The Man with a Load of Mischief by Martha Grimes Read Free Book Online Page A

child stuck to the same story every time, afraid, perhaps, that any change in her account would see her in the dock of the Old Bailey.
    As Twig sat their drinks before them, Matchett said, “What do you think, Plant, about this business?” He always managed to bring Melrose into conversations as if he had found him, like an old suit of clothes, on a Oxfam rack.
    Melrose studied his cigar. “I suppose I agree with Wilde. Murder’s a mistake. You shouldn’t do anything you can’t talk about after dinner.”
    â€œHow cold-blooded of you —” Agatha began, but was interrupted by Matchett’s rising to greet two people who had walked into the bar. “Here’s Oliver and Sheila.”
    Melrose watched his aunt try on several smiles to see which one fit. She loathed both Oliver and Sheila, but couldn’t let it show. Although Melrose shared her dislike of Oliver Darrington, he thought Sheila a pretty good sport. She was euphemisticallydescribed as Darrington’s “secretary,” but all knew she was his mistress. And although she appeared to be little more than a hanger-on, like a starlet on the arm of a producer, Melrose suspected she had twice the brains Darrington had — not much of a compliment, since he had none. What she concentrated largely on showing was her body, which, together with her face, made a very pleasant package. Melrose did not really go for the type, though he could understand how many men would. He liked a woman to look at him out of clear and honest eyes — Vivian Rivington’s eyes, perhaps. Sheila’s were so heavily outlined that he often got the impression, close up, of looking at a very pretty seal.
    Sheila and Oliver drew up chairs, slung their coats across them, and seemed prepared to talk about the one subject Melrose was sick of.
    â€œOliver’s got a theory,” said Sheila.
    â€œOnly one?” asked Melrose, staring at a moose above the bar, whose cracked white plaster lips were in need of seeing-to by a taxidermist.
    â€œIt’s horribly clever,” said Sheila. “Just you listen.”
    Melrose preferred to study the moose.
    â€œDon’t you think so, Mel?” Sheila was nudging him.
    â€œThink? About what?” Melrose yawned. His stomach rumbled.
    Sheila pouted. “Oliver’s theory . About the murders. Haven’t you been listening?”
    â€œPay no attention to Melrose,” said Lady Ardry, adjusting her fox-fur neck piece. “He never listens.” Melrose thought the little glass eyes of the fox were imploring him. From the moose to the fox. Had he become a lover of the wild?
    Whether Melrose wanted to know or not, Sheila was leaning across the table toward him, pouring out Oliver’s theory: “That it’s someone with a grudge against Long Piddleton. Someone that was wronged by the town, and the wound festered and festered, and he’s seen a way to get his revenge.”
    â€œWhy didn’t he just toss his badge in the dirt?” asked Melrose, discarding the long ash from his cigar. “Gary Cooper did.” He was very fond of old westerns.
    Sheila looked perplexed and Oliver stopped smiling cleverly.
    â€œI told you, Sheila. Pay no attention to him. Pretend he’s not here,” said Agatha, who then asked for another pink gin.
    But Sheila persisted. “Oliver’s writing a book, you know. A kind of fictionalized documentary about this sort of thing —”
    â€œ This sort of thing?” inquired Melrose, politely.
    â€œ You know, about especially weird sorts of murders —”
    â€œCome on, Sheila, don’t give it all away,” said Darrington. “You know I don’t talk about works in progress.”
    Agatha was looking grim. In Long Piddleton, he was her chief competition, having enjoyed a modest fame for several years as a writer of detective novels. The fame (much to her delight) was racing downhill after