The Lamorna Wink Read Free Page B

the living room to the dining room, in which stood a twin-pedestaled dining room table and two sideboards opposite each other on facing walls. If he pulled out drawers and opened cabinet doors, he bet he would find silver, napkins, china.
    From there they went to the rest of the house and the study (or, as Esther Laburnum called it, the “snuggery” or “snug”). Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lined three walls. In front of one a refectory table of English oak stood upon a carpet that Melrose thought he recognized as Turkestan (a payoff of those countless hours spent being taught antiques by Marshall Trueblood). Against the fourth wall sat a large desk, its top covered with the tools of writing: letters, accounts, journals.
    It was a smallish and clearly much-used room. One could almost sense the impress of bodies against the stuffed armchairs. “Snuggery” here was rightly applied. With the fireplace alight, especially on days such as this one (rain-lashed, wind-lashed, he thought in melodramatic terms), snug is what he felt. Melrose walked around checking the many leather-bound or gaudily jacketed newer books; it was quite a library, one appealing to diverse tastes. One end of the refectory table held another half-dozen small silver-framed pictures.
    â€œAre these the family?” he asked her, picking up first one and then another.
    â€œI expect so. Would you look at that fireplace mantel! What carving!”
    Melrose followed his own line of thought. “I don’t understand why people would go off and leave behind such personal things. One ordinarily tucks them safely away in a locked cupboard or trunk or some such place. One doesn’t leave them out.” He sounded quarrelsome, as if such behavior shouldn’t be condoned.
    Mrs. Laburnum answered with no more than an uninterested “Um,” leaving Melrose to peruse this little hoard of pictures and pursue his little mystery. There were four or five people represented here, all informally caught on film. The core group appeared to consist of a fortyish couple, very handsome; an elderly man who looked like the one in the portrait—yes, there was a trace of that squinty look; a pretty little girl of perhaps six or seven; and a little boy, probably a year or so younger, shown with his father on a sailboat. Several other pictures were taken aboard this boat. Melrose wondered how well off they were; judging by this house and the size of the boat, very. One or the other of these four was in the other photos with relations and friends. The grand-parents seemed to be represented wholly by the old man.
    Rarely did Melrose envy other people, for at home he was surrounded by friends more or less like him—unmarried, childless, unattached, really—and if anyone in his circle was to be envied it was he himself, with his manor house, his land, his money. What struck him about the family in these snapshots was that they seemed so hugely happy. Even the old man finally dropped the bad-humored look. Their smiles were not the camera’s but their own. Melrose envied them no end.
    â€œLovely little family, aren’t they?”
    He had forgotten Esther Laburnum in his absorption in the pictures.
    â€œSo sad about the children. I believe they drowned.”
    â€œDrowned?” Melrose took this awful news almost as he would a personal loss.
    â€œIt was all extremely sad. It happened—oh, five years ago. What must have made it worse for them—the parents—was that they were out when it happened. I wasn’t here then.” She had already told him this a couple of times. It was as if she were trying to dissociate herself from the house and its owners. “Would you like to see the upstairs now?”
    He told her he would. Yet he hated leaving the father and mother to the hellish knowledge that they hadn’t been around to save their children. Obediently, Melrose followed Esther Laburnum (in whom he