The Blue Last

Agatha sometimes, the way she’s always telling me how I’ll feel?”

Polly was not offended. This was because she liked taking her own line, and not paying that much attention to Melrose’s. Right now she put down the spoon with which she’d been eating Weetabix (Melrose had never known anyone to actually order Weetabix in a restaurant) and asked, “What are you and Richard Jury working on?”

“How do you know we are?”

“I know. You’re obvious.”

“Can’t discuss it. Sorry.”

Polly made little jumps in her chair, “Oh, come on, Melrose; you can tell me a little, can’t you?”

“Okay.” He told her about the murder of Simon Croft. “It was in the papers; maybe you read about it.”

She shook her head. “What else?”

“Nothing else.” Melrose had imbibed too much of Divisional Commander Macalvie’s philosophy: don’t.

Yet he felt moved to tell her about Gemma and the shooting.

“My God, Melrose! Whoever would murder a nine-year-old child?”

“Because it happens, doesn’t it? A child abducted, beaten, maimed, raped, held hostage. Murdered. I know someone to whom it’s happened.”

“Who?”

Melrose shrugged, sorry he’d brought it up. He was thinking of Brian Macalvie again. “You wouldn’t know him.”

“But in these circumstances? Her home, her family?”

The waiter set two fresh cups before them with a waiterly flourish and Melrose asked for the bill.

“In any event, Jury thinks it’s possible someone else was the target. A girl employed as undergardener who often went into the greenhouse.”

“Did she tell him that?”

“No.”

“Then how does he know?”

Melrose stopped his spoonful of foam on the way to his mouth. “What do you mean?”

“What makes you think this undergardener and not the nine-year-old was the target?”

“It seemed more-plausible. The girl often worked in the greenhouse after dark. Also, she quit right after the shooting.”

“So would I. Yet she wasn’t in the greenhouse and the little girl was. Unless the shooter was blind.”

“The undergardener is quite small. The greenhouse is shadowy, murky. The killer expected the girl to be there. Add that up and it’s possible.”

“It’s possible, but is it probable? You’re going to quite a bit of trouble twisting the facts to suit what you want to believe.” She sighed. “Mysteries, mysteries, mysteries, mysteries.” Her head wagged from side to side as if she were shaking water out of her ears or auditioning for the role in the next Exorcist film. “I’m getting to loathe mysteries, including my own. Maybe mostly my own.”

Melrose was relieved to get away from the Gemma affair. Was Polly smarter than they? “Good heavens, Polly, that’s terrible. But you do write other books.”

“I could have written A la recherche et cetera and they’d still have me swimming the genre gutter.”

“But I like your Inspector Guermantes. Of the Surete.” He’d like him better if Polly weren’t fishing names out of Proust.

“So do I, but that doesn’t mean I have to dance every dance with him. Only, if I don’t I’ll probably have to go back to being a wallflower.”

“That you will never be.” Melrose pushed back from the table and signed for the waiter, lurking back there in the shadows with two others. “I’ve got to go, Polly.”

Polly regarded her empty Weetabix bowl. “Yes, I guess I should, too.”

“Polly, when are you ever going to come visit me? I’ve asked you several times.”

“I’d like to.” She gathered her coat around her. It was one of Polly’s unflattering colors, a rust shade that really looked rusty. “But I’d undoubtedly be overwhelmed. By your house and your ritzy friends.”

“You’re no competition for Mrs. Withersby, that’s sure.” Tired of waiting for his bill, Melrose dumped money on the table, including a hefty tip.

“Who’s she?”

“One of my ritzy friends.”

Melrose’s first stop was in Regent Street, where he went into Hamley’s. Given that this was only two days before Christmas, he had not been mistaken about the crowd. The place was jammed, understandably, with children.

Ill-advisedly stopping to inspect this year’s toy rage-some sort of lunar space station manned by robotic personnel-he found himself surrounded by kiddies, one of whom got her sticky fingers on his black jeans and looked at him as if he were a ladder she was about to climb for a front-row seat. Her little look was so baleful, he sighed and picked her up and set her on his shoulders. Now she got her fingers into his hair, and he listened to the chattering, gasping children who coveted this toy. The place thronged and thrummed with pre-Christmas anticipation.

The parents of these children were all mucking about with apparently no care that their little darlings might be in the arms of the Regent Street Ripper. Tired of his hair being shredded, Melrose set the little girl down where she promptly began wailing to be taken up again, her little arms reaching pitifully upward. He patted her head and strong-armed his way through a crowd as thick as treacle. A haggard sales assistant pointed him in the right direction.

He searched the tables and walls but found nothing he wanted. He turned away when his eye lit on one article that just might do as it was very stretchy. He plucked it from the long hook on the wall and plowed through the field of wildflower children to the cash register.

Outside, he stopped on the pavement to think. People swam around him as if he were no more than an irritating rock in the middle of a stream. Then he walked the short distance to Liberty’s and into its stationery department. There he purchased a pad of paper and ventured down to the coffee shop where he got himself an espresso. He sat down with the pad and carefully drew a picture.

Following this he found a pay phone still working in Oxford Street and called Mr. Beaton. Melrose told him what he wanted and apologized for such dreadfully short notice.

After this, he took a cab to the Old Brompton Road.

Mr. Beaton, whose premises were above a sweet shop, was delighted to see him again after-what was it-three years?

“My lord,” said Mr. Beaton with but a marginal bow.

Melrose had never had the heart to tell Mr. Beaton that he’d given up his titles years before. Mr. Beaton would put it down to carelessness at best, slovenliness at worst. Mr. Beaton never changed: always the morning coat, always the tape measure. If Melrose had his way he would hang the George Cross on the ends of that tape measure.

Mr. Beaton’s apprentice-this one, tall and angular with a shock of ginger hair-copied the fractional bow.

“Now, if you brought your drawing, I’ll see what I can do.”

Melrose produced the picture he’d drawn in Liberty’s coffee shop. “I’m pretty certain it’s to size, Mr. Beaton. I’ve a good memory for things like this.” Had he?

Mr. Beaton instructed his apprentice to bring out certain bolts of cloth. The young man slipped into a room at the rear and was back in a few seconds, carrying the bolts of material.

“Just feel this, now, Lord Ardry.” Tenderly, the tailor held out several inches of material from one of the bolts.

Melrose always felt humbled in the presence of Mr. Beaton, for the old man’s attitude toward cloth was as reverent as a priest’s toward the chalice. Just then, providentially, sunlight filtered through the small panes, fretting the cloth. Melrose fingered the wool and sighed. Woven air, spun sunlight, Melrose had never felt anything as soft