The Old Wine Shades Read Online Free PDF Page B

and Melrose snatched it up. He took a bite. ‘Um-um. Melts in one’s mouth.’ It did, too. He took another mouthful and set the rest on his little plate. ‘Martha goes to quite a lot of trouble for you, Agatha. You really don’t appreciate her.’
    ‘Of course I do. I’m often in the kitchen telling her how delicious things are.’
    ‘You’re often in the kitchen, I know.’ He flicked over another page to be met with the rather bulbous eyes of the Honorable Judith Pudelthwaite-Duehamps. Judi was girl of the week (and where was the honor in that?), chosen for her title, her beauty and her dalliance with Renaissanee painting, which she would pursue further at university. Only now she was in her gap year and intending to travel and visit the great museums of the world. Why didn’t Judi make a stop at Agatha’s cottage in Plague Alley? There were things that had been collecting there for at least as long as the Renaissance. That stuffed owl on the mantel, for example.
    Oh, Judi, Judi, what you’re really going to do is chase after boys and marry another ‘Honorable’ and live on mummy and daddy’s money and go fox-hunting and have tailgate picnics at Newmarket and Wembley and do something or other with the Women’s Institute.
    ‘Melrose, what are you doing?’
    ‘Thinking.’
    ‘Well, you do entirely too much of it. You were aimlessly looking off. Now, are you going to see Inspector Jury while you’re in London?’
    Melrose sighed in annoyance. ‘Agatha, you keep on demoting him. He’s a superintendent. He’s very high up the ladder.’
    ‘Well, he never corrects me.’
    ‘He doesn’t need to.’ He didn’t, except for the odd villain or two. It occurred to Melrose that Jury had fewer defenses in play than anyone he’d ever known.
    ‘I can tell you this: Ruthven and Martha won’t see much of me while you’re gone, not with that execrable hermit you’ve installed out there.’ She tilted her head in the direction of the wide, deep lawn to the side of the house, where there sat, at a distance, the hermitage, a very fashionable installation in the eighteenth century.
    ‘They’ll be heartbroken. Since the hermitage was empty I saw no reason not to install him; there’s one more upswing in our doddering economy.’
    ‘He creeps about.’
    ‘He’s a hermit. They creep.’
    Agatha said, ‘Now that I think about it, I could do with a little trip to London. I need a few things from Harrods.’
    Unfazed by her plan, since he had no intention of including himself in it, he said, ‘Nobody actually needs anything from Harrods. I go to Harrods for the thrill of needing nothing it has on offer. For the thrill of being crushed in a busload of people who also need nothing. You’ve got to understand that with Harrods you’re there because you’re there. It’s a destination place, you know, like Las Vegas or the La Brea Tar Pits. We’ve all known a Harrods moment. It’s a Zen thing.’ He turned the page.
    ‘You’re not making any sense, Melrose.’ From the cake stand, she selected this time a small, nut-filled confection.
    Her seventh? He was looking forward to his week in London.
    Right now he was looking out of the window to Agatha’s left at Mr. Blodgett, his hermit, leering (as he’d been told to do). ‘Ah, look, Agatha!’
    She turned to the window and dropped her pastry. ‘It’s absolutely unbearable.’ She made a go-away, go-away gesture. But Mr. Blodgett stuck to his guns. He also stuck to Aghast (Melrose’s goat). Now he was doing a little jig. Melrose smiled. It was a bit of cabaret. He waved in friendly fashion.
    Mr. Blodgett occupied the little stone structure on the Ardry End grounds. He was much better than the first hermit Melrose had hired, as that one was always down the pub. Unfortunately, although Mr. Blodgett could revolt Agatha, he didn’t keep her away.
    Agatha also loathed the goat, and not even the two of them in tandem disgusted her enough to make her leave the fairy