Rainbow's End by Martha Grimes Read Free Book Online Page B

gold.”

SIX
    Rainbow’s End was a quiet pub that had once had the advantage of traffic now diverted onto the A36. It backed onto a wide river that flowed through the Langfords, twin hamlets some twenty miles from Salisbury. It must have done a lot of dinner business, for the newish-looking dining room was surprisingly large.
    But Macalvie and Jury were in the older, much smaller saloon bar: brick and wood; handsome, upholstered Queen Anne chairs set around small tables; plenty of glass, gilt, and tulip-shaped wall sconces. Jury was reading a framed newspaper article (in which the pub got a mention, hence the framing) about New Agers trekking through the Langfords, leaving their philosophy (if one could call it that) and remnants of belongings along the way. New Agers. Jury felt strange, time-warped, having just come from Old Sarum and with the pub’s being so near to Stonehenge.
    â€œFifteen million pounds to turn the landscape into what it looked like in 2000 B.C .,” said Macalvie. “Now, is there anything in that that strikes you as just a little wacky?” He was complaining about the expensive and extensive plans the National Trust and English Heritage had for revamping Stonehenge and putting in a new tourist center.
    Jury smiled. “It does, yes.”
    â€œI mean, what in hell did the landscape look like in 2000 or 3000 B.C .? Neolithic man we’re talking about. How do these architects know?” Macalvie brooded, studying his nearly empty pint of lager.
    They had moved to the dining room where they ordered the river trout and another pint of lager.
    After a moment, Macalvie said, “The hard thing is going to be to get Rush to check for poisons. And get the body in London exhumed.”
    â€œWhat in hell are you talking about?”
    â€œYou know what I’m talking about. Give me the bread.”
    Jury absently handed a wicker basket to him. “Actually, I don’t. Poison?”
    Macalvie answered obliquely by saying, “You can bet my lady’s going to get a going over. At least I control that much.”
    â€œAnd what poison are you looking for?”
    Macalvie was examining his empty glass as if he were going to dust it for prints.
    â€œYou didn’t answer my question. You don’t know the answer, that’s why. So it shouldn’t take more than a millennium or two to identify this suspect poison.” Jury’s smile wasn’t very sincere. “You know how difficult it is if you don’t know what poison you’re looking for.”
    â€œI can eliminate, or the path guy can, obvious poisons. Tox testing can eliminate a lot more. A comprehensive serum and urine analysis will either turn up what it was or else eliminate hundreds of poisons.”
    Jury was getting impatient. “I don’t get it, Macalvie. Here’s a tourist who has an accident and ends up at the bottom of a well. The fall killed her. Why’re you making something else of it?” But Jury knew why, although to give Macalvie a connection between Angela Hope and Helen Hawes was apparently to grant him an even more tenuous connection to Frances Hamilton. “If you’re trying to account for the sickness before this Hope woman died, maybe it was simply food poisoning.”
    â€œPossible. But not very likely unless they all took tea together.”
    This begging the question irritated Jury. “You’re already assuming the same thing killed all of them.”
    Almost innocently, Macalvie looked at him. “Of course.”
    Jury shook his head, turned toward the windows of the pub overlooking the river, becalmed in the evening sun. Jury watched the water, the chequered light coming through the trees. Near the opposite bank, a swan buried its head beneath its wing, drifting. And he thought about Stratford and Jenny.
    Macalvie frowned at his own thoughts, his eyes following the direction of Jury’s own, out where a smoking mist hung along