The Old Contemptibles by Martha Grimes Read Free Book Online Page A

so forth and now you’re, as they say, taking the piss out.”
    There was a pause. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. What did you say to Vivian?”
    Melrose dropped the receiver in the cradle without realizing it would crash in Jury’s ear.
    “He’s serious,” he said to the swords.

5
    Jury stared at the receiver, assumed either the connection or his friend’s mind had broken and smiled. Plant’s reactions had been a little strange, but then it was strange and sudden news. . . .
    Strange in a way to Jury himself, an announcement of an engagement that hadn’t been settled, a proposal that hadn’t even been made. And wondering if Jane would even want to marry him. Yet, given their relationship, she would at least take it seriously, he thought.
    But the doubt plagued him, perversely making him decide he would go out now and buy a ring—not anything too frighteningly formal, just a ring. That she might refuse only made him more determined.
    She needed him. After what she’d been through with her husband’s suicide and was still going through with his family in Cumbria, she needed—well, if not a husband, certainly an ally, someone besides her son. He seemed to be her one source of moral support.
    Whenever she talked about him, her mood, beginning blithely and happily, would shift either to one highly excitable or deeply morbid at the thought of the Holdsworths’ getting control of him, an idea that Jury told her was absurd. It would often provoke an argument, such as the one they’d had the night before.
     • • • 
    He shouldn’t have become so impatient, he knew. But her response to his own, as he thought, perfectly reasonable point that there could be no possible legal point that would permit the grandparents to take the boy from her, she had slammed her hairbrush down on the dressing table, shivering the contents on top, every article of which he knew by heart. The little silver-framed picture of her son jumped with the blow, as if he too were surprised at the fury.
    “You don’t know them, do you? Just because you’re a policeman, do you think you can predict every one’s behavior?”
    Jury ignored that.
    He had risen from the bed where he’d been sitting and come over to put his hands on her shoulders and look at her in the mirror. Everything about her presence seemed charged—her breathing, her eyes, the electricity that lifted a fine veil of hair. “Janey, you’re not thinking straight.”
    “Thank you for that!”
    Jury retrieved the silver-backed brush and went to brush her hair, thinking it might calm her, but she pushed his hand away. In a smaller voice and looking down at the table top, she said, “A remittance woman, that’s what Genevieve called me, oh, with a smile, naturally.”
    “What on earth is that supposed to mean?”
    Now she was brushing her own hair, furiously. “That what I live on came from my family, and it’s not much. That we live in Lewisham. That I don’t have a job. That I’ve lost four in as many years, even if two were unfairly lost. . . . Well, it’s true, I have no head for business or money. That the next move will be into a cold-water flat—”
    “How about mine?” Jury reached down and kissed her cheek.
    Then she started weeping soundlessly, tears running slowly down and splashing, one by one, on the glass-topped table as she raised her hand to cover his. “Oh, Lord, I’m so sorry. Why do I have to take it out on you?” And then she turned swiftly and grabbed him round the waist and clung.
    “Take it out on me, anytime, love. Anytime. And what on earth’s wrong with this house? Two up, two down, perfectly respectable.”
    He could feel her breath warm through his shirt as she said, “How the hell would you know?” She laughed. “You told me you couldn’t picture anything but the bedroom.” She looked up at him andsmiled, then leaned her head against him again. “The thing is, it’s the fourth move in five