Read Online Jerusalem Inn by Martha Grimes - Free Book Online Page B

tourists, which amounted to the same thing. This one in particular, with his lavender ascot and jade green Sobranie, was a perfect match for Jack outside, although not as wooden. No less colorful (metaphorically speaking) was the old woman by the fireplace, tippling her gin and mumbling her gums, who sometimes charred for Dick Scroggs, and sometimes didn’t. When she didn’t, she talked to the stone hearth cat and drank her wages.
    â€œDo you think Scroggs will ever finish tarting this place up?” asked Marshall Trueblood, who owned the antiques shop next door. He looked round at the polished brass and pewter and recently added gamebird prints and plugged another Balkan Sobranie — pink, this time — into a long cigarette holder.
    Melrose Plant thought the question ill-advised, considering the source, but was too polite to say so. Plant had always considered Trueblood more of an event than a person. He kept on with his Times crossword, occasionally stopping to lift his pint of Old Peculier.
    â€œOh, I don’t know. I rather like it,” said Vivian Rivington. “It used to be such a grotty old place. Since the Load of Mischief closed, it’s rather nice having —”
    Marshall Trueblood shut his eyes in pain. “ Do stop being so full of bonhomie, darling. I find it quite tiring. Good lord, here’s old Scroggs parting his hair in the middle and slapping it down with some odious hair tonic. And he’s even doing meals. ” He sipped his Campari and lime.
    â€œWell, I like it, anyway. It’s somewhere to go for a meal if one doesn’t feel like cooking —”
    Trueblood dribbled ash into a tin tray. “If one wants a meal , darling, one goes to London.”
    â€œYou’re such a snob,” said Vivian, matter-of-factly.
    â€œWell, someone has to be one. Look at Melrose sitting there, who should be, and yet is so disgustingly egalitarian. Being a gentleman, darling” — this “darling” addressed to Melrose — “went out with Empire —”
    Melrose assumed he meant furniture and not colonialism.
    â€œYou’re an endangered species, Melrose. And I think it’s terribly boring of you — both of you — to be going away so close to the Christmas hols, and to County Durham. Good heavens, you must be mad. It’s near Newcastle and all sorts of roughs prowl the streets and brawl and break beer bottles at football matches. And it snows there.”
    â€œIt snows here, too. It’s that white stuff that was coming down this morning,” said Plant, working quickly through two ups and three downs.
    â€œI’m talking about snow, darling. Tons of it. Walls of it. It doesn’t do that here — what’s the matter Viv-viv? You look a bit pale.”
    Her face did look waxen in the firelight. “All that talk about snow. It reminds me of the big one we had years ago. And the murders.” She turned to Melrose. “Have you heard from Superintendent Jury lately, Melrose?”
    Known him for years and still won’t call him by his first name, thought Plant. Mistress Formality. “Phone calls, mostly. Jury hasn’t much time to write, I imagine.”
    Trueblood slapped his hand on the table, jumping the pints and glasses. “Now there was a perfectly divine man! Stopped by his digs once or twice whilst I was in London. But he’s never there. Let’s murder someone and get him back here. . . . ” He looked around at the old lady by the fire. “Withers, old trout,” he called out, “would you be willing to be done in for a lifetime supply of gin-and-it?” He turned back and said, “Not terribly logical, I expect, but . . . like a cig?” He held out his black box of Sobranies to the others.
    â€œNo thanks, I don’t smoke crayons,” said Melrose, getting out a thin cigar.
    Mrs. Withersby, hearing the magic word gin,