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

but to sit on dressing tables or in escritoires gathering dust. Her mother had collected them, tops painted with ribbons, flowers, hearts, in that rather vague if feverish excitement her mother affected in nearly everything she did.
    So Kate was surprised to find herself in another part of the shop looking at the old books, still holding the miniature in her hand. She must have been carrying it long enough to draw the riveted gaze of the shopkeeper to her. He had appeared again in the opening above the half-door to the room beyond, his hands clasped behind him, staring at her like a guard from a castle keep. Kate imagined that he thought she meant to nick it and she was embarrassed enough that she turned it over to see the price. Twenty pounds. It was noteven a good example of its kind: the heart was threaded with scratches, the gilt round the oval top was flaked. Indeed, it might not even have been an original, but under the censorious stare of the owner, she felt compelled to tell him she’d have it. Of course his manner altered accordingly, the gaze shifted, the tone when he spoke was as cottony as the small square placed into an overlarge box to act as a cushion.
    It was easy enough to explain to herself when she was outside on the pavement once more. Another little gift to appease the gods. What a conscience she must have, she thought, standing there outside the shop with its partly shuttered windows. If she had ever tried to do anything criminal, it would have caught her out immediately. How had her parents, both shallow, feckless dilettantes, managed between them to fashion it? Far more artistry had tone into this paste momento she held. She smiled grimly, pulled up the high collar of her lamb’s wool coat, and started down the narrow street toward the ocean. Her conscience put her in mind of some medieval chalice of the sort she remembered seeing at the Victoria and Albert. An elaborate, supposedly splendid (but Kate thought vulgar) liturgical icon, heavily chased with gold beading, studded about with jewels. Her conscience, she thought ruefully, was as impractical and flashy as her sister, Dolly.
    Kate maneuvered the narrow space between a Ford Granada with its bonnet up and the drab window of a boutique. The snow had had time to turn to slush, and the shoppers sluggish. None of the faces that she passed looked pleased with their errands or with their glittery surroundings. It was old glitter anyway, not new. The Royal Pavilion was banked in by scaffolding, and a wide, blue hoarding covered part of its front while it underwent repair. How many hundreds of pounds must be going into keeping these impractical,flashy minarets and turrets up. Kate thought again of Dolly.
    No one except herself had forced Kate into those years of nursing their father, so she shouldn’t blame Dolly for getting off scot-free. A flat in London, a score of lovers, and enviable looks were the rewards of self-indulgence — not to mention the money itself. Kate did not feel any bitterness with regard to her sister; Dolly had done nothing by way of manipulating the old man into leaving her the lion’s share of the inheritance. It had long been clear that he would favor the child who, short of being the son, most resembled himself.
    Kate had watched the progress of her father’s illness over the years uncoil and make its slow way through tissue and bone. Still to the end the society of others had been his vocation; he drank champagne at breakfast and Glenfiddich at tea. Illness and dissipation had turned him into a hollow-cheeked, wasted man who looked twenty years older than he was, one whose mind had clouded over at the end: he had “visions,” he said. The visions were usually uncomplimentary to his elder daughter, thought Kate wryly, and undoubtedly helped along by the Glenfiddich.
    What had surprised Kate and what now all but overwhelmed her was the knowledge that it hadn’t made any difference and that if