"Vaguely," Jury said.

"In addition to being fairly tall, fairly dark, and fairly handsome, he's politeness on a platter and usually seems to be lost in contemplation of a world beyond the Jack and Hammer."

"Is there one?" asked Diane, tapping ash from her cigarette. "And am I in it?" She looked vaguely, dreamily around the room.

Trueblood went on. "I think he's intelligent, but since he doesn't talk much, it's hard to say. It's all so-irregular."

"What does that mean?" asked Jury.

"Vivian shouldn't marry a foreigner. She shouldn't even marry a person we don't know. He won't fit, you know, our little routines."

Said Diane, "He won't be around for our little routines, Marshall. I expect they'll want to live in Venice instead of Long Pidd."

"Good lord!" said Jury. "Prefer Venice to Long Piddleton? What philistines!"

Trueblood took him seriously. "It's the truth, though. We don't like it at all."

"Tell me, who's we?"

"Who? Why the Long Piddletonians. Ada Crisp is dead against it, as is Miss Twinney. Jurvis the Butcher is all out of sorts. d.i.c.k Scroggs doesn't think this foreigner has any business just marching in here and carrying off Vivian. Trevor Sly's beside himself-"

"No," said Jury. "Richard Jury's beside himself listening to this twaddle. Trevor Sly? Since when did any of you ever give a b.l.o.o.d.y d.a.m.n what he thinks? And how did you collect these opinions anyway? Do a door-to-door canva.s.s?"

"Well, no, not exactly. . . ."

"Not exactly. What you did was b.u.t.tonhole anybody you could and talk about Franco Giopinno in most unflattering terms. The point being," Jury went on, just as testily, "how do you know she isn't in love with him?"

Three pairs of eyes looked at him as if he'd taken leave of his senses.

Love?

Love was quickly jettisoned. "I hope you're intending to come back with us, old sweat," said Trueblood to Plant. "We've got to fix up-you know-something, some way to get Viv-Viv out of this."

Jury's tone was sarcastic, something he rarely reverted to. "I hope it's as successful as your trip to Venice to announce my impending wedding."

They had done this but preferred not to be reminded.

Trueblood said, "It did work, Superintendent, remember? It got her back to Northants, didn't it? C'mon, Melrose, think, will you?" He tented his hand over his brow as if his brain wattage was about to blow.

Melrose sighed. "Why bother? Look who's here to do it for us." He nodded in the direction of the doorway.

Lady Ardry, accompanied by her doppelganger, Esther Laburnum, filled the spot recently vacated by the five dogs. It wasn't, Melrose decided, much of a trade-off. They stood, arm in arm, then moved forward toward the table, still arm in arm, as smoothly as a couple in a ballroom dancing contest.

Said Agatha, "Well! Here's half of Long Piddleton come like the mountain to Muhammad. I'd like to introduce my good friend Esther Laburnum." She did so, coming round to Jury. "And this is my great friend Superintendent Richard Jury, who's solved more cases than you could shake a stick at, but like your typical policeman is never around when you need him." Agatha laughed at her little joke. "Thank you," she said to Jury, who had politely risen to pull two chairs up to the table.

Esther Laburnum, who could talk a blue streak selling real estate, was silent; but, then, Agatha would make up for it, as she was always worth two people talking. They sat down and she ordered large sherries for both of them.

"Superintendent, this is a bad thing, isn't it? I was astounded when I heard it was that Friel woman-"

Melrose interrupted. "I thought you said you suspected her right along, Agatha."

"More or less. Yes, my heart does go out to that boy, having his aunt killed in that way."

Was she, Melrose wondered, delivering a message to this boy, Melrose?

"What will happen to him?"

Esther Laburnum drank off her sherry in one go and, thus lubricated, found her faculty of speech had not deserted her. "The Woodbine is heavily in debt. Of course, it belongs to young John now, or the controlling interest does. Brenda Friel's interest in it-well, who knows who that'll go to." She looked round the table as if she expected someone there to cough up an answer. "She's no family I know of, except some distant relations in London; her life revolved around that girl of hers, Ramona. Oh, such a tragedy, such a tragedy. I expect John'll have to sell up to pay off the debts, but property such as that tearoom is not in demand."

While Esther handed down this litany of woe, Agatha sat there smiling approval as if Esther were a wind-up doll set to present the opinions of its mistress.

"The dear boy," Esther continued, "seemed not to want to heed my advice, but then I expect he's too upset to think of practical matters. I told him that perhaps he could induce Mrs. Hayter to help run the place as long as her sympathy was involved-"

Even Marshall Trueblood was taken aback, listening to such blatant cynicism.

"-to do the baking and so forth, but I couldn't imagine her doing all of it, and advised him again, quite firmly, to sell up."

"Who's the buyer?" asked Diane Demorney, narrowly regarding Esther through a scrim of cigarette smoke.

Esther sat up straight, her hands fluttering about her throat-her pearls, her neckline. "What? What are you suggesting?"

Diane shrugged. "I'm not suggesting anything. I'm merely saying you must have a buyer. You seem to be so anxiously advising this boy to sell his property. Sounds like there's scarcely a moment to lose, I, mean, seeing how you intrude upon his grief this way."

There was dead silence, as there so often is if one speaks a hugely embarra.s.sing truth. Diane looked at Melrose and then away again with a tart little smile. A speech like this from Diane came around as often as a chorus of caroling goldfish at Christmas.

Esther Laburnum looked to Agatha for something- support, Melrose imagined. And pigs might fly. Esther then took the only course open to her: she changed the subject. In a simpering manner, she said to Melrose, "Lord Ardry, I don't imagine you had any idea what you were in for when you took Seabourne House."

This innocuous observation called forth nothing from Melrose but "No, I didn't."

"It was so dreadful, what happened to those poor Bletchley children. Unimaginable."

"Not, unfortunately, unimaginable. Someone was very able to imagine it."

"But it's still a mystery. Had she-you know-anything to do with it?"

She-you-know meaning Brenda Friel. Hers was now a name one best not speak, as if it carried in it some black enchantment that might lead other innocents down to the sea.

Melrose answered, "Not that I know of."

Esther kept going. "And that poor young man at Bletchley Hall. I heard she was the one who shot him. Good heavens! Her mind was obviously disturbed, wasn't it?"

Jury said, "There was a great deal of disturbance." He rose. "I'm going to collect my things. Got to head back to London."

"Now? Oh, surely not!" said Esther Laburnum, as if she were fully conversant with Jury's job.

"I'm afraid so. As soon as I can find Sergeant Wiggins."

"But-" Diane paused. "You can at least stop in Long Piddleton. It's right on your way."

"For anyone who thinks Oxford is on the way to Cornwall, yes, I guess it is." Jury smiled.

"But we've been absolutely counting on you."

Jury laughed. "Not too much, Miss Demorney. You only saw me an hour ago."

Diane wasn't giving up. "But that's the effect you have on people, don't you know? The minute one sees you, one begins to count on you. One begins to undertake all sorts of supposedly impossible schemes because you can pull one through."

Jury laughed harder. "You can certainly take a compliment and run with it."

Melrose said, "I'll be cutting my visit short, Miss Laburnum; I'll be returning to Northamptonshire with my friends."

"I, myself," said Agatha, "will be staying on in Bletchley a bit longer."

Was that a collective sigh of relief Melrose heard? "Esther here is giving me a crash course in selling real estate. She seems to think I've a natural apt.i.tude for it."

Melrose felt like resting his head in the peanut bowl. Agatha couldn't sell anyone a winning lottery ticket. Imagine her trying to sell a house. He felt weak with held-back laughter.

"Well, I don't see what's so amusing about that! I've nothing more to say to you, Melrose, nothing at all."

"Oh, I don't know. You could say you've been to Bletchley, but you've never been to you." Melrose tossed a handful of peanuts into his mouth and smiled.

Jury was upstairs packing ("my meager belongings"); Trueblood was valuing the furniture ("A George First bureau, by G.o.d; do you think this Bletchley fellow would let it go?"); and Diane and Melrose were standing in the foyer as she gazed round and round and finally landed on the staircase.

"Melrose, did you ever see an old film . . . what was its name? It was before my time of course-most things are-but it's on video. It's about this old house. . . ."

Diane recounted the entire story of The Uninvited as Melrose stood rooted, mouth agape, absolutely bamboozled by the idea that he and Diane shared a common memory.

"It always made me feel-"

Diane feeling?

"-rather queer, rather off."

Even if the feelings hardly reached beyond the murky depths of "queer" and "off."

"As a matter of fact, Diane, yes, I do know it. The Uninvited, it's called. I thought of it the first time I saw this house." He was prepared to explore this strange coincidence of his and Diane's being, possibly, the only two people in the world besides Dan Bletchley who had seen and remembered The Uninvited. "Now, the music, if you recall-"

"But the girl, Melrose. That dreadful white dress!"

So much for exploration; they were back safely in Demorney territory of paper tigers and cardboard alligators and designer wardrobes. She was plugging a cigarette into her foot-long holder, which he then lighted.

"What are you going to do about Vivian, Melrose?"

"Do?"

"Yes, do."

"Oh . . . Trueblood and I will think of something."

Diane heaved a great sigh. "I'm not talking about one of your daffy schemes. Good G.o.d, I still remember that black notebook business."

Melrose preferred to forget it. To pay her back, he smirked and said, "You wouldn't be interested in Count Dracula yourself, would you?"

Diane looked pained. "Don't be absurd. And I don't want to live in Venice. All that wine and water."

"You make it sound like quite a religious experience."

Looking round, as if she expected the doors of a drinks cabinet to fly open on seeing her, Diane asked, "You wouldn't have any vodka about, would you?"

"Oh, I'm sure we can find some."

Martini in hand-or, rather, vodka in hand, vermouth having eluded their search, "as if it mattered"-Diane trailed after Trueblood, making unschooled comments about the carpets and sideboards and silver and never shutting up, no matter how many times he told her to.

Jury had come down with his duffelbag.

"Three weeks in Ireland and that's all you took?"

"Since one might not survive three days, I didn't see the sense in packing for a long and happy life, right?"

"Did you call Macalvie? You said you were going to."

"No. I thought we'd stop in Exeter. Unlike Oxford, it is on the way."

Melrose pulled him aside (as from an unseen audience) and said, "Listen, you really should stop off in Long Piddleton."

"And like Oxford, that is not on the way."

"Come on. Vivian would listen to you."

Jury laughed. "No, she wouldn't. And who the h.e.l.l are we to tell her what to do? It's her life."

"Oh, please. You're not going to resort to that old cliche, made up for people who want to abnegate responsibility?"

"She's my responsibility? Moi?" Jury clapped his hands to his chest.

"Certainly. It's not 'her' life."

"It isn't? Then whose?"

"All of ours. You've got to do something, Richard. She'd listen to you."

Jury just gazed at him.

"Don't give me that look. It's your what a chump look."

"It is indeed."