I Am the Only Running Footman by Martha Grimes Read Free Book Online

then? She’s not terribly attractive.”
    This was said with some relief, as if removing the lady in the Porsche from the running of marriageable females. These Agatha appeared to see as so many lovelies hastening toward the family vaults of Ardry End, its chinoiserie, crystal, Queen Anne furniture, and the titles that Melrose had dropped like petals in the dust — earldom, viscountcy, baronetcy — that could still be gathered up (she seemed to think) and glued back on the bud.
    â€œYou don’t have visitors this time of year, Melrose.” She sighed and called again for her sherry. Scroggs went on turning the pages of his newspaper. “It’s not like the old days. Remember your dear mother, Lady Marjorie —”
    Here she would go again, poking along the paths of his family memories like a pig rooting through rosebushes. “The Countess of Caverness, yes. And my father, and my uncle Robert. I have always had a very good memory for detail. But what were you doing up at Ardry End?”
    â€œTo see Martha about the Christmas dinner. She said it hadn’t been decided yet.”
    â€œIt has. Poor Man’s Goose and Idiot Biscuits.”
    â€œMy favorite!” said Marshall Trueblood. “I hope we’re invited.”
    â€œOf course. You always are.”
    â€œYou’re making it up,” said Agatha, stomping her cane on the floor in an attempt to unglue Scroggs from his paper. “There’s no such thing.”
    â€œThere certainly is. It’s actually ox-liver. And for your sweet you may have raspberry flummery. Or would you prefer the gooseberry fool? Martha’s quite good with a fool.” Melrose yawned and watched the Jack Russell through the leaded window that spelled out Hardy’s Crown in amber lettering. It was sniffing round the feet of a woman in a brown hat standing on the pavement looking speculatively at Trueblood’s window. Melrose thought she looked familiar.
    â€œThere she is!” cried Agatha, craning her neck to peer through the leaded glass.
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    â€œI didn’t mean to barge in,” said the young woman in the brown hat.
    It was, thought Melrose, looking at the dreamy, gawky girl, exactly the sort of comment that Lucinda St. Clair would make. She was the sort of woman who people would still refer to as a “girl” even in her late twenties or early thirties.
    â€œYou’re not barging!” said Vivian with the first display of brightness she had shown since she’d walked in.
    For Melrose, Vivian Rivington had always embodied in near-equal measure beauty, grace, and kindliness. She could wear as she now did the old wool skirt and twinset or doll herself up in what Trueblood designated as “the Italian period,” but she still never seemed to know what to do withherself or whether the one or the other persona fit. Thus it wasn’t surprising that she should take the measure of Lucinda St. Clair, probably thinking that here was a female in even worse shape than she, Vivian; one who was dressed in an even drabber twinset.
    â€œThank you very much,” said Lucinda with a look of gratitude hardly occasioned by the simple act of Trueblood’s pulling out a chair for her. He himself knew Sybil St. Clair, her mother, who was an occasional customer of his. This made it that much worse for Agatha — that even Trueblood had indirect knowledge of their visitor and she none.
    Lucinda’s eyes were large and chestnut brown. When they met the beady black ones of Agatha, she quickly looked away. Agatha had been silently scouring Lucinda St. Clair for signs of marriageability, signs which Agatha always seemed to think such ladies sported in neon-bright arrows. Then Agatha squinted and demanded to know if they had met.
    Melrose sighed and hoped neither would track the memory down. They had indeed met, albeit very briefly, at one of those dreadful parties at Lady