Free The Winds of Change by Martha Grimes Page A

path, looking at the windows, having no sense of being watched. He walked around to the front of the house, where he saw an old man bent over a wheelbarrow into which he was throwing whatever he had uprooted from whatever bit of earth he was clearing.
    A Sisyphean task the old man had before him, given the general state of the land in front of the house. It looked as if it hadn’t been touched in years, and yet new shoots were still breaking through the earth, such as that iris forcing its way up through weeds. It must have been very hardy stock to begin with, hardy or so entrenched it couldn’t be stopped by time or inattention or carelessness. Beside a dry pool a miasma of pink climbing roses covered a trellis, nearly closing off the flaking benches where the occupants had once sat to enjoy the perfumed air.
    The arthritic-looking gardener (for Jury assumed him to be one) with his wheelbarrow couldn’t have gotten this lot into shape in a million years. Jury supposed he was an old retainer, kept on so that he might feel useful, thus keeping at bay the end of his declining years. But he also might have been there as some sort of evidence of the past, the unchanging, changeless past.
    The land here was thickly wooded. The branches of the trees on either side of what once had been a laburnum tunnel, or an avenue of chestnuts and laburnums and sycamores and oaks tangled together in so dense a canopy that the light of the afternoon sun could barely break their cover. It was inviting, at least to Jury, who liked his paths well shuttered. He walked for a short distance along this path, the path itself nearly obscured by rutted earth, tall grasses, weeds and fallen branches. Every once in a while he passed a tree whose trunk had been whitewashed with an X and Jury wondered if these trees were to be cut down, clearing the way a little. He picked at the whitewashed bark and found the paint to be old and flaking. Whoever had started the process of resurrecting this once-pretty path had forgotten it or decided not to bother.
    And the avenue would have been pretty, inviting a stroll in fragrant air, the source of which Jury couldn’t determine. He supposed it was a combination of scents. He turned and walked back, seeing the path as it once was. Jury had a divining eye, an eye trained to see outlines or patterns no longer adhered to but still there, like footprints in soft earth. The white crosses, the air of mystery and the tantalizing wish to find out what lay at the end of the path and if these trees were doomed. It was odd that the gardens behind the house were to be completely overhauled by some garden architect while the front of the house was, apparently, to be left untouched, seen to by the silent, elderly gardener. Declan Scott, he thought, must want to hang on to the past, or to his origins, or to keep whatever he could from changing.
    A thankless job, Mr. Scott, a thankless job.

10

    The door was opened by a woman of late middle age whose good looks were now fading and who appeared to be doing little to stop the progress. She wore no make up except for a dab of lipstick and a boxy haircut that didn’t serve her strong, squarish face. Had it not been for the white calf-length apron that bound her more like a winding sheet than an apron, Jury would have assumed she was a relation or friend of the owner rather than a member of staff. Indeed ‘staff,’ as he understood it, had been considerably reduced; the cook was standing in for a butler or valet, who once would have been a necessary adjunct to the house in its heyday of cars and carriages, when there was a full complement of valets, cooks, housemaids. There must once have been such staff, considering the size of the place and its obvious elegance, even though it might now not be ‘kept up’ the way it once had been, very much like the woman who stood here now.
    After he had identified himself - unnecessarily, for she knew who he was - the woman said she would let Mr.