The Five Bells and Bladebone Read Free Page A

Idiot would just pick up that T in nit.) “Met an old chum there, he said, and he’s having a nice long natter.”
    Vivian asked with suspicion, “Old chum? What sort?”
    “Female sort. He’s having tea with her in the Trusthouse Forte at the Woburn turn-off.”
    Melrose smiled round the table and went back to his puzzle.

Three

    I T WAS J URY , but he was not finishing tea in a Trusthouse Forte on the M-1. He was in his Islington flat, trying to finish his packing. His packing and his argument. Tossing socks and shirts into a duffel bag, he was trying to talk the tenant from upstairs out of her latest harebrained behavior.
    The tenant from upstairs, Carole-anne Palutski, was paying precious little attention, for she was too busy making small adjustments to her exotic costume in front of Jury’s mirror.
    As she applied more Poppies-from-Heav’n lipstick, Jury said, “He wants a shop assistant, love, not a belly dancer.” He held up a Shetland sweater, inspecting it for mothy bites. He frowned.
    “That’s what you know. Andrew’ll love my outfit. Add a bit of sparkle and shine to the shop.” She put her arms out straight and spun briefly like a top.
    And some outfit it was: gold netting over cerise silk for the brief top; the same silk for the pantaloons; gold braiding round the bottom of the halter and the top of the pants, allowing an even stronger definition of the naked torso in between. Not completely naked, no: something filmy covered the skin there, serving the illusion that it waseven more skinlike. And round her coppery hair, Carole-anne had affixed a band of crushed gold lamé, a fake sapphire embedded in the center.
    Talk about gilding a lily. Carole-anne was too beautiful in a chenille bathrobe for her own good, much less in her new harem costume.
    There was a tiny tinkle as she rose on her toes to get in one or two stretching exercises before going off to work. Jury looked over the top of the sweater where he had found a moth hole big enough to put three fingers through. “Do I hear bells?”
    She was huffing a bit as she did her jumping jacks. “It’s just these,” she said, sticking out her foot. Tiny bells were strung round her ankle below the layers of pantaloon.
    “I hope the camel train makes it,” said Jury. “If the Riffs don’t carry you away, you’ll be able to get to your lessons.” It was her missing her acting lesson that had caused the argument. She had whined and whined about Jury’s arguing her out of that all-night job in a Leicester Square club because it interfered with her acting career. Now the reverse was true; she loved her daytime job at the little shop in Covent Garden so much, she wasn’t finding time for her acting. And it hadn’t taken long for Jury to believe that Carole-anne was an extraordinary actress. To say nothing of those knock-’em-in-the-aisle looks.
    She flopped on the sofa, sprawling like a ten-year-old, musical ankles resting on the coffee table. “I’ve only got that little-bitty part in Camden-bloody-Town. It’s not even speaking .”
    She made such a meal of the word, and such a face with it, Jury wanted to laugh. “You don’t need to speak. As Mrs. Wassermann says, ‘She walks down the street, it’s an entire conversation.’ I thought you wanted to be another Shirley MacLaine. Or was it Julie Andrews? Although I can’t see you running downhill in a dirndl. Besides, you can’t sing.”
    “I don’t want to be them. I wish to play Medea.”
    He looked up from his duffel bag. “You wish to play who? ”
    Having cadged one of Jury’s cigarettes, she was now wrapping her toes round the telephone receiver, trying to lift it. “I saw it on the telly, Zoë Caldwell, you ever seen her?”
    Sorting through mismatched socks, Jury said, “Take your acting lessons for maybe two millennia and you might get to understudy her understudy.” He nodded at her costume. “If you take off those rags.”
    “Well, I agree, the costumes in Medea