Help the Poor Struggler by Martha Grimes Read Free Book Online Page B

hours later. Some of that time had been spent wandering aimlessly in the well-tended gardens above the Marine Parade. A further half-hour she’d spent going up and down several little flights of steps along the Parade and moving backward toward the stone wall to beat the running tide.
    She was presently breaking another injunction by walking along the dark arm of the Cobb that made a safe harbor for the little fishing boats, creaking out there in the wind and the water.
    Mickey puffed along behind her. He was a terrier and too fat because Angela kept feeding him scraps of food from her plate, disgusting things like mashed swede or blood pudding or skate that always looked to her like the clipped wing of some big bird. All Mickey was supposed to eat was dried dogfood. He was old, and her parents were afraid he’d have a heart attack.
    She was tired of her parents and she hated her school. She hated nearly everything. Probably, it was because she wasn’t pretty, and having to wear this long braid and hard shells of glasses. No one else at school had to wear thick glasses. Her classmates teased her constantly.
    Angela stopped far out on the Cobb to look back at the lights of Lyme Regis along the Marine Parade. She had never seen Lyme at night from this distance. She liked that unearthly glow of the lamps. The little town seemed light-lifted above the black sea.
    She wished it would fall in and drown. Angela didn’t like Lyme, either.
    The tattoo of Mickey’s paws scraping stone continued as Angela walked on. Mickey loved the sea. When the tide was out, he’d tear away from her like a bit of white cloth in the wind and chase the ruffs of waves as if he’d never felt freedom before, as if he were having the time of his life.
II
    She took off her cape and threw it over the little girl. Better to freeze than have to look at the blood-soaked dress of the body on the black rocks. The small dog was hysterical — running to nose at the cape, then back to Molly, going dog-crazy.
    Standing on the high-piled rocks at the end of the Cobb, Molly Singer felt removed from the scene, a dream figure, looking down; a nonparticipant, the prying eye of some god.
    In the seamless merging of sea and sky she could find no horizon. There was a chalky moon, and the sky was hammered with stars. And a distance off were the lights along the Parade.
    Back and forth ran the dog. She would have to do somethingabout the dog. Molly had a vision of the little girl and her dog, walking out along the Cobb, two dark silhouettes against the darker outline of the seawall.
    She would have to get the dog back to shore. She was freezing, but at least she couldn’t see the body now, which was the important thing.
    Holding on to the dog, which struggled in her arms, she picked her way over the rocks and back to the seawall. On one of the dogtags was the name of its cottage.
    She found Cobble Cottage and left the dog there, inside the gate.
    Molly stood on the deserted Marine Parade, her own rented cottage at her back, the cold forgotten as she leaned against the railing where seaweed was tied like scarves, thrown up by the tide. The wooden groins along the shingle kept the sand from shifting. It would be nice if the mind could build itself such a protective wall.
    She looked along the Cobb to the pile of rocks from which she had come.
    All she could think of was the line from Jane Austen. The young people were all wild to see Lyme.

SEVEN
    E LEVEN it might have been, but the manager of the White Lion didn’t argue about the licensing laws any more than had Freddie’s customers — though here it worked in reverse. The manager reopened the bar and smiled conspiratorially after Jury and Wiggins booked rooms. “Residents only,” he said.
    Wiggins, probably in some attempt to stay the awful effects of sea air, went straight to bed. It was the weather that had forced Jury and Wiggins to stop on the way back from