The Old Contemptibles by Martha Grimes

Author:Martha Grimes [Grimes, Martha]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Thrillers, Traditional British, Mystery & Detective, Suspense, Fiction
ISBN: 9780345513571
Google: 7_efkQEACAAJ
Amazon: B00BW4OMI4
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2008-09-29T18:30:00+00:00

23

Which he did, after tea, when she was feeding hounds. As the cage of the kennel clicked shut behind, the raucous outcry he’d heard in the distance had died; hounds were gobbling down their glutinous feed and slurping at their water.

Mist had rolled in across the cobbled yard and covered their feet, Millie’s wellingtons squelching as she walked over to the wall to set down the empty buckets. For all the attention she paid, he might have been invisible. Then, with a feigned little start, she said, “Oh, hello,” as if she hadn’t noticed until that moment his approach through the rising ground mist.

“Don’t sound surprised. You knew I’d wonder just who I am, if I’m not what I say I am.”

She looked up at him, chewing at the inside of her mouth, as if now that he was here, she wasn’t too sure. “Oh, I don’t know that. I only know you’re not a book-cataloguer; you’re not really here to work on Mr. Holdsworth’s library.” Then she waited out the ensuing silence.

“Just how do you know that?”

“You told me.” She walked with her buckets through the door to the kennels. Hounds sounded as if they were rioting.

Melrose called after her, “What the devil’s that supposed to mean?”

She came out onto the cobbles and stared up at him. “If you were what you said, you’d have looked at my message, frowned, looked peculiar and read it out to everyone.” She shrugged. “But you made something up to say.”

He wouldn’t have minded so much being found out by Fellowes, or Madeline or any of them. But this eleven-year-old child with her witchy cat (Sorcerer had just emerged from the gloom) was really too much. “So you weren’t sure until then. Well, what would have happened if I had read it out?”

“I’d have said it’s a Chinese saying. Want to take a walk?” She was buttoning up an outgrown overcoat, short in the sleeves and not as long as her dress.

Melrose winced. “Are you sure you feel safe, walking about with a person who’s not what he says he is? I could be dangerous.”

“No more than anyone else around here. I want to show you something.”

• • •

“They told me it was an accident,” she said, as they stood on a small shelf of cliff surrounded by conifers that overlooked the foot of Wast Water. The three of them (Sorcerer making a third) had walked for perhaps ten minutes through the deeply wooded land and come out here, not far above the lake. “Come on,” Millie commanded, making her way down the rocks. Melrose followed.

It was not a cave, exactly, but another mass of lichen-covered rocks with the shelf above serving as a roof. Sphagnum moss dripped down from the rocks above. The overlapping flattish stones on which they stood, Millie pointing downward, were slippery with cladonia. “They said she slid and fell down onto the lake shore. See that sort of path?”

Not a path to walk down, certainly, more of a gully beside which ran a narrow beck.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.