful.”

“I like it when it snows. When the snow tops the hedges and shadows move back and forth.”

“Do you get snow in Cornwall?”

“Sometimes we get a lot.”

Melrose seriously doubted it. Down toward the bottom of the garden he saw two figures, a man and a woman, planting or hoeing or whatever people did in that world which he would prefer not to mess about in. None of the Ryland experience as (so-called) undergardener seemed to stick except filling and emptying wheelbarrows full of dirt.

“That’s the Macmillans. He’s her father. They have a big garden shop outside Launceston. Here’s the cottage.”

Architecturally, the cottage bore no resemblance to the main house. It was built of stone and knapped flint in a checkerboard design, with a thatched roof, and even a thatched porch overhanging a wide step flanked by two narrow columns. It was surrounded by a hedge out of which had been carved a topiary to hang over the pebble walk. Only a one-up, one-down, it was the fussiest little place Melrose had ever seen. The fuss continued on the inside with the curtains patterned in blue and pink hydrangeas and sofa and two armchairs covered in a cretonne full of pansies, roses and lilies—a regular flower garden of furniture.

No wonder Lulu liked it. “I’m going to live in this som...