The Lamorna Wink Read Free Page A

gardening and on the country’s “Living National Treasures,” artisans who continued in outlandishly arcane avocations such as thimble-chasing or making rock gardens for doll houses. Then there was an article on the hunt and its grave importance to the country. The print practically bled entitlement.
    The properties shown usually took up a page apiece and as often as not failed to give the asking price; instead, the copy indicated the property’s price would be given “upon request.” This bit of showmanship Melrose imagined was from the “if-you-have-to-ask” school. Melrose didn’t. He’d torn the page from the magazine and gone to the telephone.
    That had been several days ago, and he was pleased with himself for undertaking to see the real thing. He discovered now, as he stood looking at it, that the picture of Seabourne hadn’t done it justice.
    But, then, it would be quite impossible to capture the atmosphere, the slight menace, the rather edgy romanticism that the place stirred in him. He told himself he was being overimaginative. It did no good.
    Architecturally, the house wasn’t especially imposing. It was Georgian, built of gray stone that worked as a kind of camouflage, making it fade into the land and woods around it. It sat on a cliff, a craggy rock-strewn promontory above the sea. It had been this setting that particularly appealed to him, as it surely would to anyone with an ounce of romance in him. The whole prospect—house, woods, rocks, sea—looked drained of color, which added to the romance. If a grim-faced chatelaine in black to her ankles had opened the heavy oak door, it would have added even more. Melrose was fully prepared to be swept away.
    But it was Esther Laburnum of Aspry and Aspry who swept back the double doors to the largest of the reception rooms (there were three) with a flourish, saying, “There!” in a pleased-as-punch tone suggesting she had just worked some sleight of hand and had called up a fully furnished room, right down to the pictures on the wall.
    Three of the walls were papered in a serene gray and the fourth, with a fireplace at its center, was given over to shelves for books and niches in which were displayed various pieces of sculpture: Etruscan heads, marble busts. A mahogany sideboard, flanked by walnut armchairs, sat beneath a portrait of an undistinguished old man with a churlish look that said he’d sooner be anywhere at all other than sitting for his portrait. The hound at his feet sported a similar look.
    Except for the sculpture, nothing else suggested any interest in the exotic; the room was as English as English could be. Easy chairs and sofa were covered in linen and chintz, patterns of bluebells or intertwining ivy and hollyhocks. One of the chairs was drawn up to a kidney-shaped writing table with marquetry inlay. Against one wall between long windows was a campaign chest, a fine example of its kind.
    â€œIsn’t it lovely?” trumpeted Esther Laburnum. She was a large woman with a boisterous voice, the sort that carries through a restaurant and condemns the other diners to hearing its business.
    The room looked so lived-in, thought Melrose. It was as if the occupants, hearing the approach of Mrs. Laburnum’s Jaguar, had decided to run and hide.
    â€œIs the rest of the house this comfortably furnished?” When she assured him it was, Melrose said, “But the owners have left so many of their personal belongings behind.” He nodded toward the portraits and pictures.
    Esther Laburnum agreed but said the house was on the market when she’d joined Aspry and Aspry. It had been on the market for some time now, and she hadn’t known the owners. She was new to the area. “In any event, the owners are apparently open to letting it or selling it or some combination of both. I mean, if you’d want to let it for a while to see how you get on.”
    They walked from