said, impatiently, “Well, come on. I’m off.”
Melrose followed. “Where to?”
“Home. I’ve got some steak and potatoes fritz.”
Melrose was entranced. Home. “Not ‘fritz,’ it’s
Bea ran down the wide stairs. “Don’t know why you bother with me, someone clever as you.”
Melrose smiled. He knew why.
“Home” was a roomy flat up three flights of stairs. No elevator. He would gladly have driven a Tin Lizzie up Pike’s Peak had Beatrice Slocum’s flat been at the top of it. Once inside, she flicked on the light and he flicked it off.
“There you go ag-”
He kissed her. It was a very long and lush kiss, and she joined in, after scant resistance.
“So,” he said, separating only long enough to say it, “where’re the potatoes
“In the bedroom.”
“Mm.”
This time she kissed him. “With the steak.”
Her arms were still wrapped around him and her chin on his shoulder when he said, “Do you ever think of marriage?”
“Me? Sure. A lot.” She rolled away and looked up at the ceiling, sighing. “We’re not good marriage material, us.”
He turned to look at her. “No, I expect ‘us’ aren’t, not if you look at us like bolts of cloth to be cut and stitched.” After another moment’s reflection, he said, “I’m pretty rich.”
“Uh-huh.” Peacefully, she yawned.
Melrose turned to look at her as she yawned again and did something blubbery with her lips. “You look like a fish.”
“Ta, very much. That’ll really get your proposal up and running.”
“Who said I was proposing?”
Bea spread her hand to catch a beam of moonlight. “What are you trying to sell, then, if not yourself?”
Melrose reached up and took her hand and kept it. “I’m doing an inventory.”
“Of what?” She yawned, loudly.
“Myself, my things.”
“Sure.”
“It’s true. I try to do one every year. It’s quite extensive. For instance, down in my wine cellar, I have a whole case of a Premier Cru from Puligny-Montrachet. And that’s just for starters.”
She lay in silence, turning this over. She said, “Down in my basement cubicle I have a case of Malvern water, fifty cans of mixed nuts, and a giant cactus. Just for starters.”
He looked at her sideways, surreptitiously. She’d found some gum-not, he hoped, a plug from under the end table. She was chewing raucously:
“Good thing, ’cause I could never marry a man who’s so snobby.”
This brought Melrose up and resting on his arm. “A snob.
“Um.”
“Well, I’m not.” He fell back on the bed again. “Haven’t we strayed from the point?”
“We? You’re the one strayed; I was just listening to you go down your wine list. You should’ve been one of them blokes like at Dotrice’s.”
Dotrice was her favorite restaurant, French and expensive. “The sommelier? Thanks. Anyway, we were talking about marriage-in a general, very hypothetical way.”
She did not reply. Her eyes were closed.
“Are you asleep?”
“No, but I’m considering it.”
She was just trying to irritate him. “What are you thinking?”
“About this painting I’m stuck on.”
Not terribly complimentary that here he was
“The mouth. It’s a portrait.”
“Who of?”
“A friend. Just a bloke I know. But I know a lot of blokes. Friends-like, you know.”
This friendly bloke-ness irritated him, as he knew the bloke himself would.
“Come on, get up”-she was sitting up herself now, pulling at his hand-“and I’ll show you.”
“I don’t
“Suit yourself.” She was out of bed and putting on a man’s white shirt that she kept on a hook behind the door as if she were used to wearing it. Melrose frowned. Given the size, the shirt must belong to a very big man. Now she was out the door. “Hell,” he said to himself and fell back against the pillow. He heard her rummaging around in the living room.
Then she was back lugging a large painting, which he was quite prepared to dislike. She turned it around for him to see and his mouth opened in astonishment. “My God. It’s me.” He could scarcely believe it.
“Clever of you to recognize it.” She was chewing gum again and trying not to smile.
In the painting he was seated in a leather wing chair, but leaning forward a little as if talking to an invisible companion. The viewer might have been that companion. The eyes were a gritty green that stonewalled any attempt to glamorize him, just as she’d kept the firelight from sparking his hair.
“My God, Bea, how on earth did you do this without me?”
“I guess I wasn’t.”
“Wasn’t what?”
“Without you.” She grinned and chewed.
PART II. A Dealer in Magic and Spells
20
On her way downstairs from her flat, Carole-anne Palutski heard the telephone ring in Superintendent Jury’s flat and quickly took the chain from around her neck where his key was warm from her skin (as the Super said, “That key could defrost the stubbornest lock”). She unlocked the door. By the time she got across the room, the ringing stopped. Hell, she thought. Hell. Her spirits had lifted momentarily, thinking it could be him calling. Whoever it was didn’t leave a message. She had bought this answering machine secondhand for a couple of quid. The Super hated answering machines, which she said was really strange for a policeman, as police lived by emergencies and what if there was one? What if she got arrested (wrongfully, of course) and only got to make the one phone call? He said he didn’t think there was much chance the answering machine would go along to the nick and bail her out. “Ha ha, always quipping, aren’t you?” she’d said. “An answering machine’s a way you can call and leave messages. You know, for me or Mrs. W.” Well, he actually had called and left messages, four for her
