Free Jerusalem Inn by Martha Grimes Page A

on her own, has landed me an invitation to suffer along with her.”
    Agatha turned her guns on Vivian, neither thanking nor paying Dick Scroggs, who set her sherry before her. Those sorts of things were left up to others. “Why? Plant doesn’t do anything artsy. Who’s invited you?”
    Vivian pulled a letter from her pocket: raised writing oncream-laid paper. “Charles Seaingham. You know, the critic. He does things on art and books for the papers.”
    He must not have done much for them, for Agatha denied all knowledge of the man.
    â€œI met him at that little party the publisher had — you know, when my book of poetry came out —”
    Always the morale-booster, Agatha snorted. “That. Poetry doesn’t sell, Vivian, as I’ve told you. You should write those romances like Barbara Cartland.” She took the letter from Vivian’s hand and read it through the lorgnette she occasionally affected, thinking it made her look stately and dignified.
    Difficult, thought Melrose, for Agatha to look like anything else but a stump. Indeed, as she sat there, solid and square in her dark brown tweed suit, that was just what she reminded him of. Birds could have nested in her hair.
    â€œMacQuade. Who’s he?”
    â€œA writer. He won —”
    Agatha was not interested in what he wrote or won. “Parmenger? Never heard of him,” thereby reducing the man’s size to a pea.
    â€œA painter.”
    â€œNudes, probably. Or big squares of color. Never did understand that sort of stuff.” She frowned. “This name. St. Leger. Lady St. Leger . . . now I know her —”
    â€œNo, you don’t,” said Melrose, without looking up from his puzzle.
    She frowned. “And just how do you know?”
    â€œIf you knew her you’d know how to say her name: ‘Sel-in-ger’, not ‘Saint Leger.’ As ‘St. John’ is pronounced ‘Sinjen.’ ”
    â€œAnd how would you pronounce Saint Francis of Assisi, then? Sinfrenass? I don’t know why you people don’t spell your names the way they sound.”
    She thrust the letter back into Vivian’s hands, and tried another line of attack: “I would like to know, Vivian, how itis you aren’t spending the holidays with your fiancé. That seems most peculiar.”
    â€œBecause, frankly, I just don’t feel like traveling all the way to Venice and, also, frankly, I don’t get on too well with his family, and —”
    â€œAnd, also, frankly,” said Melrose, “Count Dracula doesn’t like Christmas. All those crosses —”
    Vivian’s face went a fiery red. “Would you please stop calling him ‘Count Dracula’!” She slammed down her half-pint, spewing up droplets of ale. Melrose thought it quite a display of anger for mild-mannered Vivian, although she had picked up a little Mediterranean temperament in those months in Italy.
    Trueblood said, “Actually, Dracula wasn’t an Italian, Melrose; he was Transylvanian.”
    â€œHe traveled a lot, though.”
    â€œOh, shut up!” Vivian turned her chair away.
    Smiling wonderfully, Trueblood said, “But he is a count, isn’t he, Viv-viv.”
    â€œStop calling me ‘Viv-viv,’ and, yes, he is a count.”
    â€œForeigner,” said Agatha with distaste, forgetting Milwaukee, city of her birth. “He’d have to give way over here, title or no. He’s a foreigner.”
    â€œItalians usually are, dear Aunt.”
    Trueblood plucked up a cigarette that matched his ascot, waved the match out as elaborately as a catherine wheel, and said, “ I found him quite charming.”
    That was no recommendation, thought Melrose.
    Agatha had clearly decided that Vivian was having entirely too much good fortune — what with Italian counts plucked from blue Mediterranean shores and house parties with the literati.