Bitter End Part 13

Buchanan felt Fizz's head turn slightly towards him. She was bursting to enter the conversation but she was fighting the temptation and wanted him to note the fact. He leaned a little closer to the miniature creature beside him.

'You think it was a botched suicide, then?' he murmured.

'Rather than a straightforward accident?'

Mrs Menzies lifted the lids of her raptor eyes. 'If it was an accident, it was a fortunate one: that's what I said when I heard about it. It must have been a blessed relief

Niall put a generous gla.s.s of sherry in her claw and shook his head at her with gentle reproof. 'Please don't start all that again, darling. We hardly knew them, after all.'

'Oh, of course we knew them. For goodness' sake, your father and I knew Lawrence's family before you were born.

I remember Lawrence as a boy, yes, and a d.a.m.ned bad- tempered, spoiled little swine he was too.' She swallowed a large gulp of sherry and thought, 'Must be worth a pretty penny now, though, swine or not. Turned out to have more brains than both our brats put together.' Then she hauled herself up in her nest of cus.h.i.+ons and said, The day we went down to the church to see them married, I said to Hugh, "G.o.d help the girl," I said, "I hope she's either deaf or as spineless as a dishrag or she'll have had enough of him within the year." That's what I said. I never thought it would last ten years, I don't mind telling you, and I certainly never thought he'd drive her to suicide.'

'Was she spineless enough to take her own life, do you think?' Fizz asked, reaching the end of her patience.

The brown b.u.t.ton eyes swung round on her like a 84. searchlight in a prison camp. 'You think it's spineless to take one's own life?'

Fizz pressed her lips together and made a pretence of questioning her professed judgement. 'Yes.'

Mrs Menzies nodded and uttered a laugh that was, surprisingly, easier on the ear than her pot-scourer voice.

'Well, well, you may be right -ninety-nine times out of a hundred, maybe. Hope springs eternal. Who can tell what miracle the morrow may bring, yes? But some people can't wait till tomorrow, you know.'

'Vanessa Gra.s.sick? Was she one of those?'

Niall topped up his mother's empty gla.s.s and Fizz's, clearly uncomfortable with the way the conversation was going. 'None of us knew Vanessa all that well, did we, Mummy? We didn't live here, most of the time, and we didn't socialise much with Lawrence after his marriage, so the only times we met the Gra.s.sicks were at other people's dinner parties where the conversation was really very superficial.'

During this speech Mrs Menzies was thinking her own thoughts but, with her son's voice overlaid, they were not quite loud enough for Buchanan to decipher. He risked a glance at Fizz and saw that she was enchanted with the old lady, not surprisingly, since she embraced the unusual in all its forms. She obviously had another question on the end of her tongue but before she could pose it Mrs Menzies announced, 'She wasn't as spineless as I used to think her, that's certain. She was a lot of disagreeable things but no-one could call her spineless. I disliked Vanessa Gra.s.sick from the day I met her.'

'Not from the day you met her, Mummy. You used to say--'

'I used to say,' his mummy rasped, impaling him with a look, 'that she was like that misshapen little rat of a Jack Russell you used to have. A two-faced b.i.t.c.h.'

'Coco was a sweet little--'

'Sweet as sugar! I agree with you, Niall, for once. She 85. was so sweet it's a wonder she didn't rot your teeth -right

up to the day she ate the cat.'

'She didn't actually eat the cat,' Niall said, fiddling with his gla.s.ses and looking earnestly from Buchanan to Fizz and back again. 'It wasn't Coco's fau--'

'Only because I caught her at it.' Mrs Menzies twitched her head and stared angrily out of the window. 'Misshapen little mongrel,' she thought. 'Lived with Nippy for two years. . . b.u.t.ter wouldn't melt in her mouth . . . first chance she got, she had Nippy by the throat... by G.o.d, I really enjoyed shooting that brute.' She held her gla.s.s out to her son to be refilled. 'That's the sort of person Vanessa Gra.s.sick was: smiling in your face and stabbing you in the back.'

Niall had given up trying to argue with her but he rolled his eyes and shook his head as he went round with the sherry decanter, as though to say, take that with a pinch of salt, won't you?

'Vanessa was a business woman,' he said gently. 'You don't make a success of a business unless you have a streak of toughness in your nature, do you? She and Joe Rudyard have made Rudyard Gra.s.sick into one of the foremost graphic design studios in the city. Quite an achievement in just -what?

-a couple of years.'

'You're acquainted with Mr Rudyard?' Fizz asked, glancing up at him as he poured her drink.

He filled her gla.s.s like a practised hostess, cupping a hand beneath it in case he spilled a drop on her clothes.

'Not really, no. I've met him ... I think at one of the Gra.s.sicks' Christmas drinks evenings, but I probably exchanged only a few words with him.'

'Living skeleton,' murmured his mother. 'Wouldn't trust either one of them as far as I could spit.'

Fizz was right in there like a flash. 'Why didn't you like them, Mrs Menzies?'

Mrs Menzies blinked at her haughtily for a moment, clearly wondering if Fizz were reading her mind. 'Rudyard? 86. I just don't like the look of that chap. Too narrow between the eyes: that's always a sign of a mean nature. And always moaning about everything. Never happier than when he has something to moan about. But her. . . the Gra.s.sick woman . . . that one's a trouble maker. She took to do with this ridiculous protest--'

'Mummy--'

'Oh, hold your tongue, Niall! If you must disagree with every word I say you can take yourself off and do something with these d.a.m.n dogs of yours. They're c.r.a.pping all over the drive.'

Niall flushed a little but made neither reply nor move to leave.

'What was I saying? Yes, Vanessa Gra.s.sick. The cheek of the woman! Writing insolent letters to Niall here -well,

to my husband actually but Niall has to deal with them trying to tell us what to do with our own property.

Nothing to do with her, but would she take no for an answer? Not a bit of it! Has to get everybody all wound up -the people in the cottages, the locals in the village, letters to the Ramblers, representations to the local council and goodness knows who else! Threatened to stage a demonstration at our gates so that every prospective buyer would know they'd be in for a fight! You ask me what Vanessa Gra.s.sick was like? That's what she was like! A two-faced b.i.t.c.h!'

Buchanan cleared his throat. 'She was no doubt concerned about the serious effect it would have on the economics of the village -and, inevitably, on the value of her own property -if you were to clear the cottages.

Losing eight families would be bound to cause a certain amount of--'

'Oh, don't you start, for heaven's sake!' squawked Mrs Menzies, flinging up her arms and whipping her head from side to side. 'I won't hear another word about it! I've told that woman and I've told your partner, Mr Whittaker, and I'm telling you -I won't be dictated to about this. 87. n.o.body's going to buy the place with eight occupied cottages tagged on to it, and that's the end of it. Enough.

Finished.'

'I'm sure the effect on the local people won't be so very bad,' Niall said with his placid smile and, his mother and Fizz having drained their gla.s.ses, went round again with the sherry bottle. 'It's been my experience that very little in this life turns out to be either as bad or as good as you expect it to be.'

'What's he on about now?' his mother muttered into her sherry gla.s.s. 'When did he become a philosopher, for pity's sake?'

Annoyed though she was, she didn't appear to be at all agitated; her head, however, had developed a slight but disconcerting wobble. Buchanan was uncertain whether this was a symptom of tiredness or intoxication, but he took it as a hint that it was time to be going. Arguing with Mrs Menzies was, in any case, unlikely to be either a practical or a profitable exercise and if Niall was going to change his mind about clearing the cottages it would not be in her presence.

They took their leave as expeditiously as politeness allowed, while Niall pressed them to stay and his mother thought, 'Eyes like his father, though. And the same strong mouth. Hope he gets himself a better wife than that Dorothy what's-her-name his father settled for. Could have had his pick, in those days, silly b.u.g.g.e.r . . . Better have a pee now before I'm caught short again.'

As they reached the doorway she raised a hand to detain them.

'Tam, my dear boy, I want you to have a little memento of Lammerburn House. Your firm bought it for us and your firm is selling it for us; it's proper that you should have something to remember it by. Niall, that bundle we sorted out for Oxfam this morning . . . there was a stag's head in it.'

Niall's gla.s.ses slipped down his nose and he pushed them up again with one forefinger. 'The . . . urn . . . the stag's head, Mummy? Were we going to throw that out?

You know how much store Daddy set by that. It was the only one he ever shot. Perhaps one of the musical boxes might be a better choice.'

'Musical boxes?' cried his mother in the sort of tone Lady Bracknell might have used when she said 'A hcmd- bag?'

'What would a virile young man like Tam want with a musical box? For G.o.d's sake, Niall, wake up! Put the stag's head in the car for him and take care you don't scratch anything as you do it.'

Buchanan was hot with embarra.s.sment and made a resolute stand against accepting the gift but he could make no dent in her determination nor could he dissuade Niall from carrying out her orders. There was absolutely no place in his flat, or even in the office, where the enormous object would look anything other than totally outrageous, but he was stuck with it whether he wanted it or not, and could only try to look genuine while he expressed his thanks.

The dogs met them in the porte-cochere but were less mettlesome this time and gave most of their attention to Niall as, between the three of them, they manipulated the magnificent twelve-pointer into the back seat. It hooked on to everything en route and Buchanan was sweating with concern for the fabric of his brand new Saab but, with one at each of the rear doors and one leaning back over the driver's seat, they eventually wedged it into place. Probably for ever.

Niall patted the deerhounds' heads in a distracted manner and then thrust his hands in the sagging pockets of his cardigan.

'Mummy likes to get her own way, you see. She hates being old and impotent and she fights it any way she can.' He smiled almost pleadingly at Buchanan, his blue eyes huge behind his gla.s.ses. 'But you mustn't take what she says too seriously, you know. She's apt to make mountains out of molehills these days. You know how 89. old people can get when they don't have anything else to worry about. There was never any bad blood between us and the Gra.s.sicks. None at all. They were perfectly nice people.'