“Worse luck for me, then.” He opened the little door of the stove with a sturdy stick, which he then used to poke at the coals, a comforting red. “If that’s the way you treat those in yer employ, why I don’t see how any of you keep staff round ’ere.” Thunk went the little door as he slammed it shut.
“We seem to have had no trouble thus far.” Melrose accidentally knocked his head against the lintel bearing the skull and MEMENTO MORI. A clump of moss fell in his hair.
Bramwell repeated his phlegmy cough. “I ought t’be in bed, me, ’stead o’ sittin’ ’ere.”
“Well, perhaps we can find a nice hospital bed for you. Bedlam has a big turnover.”
“None o’yer doctors, no thanks, not after what ’appened t’ my Doris. Did I tell yea about-?”
“Your Doris? Yes-” Melrose would have banged his head on the skull again but he didn’t want more moss in his hair.
Bramwell swiveled his gaze to Jury, for here was one who hadn’t heard the story. “My Doris goes into ’ospital to get one o’them ovaries seen to, and what do they do but take out the whole womb. The whole bloody boiling, don’t they? Well, I tells ’er, fer God’s sake, lass, sue the bleedin’ place. Absolutely disgustin’ I calls it, doctor don’t even know what bleedin’ operation ’e’s supposed t’be doing. My God!” Turning again to Melrose, he said, “I’d sooner be right back ’ere sleepin’ rough, me. That Theo Browne puts me in mind of a weasel.” He settled himself back against his pillowcase of belongings.
Jury pulled at Melrose’s sleeve. “A word?” He backed away from the hermitage entrance.
“What?” Melrose scowled.
“Are you missing the point here? The point not being to evaluate you and Theo as respective employers; the point being to fire this bloody fool before he seeps into every crack and crevice of Ardry End.”
“He’s certifiable.” Melrose mumbled imprecations… um… mumm… ass…
“Fire him, for God’s sake!” Jury pushed Melrose back to the entrance.
“Mr. Bramwell!”
Bramwell could look quite piteous and imploring when it suited him, as it did at the moment. (Oh, he knew what the two were up to!) He pulled his collar tight with a trembling hand.
Melrose opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. He felt like a fish. Fortunately, he was saved from continuing by Ruthven, who, coated and scarved, approached over the acre or two between house and hermitage. This momentary reprieve turned Melrose hearty: “Well, here comes your beef tea.”
Bramwell immediately dropped his orphan-in-the-storm persona and flexed his fingers, preparatory to picking up whatever was on the tray which Ruthven set down on the smooth stump that Bramwell used for his breakfast, lunch and dinner table, as well as for morning coffee and afternoon tea.
Melrose noted there was considerably more than beef tea on the tray. There was a substantial pile of sandwiches: cheese, chicken and prosciutto. This last really annoyed Melrose as he liked prosciutto with melon and there probably wasn’t any left. “I see your dicey health isn’t affecting your appetite, Mr. Bramwell.”
“Got to keep me strength up. Thank you, Mr. Ruthven,” he said as Ruthven shook out a big napkin, which the hermit spread carefully over his wide front. Selecting a sandwich of prosciutto, he said, “I’ll say this fer yea, yea don’t stint.”
He could have been saying this to Melrose, Jury, Ruthven or God.
No, thought Jury. God stints.
They were feeding carrots to Aggrieved, both of them looking and listening for Momaday.
“I am completely cowed by staff,” said Melrose. “Cowed.”
“By these two you seem to be.”
“It’s why I don’t have more.” It wasn’t, really; he was just enjoying feeling sorry for himself.
Aggrieved, seeing another carrot come out of Jury’s pocket, nudged his shoulder with some force. Jury shoved him back. Melrose, unaware of this small fracas, kept talking about the staff he didn’t have: “A chauffeur, a vegetable cook to help Martha-”
“Who wouldn’t be able to stand it-” Jury bumped Aggrieved’s elegant neck, payback for another muzzle in the face.
“-more stable staff, a valet de chambre, a maid. No, two maids, one a ’tweenie.” Melrose liked that word. “A ’tweenie.”
“Was there ever such a staff at Ardry End?”
“No. But it sounds good.”
“I swear,” said Jury, back inside the house, “I’m having a nap.”
“And I swear I’m having a drink.”
Each having had what he’d sworn he’d have, they were presently out driving along narrow country roads. Jury had said he wasn’t ready yet for the “vocal confusion” of the Jack and Hammer.
“I’ve heard it called a lot of things, but never vocally confused,” said Melrose.
Early evening was shading off into night. It had been one of those winter days when trees and houses had razor-sharp outlines and the air was clear as a bell. Jury looked off to his left and up a gentle-climbing hill. “Look up there.”
“The pub, you mean? It’s rather grand, isn’t it, the way it sits up there and looms over the village?” Melrose had already turned the car into the even narrower road sloping up the hillside. “Let’s go inside.”
Deserted. This was a word that conjured images of empty rooms, skewed curtains, of squares of deeper hue on walls where pictures have been taken down. The Man with a Load of Mischief did not seem so much deserted as sad. Had it not been for dust and leaves blown into corners, and wall sconces unresponsive to the push of a switch, it would not have surprised Jury to see the manager still behind the bar, or that arthritic old waiter passing by with a tray or customers spotted at tables and barstools around the room.
It was not dark but shortly would be, and filaments of what was left of mingy winter light managed to steal past the grime of the casement windows and suffuse the dead air with a bit of life. In the entrance hall, Melrose looked at those same framed prints of the hunt making its silly progress along the papered wall. Even the wallpaper had escaped the years’ abuse, where one would expect it to be hanging in long flaps, it still clung fast. He followed the sound of Jury’s voice into the saloon bar.
Jury said, “It’s all here: the equipment”-he rested his hand on the china beer pulls-“the drink, the glassware.” Bottles of whiskey, gin, vodka and dark syrupy liqueurs ranged across shelves, doubled by the mirror behind the bar. “I’m astonished the place hasn’t been vandalized. My Lord, it’s been-what? thirteen, fourteen years?”
Melrose brushed his hand over the barstool and sat down. “Do we have vandals around here? I mean, except for Agatha? And this place was vacated, if you remember, in rather a hurried way. I found Mindy up here, you know. Anyone who would leave his dog behind to fend for itself, well… I used to walk her up here in case she was homesick and so she could chase invisible stuff. She quite enjoyed that; I’ll have to bring her here again.” Melrose squinted at the row of bottles. “If those bottles of Johnny Walker and Bells are still here, what about the wine cellar?”
Down in the cellar they stood in more dead leaves and dust, but, of course, one expects, no, wants wine bottles to be dusty, for it proves something or other. Shelf after shelf, marching along the cold room, held the wines of Bordeaux, Tuscany, Spain; wines from the Médoc; Cabernet Franc and Merlot; grand cru from Puligny-Montrachet; Chardonnays from California; sherry from Spain; Sauternes-someone had known a lot about wine.