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

Jane Hay-Hurt’s. But he didn’t think Agatha could put a name to this memory, for she had been busy talking to Lady Jane, who was in absolutely no danger of joining the Ardry-Plant line and raiding the inheritance. Lady Jane was literally long in the tooth, resembling as she did an Alsatian, and Agatha liked to push Melrose in her path, realizing that the Ardry-Plant fortune was perfectly safe. But in Lucinda, Agatha would see a possible adversary relationship; here was an eligible woman who had crossed Agatha’s field of vision and had the temerity not to withdraw from the field. She was youngish and nice and merely plain. Melrose hoped that nothing would jog his aunt’s memory because then she would recall having met Lucinda’s mother, Sybil, with whom his aunt had had a wonderfultime sitting on Lady Jane’s settee, demolishing teacakes and characters.
    â€œNo, you haven’t,” said Melrose, putting a dead stop to speculation. “Miss St. Clair somewhat resembles Amelia Sheerswater.” It was a name plucked from air. But it would make Agatha wonder about this new addition to the ranks of Melrose’s women. “We’re just having a drink; what would you like?”
    Lucinda St. Clair drew her brown hair away from her face and appeared to be in deep colloquy with herself over the drink selection.
    â€œHow about sherry?” offered Vivian helpfully. “The Tio Pepe’s very good.”
    As if Tio Pepe were a drink so rare, refined, and quixotic that it changed from bottle to bottle and pub to pub, thought Melrose. But might as well let Vivian do her thing. Lucinda nodded and Trueblood called to Dick Scroggs for the sherry before he settled back to plug a blue Sobranie into his holder.
    Everyone smiled at Lucinda except Agatha, who still was scanning the St. Clair face for telling signs of the Sheerswater one.
    It occurred to Melrose when Dick brought her Tio Pepe and stood there looking at the newcomer with his bar towel draped over his shoulder that perhaps the girl was uncomfortable amidst all of this attention. Indeed Lucinda looked from her glass to him and smiled weakly as if she thought she were expected to perform at this little pre-Christmas gathering, to jump up and recite something or tell a clever anecdote. What she did not realize was that they had all been saying pretty much the same thing to one another for years now and it was refreshing to see an unfamiliar face joining their ranks.
    Melrose saw Lucinda sliding down a bit in her chair and decided to extricate her before the group all burst into carol-singingor something. He picked up his drink and hers, smiled, and excused both himself and her. “I really think Miss St. Clair has come to Long Piddleton for a bit of a talk with me.”
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    When they were seated at a table near the fireplace, she began with another apology for presuming upon their brief acquaintance, and told him she was just on her way back from Northampton where she’d gone to pick up some materials and things. “For Mother. She’s doing up a house in Kensington. You remember Mother?”
    Didn’t he just. Sybil had once been plain wife and mother before she’d taken up the artsy ways of the world of interior design. Typical of her, too, that she’d send the daughter to do the dog’s work, running about with swatches of material, matching and measuring. As he remembered her, she seemed to prefer frocks without waists, all folds that hung aimlessly here and there. There was all the shine and glint in her complexion that Clinique could give her.
    Melrose had met her again on one of his infrequent trips to London. He had befriended Lucinda, feeling something of the agony of a young woman with no social graces and the thin-legged, long-nosed look of a crane. She wore white and shouldn’t have, as it only increased the image. Poor Lucinda managed to turn a deer park into